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John Oliver Misses the Mark on Israel and Hamas
More than a month into Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, British comedian John Oliver recently dedicated a significant amount of his weekly HBO show Last Week Tonight to discussing current events in both Israel and Gaza.
However, while Oliver’s analysis is presented as balanced and insightful, it falls short in several areas.
In particular, Oliver’s depiction of Hamas, his portrayal of Israeli actions in Gaza both before and during the war, and his characterization of the discourse surrounding a ceasefire are all lacking in both context and nuance.
John Oliver’s Misunderstanding of Hamas
From the depiction of Hamas throughout his monologue, it is clear that John Oliver and the writers at Last Week Tonight have a very shallow understanding of what the Palestinian terror group is and what it stands for.
Not once during the 32-minute-long segment does Oliver mention the contents of Hamas’ 1988 founding charter or the terror group’s explicitly stated raison d’etre: The ultimate destruction of the Jewish state.
The farthest that Oliver will go is to inform his audience that Hamas was opposed to the Oslo peace process and tried to derail it through bus bombings. However, he never identifies the genocidal ideology that underpinned Hamas’ “resistance” to Israel.
Instead, Oliver claims that historically and prior to the 2006 Palestinian election (where Hamas ultimately won a majority of seats), Hamas ran on an anti-corruption platform and that it had gone “out of its way to present itself as more moderate back then.”
A narrative is thus created of Hamas as something that started out as a moderate anti-corruption political party, as opposed to the internationally-recognized terror group that it truly is.
Oliver’s source for asserting Hamas moderation? None other than an old English-language interview with Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad, where he claims that Hamas is a moderate and open-minded organization that believes in democracy and “political pluralization.”
As any analyst will tell you, Hamas has a history of moderating its tone in English while simultaneously engaging in extremist rhetoric in Arabic. All a researcher at HBO had to do was search for a Hamas election rally in 2005/2006 (such as this one, where Ismail Haniyeh says no to recognizing Israel or negotiating with it) to know that, to Palestinian voters, Hamas did not moderate its tone in the lead up to the 2006 election.
By presenting Hamas through Western framing, Oliver makes such outrageous statements as implicitly comparing Hamas to the current Israeli government (and regardless of one’s political beliefs, there is no comparison between the Palestinian terror group and the current coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu), and by claiming that “as prospects for peace collapsed, Hamas seems to be vindicated in its messaging.”
John Oliver’s Lop-Sided Look at Israel’s Activities in Gaza
Another area where John Oliver’s analysis misses the mark is in his depiction of Israel’s activities in Gaza both before and during the war.
Throughout the piece, Oliver describes Israel’s defensive war against Hamas as “the relentless bombings of civilians,” “collective punishment” (which he deems to be a “war crime”), and “horrifying.”
He even goes so far as to describe Israel’s deliberate targeting of Hamas infrastructure as “a barrage of Israeli rockets,” implicitly comparing it to Hamas’ indiscriminate bombing of Israeli civilian areas.
While Oliver is openly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, he is conspicuously silent about Hamas’ embedding of its terror infrastructure within densely populated civilian areas, about Israel’s opening of a humanitarian corridor to the south for Palestinians fleeing the fighting, and about the foreign aid that Israel has allowed to enter the embattled strip as it continues to uproot Hamas.
John Oliver’s portrayal of Israel’s relationship with Gaza prior to the war also lacks proper context and nuance.
Oliver claims that “Israel’s approach to Gaza has been truly punishing. Fencing people in, limiting exits, and trapping them inside what has been called ‘an open-air prison’ by many human rights organizations. Life under a blockade there has been hard for a long time even when there aren’t bombs flying.”
He then goes on to show a clip of a 2019 PBS report that discusses water accessibility, public hygiene, electricity, and how many Gazans allegedly have “a sense of having little to lose.”
However, once again, this is not the full picture of Israel’s relationship to Gaza.
Oliver conveniently disregards the following salient facts:
Both Israel and Egypt enacted a blockade of Gaza in order to impede Hamas’ importation of weaponry.
Hamas misused foreign aid money earmarked for Gaza’s infrastructure in order to develop its terror infrastructure.
Hamas negligence led to the majority of Gaza’s water being non-drinkable.
Israel provided Gaza with almost 10% of its water needs and 50% of its electricity needs before October 7.
Prior to October 7, Israel had granted work permits to over 15,000 Gazans.
John Oliver Calls for a Ceasefire
Near the end of this piece, John Oliver calls for a ceasefire, saying that it is the “first step” to a solution for “peace in the Middle East.”
Oliver concedes that there is the danger of Hamas using a ceasefire to regroup but he claims that danger will exist whenever the war ends and the continuation of the war will only create more extremists in Gaza.
However, Oliver’s analysis falls short in that it places the onus entirely on Israel for implementing a ceasefire, it calls for a ceasefire without preconditions (such as the release of the hostages); takes for granted that Hamas will continue to rule after the war (as opposed to Israel’s stated goal of uprooting Hamas); and doesn’t take into account that extremists do not always arise out of the dust of an intense bombardment (such as the destruction of the Nazi regime and the uprooting of Imperial Japan).
Further, in supporting his call for a ceasefire, Oliver references the numerous ceasefire rallies that have taken place around the world.
However, these rallies are hardly the moral and humanitarian voices that Oliver portrays them as. Many of these protests have made little to no mention of Hamas’ continual attacks against Israel, have placed the entire onus for the conflict on Israel’s shoulders, have been marred by antisemitism and violence, and have even been attended by those blatantly supporting Hamas.
As Within Our Lifetime, one of the groups organizing these rallies, expressed in a recent advertisement, it starts with a ceasefire and ends with “cease Zionism,” effectively calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state.
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Antisemitism Continues to Skyrocket in France, With Over 1,500 Incidents Recorded in 2024, New Report Finds
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a new bombshell report.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, on Wednesday released its annual report on antisemitism, which was compiled by the Jewish Community Protection Service using data jointly recorded with the Ministry of the Interior.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
One such incident occurred in late June, when an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”
In another egregious attack that garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.
Comme chaque année, le Crif publie le rapport annuel sur les chiffres de l’antisémitisme en France établi par le Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (@SPCJFRANCE) sur la base des chiffres recensés conjointement entre le SPCJ et le ministère de l’Intérieur.
Pour la… pic.twitter.com/VuPwVXvq0f
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 22, 2025
Antisemitism skyrocketed in France following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. According to CRIF’s report, the surge continued unabated last year, with over 30 percent of antisemitic incidents, or 43 out of an average of 130 per month, making direct reference to “Palestine.”
In November, for example, a monument honoring victims of the Nazis located in eastern France was vandalized with graffiti reading “Nique Israël,” or “F—k Israel” in English.
On the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, three men brutally attacked a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of last Oct. 7.
In September, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near the eastern city of Lyon, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”
CRIF’s latest data also showed that 192 antisemitic acts were committed in schools, which accounted for 12.2 percent of all such incidents recorded last year.
Synagogues were targeted as well. In August, for example, French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.
France is one of several countries that has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations since Hamas’s invasion of Israel.
According to a report from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, there has been a staggering 340 percent increase in antisemitic acts worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022.
The report showed a sharp rise in antisemitic outrages in North America and Europe, with the US up 288 percent, Canada increasing by 562 percent, and Britain seeing a 450 percent spike, with nearly 2,000 incidents recorded in the first half of 2024 in the UK.
The post Antisemitism Continues to Skyrocket in France, With Over 1,500 Incidents Recorded in 2024, New Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Cornell University Statue Vandalized by Anti-Zionist Activists
Anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell University kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which defamed Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.”
“Divest from death,” the students, who have not yet been identified, graffitied on a statue of Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White that is located on the Arts Quad section of campus — as first reported by The Cornell Daily Sun on Tuesday. “Occupation=death.”
Speaking anonymously to The Sun, the university’s official campus newspaper, the students provided an account of their grievances, which addressed what in their view is the insufficiency of the recently negotiated ceasefire between Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group, and Israel. In so doing, they put forth the view that all of Israel must be surrendered to the Palestinians, whose leaders have serially rejected viable two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since the United Nations voted in 1947, via Resolution 181, to partition what was then known as British Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.
“We demand that Cornell divests from the weapons manufacturers that make genocide possible,” they said. “A ceasefire will save lives, and we hope it will be permanent. But a ceasefire is not a free Palestine, and we will organize until we see a liberated Palestine free from genocide, occupation, and apartheid.”
Anonymous collectives of anti-Zionists have vandalized Cornell University property before, and the school as a whole has seen some of the most disturbing incidents of campus antisemitism since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In August, a group vandalized the Day Hall administrative building, graffitiing “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” on it and shattering the glazings of its front doors. They justified their actions.
“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration really cares about: property,” the students told The Sun. “With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine.”
Anti-Zionists convulsed Cornell University’s campus during the 2023-2024 academic year, engaging in activities that are without precedent in the school’s 159-year history. Three weeks after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to perpetrate heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
By the end of the year, Pollack announced her resignation as president of the university, which followed the installment of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the campus in which pro-Hamas students had lived and protested the university’s investments in companies linked to Israel.
Cornell now has a new interim president, Michael Kotlikoff, and his administration has vowed to punish and deter criminal behavior undertaken in the name of anti-Zionist activism.
“Acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” he said in August. “We will enforce these policies consistently, for every group or activity, on any issue or subject …We urge all members of the community to express their views in a manner that respects the rights of others. One voice may never stifle another. There is a time, place, and manner for all to speak and all to be heard.”
So far, Kotlikoff’s administration has executed its zero-tolerance policy, pursuing criminal investigations against protesters who break the law, as happened on Sept. 24 when a mass of students disrupted a career fair because it was attended by Boeing and L3Harris, an American defense contractor. The incident resulted in three arrests, and, later, severe disciplinary sanctions, including classifying five students as “persona non grata,” which, Cornell says, bans from campus “a person who has exhibited behavior which has been deemed detrimental to the university community.” However, the university did downgrade sanctions levied against a doctoral student after his supporters decried that dis-enrolling him as a student would lead inexorably to his deportation from the US.
Regarding this latest incident, Cornell has vowed to bring the vandals to justice.
“Vandalism violates our code of conduct and the law,” the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD) told The Sun. “Graffiti is property damage, which is a crime. We are committed to identifying the perpetrators responsible.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Fires Head of Terrorist-Linked World Central Kitchen From President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, Nutrition
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the firing of celebrity chef Jose Andres, founder of the controversial World Central Kitchen (WCK), from the president’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, claiming that the restaurateur and humanitarian is “not aligned with” the current White House’s mission.
Trump shared the news of Andres’s departure in an “Official Notice of Dismissal” on social media. The statement explained that his administration is currently in the process of “identifying and removing over a thousand presidential appointees from the previous administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.”
Over the past year, Andres has found himself embroiled in controversy regarding the alleged conduct of WCK employees in Gaza. WCK, a US-based NGO founded by Andres to help feed needy people caught in disasters or conflict zones, has been operating with roughly 500 employees in Gaza since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023. The charity has often engaged in heated public disputes with the Jewish state, accusing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of purposefully targeting its workers with airstrikes — allegations that Jerusalem has adamantly rejected.
In April 2024, the IDF came under fire after it conducted airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy, killing seven employees of the charity. Israel acknowledged responsibility for the incident and insisted that the airstrikes violated internal protocol, subsequently dismissing two senior officers over the botched military operation.
Israel has accused WCK of insufficiently vetting its workforce and employing terrorist members within its ranks.
Last month, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had “affiliations and direct connections” with terrorist groups. Israel conducted an investigation into the backgrounds of the charity’s employees after the Jewish state discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Nov. 30. At the time, WCK said it had no knowledge of an employee involved in the Oct. 7 onslaught, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 hostages during their rampage in southern Israel.
Israel has long insisted that Hamas and similar terrorist groups have infiltrated humanitarian organizations in Gaza. In August 2024, the United Nations admitted that nine employees of UNRWA, the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, were fired over their alleged involvement in the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel.
Andres responded to Trump’s statement on X/Twitter, claiming that he had already resigned.
“I submitted my resignation last week … my 2 year term was already up,” Andres wrote.
“I was honored to serve as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. My fellow council members — unpaid volunteers like me — were hardworking, talented people who inspired me every day. I’m proud of what we accomplished on behalf of the American people,” he added.
The post Trump Fires Head of Terrorist-Linked World Central Kitchen From President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, Nutrition first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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