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Hamas to Stay Out of Gaza Truce Talks, Iran Considers Israel Attack
Hamas leader and Oct. 7 pogrom mastermind Yahya Sinwar addressing a rally in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/braheem Abu Mustafa
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said on Wednesday it would not take part in a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks slated for Thursday in Qatar, dimming hopes for a negotiated truce that Iranian sources say could hold back an Iranian attack on Israel.
The US has said it expects indirect talks to go ahead as planned in Qatar’s capital Doha on Thursday, and that a ceasefire agreement was still possible. However Axios reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a trip to the Middle East that had been expected to begin on Tuesday.
Three senior Iranian officials have said that only a ceasefire deal in Gaza would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil last month.
US President Joe Biden similarly said he expects Tehran to hold off attacking Israel if a Gaza ceasefire agreement is reached.
“That’s my expectation,” he replied when asked asked by reporters during a visit to New Orleans on Tuesday whether a deal could prevent Iran’s promised retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh. “We’ll see what Iran does and we’ll see what happens if there is any attack. But I’m not giving up [on reaching a ceasefire deal].”
The Israeli government said it would send a delegation to Thursday’s talks, but Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that controls Gaza, requested a workable plan to implement a proposal it has already accepted rather than more talks.
“Hamas is committed to the proposal presented to it on July 2, which is based on the UN Security Council resolution and the Biden speech and the movement is prepared to immediately begin discussion over a mechanism to implement it,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
“Going to new negotiation allows the occupation [Israel] to impose new conditions and employ the maze of negotiation to conduct more massacres,” he added.
There has been no let-up in fighting in Gaza, where residents of the southern city of Khan Younis said Israeli forces intensified tank shelling on eastern areas of the city center.
Israel said it was responding to Hamas rocket fire towards Tel Aviv on Tuesday and had struck rocket launching pads and terrorists among 40 military targets over 24 hours, including in central Gaza, Khan Younis, and western Rafah in the south.
Armed groups of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in Gaza, said they had attacked Israeli forces in several areas, while Palestinian health officials said Israeli strikes had killed at least 14 people so far on Wednesday, mostly in the center and south.
Hamas also said its fighters were engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank, where Israel said it had killed a number of terrorists.
‘UNCERTAIN OPPORTUNITIES FOR DIPLOMACY’
A ceasefire deal would aim to end fighting in Gaza and ensure the release of Israeli hostages held in the enclave in return for many Palestinians jailed by Israel, but the two sides remain divided by sequencing and other issues.
Hamas wants an agreement to end the war and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza as a basic pre-condition for releasing hostages, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will only agree to a pause in fighting to allow as many hostages to return as possible. He has repeatedly said the war can only end when Hamas is eradicated.
A Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people, with more than 250 taken into captivity in Gaza, in one of the most devastating blows against Israel in its history.
In response, Israeli forces have waged a military campaign in Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza say the campaign has killed around 40,000 people, although experts have cast doubt on the reliability of such figures, which don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has lost more than 300 soldiers. Hamas rocket attacks on its territory have continued.
In an attempt to deter a separate escalation between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel, after the latter killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut’s southern suburbs last month, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Biden, landed in Beirut on Wednesday.
Hochstein will meet with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the armed Amal movement, which is allied to the Hezbollah terrorist group and has also fired rockets on Israel.
“We are facing uncertain opportunities for diplomacy, which is now moving to prevent war and stop Israeli aggression,” Mikati said in a speech ahead of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Mikati said talks with Arab and Western leaders had intensified due to the seriousness of the situation in Lebanon and the region.
The post Hamas to Stay Out of Gaza Truce Talks, Iran Considers Israel Attack first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UCLA Allowing Pro-Hamas Protesters to Exclude Jews from ‘Gaza Encampment’ Area ‘Abhorrent,’ Federal Judge Says
Law enforcement officers detain a demonstrator, as they clear out a pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson
A US federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) must stop allowing pro-Hamas demonstrators to secure an encampment from which Jewish students were barred entry, calling the situation permitted on campus “so unimaginable and so abhorrent.”
Last semester, pro-Hamas groups at UCLA waged for three weeks a campaign aimed at pressuring school officials into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The action culminated in their erecting on the Royce Quad section of campus a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and refusing to vacate the area until their demands were met.
Enabled by UCLA chancellor Gene D. Block, who had the encampment protected by physical barriers and campus police, the area became the site of violent clashes between pro-Hamas and pro-Israel protesters and a zone of nullification in which federal civil rights laws prohibiting the exclusion of individuals based on their racial or religious identity were, according to the judge, flagrantly flouted. Throughout the encampment’s existence, Jewish students were barred from walking near or through the area on their way to class unless they denounced the Zionist component of their Jewish identities, a policy which UCLA police upheld without compunction.
Granting a request for injunctive relief filed by Jewish students who sued the university, US Judge Mark Scarsi of the District Court for the Central District of California grated UCLA’s defense of its role in supporting the encampment — which argued, in his words, that it “has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters” — and described what took place there as “so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.”
He continued, “The injunction does not mandate any specific policies and procedures UCLA must put in place, nor does it dictate any specific acts UCLA must take in response to campus protests. Rather, the injunction requires only that, if any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students.”
Scarsi, who formally assumed office in 2020 after being nominated in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, also affirmed the plaintiffs’ contention that Zionism is an integral part of their Jewish faith. The ruling is the first to address directly how university administrators handled pro-Hamas encampments on their campuses, which, across the country, descended into proclaiming support for terrorism, threatening a genocide of Jews, and unobstructed vandalizing of school property and assault.
“Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” Mark Rienzi — president of the public interest law firm Becket, which represented the plaintiffs — said on Tuesday, praising the decision’s defense of religious liberty. “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation. UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”
A slew of lawsuits filed by Jewish students and against their universities over their handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded Israel and launched the ongoing war in Gaza, have been decided this summer or remain in the courts.
Earlier this month, a Massachusetts federal judge “in part” denied Harvard University a motion to dismiss a suit which accuses it of failing to respond to numerous antisemitic incidents during the 2023-2024 academic year, clearing the case to proceed to trial. Throughout the summer, Columbia University and New York University (NYU) settled two lawsuits, with NYU paying an undisclosed sum of money to avoid further discovery and litigation.
Most recently, North Carolina State University (NCSU) settled a civil rights complaint which accused school officials of declining to discipline anyone involved in a series of antisemitic incidents in which a Jewish student was allegedly bullied, doxxed, and threatened with physical violence.
As part of the settlement, an outcome achieved during an “early” mediation process arbitrated by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the university agreed to update its anti-discrimination policies to adhere to a 2019 Trump administration executive order which recognized anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism, include antisemitism in its programming on racial and ethnic hatred, and hold regular meetings with Jewish organizations on campus. The university will also base its handling of future antisemitic incidents on North Carolina’s Shalom Act (House Bill 942), which explicitly refers to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post UCLA Allowing Pro-Hamas Protesters to Exclude Jews from ‘Gaza Encampment’ Area ‘Abhorrent,’ Federal Judge Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Anti-Israel Media Bias Flares in Martha’s Vineyard Paper Newly Led by Charles Sennott
Charles Sennott. Photo: Screenshot
News coverage in the Martha’s Vineyard Times tends to stick to local concerns — labor negotiations between the Steamship Authority and the union that operates the ferry between the island and Cape Cod, the perennial shortage of “affordable” housing for year-round and seasonal workers, shark sightings.
For the past few weeks, though, the Times has been on a campaign against the Martha’s Vineyard Chabad after it hosted a Jewish cultural festival event featuring the singer Matisyahu.
Instead of writing about the festival, the newspaper highlighted a small anti-Israel protest against it. Then it ran another story focusing on a protester-participant, and a third story attacking the festival’s organizer.
One Times news article referred to Israel’s “brutal military campaign” and quoted a protester who said, “We are here to reject the presence of someone who performs and fundraises for the Israeli Occupation Forces and the AIPAC lobbying group, condones violence against the Palestinian people and land in the name of Jewish safety, and denies ongoing genocide.”
The onslaught of hostile coverage has generated a disappointed response from readers.
One of them, Jackie Mendez, took to the newspaper’s comments section. “What is Jewish culture? The MVTimes doesn’t care to explain. Instead, it chooses to give yet more time and space to the ignorance and hatred of Israel,” Mendez wrote. “This newspaper gave editorial space to this kind of rabid Jew-hatred.”
Another reader, Judith Hannan, a former columnist for the Times, wrote in a letter to the editor, “The main issue I think so many of us have is that an event to celebrate a rich and diverse culture, under a literal and metaphorical broad tent, was covered with such bias so the reader walks away with no more understanding of Jewish heritage and culture than they had already.”
The rabbi of Chabad on the Vineyard, Tzvi Alperowitz, wrote in an email to his community that he was disappointed by the coverage. “The Jewish Culture Festival was a tremendous and remarkable community celebration. Close to one thousand people gathered in absolute harmony and unity to proudly celebrate Jewish culture and identity,” Alperowitz wrote. “But instead of a beautiful story about Jewish resilience and celebration in spite of the most tragic year for Jews since the Holocaust, the MV Times cynically chose to paint their coverage of the event through the lens of the few protesters who stood outside.”
Alperowitz continued: “That’s a choice that reflects poorly on the MV Times and its editorial team. Every rational individual can see straight through the piece and understands that it was a cynical use of clickbait to turn a proudly Jewish event into an opinion article bashing Israel.”
Who is in charge at the Martha’s Vineyard Times? The paper was purchased in January of this year by Stephen Bernier, who installed as publisher Charles Sennott. Sennott is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Boston Globe, where he was notorious for the anti-Israel tilt of his coverage. The watchdog organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) called Sennott “a virtual spokesman for the Palestinian side,” warning that “under Charles Sennott, the Boston Globe is in danger of reviving its former tradition of blaming Israel first, no matter what the facts.”
Since leaving the Globe, Sennott has been pursuing nonprofit journalism ventures, the latest of which is The GroundTruth Project, where he is listed as the founder and editor-in-chief. The GroundTruth website also lists former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet as one of its directors, and the Ford Foundation as among its funders.
CAMERA has also been sharply critical of Sennott’s work with the GroundTruth Project. A CAMERA report on a three-part Sennott series attacking Christian Zionism called the work “outrageous” and said it featured “bigoted and sloppy reporting.”
“Sennott indoctrinates young journalists with his long-standing anti-Israel, anti-American, and anti-Evangelical biases,” Dexter Van Zile, then with CAMERA, wrote in a 2019 blog post for the Times of Israel. Van Zile then quoted David Parsons, vice president and senior international spokesperson for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. “There are only two journalists I will never work with again and one of them is Charles Sennott,” Parsons said.
In a Dec. 15, 2023, LinkedIn posting, just weeks before assuming the Martha’s Vineyard Times role, Sennott faulted Israel for deliberately and “with impunity” killing scores of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists. Israel has disclosed evidence that some of the “journalists” were members of Gaza-based terrorist organizations. Sennott’s article, while faulting Israel, also omitted that Hamas restricts the activities of journalists in Gaza, with threats of violence.
I wrote to Sennott asking him whether he is trying to turn the weekly island newspaper into a vehicle for pushing an anti-Israel agenda, or whether there is a conflict in his dual roles at the Martha’s Vineyard Times and at the Ground Truth Project.
So far, I haven’t gotten a reply from him.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post Anti-Israel Media Bias Flares in Martha’s Vineyard Paper Newly Led by Charles Sennott first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ben Gvir’s Temple Mount Visit Raises a Larger Question
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visits Al-Aqsa compound also known to Jews as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City May 21, 2023. Minhelet Har-Habait, Temple Mount Administration/Handout via REUTERS.
Jews can pray where they choose in London, New York, Buenos Aires, or Sydney — but not in Jerusalem. The world is in an uproar after Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount to mark the solemn Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av. Critics say that Ben Gvir disrupted the carefully-crafted status quo in Jerusalem — and even broke with the policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ben Gvir says that he has the authority to assert his own guidelines.
The Temple Mount, which was the site of the first and second temples, should be a place where every Jew is permitted to visit without controversy. It seems that the only reason Jews are not allowed to pray there is the threat of a violent reaction from non-Jews, but how can this be allowed in a Jewish state? Surely some accommodation can be reached if both sides would be open to it. But sadly that’s not the case.
How can we have a Jewish state where Jews cannot visit one of the holiest places in their history because of threats of violence from others? If the answer is that this situation is just temporary, we need to seriously look at if that’s true — and ask how there can be a credible partner for peace when Jews are not allowed to visit this site due to threats of violence.
Jews can pray at Jewish holy sites anywhere in the world — just not in Jerusalem.
Critics took issue with Ben Gvir because they believe his move will disrupt ceasefire negotiations with Hamas.
US State Department Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said, “we certainly are paying close attention to actions and activities that we find to be a detraction from Israel’s security, a contributor to greater insecurity and instability in the region, and that would certainly be the actions that we saw today that Mr. Ben-Gvir participated in. Even the prime minister’s office itself made clear that the events of this morning are a deviation from what is Israeli policy and a deviation from the status quo.”
He went on: “any unilateral action like this that jeopardizes such status quo is unacceptable. And not only is it unacceptable, it detracts from what we think is a vital time as we are working to get this ceasefire deal across the finish line. It detracts from what our stated goal is for the region, which is a two-state solution, a Palestinian state and an Israeli state that’s side-by-side, living in — with dignity and harmony.”
If this two-state solution that will see people live “with dignity and harmony” is shaken up by a few Jews praying, then what is the plan for changing that in the future? The reality today is that Jews are only allowed to ascend the Temple Mount during very limited hours, and it is closed to Jews on Shabbat. Yet Arabs can mostly pray freely.
One also wonders why international critics bother so often and so much with the tiny Jewish State, instead of paying attention to crises close to their own homes, such as violent and deadly protests — or actual human rights violations occurring throughout the globe.
In the long term, if Jews wanting to pray peacefully causes an uproar, then we don’t have a true partner for peace. Ben Gvir’s actions may have inflamed the situation — but the larger issue is one that needs to be addressed.
Ronn Torossian is an entrepreneur and philanthropist.
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