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The Old and New Terrorists Speak the Same Words
Israeli troops overlook Jerusalem’s Old City, during the Six-Day War, June 1967. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, the radical left unabashedly aligned itself with Hamas. Many were shocked by the wave of genocidal antisemitic propaganda that followed, but the tropes employed by the leftist antisemites, from talk of a “global imperialist conspiracy” to the “perfidy of the Zionists” were not new. They were yet another iteration of the unfortunately successful combination of classic Jew-hatred and Soviet antisemitism.
This explosive mix was present in Europe throughout the 20th century but, following the 1967 Six-Day War, it was vigorously embraced by the European left. The left drenched itself in Soviet propaganda that depicted Israel as a colonial outpost of Western imperialism and Jews as bourgeois capitalists. Over time, a culture of systemic antisemitism developed on the European left that today has come into its own.
In Italy, where I live, a terrorist group called the Red Brigades committed atrocities throughout the 1970s. It was responsible for numerous kidnappings and murders, including the leader of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party and former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
The Red Brigades pretended to be a new kind of radical group, but in an article published in 1978 in the leftist newspaper Il Manifesto, the former communist politician Rossana Rossanda wrote, “Anyone who was a communist in the 1950s recognizes the new language of the Red Brigades at first glance. It’s like leafing through the family album: There are all the ingredients that were proposed to us in the Stalin and Zhdanov courses of blessed memory.”
The present surge in antisemitism is exactly the same. It claims to be new and dedicated to new principles, but it is nothing but the family album of classic Soviet antisemitism.
It would be enough to take any of the Red Brigades’ manifestos and replace words like “Christian Democracy,” “state” or “our country” with “Israel,” “Zionism” and “Palestine” to see this. One would produce rhetoric like: “Israel and its accomplices have taken on the task of keeping Palestine under the imperialist yoke and unleashing terror and massacres by Zionist killers whenever the Palestinian struggle has called their power into question”; or “The essence of the Imperialist State, of which Israel has always been the maximum representative, is now before our eyes in all its evidence, without the misleading veil of a formal ‘democracy’ with which it had clothed itself: mass roundups and arrests, siege, special laws, special courts and concentration camps.”
It is also instructive to examine the attitude the Italian Communist Party held towards the Red Brigades, as it is remarkably similar to the attitude taken by the moderate institutional left towards radical-left antisemitism and Hamas.
While some members of the Italian Communist Party condoned the Red Brigades’ terrorism, the majority downplayed it. Their ignorance was willful. It was necessary to avoid recognizing that that the left was capable of fostering and committing acts of horrific violence. This is uncannily similar to the Western left’s refusal to recognize antisemitism in its own camp, denying and downplaying it as acceptable “anti-Zionism” in order to avoid facing it head-on.
Even more striking is that some Italian communists claimed that a conspiracy led by American imperialism, fascists or the intelligence services was behind the atrocities attributed to the Red Brigades. We see exactly the same conspiracy theories today, with some even denying the Oct. 7 massacre happened at all. Other claim that the massacre was perpetrated by Israel as an excuse to attack Hamas or that Israel’s defensive war against the terror group is controlled by American “imperialism.”
Italian left-wing intellectuals also spoke of the Red Brigades as “comrades who are wrong.” In effect, they considered terrorism a tactical error but agreed with the totalitarian ideology that caused it. This is the same stance taken by those who today condemn Hamas and its atrocities but endorse the idea of destroying Israel. The old communists declared that they were “neither with the Red Brigades nor with the state,” effectively creating a moral equivalence between the two, just as leftist antisemites seek to put a terrorist organization on par with Israel’s democracy.
Western nations must take this threat seriously. A society in which students speak about Jews and Israel the same way a 1970s Marxist-Leninist terror group spoke about its own targets is diseased. When we hear educators, politicians or intellectuals speak this way, we know this disease is potentially terminal. The democracies must respond to this infection with the vigor required to eradicate it, if only for the general good of a society that wants to protect its intellectual and political liberties.
The post The Old and New Terrorists Speak the Same Words first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Columbia University President Appointed as UK Economic Adviser
Columbia University administrators and faculty, led by President Minouche Shafik, testified before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/Reuters Connect
i24 News – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named Minouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University, as his chief economic adviser at Downing Street, a move aimed at stabilizing the country’s fragile economy and averting a potential budget crisis.
Shafik, an economist of Egyptian origin with dual British and American nationality, has held senior roles at the Bank of England, the IMF, and the World Bank.
She later led the London School of Economics and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020.
Her tenure in the United States was more turbulent. Shafik stepped down as president of Columbia University in 2024 after just a year in office, amid fierce criticism over her handling of pro-Palestinian protests following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
US officials accused her of failing to confront antisemitism on campus, while students and faculty condemned her decision to call in police to dismantle protest encampments.
Since returning to Britain, Shafik has played an active role in policy and cultural institutions. She advised Foreign Secretary David Lammy on international aid reform, has chaired the Victoria & Albert Museum since January, and led the “Economy 2030” inquiry for the Resolution Foundation, where she argued for reforms to the UK’s system of wealth taxation.
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Israel Mulls West Bank Annexation in Response to Moves to Recognize Palestine
The Jordan Valley. Photo: Юкатан via Wikimedia Commons.
Israel is considering annexation in the West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state, according to three Israeli officials and the idea will be discussed further on Sunday, another official said.
Extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank – de facto annexation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war – was on the agenda for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet meeting late on Sunday that is expected to focus on the Gaza war, a member of the small circle of ministers said.
It is unclear where precisely any such measure would be applied and when, whether only in Israeli settlements or some of them, or in specific areas of the West Bank like the Jordan Valley and whether any concrete steps, which would likely entail a lengthy legislative process, would follow discussions.
Any step toward annexation in the West Bank would likely draw widespread condemnation from the Palestinians, who seek the territory for a future state, as well as Arab and Western countries. It is unclear where US President Donald Trump stands on the matter. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar did not respond to a request for comment on whether Saar had discussed the move with his US counterpart Marco Rubio during his visit to Washington last week.
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the prime minister supports annexation and if so, where.
A past pledge by Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley was scrapped in 2020 in favor of normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump in his first term in office.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States said on Friday it would not allow Abbas to travel to New York for the United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognize Palestine as a state.
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Israel Pounds Gaza City Suburbs, Netanyahu to Convene Security Cabinet
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was set on Sunday to discuss a plan to seize the city.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighborhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and on Sunday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.
The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a “dangerous combat zone.”
“They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave,” said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu’s security cabinet will convene on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, which he has described as Hamas’ last bastion.
A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.
HAMAS SPOKESPERSON TARGETED
Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ armed wing. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.
Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.
Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas’ top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group’s messages, often via video, for around two decades, delivering statements while wearing a red keffiyeh that concealed his face.
The US targeted him with sanctions in April 2024, accusing him of leading the “cyber influence department” of al-Qassam Brigades.
In his last statement on Friday, he warned that the planned Israeli offensive on Gaza City would endanger the hostages.
On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies.
“People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn’t find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded,” said Ghada, a mother of five from the city’s Sabra neighborhood.
Around half of the enclave’s more than 2 million people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.
Israel’s military has warned its political leaders that the offensive is endangering hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Protests in Israel calling for an end to the war and the release of the hostages have intensified in the past few weeks.