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Ruth King

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POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL: FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on November 26th, 2023

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

As some of Israel’s hostages, kidnapped by Hamas, are returning to freedom, thousands of Israelis have been returning from overseas to help fight terrorism or to give support to those adversely impacted by the war.  Many hundreds are making Aliyah and returning to the land of their ancestors. There are also some amazing stories of Israeli farmers returning time and again on Oct 7 to rescue survivors while under fire from terrorists. 

Meanwhile, startups are returning to full operation, despite having many employees in military service. And Israel has allocated over one billion shekels to return devastated communities back to their previous physical condition.  Finally, a Torah scroll made a triumphant return to Gaza after an 18-year absence.

Michael Ordman

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Farmer saves 120 from Hamas. Incredible dashcam footage shows farmer Oz Davidian dodging bullets as he saved 120 lives from the Supernova music festival on Oct 7. He drove his truck on 20 separate journeys from the Re’im site of the open-air party to bring survivors to safety.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/truck-dashcam-footage-shows-farmer-dodging-bullets-as-he-saved-120-from-music-festival/
 
Ofek the heroine. Six-year-old Ofek nearly died from blood loss on Oct 7 after Hamas terrorists shot her in the leg. MDA paramedic Yarin and EMT Gali treated Ofek and were amazed at how calm she was. A month later they brought Ofek a unicorn doll inscribed “To Ofek the heroine, with great love, Gali and Yarin from MDA”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380453
 
Iron defenses. Israel made the first operational use its “Iron Beam” laser defense system. It successfully intercepted an incoming rocket fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip at Israeli territory. Israel also used its high-accuracy “Iron Sting” GPS/laser-guided mortar for the first time in combat.
https://www.jns.org/iron-beam-laser-intercepts-hamas-rocket-from-gaza/
 
Fast track for volunteer doctors. The Jewish Agency, Nefesh b’Nefesh and Israel’s Aliyah Ministry are setting up a database to help global physicians (Jewish and non-Jewish) volunteer in hospitals and medical facilities around the country as quickly and efficiently as possible. 70+ have already arrived and begun work.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380610
 
More volunteering opportunities. This Israel21c article lists dozens of organizations who can provide exciting and rewarding experiences while helping the disadvantaged and the whole of Israel at this time.
https://www.israel21c.org/how-you-can-volunteer-in-israel-during-the-war/
 
100 make Aliyah to join the IDF. Some 100 young Jewish men and women from around the world have made Aliyah and are completing a Defense Ministry course to prepare them physically and mentally for IDF service.
https://www.jns.org/100-jewish-youngsters-make-aliyah-to-enlist-in-idf/
 
Grants for student reservists. Israel’s Technion Institute is awarding NIS 6,000 to all its 2,500 students who were mobilized by an emergency call-up order for ‘Operation Swords of Iron.’ The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has also announced an aid package for its roughly 4,000 students who are serving in the IDF.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2023/11/the-technion-supports-reserve-soldiers/
https://www.bfhu.org/2023/11/21/boosted-support-for-hu-students/
 
Innovation helps treat traumatized kids. Israeli NGO Machshava Tova is providing innovation workshops to Israel’s evacuated children of the south. It helps them get over the traumatic events of Oct 7 as well as develop new skills.  https://video.i24news.tv/en/9e44d596-82e6-4c4c-8a1c-96f84ae49bd5/content/6341511194112
 
Give help, get help. In the very first week of the war, Israel’s Technion Institute set up a “Give Help / Get Help” center to help evacuees, and IDF soldiers. Initiatives include daycare for kids, free secondhand shop, free haircuts, donated goods, computers for kids, toys, books, and crafts, music & dance events, and much more.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2023/11/the-techion-at-its-best/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Using AI to spot lung disease. Israel’s Medial EarlySign (see here previously) has partnered US-based Geisinger to identify patients at high risk for respiratory or pulmonary diseases such as lung cancer. Their LungFlag AlgoMarker analyzes data from a patient’s electronic health record to enable early screening.
https://nocamels.com/2023/11/israeli-us-firms-create-ai-program-to-spot-lung-disease-risks/
 
Fast DNA sequencing. (TY OurCrowd) Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine is to using the AML(acute myeloid leukemia) detection kits from Israel’s Sequentify (see here previously) in its leukemia research. Sequentify’s Infiniseq technology cuts DNA sequencing time to only 3.5 hours.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/stanford-to-use-sequentify-kits-for-hematological-malignancies-ngs-sequencing-301981511.html
 
Milk extract may help IBD sufferers. Israel’s Exosomm extracts tiny capsules of microRNA called exosommes from cows’ milk. They then add them as a powder to food as a treatment for colitis and Crohn’s. Successful laboratory trials have led to recruitment for clinical trials at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.
https://www.israel21c.org/milk-extract-could-ease-symptoms-of-crohns-and-colitis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNqGqVe-erg
 
Shapeshifting capsule is a loss leader. Israel’s Epitomee has completed clinical trials of its ingestible pill that opens up in the stomach to produce a feeling of satiety. In 24 weeks the 140 participants who swallowed the pill lost up to 15% of their body weight, with no side effects.  Epitomee intends to apply for FDA approval in 2024.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-startups-weight-loss-pill-aces-clinical-trials/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Y8kYXzInI
 
More funds for medical treatments. An additional NIS 650 million will be added to Israel’s health basket as part of the war efforts.  https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-774070  
 
Medical students in IDF. Some 200 Israeli medical students were studying overseas but returned to join the IDF. Israel’s Ministry of Health has requested the deans of Israeli medicine faculties to help to integrate these students in Israeli hospitals and medical schools at the end of the war.
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/17112023-02
 
IFCJ funds new fortified ER. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has funded a 100-patient Emergency Operations Center in a fortified sheltered area of Emek Medical Center in the Galilee. The IFCJ is also funding a 50-patient fortified space in the hospital’s oncology building.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380683

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The ‘Complexity’ of Idiocy The Left is less a political movement than a neurotic clown collective arrogantly spouting toxic imbecility By Thaddeus G. McCotter

By on November 25th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/25/the-complexity-of-idiocy/

Often, yours truly has expounded (okay, ranted) upon the term “narrative,” which is just an artful euphemism for “lie.” A device drawn from fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, it facilitates lying by eliding the need for providing the facts and proving the truth of one’s assertions. Consequently, it is a boon to propagandists, who can harp on a “narrative” ad nauseum to provoke and persuade the public to do as the purveyor of the lie seeks.

For the Left, one oft used word signaling an impending narrative is the word “complexity.” Usage of this word allows the Leftist to cull and, importantly, dispense with whatever facts or allegations they choose to create a narrative. This is critical in instances where the facts at hand lead to an ineluctable conclusion – i.e., the truth – that is antithetical to the Left’s aim. Let us explore four instances of the Left’s “complexity” of idiocy driving a narrative harmful to America and the world.

In American domestic policy, the Left is not content with foisting cancel culture upon the country and coopting the corporate media to control the political debate. The Left wants to silence any dissent to its authoritarian aims. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution recognizes and protects the God-given rights to each citizen of “political rights,” such as free speech. One would think the constitution’s prohibition would be the last word on censorship; but one would be underestimating the Left’s power to pretend the clear prohibition of government censorship is, instead, “complex.”
https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/25/the-complexity-of-idiocy/

Often, yours truly has expounded (okay, ranted) upon the term “narrative,” which is just an artful euphemism for “lie.” A device drawn from fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, it facilitates lying by eliding the need for providing the facts and proving the truth of one’s assertions. Consequently, it is a boon to propagandists, who can harp on a “narrative” ad nauseum to provoke and persuade the public to do as the purveyor of the lie seeks.

For the Left, one oft used word signaling an impending narrative is the word “complexity.” Usage of this word allows the Leftist to cull and, importantly, dispense with whatever facts or allegations they choose to create a narrative. This is critical in instances where the facts at hand lead to an ineluctable conclusion – i.e., the truth – that is antithetical to the Left’s aim. Let us explore four instances of the Left’s “complexity” of idiocy driving a narrative harmful to America and the world.

In American domestic policy, the Left is not content with foisting cancel culture upon the country and coopting the corporate media to control the political debate. The Left wants to silence any dissent to its authoritarian aims. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution recognizes and protects the God-given rights to each citizen of “political rights,” such as free speech. One would think the constitution’s prohibition would be the last word on censorship; but one would be underestimating the Left’s power to pretend the clear prohibition of government censorship is, instead, “complex.”

Consequently, as they have on college campuses, the Left has been weaponizing federal and state governments both directly and through colluding with private entities to censor free speech.  Creating the camouflage of “complexity” by pretending there exists a transcendent right not to be “offended” and purporting to be promoting “safety,” the censorious Left’s aim is to cloud the truth that the supreme law of the land prohibits the government from infringing upon Americans’ free speech and all political rights. And no amount of faux complexity can obscure the fact that there is nothing more dangerous than a censor.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Other Willing Accomplice: The European Union by Majid Rafizadeh

By on November 25th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20175/iran-accomplice-eu

Germany is the top European trade partner buying oil and non-oil commodities from Iran.

“UANI [United Against Nuclear Iran] said that research had led to the identification of 2,500 businesses around the world, suspected of having involvement with Iran, with hundreds in Europe. They will publish their names if they do not receive satisfactory answers.” — The National, September 22, 2023.

The EU’s trade with Iran, increasing the Iranian regime’s revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the theocratic establishment to provide weapons to Russia, repress its own people even further, strengthen its military presence in Venezuela and Cuba, help its proxies escalate their goals of trying to annihilate Israel and the Jews, and above all, top off its nuclear weapons program with which to blackmail everyone.

If this is the damage the Iranian is doing without nuclear weapons, just think what it will do with them.

The Europeans’ continuing business with Iran repeats the same mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will ultimately turn on them. Appeasing anyone will only encourage him to become an even greater threat. Although Europe and the US most probably will not do it, the time has come to stop.

In spite of the Iran’s increasing involvement in the war against Ukraine and against Israel and Jews, the European Union, as well as the US, appear more than happy to continue appeasing the Iran’s ruling mullahs. Shouldn’t this make them considered accomplices?

Iran and Russia are fast making headway constructing a plant based in Russia that will mass-produce Iranian-designed kamikaze drones, presumably to help Moscow attack Ukrainian targets.

Yet, no sanctions or pressure have been imposed either by the United States or the European Union just on this project, let alone Iran’s lethal nuclear program or the 60+ attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq just since October 17.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Fiery But Peaceful: When Irish Eyes AREN’T Smiling Beege Welborn

By on November 24th, 2023

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/11/24/fiery-but-peaceful-when-irish-eyes-arent-smiling-n594433#google_vignette

Yesterday afternoon an absolutely horrific attack occurred in Dublin, Ireland’s city center.

Three little kiddoes and their teacher were standing by a creche in front of their Catholic school when a man appeared, and, out of the blue, began slashing at them.

A FIVE-YEAR-old girl who was seriously injured in a stabbing incident near a school in Dublin city centre yesterday afternoon is in a critical condition in hospital.

Gardaí said they are continuing to investigate all of the circumstances of the incident, which occurred near Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square shortly after 1.30pm yesterday afternoon.

In an update this morning, gardaí said the five-year-old girl remains in a critical condition in CHI Temple Street.

A six-year-old girl is still receiving treatment for less serious injuries at CHI Crumlin.

A five-year-old boy was discharged from CHI Crumlin yesterday evening.

A woman in her 30s, who is the children’s carer, remains in a serious condition in the Mater Hospital.

The man was disarmed by passers-by, and taken into custody quickly by the Gardaí, who’d arrived within minutes on scene.

It is eerily reminiscent of the ghastly attack on little children in the French park this past spring.

What made it all the more disquieting is that none of the news reports of the stabbing itself mentioned a name or description other than age. As the day progressed – nothing. Even the Gardaí press conference last evening was devoid of detail concerning the attacker.

He’s described as simply “a male.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Left Conspires to Keep Election Fraud Quiet. Wonder Why? Betsy McCaughey

By on November 24th, 2023

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2023/11/24/the-left-conspires-to-keep-election-fraud-quiet-wonder-why-n2631578

You can see it with your own eyes. But Democrats and their left-wing media allies call it a “fantasy.” What is it?

Election fraud.

A Lawrence, Massachusetts, voter who had been turned away from the polls on Election Day and told he had already voted found out he was the victim of fraud. He checked the footage on the video camera outside his front door and saw that a woman had removed mail-in ballots from his mailbox. He called the police.

It’s happening in many places. On Tuesday, Fight Voter Fraud, Inc., a nonprofit voter rights group, appeared in Connecticut Superior Court to demand the arrest of a woman allegedly caught on video committing mail-in ballot fraud in the 2019 Bridgeport Democratic mayoral primary and again in the 2023 primary. The group, protesting that city officials pretend there’s no problem, also called on the Connecticut legislature to appoint a special prosecutor.

According to Rasmussen Reports, a staggering 60% of likely voters nationwide consider election cheating a problem. Yet the Left denies it’s happening.

The Washington Post calls it a “myth” and a “fantasy offense.”

Worst of all, the federal government is suppressing the evidence and censoring anyone who complains about election cheating.

Never-before-seen emails released by the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 6 reveal that a government-sponsored task force is muzzling public figures, thousands of ordinary Americans, and media outlets like Newsmax and The Babylon Bee when they report election irregularities.

The emails show that officials within the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department — the deep state — organized the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020, recruiting academics at Stanford University and the University of Washington to question election honesty and then instruct social media companies such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube to label the postings as “misinformation” or take them down entirely.

Don’t be fooled by the name Election Integrity Partnership. This task force does the opposite, silencing concerns about election integrity

In 2020, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich objected when the state of Pennsylvania adopted new election rules during the COVID pandemic that, in his view, invited cheating. He tweeted, “Pennsylvania democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election.”

When Nicole Malliotakis ran for Congress in 2020 from Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, she posted on Facebook: “Be sure to vote tomorrow because we’re not only taking on Max Rose, Nancy Pelosi & Bill de Blasio. We’re taking on Dead Democrats too!”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Harps, Shamrocks and Anti-Semitism

By on November 24th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2023/11/nazis/

“Two days after neo-Nazi terrorists from Gaza slaughtered, raped and burnt 1400 Israeli Jews, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Israel Embassy in Dublin to denounce Israel.” Now that is the kind of absurd sentence that once upon a very distant time would have got students at journalism class into dire trouble. “It doesn’t make sense,” would scold the dried-out old veteran of two hundred bars, half a dozen newsrooms and three and half wives. “You clearly mean the protesters had gathered outside the Palestinian Embassy in Dublin to protest at the murder of Jews, so please don’t dress up the hideous truth with these misbegotten attempts at satire.”

Ah, but that was once upon a distant time. In the woeful here and now, this is surreal, a bad dream, a very bad dream. This after all had occurred on October 7, 2023, not October 7, 1943. The latter date was when Hitler met his Gauleiters at his Wolf’s Lair to discuss the remaining details of the Final Solution, to be concluded that year. But since that terrible day in 1943, and up until its eightieth anniversary in 2023, no government could publicly mass-murder Jews anywhere. Even Himmler, Hitler’s executioner of the Jewish people, that October had written of the extermination program, “This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written.”

That was the point about that Final Solution: even by the utterly debased standards of the Nazis, it was such a shameful business that it had to be kept secret. “The Jews must be exterminated,” said Himmler privately. “I do not consider myself justified murdering the menfolk … while leaving their children to grow up and to take their vengeance on our sons and grandsons.”

Whereas the Final Solution of October 7, 2023, was to be a very public affair, and the first target would be the fun-loving liberal Jews attending an all-night rave, to be videoed and celebrated on social media. All previous genocides had been secret, and covered up, as in the Nazi execution pits at Babi Yar, the gas chambers of Belzec, or the death camps of the Khmer Rouge, Stalin’s NKVD and Mao’s Red China.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

72 Columbia Student Groups Issue Anti-Israel, Terrorist-Empathizing Manifesto Catherine Salgado

By on November 24th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2023/11/24/72-columbia-student-groups-issue-anti-israel-terrorist-empathizing-manifesto-n4924201

One disturbing outcome of the current Israel-Hamas conflict is the exposure of radical anti-Semitism at American universities. Over 70 student groups at Columbia University just issued a manifesto against Israel that would have made the Nazis proud.

Two student groups at Columbia were suspended recently for repeatedly threatening and intimidating Jewish students, as PJ Media’s Rick Moran reported. Dozens of Israel-hating, terrorist-empathizing Columbia student groups want them reinstated. Perhaps it’s not surprising at a school funded by globalist anti-Israel billionaire George Soros…

The heinous Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack left hundreds of Israelis dead and forced Israeli authorities to come to grips with the reality that Arabs, who have no right at all to Israeli land, have been refusing peace in favor of trying to destroy Israel for decades, and they’re not going to change their minds now. The majority of Gazans support jihad against Israel, and the Gaza Strip is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas and the terrorist-funding Palestinian Authority (PA), which use civilians as human shields. Yet Columbia student groups issued a perverted Nov. 14 manifesto based entirely off anti-Semitic terrorist propaganda!

The manifesto even had the audacity to accuse Columbia of anti-Semitism for shutting down Jewish Voice for Peace, which openly intimidated other Jews! While explicitly spreading Hamas propaganda and vilifying Israel with hideous lies, these woke student groups saw no hypocrisy in mentioning anti-Semitism. “We know that antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism—in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians—are all cut from the same cloth: Western colonization, imperialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness,” the manifesto screeched. Jews are always framed as white colonialist oppressors in academia, and the students are apparently unaware that Arabs have a long history of racism against black people.

Ironically, the manifesto signers included Columbia Queer and Asian, Columbia Queer Alliance, Proud Colors, and GSAS Queer Graduate Collective. Yet if these LGBTQ radicals went to Palestinian-controlled areas, because the Palestinians are Muslim, these Columbia activists  would “risk summary execution” and face harsh persecution. Ultimately, Hamas would be happy to kill every single one of these woke Columbia students, except possibly some of the Muslims, but the students probably couldn’t be brought to realize that until and unless they were actually being killed. This is the level of willful ignorance and self-delusion at Columbia:

We are committed to creating a multi-generational, intersectional, and accessible space dedicated to fighting for abolition, transnational feminism, anticapitalism, and decolonization, and also to combating anti-Blackness, queerphobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Greatest American Western Novel of All Elmer Kelton’s ‘The Time It Never Rained’ is an overlooked classic.Kevin Mims

By on November 24th, 2023

https://quillette.com/2023/11/23/the-greatest-american-western-novel-of-all/

When Cormac McCarthy died in June of this year, much was written about his 1985 western novel Blood Meridian, which many literary highbrows over the years (Harold Bloom, Saul Bellow, George Steiner, etc.) have claimed is not just a great western but one of the great masterpieces in all of American literature. Likewise, when Larry McMurtry died in 2021, many of the appreciations that appeared in print made similar claims for his western novel Lonesome Dove, published exactly three months after Blood Meridian, on June 1st, 1985. But, in the opinion of many ordinary readers of western fiction, the greatest cowboy novel of them all is Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained, published 50 years ago this month, and a full 15 years before Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian.

Unlike McCarthy and McMurtry, Kelton never received a Pulitzer Prize for his work. But he won seven Spur Awards for Best Western Novel from the Western Writers of America. Four of his books won Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1995, the Western Writers of America voted Kelton “the greatest western writer of all time.” In 1998, he won the inaugural Lone Star Award For Lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. And, as Houston Public Media noted in 2014, “The Time It Never Rained is now recognized as his finest work, and a lasting contribution to Texas literary history.”

Elmer Kelton was born in 1926, the son of a Texas rancher. “I grew up in a cowboy world,” Elmer once wrote. “My father, Buck Kelton, was foreman of the large McElroy Ranch, in Crane and Upton counties. He never went to the movies, and he never read western novels to find out what cowboys were supposed to be like. They had been part of his heritage since his grandfather brought a string of horses out of East Texas in 1878 and settled in Callahan County, east of Abilene.” He realised at a young age, however, that he wasn’t cut out for a cowboy’s life. His eyesight was weak and he preferred reading books to riding broncs.

Kelton enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin and was matriculated there from 1942 to 1944, and then again from 1946 to 1948, earning a BA in journalism. The two-year interruption in his education was the result of his service in the US Army near the end of World War II. After graduation, Kelton spent 15 years covering the farm-and-ranch beat for the San Angelo Standard Times. Later, he spent five years as the editor of Sheep and Goat Raiser magazine, and then 22 years as an editor at Livestock magazine, retiring in 1990. During those years, he also churned out 30 western novels. He continued writing and publishing novels right up until 2009, the year of his death. His official bibliography lists 48 novels, six story collections, and more than a dozen non-fiction books.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Holocaust Historians, the Genocide Charge, and Gaza The accusation is wrong on the facts and objectively serves to support the intent of Hamas to murder Jews with impunity. Norman J.W. Goda Jeffrey Herf

By on November 24th, 2023

https://quillette.com/2023/11/23/holocaust-historians-the-genocide-charge-and-gaza/

Following the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7th, accusations of genocide can be heard from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. These accusations, however, are not being made against the massacre’s Palestinian perpetrators. They are intended to indict the prosecution of Israel’s military retaliation in Gaza and the consequent death toll there. From countries like Iran and Iraq, this kind of perversity was predictable. The virulent antisemitic reaction to the October 7th attacks in the West—which began before Israel attacked Hamas targets in Gaza—is more shocking. In the US alone, those who have taken the opportunity to accuse Israel of genocide include congressional staffers, a congressional representative, numerous university students, and a significant number of university professors.

This is not the first time that Israel has faced accusations of genocide. During the 1982 war in Lebanon, Israel acted to neutralize the bases from which Palestinian guerillas were attacking the country’s north. An Israeli-backed Christian militia was ordered to clear the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, from which Israeli soldiers had taken fire during the campaign. In response to the recent assassination of Lebanon’s Christian president Bashir Gemayel, the militiamen killed a number of fighters and a still-unsettled number of Palestinian civilians. To this day, there is no agreement on how many were killed. The Red Cross said 460. Palestinian scholar Maher Sharif insists that the figure might have been as high as 4,500. Such is the politicization of casualty figures.

These events provoked global outrage, but it is important to note that they also provoked outrage within Israel itself. The 1983 report of the Israeli government’s Kahan Commission held the IDF indirectly responsible for the massacre and led to the resignation of defence minister Ariel Sharon. The UN General Assembly, however, went further than this, voting in 1982 to condemn the killing at Sabra and Shatila as an act of genocide, even though the UN had not investigated the crime. As the Soviets put it during the UN debate, Israel’s purpose “is to destroy the Palestinians as a nation.”

But “genocide” isn’t simply a word for reprehensible conduct in war. The term is defined by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention as the demonstrable intent to destroy a national, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. Not only was the UNGA’s claim of genocidal intent and practice inconsistent with Israel’s own self-critical investigation of wrongdoing, but up to 300,000 Palestinian refugees still live in Lebanon today. The accusation of genocide, international-law expert William Schabas later wrote, was simply used by the UNGA “to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Time to take a stand against the new Jew hatred Join the March Against Anti-Semitism in London this Sunday. Tom Slater

By on November 24th, 2023

https://quillette.com/2023/11/23/holocaust-historians-the-genocide-charge-and-gaza/

Following the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7th, accusations of genocide can be heard from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. These accusations, however, are not being made against the massacre’s Palestinian perpetrators. They are intended to indict the prosecution of Israel’s military retaliation in Gaza and the consequent death toll there. From countries like Iran and Iraq, this kind of perversity was predictable. The virulent antisemitic reaction to the October 7th attacks in the West—which began before Israel attacked Hamas targets in Gaza—is more shocking. In the US alone, those who have taken the opportunity to accuse Israel of genocide include congressional staffers, a congressional representative, numerous university students, and a significant number of university professors.

This is not the first time that Israel has faced accusations of genocide. During the 1982 war in Lebanon, Israel acted to neutralize the bases from which Palestinian guerillas were attacking the country’s north. An Israeli-backed Christian militia was ordered to clear the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, from which Israeli soldiers had taken fire during the campaign. In response to the recent assassination of Lebanon’s Christian president Bashir Gemayel, the militiamen killed a number of fighters and a still-unsettled number of Palestinian civilians. To this day, there is no agreement on how many were killed. The Red Cross said 460. Palestinian scholar Maher Sharif insists that the figure might have been as high as 4,500. Such is the politicization of casualty figures.

These events provoked global outrage, but it is important to note that they also provoked outrage within Israel itself. The 1983 report of the Israeli government’s Kahan Commission held the IDF indirectly responsible for the massacre and led to the resignation of defence minister Ariel Sharon. The UN General Assembly, however, went further than this, voting in 1982 to condemn the killing at Sabra and Shatila as an act of genocide, even though the UN had not investigated the crime. As the Soviets put it during the UN debate, Israel’s purpose “is to destroy the Palestinians as a nation.”

But “genocide” isn’t simply a word for reprehensible conduct in war. The term is defined by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention as the demonstrable intent to destroy a national, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. Not only was the UNGA’s claim of genocidal intent and practice inconsistent with Israel’s own self-critical investigation of wrongdoing, but up to 300,000 Palestinian refugees still live in Lebanon today. The accusation of genocide, international-law expert William Schabas later wrote, was simply used by the UNGA “to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision.”

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