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How to be a liberal Zionist when Israel is at war
(JTA) — How to be a liberal Zionist at war?
For 10 months (much of it from Jerusalem itself) I watched Israel’s most ultra-nationalist and religious government in history tear the country apart with a controversial package of judicial reform, increased subsidies to the ultra-Orthodox, and expansion of settlements and Jewish sovereignty in the West Bank.
The West Bank smoldered following settler terrorist rampages at Huwara, attacks on Israeli civilians on West Bank roads and towns and repeated incursions by the IDF to root out Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist cells. Palestinian statehood was increasingly sidelined by Israelis and Arabs alike in the pursuit of normalization agreements. Diaspora Jews agonized, condemned or just became more apathetic about Israel, and Western world opinion shifted against the state of Israel and her government.
Everything changed on Saturday morning. News reports poured in about an unprecedented barrage of 4,000-plus missiles into Israel from Gaza and, most significantly, the infiltration of hundreds (if not more) Hamas terrorists into Southern residential communities. Some of them surrounded a crowd of festival-goers at a desert rave within Israel, killing, raping and taking men, women and children captives back to Gaza. I stared at my screens and feeds in disbelief.
I stayed up far too late on Saturday night trying to absorb the shock of the day’s events — the colossal intelligence failure, the unprecedented breach of Israel’s security barriers protecting civilian settlement, the fears for regional war. But by the time I awoke on Sunday morning, the horror had magnified beyond what I could have imagined: A professor with whom I was recently on a panel was killed in the South, my postdoctoral supervisor’s daughter and son-in-law were murdered on a kibbutz as they saved their child, a friend of a friend’s son and recent PhD in my field was kidnapped and is now confirmed dead.
Many others posted about loved ones missing or killed, or tales of near escapes from terrible fates. Friends — my own age or older — submitted selfies in uniforms, having been called up as reservists. Parents posted about their panic over children in the army being sent to the front or returning to duty. Others expressed general fears from bomb shelters or safe rooms, wondering what happens next.
As modeled by friends who joined the pro-democracy camp week after week at demonstrations across Israel this summer but have now dutifully donned the uniform, volunteered to give blood and generally have come together to support a grieving nation, to be a liberal Zionist at a time of war means putting the love of Zion and loyalty to the people of Israel (as well as to a future peace with Palestinians) ahead of a loathing for Netanyahu and some of his partners and policies.
Liberal Zionists can acknowledge that both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered at the hands of corrupt and callous leaders who have not sought peace. A liberal Zionist can hold two ideas in their head at the same time in this historical moment: both that Israel can and must do what is necessary to defend herself and that a diplomatic solution to the Palestinian issue is the only way to avoid permanent war. Liberal Zionists can see merit in the Palestinian cause but full-throatedly declare that liberation cannot come by raining rockets over coastal Israel, murdering families in their homes or taking grandmothers and babies captive.
While liberal Zionists like me believe in free speech and the Palestinian cause for statehood, I can’t find any place in my heart for those — like the pro-Palestinian protesters who gathered in New York, San Francisco and so many other places on Sunday — who celebrated over Israeli corpses. This is neither justice nor peace and a disgrace to the democratic public square.
Yet just as liberal Zionists must agree that Hamas is the aggressor to an unprecedented escalation perhaps only comparable to the surprise attack of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, they can admit that this emerges from a cycle of violence that goes back decades, ultimately to the unresolved existential arguments of 1948. As Gaza is no democracy, one can hardly know how average Palestinians there feel about or whether they support Hamas’ attack (even as we know that successive generations of Israeli young people are more hawkish). By the time this is all over, fingers will be pointed, leaders will lose their positions, hearts will be hardened and societies scarred. So many more on both sides will be dead and the dream of a two-state solution buried for another generation.
While Israel’s harshest critics claim this is a tragedy for the Palestinian people, perhaps even the beginning of a second Nakba, it is no less a calamity for Israelis, who have not only seen their national security threatened, but the promise of a peace for both sides living side-by-side once again put on hold.
Alas, there is likely worse to come for Israelis and Palestinians in the next days and weeks. It seems almost inevitable that if the Israeli civilian captives are to be freed and Hamas leadership decapitated once and for all, an IDF ground invasion will be necessary to secure the Strip, even without the alarming calls by ultranationalist, rabble-rousing coalition partners to reduce Gaza to rubble. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who one hopes will only be forced to account for this failure on his watch) vowed no shelter for terrorists and called upon Gazans to leave — to where? Will a humanitarian corridor be opened to Egypt? — aerial bombing of Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods commenced and Palestinian civilian casualties will surely mount.
Should IDF troops follow, I fear the images of flag-draped coffins coming home. Meanwhile, the IDF responded to rockets from Hezbollah territory into Sheba Farms on the Israel-Lebanon border, raising the specter of the worst-case scenario: a two-front war, or even regional conflict, with Iran’s proxies.
Liberal Zionists at war will have anguished debates about the future — especially one that may well include the reoccupation of Gaza. Yet, these must be seen as arguments for the sake of heaven at this historical moment, born out of love, rather than hatred, of the people, land and state of Israel.
For the past month, Jews have gathered in synagogues to pray for life and peace — we can only hope now for the alleviation of the harshest decree in this holy and heartless land.
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The post How to be a liberal Zionist when Israel is at war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Yale University Student Body Approves Divestment Referendum Targeting Israel
Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin
Yale University students have voted in favor of a referendum calling for the school’s divestment from Israel — a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — the Yale Daily News reported on Sunday.
“The referendum, proposed and written by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, asked three questions. The first two ask whether Yale should disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, ‘including those arming Israel,’ and the third asks whether Yale should ‘act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students,’” the paper reported, noting that while each item received overwhelming “yes votes,” they equaled just over one-third of the student body.
The low-threshold is, however, sufficient for the referendum questions being codified and passed as a resolution by the Yale College Council (YCC), which facilitated the referendum and spoke positively of it before students cast their votes. It also rings loudly to the school’s Jewish community, senior Netanel Crispe told The Algemeiner during an interview, explaining that some 2,500 students voted for a policy aimed at compromising Israel’s national security to precipitate its destruction.
Crispe, as well as his fellow student Sahar Tartak, led a campaign against the referendum.
“We put up a good fight, and I am immensely proud and grateful for all the students who organized to support the ‘vote no’ campaign,” Crispe said. “While this ultimately represents the opinion of less than half the student body, it highlights the level of animosity, discrimination, and, to a large degree, Jew-hatred that is present on this campus. What they said is that they support destruction of Jews, the abandonment of Western values, and are willing to do anything at their disposal to accomplish those goals.”
He continued, “The largest consequence of this resolution and its passing on the student level is its effect on the Jewish students. Some 2,000 of our peers were willing to publicly make it clear that they don’t support us and that they’re willing to go in favor of a bill that specifically targets the Jewish state and the land of Israel while labeling it as an apartheid state and perpetrator of genocide. I’ve seen no such bill or resolution put forth or passed to condemn Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 or to support Jewish life or condemn antisemitism.”
On Monday, Yale University told The Algemeiner it will continue to foster intellectual diversity and a robust Jewish student life without discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of the referendum.
“The university remains committed to fostering an academic environment where all can feel a sense of belonging,” a spokesperson said. “There are strong collaborations and close working relationships among the Joseph Slikfa Center for Jewish Life at Yale, Chabad at Yale, the University’s Chaplain’s Office, the faculty-led Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life, and other offices across Yale, including the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Office of the President. For example, the Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life is helping to guide the university’s continued efforts to support and enhance student life for Yale’s Jewish students.”
Regarding the referendum, the university said, “The referendum votes are expected to be formally transmitted to President [Maurie McInnis] this week. The YCC followed the referendum process according to its by-laws, and throughout the voting process, many undergraduate students and other members of the Yale community — including graduate and professional school students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents — shared their views openly with one another and with Yale University leaders.”
Speaking to the Yale Daily News, Han Pimental-Hayes, a leader of the anti-Zionist Sumud Coalition group which authored the resolution, praised the outcome of the referendum as expressing the will of students.
“University leaders have long tried to paint pro-Palestine and pro-divestment students as a fringe majority,” she said. “The results of this referendum demonstrate that, in reality, the movement for a free Palestine and a more ethical endowment is overwhelmingly popular.”
Yale University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) has before ruled against divesting from armaments manufacturers, saying in April that “it does not believe that such activity meets the criteria for divestment” because “this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” The decision set off a raging protest which resulted in the assault of a Jewish student and the arrest of some 47 students who had trespassed Beinecke Plaza, where they vowed to abstain from food unless the university acceded to their demands.
The campus has seen a heightening of anti-Zionist and antisemitic behavior since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. Less than a month after the onslaught, the Yale Daily News came under fire for removing what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas raping and beheading Israelis on Oct. 7 from an article written by Sahar Tartak. Published on Oct. 12, the column — which lambasted Yalies4Palestine (Y4P), for defending and seemingly applauding Hamas’s atrocities — was at some point afterward censored to no longer include a portion describing reports and eyewitness accounts of Hamas raping and beheading Israeli civilians. The paper later apologized.
Additionally, on the day of the massacre, Zareena Grewal — an associate professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and Religious Studies at Yale who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” — defended Hamas, saying it had “every right to resist through armed struggle” while denouncing Israel as as a “murderous, genocidal settler state.”
Most recently, a pro-Hamas activist spat in the direction of Jewish students, a group which included Tartak, for campaigning against the referendum.
On Monday, during an interview with The Algemeiner, Tartak called on the campus’ Jewish community to confront hostility with courage and strength in numbers.
“Our response to this should be an even stronger and prouder Judaism,” she said. “We need Shabbat dinners to be twice as large, twice as many students visiting Israel for Birthright, lighting Shabbat candles, and coming to Jewish learning classes and Torah study. That’s the way we empower Jewish students: make them connected in proportion to the extent that they are being targeted on campus.”
Follow Dion J.l Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Yale University Student Body Approves Divestment Referendum Targeting Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘UNRWA Gives Rise to Palestinian Terrorism’: Experts React to NYT Expose Revealing UN Staff Active Hamas Members
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Dozens of senior staff at UNRWA, including school principals, are active members of Hamas and other terrorist groups, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday, in revelations that sparked renewed calls to shutter and defund the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The allegations exposed in the Times, based on firsthand testimonies as well as internal documents seized by the Israeli military from Hamas offices in the Gaza Strip, assert that at least 24 senior administrators and teachers employed by UNRWA at 24 different schools are registered members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Many were also involved in armed activities, with some possessing weapons like rifles and grenades or engaging in combat training conducted by these groups.
However, UNRWA expert Einat Wilf — who previously served in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset — argued that the Times‘ exposé detracted from the real issue: that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict by entrenching the refugee narrative and fostering a new generation committed to terrorism.
“UNRWA is not infiltrated by Hamas; UNRWA is the soil that constantly gives rise to more violent Palestinian organizations,” Wilf told The Algemeiner.
Residents of Gaza told the Times that Hamas’s presence in UNRWA schools was “an open secret,” with one example of an UNRWA teacher “regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov.”
The report noted Hamas tunnels running beneath UNRWA schools and referenced internal Hamas communications identifying specific schools as locations for concealing weapons, with some texts describing schools and other civilian areas as ideal shields, or, in their terms, “the best obstacles to protect the resistance.”
In one notable incident, UNRWA uncovered a tunnel running beneath one of its schools in central Gaza. The agency reported at the time that it had protested to Hamas about the tunnel’s presence and moved to seal the entrances. However, the seized documents revealed that the school’s principal, Khaled al-Masri — who UNRWA did not fire — is a Hamas member who had been issued weapons by the terrorist group, including an assault rifle and a handgun. Photographs on social media showed him standing before a Hamas banner.
“The UN has been unable and or unwilling to eliminate Hamas militants and their supporters, as well as those from other terrorist groups, from their ranks,” James Lindsay, who served as UNRWA’s general counsel until 2007, told the Times.
“UNRWA hiring practices and the makeup of the labor pool from which UNRWA draws its employees suggests to me that the numbers the Israelis are talking about are probably pretty close to the truth.”
UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini claimed that the organization “lacked the resources” to independently investigate the allegations, according to the report.
He also said that it was “extraordinarily interesting” that Israel shared the documents with the Times rather than UNRWA, but failed to mention that the agency had rejected evidence of terrorist activities on the part of his staff on several occasions in the past.
After being confronted with footage showing UNRWA employees loading the corpse of a murdered Israeli into a vehicle during Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, the organization responded by stating that some of its staff “may” have been involved with Hamas.
“The UN seems intent on portraying this problem as a few bad apples, rather than acknowledging that the tree is rotten,” Amir Weissbrod, the Israeli foreign ministry’s deputy director for international organizations, told the Times.
The findings add to long-standing accusations that UNRWA’s operations in Gaza facilitate radicalization rather than fostering peace. Last month, Israel passed legislation banning the agency from operating within Israeli territory and prohibiting any Israeli authority from engaging with it.
Wilf commended the Israeli government for finally taking decisive action against the agency, saying that last month’s bill and the decision to expose the agency to the press marked an end to “decades of serving as UNRWA’s Iron Dome and protector.”
However, she went on to argue that the real issue with UNRWA is not limited to its staff’s ties to Hamas but its broader role in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that while Palestinians often separate UNRWA employment from direct terror activity, “the wife will work as a teacher and get paid directly by UNRWA, and the husband will be a Hamas operative.”
The critical question, Wilf said, is not how many terrorists are paid by UNRWA but rather how many have been educated by the agency or falsely registered as refugees.
“How many of the terrorists, the butchers, not just of Hamas, but Palestinian terrorists over the years, how many of them have been educated by UNRWA? How many of them were living in neighborhoods that were misnamed refugee camps, even though they’re not camps and no one there is a refugee?” she said, adding that the answer is “practically everyone.”
UNRWA “secures the next generation of people who believe that it is their noble duty by any means necessary to ensure that Jews do not and will not have a sovereign state,” she concluded.
Marcus Sheff, CEO of the NGO IMPACT-se, which monitors UNRWA’s educational curricula, responded to the Times‘ report by saying it confirmed what the world has known for years. “Quite simply, Palestinian children are subjected to indoctrination on a grand scale — and UNRWA is one of the driving forces behind it,” he told The Algemeiner.
According to Sheff, the curriculum in UNRWA schools glorifies violence and promotes deeply antisemitic narratives. “UNRWA educates the majority of schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “They teach students that Jews are liars and fraudsters, that Jews spread corruption which will lead to their annihilation. They are told to ‘cut the necks of the enemy,’ that a massacre of Jews on a bus is to be celebrated as a BBQ party. Terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 38 people, including 13 children, are held up as role models. Many of the people running the schools, teaching, and creating educational content are members of terror organizations. UNRWA is not fit for purpose and should not be allowed to educate children.”
In 2018, the Trump administration cut all funding to UNRWA, calling the agency “irredeemably flawed,” a decision reversed by the Biden administration soon after taking office. Apart from the US, UNRWA receives funding from Canada and several EU states.
Fleur Hassan Nahoum, special envoy for Israel’s foreign ministry, called on those countries to cease all funding to the agency, which she described as an obstacle to peace.
“UNRWA was infiltrated by jihadi terrorists a long time ago,” she told The Algemeiner. “The world is now unearthing what we already knew. It is a poisonous organization taking us further away from peace. The question is now why are countries still funding them.”
The post ‘UNRWA Gives Rise to Palestinian Terrorism’: Experts React to NYT Expose Revealing UN Staff Active Hamas Members first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Says Israel Must Have ‘Victory’ in Gaza as Middle East Rises to Top of Transition Agenda
US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC, US on Nov. 13, 2024. Photo: ALLISON ROBBERT/Pool via REUTERS
US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said that Israel must achieve “victory” against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza before the war can end, elaborating on his views toward the conflict as the Middle East rises to the top of his agenda just six weeks out from his inauguration next month.
In Trump’s first sit-down interview since his electoral victory last month, NBC host Kristen Welker asked if the president-elect is going to “pressure” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza.
“Yeah, sure,” Trump said, shrugging.
“I want him to end it, but you have to have a victory,” he continued, before adding that people have “forgotten” about Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, which started the war.
“People forget about Oct. 7 … I noticed that a lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, it never really happened.’ That’s like the Holocaust,” Trump said. “You know, you have Holocaust deniers. Now you have Oct. 7 deniers, and it just happened. No, Oct. 7 happened. And I’ve seen the pictures. It is — what happened is horrible.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped over 250 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating mass sexual violence during their onslaught last Oct. 7. Israel responded to the massacre with an ongoing military campaign in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities.
Since the onslaught, many anti-Israel activists, organizations, and lawmakers have attempted to downplay the atrocities, even alleging that widely corroborated claims of systematic sexual violence targeting Israeli women were fabricated. In some cases, others have falsely claimed that Israel, not Hamas, killed all the civilians on Oct. 7 in a “false flag” operation to justify a subsequent offensive in Gaza.
Trump’s comments came on the same day that he released a statement on the social media platform Truth Social reacting to the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime by rebel forces over the weekend.
“Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer,” Trump posted. “There was no reason for Russia to be there [in Syria] in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success.”
On Saturday, Trump argued that the US should “not get involved” in Syria.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Despite having expressed a desire during his presidential campaign to remain out of foreign military entanglements and focus on US domestic issues, Trump has found himself increasingly focused on the Middle East amid major regional developments.
Last week, Trump vowed there will be “hell to pay” in the region if Hamas does not release all of the remaining hostages in Gaza before his inauguration on Jan. 20.
The post Trump Says Israel Must Have ‘Victory’ in Gaza as Middle East Rises to Top of Transition Agenda first appeared on Algemeiner.com.