RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/23/opinions/israel-gaza-protests-jews-bitton/index.html

Here’s a secret that many of the protesters in university encampments and on city streets don’t seem to be in on: The more they demonize Israel, the more they reawaken Jewish identity and strengthen Zionism.

As a community leader and Jewish educator in the United States, I have been living in the shadow of the horrors of October 7. We have seen the worst carnage against Jews since the Holocaust, video-broadcast by brutal terrorists. We have witnessed the avalanche of rising antisemitism around the world, including allegations last Saturday that a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France was gang-raped while being subjected to religious slurs. We have found out that too many of our allies right here at home refuse to speak up when Israelis are murdered or when American Jews who care about Israel are excluded from polite society.

While the intensity of the campus protests are simmering down with the end of the school year, the virulence of demonstrators outside college quadrangles are only intensifying the fear Americans Jews are feeling. Last week, protesters in Lower Manhattan targeted an exhibit dedicated to the memory of the hundreds of young Israelis murdered or kidnapped from the Nova music festival. They unfurled a banner proclaiming “Long Live October 7” and held signs declaring that Zionists “are not Jews and not human.” Days earlier, crowds chanted “kill another Zionist now” across from the White House in Washington.

But paradoxically, every day since October 7, I have also seen how this rise in antisemitism and anti-Zionist rhetoric is inspiring Jewish pride and solidarity with Israel among so many young Jews. I have seen this as a visiting researcher studying American Jewry at New York University. And I have seen this as the spiritual leader of Manhattan’s Downtown Minyan, a congregation filled with the diverse, ambitious and socially liberal young professionals who thrive in New York.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-i-saw-at-a-terrorist-rally-outside-a-synagogue/

Thirty minutes after Hamas supporters first set up their operation outside a Los Angeles synagogue, they maced their first Jew. And the Los Angeles police did nothing.

Not until an hour into the terrorist rally outside a synagogue, did the LAPD finally step in, pushing back masked Jihad supporters in keffiyeh terror scarves from the entrance of Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) which they had occupied.

And then the mob, chanting calls for “intifada” and the destruction of Israel, moved outward to target two smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from Islamic terror in Iran.

“Billions of us will come and kill you,” a heavily accented Middle Eastern man in a keffiyeh unprompted rasped at me as I walked up. Only dozens had actually shown up, but they made up for it with bullhorns, robotic chants, and assaults in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.

The Jewish counterprotesters had come waving American and Israeli flags while the other side was a sea of terrorist flags. A man wore an Antifa cap, another had come in ski goggles during 90-degree heat, while others toted bear spray, metal bottles, and other implements of violence.

The Jewish community members included older men and women, as well as families, while the Hamas contingent was mostly young and many were masked. A pair of rabbis led a melodic song that could hardly be heard over the harsh clatter of the hateful terror chants.

Despite knowing that a terrorist rally was planned outside a synagogue, the LAPD had allowed the terrorist supporters to take over the entire sidewalk leaving only a thin lane for attendees to walk through to get inside. The LAPD did little to interfere with the terrorist supporters, but did block Jewish counterprotesters from reaching their own synagogue. The police also did nothing as clumps of masked Hamas supporters broke away from the synagogue and began confronting, threatening, and attacking Jewish community members on the street.

https://freebeacon.com/israel/ford-foundation-sends-millions-to-organizations-that-have-celebrated-oct-7-terrorist-attacks/

Shortly after Oct. 7, the president of the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, issued a statement on the foundation’s behalf. Walker, who has been lauded by Laurene Powell Jobs as an “optimist,” a “realist,” and a “prophet who speaks truth to our world’s most troubling demons,” announced that the Ford Foundation would bankroll “immediate humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza and the Middle East.”

“Administered by our colleagues in the Middle East and North Africa regional office,” Walker said, “the resources will go to partners in the region to provide life-saving support and other essential needs to the affected Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” The statement referred to “tragic events” that had occurred in Israel and Gaza but made no mention of who was behind them, instead expressing concern for the “anguish, pain, and suffering that countless families are experiencing in Gaza at this moment.”

While the country’s leading universities have been under the microscope since Oct. 7, the nation’s top foundations have largely evaded scrutiny. Both, however, sit atop multibillion-dollar endowments and exert enormous influence on American politics and public policy: The Ford Foundation alone oversees the disbursal of approximately a billion dollars a year.

Where is that money going? A review of grants disbursed by the Ford Foundation’s team overseeing the Middle East and North Africa, led by Cairo-based regional director Saba Almubaslat, shows that several of the foundation’s grants have gone to organizations whose employees, events, and projects celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and decried the “Zionist entity.”  They make little effort to disguise their hostility to Jews and the state of Israel.