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Bravo! Dina Rubina: Rude and Crude but Definitely Justified

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2024/05/rude-and-crude-but-definitely-justified/

Pushkin House in London, in collaboration with the University of London, recently invited Israeli author Dina Rubina (above) to a literary discussion on Zoom about her books. Then she received the email below from the meeting’s moderator, Nataliya Rulyova, who demanded she state where she stands “on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because other invited participants need to “understand your position on this issue before responding”. That note and Ms Rubina’s blistering response are reproduced below.

From: Nataliya Rulyova

Hello, Dina!
The Pushkin House announced our upcoming conference on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They wanted to understand your position on this issue before responding. Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?
— Natasha

Then followed Ms Rubina’s response

From: Dina Rubina
To: Nataliya Rulyova

Dear Natalia! 
You’ve written beautifully about my novels, and I’m so sorry for the time you’ve wasted, because apparently we have to cancel our meeting.

The universities of Warsaw and Torun have just canceled lectures by the wonderful Russian-speaking Israeli writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Galicia’s Jews in the 17th and 19th centuries “to avoid making the situation worse.” I suspected that this would affect me too, since academia is now the main breeding ground for the most disgusting and virulent anti-Semitism, disguised as so-called “criticism of Israel.” I was expecting something like this, and I even decided to write you an email about it… but I put it aside. It’s time for me to publish it.

This is what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious report on my position regarding my beloved country, which currently lives (and always has) surrounded by ferocious enemies who seek to destroy it . My country which is waging a just war today against a rabid, ruthless, deceptive and cunning enemy. The last time I apologized was in elementary school, in the principal’s office, I was 9 years old. Since then, I have been doing what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing exclusively my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

German Police Stop Muslim Terror Attack on Synagogue One of the Muslim men was shot after attacking a police officer. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/german-police-stop-muslim-terror-attack-on-synagogue/

We hear a lot of talk about “Islamophobia”, but the proportion of Muslim terror plots against other people’s houses of worship is incredible and a truly global phenomenon. There are so many that all you can do is say, “here’s another one.”

And here’s another one.

German authorities said on Friday that they have arrested two men suspected of plotting a knife attack on worshippers at a synagogue in the southwestern city of Heidelberg, The Associated Press reported.

The pair discussed “the killing of one or more visitors in the attack on the synagogue followed by death as martyrs, whereby the two persons wanted to be shot to death by police,” authorities said in a joint statement quoted by AP.

The two suspects are German citizens, with the 18-year-old also holding Turkish nationality, authorities said. Their names were not released.

One of the Muslim men tried to attack the police.

The 24-year-old, armed with knives, was shot during the search around three weeks ago when he ran towards a police officer and did not respond when spoken to. He was injured. According to earlier statements by investigators, the suspect suddenly fled out of a window with several kitchen knives during the operation. There he deliberately threw a knife at a police officer and ran towards him with other knives.

He was doing what his religion taught him to do. And these two men were far from alone. There is a reason this keeps happening over and over again, and it’s not about Israel or even Jews. It’s about Islam.

The sooner we come to terms with that reality, the sooner we can intelligently address the situation.

What’s Spanish for ‘Chutzpah’? Bret Stephens

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/21/opinion/thepoint#spain-palestine-recognition

This week’s announcements by the governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain that they will recognize a Palestinian state are drawing predictable reactions from predictable quarters. Some see them as useful rebukes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war strategy in Gaza that will further isolate Israel. Others, including me, view them as feckless gestures that reward Hamas’s terrorism.

That’s a column for another day. For now, it’s enough to note the Spanish government’s sheer nerve.

Though Spanish public opinion overwhelmingly supports swift recognition of Palestinian statehood, it’s another story when it comes to Spain’s own independence movements. In 2017 the regional government of Catalonia held a referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court, on the question of Catalan independence. Though turnout was low — in part because Spanish police forcibly blocked voting — the Catalan government said nearly 90 percent of voters favored independence.

The central government in Madrid responded by dismissing the Catalan government, imposing direct rule. Two years later, under the current left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, Spain sentenced nine Catalan independence leaders to prison on charges of sedition, though they were later pardoned. This year the lower house of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant amnesty to those involved in the 2017 campaign as part of a deal to prop up Sánchez’s government, despite a Senate veto. Seventy percent of the Spanish public opposes the amnesty.

Catalans aren’t the only ethnic minority in Spain that has sought independence, only to encounter violent suppression. In the 1980s the Spanish Interior Ministry under a socialist government responded to the long-running Basque separatist movement with state-sponsored death squads, notoriously responsible for a string of kidnappings, tortures and assassinations. The Spanish government called the separatists terrorists — as indeed some were — though their tactics look tame compared with Hamas’s. By the time the conflict ended in 2011, it had claimed more than 1,000 lives.

The Free World: An Alarming Status Report by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20660/free-world-alarming-status

It seems urgent for the long-term survival of the United States and the Free World – where people enjoy unprecedented freedom of speech, property rights, economic opportunity, religious freedom and other civil liberties – not to accept assaults on these hard-won achievements either at home or abroad.

Adversaries have become increasingly empowered, and allies may well be losing confidence in the West’s leadership. This week it was announced that three countries in Europe, Ireland, Norway and Spain – all of which have long, unfortunate histories of antisemitism – plan to recognizing a Palestinian State that will be terrorist.

US President Joe Biden assured Russia in 2022 that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be all right. Predators do not “do” minor.

The Biden administration handed over Afghanistan to a terrorist group, the Taliban; now it looks as if the Biden administration and these three racist countries in Europe are determined to hand Gaza to another terrorist group, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which openly says it is more committed than ever to destroying its free, democratic neighbor, Israel.

Israel is trying to protect its citizens and maintain its sovereignty in the face of relentless aggression, while battling not only Hamas but also two illegitimate antisemitic courts (the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice), the antisemitic United Nations, antisemitic European countries, well-funded antisemitic demonstrations in the West, and the Biden administration… [which] for years has been trying to force out Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US would doubtless prefer an Israeli prime minister who would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza and reconstitute its military capabilities; who would allow the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state bordering Israel, and who would stand aside as genocidal Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

In addition, the Communist Chinese regime, seeing the Biden administration reward aggression, past, present, and presumably future, is encircling the Philippines and Taiwan and sending tens of thousands of young men of military age in packs across America’s southern border, and more than 5,000 over its northern one.

One can only wonder which of the likely leaders of the Free World will permit — or put a stop to — these staggering negative trends of geopolitical deterioration in the future.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20660/free-world-alarming-status

It seems urgent for the long-term survival of the United States and the Free World – where people enjoy unprecedented freedom of speech, property rights, economic opportunity, religious freedom and other civil liberties – not to accept assaults on these hard-won achievements either at home or abroad.

Adversaries have become increasingly empowered, and allies may well be losing confidence in the West’s leadership. This week it was announced that three countries in Europe, Ireland, Norway and Spain – all of which have long, unfortunate histories of antisemitism – plan to recognizing a Palestinian State that will be terrorist.

US President Joe Biden assured Russia in 2022 that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be all right. Predators do not “do” minor.

The Biden administration handed over Afghanistan to a terrorist group, the Taliban; now it looks as if the Biden administration and these three racist countries in Europe are determined to hand Gaza to another terrorist group, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which openly says it is more committed than ever to destroying its free, democratic neighbor, Israel.

Israel is trying to protect its citizens and maintain its sovereignty in the face of relentless aggression, while battling not only Hamas but also two illegitimate antisemitic courts (the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice), the antisemitic United Nations, antisemitic European countries, well-funded antisemitic demonstrations in the West, and the Biden administration… [which] for years has been trying to force out Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US would doubtless prefer an Israeli prime minister who would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza and reconstitute its military capabilities; who would allow the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state bordering Israel, and who would stand aside as genocidal Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

In addition, the Communist Chinese regime, seeing the Biden administration reward aggression, past, present, and presumably future, is encircling the Philippines and Taiwan and sending tens of thousands of young men of military age in packs across America’s southern border, and more than 5,000 over its northern one.

One can only wonder which of the likely leaders of the Free World will permit — or put a stop to — these staggering negative trends of geopolitical deterioration in the future.

London’s Jews are fighting back against the bigots The anti-Israel mob failed to cancel a film screening about the horrors of 7 October. James Heartfield

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/24/londons-jews-are-fighting-back-against-the-bigots/

On Thursday evening, over 1,500 members of London’s Jewish community and their allies chased off an anti-Israel protest outside the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley, north London.

The anti-Israel protest, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was prompted by the Phoenix’s decision to show a film from Seret, the UK-Israeli film festival. The film in question, Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, documents the Hamas attack on 7 October last year, in which hundreds of music fans were slaughtered.

The protest had been building up a head of steam for several weeks. Earlier this month, a group called Artists for Palestine UK called for the Phoenix, and several Everyman cinemas, to boycott Seret, claiming that it was ‘co-sponsored by the Israeli government’ and thus part of Israel’s ‘broader art-washing strategy’. On Wednesday night, pro-Palestine protesters echoed these claims when they vandalised the Phoenix cinema and scrawled ‘say no to art-washing’ across its entrance.

It also emerged on Thursday that two of the Phoenix’s big-name patrons, directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, resigned from its board in a huff over its decision to show films from Seret.

It certainly looked like it was going to be a tough night for the Phoenix. Organisers of the protest against the screening urged the anti-Israel mob to ‘BRING NOISE! Drums, bells, pots and pans, whistles…’. But in the event, the protesters were drowned out by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

Local Jews and their allies were outraged by the attack on the Phoenix. And so that evening, they rallied to the defence of the cinema. By 6.30pm, the Phoenix’s defenders were already crammed on to the cinema side of the street. Opposite them, in an over-large police pen, three lonely anti-Israel protesters were left to rattle around by themselves.

As the number of the Phoenix’s defenders became too many to contain on the pavement, they started spilling over on to the street. When 40-or-so anti-Israel protesters walked up from the Underground, they were booed and barracked by East Finchley’s Jewish community.

The Secret Reason Hamas’s Friends – Ireland, Norway, Spain (and Germany) – Are Helping the Palestinians by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20661/ireland-norway-spain-palestinians

Ireland, Norway and Spain should have advised the Palestinians that if they wanted anything from Israel, they should sit down and negotiate with the Israelis, and not try to impose any solution on them with the help of the international community.

They also should have told them that there will be no peace negotiations with Israel unless the Palestinians repudiate and renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Apparently, Ireland, Norway and Spain do not even realize that they just strengthened the terrorists in their own countries. When Muslims demonstrated in Hamburg last month and demanded that shariah law and a Caliphate replace democracy in Germany, politicians said they should be jailed and stripped of their citizenship.

Perhaps a few countries might also recognize a State of Catalonia?

[W]hen [Palestinians] talk about “liberating” the land, what they really mean is that they want to murder all Jews or expel them from Israel, and replace it with an Iran-backed Palestinian terror state.

The timing of the recognition of a Palestinian state, just months after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, sent a message to the terrorists — which should be transposed to the Europeans in their own countries — that the more people they slaughter, including the Gazans Hamas kills as human shields, the more support they will have from the Europeans and the rest of the international community.

Ireland, Norway, and Spain are letting it be known that the international community is willing to overlook, submit to, or even condone terrorism. This attitude will not promote any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — or among anyone trying to transform other countries. Instead, it encourages those who want to fundamentally remake countries in the West.

Finally, who in his right mind imagines that the Middle East would be secure and peaceful with a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel? Such a state will simply serve as a springboard for more attacks against Israel. The Palestinians openly stated as much in their ratified 1974 “10-Point Program,” known as the “phased plan,” in which any land acquired will be used to get the rest.

Basically, as Hamas openly states in its charter, its aim to eliminate the only homeland of the Jewish people and murder as many Jews as possible. It appears that the Europeans wish to finish the task that Hitler started — the secret reason they are assisting the Palestinians in achieving this goal.

South Africa, Putin’s Marxist Cadres and the International Court of Justice at the Hague by Nils A. Haug

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20659/south-africa-putin-marxist-cadres-and

[I]n 2023, the ANC, on behalf of the South African government, brought charges of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This case seems to be another fatuous endeavour by the ANC for prominence….

[T]he ANC has effectively “turned its back on Western values, and expressed its support for countries and organisations that subscribe to terror as a measure and method of governance.”

Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, citizen.co.za, November 15, 2023

[E]verything Western, regarded as colonialist or imperialist, must be destroyed and recreated according to atheist, socialist, dogma… in pursuit of a revolutionary version of pseudo-egalitarian social justice.

The historic ties of these African countries to the totalitarian countries of Russia, Cuba, and China and to revolutionary movements such as Hamas are as strong as ever.

Through BRICS and other forums aligned with anti-Western actors, these African countries oppose the West with impunity and reject any pretence of joining the West’s sphere of nations with their liberal democratic traditions.

Anglo-American nations blissfully ignore Africa’s strong connection to despotic regimes and persist in their simplistic approach towards these countries by showering them with financial incentives and arranging unproductive conferences…. African countries gladly accept the offered funds while remaining aligned to totalitarian regimes. Financial enticements by the West for the purposes of gaining favour are made in vain: these leaders remain, at their core, Marxist revolutionaries imposing extreme socialist policies on their populace, unfortunately leading to the demise of hitherto prosperous and productive economies.

Until a positive regime change occurs, no improvement in the lives of the average citizen can be expected. The people get poorer by the day. ….The dim prospects of the poor, which led to the protest and resulted in millions of dollars in damage to the economy, have not improved.

South Africa which is fast approaching a failed state. A 2023 Harvard Kennedy Business School study describes the cause as “collapsing state capacity and spatial exclusion” — which translates as state inefficiency and the exclusion of whites from certain aspects of the economy. The same can be said of Zimbabwe (very much a failed state), Namibia, and others…. Consequently, skilled workers continue to depart the country in droves.

This is the complex world of southern African politics, whose leaders present lip service the Western ideals of democracy while accepting generous global hand-outs – usually offered, unfortunately, with no demands for accountability.

In South Africa, the most “important benefactor of the African National Congress’s (ANC) since independence in 1994, providing military support for years, was the former Soviet Union. Despite exhibiting a veneer of democracy, the ANC and their associates, remain fervently Communist-Socialist, adopt Marxist-Leninist socialist dogma as their political worldview and hold Russian President Vladimir Putin in high regard.

From the Embers of an Old Genocide, a New One May Be Emerging Nicholas Kristoff

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/darfur-sudan-genocide.html

First they killed the adults.

“Then they piled up the children and shot them,” a witness told Human Rights Watch. “They threw their bodies into the river.”

That’s a scene from a humanitarian crisis happening now in Sudan that has been overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine and may be about to get far worse. It’s a conflict, by some accounts a genocide, unfolding particularly in the Darfur region there.

You may remember Darfur: It was the site of a genocide two decades ago. Those atrocities galvanized a vast response, led by protesters across the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, then senators, were among those who called for action, and they were joined by tens of thousands of high school and college students, plus activists from churches, synagogues and mosques working together.

While hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in Darfur at that time, the campaign also probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. Other countries imposed sanctions and an arms embargo, peacekeeping forces were established by the African Union and the United Nations, and the Sudanese leader who commanded the genocide was eventually ousted.

Yet today the slaughter in Darfur is resuming — and the international response is not. Most Western nations and African ones alike have been fairly indifferent.

“The inaction pales in comparison to the situation 20 years ago, when global leaders felt morally and legally obliged to act on Darfur,”

Some of the same Arab forces responsible for the genocide in the 2000s are picking up where they left off. They are massacring, torturing, raping and mutilating members of non-Arab ethnic groups — the same victims as before — while burning or bulldozing their villages, survivors say.

There’s a racist element: Arab militias mock their victims as “slaves” and taunt them with racial epithets — the non-Arabs are often darker skinned. The militias seem to be trying to systematically eliminate non-Arab tribes from the area.

Rewarding fascism Today’s recognition of the State of Palestine is virtue-signalling at its most dangerous and dumb. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/22/rewarding-fascism/

So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous.

Of course, Irish taoiseach Simon Harris, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez and Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre are presenting their pious recognition of Palestine as a stab for peace. This is about helping to ‘create a peaceful future’, said Harris. They’re either delusional or they’re engaging in doublespeak. For the true impact of their imperious intervention will be to exacerbate hostilities. Hamas will feel emboldened. It now knows that a wonderful gift awaits it if it keeps battering Israel: a state of its own. In dangling this dream before Hamas, the three PMs have all but green-lighted its terrorism.

Rarely has virtue-signalling felt so reckless. The PMs are so keen to broadcast their correct-think to the world that they appear not to have given one thought to what the consequences might be of three European nations butting in to a bloody war. Their blindness to everything but their own righteousness was best summed up in the figure of Simon Harris. There he was on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin sermonising about how this is ‘the right thing to do’ – translation: ‘aren’t I wonderful?’ – without so much as a flicker of concern for the global impact of rewarding an act of apocalyptic violence.

That really is what is happening here. Harris and the others were careful to condemn Hamas’s 7 October pogrom, of course. Harris called it a ‘barbaric massacre’. And yet the fact is that today’s announcements, this vain granting of legitimacy to a Palestinian state, would not be happening had it not been for 7 October. Indeed, Harris expressly linked his recognition of Palestine with the ‘appalling’ and ‘unconscionable’ war in Gaza. Yes, a war started by Hamas. On 7 October. With its carnival of anti-Semitic barbarism, the likes of which the world had not seen since the Holocaust. And there you have it. Want a state? Start a war. Kill some Jews. Job done.

Whatever subjective spin the three PMs put on their heedless act of global virtue-signalling, the objective consequence is the legitimation of Hamas. Indeed, Hamas has warmly welcomed their recognition of Palestine, describing it as ‘an important step towards affirming our right to our land’. I’m not into guilt by association, but seriously – when an army of anti-Semites starts singing your praises, you’ve messed up. Badly.

Ireland, Spain, Norway Recognize Palestinian State; Israel Recalls Ambassadors by James Lynch

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ireland-spain-norway-recognize-palestinian-state-israel-recalls-ambassadors/?utm_source=recirc-

Israel is recalling its ambassadors from Ireland, Spain, and Norway after the three European nations announced that they would formally recognize a Palestinian state.

Ireland, Spain, and Norway announced on Wednesday they will be formally recognizing a Palestinian state beginning next Monday, and each nation called for a cease-fire to end the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“I am sending a clear message today: Israel will not be complacent against those who undermine its sovereignty and endanger its security,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said upon its decision to recall the ambassadors.

The countries’ ambassadors in Israel will be subject to “reprimand talks” where they will be shown footage of the atrocities Hamas committed against innocent civilians on October 7.

“Recognizing a Palestinian state will lead to more terrorism, instability in the region and jeopardize any prospects for peace,” the Israel foreign ministry said on X. “Don’t be a pawn in the hands of Hamas.”

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas celebrated the decision from Ireland, Spain, and Norway to recognize a Palestinian state, although the leaders of each country distanced themselves from Hamas.

“This is an investment in the only solution that can bring lasting peace in the Middle East,” Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre said, referring to a two-state solution.

“We hope that our recognition and our reasons contribute to other western countries to follow this path, because the more we are, the more strength we will have to impose a ceasefire, to achieve the release of the hostages held by Hamas, to relaunch the political process that can lead to a peace agreement,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said to Spain’s lower legislative chamber.