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Stark images of murder and torture in Israel leave US senators in tears and silence

WASHINGTON (JTA) — If there’s a trait that unites the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, it is volubility: These folks, who invented the filibuster, know how to talk.

It was remarkable to see them then exiting a screening room on Tuesday in the bowels of the Capitol building, barely able to shape their mouths into a single word.

The unusual silence came after two senators, Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Nevada Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, screened for their fellow senators 43 minutes of harrowing footage of the carnage Hamas terrorists committed on Oct. 7.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, said as she walked away, her eyes filled with tears.

Israel’s government, which produced the film to combat denial about the horrors the unfolded during the attack, has made the video available for private screenings, on strict condition that its images are not shared. It has been shown in statehouses and Hollywood, and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democratic minority in the U.S. House of Representatives, has screened the video for House members.

The latest viewing comes at a pivotal time for support in Washington for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. A short ceasefire is now underway as Israel trades Palestinian prisoners for some of the 240 hostages Hamas terrorists abducted on Oct. 7. Israel wants to resume the war soon to maintain its momentum. But even as President Joe Biden staunchly supports Israel’s aims — to return the hostages and dismantle Hamas — the Biden administration is pressing Israel for assurances that it will protect Gazan civilians when it resumes its campaign. And skepticism of how Israel has waged war in Gaza has increased among Democrats, with 49 members of Congress now supporting some sort of extended ceasefire, a dynamic that Punchbowl News reported has Israelis so concerned that they dispatched a senior military figure to speak to congressional Democrats on Monday.

Two Democrats who back a ceasefire were among the 40 senators from both parties who attended the screening. Massachusetts Dem. Elizabeth Warren blanched and brushed away a reporter as she exited, whispering “No comment.” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin was the first to leave. A reporter asked him if seeing the violence changed his outlook in any way.

“All I know is that it was horrific and this makes it clear just how horrible it was,” he said before ducking into a senators-only portion of the building.

Most of the senators exiting the room said nothing, despite pleas from reporters. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, held upon her hand and kept walking, her eyes cast down. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat whose mother is a Holocaust survivor, literally ran out of the room. (A spokeswoman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw but was also rushing to preside over the Senate floor.)

Only Rosen and Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, spoke at any length to reporters. Cruz, a skilled orator, spoke slowly and deliberately in low haunted tones, fixating on the joy evident in the terrorists as they carried out their butchery.

“Much of the footage is from Hamas’ own body cams from their own cell phones,” Cruz said. “We saw terrorist celebrating as they murdered children and women as they desecrated the bodies we saw them beheading bodies with knives we heard audio of the terrorists calling their parents celebrating people that murder.”

He paused a long moment. “There is a level of evil and hate and depravity that defies words,” he said.

For Cruz, what he saw made Israel’s case for continuing the war. For Rosen, it was a case she felt he had to make to the Senate; she said in a statement after the screening that she was hoping to convince her colleagues to support $14 billion emergency aid package to Israel that Biden has requested.

“It’s important that we see it now in real time because Hamas has avowed to repeat this day, over and over, over and over,” she said in a low, reverent tone, her face still blanched white. “We need to move forward to find a way to end the cancer that is Hamas terror. And that’s what we need to do. That’s what I’m going to focus on.”

Her aide reminded her she had a meeting. It would have to wait. “I’m going to take a moment for myself after this,” Rosen said.


The post Stark images of murder and torture in Israel leave US senators in tears and silence appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai

Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]

The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters

A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson

The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.

“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”

It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”

DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.

Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”

The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.

“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”

The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.

Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.

“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”

The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza

Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe

The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. 

In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”

“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.

Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”

Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”

Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza. 

“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.

According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.

Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.

On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.

Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote. 

Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election. 

Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.

Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.

Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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