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Palestinian ‘Resistance’ Groups Don’t Just Target Israelis
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Hamas and its allies in the media, Congress, and especially in academia have saturated the nation with propaganda meant to sway the “hearts and minds” of Americans against Israel. They appear to be winning. The proliferation of anti-Israel protests across the nation since October 7, attests to the failure of the American educational system and the success of the “Palestine” lobby.
At the forefront of Hamas’ propaganda victories are legions of uninformed college students, aided by professional agitators and biased media figures. Shutting down roads, bridges, and airports with seeming impunity, they have made it impossible for even people with no interest in politics to avoid the war in Gaza.
Anti-Israel propaganda depends on ignorance. Students chanting “From the river to the sea” can’t identify either the river or the sea in question. Few have even heard about UN Resolution 181, and fewer still know how a piece of territory roughly the size of New Jersey came to be known as “Palestine.” They have been misled into believing “a truth” far removed from truth.
To counter the assault of anti-Israel propaganda on the streets of American cities and on American college campuses, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) introduces a new series aimed at debunking the ubiquitous “pro-Palestine” claims. This one is about the subject of occupation.
Hamas is the enemy of both Israel and the US. While Israel fights the military battle to destroy our common enemy, the least Americans can do is fight the propaganda battle at home.
With their chants and banners, anti-Israel protesters minimize Hamas atrocities by claiming it is a “resistance group” engaged in a “liberation struggle.”
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) released a “Day of Resistance Toolkit” one day after the October 7 pogrom, praising the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance” and urging campus chapters to participate in a “national day of resistance.” It advised them to “ground our campuses and communities in a narrative which centers the legitimacy of resistance,” and to frame the massacre of civilians as a “natural and justified response to decades of oppression.”
But Hamas is not a resistance group. Legitimate resistance groups don’t butcher infants, abduct grandmothers, or brand children. They don’t send storm troopers to prey on children and elderly civilians. They don’t use rape as a tactic to desecrate their victims and satisfy their violent sexual desires. They don’t defile corpses or kill family pets. Any group that does so crosses the line from “resistance” to “terrorism.” Hamas’s feral humans did these things, bragged about doing so, to their mothers even, and made videos of themselves doing so. And they promise to do it again.
According to International law, non-state “resistance” groups must “ensure respect for the [Geneva] Convention in all circumstances.” To be considered a legitimate “resistance” group, they must always be “in compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.” But Hamas defies all the rules of war, as do all the other Palestinian organizations that hide behind the “resistance” label.
Hamas is a terrorist group and is designated so by many countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, Paraguay, Japan, the European Union (comprising 27 nations), and of course Israel.
Jordan banned Hamas in 1999. In 2017, Saudia Arabia’s foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir rejected Hamas’ claim to the term “resistance” and called it a “terrorist organization.” Not only has the United Arab Emirates designated Hamas a terrorist organization, but, in 2021, it chastised all nations that have not done so. The UAE’s foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, called it “unfortunate that some countries do not act more clearly in classifying … Hamas, Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood” as terrorist organizations.
Another false claim is that the “Palestinian resistance” targets Israel only. The Americans killed on October 7 and those taken hostage back to Gaza, so goes the argument, weren’t targeted as Americans per se, but were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and were mistaken for Israelis. Noura Erakat, an associate professor at Rutgers University who calls Hamas “a nascent sovereign of the Palestinian people,” also claims that it “has only targeted Israel.”
Does anyone believe that the 32 Americans murdered on October 7 didn’t identify themselves as Americans to their executioners? And if the Americans kidnapped by Palestinians and held hostage in Gaza were initially mistaken for Israelis, Hamas soon learned that they were American and yet continued to hold them.
Various members and factions of the “Palestinian resistance” have been deliberately targeting Americans for decades, long before Hamas was founded. In 1968, Palestinian nationalist Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert F. Kennedy because of his support for Israel. In 1973, Yasser Arafat of the PLO — the allegedly secular half of the “Palestinian resistance” — ordered the execution of US ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, and Chargé d’Affaires, George Moore, after they were taken captive at a party in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.
In addition to killing Americans who were mistaken for Israelis, Hamas is also responsible for killing Americans because they were Americans.
On October 15, 2003, Americans in Gaza were targeted with a massive bomb buried under a road at the Beit Hanoun junction. The bomb was detonated remotely as a convoy of SUVs easily-recognized as US State Department vehicles drove over it. Palestinian police arrested three members of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) for the bombing. They were identified as residents of the Jebaliya Refugee Camp (a Hamas stronghold). According to the Israeli government, the PRC is “supported, subsidized and trained by the Hamas terrorist organization.”
What was a convoy of State Department SUVs doing in the Gaza Strip in October 2003? The answer should sicken every American. They were interviewing Palestinian students for Fulbright Scholarships. That’s right. US taxpayers paid for diplomats to travel to the heart of Hamas-land in order to dispense more tax dollars to subsidize Palestinian students, offering them a free college education.
Three Americans serving on the security detail of those diplomats were killed in that attack. As the State Department spokesman in 2003, Richard Boucher, put it, “We have employees on contract, in this case from DynCorp, who help supplement our security resources.”
John Eric Branchizio from San Antonio, Texas, was a 9-year veteran of the Navy Seals. He was the oldest of those killed by Hamas, having turned 37 years old two days before the attack.
Mark Thaddeus Parsons from Yonkers, New York, was 31 years old.
John Martin Linde Jr. from Missouri was the youngest killed, only 30 years old. He served 10 years in the US Marine Corps and retired at the rank of Sergeant.
President George W. Bush issued a press release on October 15, 2003, condemning the attack and explaining the circumstances.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 15, 2003
President Condemns Terrorist Act in Gaza Wednesday
I condemn in the strongest terms the vicious act of terrorism directed against Americans in Gaza today. We are working closely with the appropriate officials to bring the terrorists to justice.
Palestinian authorities should have acted long ago to fight terror in all its forms. The failure to create effective Palestinian security forces dedicated to fighting terror continues to cost lives. There must be an empowered prime minister who controls all Palestinian security forces, reforms that continue to be blocked by Yasser Arafat. The failure to undertake these reforms and dismantle the terrorist organizations constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving the Palestinian people’s dream of statehood.
The Americans who were attacked today were pursuing a vision for a better future for the Palestinian people. The U.S. embassy officials traveling in Gaza were there to interview young Palestinian candidates seeking Fulbright scholarships to study in the United States. This is another example of how the terrorists are enemies of progress and opportunity for the Palestinian people.
On behalf of the American people, I send my heartfelt condolences to the families of the brave Americans who were killed and injured serving our country and its ideals.
Bush’s statement left out some details, such as the fact that when American investigators arrived at the scene, rock-throwing Palestinian “youths” — perhaps some of the same youths the diplomats risked their lives to interview — forced them to retreat and wait for military back-up.
So the next time someone says that the “Palestinian resistance only targets Israelis,” explain the difference between a resistance group and a terrorist group. Then remind them who killed Robert F. Kennedy, Cleo Noel, George Moore, John Branchizio, Mark Parsons, and John Linde.
IPT Senior Fellow A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Ginsberg-Milstein fellow.
The post Palestinian ‘Resistance’ Groups Don’t Just Target Israelis first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Why Does the Media Not Tell the Truth About Hezbollah’s Attacks on Israel?
Firefighters respond to a fire near a rocket attack from Lebanon, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, near Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, June 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Last month, the BBC News website published a report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Lucy Williamson under the headline “Fires in northern Israel fuel demands to tackle escalation with Hezbollah.”
The following day, the BBC News website published another report by the same journalist on the same topic titled “Israelis using gardening tools to fight wildfires sparked by Hezbollah rockets.”
A couple of weeks later, that pattern was repeated. On June 19, the BBC News website published a report by Williamson headlined “Israel and Hezbollah play with fire as fears grow of another war,” which was previously discussed here.
Late on June 22, the BBC News website published another report titled “Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war,” which is credited to “Lucy Williamson, Reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border.”
If one assumed that the reason for the appearance within days of a second report on the same topic by the same journalist was the emergence of new information concerning the situation on Israel’s northern border, one would be wrong.
A considerable proportion of Williamson’s second report (which was also translated into Swahili) consists of interviews with people on both sides of the border: Israelis from Kiryat Shmona and Malkiya, and two residents of southern Lebanese villages.
Failing to clarify that her interviewee lives in a town described as one of the “bastions of strong Hezbollah support” where a strike against a Hezbollah command center took place in March, Williamson tells her readers that:
Fatima Belhas lives a few miles (7km) from the Israeli border, near Jbal el Botm.
In the early days, she would shake with fear when Israel bombed the area, she says, but has since come to terms with the bombardments and no longer thinks of leaving.
“Where would I go?” she asked. “[Others] have relatives elsewhere. But how can I impose on someone like that? We have no money.”
“Maybe it is better to die at home with dignity,” she said. “We have grown up resisting. We won’t be driven out of our land like the Palestinians.”
Readers may recall that just days earlier, another BBC report from southern Lebanon promoted that same “Nakba” comparison.
Similarly failing to note Hezbollah’s presence and infrastructure in Mays al Jbal (also Meiss al Jabal), Williamson continues:
Hussein Aballan recently left his village of Mays al Jbal, around 6 miles (10km) from Kiryat Shmona, on the Lebanese side of the border.
Life there had become impossible, he said, with erratic communications and electricity, and almost no functioning shops.
The few dozen families left there are mainly older people who refuse to leave their homes and farms, he told the BBC.
But he backed the Hezbollah assault on Israel.
“Everyone in the south [of Lebanon] has lived through years of aggression, but has come out stronger,” he said. “Only through resistance are we strong.”
Williamson fails to remind her readers that Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon 24 years ago, and that the only “aggression” has been in response to attacks by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, such as the cross-border attack that sparked the war in 2006.
As in her previous report, Williamson portrays the events resulting from the Lebanese terror group’s decision to attack Israel on October 8 as “tit-for-tat”:
But as the tit-for-tat conflict grinds on, and more than 60,000 Israelis remain evacuated from their homes in the north, there are signs that both Israel’s leaders and its citizens are prepared to support military options to push Hezbollah back from the border by force.
Also, as in her own previous reports and in most other BBC content, Williamson fails to explain to her readers that according to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah should be nowhere near the border with Israel ,and that the UN’s “peacekeeping force” in Lebanon has failed to enforce that resolution since it was passed in 2006.
Williamson’s framing of the situation in the north of Israel includes the following:
The dangerous stalemate here hinges largely on the war Israel is fighting more than 100 miles (160km) to the south in Gaza.
A ceasefire there would help calm tensions in the north too, but Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is keeping both conflicts going, mortgaged by his promise to far-right government allies to destroy Hamas before ending the Gaza War. [emphasis added]
And:
Demands for political change are likely to increase when Israel’s conflicts end.
Many believe Israel’s prime minister is playing for time: caught between growing demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, and growing support for a war in the north.
In other words, Williamson’s framing ignores the fact that Hamas chose to attack Israel on October 7, and that Hezbolah chose to attack Israel on October 8, and almost every day since then. She erases the fact that Hamas has rejected multiple ceasefire offers in order to promote a narrative whereby it is Israel’s prime minister alone who is “keeping both conflicts going”.
Moreover, she tells BBC audiences that:
The problem for Israel is how to stop the rockets and get its people back to the abandoned northern areas of the country.
The problem for Hezbollah is how to stop the rockets when its ally, Hamas, is being pounded by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Williamson cites a statement made by the UN Secretary General on June 21:
Hezbollah is a well-armed, well-trained army, backed by Iran; Israel, a sophisticated military power with the US as an ally.
Full-scale war is likely to be devastating for both sides.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said it would be a “catastrophe that goes […] beyond imagination”.
Like the UN Secretary General, Williamson has nothing to tell her audiences about the Lebanese state’s decades-long failure to tackle the Islamist terrorist organization that has repeatedly dragged that country into conflict, and has nothing to say about the failure of the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions designed to prevent further conflict.
The BBC’s sidelining of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and its whitewashing of the failures of the UN forces that are supposed to enforce it, did not begin in October 2023: that editorial policy has been evident for many years.
Now, however, that policy is being used to advance framing of a potential escalation after over eight months of continuous attacks on Israeli communities by Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, as something that is the responsibility of Israel alone.
Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Why Does the Media Not Tell the Truth About Hezbollah’s Attacks on Israel? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months
The University of Toronto has received an injunction to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on its property. The 98-page decision from Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said that members of the encampment must take down the tents within 24 hours, by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3. Toronto Police will have […]
The post University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal
Vandals in Canada targeted a Jewish cemetery. Photo: Screenshot
Vandals have targeted notable Jewish cemeteries in Cincinnati, Ohio and Montreal, Canada, sparking outcry and concern over mounting threats of antisemitism.
Vandals at Montreal’s Kehal Yisrael Cemetery placed memorial stones in the shape of a Nazi swastika on top of tombstones. Ones with the last names Eichler and Herman were targeted in the antisemitic attack.
Placing memorial stones on graves is an ancient Jewish custom to memorialize the dead. Jewish cemeteries oftentimes have stones nearby tombstones for mourners.
Canadian leaders decried the vandalism.
“It is absolutely abhorrent and revolting to defile the dead with swastikas,” Jeremy Levi, the Jewish mayor of a Jewish-majority suburb of Montreal, commented on X/Twitter. “This desecration at the Kehal Israel cemetery in Montreal is beyond contempt. [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau, step aside and get out of the way so we can reclaim our country. May this Kohen’s neshama have an Aliyah on high.” One of the tombstones vandalized belonged to a Kohen.
The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada’s parliament and candidate for prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, lambasted Trudeau and denounced antisemitism. “We cannot close our eyes to the disgusting acts of antisemitism that are happening in our country everyday,” he posted on X/Twitter. “The prime minister must finally act to stop these displays of antisemitism. If he won’t, a common sense Conservative government will.”
Canada, like many countries around the world, has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Meanwhile in Cincinnati, vandals targeted two historic Jewish cemeteries this past week, toppling and shattering ancient tombstones — some dating back to the 1800s.
According to a statement from the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, 176 gravesites in Cincinnati’s West Side were ruined “in an act of antisemitic vandalism.”
“Due to the extensive damage and the historical nature of many of the gravestones, we have not yet been able to identify all the families affected by this act,” the statement continued. “Our community [is] heartbroken.”
The Cincinnati Police Department and the FBI are investigating the incidents.
The destruction of monuments is the latest in a greater trend of antisemitic vandalism. In an incident over the weekend, vandals in Australia targeted war memorials dedicated to Australian veterans who sacrificed their lives in Korea and Vietnam with pro-Hamas graffiti.
A couple weeks earlier, vandals in Belgium defaced two memorials for Holocaust victims with swastikas and a phrase calling for violence against Israel. In Germany, meanwhile, at least seven stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks in the sidewalk meant to mark Jewish homes seized by the Nazis, were defaced with the message “Jews are perpetrators.”
The US, Canada, Europe, and Australia have all experienced an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and amid the ensuing war in Gaza. In many countries, anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked to record levels.
According to the B’nai Brith, antisemitic incidents in Canada more than doubled in 2023 compared to the prior year.
The post Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.