https://www.breitbart.com/education/2024/04/28/protesters-remove-american-flag-raise-palestinian-flag-in-harvard-yard/
Protesters at an anti-Israel “encampment” in Harvard Yard removed an American flag from University Hall, the central administration building, and flew a Palestinian flag in its place Saturday before university staff intervened.
Harvard students cheer as they replace an American Flag with a Palestinian Flag. Are you paying attention yet?
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/29/israel-has-chosen-the-least-bad-of-bad-alternatives/
History frequently offers insight into present-day events. Far too often that perspective is ignored either because of a lack of knowledge, the mistaken belief that it has no relevance in today’s world, or discomfort over the challenge that that knowledge presents. The war in Gaza does have an historical precedent, albeit one on a far grander scale.
Bear with us as we unpack the analogy …
As the endgame of World War II in mid-1945 became focused on the planning of “Operation Downfall,” the invasion of the Japanese homeland, the decision was made to deploy the first (and last) atomic weapons ever used in warfare. This was not a choice taken lightly and was repugnant to President Harry Truman and many of his advisers. But it was made based on a grim calculus comparing the hope that the bombs would force an immediate surrender (at a cost of more than 100,000 civilian lives), against the anticipated casualties and impact of an invasion of Japan’s home islands.
An article written by one of us (Dr. Miller) last year delves into the background. After experiencing 18,000 dead and 78,000 wounded in capturing Iwo Jima and Okinawa (two relatively small islands), the magnitude of the resistance was understood. And unlike in those battles, a mainland invasion would face troops who could be easily resupplied, making them even more difficult to dislodge.
In that 2023 article, a Marine four-star general and historian is quoted as saying there were no post-invasion plans for the six Marine divisions (each 23,000 strong) in Operation Downfall because they were expected to be decimated and non-functional after invading Honshu to make way for the Army. In other words, it was expected that just to commence the invasion, some 100,000 allied lives would be lost, along with far more Japanese killed. Estimates of subsequent American deaths neared 1 million, with at least 5 million Japanese expected to perish.
The new one-hour documentary Screams Before Silence by Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta, is one of the major events since October 7. It’s a harrowing, profound, utterly unforgettable film, superbly directed by Anat Stalinsky. In it Sandberg, who came to Israel to get the background for the film, “interviews multiple eyewitnesses, released hostages, first responders, medical and forensic experts, and survivors of the Hamas massacres,” people who have seen some of the worst sights and undergone some of the worst experiences imaginable—or beyond imaginable. Released on YouTube on April 26, Screams Before Silence already totals half a million views and will indelibly engrave the horrors of sexual assault and other crimes, both on October 7 and in its aftermath, among large portions of humanity not hopelessly lost to antisemitic hatred or ludicrous ideologies.
And for that, Sheryl Sandberg must be credited with a tremendous achievement.
Screams Before Silence begins with a visit to a devastated, largely burned-down kibbutz, then takes you to terrifying footage from the onset of the attack on the Nova music festival very early that Sabbath morning at 6:30 a.m., and then—mainly via the interviews—takes you deeper and deeper into hell until you reach its core. It does not show you images from that abyss (“Out of respect for the victims and their families, we chose not to show explicit images in this film”); but you hear the voices and see the facial expressions of people who were there; or who, as first responders, came upon the scenes of horror; or who, as forensic experts, had to deal with the corpses; or who, as hostages, continued to suffer in hell for weeks on end.
To look up—dazed and silenced—from this film and stare around at the world almost seven months later, a world of crazed “demonstrations” on US campuses and attacks on Jews in London, Paris, and elsewhere, is to have the bewildering feeling that what happened on October 7 was really just the inception, the igniting spark, of a global wave of hysterical hatred of Jews and, particularly, of the Jewish state that was already, latently, there, and just needed something like a horrific massacre to set it in motion. The tens of thousands of people bellowing “From the river to the sea…,” “Resistance by any means necessary,” “Globalize the intifada,” and the like know exactly what happened on October 7, and continues to happen in its aftermath in the tunnels of Gaza, and think it’s great.
https://www.jns.org/the-perils-of-a-bad-deal/
Whenever I sit down to craft a piece on the “Bring Them Home Now” protests, a call I received at my office in 2009 haunts me into changing or tweaking topics. The person initiating the conversation that day introduced himself as the grandfather of Gilad Shalit.
No further clarification was required. By this point, the Israel Defense Forces soldier who’d been captured by Hamas terrorists nearly three years earlier had become a household name. So, too, had his family.
“How dare you?” Tzvi Shalit began, going on to berate me for jeopardizing the campaign for Gilad’s release. My latest column, he said, was not only insensitive; it was downright dangerous.
Stunned by his accusation and intimidated by his understandable pain, I stuttered a sympathetic response. Yet, neither my apology for having caused unintended offense, nor my explanation that the article in question was actually a critique of the media for stifling debate, did any good.
As far as he was concerned, I was siding with the enemy—not the organization holding his grandson in Gaza, mind you, but the then-caretaker government of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
After his resignation over corruption charges, he was replaced by Tzipi Livni as head of Kadima in the party’s September 2008 primaries. Her inability to form a coalition in the following weeks spurred the February 2009 general election.
And though Kadima garnered a majority of Knesset seats, Livni still couldn’t form a government. Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded where she failed, and thus it was he who succeeded Olmert as prime minister.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/as-hamas-loses-its-grip-gazans-speak-out-against-the-terrorist-sect/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=third
The unrest on America’s college campuses took a noticeable turn for the worse shortly after Iran entered the war that erupted with Hamas’s 10/7 massacre, and it got worse still after Israel retaliated in response to that 350-plus missile and drone attack on its territory. But even as the country’s most outspoken college students lean into their conclusion that the problem in the Gaza Strip is Israel, Gazans themselves are growing bolder in their condemnations of the terrorist sect that consigned them to this war.
“Palestinians in Gaza are increasingly willing to voice their anger against Hamas,” the Financial Times reported Thursday. Although “Hamas rules Gaza with a tight grip” and reliably visits retribution on the Gazans who speak out against its misrule, Palestinian civilians are increasingly “speaking out against the Islamist group.”
One Gazan who spoke with FT’s reporters criticized the terrorist outfit for failing to foresee the consequences Israel would mete out in response to the 10/7 massacre — or, if they did, to ignore them. “They [Hamas] should have restricted themselves to military targets,” he said. Another castigated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “I pray every day for God to punish the one who brought us to this situation,” that Palestinian civilian exclaimed. “I pray every day for the death of Sinwar.”
According to pollsters with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, these sentiments may be indicative of broader trends in the opinion landscape.
Khalil Shikaki, director of the centre, said that support for Hamas fell by almost a quarter to 34 per cent, according to a poll taken during the first week of March. The movement also lost popularity in the West Bank, where support fell from 44 per cent to 35 per cent. “There is no doubt support for Hamas is declining in Gaza because more and more people feel it has some responsibility for the pain they are enduring,” said Shikaki.
And the liberty Palestinian civilians now feel to voice their hostility toward Hamas’s regime freely is almost certainly a direct result of Israel’s efforts to degrade and, ultimately, disperse the terrorist organization. “Critics have been emboldened because there’s no one now to fear,” said one Gaza analyst. One former resident of the Strip, a professor at the Gaza-based al-Azhar University, put it most succinctly: “People are no longer afraid.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-and-the-decline-of-the-west/
The response of the U.S. and EU leadership to Hamas’ genocidal savagery against Israel, a Western liberal democracy, has been despicable and dangerous. Blustering protestations of support and solidarity by politicians have been undercut by schoolmarmish hectoring about Israel’s “disproportionate” tactics and alleged callous disregard for Palestinian Arab lives and well-being.
This geopolitical virtue-signaling has been correctly interpreted by Hamas and Iran as a green-light to double-down on its aggression, which won’t stop with Israel.
Last week Iran showed the way by launching an unprecedent, indiscriminate attack on Israel with a 300-strong barrage of drones and missiles. Aided by the U.S., Great Britain, and Middle East Sunni states, but mostly the result of Israel’s superb anti-missile defenses, Israel suffered only one casualty.
But consistent with the kinda, sorta support the West has been showing for the last six months, this aid was followed by criticism and warnings against retaliation that once again signaled Israel’s enemies that the West really doesn’t have Israel’s back, but can be depended upon to stick a knife in it.
The Biden administration took the lead. Biden himself instructed Israel not to retaliate, but “take the win,” an egregiously stupid comment bespeaking what Biden’s track-record has repeatedly shown: that he is a Chamberlain-class appeaser. But the Europeans and the Brits were just as short-sighted, not to mention displaying the usual “preemptive cringe” that for decades has been the West’s default posture when engaging its enemies.
As World Israel News reported, “French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community should do ‘everything we can to avoid a flare-up.’ He said he would attempt to convince Israel ‘that it should not respond by escalating, but rather by isolating Iran.’
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/israel_an_unlikely_pariah_in_a_dangerous_world.html
If you believe the enemies of the free world, Israel is guilty of the worst crimes against humanity. Governments, international organizations, NGOs, academics, and student activists condemn its post-October 7th actions against Islamic terrorists. Leftist media makes the only democracy in the Middle East seem worse than communist China.
Consider only a few of China’s numerous atrocities that Western governments, international bodies, and mainstream media overlook:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its brutal suppression of students at Tibet’s universities. Every year, beginning in March, Tibetan students organize protests to mark the anniversary of the Chinese occupation of their country in 1959. To counter them, since 2009, China has been ordering campus lockdowns lasting as long as a month. Surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, and tracking via a required app called Clean Cafeteria alert the authorities to students’ locations and activities. This year’s lockdown lasted the entire semester. At a recent protest, over 100 students were arrested and 20 killed.
In February, over 1,000 Tibetans were arrested and beaten for peacefully protesting a dam project. The dam will force the relocation of two villages and destroy several centuries-old Buddhist monasteries, some with murals dating to the 13th century. China’s policies in Tibet — during its 65-year occupation — amount to nothing short of ethnic cleansing and the eradication of Tibetan culture and religion.
Chinese nationals at U.S. universities are subject to repression and surveillance by the communist state and its agencies. If they speak about human rights violations in China, they are targeted for attacks, and their families in the homeland are threatened. University administrations and teachers, quick to protest every perceived wrong in America and the world, do nothing for the persecuted students. After all, they receive over $1 billion in CCP largesse and tuition from nearly 400,000 Chinese students.
The persecution of Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong adherents is well known only because of the independent efforts of exile groups and individuals in China who send out reports and videos at significant risk. But mainstream media and governments turn a blind eye to their protests. Even the International Criminal Court (ICC) has failed these persecuted groups. In 2020, Uighur exiles urged the court to investigate the CCP’s campaign of torture, forced sterilization, organ harvesting, and other abuses. The court refused, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to show Chinese officials committed crimes over which it had jurisdiction.
Hong Kong-based pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, 76, has so far spent four years in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison. He faces the prospect of life imprisonment for sedition. Lai had fled mainland China at 12 as a stowaway on a boat to seek freedom in the British colony. He became a billionaire after starting a series of businesses and later set up media houses. His assets have been frozen, and his newspaper, Apple Daily, has been shut down. Western governments’ responses to his son Sebastien’s appeals for their intervention are disappointing.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/israel-is-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza/
The accusation has a malicious ulterior motive: advancing antisemitism.
In the months since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, there has been a full-force campaign to frame Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza as a genocide. And it’s not just an accusation pushed by the extreme Left. This is a campaign endorsed by foreign governments, international organizations, the media, and even elected U.S. officials. But why? It’s not simply that Israel’s actions in Gaza fail to meet the legal standard of genocide, but that other wars on a single population — Bashar al-Assad’s on Syrian Sunnis, the Chinese Communist Party’s on Muslim Uyghurs — stir no similar outrage. There’s a name for that double standard: antisemitism.
“Genocide” has a definition in law. For Israel’s actions to meet the legal criteria of genocide, there must be evidence of more than just a high casualty count or the leveling of property. Per the United Nations, genocide requires an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” As statements by Israeli officials have made clear, their intentions in Gaza are limited to eliminating Hamas’s operational capacity and bringing home hostages. (Hamas, however, has openly declared its intent to wipe out Israel and the Jewish people. Just read their charter.)
Any proper debate about genocide first requires understanding the casualties in Gaza, because whom Israel targets — and how — determines the legitimacy of the war effort. The only source of data on casualty figures has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, which claims that 70 percent of the more than 30,000 people who have died are women and children. Despite mounting evidence that the health ministry’s numbers are statistically impossible, they continue to be legitimized by the U.S. government and widely distributed by mainstream media, and have even been used to discredit the Israel Defense Forces’ own statistics on eliminated Hamas combatants. West Point’s John Spencer, the premier expert on urban warfare, has repeatedly stated that the precautions Israel has taken to prevent civilian harm throughout this war — including during last month’s raid of al-Shifa Hospital, in which the IDF killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters — not only surpasses that of any military in history, including our own, but goes above and beyond what is required by international law.
https://www.jns.org/blinkens-willful-blindness/
Though it’s almost blasphemous to mention the Abraham Accords and the Oct. 7 massacre in the same sentence, the two have something important in common. Both exposed the lie that the “path to peace” must pass through Ramallah and Gaza City.
The first illustrated that previously hostile Arab and other Muslim-majority states—with modernization and self-preservation against the common threat of a nuclearized Iran in mind—were ripe for mutually beneficial ties with Israel.
The second proved, as if any additional evidence were required, that the road to hell—like that leading to the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust—was never paved with good intentions; it has been tarred all along by Islamist ill will and evil Palestinian deeds.
To Israel’s peril and America’s detriment, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden never internalized the former and has yet to acknowledge the latter. As soon as it took office, it began to undermine the historic agreements brokered by former President Donald Trump between Israel and the Gulf states.
At the Negev Summit in March 2022 in Sde Boker, where then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hosted his Bahraini, Egyptian, Moroccan and Emirati counterparts, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that “regional peace agreements are not a substitute for peace with the Palestinians.”
His resuscitation of this false premise was bad enough, especially as it coincided with an uptick in Palestinian terrorism in the streets of Israeli cities. But the fact that the overall context was Team Biden’s attempt to revive the nuclear deal with Iran from which Trump had withdrawn made it all the more significant.
This example of a disastrous foreign policy born of a disconnect from reality isn’t ancient history, by the way. The gathering in question took place a mere year and a half before Palestinian butchers broke through the Gaza border fence, raping, beheading, immolating and mutilating at least 1,200 Israelis (and foreigners), while abducting 250 others.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20585/israel-under-attack
Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter explicitly prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any member state, making Iran’s actions tantamount to an act of war.
The US administration’s call for Israel to refrain from responding to attacks while facing direct aggression is deeply troubling and raises significant questions about the principles of sovereignty and self-defense.
In the face of relentless attacks on Israel, Washington is sending a dangerous message of encouragement, if not outright approval, to aggressors and undermining Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats.
Where is any real threat or pressure being paced on Hamas, Qatar or Iran, all of whom initiated the conflict in the first place? As far one can tell, nothing is even being done to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If Iran had nuclear weapons, does anyone think it might hesitate to use them, even “just” as a means of coercion?
The expectation that Israel should tolerate such attacks not only undermines the principles of self-defense and sovereignty but also erodes the longstanding partnership between the United States and Israel, sending a disconcerting message to the world about the strength of any US alliance in the face of adversity.
Amid the relentless assaults from multiple adversaries — Iran’s regime, Qatar, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis — Israel finds itself surrounded by Iran’s “ring of fire” on all fronts.
These coordinated attacks, originating from both neighboring states and non-state actors, pose, as clearly intended, a threat to Israel’s existence. In these dire circumstances, Israel looks to its longstanding ally, the United States, for crucial support and solidarity. However, the Biden administration’s approach has left Israel feeling isolated and abandoned at a time when it most needs unwavering backing.
Top Stories @ Fox News