| Hamas leader meets with UNRWA deputy - to ensure that he won't say the truth which sunk his predecessornoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 03 Jun 04:45 AM | | On Wednesday, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar met with the UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-Generalafter his boss Matthias Schmale was essentially kicked out of Gaza, and out of UNRWA.
Schmale had told Israeli TV that Israel's bombing campaign didn't aim at civilian targets and since then UNRWA employees, Hamas and other Gazans have been calling for his scalp.
Schmale apologized profusely but UNRWA asked him to leave Gaza for "consultations." He later announced that he was taking an extended leave of absence.
Not wasting any time, Hamas leader Sinwar met with Schmale's Gaza deputy and apparent replacement Lenny Stenseth. CLearly he wanted to get a strong message across:
Nobody in Gaza says anything to the media that Hamas does not approve. Hamas has vetoed UNRWA curricula before - when UNRWA gingerly announced that it would start teaching students about the Holocaust, Hamas made it clear that they would do no such thing. The UNRWA teachers union, and I believe its other workers' union, is run by Hamas in Gaza. They make the decisions of what can be taught and said. UNRWA allows itself to be bullied by them. In short, UNRWA is effectively controlled by a terror group. * * * * * *
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Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal Tonight (Wednesday) at midnight is the deadline for Yair Lapid to tell Israel's president that he has formed a government. Negotiations between the eight parties – including Ra'am, an Arab Islamist party – that will be part of the almost wall-to-wall coalition are still taking place as I write this, so everything I say is subject to change. The coalition, if it comes to be, will be led by Naftali Bennett and Lapid, who will each be Prime Minister for two years, starting with Bennett. So who will not be in the coalition? The single largest party, Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud, of course, two Haredi parties that have cast their lot with him, and Betzalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party. If this coalition comes about as planned, it will be the first time in the history of Israel that there hasn't been at least one explicitly religious (Jewish) party in the government, and one of the few times without a Haredi party. There will, however, be a fundamentalist Muslim party! And Mansour Abbas' Ra'am party has already demanded that the government make no commitment in its platform to reforms favoring the LGBT community. At first the idea was that Ra'am would not be a member of the coalition, but would vote for it from outside, so that it would have the 61 mandates necessary to come into existence. But at some point it was decided that it would be part of the coalition, although without any ministerial portfolios. This too would be a first in Israel's...Read More |
From Ian: Melanie Phillips: The strange reluctance to defend liberal principles Last weekend, there was a particularly shocking antisemitic incident at a demonstration near the Israel embassy in London. A masked youth was filmed telling a Muslim crowd: "We'll find some Jews here ... We want the Zionists, we want their blood!" Minutes earlier, a YouTuber called Mohammed Hijab had whipped up the mob against the "terrorist apartheid state of Israel" by declaring: "We love death." The Times reported:
Hijab, a former trainee history teacher, told the group through a megaphone: "The truth of the matter is that we are with the brothers and sisters of Palestine and we will get our vengeance in this dunya [world] or the akhirah [hereafter] ... we will get our justice." Surrounded by chants of allahu akbar, Hijab continued: "The difference between us [Muslims] and them [Jews] is this ... We believe that life begins with death. We don't care about death. We love death, and if you think that our people in Palestine or across the Arab and Muslim world will let go of the struggle and our sacred places, like Al Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem], you are grossly mistaken." The Metropolitan Police are now said to be hunting the masked youth who called for Jewish blood. But police officers who had been within earshot of his ranting had stood by and done absolutely nothing while he incited the murder of Jews...Read More |
(2) What were Akiva's beginnings? It is said: Up to the age of forty, he had not yet studied a thing. One time, while standing by the mouth of a well in Lydda, he inquired, "Who hollowed out this stone?" and was told, "Akiva, haven't you read that 'water wears away stone' (Job 14:19)? - it was water falling upon it constantly, day after day." At that, Rabbi Akiva asked himself: Is my mind harder than this stone? I will go and study at least one section of Torah. (Avot D'Rabbi Natan 6:2) It was only a matter of time. Living on a steady diet of anti-Israel propaganda was bound to have an effect on American Jewry, wearing down their critical thinking skills and turning them against their brothers in Israel. The propaganda is not stealthy, but is completely out there: served straight up not just on social media, but in the ivy halls of academia, from the pulpit, and in the pages of the New York Times. This is crucial, because it's one thing if you hear it at a party or see it on Twitter, but if your college professor and/or your rabbi tell you that Israel is occupying Arab land, and the New York Times publishes only articles critical of Israel, then that's all there is. The average or even very educated American Jew isn't going to dig deeper. Why should a Jew question what the rabbi says in her sermon in temple? Why would the New York Times, an august newspaper...Read More |
Over the weekend Paris hosted the first MENART Fair, a modern and contemporary art show dedicated to artists from the Middle East and North Africa, presented by major galleries.
It is essentially the successor to the Beirut Art Fair which could not be held this year - but with one difference - Israeli artists were invited as well. Hamas evidently has a Department of Artistic Production of the Islamic Resistance Movement, which condemned the participation of Arab artists at MENART because of the participation of Israeli artists. Hamas called it "a normalizing activity with the occupation that killed Palestinian children in the last war." However, not only didn't Arab countries boycott the exhibition - but Iran participated as well! * * * * * *
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From Ian: Israel Has Set a New Standard for the Ethics of War Despite everything you may have been reading or hearing these last few weeks, Israel has delivered the greatest moral miracle in the history of warfare. The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces vis-à-vis the protection of civilians on both sides has no equal or precedent. Indeed, Israel has set a new standard for the ethics of war. This may sound shocking, given the cacophony of accusations leveled against Israel on social media. However, the vast majority of those shrill voices are long-term critics of Israel for whom it can do no right. The reality lies in a casualty count so low as to have no precedent in modern history. Warfare is brutal. Urban warfare is hell. Since the 1990s, civilian deaths have accounted for some 90 percent of all casualties of urban warfare. In recent decades, militias and terror groups have increasingly embedded themselves deep withing civilian populations. From Saddam Hussein's infamous human shields to ISIS bunkers in civilian towns, the goal has been the same: a forced choice between destroying the enemy without regard to mass civilian casualties, or avoid the latter and fail to accomplish the former. Perhaps no other group has mastered the horrific art of embedding itself among civilians like those hell-bent on destroying Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah consistently fire lethal rockets...Read More |
Hamas held a gala to honor media outlets in Gaza that reported on what Hamas wanted reported - and that ignored what Hamas wanted silenced.
The Hamas media department sponsored the ceremony, saying it was "honoring media organizations for their role in covering field events in the Gaza Strip during the days of the aggression."
During the war, the Gaza media dutifully refused to report on Hamas rockets being shot from residential neighborhoods, or of Gazans killed by misfired rockets, or of how GAza human rights organizations identified terrorists killed by Israel as "civilian."
Scores of journalists attended the event, not at all embarrassed to be associated with Hamas, which does not allow freedom of the press in Gaza at all. Hamas logos were prominently displayed during the event.
I wonder if the New York Times and AP reporters were in attendance. * * * * * *
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Oren Gross is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School since 2002. He is an expert on international law and has published extensively.
On Tuesday, he resigned from that university's Center for Jewish Studies over its atmosphere of pervasive anti-Zionism and its indifference to the new wave of antisemitism.
"I see no place for me to remain affiliated with CJS which has turned into an echo chamber of silence and in which those, such as myself, who are unapologetic Zionists feel increasingly isolated," Dr. Gross wrote in his resignation letter.
Gross was unsparing in his critique of his progressive colleagues refusing to support Israel when it was being bombarded by thousands of rockets, or, worse, siding with Hamas. "Most of you stayed silent when Israel was attacked (again!). Some of you thought it opportune to shine your golden entry ticket to progressive circles by actually condemning the Jewish state," he charged.
Worse, he accuses his colleagues at CJS of silence in the face of new attacks against Jews worldwide. "Most of you stayed silent even when anti-Semitism and physical violence against Jews in the United States increased, this time not by individuals wearing red MAGA hats but rather the colors of the Palestinian flag," Gross continued.
Exposing how unwilling the CJS...Read More |
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