“Oct 7 2023”

“The New York Times” presents IfNotNow activists as liberal idealists. But beneath the surface of their rhetoric is contempt for Jews and indifference to Jewish genocide.

With each passing week since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogroms in Israeli communities in southern Israel, the magnitude of the sea change in attitudes towards antisemitism becomes more and more apparent. But as the 110-day mark since the terrorist assault approaches, the straight line that runs between what fashionable liberal American opinion likes to call “anti-racism” and hatred for Jews has become not just obvious but undeniable.

OTTAWA—More than two dozen of Canada’s top universities have made it clear to MPs: a call for the genocide of Jews violates their codes of conduct — no matter what.

Their assertions come in letters replying to a demand from five MPs in December that Canadian schools clarify their policies in the wake of a major controversy on the issue in the U.S.

There, the heads of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were lambasted in the U.S. Congress, and faced widespread public condemnation, for saying that whether a call for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policies depended on context.

From the river etc etc will still be chanted by the campus Hamas contingent.

Don’t dismiss a corrupt, down and out country. South Africa as an Iranian proxy can make bad mischief for Israel.

What kind of people are we that we have to justify ourselves before them? And who are they to demand it of us? What is the point of this whole comedy of putting an entire people on trial when the verdict is known in advance? How does it benefit us to participate voluntarily in this comedy, to brighten up these villainous and humiliating proceedings with our speeches for the defence? Our defence is useless and hopeless, our enemies will not believe it.”

No, this is not a voice mad at Israel for defending the claim of ‘Genocide’ at the ICJ on January 11, 2024. It is the voice of the early Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky appealing to hapless Russian Jewry in 1911.

Almost four months to the day, and not in a good way, the world has turned upside down.

In a risibly threadbare case, the victim of a depraved genocidal attack was accused at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague of committing genocide. Lacking evidence of mens rea (criminal intention) that is prerequisite, or indeed any vestige of substantive evidence, South Africa sought to invert the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention of December 1948, which is specific to the “crime of crimes”. The accused is not just any victim, but the Jewish state, whose re-establishment in the May of the same year that the Convention was brought into effect was no coincidence.

Hamas on Sunday released a statement denying its members committed atrocities on Oct. 7.

The denial is a complete reversal for the terrorist group and a total disavowal of its own footage, after it supplied GoPro cameras to its operatives so that they could capture for posterity their horrific deeds on that day.

Police have charged a 26-year-old Mississauga man for allegedly blocking off the Gardiner Expressway to stage a pro-Palestinian protest in November.

Police accuse the man of being one of several drivers who jumped out of their cars to “engage in unlawful assembly on the highway.” They blocked all lanes of traffic westbound on the Gardiner Expressway at Spadina Avenue.

Police say the demonstrators fled when they arrived.

Disturbing, antisemitic protests are on the rise in Canada. Do we let the terror flags fly?

One of the greatest challenges in liberal democracies is the tension between curbing hatred and protecting free speech. The 1977 case of a planned Nazi rally in Skokie, Illinois, is one of the most famous examples.

Skokie was a nearly half Jewish town and home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. The Nazis planned to appear with banners and in uniforms with swastika armbands. Skokie officials tried to block the demonstration, and this led to a series of lawsuits. Famously, the American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) took up the free speech rights of the Nazis, who were represented by Jewish lawyer David Goldberger. The case tested the ACLU’s commitment to the value of free speech in the face of abhorrent and hateful conduct by a small group of repugnant bigots.

Zach Kessel and Ari Blaff offered a big write-up at National Review titled “How the Washington Post Abandoned Basic Journalistic Standards Covering the Israel–Hamas War.”

Some of it recounts the general tendency to rely on Hamas: “A review by NR of the Post’s coverage since 10/7 revealed no fewer than 148 individual articles that cite the ministry’s casualty statistics. Some of the articles refer to the Gaza Health Ministry as ‘Hamas-run’ while others lack any modifier that would inform a naïve reader who might view the Gaza Health Ministry as a neutral agency.”

More than three months have passed since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, during which hundreds of Israelis were murdered, beheaded, raped, mutilated, and kidnapped — and it is still hard to find any senior Palestinian Authority official who is prepared to condemn the atrocities.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has held a number of meetings over the past few weeks with senior US administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has refrained from publicly denouncing the Iran-backed Hamas terror group for its barbaric attacks on Israelis.

Videos of antisemitic speeches by Iranian generals, given to UK students, are being investigated by the Charity Commission.

The regulator is also looking at footage of “death to Israel” chants at an Islamic charity’s UK premises.

Verified by the BBC, two of the videos show talks by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One described an apocalyptic war on Jews.

h/t Sweetpea

The Israeli army says 24 of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday – the deadliest day for its forces since their ground operation began.

That includes 21 reservists who died in an explosion likely caused by mines that Israeli forces had placed in two buildings to demolish them, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

It is thought a missile fired by Palestinian armed fighters hit a tank guarding the troops just beforehand.

Some members of Ontario’s public workers’ union are calling on leaders to distance the union from recent anti-Israel demonstrations where the union’s flags were prominently on display, but they say their concerns are so far being ignored.

Last week, several Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) wrote to president JP Hornick. The members urged Hornick to explain OPSEU’s participation at a Toronto anti-Israel protest on Jan. 14. Video of the event showed marchers chanting in support of the Iranian-backed Houthis, a terrorist group whose motto is “curse the Jews.” The also asked Hornick to clarify the union’s support for Jewish members.

I am all for crushing our Houthi public servants.

Many have long assumed that American casualties would be the trigger for a strong response to Iran-orchestrated Mideast aggression, yet now that U.S. personnel have been victimized, will President Biden act militarily to deter further attacks?

Two Navy SEALs missing since January 11 amid an operation to seize Iranian arms bound for the Houthis in Yemen have been confirmed dead. “We regret to announce that after a 10-day exhaustive search, our two missing U.S. Navy SEALs have not been located and their status has been changed to deceased,” the Pentagon’s Central Command said Sunday.