Peter Myers Digest: About the Genocide in Palestine
(0) EU head Ursula von der Leyen branded ‘Frau Genocide’ over Gaza
(1) Stephen Fry, in Xmas video, denies Gaza genocide, depicts Jews as the real victims & critics as racists
(2) Stephen Fry endorsed Israel lobby group CCFP/StandWithUs, funded by Netanyahu
(3) Stephen Fry’s Xmas video was made by members of IDF pre-military feeder group
(4) Melanie Phillips upholds Israel’s right to committ Genocide
(5) UN Panel deplores Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
(6) Zara, Zara, you can’t hide, stop supporting genocide
(7) Israel drops facade, reveals genocidal mindset
(8) Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
(0) EU head Ursula von der Leyen branded ‘Frau Genocide’ over Gaza
Irish member of European Parliament calls von der Leyen ‘Frau Genocide’ over Gaza
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231225-irish-member-of-european-parliament-calls-von-der-leyen-frau-genocide-over-gaza/
Irish member of European Parliament calls von der Leyen ‘Frau Genocide’ over Gaza
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231225-irish-member-of-european-parliament-calls-von-der-leyen-frau-genocide-over-gaza/#disqus_thread>21 Comments
December 25, 2023 at 3:05 pm
Irish Member of the European Parliament Clare Daly has once again criticized the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over her stance on relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza, calling her “Frau Genocide”, Anadolu Agency reports.
Daly’s speech at the European Parliament went viral on Monday after she accused von der Leyen of overriding the foreign policies to “cheerlead a brutal apartheid regime.”
She said von der Leyen “elevated to power without a single vote from the citizens who has spent the last two months swooping in and overriding the foreign policies of elected governments all to cheerlead a brutal apartheid regime that she calls a ‘vibrant democracy’ as a pulverizers a city of children.”
“Well, my God with defenders of democracy like that, I think I speak for many, many citizens of Europe when I say ‘Nein Danke!’ No, Thanks, Frau Genocide,” she added.
Last month, she criticized von der Leyen for not calling for a truce in Gaza, saying that “it’s not just Israel’s genocide,” but Europe’s too.
Von der Leyen has been criticized for her support to Israel and hesitance to call for restraint in Gaza.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October, killing at least 20,424 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 54,036 others, according to local health authorities.
Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid shortages of food, clean water and medicines.
(1) Stephen Fry, in Xmas video, denies Gaza genocide, depicts Jews as the real victims & critics as racists
https://www.timesofisrael.com/stephen-fry-decries-antisemitism-in-christmas-video-is-pilloried-online/
Stephen Fry decries antisemitism in Christmas video, is pilloried online
British Jewish actor urges UK citizens to speak out against Jew hatred; wave of commentators accuse him of playing ‘victim’ while not caring about Palestinians in Gaza
By MICHAEL HOROVITZ
26 December 2023, 11:04 am
Stephen Fry issued a heartfelt Christmas message Monday, calling out the surge in antisemitism in the United Kingdom and encouraging the country’s Jews to take pride in their heritage — and swiftly sparked a torrent of online trolling and backlash, with many accusing the actor and writer of playing the victim instead of shining light on the plight of Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.
“The great Irish thinker and writer Conor Cruise O’Brien once said that ‘antisemitism is a light sleeper.’ Well, it seems to have woken up of late,” Fry said in the video, which aired on the British Channel 4 network. “The horrendous events of October 7th and the Israeli response seemed to have stirred up this ancient hatred.”
Jewish on his mother’s side, Fry was not raised in a religious household and said he did not identify as such.
“Then again, I know, because I’ve been warned, that I’ve been on lists of British Jews that some ultra right-wing newspapers and sites have published over the years. And I’m frankly damned if I’ll let antisemites be the ones who define me and take ownership of the word Jew, injecting it with their own spiteful venom,” he said. Therefore: “I accept and claim the identity.”
Referencing the Israel-Hamas war, Fry said: “It’s agonizing to see all the violence and destruction that’s unfolding, and the terrible loss of life on both sides brings me an overwhelming sadness and heartache. But whatever our opinions on what is happening, there can be no excuse for the behavior of some of our citizens.”
Fry cited rising antisemitism statistics from the Metropolitan Police, noting that there have been 50 incidents in London alone every day since October 7, amounting to a 1,350% rise.
“Shop windows smashed, Stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish property, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the neighborhoods of Britain. Jewish people are becoming fearful of showing themselves. In Britain. In 2023,” he stated, adding that he believed the events would have reminded his grandparents — who fled central Europe in the 1930s — of the situation on the continent at the time.
“They believed Britishness meant being fair and decent, but what can be more unfair or indecent than race hatred, whether antisemitism, Islamophobia or any kind?
“Knowing and loving this country as I do, I don’t believe that most Britons are ok living in a society that judges hatred of Jews to be the one acceptable form of racism. So speak up, stand with us, be proud to be Jewish or Jew-ish – or, if not Jewish at all, proud to have us as much a part of this great nation as any other minority, as any of you,” Fry stated.
Channel 4 has broadcast a contemporary, alternative message to the Royal Christmas Message since 1993. The Guardian noted it was “refreshing” that Fry was given the honor this year, after in 2008, Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — a Holocaust denier — was chosen.
In one of the responses to Fry’s video, X user @MannieMighty1 posted a composite image of Fry next to an injured Palestinian child and wrote: “Good afternoon. My name is Stephen Fry, hopefully ‘Sir Stephen’ by next year, and I’m here to tell you about how oppressed I’ve chosen to be. Pay no attention to that malingering scruffy urchin in the next frame. He brought it upon himself…*slurp*…”
Another user wrote: “I’ve worshiped Stephen Fry for my entire adult life. To hear him conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism has shocked me. To hear him show no care or support for the Palestinians & instead center people in this country has broken me. Smashed windows vs carrying your dead child?”
Yet another said: “We don’t have a problem with Jews, Stephen Fry, we have a problem with genocide & you know it. When it was Jews who were the targets of genocide, this country gave half a million lives fighting the evils of Nazism. Now we fight to protect Palestinians. It’s what we do. Same rules.”
All three posts received thousands of likes and retweets.
The video drew some support as well, with a user commending the “beautiful” message.
“His words on how the UK has always been and must always be a safe place for Jewish people, was so powerful & his comments cautioning against use of slurs targeting anyone made me cry,” the X user wrote.
“Thank you @stephenfry for your bravery and good humor. How reassuring it is to know that those of us who fight daily against the scourge of antisemitism are not alone,” user Bella Wallersteiner wrote.
“I’m a big fan of @stephenfry, but after watching this video I’m an even bigger fan,” @BermanNDP wrote. “Jews should be safe to practice their culture openly wherever they live, free from harassment, persecution and hate.”
Antisemitism has skyrocketed around the world since war erupted between Israel and Hamas after the terror group’s October 7 massacre, in which terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped some 240.
Israel’s military campaign, aimed at toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza and securing the release of the hostages, has come under harsh international criticism for its mounting death toll. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the offensive, though those figures cannot be independently verified and include combatants as well as civilians killed by misfired Gazan rockets; Israel says more than 8,000 were Hamas operatives.
In the UK, there were more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents reported between October 7 and December 7, the highest ever total reported to the Jewish community security organization CST across such a period. Weekly rallies in London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have come under scrutiny for antisemitic chants and posters by some participants.
(2) Stephen Fry endorsed Israel lobby group CCFP/StandWithUs, funded by Netanyahu
That Stephen Fry was invited on to national television to deliver a pro Israeli propaganda piece, diverting attention from genocide in Gaza and painting Jewish people as the real victims (some windows have been smashed) tells you how powerful the Israel lobby is.
— Joe Brolly (@JoeBrolly1993) December 26, 2023
Joe Brolly
@JoeBrolly1993
That Stephen Fry was invited on to national television to deliver a pro Israeli propaganda piece, diverting attention from genocide in Gaza and painting Jewish people as the real victims (some windows have been smashed) tells you how powerful the Israel lobby is.
Stephen Fry gave a televised christmas message which imaginatively smeared opponents of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza as being motivated by racism.
More should know about his involvement with the Israel lobby group CCFP/StandWithUs which has been funded by Netanyahu.
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) December 25, 2023
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Stephen Fry gave a televised christmas message which imaginatively smeared opponents of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza as being motivated by racism.
More should know about his involvement with the Israel lobby group CCFP/StandWithUs which has been funded by Netanyahu.
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline·
Dec 26
Stephen Fry has at least twice signed letters for this Israel lobby group. The first time was in 2019 to support the Eurovision song contest being held in Israel.
That year, Israel hosted the Eurovision on top of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of al-Manshiyya.
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Dec 26
The second time Stephen Fry signed a letter for Israel lobby group CCFP/StandWithUs was in October 2023, to support Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, describing it as a “necessary step.”
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Dec 26
Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) is legally the same thing as StandWithUs, an Israel lobby group funded directly by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.
CCFP was founded as part of one legal entity with StandWithUs called the Israel Emergency Alliance.
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Dec 26
Creative Community for Peace coordinates with the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, and the former Consul General, David Siegel, has directly praised the organisation:
“They are effective because they work from inside the industry…”
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Dec 26
The founder of the Creative Community for Peace is Dave Renzer, who is in fact married to Esther Renzer, the founder and president of StandWithUs.
StandWithUs works closely with the Israeli Foreign Ministry of Affairs.
Lowkey
@Lowkey0nline
Dec 26
Can Stephen Fry be an authority on racism if he puts his name on the letters of a lobby group which functions as a proxy of a racist regime, exacting a genocidal war on the Palestinians?
(3) Stephen Fry’s Xmas video was made by members of IDF pre-military feeder group
Makers of Fry’s ‘alternative’ video members of IDF pre-military feeder group
Makers of Fry’s ‘alternative’ video members of IDF pre-military feeder group
by SKWAWKBOX (SW)27/12/2023
Stephen Fry’s supposed ‘alternative’ Christmas video on Channel 4 has provoked outrage for its conflation of anger over Israel’s genocide in Gaza with the ‘ancient hatred’, antisemitism. Even previously committed fans of Fry quickly expressed their disgust:
Harsher critics condemned his speech as poor propaganda that seeks to make supporters of Israel the victims instead of the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinian civilians, around half of them children:
Fry’s video was produced, as Mintpress News (MPN) has highlighted, by a production company whose owners have close ties to a pro-Israel group that even acts as a channel for ‘tens of thousands’ of UK and other youth to join the IDF (or Israeli occupation force).
As MPN pointed out:
The producers of Stephen Fry’s controversial Christmas message were members of a Zionist youth group that funnels members into the Israeli military.
[Production company] Fulwell73 was founded by Leo Pearlman, Benjamin Turner, Gabe Turner, and Ben Winston. All of whom were members of the Zionist youth group B’Nei Akiva, which runs pre-military programmes to enrol members in the Israeli occupation forces. They have also spoken at events for the Israel lobby group, the Jewish Leadership Council.
The B’Nei Akiva (The Sons of Akiva) website confirms the IDF link through its <https://web.archive.org/web/20231226234947/https://www.worldbneiakiva.org/limmud> ‘Limmud’ programme, which states:
Mechina Olamit
The Mechina serves as the ideological Beit Midrash of Bnei Akiva. Through its learning programme, participants will deepen their understanding of our movement’s ideology, learn how to be leaders and gain practical hadracha skills.
The “Mechina” formula is a real Israeli success story. Each year tens of thousands of young Israelis join Mechinot around the country to prepare for the challenges of transitioning from school into the IDF. Many of them go on to leadership roles both within and after the army. Our Mechina Olamit programme applies this same successful formula for Limmud as they transition to university, community leadership roles, and their professional lives in the future.
MPN’s comment also notes that Fulwell 73’s founders have spoken at ‘Israel Lobby Group’ Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) events. The JLC website states that the organisation:
Embraces its historical and religious traditions, is engaged with Israel, nurtures its youth, and cares for its infirm, the elderly, and those on the margins
Fry has also signed letters for an Israeli lobby group, StandWithUs (also known as ‘Creative Community for Peace’) – and has called Israel’s actions in Palestine since 7 October a ‘necessary step’ – as musician and Palestinian rights advocate Lowkey pointed out:
<https://i0.wp.com/skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/lowkey-fry1.png?ssl=1> Thankfully, Fry’s video was not the only one on offer. A genuine alternative Christmas message by Jewish comedian Alexei Sayle went viral on Christmas Day evening and has been watched by around two million people so far on Twitter and other social media platforms – and while Fry trended on Twitter for the outraged reaction to his comments, Sayle trended for the public’s massive and overwhelmingly popular reception.
Watch Sayle’s brilliant 4-minute video on YouTube <https://skwawkbox.org/2023/12/24/watch-alexei-sayles-alternative-alternative-xmas-message-here-6pm-tomorrow/> here or on Twitter <https://x.com/skwawkbox/status/1739345241700987384?s=20> here. Don’t forget to share.
(4) Melanie Phillips upholds Israel’s right to committ Genocide
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382394
The revival of an ancient calumny
In response to the genocidal Hamas agenda, churches have turned on its Jewish victims. Opinion.
Melanie Phillips
Dec 22, 2023, 3:37 PM (GMT+2)
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, The Legacy, in 2018. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.
(JNS) There’s an unmistakable drumbeat to the antisemitism that’s erupted across the West in the wake of the Oct. 7 pogrom. In response to the genocidal Jew-hatred fueling Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs, an even older form of the oldest hatred has surfaced—Christian hostility to the Jews.
The wholly unwarranted Western condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces for causing an allegedly disproportionate death rate among Gaza civilians echoes the ancient Christian calumny that the Jews are killers motivated by revenge and blood lust. The churches themselves are explicitly fueling this demonization.
Last Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem claimed in a statement that “a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents.”
This incendiary allegation was repeated uncritically as fact across the Western media.
The following day, however, Fox News reported an IDF statement that an incident took place instead “near the Latin Church in the Shejayia area,” a different church altogether in another part of Gaza where IDF troops had “operated against a threat that they identified in the area of the church.”
The Elder of Zion website reported that this didn’t stop The Christian Post from claiming the IDF had “confirmed” it had shot and killed the two women “on the grounds of Gaza City’s only Catholic church.” Yet confusingly, the paper also said the IDF had “confirmed” to Fox News that the incident took place near the church in the Shejayia area of Gaza during an operation against Hamas terrorists.
The Christian Post, whose report has been removed from the web, may have been confused by the IDF mistakenly referring to the Shejaiya church as Latin. Shejaiya is the location of a Greek Orthodox and an Episcopalian church; the Holy Family church, in Rimal, is the only Gaza parish under the Jerusalem Latin Patriarchate.
On Monday, Israel ended any such confusion when the Prime Minister’s Office stated categorically: “There was no fighting in the Rimal neighborhood on Saturday where this Catholic church was located.”
Yet that same day, the Pope’s message-board Vatican News not only repeated but even embellished the original accusation. The Israeli military, it said, had “entered the compound of the Holy Family Catholic Parish in Gaza, shooting at anyone leaving the church.”
On top of this fresh and unsubstantiated allegation, which ignored the Israelis’ flat denial that they had been operating anywhere near this church, the Vatican then upped the ante and framed this as a religious war by claiming: “Israelis have opened fire on Gaza’s Christians.”
This hysterical and vicious misrepresentation of Israel’s desperate battle to destroy Hamas reflects the moral bankruptcy of Pope Francis himself.
Not only did he claim that Israel was subjecting unarmed civilians to bombings and shootings and that “this even happened inside the parish complex of the Holy Family,” he has also repeatedly described Israel’s war to destroy Hamas as terrorism.
In October, he reportedly held a fraught phone call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whom he told: “It is forbidden to respond to terror with terror.”
Equating the attacks by Hamas with the attempt to destroy its capacity to repeat them is to strip Israel of the legitimacy of its defense against genocide.
The church has simply lost its moral compass.
Although it condemned the Oct. 7 pogrom, it has rendered this worthless by attacking the victims of Hamas’s genocidal agenda. This inevitably calls to mind the shocking record of the Catholic church during the Holocaust, when Pope Pius XII turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities.
The same prejudice has been on copious display in the liberal Protestant churches led by the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said: “The relentless bombardment of hospitals and civilians in Gaza is intolerable. It’s against international humanitarian law—it must stop and stop now. The misuse of hospitals by Hamas does not justify attacks by Israel. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Welby conspicuously failed to acknowledge that that under international law a hospital can be attacked if it is being used as a terrorist command center or ammunition store, as Gaza’s hospitals have been.
Moreover, for the leader of Anglicanism to represent the battle between civilization and barbarism as “two wrongs” reveals a church that has lost all claim to moral authority.
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed what he described as “this new cycle of violence” on “decades of occupation.” Even though Israel left Gaza in 2005, both the Catholic and liberal Protestant churches believe that Israel is illegally occupying the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.
Totally ignoring the brainwashing of the Palestinian Arabs to hate and murder Jews and drive them out of the whole of Israel, and refusing to acknowledge the relentless attacks on Israelis who live in the disputed territories in accordance with international law, the churches have swallowed the left-wing view that the Palestinians are victims of Israeli oppression.
This unholy upending of truth and morality results from the synthesis of an ancient Christian calumny with Palestinian propaganda.
Some Christians are among the most committed supporters of Israel in the world. Nevertheless, the deepest root of many churches’ hostility to the Jewish state lies in the resurrection of the previously discredited doctrine of “replacement theology,” also known as “supersessionism.”
This doctrine, which holds that because the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus they were stripped of God’s favor so that Christians became the “new Israel” while the Jews were damned, was the source of centuries of Christian atrocities against Jews until the Holocaust drove it underground.
It was given new life by Palestinian Christian “liberation theology,” which falsely states that the Palestinian Arabs were the original possessors of the Land of Israel. This invested the Palestinian claim to the land with the status of Christian writ, turning Israel into an ungodly interloper and its defenders into God’s enemies.
It is a variant of liberation theology, the doctrine propounded in the 1960s to suggest that socialist revolution was the proper fulfilment of the Christian duty to the poor—a doctrine of which Pope Francis is a leading exponent.
In its anti-Israel iteration, Jesus becomes a Palestinian Arab (a historical impossibility, ed.)persecuted by the Jews while Jesus’s “descendants” become today’s Palestinian Arabs, crucified in the very land that was supposedly promised to them. Their liberation would, of course, require the dissolution of the Jewish state.
This ludicrous and lethal fiction has been pumped out for decades by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. Its founder, Father Naim Ateek, is a close friend of many senior Anglican bishops. Sabeel, used as a major resource by Anglican clergy, aid agencies and pilgrimage companies, is a crucial source of systematic, theologically based lies and libels about Israel.
Meanwhile, Christianity is under actual assault all over the world from radical Islam. Last April, churches in Pakistan and Uganda were attacked and burned by Muslim mobs. In the same month, dozens of Christians were murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The vicar of Babwisi parish said: “In one night of unfathomable horror, men, women and children were slaughtered like chicken.” In Nigeria, more than 52,250 Christians have been butchered or hacked to death since 2009.
Yet on this worldwide Christian persecution, the churches are all but silent. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are safe. Yet the churches dump on Israel while genuflecting to Islam.
In this terrible war against the forces of evil in Gaza, the Christian church is once again tragically turning on its Jewish parent while embracing its Islamic assassin.
(5) UN Panel deplores Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/chair-summary-of-panel-discussion-on-2023-war-on-gaza-the-responsibility-to-prevent-genocide/
Chair Summary of Panel Discussion on “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide”
Scroll down for .PDF version
The Panel discussion “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide” was convened on 12 December 2023 by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). The event consisted of an opening with remarks by H.E. Mr. Arrmanatha Christiawan?Nasir, Vice Chair of the Committee and Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations, and H.E. Ms. Feda Abdelhady Nasser, Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations. The panel was comprised of Mr. Jehad Abusalim, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund; Mr. Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide, Stockton University; Ms. Hannah Bruinsma, Legal Advisor at the NGO Law for Palestine; and Ms. Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. The event was broadcast live on UN WebTV.
In his opening, the Vice Chair stated that the Committee had convened the panel at a time when the Palestinian people’s very existence was under threat. The death toll among Palestinian civilians—mostly women and children—caused by Israel’s war on Gaza was akin to collective punishment. Furthermore, the forcible displacement of Gaza’s population, many of whom were already refugees, and the systematic destruction of homes, infrastructure, mosques, churches, hospitals, public buildings, and protected objects, was endangering the very presence of Palestinians in their ancestral land. Such violence raised questions about the objectives of Israel’s military operation and the international community’s responsibility to address ongoing crimes. The international community recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” of 9 December 1948, ratified or acceded by 153 States, as of 2022. It was the obligation and duty of Member States to prevent this crime and implement the “never again” call.
Ambassador Feda Abdelhady said that the State of Palestine had acceded to the Genocide Convention, alongside other human rights covenants, but had not foreseen being compelled to invoke it, believing that the international community’s vow of “never again” was universal and that the legal and moral obligations towards the question of Palestine would be upheld, enabling the Palestinian people to realize their long-denied rights. The world was witnessing unspeakable atrocities and crimes in Occupied Palestine, especially in the besieged Gaza Strip, being perpetrated by Israel and its occupying forces, including settler militias, as a blatant extension of over 75 years of Nakba.
This situation had led scholars, jurists, civil society, parliamentarians, governments, and global citizenry to conclude that Israel was committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Palestinian people. Ambassador Abdelhady said that the aims were the erasure of the Palestinian presence, its national identity, and the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian land with as few Palestinians as possible. The State of Palestine appealed to Member States and all organs of the UN system to take action, with the most urgent step being a ceasefire. She expressed the hope that the panel would help raise awareness, provide information about the law, and suggest avenues for action.
Panel Discussion
Mr. Jehad Abusalim, born and raised in Gaza, stated that his family and friends were among the over two million Palestinians enduring one of the most violent military assaults this century. As of 11 December, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that 24,142 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by Israeli bombardment, including 9,420 children. Additionally, 48,901 had been injured, and 1,840,000 had been displaced. A total of 53,000 homes and over 1,300 industrial facilities had been destroyed. What he described as the “ongoing genocide in Gaza” was part of Israel’s violent settler-colonialism and occupation of Palestinian land which began with the 1948 Nakba (“the catastrophe”), leading more than 750,000 Palestinians to flee or be expelled from their homes. The Nakba, he stressed, was not just an event in the distant past: its ongoing political, economic, geographic, and cultural effects prevented Palestinians from realizing their potential in their own homeland.
In 1956, 1957, and in 1967, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, forcing a process of “de-development” and separating it from the West Bank through military closures and a permit system that limited entry and exit from the Strip and splitting families. In 2007, Israel imposed a land, air, and sea blockade. When Gaza rebelled, Israel always responded with extreme violence, further colonization, incursions, mass bombardment, and the killing of civilians. Residents of Gaza used the expression “I’m suffocating” to describe a psychological and emotional state when every simple and basic daily act, like accessing clean water, travel for medical treatment or education, fishing, and harvesting crops, were exhausting ordeals. Gazans continued to be killed in droves because Israel used extreme violence to reassert control.
Mr. Raz Segal pointed out that on 9 December 2023, a group of 56 senior scholars of the Holocaust, genocide, and mass violence, including himself, signed a statement deploring the atrocity crimes against civilians committed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad on 7 October, and by Israeli forces since then. They noted evidence of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines as a crime against humanity. Since 7 October, Israeli leaders, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, ministers in the war cabinet, and senior army officers – all with command authority – had made dozens of statements demonstrating an “intent to destroy Palestinians “as such”. Israel’s officials used a tried colonial rationalization for the destruction of people under colonial occupation by describing them as “human animals”. According to Mr. Segal, casting entire civilian populations as “savages” or “enemies” – and as legitimate military targets – was a common genocidal mechanism. As examples, he cited the 1904-1907 operation in Southwest Africa when the German colonizers killed 65,000 Herero and Nama – 80 percent of the population. A similar rhetoric was utilized by Hutu authorities in Rwanda in 1990 leading to the 1994 genocide.
For Mr. Segal, Israel had demonstrated genocidal intent according to the three acts defining genocide in the Convention: (a) “killing members of the group”; (b) “causing serious bodily or mental harm”; and (c) “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The “total siege” measures, together with the forced displacement of over 1.8 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, and the risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases, exacerbated by acute shortages of food, clean water, fuel, and medical supplies, met the conditions defined in the Convention. While forced displacement – or “ethnic cleansing”- was not in itself an act of genocide, it had historically figured in genocidal processes of pushing unwanted people into designated areas – that eventually escalated into genocide. The Nazis experimented from 1939 to 1942 with various schemes of forced displacement of Jews before reaching the “final solution of the Jewish question.” Mr. Segal added that Israel’s statements about deporting Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai desert were also alarming as deserts have been used historically as weapons of genocide, leaving entire populations to die from hunger and dehydration.
Mr. Segal also noted that since 7 October, there was incitement to genocide, a separate crime under article 3 of the Genocide Convention, in Israeli media, social media, politics, and public spaces. The Israeli discourse promoted the notion that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza”, “Palestinian children are terrorists,” and the Israeli army needs to “burn Gaza until nothing was left of it”. Such statements openly confirmed the “intent” – usually the most difficult element to prove.
Ms. Hannah Bruinsma expressed concern that intellectuals and activists, particularly Palestinian colleagues speaking out or calling for legal actions against Israel’s crimes, were facing threats, not just in Palestine, but also in the United States. She mentioned the failure of the international community to hold Israel accountable for the 75 year-long settler colonial regime, 56-year illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and 17-year-long siege of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s decades-long impunity for international crimes, including the crime of apartheid, had continued with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and incitement to commit genocide in Gaza. Genocide was taking place in Gaza while the United States used its UN Security Council veto to stop calls for a ceasefire.
Ms. Bruinsma stated the situation in Gaza met the legal and criminological definitions of genocide, requiring both intent to destroy and actions. As other panellists, Ms. Bruinsma judged that Israel had committed actus reus in Gaza, actions that constituted genocide as defined by the Convention. Usually, “intent” was the most difficult part to prove, but in this case, Israeli leaders had been so publicly explicit, that their statements clearly constituted the mens rea – the mental element – of genocide. Since 7 October, Law for Palestine created a database, so far containing over 500 statements of genocidal statements by Israeli public officials that would be submitted to the ICC.
Ms. Bruinsma cited Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide”, noting that he had written that genocide was not limited to acts of mass killing, but must encompass a coordinated plan aimed at destroying the essential foundations of the lives of national or ethnic groups. In Gaza, Israel’s implementation of the 17-year-old “Dahiya doctrine”, a military strategy of using disproportionate force to weaken the population to the point where mere survival supersedes resistance, was in full display. The Genocide Convention, signed by 152 States so far, obliges all States to comply with its terms, as reiterated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on several occasions. The prohibition of genocide constituted a jus cogens norm, meaning that it was absolute and could not be deviated from under any justification or circumstance. In closing, Ms. Bruinsma expressed solidarity with her colleagues in the Occupied Palestinian Territory who demanded robust action against these crimes, often at personal risk. It was incumbent on all members of the international community to build a case against the perpetrators of this genocide and see that they were brought to justice.
Ms. Katherine Gallagher focused on the characterization of the crimes being committed in the Gaza Strip, the implications for the International Criminal Court and States parties. She reiterated that intent and genocidal acts were currently taking place in Gaza in addition to crimes against humanity, i.e.: murder, persecution, forcible transfer, and extermination.
Article 1 of the Convention created a legal duty to prevent genocide: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish”. The ICJ found in the case of Bosnia v Serbia, “that each State party must assess whether a genocide or a serious risk of genocide exists”. This was the international community’s collective commitment to ensure that groups were not targeted for destruction because of their identity. All states had a “duty to prevent”: (a) from the moment a country “learns of or should have learned of the existence of a serious risk of genocide” (b) to take all measures “reasonably available to them” to deter the commission of the crime; and (c) such duty was heightened when a State had the ability to influence or “effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent”. The ICJ could also issue provisional measures to ensure compliance with the Convention in the case of an unfolding genocide, including if it found that breaches of the Convention were “plausible” (e.g. Gambia v Myanmar re: Rohingya genocide).
Ms. Gallagher informed that the Center for Constitutional Rights, on 13 November, had filed an urgent motion on behalf of Defense for Children International-Palestine, Al-Haq, and individuals in Gaza asking a US federal court to immediately stop President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin from providing further arms, money, military support, and diplomatic support to Israel on grounds that they have a legal duty to prevent, and not contribute to “an unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”.? The lawsuit claimed that by providing military assistance to Israel, the US had crossed the line to “complicity in genocide”. Other experts had concluded that the United States had breached its obligation to prevent genocide. Ms. Gallagher strongly urged Member States to act and prevent the “unfolding genocide in Gaza”.
H.E. Mr. Hari?Prabowo, Deputy Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations, who moderated the Q&A session, invited Member States “to assume their responsibilities to prevent genocide and to “vote for humanity” at the resumed General Assembly 10th emergency special session taking place that afternoon. He asked clarification on accountability mechanisms available to Member States, including at the ICC and ICJ.
Panellists responded that taking “precautionary measures” at the ICJ was a tool available. Halting the transfer of weapons to Israel and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) measures were also powerful measures. Ending decades-long of impunity vis-à-vis the State of Israel and preventing a possible escalation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where weapons are being distributed to settlers, were necessary. Other suggested actions included an arms embargo against Israel, as called for by the General Assembly 40 years ago; implementation of article 6 of the Arms Trade Treaty prohibiting arms transfers in cases of genocide; and applying diplomatic and visa restrictions to Israelis. Responding to a question on the role of national courts, it was reiterated that the crime of genocide is an erga omnes norm, so all States can file cases in national courts because of the Convention’s universal jurisdiction. A strong call was made to States to act and not leave the burden to civil society organizations.
Responding to a question on Israel’s stated goal of “wiping out Hamas” and the possible duration of the conflict, panellists responded that there was no convincing evidence that Hamas could be defeated without further devastation and huge civilian casualties. It was also suggested to stop referring to a “conflict” but rather to “State violence” inflicted on Palestinians beginning with the 1948 Nakba. A just and lasting solution would have to be based on equality, dignity, and agreement that “security for Israel depends on security for Palestinians and vice versa”. Panellists concluded by reiterating the sense of urgency to “stop the killing and the ongoing genocide” while ensuring Israel’s accountability and an end of the occupation.
In closing, Ambassador Prabowo expressed the Committee’s support to the Secretary-General for invoking article 99 of the UN Charter, asking the Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities and ensure the implementation of its resolution 2712 (2023) while regretting the failure of the Security Council, on 8 December, to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The onus was now with the General Assembly. He made a final appeal to all Members and Observers of the Committee to take usual action and stand up for Palestine.
(6) Zara, Zara, you can’t hide, stop supporting genocide
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/zara-west-end-oxford-street-regent-street-london-b2468814.html
Pro-Palestinian protesters target Zara stores in London’s West End
Hundreds marched on Oxford Street and Regent Street, bringing traffic to a standstill on Saturday afternoon.
Ted Hennessey
Pro-Palestinian protesters targeted fashion giant <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/zara> Zara as they urged Christmas shoppers to boycott “Israeli-linked” brands in <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/london> London.
Hundreds marched on <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/oxford-street> Oxford Street, <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/regent-street> Regent Street and Carnaby Street, busy shopping districts in the capital’s <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/west-end> West End, bringing traffic to a standstill on Saturday afternoon.
Some chanted “while you’re shopping, bombs are dropping”, referring to the Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
They stopped outside two Zara stores, both of which had closed and were guarded by security, urging people to boycott the brand.
Some chanted: “Zara, Zara, you can’t hide, stop supporting genocide”.
Earlier this month, Zara pulled an ad following complaints that it contained pictures resembling images from the Israel-Hamas war.
The campaign, called The Jacket, contained a series of images in which the model was pictured against a background of cracked stones, damaged statues and broken plasterboard.
Zara said the campaign presented “a series of images of unfinished sculptures in a sculptor’s studio and was created with the sole purpose of showcasing craft-made garments in an artistic context”.
However, some viewers suggested they were similar to images emerging from Gaza.
The company said it regretted a “misunderstanding” about the pictures, after some customers “saw in them something far from what was intended when they were created”.
Protesters also chanted “shut it down” outside a Puma store on Carnaby Street.
The sports company was included on a list of brands to boycott which was written on leaflets handed out.
Calls to boycott Puma stem from the firm’s sponsorship of Israel’s national football team.
Saturday’s demonstration, organised by direct action group Sisters Uncut, began in Soho Square, where protesters chanted “free Palestine”.
Protesters waved Palestinian flags, played music and let off coloured smoke.
Some shouted the controversial chant “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”.
Leaflets distributed by the group said: “No Christmas as usual in a genocide. The UK is complicit.
“Don’t fund genocide in Palestine. Boycott Israel.”
The Metropolitan Police said no arrests were made.
(7) Israel drops facade, reveals genocidal mindset
> https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/21/the-anatomy-of-zionist-genocide
The anatomy of Zionist genocide
What are the motivations behind Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, and what is the way forward?
Yoav Litvin
Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer.
Published On 21 Dec 202321 Dec 2023
On October 7, Hamas fighters <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/14/on-october-7-gaza-broke-out-of-prison> breached the Gaza prison fence, <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/what-happened-in-israel-a-breakdown-of-how-the-hamas-attack-unfolded> launching a coordinated attack on at least seven Israeli military installations and more than 20 surrounding residential communities. Over 1000 Israeli citizens, both civilian and military, as well as dozens of foreign nationals, were killed in the attack. Some 240 others were taken captive. Caught off guard and in disarray, the Israeli military responded to the attack in a frenzy, firing indiscriminately on breached localities, <https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/-role-of-israeli-tanks-in-deaths-of-israeli-civilians-back-in-spotlight/3074668> slaying Israeli captives alongside Hamas fighters in the process. It took the Israeli forces nearly a day to recapture all lost territory and secure the Gaza perimeter.
Following Hamas’s unprecedented incursion, Israel’s public relations apparatus launched a misinformation campaign aimed at inciting fear and fury and began to spread unverified atrocity propaganda. The campaign, involving tales of babies being “beheaded en masse”, “burned” and “hung on a clothesline”, helped transform the Israeli public’s shock into genocidal tribalism and diverted attention from Israel’s political, intelligence and military blunders that paved the way for the attack in the first place. The campaign also helped the government garner crucial public support for mass mobilisation of reserve units which made the consequent full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip possible.
After securing unconditional military, political and diplomatic backing of its imperial sponsors in the West, most notably in Washington, and under the pretext of countering Hamas and rescuing captives, Israel then initiated what has since been accurately described as an AI-guided “mass assassination campaign” in Gaza.
Ten weeks on, most of Gaza is now destroyed, nearly 20,000 Palestinians are dead with many more still under the rubble, and the world continues to watch a genocide unfold in real time. Examining these events through a behavioural-neuroscientific lens could offer insights into the Zionist settler colonialist dynamic in general and the particular motivations behind Israel’s current genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as potential paths forward.
The pillars of Zionist propaganda
In response to historical trauma, Jewish people have a deep fear of anti-Semitism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this fear, along with disdain for oppressors, led to the formation of autonomous Jewish self-defence groups in various geographies.
Zionism, a European colonial movement, recognised the potential of this dynamic. It syncretised Jewish longing for safety and self-defence with <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/9/the-zionist-fallacy-of-jewish-supremacy> white supremacist, messianic and fascistic ideologies. This synthesis birthed a new, nationalist Jewish identity that equates Jewish safety with the construction of an exclusivist homeland in Palestine through the displacement of the region’s Indigenous populations.
Settler colonial endeavours typically depend on depicting the targeted territory as “uninhabited”, and its existing inhabitants as inhuman barbarians unworthy of any land.
This portrayal allowed Zionists to displace the Indigenous population of Palestine without moral qualms, portraying the establishment of Israel not as the destruction of a people but as the construction of a “villa in the jungle”.
Within the Israeli society grounded in land and resource theft, offensive aggression under the guise of “<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/17/does-israel-have-the-right-to-self-defence-in-gaza> self-defence” (as in “Israel Defence Force”) has been rewarded and reinforced from the very beginning and consequently became a routine part of life. By reinstating fear and hijacking trauma associated with past and present negative experiences of Jewish people, Zionist leaders ensured the settler population’s continued support for aggressive, expansionist, hegemonic, <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/27/a-ceasefire-in-a-time-of-genocide> genocidal policies and shielded their corruption and other criminal endeavours from public scrutiny.
To maintain Israel’s violently oppressive status quo and expand the territory of the settler colony, Zionists opportunistically conflated their colonial ideology with Judaism.
Citing divine dispensation, radical, far-right settlers have been encouraged to seize hilltops on Palestinian land, expel those living there, and form illegal outposts. These outposts are later fortified by the Israeli military and eventually “legalised” by the Zionist state.
Beyond justifying violent land theft, the conflation of Zionism and Judaism serves to delegitimise Indigenous resistance by equating any criticism of Zionism or Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as an attack on Jews. Further, it hinders anticolonial resistance by portraying a political struggle over land and resources between occupying settlers backed by imperial forces and an Indigenous-occupied people as a supposed ancient religious “conflict” between equals.
This conflation encourages Zionist appropriation and exceptionalisation of Jewish victimhood. Israeli hasbara presents the Holocaust as an unparalleled genocide, granting Jews special victim status. This narrative justifies privileges, discounts and allowances for Israel as the “Jewish state” constructed to ensure the safety of Jews, at the expense of Indigenous Palestinians. Notably, Zionist revisionism often neglects and downplays Nazi crimes against other oppressed groups, including communists, socialists, Roma, disabled individuals, LGBTQI and African Germans.
The liberal wing of Zionism serves to whitewash the reactionary core of the movement and conceal its true objectives – expansionism and apartheid. Misleadingly, Liberal Zionists portray Zionism as an ideology aligned with democratic, progressive values and human rights, falsely projecting a genuine commitment to peace, justice and full integration into the Middle East.
Fear and genocidal fervour
Until October 7, Israel upheld its founding aspiration, enforcing a doctrine of <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/7/un-report-finds-israeli-occupation-root-cause-of-conflict> endless occupation while oscillating between <https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771> implicit and explicit forms of genocide, the latter often described as “mowing the lawn” in reference to Israel’s periodical attacks on Gaza since its 2005 “withdrawal” from the besieged Palestinian enclave. During this time, Israeli Zionists reaped the benefits of Palestinian land and its resources in a modern, affluent, supposedly democratic consumer paradise, fostering robust connections and identification with white US and Europe and oil/cash-rich Gulf monarchies, rather than its immediate neighbours.
On October 7, intense fear and shock gripped Israeli society, presenting Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government with a golden opportunity to quash rising dissent against corruption, and please his coalition membe rs with a genocidal land grab.
Fear in Israel is sustained through militarisation, anti-Palestinian narratives, reframing resistance as “terrorism,” remembering past atrocities, focusing on perceived threats and promoting segregation, ie, apartheid. Chronic fear induces symptoms akin to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), making the Israeli population prone to aggression masked as “self-defence”.
The toxic mix of fear, <https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza> dehumanising propaganda, rewards for aggression and intense apartheid has bred a lack of empathy in Israelis toward Palestinians. Despite claiming the Gaza conflict as “self-defence”, Israeli leaders openly blame Palestinian society as a whole, essentially sanctioning collective punishment of civilians. Daily, Israeli institutional leaders mock Palestinian culture and cheerlead the torture, displacement and annihilation of Palestinians, revealing a disturbing genocidal mindset.
The path forward
On October 7, the carefully constructed Zionist facade of incremental genocide within a liberal/democratic framework collapsed, exposing Israel’s genocidal and fascistic core. Zionists in Israel and beyond did not mourn the end of this charade, and instead celebrated their newfound freedom to kill and destroy Palestinians without any restraint or pretence. This development not only poses a threat of elimination to the Palestinian people but since the Occupied Territories are used as a laboratory for the development and testing of new military technology and strategies, it could also set the stage for similar violent escalations against oppressed communities in the Global South as well as against BIPOC and immigrant communities within the Global North.
Israel’s genocidal behaviour in Gaza and elsewhere in historic Palestine resonates with patterns seen in the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram obedience study. In the latter, individuals, swayed by authority, had administered potentially lethal shocks to other participants.
For Zionists to break their addiction to aggression, they would need to go through a process of deprogramming and decolonisation. This would require them to embrace the truth about the history and nature of Zionism, commit to sincere accountability, recognise the humanity of Palestinians, and empathise with their suffering and plight. Once the oppressive structure, Zionism, is disassembled, it can be effectively dismantled, paving the way for a process of rehumanisation and reconciliation through the use of <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/2/2/on-empathy-and-other-liberal-zionist-canards> empathy. Liberation, reconciliation and an end to Israel’s genocidal violence can only be achieved within a steadfast and unwavering anti-Zionist framework that aligns with wider leftist, antiracist, anticolonial values.
Dedicated to the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer.
(8) Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
WYATT REED·DECEMBER 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists.
The fallout from December 5 House Committe on Antisemitism hearings has already cost University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill her job, while demands by billionaire pro-Israel donors and politicians for the firing of Harvard’s Claudine Gay have grown by the day. Both stand accused of refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews, even though no such calls have taken place on their campuses.
Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the forces orchestrating the carefully choreographed, heavily-funded campaign to crush Palestine solidarity activism on campus.
The law firm leading the assault on the universities has included David Friedman, the former ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, among its partners. Until 2021, this firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, was registered with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent on behalf of an Israeli principal.
The firm’s clients include associates of a jailed Ukrainian billionaire who bankrolled neo-Nazi militias, along with a who’s who of corporations accused of defrauding and even killing consumers.
Meanwhile, the “Jewish student” witnesses who set the stage for the attacks on Magill and her fellow university presidents at the House Antisemitism Committee were employed on at least a semi-professional basis by Israeli lobbying cutouts.
They included <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-frieden> Jonathan Frieden, a Harvard Law student who moonlights as president of Alliance for Israel; MIT graduate student Talia Khan, the <https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/syishsx4t> president of MIT Israel Alliance; and Bella Ingber, co-president of NYU’s Students Supporting Israel.
Israel lobbyist moonlighting as UPenn student calls for Covid-style lockdowns on Palestine protests
The most harrowing — and clearly questionable — claims furnished during the December 5 congressional hearings came courtesy of Eyal Yakoby, an Israeli-American senior at UPenn.
“Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve… read the statement, ‘Ninety-percent of pigs are gas chambered!’ on the pavement as I walked to class,” Yakoby moaned.
The most likely explanation for the appearance of this phrase on UPenn’s Locust Walk was not the presence of chalk-wielding neo-Nazis but rather, that of animal welfare advocates, who were presumably calling attention to the fact that most pigs are killed by slaughterhouses which employ a grotesque method of gas inhalation <https://www.wired.com/story/dex-pig-slaughterhouse-gas-chambers-videos/> exposed by activists in late 2022.
“’You’re a dirty little Jew and you deserve to die’ are not words said by Hamas, but by my classmates and my professors,” Yakoby claimed during a December 5 press conference convened by the House GOP leadership. Oddly, he neglected to name a single student or UPenn employee responsible for such inflammatory remarks.
Conjuring up images of a campus overwhelmed by Hamas-linked hatemongers, Yakoby seemed to call for imposing Covid-era lockdowns on students protesting Israel’s blood-drenched assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
“During Covid, strict guidelines governed everything from class attendance and graduation walks,” he said. “But now, when students and faculty defy policies to intimidate Jewish students, where is the same resolute enforcement?”
Lawsuits target top US campuses with flimsy, unprovable allegations
Just hours after his appearance alongside members of Congress, Yakoby filed a lawsuit against UPenn, claiming the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to respond to antisemitism.
Yakoby’s lawsuit was filled with <https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/penn-students-lawsuit-shows-campus> dubious, highly politicized accusations, including complaints about the chanting of “antisemitic slurs” such as “Intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea.”
A closer examination of other incidents described in the lawsuit against Penn reveals a great number of them appear to have been seriously exaggerated or manufactured out of whole cloth.
The most ‘threatening’ episode described by the Yakoby, for example, consists of a man who “threateningly approached him” and “yelled ‘fuck you.’” As a result of this experience — and the agony apparently endured when the plaintiff observed other students removing posters showing Israeli captives — the suit claims that “Yakoby missed his next two classes” because he was “shaken by these escalating acts of hate.”
The vast majority of claims of overt antisemitism appear to consist of statements by students and professors who criticized the state of Israel but generally took pains to distinguish between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism.
Elsewhere, the lawsuit accuses professors of antisemitism because they questioned now-debunked Israeli atrocity propaganda about the October 7 attacks, including a demonstrably false claim by Yakoby that the “killing of 40 [Israeli] babies” by Palestinian militants had been “confirmed.”
Many of the alleged incidents described as “assaults” fail to meet basic evidentiary standards, leaving the court with no option but to take the plaintiffs’ word that the contents of the complaint happened as described.
Claims that a Jewish student was taunted with exhortations to “keep walking you dirty little Jew,” for instance, are typical of the highly suspect claims found throughout the lawsuit.
Indeed, no proof of this alleged interaction was provided, nor did the plaintiff’s provide even a vague sketch of the assailant’s identity. Instead, the entire emphasis is placed on the supposed lack of “sympathy” subsequently shown to the student by a professor who decided not to award her an “extension on her class lecture note assignment.”
The plaintiffs also took aim at Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, who had been invited to a literary festival at Penn before being murdered in a December 6 Israeli strike described by human rights monitors as a “targeted assassination.”
The demands of the pro-Israel activists include “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees” who they say are “responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it; suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct… the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” and “compensatory, consequential, and punitive [financial] damages.”
Israel lobbyists are also targeting America’s most expensive campus, New York University, leveling a litany of flimsy and unprovable antisemitism allegations to extract heavy financial damages, including a full refund of tuition. Bella Ingber, who also featured prominently at the House Republican press conference, is a leading face of the NYU lawsuit.
During the Republican presser, Ingber <https://twitter.com/HouseGOP/status/1732061387763917084?s=20> compared conditions at NYU to life under the German Nazi Reich.
“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the unmistakable anti-Semitism that I have experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”
The plaintiffs of the Israel lobby-led lawsuit “request that a judgment be entered in each of their favor, and against NYU” which would see the university “terminating deans, administrators, professors and other employees responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school, whether because they engaged in it or permitted it… suspending or expelling students who engage in such conduct,” and “compensatory and punitive damages.”
In other words, the lawsuit seeks campus-wide regime change, replacing any and all administrators with those willing to take instructions from the Israel lobby.
“Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House” lead legal assault on campus speech
If the language of the NYU lawsuit sounds familiar, that is because it was brought by the same high-powered corporate legal firm presiding over the legal action against UPenn: Kasowitz Benson Torres, best known for its work on behalf of former President Donald Trump. The firm’s leadership has been aptly <https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1542203201491009538> described as “Bibi Netanyahu’s guys in the Trump White House.”
The law firm was known as Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman until 2017, when its partner, David Friedman left to become US Ambassador to Israel. Friedman has been <https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-longer-us-ambassador-david-friedman-is-sticking-to-his-sledgehammers/> credited with working alongside former presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to pressure Trump into adopting more radically anti-Palestinian positions.
The firm was founded in 1993 by attorney Marc Kasowitz, who gained national notoriety for his work representing Big Tobacco, describing himself as one of the “most feared lawyers in the United States.” Though reports describe him as a strong Trump ally and a go-to source for the former president, financial disclosures show Kasowitz and his wife have donated thousands of dollars to <https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/when-trump-goes-looking-for-a-media-brawl-this-feared-lawyer-steps-in/2016/10/16/f6dbc486-9181-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html> Democratic politicians as well, including former President Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden, and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Also employed by the firm is former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a hardcore neoconservative who now serves as <https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/press-releases/senator-joseph-i-lieberman-lead-united-against-nuclear-iran-chairman> chairman of the pro-war United Against a Nuclear Iran. While in Congress, Lieberman advocated for <https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-lieberman> moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as far back as 1995.
A quick glance at Kasowitz Benson Torres’ recent handiwork reveals a lengthy track record of defending Goliath from David. For example, its website boasts of successfully <https://www.kasowitz.com/clients/case-studies/supreme-court-rules-for-client-comcast-in-landmark-antitrust-class-action/> defending Comcast against a class-action lawsuit by angry customers. Other high-profile clients <https://www.kasowitz.com/media/client-news/kasowitz-on-behalf-of-teva-resolves-one-of-the-nation-s-largest-securities-class-actions/> include Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, best known for causing the ongoing worldwide shortage of a vincristine — a crucial drug in treating most types of childhood cancers with <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/health/cancer-drug-shortage.html> no known substitute — after it deemed production insufficiently profitable.
In 2019, the firm <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-14/trump-lawyer-kasowitz-takes-on-ukrainian-billionaire-as-client> signed on to represent the US-based co-defendants of notoriously-corrupt Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who now languishes in a Kiev prison and is known for bankrolling current president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi Azov Regiment. Ukrainian financial giant Privatbank maintains that Kolomoisky and his associates defrauded the bank out of billions of dollars.
A year later, Kasowitz Benson Torres was required to <https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6863-Registration-Statement-20200828-1.pdf> register as a foreign agent with the US Justice Department after agreeing to represent an Israeli real estate developer specializing in <https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3722?kiryat-sefer-diur-modiin> building luxury condos for ulra-Orthodox Jews living in illegal settlements.
From the 2021 FARA registration form by Kasowitz Benson Torres
This November, The Grayzone <https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/07/leak-trump-ambassador-israel-nyu-palestine-protests/> revealed a leaked letter signed by David Friedman and delivered to NYU administrators in advance of the lawsuit. The letter demanded NYU establish a position dedicated to “combating antisemitism,” and disband student clubs dedicated to Palestine activism.
Now, the law firm’s crusade to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists is spreading across the country. This November, two of the firm’s partners <https://www.foxnews.com/media/major-law-firm-accuse-elite-universities-civil-rights-violations-enabling-antisemitic-mobs> revealed that the legal team plans similar suits for Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley, accusing them all of “deliberate indifference” to the supposed plight of Jewish students.