RSS
Do Uninformed Hollywood Celebrities Realize They Are Hurting Chances of a Gaza ‘Ceasefire’?
Recently, a letter was addressed to the Hollywood actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, signed by hundreds of Hollywood actors (along with, for some reason, many who are not actors), demanding that the union’s leadership call for “a permanent ceasefire” in the war in Gaza.
The letter also demanded that SAG-AFTRA, “condemn our industry’s McCarthyist repression of members who acknowledge Palestinian suffering.”
The letter itself is comprised largely of slanderous lies about Israel’s conduct of the war, just as one would expect from the likes of the usual suspects who signed it — Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Susan Sarandon, Cynthia Nixon.
I could go on at length to dispute their claims, pointing out that fighting a war that the enemy started and in which many civilians tragically die — as they do in *all* major wars — is not what the word “genocide” means.
I could point out that Israel is not “waging a war of collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza,” but rather going to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties to an extent unprecedented in modern, urban warfare.
A simple thought experiment underscores the absurdity of the above two claims: imagine if Israel actually did want to commit genocide or wage a war against the civilian population. What would that look like? Obviously, hundreds of thousands if not millions would be dead. Not tens of thousands.
And let me take this moment to say that, of course, it is terrible that there are many innocent civilians among the thousands of dead. I, and every Jew and supporter of Israel I know, feel horrible for the innocent victims of this war — a war that Hamas started and that would end instantly the moment Hamas surrenders.
I could point out that under international law, it is legal to target “safe zones, schools, and hospitals” when the enemy uses them as bases for their operations — just as Hamas is doing.
I could point out the brazen audacity of calling for the “release of all hostages — both Palestinian and Israeli” as though terrorists and armed enemy combatants taken prisoner are “hostages,” and in any way comparable to women and children dragged from their beds.
I could point out the inanity of the oxymoron “permanent ceasefire,” when a “ceasefire” by definition is temporary, just like the ceasefire that was in place on October 7, 2023, before Hamas violated it by invading Israel — and just like every other ceasefire that has been agreed to and violated by Hamas over the past decades.
What might be “permanent” is a peace treaty, such as those negotiated between Israel and many of its other neighbors. But Hamas has made it clear they will never agree to such a peace, and thus any cessation of hostilities could only be “permanent” if Hamas is completely defeated, which is, of course, Israel’s goal.
I could make all of these points, and many others, in response to the false, naïve, and incendiary anti-Israel statements made in the letter to SAG-AFTRA — but similar arguments have been put forth many times in many formats and forums, and there is no need to rehash them at greater length here.
Instead I want to ask this question: why do these actors think that they can proffer a laundry list of slanderous claims against Israel, which are, ultimately, antisemitic in fact if not in intent, without deserving to face any consequences?
I am not aware of any actors facing “McCarthyist repression” just for “acknowledging Palestinian suffering,” as the letter claims.
What I am aware of are instances in which some of those who have signed the letter — such as Susan Sarandon and Melissa Barrera — lost work over blatantly antisemitic statements.
Should they be protected from those consequences? Would an actor who made racist statements targeting any minority group (aside from Jews) and lost work as a result (see: Roseanne Barr) have the temerity to “condemn” the “McCarthyist repression?”
Now, I realize that many of those who signed the letter are probably too stupid to understand the implications of what they have endorsed. If this sounds overly harsh, I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to say it.
I have little doubt that many of the signatories are well meaning, caring people, who see suffering and think they are doing the right and noble thing in calling for it to end. But does that absolve them from all responsibility in signing something they don’t understand?
And what of those who do understand? Who are knowingly giving credence to the lies and anti-Israel propaganda that not only damages Israel in the eyes of the public but also fuels anti-Jewish hatred in the US? What of their responsibility?
It’s bad enough that the letter is an unbalanced, anti-Israel diatribe that doesn’t once lay any blame for anything at the feet of Hamas — and, shockingly, doesn’t even once use the word “Hamas” in its discussion of a conflict it portrays as being fought between Israel and Gazan civilians.
What’s worse is that, by entirely taking the unnamed Hamas’ side, the letter makes its stated goal of ending the conflict less likely to occur.
Hamas can find great encouragement in the fact that its objective of turning Israel into a pariah is working — it’s working on college campuses, on the streets of European cities, among segments of the Democratic Party, and among these Hollywood actors.
Why would Hamas agree to a ceasefire when not doing so seems to be paying such dividends?
Do the signers of the letter know that their actions make a ceasefire *less* likely? Are they too unaware of the geopolitical situation or the strategies and motives of Hamas to understand? Or are they too blinded by their antipathy toward Israel and Jews to care?
Whether for better or worse, celebrities have a great deal of power in our society. But with great power comes great responsibility. Or does it?
Michael Kaplan is a TV writer-producer, playwright, and children’s book author. For his TV work, he has been nominated for four Emmy Awards, winning one.
The post Do Uninformed Hollywood Celebrities Realize They Are Hurting Chances of a Gaza ‘Ceasefire’? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Flip through the digital edition of the Fall 2024 print magazine from The Canadian Jewish News
We’ve produced a collection of feature articles four times a year since 2022. The next edition of this magazine will appear in mid-December, and look out for a reimagined publication with a name of its own in 2025. Get future copies delivered to your door as a thank-you for donating to The CJN.
The post Flip through the digital edition of the Fall 2024 print magazine from The Canadian Jewish News appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report
Anti-Zionist Harvard students taking part in a sit-in organized by a student group which favors the Islamist terror group Hamas. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Harvard University disciplined virtually no one who was accused of perpetrating antisemitic harassment or participating in a “Gaza Solidarity” encampment last academic year, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce alleged on Thursday.
As evidence supporting its claims, the committee cited documents obtained during its ongoing investigation of Harvard University, which was prompted by a succession of antisemitic incidents in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel as well as allegations of antisemitism going back years. According to the committee, “not one of the 68 Harvard students referred for discipline conduct related to the encampment is suspended, and the vast majority is in good standing.”
Neither, it continued, were any of the students who chanted antisemitic slogans on campus property punished. Essentially slapped on the wrist, they were “admonished,” a verbal measure which, Harvard acknowledges, is not recorded in their records as a disciplinary sanction.
“Harvard failed, end of story. These administrators failed their Jewish students and faculty, they failed to make it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, and in this case, Harvard may have failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities to protect students from a hostile environment,” US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “The only thing administrators accomplished is appeasing radical students who have almost certainly returned to campus emboldened and ready to repeat the spring semester’s chaos. Harvard must change course immediately.”
The Algemeiner has previously reported that Harvard University was amnestying students charged with violating school rules which proscribe unauthorized demonstrations and disruptions of university business. During summer, it “downgraded” disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard and roiling the campus for nearly five weeks.
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to restore order and dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents on campus in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, interim president Alan Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated by participating in the demonstration.
Harvard then began suspending the protesters following their rejection of a deal to leave the encampment, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before then, Garber vowed that any student who continued to occupy the section of campus would be placed on “involuntary leave,” a measure that effectively disenrolls the students from school and bars them from campus until the university decides whether they are allowed back. The disciplinary measures were levied one day after members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) created a sign featuring an antisemitic caricature of Garber as Satan, and accused him of duplicity.
During Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in May, reports emerged that some students had been banned from graduation and receiving their diplomas.
However, Harvard and HOOP always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters and an embarrassment to the university. Indeed, after the suspensions were lifted, HOOP proceeded to mock what they described as their administrators’ lack of resolve. Unrepentant, they celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”
The past year has been described by experts as a low point in the history of Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most important institution of higher education. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas across southern Israel, the school has been accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism, while important donors have suspended funding for programs. In just the past nine months, its first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist; Harvard faculty shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media; and its protesters were filmed surrounding a Jewish student and shouting “Shame!” into his ears.
According to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard has repeatedly misrepresented its handling of the explosion of hate and rule breaking, launching a campaign of deceit and spin to cover up what ultimately became the biggest scandal in higher education.
A report generated by the committee as part of a wider investigation of the school claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult its members when Jewish students were subject to verbal abuse and harassment, a time, its members felt, when its counsel was most needed. The advisory group went on to recommend nearly a dozen measures for addressing the problem and offered other guidance, the report said, but it was excluded from high-level discussions which preceded, for example, the December congressional testimony of former president Claudine Gay — a hearing convened to discuss antisemitism at Harvard.
So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being an accessory to what the committee described as a guilefully crafted public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.
Currently, the university is fighting a lawsuit which accuses it of ignoring antisemitic discrimination. The case survived an effort by Harvard’s lawyers to dismiss it on the grounds that the students who brought it “lack standing.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
If Eric Adams Steps Down, New York City’s Next Acting Mayor Will Be an Anti-Israel Critic
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Photo: Screenshot
The next acting mayor of New York City might be a left-wing activist and staunch critic of the Jewish state.
US prosecutors charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday with soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery. Adams’s potential departure from office could prove consequential for New York City’s estimated 960,000 Jewish residents, representing roughly 10 percent of the Big Apple’s population, and supporters of Israel living in the city.
If Adams resigns as a result of the federal charges against him, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is widely expected to step into the mayoral role as his replacement. A review of Wiliams’s social media history reveals a pattern of denigrating Israel, raising questions over whether the public advocate would defend the city’s Jewish community.
Williams has condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza as a “war crime” and criticized the US Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in July.
“Aside from basic humanity, under accepted [international] Law Benjamin Netanyahu is quite literally, at this moment, engaged in [international] war crimes/human rights violations,” Williams posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Instead of Congress trying to stop it, they gave a platform.”
Williams issued a statement on Oct. 11 of last year, four days after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, lamenteing the terrorist attacks on the Jewish state before calling on Jerusalem not to retaliate and shifting attention to alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.
“We can, we have to be able to, at once grieve the hundreds of innocent lives taken in Israel, and oppose the escalating violence of retaliation, the endless war, the systemic violence and oppression of Palestinians too often ignored, excused, or condoned,” Williams wrote.
On Oct. 14, one week after Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Williams condemned “shameful” New York elected officials that “won’t even mention [Palestine] or [Gaza].”
Five days later, less than two weeks after the largest single-day mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Williams called for an immediate “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Israel had not yet launched its military offensive in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza to dismantle the terror group’s military capabilities and free the 251 hostages kidnapped from southern Israel on Oct. 7. He also drew an equivalency between Israel’s military operations to the Hamas atrocities.
“The moral compass of our leaders shows stunning irregularities,” Williams wrote on Instagram.
“On point in condemning horrendous attacks on Israel and demanding hostages be returned,” he added. “[Yet, failure] to recognize the [United Nation’s] description of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, let alone support de-escalation and ceasefire.”
On Oct. 24, Williams declared Gaza a “humanitarian crisis” and added that “all of us who rightly condemned Oct 7 on Israel should be rightly demanding a [ceasefire] now and before any ground invasion.”
Israel began striking Hamas targets after repelling the Oct. 7 invasion but did not launch a ground offensive into Gaza until Oct. 27.
In February, Williams appeared at a press conference conducted by the “NYC 4 Ceasefire” coalition to demand an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. During the event, participants referred to the Gaza war as a “genocide” and honored Palestinian “martyrs.”
“We have gathered here today to show city-wide support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide in Palestine,” said Jawanza Williams, organizing director of left-wing activist group VOCALNY.
Williams harbors ties to the vehemently anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America group (DSA). In a 2018 interview with the left-wing media outlet Jacobin, Williams said, “I have no problem saying I’m a Democratic Socialist.”
Williams has solicited an endorsement from the group while running for office in New York City. DSA has routinely praised Hamas’s so-called “armed struggle” against Israel. The group issued an explicit endorsement of Hamas, stating that the terrorist organization is a cornerstone in the “resistance” against the “Zionist project.” DSA has also accused Israel of committing “genocide” and praised the Hezbollah terrorist group for attempting to pummel the Jewish state with missiles.
The post If Eric Adams Steps Down, New York City’s Next Acting Mayor Will Be an Anti-Israel Critic first appeared on Algemeiner.com.