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Rashida Tlaib Fumes Over US House Vote to Prohibit State Department From Citing Hamas Casualty Figures

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a measure that would prohibit the US State Department from using funds from the international affairs budget to cite casualty figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, sparking backlash from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

A bipartisan group of lawmakers — Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Mike Lawler (D-NY), and Carol Miller (R-WV) — spearheaded the amendment to the annual State Department appropriations bill. The measure ultimately passed the House by a vote of 269-144. It’s unclear whether the amendment will survive a vote on the Senate floor.

Tlaib lambasted her peers in the House for the vote, suggesting that they harbor deeply-ingrained “racism” against Palestinians. She dismissed the amendment as an effort to “dehumanize” Palestinian people.

“Since 1948, there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence,” Tlaib said before the vote. “My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll.”

The Gaza Health Ministry — which is run by the Hamas terrorist group in control of the Palestinian enclave — manages the health care and medical services in the Gaza Strip. Experts have cast doubt on the reliability of their figures for systematically overcounting the number of casualties and not distinguishing between civilians and terrorists as part of a strategy to tarnish Israel’s public image.

“Six children, six are killed in Gaza every single hour,” Tlaib said. “But Palestinians are not just numbers. Behind these numbers are real people — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters who have had their lives stolen from them and their families torn apart, and we should not be trying to hide it.”

Tlaib apparently sourced the claim that six children in Gaza are killed hourly from the World Health Organization (WHO), which has long been criticized for allegedly having an anti-Israel bias. The WHO made these claims in November, roughly a month into the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Earlier this month, however, the Associated Press published an analysis showing that the proportion of children killed in the war in Gaza has nosedived, falling to below 40 percent of all casualties in April from above 60 percent in October.

“There is so much anti-Palestinian racism in this chamber that my colleagues don’t even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist at all,” Tlaib continued. “Not when they’re alive, and now, not even when they’re dead. It’s absolutely disgusting. This is genocide denial.”

Israel’s ongoing defensive war against Hamas in Gaza has not been legally recognized as a genocide by any major international organization. South Africa has attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to get the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule that Israel is committing “state-led genocide” as part of an ongoing case. Israeli officials have strongly condemned the ICJ proceedings, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

According to John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Israel has “followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation, and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.” When taking into account casualty figures from both Hamas and Israel, the latter’s war effort has led to 1.5 civilian deaths for every combatant death — a far lower proportion of civilian deaths compared to the US-led effort to eliminate ISIS from the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, has received widespread bipartisan backlash for her fierce opposition to Israel. She also possesses a map of the Middle East in her office which omits the existence of the Jewish state.

In the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre throughout southern Israel, Tlaib defended the chant “from the river to to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an “aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.” The chant is widely acknowledged as a call to eliminate the state of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

In April, Tlaib received a wave of criticism for refusing to condemn anti-Israel protesters who chanted “death to America” and “death to Israel” during a rally in her district.

Two months earlier, the House passed a resolution condemning Hamas’ use of sexual assault as a weapon of war during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. It was a near-unanimous vote, with a single exception: Tlaib, who only voted “present,” arguing she could not support the measure because it did not also accuse Israel of using sexual assault as a weapon of war. Mounting evidence has documented Hamas’ systematic use of torture and sexual violence, including mass rape, against the Israeli people during the onslaught.

Last month, Tlaib gave a keynote speech at a conference in which many speakers celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks and called for the eradication of Israel.

The post Rashida Tlaib Fumes Over US House Vote to Prohibit State Department From Citing Hamas Casualty Figures first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students

DePaul University Law School. Photo: ajay_suresh/Wikimedia Commons.

My name is Brooke Goldstein. I am the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, and the founder of the #EndJewHatred civil rights movement. I have dedicated my career to upholding the legal rights of the Jewish people, a fight that is all the more pressing after the wave of Jew-hatred unleashed in America and around the world following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.

In 2021, a few years before October 7, a Jewish student identified a major problem at DePaul University. She went public about “a long history of antisemitism on DePaul’s campus … without DePaul doing anything really substantive to address this situation.”

In a clear call for action, she said that, “DePaul, as an administration and as a university, doesn’t fully understand what is required for Jewish students in particular to feel safe in their campus community.”

The unprecedented wave of hatred launched against Jews and Israelis at DePaul University over the past year is a direct result of the administration’s failure — not just to help its Jewish community feel safe, but to actually keep its Jewish students safe.

Jew-hatred has become systematized in higher education, and we are now seeing the consequences playing out on campuses across the country — including at DePaul University.

Radicalized agitators who openly support foreign terrorist organizations target Jewish students with calls for their genocide.

“From the river to the sea” is a call for genocide.

“Globalize the intifada” is a call for worldwide violent attacks on Jews, like we see in the streets of New York City and Amsterdam, and on campus here at DePaul.

Jews are dehumanized, deprived of the right to openly express their identity, and the civil rights of Jewish students are ignored and violated — their minority status disregarded, and the harm and violence they endure is minimized. All of this is unacceptable.

Max Long emigrated to Israel from Boston in 2015. He served in the Israel Defense Forces, and, when he was released from the reserves, enrolled at DePaul University in March of this year. After seeing the pervasive atmosphere of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric on campus, he was inspired to use his voice and personal experience to empower and educate his classmates about antisemitism, and about the war against Palestinian terrorism in Gaza.

Michael Kaminsky is a junior who came to DePaul from Buffalo Grove, IL. He, too, has been inspired to use his voice and experience to empower and educate the community about antisemitism, and about Jewish identity. He is a founding member of DePaul’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, a StandWithUs Emerson fellow, and a proud member of AEPi.

Max and Michael are proud and empowered advocates for Jewish civil rights. They are loud voices for the indigenous rights of the Jewish people in their indigenous homeland — Israel.

On November 6, Jew-haters decided to silence their voices. Two masked men violently attacked Max and Michael with such force that Max suffered a brain injury and Michael suffered a fracture and lacerations.

Max and Michael were doing what they have done many times before — exercising their right to peacefully express themselves and their views, and engage with passersby.

This attack happened in the plain sight of a DePaul public safety officer, who did nothing to intervene. The officer had an opportunity to stop the attack, but did nothing to help Max and Michael.

But it gets worse.

The university was well aware of multiple threats against Max and Michael, just as it was aware of the campus climate of hate targeting Jews. But it did nothing. It failed to protect its students, even when a violent attack was unfolding in front of one of its public safety officers. This cannot be tolerated.

We cannot be silent in the face of intolerance and injustice. This is why The Lawfare Project represents Max and Michael — to demand justice, to ensure that their rights are protected, and to make sure that what they experienced is not experienced by any other Jewish student at DePaul University.

Even now, their attackers remain at large. We demand that the Chicago Police Department use every tool at its disposal to arrest those responsible, and that they be prosecuted for the hate crime they committed, to the full extent of the law. We need to impose meaningful consequences on antisemitic hate crimes to deter future attacks, and to send the clear message that our society rejects this extremist hate and violence.

As for the university, our attorneys are reviewing all options, including legal options, to make sure that the school is accountable not just to Max and Michael for this attack, but to all Jewish students who are under daily threat of similar attacks.

We are here to make sure that DePaul does the right thing, and will take whatever action is necessary to do so.

Jew-hatred has no place at DePaul, or on any college campus. We are demanding action from the school — as all decent people should.

Max and Michael are not alone. Our Jewish students on campus are not alone. We are all here for them, and we will make sure that their rights are protected and upheld.

Brooke Goldstein is the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project and the founder of the End Jew Hatred movement. She is also an author, award-winning, filmmaker, and regular news television commentator. 

The post DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street, following the results of the election, in London, Britain, July 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville

Britain would follow due process if Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UK, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday, when asked if London would fulfill the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister.

“We are signatories to the Rome Statute, we have always been committed to our obligations under international law and international humanitarian law,” Lammy told reporters at a G7 meeting in Italy.

“Of course, if there were to be such a visit to the UK, there would be a court process and due process would be followed in relation to those issues.”

The post UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’

There’s a trope on sitcoms where characters think they’re being filmed for a reality television show, when in fact what they’re experiencing is real life. (Real life within the fictional […]

The post How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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