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Gaza Protests Are Based on Jew Hatred, Not Human Rights
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Photo: Reuters Connect
There is no issue that brings out so many global protestors, week after week, as Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza. But whatever is causing this unique display of passion and animosity against Israel, it is not humanitarian concern.
Hamas’ decision to start this war through a campaign of mass murder, rape, and kidnapping on October 7, and then fight it from beneath and behind Gaza’s civilians and civilian infrastructure, has led to heavy casualties and severe suffering for the Palestinian population. Their plight should move us all.
But contrary to pervasive and outrageous claims of “genocide,” the Palestinians’ plight is unfortunately an example of the horrors of urban warfare. It is strange, then, that only this war should generate such hysteria as to drown out every other conflict and atrocity.
No encampments were set up across the world to protest the wars in Syria and Sudan, where so many more innocent Arab civilians died. And no other conflict has aroused the rabid passion and hate displayed against Israel, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Unlike Israel’s war to dismantle Hamas, Russia’s war against Ukraine, now in its second year, does arguably merit the use of the terms “genocide” and crimes against humanity.
Every Russian official from Vladimir Putin on down has made the intent of this campaign clear: to wipe out Ukrainians as a national group; indeed, Russia denies Ukrainians’ existence as an ethnic group in the first place.
While the genocidal nature of Russia’s imperial war does not involve total extermination like the Nazi Holocaust, it violates nearly every other section of the Genocide Convention. This includes the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. In fact, Russia is so proud of this forcible transfer that it puts the number at hundreds of thousands.
Torture, sexual violence, and rape are rampant and systematic. While the mass graves and murders uncovered at Bucha and other areas around Kyiv are well known, that process has been replicated across all the Ukrainian territory that Russia controls. The civilian death toll is unknown, but one analysis suggested as many as 75,000 people may have been killed in Mariupol alone.
There are approximately ten million Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons, and there is widespread intentional targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure across the country.
The outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war will also decide the future of the international order. Yet neither the humanitarian atrocities nor the existential element of Russia’s invasion seem to stir much concern in newsrooms, in the streets, or among politicians these days.
The latest civil war in Sudan, raging for just over one year, has also seen barbaric and genocidal violence and civilian displacement and suffering. In particular, the Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted the ethnic African Masalit tribe, reportedly killing as many as 15,000 in West Darfur’s provincial capital of El Geneina alone. This includes reports of the systematic murder of primarily male children and infants. Sexual violence and rape are also ubiquitous and methodical.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations at the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), recently asserted that “By all measures — the sheer scale of humanitarian needs, the numbers of people displaced and facing hunger — Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.”
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child warned that “24 million children are at risk of a generational catastrophe.”
In Myanmar, the civil war raging since the junta overthrew the democratic government in February 2021 has seen some of the worst barbarism imaginable. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk described the junta’s terror campaign against its opponents as “inhumanity in its vilest form,” including mass killings and “burning them alive, dismembering, raping, beheading, stabbing, bludgeoning, and using them as human shields against attacks and landmines.” Mutilated corpses and heads are displayed as warnings, including the bodies of defiled women with “foreign objects lodged in their bodies.”
Principled activists would be at least as vocal about these staggering atrocities, among many others, as they are about Israel. Instead, there is only widespread indifference and deafening silence. The vast majority of the people outraged by Israel’s supposed “genocide” in Gaza, it can be safely concluded, are not driven by principles at all. They are driven by hatred of Jews and Israel, pure and simple.
Oved Lobel is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
The post Gaza Protests Are Based on Jew Hatred, Not Human Rights first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Newsom Calls Trump’s $1 Billion UCLA Settlement Offer Extortion, Says California Won’t Bow
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, U.S., August 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Saturday that a $1 billion settlement offer by President Donald Trump’s administration for UCLA amounted to political extortion to which the state will not bow.
The University of California says it is reviewing a $1 billion settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA after the government froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding over pro-Palestinian protests.
UCLA, which is part of the University of California system, said this week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over anti-Israel student protests.
“Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to kneecap America’s #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until @UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom,” the office of Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post.
“California won’t bow to Trump’s disgusting political extortion,” it added.
“This isn’t about protecting Jewish students – it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president.”
The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests and in doing so violated Jewish and Israeli students’ civil rights. The White House had no immediate comment beyond the offer.
Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president’s threats. The University of California says paying such a large settlement would “completely devastate” the institution.
Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last week, UCLA agreed to pay over $6 million to settle a lawsuit by some students and a professor who alleged antisemitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.
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Trump Nominates State Dept Spokeswoman Bruce as US Deputy Representative to UN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaks during her first press briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.
Bruce has been the State Department spokesperson since Trump took office in January.
In a post on social media in which Trump announced her nomination, the president said she did a “fantastic job” as State Department spokesperson. Bruce will need to be confirmed for the role by the US Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a majority.
During press briefings, she has defended the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions ranging from an immigration crackdown and visa revocations to US responses to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, including a widely condemned armed private aid operation in the Palestinian territory.
Bruce was previously a political contributor and commentator on Fox News for over 20 years.
She has also authored books like “Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda” that criticized liberals and left-leaning viewpoints.
In a post after Trump’s announcement, Bruce thanked him and suggested that the role was a “few weeks” away. Neither Trump nor Bruce mentioned an exact timeline in their online posts.
“Now I’m blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,” Bruce wrote on X.
Trump has picked former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz to be his U.N. envoy. Waltz’s Senate confirmation for that role, wherein he will be Bruce’s boss, is still due.
Waltz was Trump’s national security adviser until he was ousted on May 1 after he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides on military strikes in Yemen. Trump then nominated Waltz as his U.N. ambassador.
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Iran Says IAEA Official to Visit for Talks, No Access to Nuclear Sites Planned
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addresses a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 20, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
A senior official from the U.N. nuclear watchdog will fly to Iran for talks on Monday, but no visit to nuclear sites is planned, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday.
Since Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites during a 12-day war in June, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been unable to access Iran’s facilities, despite IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stating that inspections remain his top priority.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31, which led the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors to declare Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, said it remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“Negotiations with the IAEA will be held tomorrow to determine a framework for cooperation,” Araghchi said on his Telegram account.
“A Deputy Director General of Grossi will come to Tehran tomorrow, while there are no plans to visit any nuclear sites until we reach a framework.”
Last month, Iran enacted a law passed by parliament suspending cooperation with the IAEA. The law stipulates that any future inspection of Iran’s nuclear sites by the IAEA needs approval by Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council.