Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Links - 27th November 2024 (1 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Elie Landau | Facebook - "Imagine if the Muslim Brotherhood organized a demonstration throughout Manhattan on the anniversary of 9/11. Imagine if the KKK staged a protest in NYC on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Imagine if Westboro Baptist Church marched on Stonewall on June 28th. You’d be outraged.  You’d be horrified.  You’d be shocked, appalled, and crestfallen that human beings could be so cruel.  So purposely hurtful.  So willfully blind.  That’s how many Jews you know are feeling today, with the demonstrations that are planned in their home cities in order to justify the worst mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust — which occurred one year ago today. Today, on October 7th, thousands of antisemites around the country and around the world — many who are not Gazan, not Palestinian, have no roots in the region, and have no working knowledge of its history other than what they’ve been told on TikTok and X — will “flood” the streets to immorally re-define the word “genocide” based simply on who they are willing to see die.   To simultaneously insist that October 7th was “not the beginning” but to nevertheless choose this day for their action in order to deny and desecrate anyone else’s right to mourn their dead.   To assert that October 7th exists on a timeline of struggle that started long before 2023, while ignoring any historical events on that timeline that conflict with their narrative of pure and perpetual victimhood.   To appease and satiate their personal — and selective — conceptions of “justice” and “humanitarianism”, which demand those rights only for some, but not others. It’s overwhelmingly infuriating and depressing. I have no positive note to end this post on, except to share the words of an *actual*, native Gazan who gets it right. Sadly, as is so often the case these days, the ones who need to hear this not only aren’t listening. They aren’t even willing to listen."

Steve McGuire on X - "NEW: The task force on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at UCLA surveyed 428 Jewish faculty, students, and staff. The results are devastating.
“Two-thirds of respondents reported that antisemitism is a problem or a serious problem at UCLA and three-quarters reported that anti-Israeli bias is a problem or serious problem.”
“Three-quarters of respondents felt that antisemitism is taken less seriously than other forms of hate and discrimination at UCLA.”
“There were over 100 reports of individuals experiencing a physical attack or physical threat.”
”Nearly 40% of respondents (N=394), noted that they experienced antisemitic discrimination at UCLA.”
”Almost half (49%) of the undergraduate student respondents reported that teaching assistants engaged in behaviors that included offensive comments, verbal attacks, or discrimination, and 76% reported that their peers engaged in these behaviors.”
“One-third of respondents indicated that they had made an informal or formal complaint to UCLA because of mistreatment or discrimination based on their Jewish or Israeli identity.”"
The left is very keen on "punching "Nazis"". Given the derangement about Israel, punching "Zionists" will soon be a good thing

Thread by @arash_tehran on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "One of the most damning intellectual features of our era, well encapsulated by Ta-Nehisi Coates's approach, is the inability to differentiate moral exigency from materialist analysis & strategic thinking.  Look at this bizarre exchange! Btw, Coates uses the phrase "I just can't accept that" a total of eight times in this interview
To be clear, this is the mismatch:  Klein says "Hamas has politically helped the Israeli right" which is a materialist analysis, a point that might be true or not true, but needs examination on its own merit. Coates seemingly takes this as "Hamas is simply responsible for what Israeli right is doing" and responds with a moral revulsion. Klein repeatedly tells Coates that he has "the same view" in regards to what Palestinians endure in the West Bank and beyond... but that basically shouting THIS IS TERRIBLE is not enough and you need to have a broader analysis & ultimately a political solution. Coates repeatedly refuses to countenance any of that & offers nothing but moral indignation"
Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 on X - ""I just can't accept that" is an amazing weasel-words phrase from Coates. It sounds like he's taking a principled stand on some issue when the actual translation is "I don't like the implications of what you're saying and therefore won't consider it"
The context is that Ezra Klein said "You have to admit that Hamas's actions make the Israeli right-wing stronger" and Coates gives the non-answer of "I can't accept that". That's not a real response!"

Drew Pavlou πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡Ό on X - "On the subject of Ta-Nahesi Coates's “2 percent” litmus test for genocide: Based on 1860 census figures, 18 percent of all white men aged 13–43 in the Confederate States died during the course of the American Civil War.   No normal person thinks this was genocide. It was one of the most just wars in history. Waged to destroy slavery, one of the most evil institutions in all human history.   But according to Ta-Nahesi Coates's falty framework the Union's war to destroy the Confederacy and abolish slavery was genocidal. According to his framework he would have to regard Sherman's March to the Sea as genocidal.  I would strongly contest these claims. All war is horrific and total war will always produce the very worst in humanity. Innocents will always suffer. So I would give almost anything for a perfect world where these wars would never have to take place. The horrible reality however is that there are sometimes moments in history where the sheer evil of an opposing governing regime is such that the greater moral evil would be to refuse to fight and thereby leave them in power. Here we can think of the American Civil War, World War II and the war to destroy ISIS as a governing power in Syria and Iraq.   All these wars devolved into total war thanks to the fanatical nature of the opposing regimes: the Confederacy, the Axis, Daesh. There were utterly horrendous civilian casualties in Mosul because ISIS systematically used civilians as human shields. However, leaving ISIS in control over Mosul forever was simply not an option.   Likewise, I believe this same standard sadly applies to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon."

Carl on X - "TA-NEHISI COATES: I don’t know, man. When you start like dropping bombs, when you wipe out 2 percent the population of people that are caged in, I don’t care what their leadership did. I’m actually — I mean, this actually goes back to the Oct. 7 question. Because you have lost sight of completely of individual life. And I guess I actually don’t know how you’re different. I was actually sitting here thinking about it, because I want to take what you’re saying seriously."
"The problem with this thinking is if you just look at the bombing of Dresden or Hamburg, you’d say the allies were the bad guys and you wouldn’t care what Hitler had done. Hamas are not the same as the Nazis, but you always have to look at the full picture. Context matters."

Hamas Murders Six Hostages, Israel Is Blamed | WSJ - "Hamas probably can’t believe its luck—or the lack of moral seriousness by its enemies. The terrorists murder six Israeli hostages, including one dual-citizen American, and Israel is suddenly under pressure to make concessions—to Hamas. That’s the way it looked Monday, a day after Israel said it recovered the bodies of six hostages. They were executed in a Gaza tunnel only a day or two before Israel reached them, shot multiple times at close range. The hostages are Eden Yerushalmi, age 24; Ori Danino, 25; Alex Lobanov, 32; Carmel Gat, 40; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the U.S. citizen, 23... Yet the reaction from the White House, the British government, the Western press and some parts of Israel is to blame the Israeli government. On Monday, in a one-word answer to a press scrum, Mr. Biden accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not doing enough to secure a hostage deal. Britain’s new Labour government chose Monday to announce that, after a review, it is suspending 30 arms export licenses to Israel. The titular explanation is that there is a “risk” the arms might be used in violation of humanitarian laws against Palestinians. Does the Keir Starmer government mean violations like Hamas shooting innocents in the head? Or does it fear that Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-Israel MP, is forming a group of independent “pro-Gaza” Members? The timing here compounds the bad policy. Like Qaid Farhan Al-Qadi, the Muslim hostage Israel rescued last week, the murdered six were found in Rafah, the city the world worked so hard to prevent Israel from entering. President Biden’s opposition kept Israel out of Rafah for three months. Vice President Kamala Harris claimed a Rafah invasion would doom its civilians. “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” she said. Israel proved her wrong, evacuating a million Gazans in two weeks. Israel has dismantled Hamas’s Rafah brigade with notably low civilian casualties. Aid groups hyped worst-case scenarios for a Rafah invasion. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris withheld weapons to stop Israel from fighting there. Ms. Harris wouldn’t rule out “consequences” if Israel went ahead. Egypt threatened to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel over it. Israel has since found over a dozen tunnels from Rafah into Egypt, which insists that Israel leave the border to let Hamas’s arms smuggling resume. It should be clear now why Israel couldn’t let Hamas rule Rafah. Mr. Biden said Sunday that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” But his next sentence pushed for a cease-fire to end the war. Ms. Harris says, “Hamas cannot control Gaza,” an important line that has been missing from her speeches, but that also seems at odds with her insistence on an “immediate cease-fire.”"
From September

Israel Offered Hamas Safe Passage Out of Gaza for Hostages’ Freedom - WSJ - "Israel’s top cease-fire negotiator made a new offer to Hamas leaders: Enjoy safe passage to another country if you lay down your arms and release the hostages. The proposal from Israeli spy chief David Barnea, made in a meeting with Egyptian officials this past week to break the impasse, was swiftly rejected by the U.S.-designated terrorist group, Arab mediators said.   Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s top cease-fire negotiator, said the offer showed how Israel was still misreading the group and warned it could continue fighting for months, if not years, the mediators said... U.S. and Israeli officials have talked about giving Hamas leaders and their men safe passage as a way to end the war since the early days of the conflict, and even offered a way out of Gaza to Yahya Sinwar. The Hamas leader rejected the offer. He was killed by Israeli troops this month."
Damn Zionists! They keep rejecting peace terms. That's why there's eternal war

Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza - "Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas.  The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.  Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology to the Israeli government. But they contended that Thursday’s event was similar to other Microsoft-sanctioned employee giving campaigns for people in need... Google earlier this year fired more than 50 workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war. The firings stemmed from internal turmoil and sit-in protests at Google offices centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services."
If you don't let employees spend work hours organising politically on work premises, that's restricting their freedom of speech. But of course, if you push back against the left wing agenda, you need to be fired because that is "hate" and you are making others feel "unsafe"
Weird. The left used to claim that private companies could do whatever they wanted

Jesse Kline: CBC lets Hamas apologist cheer Sinwar unchallenged - "It featured an interview with Omar Rahman , a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, who excused Hamas’s atrocities while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodthirsty tyrant who’s solely responsible for the ongoing violence. “There’s a celebration of the man, including especially the manner in which he died,” Rahman said of Sinwar, who he described as a “martyr.” There’s of course nothing wrong with airing the Palestinian point of view. From a journalistic perspective, it’s vitally important. But in the past, mainstream media outlets understood that it can be dangerous to legitimize voices who espouse the views of our enemies and dismiss the callous murder of innocent civilians. At the very least, they knew they had a duty to challenge such views. In this regard, the CBC has shirked its journalistic responsibilities. Rahman couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the October 7 massacre... This is the argument that Hamas apologists have been making ad nauseam since October 7 — that even if the events of that day were horrific, they have to be put into “context.” Not the historical context of a beleaguered people who sought safe haven in their historic homeland after nearly being wiped out in Hitler’s death camps. Not the context of numerous two-state solutions that were rejected by the region’s Arabs in favour of bloodshed and violence. Rather, they use the word “context” to justify terrorism, even on the scale of October 7 — an attack that was so barbarous, it leaves absolutely no room for moral equivocation. Or at least it shouldn’t. The CBC, it turns out, was more than happy to let Rahman describe Hamas as a “resistance organization,” rather than the terrorist organization that our own government — the one that provides the public broadcaster with over $1 billion a year — recognizes it as. Host Rebecca Zandbergen was completely content to let Rahman espouse the blatant lie that, “Hamas has tried to reach a ceasefire. It wants to bring an end to the suffering,” while Netanyahu has “made it clear he’s not interested in a permanent end to this.” In fact, it is well documented that Sinwar had no interest in negotiating an end to the war, despite the immense suffering of the people he claimed to represent, because he believed that images of dead Palestinians furthered his own goals by turning world opinion against Israel. Rahman went on to accuse Israel of committing a “genocide” and claim that Netanyahu intends to install a “permanent Israeli military presence” in Gaza, with his ultimate goal being “the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its population” — or, as he described it, “the crime of all crimes.” Of course, no evidence was provided to support these suppositions, but in today’s world, no evidence is needed — if you hear it enough times on TikTok, it must be true. Zandbergen didn’t even try to challenge these blatant falsehoods. The only thing resembling a counterpoint that she offered was to ask about the “concerns we hear about the way Hamas has treated its own people.” To which Rahman responded by claiming that, “The primary oppressor of Palestinians is not Hamas or Fatah or the PA or whatever, it’s Israel.”... Zandbergen showed she was capable of challenging her guests when she interjected in Rae’s discussion of how repressive Hamas has been with a question about whether Canada and the West will lose its “moral authority” if it fails to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. Yet she let Rahman spout his pro-Hamas nonsense uninterrupted. The western media’s newfound willingness to legitimize voices that excuse the wanton murder of innocent civilians and hold up the Jewish state as the root of all evil in the world give license to the radicals in our streets who are calling for the death of Jews and burning Canadian flags. Making the situation worse is the fact that every right-thinking Canadian taxpayer is forced to fund the CBC’s biased journalism. If the Conservatives win the next election and follow through on their promise to defund the public broadcaster, the CBC’s ivory tower elites will have no one to blame but themselves."
CBC media bias is a myth, of course

Law students threatened with disciplinary action by admin at pro-Palestinian sit-in - Washington Square News : r/nyu - "Headline says sit in but the charges were trespassing and vandalism with hate speech"
Weird how often "pro-Palestinian speech" takes the form of trespassing, vandalism and hate speech

𝗑𝗢𝗼𝗡 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ on X - "My biggest blackpill moment was watching an entire society celebrate terrorism as if it was a joyous holiday."
Gary Katz on X - "I experienced such a moment watching them celebrate 9/11. They also loved when the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed, because one of its passengers happened to be an Israeli."

Thread by @sfmcguire79 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "“Writing ‘f*ck you Boeing’ is free speech and fully protected; preventing Boeing from discussing jobs with students is not. Calling someone a ‘kapo’ is offensive, but protected speech; breaking through a police line is not.”  Cornell President Kotlikoff explains free speech:  πŸ§΅
Referring to the disciplinary measures taken against students who disrupted a career fair, a student asked him:  “Why are you punishing students for free speech?”  He explained the difference protected speech and illegitimate violations of the rights of others. “Speech that constitutes a direct threat to others, or violates the rights of others to speak or attend events (‘heckler's veto’), is never protected, since its function is not to share thoughts and ideas, but to silence them.”
The student’s response?  “Boeing kills babies.”  This perfectly illustrates how anti-Israel protestors don’t really understand or care about free speech. Kotlikoff: “That is not a free speech argument, but rather one that asserts a moral justification for violating the rights of others; that assumes the right to decide what activities other students may pursue, what conversations they may have and with whom they may have them.” He continues: “No student at Cornell has been punished for expressing their beliefs. Neither will any student be permitted, whatever their feelings of moral righteousness, to forcibly deny others the rights that are central to our mission at Cornell.”"
KOTLIKOFF | Whose Foot? - The Cornell Daily Sun

Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social on X - "Just finished Bob Woodward's "War". A few takeaways. Biden and Harris detest Netanyahu and privately tried to discourage him from attacking Gaza, but Netanyahu received encouragement to "destroy Hamas" from the Jordanians, UAE, Saudis and Egyptians."
Clearly the Jordanians, UAE, Saudis and Egyptians are Islamophobic and support genocide

Meme - Hamas Atrocities @HamasAtrocities: "Hilarious!  Sinwar had a pack of Mentos on him when he was killed.  Mentos is on many boycott lists by the Western pro Hamas idiots because 9 years ago the dimwits dug up an image of a Mentos package that says "I Love Israel""
"I will not buy Mentos again! @Mentos @MentosUS #mentos Stop the occupation #FreePalestine"

Meme - Drew Pavlou πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡Ό @DrewPavlou: "The grim irony of Purple Pingers supporting Hamas is that the victims of October 7 were all people like him.   Hamas targeted some of the most left wing pro-peace Israelis on October 7 when they went on a rampage through socialist kibbutzim - the equivalent in an Australian context would be an Islamist terror rampage through Brunswick Melbourne with all the victims being white kids with “Always Was Always Will Be” t shirts and Naarm settler in their bio. So literally just Purple Pingers type people.  Hamas would have almost certainly executed him on October 7 if he had been anywhere within their vicinity. They killed peace activists, they killed Thai migrant workers, young leftists at a music festival. They even killed Arab Muslims who fell in their hands. They slaughtered everybody and filmed videos celebrating amid piles of corpses.   Purple Pingers believes that this is just what it takes to resist a colonial power so should he volunteer his neck before the executioners blade first?  He’s a white Afrikaner living in Australia so by his own admission he is a double colonial settler."
Purplepingers *hammer and sickle* @purplepingers: "I keep getting asked if I agree with violence when it comes to resistance against oppression. Who am I to say how someone should seek their own liberation? If you want to seek liberation, I'll be there to support you, whichever method you choose."

Incendiary devices that burned ballot boxes carried 'Free Gaza' messages, AP source says - "Incendiary devices found at the scene of ballot drop box fires in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, this week were marked with the message “Free Gaza,” according to a law enforcement official. A third device placed at a different drop box in Vancouver earlier this month also carried the words “Free Palestine” in addition to “Free Gaza”"
Time to blame the Mossad and/or condemn the suppression of "pro-Palestinian speech"

Meme - Drew Pavlou πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡Ό @DrewPavlou: "Hamas supporters when their fighters film themselves parading half naked corpses of Jewish women through the streets: wow our wholesome smol bean resistance fighterinos would never rape anyone 😚😚😚
Hamas supporters when somebody illegally expands a basement in Brooklyn: CONFIRMED JEWISH PEDOPHILE RAPE DUNGEONS SPREAD THIS TO 20 MILLION PEOPLE RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW!!!!!!"

Teens accused of plotting to bomb pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill - "Two Ottawa teens allegedly plotted to bomb a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill before they were arrested by the RCMP, according to documents obtained by Global News.  The boys, both minors, were arrested in December and February over what police called a terrorist plot against the Ottawa Jewish community... one of the accused is charged with possession of acetone, oxidizer and metal ball bearings.  All are common components of homemade bombs. The plot was allegedly linked to ISIS, also known as DAESH, and was “possibly accelerated” by the Hamas attack on Israel, according to the government’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre.  “Although radicalization of these individuals reportedly began prior to the October 2023 Hamas attack, at least one of the individuals was reportedly in contact with DAESH overseas and the arrests occurred during a period of DAESH calls to violence in response to the conflict.”... The case comes amid a spike in antisemitic attacks in Canada, including shootings on Jewish schools.  ISIS-related cases have also surged since last year, most recently the arrest in Quebec of a Pakistani foreign student accused of planning a mass shooting at a Brooklyn, N.Y., Jewish centre... Canadian law enforcement had failed the Jewish community.  “They understand the extent to which we are under threat,” Fogel said. “Yet they are not taking all the steps necessary, they are not using the provisions of the Criminal Code in ways that are going to offer protection to those who are at risk.”  “And equally important, theyt are not signalling to those who are advancing this toxic and violent manifestation of hate that in Canada there is no room for that kind of exhibit.” The first Ottawa youth was arrested on Dec. 15 and charged with two terrorism offences, among them “communicating instructional material related to an explosive substance.”  He was also charged with instructing a second person to “carry out a terrorist activity against Jewish persons,” and was later charged with murder conspiracy.  Following his arrest, his father said the Iraqi family had warned the youth to steer clear of extremists, and had sent him to sessions with an imam.  Posts on the father’s Facebook page refer to Zionists and Jews in a derogatory manner, while one says to get rid of all Israelis."
Damn "Zionists"!
Naturally, on reddit people were complaining about Islamophobia
Weird. Muslims keep claiming that ISIS is run by Israel because they never attack Jews

Thread by @Sultanknish on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "“I can literally feel myself starting to see Jews as my enemies."  Talya Lubit was raised in a pro-Israel conservative Jewish household.  Then she went to a social justice anti-Israel college and teamed up with a Hamas operative to vandalize a synagogue.  This is her story.
Joe Biden was visiting Pittsburgh while nearby Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) protesters demanded a ‘ceasefire’ that would save Hamas. One of the protesters was Talya Lubit, a recent college graduate, who told the media, “We’ve been begging and pleading for a ceasefire for six months now.”  Three months later, Lubit, who had been active in JVP anti-Israel rallies and petitions, vandalized a synagogue. Arrested alongside her was Mohamad: a self-described “Hamas operative”. Despite being raised in a conservative Jewish household, Talya abandoned Judaism, adopted veganism and became an animal rights activist.  “Sometimes it’s as if we forget that we are animals and we kind of set ourselves above as if we are this higher creature.” As a Middle East Studies student, Talya became obsessed with Arab Islamic culture. A profile that appears to be hers claimed that she found “Arabic and many aspects of Middle Eastern culture” to be “incredibly beautiful.” Somewhere along the way, Talya met Mohamad.  Mohamad Hamad, according to the indictment, “referred to himself as a ‘Hamas operative,’ sent a picture of himself wearing a headband with the Hamas logo to another associate, and exchanged messages with another individual regarding building an explosive device, including a video of a test detonation.” Together, Talya and Mohamad bonded over messages “during which they planned their vandalism activities and specifically discussed selecting Jewish targets.”  “If I join you in doing graffiti on this building it matters to me that it is done in good taste,” Talya Lubit insisted at one point. She worried about “trying to make it ugly and abnoxious” and “like borderline desecration of religious place”.  The “good taste” graffiti that the duo settled on was the red ‘inverted triangle’ used by Hamas and its supporters to mark Jewish targets for death underneath the words ‘Jews 4 Palestine’  Lubit described the synagogue vandalism as “a last ditch attempt at staying Jewish.”  “Every day I think, ‘I don’t want to be Jewish anymore,’” she told Hamad, finding it conflicted with “being anti-oppression.”  Lubit's base appeared to be the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Pittsburgh which was a vortex of hate. This is 'Alexandra Weiner', a member of JVP's chapter in Pittsburgh. Weiner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mathematics, a transgender man who identifies as a woman and an anti-Israel activist who identifies as Jewish had been accused by a student of saying that he supported “the liberation of Palestine through armed resistance against all of Israel by any means necessary” and “supports the killing of any Israeli or Zionist colonialist.”  Weiner has told the media that he started taking hormones on Oct 7 and that his “transition journey is really intertwined with my Palestine activism journey” with the JVP hate group. The Pittsburgh JVP chapter posted an ad for a vigil on Oct 7 to “honor our martyrs” which is a term used for Hamas terrorists “honoring the long, ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people.”  This is the kind of ugly atmosphere that may have helped radicalize Lubit into partnering with a ‘Hamas operative’ to vandalize a synagogue."
So much for all Jews being unconditionally pro-Israel

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