“Oct 7 2023”

Are the Israelis innocent here? Are the Jews? Yes and no, seems to be the general answer

When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the schools near me put Ukraine flags in their windows. When George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis two years earlier, Black Lives Matter posters appeared overnight all over my north London neighbourhood. Because that’s the kind of caring, sharing milieu in which I live, full of politically aware good liberals.

So do you know how many Israeli flags I’ve seen in the week since Hamas kidnapped, raped and slaughtered over a thousand Jews in Israel, from geriatric Holocaust survivors to tiny babies? That’s right: nada, zip, none.

The Hamas attack on Israel was an even greater atrocity than the suicide aerial assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and was a greater act of collective suicide. Al-Qaida knew that the 9/11 attacks were a “massacre of the innocents,” but their principal target were famous buildings that symbolized the power of American capitalism and military strength. The attacks were a shocking escalation of long-standing terrorist activity, following attacks in the previous several years on the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut (1983), the international barracks at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia (1996), the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998) and the USS Cole in Yemen. They were, in their psychotic way, intended to be a show of purposeful strength and menace. The Hamas attack on Israel was a deliberate assault on random civilians with no greater symbolism and no reasonable possibility that the authors of it did not know that Israel’s response would be a determined effort to capture or preferably kill every member of the Hamas military and terrorist apparatus.

This is the home of an entire family in #KfarAza slaughtered by #Hamas #terrorists. The family dog refuses to leave the bed where the family’s children used to sleep before they were butchered. #HamasTerrorist #Gazagenocide #Isarael #Palestine #GazzeUnderAttack #Israel #Gaza pic.twitter.com/fqTX0SLCPl

— Breaking News Worldwide (@FelizKarenP1) October 14, 2023

After terrorists killed my cousin Daniel Pearl, my family called for peace. But after the worldwide celebration of our people’s slaughter, my hope for peace is dead.

The story I’m about to tell is one that many progressive Jews can relate to. In some ways, it’s a prototypical arc of a diaspora Jew who has always advocated for nuance. This week, something broke in us. We watched history repeat itself. Not just on the global scale, with the wanton massacre of our people, the savage mass murders and dismemberments of entire families and communities. But for many, my family included, history is repeating itself on a personal level as well.

How did we get to the point that on numerous American campuses devoted to “social justice,” many student groups openly celebrated a brutal Hamas attack that killed more than 1,000 Israeli civilians and saw many hundreds tortured, beheaded, executed in front of family members and set on fire?

Meet 20 year old Inbal Rabin-Lieberman.

After hearing a noise at 6:30 a.m., she knocked on all the doors in her kibbutz.

She realised danger was imminent, so she armed herself and her team.

During 4 hours of combat, she took down 5 terrorists and her team took down another 15. pic.twitter.com/1nyqwb2YU6

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 14, 2023

h/t Mauser

A lone supporter of Israel is attacked by a mob who violently beat him, surround him and scream "Allahu Akbar"

Terrifying.

British Jews stay safe. pic.twitter.com/nlutwcW4dq

— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) October 14, 2023

The Biden administration, despite knowing that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the largest funder of the terror group Hamas, nevertheless decided to relax sanctions on Iranian oil exports. In 2020, Iran’s economy had a reported trade deficit of $3.45 billion; by 2023, according to former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe:

“Look, it’s not even just this $6 billion, which clearly is going to further enrich Iran. It’s closer to $60 billion. If you look at what the Biden administration has done to help this Islamic terrorist regime in Iran by [stopping enforcement of] sanctions, by lifting restrictions, by allowing Iranian oil to increase by 650% over the last year from 400,000 barrels of oil a day to 3 million barrels of oil a day – all of this has strengthened [the Iranian regime]”

Just weeks after the US gave Iran’s ruling clerics a fungible $6 billion line-of-credit as an effective ransom for hostages, the Iran-backed Hamas on October 7 launched a massive attack on Israel, killing more than 1,300 Israelis, mostly civilians, and wounded thousands more. Iran’s leadership and their Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah have been praising Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel.

Israeli forces have surrounded the Gaza Strip, announcing their readiness for ‘significant combat operations’ after launching preliminary raids into Gaza overnight into Saturday.

In a statement published today, the IDF said it is preparing to ‘expand the offensive’ with a ‘wide range of offensive operational plans’ which it says include a ‘joint and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land.’

Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said on Saturday that Israeli forces are now ‘in formation… all around the Gaza Strip, in the south, in the centre and the north’ as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met with troops.

Documents that were labeled “top secret” in Arabic were discovered on the bodies of dead Hamas terrorists this week after they launched an unprecedented terrorist attack against Israel.

The documents showed that the detailed plans Palestinian terrorists were given ordered them to “target elementary schools and a youth center” in Kfar Sa’ad, a kibbutz in Israel, and to “kill as many people as possible.”

Pro Palestine rally In Mississauga, canada rt now ….⁦@Ranting4Canada⁩ ⁦@puneet_sahani⁩ ⁦@IsraelinToronto⁩ ⁦@CBCTerry⁩ ⁦@NaorGilon⁩ ⁦@RebelNewsOnline⁩ pic.twitter.com/5Df2bgqAOY

— T-Bag (@kuchnahinaata) October 14, 2023

Demonstration supporting Palestine today in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada pic.twitter.com/ro7I99aw4h

— Mai Badawy (@Mai_Badawy) October 14, 2023

Twitter Palestine Mississauga

Jewish and Muslim Americans in cities all around the country are worried that escalating tensions between Israel and Palestine, which some are calling “isolating and scary”, will exacerbate hate crimes and harassment in the United States.

For many Arab Americans in New York City, Bay Ridge was always a place of safety. The south Brooklyn neighborhood is 3 sq miles of Arabic bodega signs, halal grocers and a growing community of Palestinian, Yemeni, Syrian and Egyptian families.

On Wednesday, that sense of safety was punctured by reports of a hate crime.

The Guardian. There I warned ya.

A Stanford University lecturer ordered his Jewish students to stand in a corner and told them “this is what Israel does to Palestine”, according to reports.

The teacher is understood to have said “only” six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and labelled students as “colonisers” or “colonised” depending on their heritage.

He also claimed the Hamas massacre of hundreds of Israelis was “legitimate” and described the terrorists as “freedom fighters”, according to The Forward.