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As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza
NITZAN B, Israel (JTA) — Since Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided face-to-face meetings with ordinary Israeli citizens. One exception occurred in mid-November, when the Israeli prime minister met with a group of Israelis evacuated from the Gaza border, including former Gaza Strip settlers who presented him with a request: to return to their uprooted homes once Israel’s war with Hamas was over.
“The Gaza Strip won’t let us rest, the land of Israel won’t let us rest until the people of Israel return to settle it, and only then will it flourish” one of the participants, Zehorit Cohen, told Netanyahu in a video clip that has since circulated online. Cohen is a former resident of the Gaza bloc of settlements, known as Gush Katif.
“It has nothing to do with strategy or security or economics or anything,” she said. “We need to go back there because it’s the land of Israel, and the land of Israel calls to us.”
Israel evacuated 8,000 settlers and all of its troops from Gaza in 2005, a withdrawal that split Israeli society and that, for the uprooted settlers, still festers as an open wound. Now, as the Israeli military reconquers broad swaths of the coastal territory in its campaign to destroy Hamas, former Gush Katif residents and other settler leaders are standing at the vanguard of mounting calls to rebuild the evacuated settlements.
“Today, after this thing, everyone understands that settlements equal security, and where there aren’t settlements, there’s terror, massacre and Holocaust,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council of settlements in the northern West Bank, said in a recent interview on Israeli Channel 14, a right-wing station.
Jewish resettlement inside Gaza has no international support and is understood by even some right-wing lawmakers to be inadvisable. But Dagan, along with settler activist Daniella Weiss, is leading a coalition of right-wing groups using the current war as a springboard to intensify a push for a return to Gush Katif.
Their coalition recently held a conference that drew some 200 people and at least one lawmaker, according to Haaretz. The group has already drawn up a list of families who have committed to relocating to a future resettlement project in Gaza.
“The true victory over Hamas will be to take territory back and establish settlements,” Dagan said.
Politicians on the far right have long called for reestablishing Gush Katif, including an Israeli government minister who did so earlier this year. Now, the war has brought those demands squarely into the mainstream.
A mid-November poll of Israel’s Channel 12 News found that 44% of Israelis are in favor of resettling Gush Katif, with 39% opposed and 17% “unsure.” A Hebrew University poll in December found that enthusiasm had declined, with 33% in favor of settlement in Gaza while 55% are opposed.
In the international arena, however, and even among Israel’s right-wing leadership, the idea appears to be a non-starter. Netanyahu has denounced the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, called the disengagement, but he voted for it as a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government at the time. While he has said Israeli troops will remain in Gaza for the foreseeable future, he called the resettlement of Gush Katif “not a realistic objective” of the war against Hamas.
And President Joe Biden called a potential reoccupation of Gaza a “big mistake” in an October “60 Minutes” interview. In March, his administration rebuked Netanyahu’s government for repealing a portion of the 2005 disengagement law.
Former Israeli right-wing officials have also criticized the movement to return to Gush Katif. Yonatan Bashi, who was one of the leading officials overseeing the implementation of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, said trying to settle several thousand Israelis in a territory inhabited by millions of Palestinians would be an error.
“From the beginning, the idea that we went to live in the Gaza Strip was a big mistake, not because of ideology but because there were 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip versus 7,000 or 8,000 Jews,” Bashi told Israel National News last month, estimating 2005 population figures. “Whoever thought our problem with the strip was geographical was wrong then and is wrong now.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who took a lead role in advocating for the disengagement plan and later became an outspoken advocate of territorial withdrawal, said the idea that settlements in Gaza provide security is “utter nonsense.”
“Had we remained in Gush Katif, we would have been in the kishkes of Gaza, and everything would have happened years ago,” he said, using the Yiddish word for guts. Instead, he blames the Oct. 7 attacks on reports that the army diverted troops from the Gaza border to the West Bank leading up to the attack.
“If our soldiers had stayed next to the border and were not … protecting the settlers so they can attack Palestinians in the West Bank and destroy their olive groves, what happened would not have occurred,” said Olmert.
Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently told Israel’s public broadcaster, “I want to return and establish settlements in the strip, but I’m not sure now is the time to do it.”
Many former Gush Katif residents and their ideological supporters feel themselves pulled back toward Gaza by trauma from a home that was lost — one that is connected to a historical right-wing Zionist mandate to control the entire land of Israel. For years after the disengagement, many of the evacuated settlers lived in temporary housing. Some communities have reconstituted themselves elsewhere. The former Gush Katif settlers generally refer to the withdrawal as an “expulsion.”
At the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan B, a southern Israeli town established to house evacuated settlers, there is a constant mourning over what was lost and an unfading desire for a return to Gush Katif.
“Here is a memorial — not a museum for something that was and is finished, but a memorial for what continues to live in our hearts” said Shimon Samson, a 71-year old guide at the center who lived in the small Gush Katif settlement of Gadid beginning in 1980, a decade after the Gaza settlements were founded.
Samson pointed to a historical Jewish presence in the ancient city of Gaza that dates back centuries, as exemplified by a replica mosaic of King David, on display by the center’s entrance, based on an original discovered in a fifth-century Gazan synagogue in 1965, shortly before Gaza was conquered by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War.
According to Samson, approximately 40 of the Israelis killed in the Oct. 7 attack were family members of the first generation of Gush Katif settlers, who left their farms in the Gaza border region to receive government-sponsored land inside Gaza.
“At first there were no problems,” recalled Samson nostalgically of the initial period of Israeli settlement in Gaza. He recalled local rabbis permitting eating fresh fish on the beachfront in Gaza City and even dining at a halal falafel stand.
The situation deteriorated with the advent of the first intifada in 1987. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority was given control over much of Gaza including the cities and refugee camps now seeing fierce battles. Violence escalated again during the second intifada two decades ago.
All told, the memorial center lists 42 civilians — not including soldiers — who were killed in terror attacks across Gush Katif’s history. Samson said another 40 community members died prematurely after the “expulsion” in 2005 from “depression, heart attack and other ailments caused by losing millions of dollars and their homes,” including two suicides. Israeli researchers found that former Gush Katif residents were at an increased risk of diabetes and hypertension.
A Haaretz report from 2005 found that 85 members of Israel’s security forces were killed in Gaza since the start of the second intifada in 2000, while 2,600 Palestinians were killed in total in the territory between 1967 and 2005. Many more Palestinians have been killed in the repeated rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with a rival Palestinian faction.
Nadin Cohen, a 70-year old immigrant from France who was evacuated from Gush Katif, now has a home in Nitzan B lined with photos of seaside vistas from her old home. Samson and Cohen both say they are too old to consider uprooting themselves again, but they both consider their grandchildren among the “many youths who are interested in settling Gush Katif once again,” Cohen said.
While such a return may seem unrealistic, evacuated settlers still have faith that it can happen. Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right lawmaker who was evacuated from a northern West Bank settlement as part of the 2005 withdrawal, quoted the Bible while expressing her belief that the residents of Gush Katif will yet return.
“We are a nation of God. This is the land that the creator of the world gave us,” she said in a video she posted to social media last week. “We just need to believe in this. If we just believe in this, God willing, we will win.”
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The post As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Northwestern University Touts Progress on Addressing Campus Antisemitism Amid Federal Scrutiny
Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University on Monday touted its progress in addressing the campus antisemitism crisis, issuing a statement containing a checklist of policies it has enacted since being censured by federal lawmakers over its handling of pro-Hamas demonstrations which convulsed its campus during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and across the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.
“In closing, although Northwestern has made significant progress in the fight against antisemitism on campus, the university remains vigilant and will continue to do what is necessary to make our campus safe,” the statement concluded. “Importantly, the fight against antisemitism is NOT [sic] a zero-sum game. All members of our communities on campus — all religions, races, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, and political viewpoints — deserve to feel safe and know that our rules will be enforced to protect them against hate, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation. Northwestern is committed to this principle.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern University struggled for months to correct an impression that it coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment.
University president Schill denied during a US congressional hearing held that year that he had capitulated to any demand that fostered a hostile environment, but his critics noted that part of the deal to end the encampment stipulated his establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
The status of those concessions, which a law firm representing the civil rights advocacy group StandWithUs described as “outrageous” in July 2024, were not disclosed in Monday’s statement.
Northwestern University is not the only school creating distance between itself and the anti-Zionist movement, a step many colleges have taken in response to US President Donald Trump’s vowing to cut the flow of taxpayer funds supplementing their budgets should they refuse to crackdown down on illegal protests and antisemitism. Following the Trump administration’s cancelling of over $400 million in federals contracts and grants awarded to Columbia University, former interim president Katrina Armstrong proposed a list of reforms the school would agree to undertake — in areas ranging from undergraduate admissions to campus security — to restore the funds.
Armstrong later resigned from her position, saying in a statement which explained the decision that she wishes to return to her role as executive director of the university’s Irving Medical Center, as well as several other positions she holds.
Meanwhile, Harvard University recently fired a librarian whom someone filmed ripping posters of the Bibas children, two babies murdered in captivity by Hamas, off a kiosk in Harvard Yard and denounced him as “hateful.” Additionally, it paused a partnership with a higher education institution located in the West Bank, a move for which prominent members of the Harvard community and federal lawmakers had clamored in a series of public statements. The Trump administration initiated a review of $9 billion in taxpayer funds it receives anyway, prompting interim president Alan Garber to defend Harvard’s handling of the issue.
“For the past fifteen months, we have devoted considerable effort to addressing antisemitism,” Garber said. “We have strengthened our rules and our approach to disciplining those who violate them. We have enhanced training and education on antisemitism across our campus and introduced measures to support our Jewish community and ensure student safety and security.”
Northwestern University is in the Trump administration’s crosshairs too. It is one of 60 universities being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over its handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
“The department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in March. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Northwestern University Touts Progress on Addressing Campus Antisemitism Amid Federal Scrutiny first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pressure Mounts on UN Members to Block Reappointment of Controversial Anti-Israel Official
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United Nations is facing growing pressure to block the reappointment of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state.
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is set to reappoint Albanese for another three-year term on Friday, despite calls from several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose her reappointment due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, across southern Israel, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the United Nations launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and that they give her “hope.”
On Monday, US Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC, Ambassador Jürg Lauber, to express his strong opposition to Albanese’s reappointment.
In the letter, Mast claimed that Albanese has failed to act “in an independent capacity with a professional, impartial assessment, and maintain the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.”
“Ms. Albanese unapologetically uses her position as a UN special rapporteur to purvey and attempt to legitimize antisemitic tropes, while serving as a Hamas apologist,” the letter read.
“In her malicious fixation, she has even called for Israel to be removed from the United Nations while likening Israel to apartheid South Africa,” Mast wrote in a letter signed by six fellow lawmakers. “Regrettably, Ms. Albanese’s rhetoric has perverted the very institution and its foundational principles in which she was appointed to serve.”
Governments worldwide, including France, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, have condemned her statements as antisemitic and urged that she not be given another term in her role.
Last month, 42 members of the French Parliament publicly urged the government to oppose Albanese’s reappointment, arguing that it “would send a regrettable signal to victims, human rights defenders, and states committed to credible multilateralism.”
This week, British Labour Member of Parliament David Taylor also objected to Albanese’s reappointment, saying “there is no place for such alleged antisemitism on the international stage.”
“Albanese’s response to the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century was to describe it as ‘a response to Israel’s oppression,’” Taylor told the Jewish Chronicle. “She described Israel as being a ‘settler colonial conquest.’”
“Making statements of this nature in a UN capacity is abhorrent and does so much damage to communities already torn apart by horrific violence, going against everything the United Nations stands for,” Taylor said.
Human rights groups and NGOs have also campaigned to prevent the anti-Israel rapporteur from receiving a second term.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, has organized a petition against her reappointment, which has garnered over 83,000 signatures.
Last month, Maram Stern, executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC urging him to reject the renewal of Albanese’s mandate, citing what she described as the UN official’s history of anti-Israel animus and antisemitic statements.
“Ms. Albanese has repeatedly made public remarks that propagate harmful antisemitic tropes, question the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and employ rhetoric that undermines the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the letter read. “Her persistent lack of objectivity and failure to uphold a balanced and impartial approach required of her as special rapporteur compromises her credibility as an independent expert.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) also urged UN Members to reject Albanese’s second term, saying she “has systematically demonstrated a troubling pattern of conduct and expression that is incompatible with the responsibilities, neutrality, and integrity expected of a UN special rapporteur.”
“Her actions not only betray the victims of terrorism and antisemitism but also are a stain on the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the AJC wrote in a letter.
The post Pressure Mounts on UN Members to Block Reappointment of Controversial Anti-Israel Official first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Three Jewish Coaches Lead Teams in NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four
Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden and Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl talk before the game as Auburn Tigers take on Florida Gators at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala., on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
The men’s 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four bracket includes four No. 1 seed teams, three of which have Jewish coaches who will lead the way in the two national semifinals taking place on Saturday.
Auburn University Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl has contributed Auburn’s success in the NCAA in part to God and his Jewish faith. He described Israel as the “ancestral homeland for the Jewish people” and called for the release of American-Israeli Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity at a post-game conference last month. He also took the Auburn team on a trip to Israel, where they made stops at the Western Wall and Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
The Tigers will compete on Saturday in the NCAA Tournament Final Four against the Florida Gators whose Jewish coach, Todd Golden, is an Israeli citizen who previously played two years professionally for Maccabi Haifa in Israel.
In 2009, Golden was co-captain of the USA Open Team, coached by Pearl, that won gold at the Maccabiah Games, which is an international multi-sport event for Jewish and Israeli athletes. Golden has been the coach of the Tigers for two seasons, but prior to that he was the assistant coach at Columbia, the head coach at San Francisco, and even worked under Pearl. Golden was director of basketball operations for the Auburn staff for the 2014-15 season and was promoted to assistant coach for the 2015-16 campaign.
Duke and Houston also play each other on Saturday in the Final Four. The head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Jon Scheyer, also formerly played in Israel and holds Israeli citizenship. He played professionally for Maccabi Tel Aviv from 2011-12. In October 2023, not long after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Scheyer commented on the conflict and said in part: “My heart breaks for the people in Israel — that have hostages, American lives that are taken, mourning loved ones.” Scheyer is leading Duke to the Final Four in only his third year as head coach.
The Houston Cougars – the fourth men’s team competing in the Final Four – do not have a Jewish coach, but they have a player who was born in Israel and played for Israel’s national youth squad. Guard Emanuel Sharp, who is the son of Derrick Sharp, was part of Israel’s under-16 national basketball team and also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv for over a decade.
This year’s Final Four have a combined record of 135-16. Since seeding began in 1979, this is only the second time in history that all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four. It previously happened in 2008. Larry Brown was the last Jewish coach to win the NCAA Tournament when he led Kansas to the victory in 1988.
The 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four begins on Saturday, with two national semifinals taking place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, and ends on Monday with the national championship.
The post Three Jewish Coaches Lead Teams in NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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