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Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March
Palestinian Youth Movement protesters speaking in Times Square, New York City, NY, USA on Jan. 1, 2025. Photo: Ethan Johnson/SIPA USA via Reuters Connect
Some experts and lawmakers are drawing a link between the Islamist ideology that seemingly motivated the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and the pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City that took place hours later.
On Wednesday, hours after a US Army veteran who pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS) drove a truck into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans and killed at least 14 people, protesters marched through New York City, chanting slogans condemning both America and Israel.
Hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators descended upon the streets of Manhattan, sporting signs calling to “End Zionism,” “End all US aid to Israel,” and for “No War With Iran.” Many of these activists also carried Palestinian flags and bellowed slogans such as “intifada revolution!” — a slogan that many consider to be a call for violence against Israelis, Jews, and Westerners more broadly.
“We’re sending you back to Europe, you white b–ches,” a protester yelled at participants of a pro-Israel counter-demonstration. “Go back to Europe! Go back to Europe!”
The demonstration was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a group that plans anti-Israel demonstrations across the United States. PYM has repeatedly praised Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
US lawmakers were quick to slam the anti-Israel demonstrations, accusing them of fomenting unwarranted hatred toward the United States and the Jewish state.
“These protesters in New York City are marching not to condemn the ISIS terrorist attack against their own country but to falsely accuse their own country, as well as Israel, of terrorism,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of the most strident allies of Israel in the US Congress.
“The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid, and genocide in the world,” Torres continued. “For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), another stalwart ally of Israel, also linked the New Orleans terror attack to the New York City demonstrations, saying that “hours after a jihadist sympathizer killed 10 Americans, pro-Hamas agitators are marching through New York City calling for a global intifada.”
“The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense — now,” Lawler added. “Silence is not an option.”
Israeli diplomat Yaki Lopez similarly linked the two incidents, posting on social media that “pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in New York City while jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans.”
“There’s little distinction between the actions of [the suspect in] New Orleans, who used a truck as a weapon and terrorist attacks in the West Bank where cars are used to run over Israelis,” added Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal. “It’s terrorism, yet there are people in this country who support ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada.’”
US federal agencies have established a link between domestic anti-Israel protests and foreign actors. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in July that the Iranian regime has organized “influence efforts” to undermine trust in American institutions, adding that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to rampant anti-Israel demonstrations. Haines also said that Iran has weaponized social media against the Jewish state and America, spreading misleading propaganda regarding the ongoing war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the year following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities. Last May, experts explained to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by ISIS and al Qaeda could carry out attacks on US soil, incensed by the ongoing war in Gaza and inspired by terrorist violence abroad.
“As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in April.
The post Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.