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Ruth King

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The 7 October deniers Jew hatred and conspiratorial thinking have always gone hand in hand. Tom Slater

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/08/the-7-october-deniers/

Tom Slater is editor of Spiked England’s most pro-Israel journal. rsk

It’s one of the grim features of our age that before the bodies are even cold after a terror attack or mass shooting, someone, somewhere, with a sizeable audience, will begin to deny it. Will speculate that it was a fake – a false flag. The salt these conspiracy theories must pour into already gaping wounds. Grieving families are turned into ‘paid actors’, into targets for derision and abuse. The blackest moment in their lives is turned into mere fodder, into content, by those blinded by conspiracism or plain old grift.

After 7 October, Israelis had to endure this – the trauma followed by the denialism – on an unprecedented scale. Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel – in which 1,200 people were butchered, the vast majority of them civilians – is the most deadly per capita terror attack since the Global Terrorism Database began keeping track in 1970. More than one person was killed for every 10,000 Israelis, calculates the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It would be as if 40,000 to 50,000 Americans had died on 9/11. You’d be hard-pressed to meet not only an Israeli, but also a diaspora Jew, who was not personally affected by the slaughter.

Plus, the manner in which this atrocity was conducted was designed to terrorise those who survived it for decades to come. The cold-blooded murders, even of infants. The rape, gang rape and sexual mutilation of women and girls. The horror that was visited upon one community after another – kibbutz to kibbutz, door to door. It was intended to evoke the racist barbarism, the unhinged murderous depravity, Jews founded Israel to escape from. This is why the terrorists filmed and broadcast their genocidal crimes.

7 October was the most documented attack ever, live-streamed from the GoPro cameras of its perpetrators. And yet still it was denied. ‘I’m shown video clips, and then I’m also told that they’re beheading babies. I’m also told that they’re raping women’, said Farhan Siddiqi, imam of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Washington, DC. ‘And when I go and I investigate those specific reports, I find out that they’re all lies.’ ‘Pro-Palestine’ outlets insisted that it was actually Israel who ‘killed many, if not most, of the civilians’. ‘How the hell did the Israelis not know this was going to happen?… I’m still a little bit down that rabbit hole’, said Roger Waters, a month after the pogrom, declaring there to be ‘something very fishy’ about 7 October. He floated the possibility it might have been a ‘false-flag operation’ – that is, staged by Israel to justify a military response.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Free Speech Impediment Too many of our nation’s college students are anti-free speech zealots. By Larry Sand

By on October 9th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/09/free-speech-impediment/

It has now been 60 years since the birth of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. It all started in mid-September 1964, when the school’s dean of students banned tables and political activity along the Bancroft strip, a 26-foot stretch of sidewalk near Telegraph Avenue. Students protested, cops were called in and angry students surrounded the police car. Thousands subsequently joined the crusade, and activist Mario Savio emerged as the leader of the burgeoning Free Speech Movement. The events at Berkeley garnered national attention.

Once again, colleges are ground zero for the free speech issue. But now things have turned 180 degrees, as many students actively try to quash speech they don’t agree with.

According to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, 70% of college students say that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence. The survey polled more than 1,600 college students and found that “2024 marks a crisis for free speech on college campuses…”

The poll revealed that more than a quarter agreed that it was more important for schools to “protect students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased” rather than prioritizing allowing students to hear a wide range of viewpoints, including possibly offensive ones.

Another poll, the 2024 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey, found that 71% of college students maintain that a professor who expresses “offensive” ideas should be reported to the university. Other eye-opening results include:

About a third of students want professors to drop uncomfortable readings.
One-quarter want them to avoid uncomfortable discussion topics.
A third of students said a professor should be reported for contending there is no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings.
A quarter contends that a professor should be reported for saying COVID vaccinations shouldn’t be required.
More than one in five students declare that a professor should be reported for asserting that biological sex is a scientific fact.
Just under one in five students said a professor should be reported for saying that affirmative action is doing more harm than good.
14% would report a professor who accused affirmative action opponents of perpetuating white privilege.
56% of students would report a classmate for saying something they thought was offensive.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Maintains ‘Wall of Silence’ on First Gentleman #MeToo Scandal “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.” by Daniel Greenfield

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/media-maintains-wall-of-silence-on-first-gentleman-metoo-scandal/

Here’s the scorecard so far.

Doug Emhoff, Kamala’s powerful lawyer hubby, admitted to impregnating his nanny during his first marriage. The status of the child is unknown, but there are allegations that she suffered a miscarriage.

A recent report described Emhoff hitting an ex-girlfriend in public. The media refused to report on the allegation and only reported on Emhoff’s denial of the allegation.

Half of the political world focused Wednesday on a Daily Mail report that second gentleman Doug Emhoff “forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man” at Cannes in 2012. Others (including Semafor) haven’t matched the reporting, and as of Wednesday evening the incident didn’t appear in The New York Times or top outlets. But the allegations are a dominant narrative in conservative media: Megyn Kelly’s coverage had more than 150,000 views on YouTube, while Trump aide Stephen Miller demanded answers. In a statement to Semafor, a spokesperson for Emhoff said “this report is untrue,” and that “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”

It’s striking that “half of the political world” is focused on an allegation the media won’t report on.

Instead, the media is reporting on such urgent stories as “Doug Emhoff On Andy Samberg’s ‘SNL’ Impression: “I Approve”, “Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to visit Arizona” and “Michael Stipe, Jason Isbell Tell Doug Emhoff Why They Endorse Kamala Harris”.

Isn’t journalism awesome?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

One Year Later, Israel is Still in Agony But rather than sympathy, hatred grows for the Jewish state. by Michael Brown

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/one-year-later-israel-is-still-in-agony/

One full year after October 7, the nation of Israel is still traumatized and many of its people are still in agony. One full year later, there are still scores of hostages languishing in Gaza, if not dead, and their families remain in daily agony. One full year later, the war with Hamas continues, but now there is also war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as possible war with Iran itself. One full year later, rather than sympathy for Israel growing it is hatred for Israel that is growing.

One year ago, the unthinkable happened on Israeli soil. A mass pogrom took place within the borders of this tiny state, the one place that was supposed to be safe for Jewish people. The nation’s vaunted security systems failed miserably and babies were slaughtered, women were raped, the elderly were executed, and whole families burned alive.

I remember waking up the morning of the 7th to the news that Hamas terrorists had flooded Israel and that as many as 100 Israelis had been killed. Impossible, I thought. Not today, in Israel. This cannot be. Then there were reports that several soldiers had been taken hostage. This, too, was unthinkable, with horrific potential consequences.

After all, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit had languished as a hostage in Gaza for five long years before his release, which required Israeli releasing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his life – yes, 1,027 prisoners, including Yahyah Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacre. What would Hamas do with several Israeli hostages?

But as that dreadful day unfolded, the news was far more devastating than anything we could have imagined. This is what I wrote one year ago as the news began to unfold: “Heartbreak. Shock. Agony. Devastation. Confusion. Rage. These are just a few of the emotions flooding the hearts of millions of Israelis in the midst of an unprecedented terrorist attack by Hamas. This is a time to stop and pray for the merciful intervention of God.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Danger of the Secularist Sensibility The high cost of the modernist inability to take religion seriously. by Bruce Thornton

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-danger-of-the-secularist-sensibility/

Last week, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times asking the question, “What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?” The answer began with a conversation that revealed the central problem with the West’s understanding of Islamic jihadism, one that still vitiates our foreign policy and plans for dealing with Muslim aggressors: our modernist inability to take religion seriously.

“What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand,” Gantz writes, “in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. ‘The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,’ a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.”

This mistake in divining the motives of militant Islam marks the U.S. conflict with Iran and its revolution and “goal of waging religious war.” For example, in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to direct the revolution, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, as David Farber reported, in a meeting with Carter “soft-pedaled the specific threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to American interests.” Brzezinski also viewed the revolution with Western eyes. The religious revolution would falter, he argued, and require secular technocrats and experts, which would dilute and marginalize the clerics.

In an even greater failure of imagination and projection of Western principles, Brzezinski advised that the U.S. should “pursue relations with individual Muslim countries on the basis of shared interests, but our emphasis on moral as well as material values, our support for a world of diversity, and our commitment to social justice should place us in a strong position to deepen our dialogue with the Muslim world.”

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EDUCATION, RELIGION Comments turned off

Hannah E. Meyers Days of Awe This is the week for universities to reestablish community around open, civilized debate.

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/october-7-and-the-days-of-awe

The anniversary of the October 7 massacre in Israel falls during Judaism’s ten “Days of Awe.” This is the charged period between Rosh Hashanah, when fates for the coming year are inscribed in the Book of Life, and Yom Kippur, when they are sealed. All across America, Jews will be chanting in unison this year’s communal sins and beseeching: “For all of these, God of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement!” Jews stand before their fate, not as individuals, but as a community.

This will also be “The Week of Rage,” when anti-Israel groups on America’s campuses will chant in unison for the annihilation of Jews—now entering their 5,785th calendar year—and their nation-state. They will openly express their support for terrorism: killing, raping, and torturing civilians to achieve political goals. “By any means necessary!” they will call out. They will wave the insignias of Hamas and Hezbollah, for whom the goal is death to America and death to Israel—and while they’re at it, death to homosexuals, to political rivals, and even to their own children, if it results in their gaining power. As a community, they stand behind an ideological vision as intolerant in its aims as it is savage in the means it chooses to pursue them.

Sensibly enough, considering what we’ve seen on American campuses over the last year, many universities are planning extra security, erecting additional barriers to movement around their quads and buildings. So far this semester, however, similar strategies have failed to quell the rage: students from Pittsburgh to Michigan have been beaten or slashed for being identifiably Jewish. Creating truly safe campuses will require more than purely defensive measures.

To work a genuine transformation in campus safety this week and onward, universities need to confront the problem as a community. They must embrace the American community tradition, which thrives by welcoming disagreement.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tal Fortgang The Lessons of October 9 Like Israel, the West must respond with strength, not weakness, to those who threaten our way of life.

By on October 9th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-lessons-of-october-9

October 7, 2023, was a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. It was also the festival of Shmini Atzeret. The following day, October 8, was Simchat Torah, another holiday on which observant Jews are forbidden from using electronics. (In Israel, the two holidays are celebrated together in one day, while outside the Holy Land they are split in two.) Consequently, it was not until after nightfall on October 8, here in New York, that I and many of my fellow Jews could take stock of the horrors that Hamas had inflicted in Israel’s south.

By then, the story on the home front had already shifted from one abomination to another. In the hours and days following the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli civilians—while babies, Holocaust survivors, and American citizens were being kidnapped and secreted through tunnels in Gaza—thousands of people took to the streets of cities throughout the West to celebrate these atrocities. These demonstrators—wrongly called “protesters,” since Israel’s military response had not yet begun—expressed support for the destruction of Israel “by any means necessary.” This is old news by now, yet it still shocks the conscience.

Many Jews and decent American citizens were horrified and confused by these displays, which have only escalated over time. They remain horrified by the thought that so many people who live among us—some citizens, even—would kick Jews and Israeli Americans while they were down. The dominant moral idea of our age presents itself in terms of concern for the downtrodden: those vulnerable or in pain receive deference and space to grieve, while others must refrain from “punching down.”

On October 8, 2023, we Jews thought, consistent with this ethos, that our pain and vulnerability would invite sympathy and solidarity. By the time daylight had broken on October 9, however, we realized we were wrong. We could no longer deny that weakness only emboldened those who hate us. Our blood was in the water, and our enemies took that as a sign to attack. To those who believe that Jews should leave Israel and “go back to Poland,” as we have gotten used to hearing, our pain is a sign that they are succeeding in their efforts to make our lives miserable until they get what they want. These are old-school bullies in progressive attire.

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ISRAEL, RELIGION Comments turned off

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) Guide for the Perplexed, 2024 Yoram Ettinger

By on October 9th, 2024

1. Yom Kippur is observed on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei (October 12, 2024), starting on the evening of October 11.  Yom Kippur is a Super Sabbath (Shabbat Shabbaton in Hebrew), concluding 10 days of soul-searching and spiritual self-awareness and self-enhancement, which begins on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish year.

2. Ten, which represents wholesomeness, has a special significance in Jewish history: God’s abbreviation is the 10th Hebrew letter (Yod – י); the 10 Commandments; the 10 Plagues of Egypt; Yom Kippur on the 10th day of Tishrei; the 10 spheres of the spiritual universe, which were highlighted during the Biblical Creation; 10 reasons for blowing the Shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; the 10% Biblical gift to God (tithe); the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tevet commemorates the beginning of the 586-589 BCE siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar; the 10 Martyrs (Jewish leaders), who were tortured/murdered by the Roman Empire; the 10 generations between Adam and Noah and between Noah and Abraham; the 10 divine tests passed by Abraham; the 10-person-quorum (Minyan in Hebrew), which is required for a collective Jewish prayer service; the 10 sons of Haman and the 10 Nazi leaders, who were hung; etc.   

3. According to Leviticus 23:26-32: “The Lord said to Moses, that the tenth day of this seventh month [Tishrei] is the Day of Atonement…. Do not do any work on that day…. This is a lasting ordinance for generations to come….”
Yom Kippur commemorates the day of divine forgiveness for the sin of worshipping the golden calf idol, and the introduction of the Moses-made second set of the Two Tablets (Ten Commandments). It induces human beings to marshal the capacity to learn from mistakes, while warning against a recurring human fallibility: the temptation to sacrifice spiritual values on the altar of materialism.

4. The astrological sign of the months of Tishrei is Libra (♎), which symbolizes the scales of justice, truth, optimism, humility and tolerance. Libra is ruled by the planet Venus (Noga – נגה in Hebrew – is the name of my oldest granddaughter), which represents divine light and compassion. 

5. The Hebrew word Kippur [כיפור] means atonement/repentance – a derivative of the Biblical word Kaporet [כפורת], which was the dome/cover of the Holy Ark in the Sanctuary, and the word Kopher [כופר], which was the cover/dome of Noah’s Ark and the Holy Altar in the Jerusalem Temple. 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Let The Economy Roll

By on October 9th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/09/let-the-economy-roll/

Maybe the primary complaint against Kamala Harris is that voters don’t know who she is nor where she stands on issues, given her flip-flopping-for-votes campaign. But we can be sure that her instincts are to bridle the economy rather than unleash it.

Not many weeks ago, we argued that Harris’ Marxist roots, from both her mother and father, inform her economic positions. It should be kept in mind whenever looking at her economic proposals.

Without giving her economic positions a label, Harris, who has spoken appreciatively of the impact her parents had on her, is definitively, though not necessarily nominally, a Marxist. She insists that public policy objectives have ‘to be about’ ensuring that everybody ends ‘up in the same place.’ She favors ‘equitable distribution’ and ‘giving resources based on equity.’

…

How is this different than the socialist creed ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ that Karl Marx popularized?

This is the opposite of letting the U.S. economy, the most powerful force on Earth when not bound by ideological chains, roll freely.

It is not a radical position to support a free market economy. The moral and material benefits of an open economy are enormous. No other system can match its dynamism and positive outcomes. (We must emphasize that the free market, or capitalism, as not a system but instead the natural human interaction.)

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Anti-Semitism in the Antipodes Gavin Silbert

By on October 8th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/anti-semitism/anti-semitism-in-the-antipodes/

The appearance of anti-Semitism in Australia, a country remarkable for its absence of anti-Semitism, raises several questions. Ignited by the Israel Gaza war and fuelled by a combination of ignorance, the current anti-Western zeitgeist of the Left, and some major failings by the Australian Jewish community and by Israel itself, the result has been an upsurge in anti-Semitism in social media, left-wing politics and the public domain. We have seen blatant breaches of the law by way of public demonstrations and damage to property both public and private. The encampments on Australian university campuses, aping those in the United States, and the damage caused to politicians’ electoral offices, have continued unabated since October 7, 2023.

Three fundamental propositions should be stated at the outset. First, we have a right of freedom of political expression which lies at the root of our democracy and, subject to well-established legal constraints, should never be interfered with.

Second, where the exercise of such legal expression contravenes the law, the perpetrators should be charged and prosecuted. The current public displays of support for Palestinian solidarity are notable for their blatant breach of state laws criminalising hate speech, unlawful assembly and causing damage to property, and also of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act of the Commonwealth. It is beyond belief that no prosecutions have been instituted by state or federal police forces, which calls into question our faith in the rule of law.

Third, criticism of Israel, however ill-informed, is not anti-Semitic. We are currently hearing repetition of the words genocide and apartheid. Genocide has a specific meaning in law and its use to describe the horrific civilian deaths in Gaza is not accurate. Similarly, the use of the term apartheid to describe Israel, which has over two million Arab citizens enjoying full civil rights and an Arab justice on its supreme court is also not accurate. Both terms are pejorative and ignorant, but not anti-Semitic.

Perhaps more interesting is the relationship between Australian Jews and the State of Israel. The vitriolic debate between Sir Isaac Isaacs and his supporters and Professor Julius Stone over Zionism and a home for the Jewish people came to an end with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Jews have lived in Australia since the arrival of the First Fleet and numbered approximately 25,000 at the time of the Second World War. They were mainly born in Australia or Britain, and considered themselves Australians of the Jewish faith. Their Judaism centred on synagogue membership and religious worship in a country which was highly sectarian, with a division between Protestant and Catholic. Multiculturalism was a term as yet uninvented. Post-war immigration introduced large numbers of European immigrants including European Jews who were the survivors of the Holocaust. By the 2021 Census the Jewish population of Australia was estimated to be around 117,000 or roughly 0.5 per cent of the population. The existence of over 300,000 Australians who are not Jewish but have a Jewish ancestor indicates the extent of assimilation.

At the time of the 2021 Census 57 per cent of Australian Jews were Australian-born, which is smaller than for the general population, which was at 71 per cent. It follows that most Australian Jews are post-war immigrants or their descendants. This makes them conscious of a need for a Jewish refuge as a protection from anti-Semitism, an attitude embedded in their psyches. Some Jewish schools and Jewish youth groups foster a love of Israel as a central part of Jewish identity, which reinforces a cultural as opposed to a religious affiliation. It is not surprising, therefore, that a study carried out by Monash University in 2017 of 8621 Australian Jews found that 69 per cent identified as Zionist and that the security of Israel was the most immediate issue of concern unifying them. The fact that 81 per cent of respondents ranked Israel above a belief in God (46 per cent) demonstrates the move away from religion and towards cultural identity.

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