question everything
question everything's JournalHamas is succeeding at playing the West for fools - The Telegraph
This week, the former hostage Mia Schem gave her first television interview. The 21-year-old French-Israeli tattoo artist described how she had been shot, groped and dragged into Gaza by her hair, where she was operated upon by a vet without anaesthetic and kept like an animal in a zoo. “I went through a holocaust,” she said. This was not the first time her voice had been heard. Before her release at the beginning of December, she had appeared in a Hamas video parroting propaganda. “People very good, very kind to me,” she had said with fear evident in her eyes.
(snip)
This grim vignette is emblematic of how the West has been played by Hamas. In a climate of Israelophobia, morality has been turned on its head. Hamas attempts an act of genocide, yet that same crime is pinned on Israel. Hamas butchers hundreds of innocents, yet Israel gets the blame.
The terrorists know exactly what they are doing. For years, they have dealt with UN officials, NGO representatives and the international media. They understand the Weltanschauung of such circles. They know that they need only enable a supply of videos of civilian casualties and the credulous journalists, sneering diplomats, jihadi sympathisers and useful idiots will do the rest.
(snip)
For Hamas, every innocent casualty is a victory. As far back as 2008, it was collaborating with Iranian planners to design hospitals and schools that could hold missiles. The logic is simple: the martyrs live on in Heaven, the media broadcasts heartrending footage, and the world ratchets up pressure for a ceasefire. Then October 7 can be planned again.
More..
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-succeeding-playing-west-fools-152008989.html
Opinion Harvard's Claudine Gay should resign - Ruth Marcus
She plagiarized her acknowledgments. I take no joy in saying this, but Harvard President Claudine Gay ought to resign. Her track record is unbefitting the president of the country’s premier university. Remaining on the job would send a bad signal to students about the gravity of her conduct.
This was not my original instinct. I thought, and continue to believe, that Gay’s accusers and their allies were motivated more by conservative ideology and the desire to score points against the most elite of institutions than by any commitment to academic rigor. This was, and is, accompanied by no small dose of racism and the conviction that a Black woman couldn’t possibly be qualified to lead Harvard. In addition, the initial reports of plagiarism seemed small-bore. Gay’s missteps did not seem to involve sweeping appropriations of carefully crafted words or thoughtful ideas but a failure to put mostly boilerplate language inside quotation marks.
(snip)
In her 1997 doctoral dissertation, for example, Gay quoted from a paper by Bradley Palmquist and D. Stephen Voss, then her colleagues in the Harvard political science department, about turnout rates among Black voters. “This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias,” they wrote. “If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race’s turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other’s across the graph.)” Gay’s dissertation — which nowhere cites Palmquist and Voss — contains nearly identical language. “This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias,” she wrote. “If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race’s turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.”
(snip)
Perhaps the most disturbing example is the least academic — Gay’s borrowing of words from another scholar, Jennifer L. Hochschild. In her acknowledgments for a 1996 book, Hochschild described a mentor who “showed me the importance of getting the data right and of following where they lead without fear or favor” and “drove me much harder than I sometimes wanted to be driven.” Gay’s dissertation thanked her thesis adviser, who “reminded me of the importance of getting the data right and following where they lead without fear or favor,” and her family, who “drove me harder than I sometimes wanted to be driven.”
Now, can I just say? Acknowledgments are the easiest, and most fun part, of writing a book, the place where you list your sources and allies and all the people who helped you get the manuscript over the finish line. Why not come up with your own thanks? What does it say about a person who chooses to appropriate another’s language for this most personal task?
More..
https://wapo.st/47lQ3Tq
(free)
Fetterman, Breaking With the Left on Israel, Rejects 'Progressive' Label - NYT
In April 2022, during his Senate primary campaign in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman spoke enthusiastically about his unqualified support for Israel and said he did not consider himself a “progressive” when it came to his views on the Jewish state.
“Whenever I’m in a situation to be called on to take up the cause of strengthening and enhancing the security of Israel or deepening our relationship between the United States and Israel, I’m going to lean in,” Mr. Fetterman, then the lieutenant governor, told Jewish Insider at the time. When it came to far-left Democrats who harshly criticized Israel, he added, “I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense.”
So as the left has turned against Mr. Fetterman in recent weeks, branding him #GenocideJohn for his unequivocal support of Israel’s fierce retaliation against Hamas in response to the group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the senator has dug in.
(snip)
Mr. Fetterman has rejected calls for a cease-fire, filled the walls of the hallway outside his Senate office with photos of the hostages taken by Hamas, draped himself in an Israeli flag and even waved one provocatively in the face of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. A large Israeli flag even hangs on the wall behind his desk, positioned to be visible in his Zoom shots. In forcefully inserting himself into an issue that has exposed a deep divide in the Democratic Party as the death toll in Gaza has risen, Mr. Fetterman has shattered any lasting perception that he is a progressive warrior in lock step with the left.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/politics/john-fetterman-progressive-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Hk0.8tra.cjtbK2-DJ4Em&smid=url-share
Promoting a Palestine from the River to the Sea (even if not sure which river and which sea)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016369553This concept will clearly eliminate Israel. The promoters do not detail what will happen to the current Israelis but they really do not want to be bothered by details, see above.
But we can envision a Palestine "from the River to the Sea" looking at Gaza which became independent in 2006.
The election that led to Hamas taking over Gaza - WaPo
(snip)
A core part of this talking point lies in what happened close to two decades ago. In 2006, the Palestinian political entity operating in the West Bank and Gaza staged elections. Little did observers know that it would be the last vote allowed by the Palestinian Authority, led then, as it is now, by President Mahmoud Abbas. The vote took place in the aftermath of a turbulent series of events: the fiery years of the second intifada, the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and the 2005 Israeli withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.
The election yielded a shock victory for Hamas, which won the most seats with some 44 percent of the vote. Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which advocates for rapprochement and peace between Israelis and Palestinians, recently observed that in no single district in Gaza did Hamas win a majority of votes.
(snip)
“Mostly, they were voting for opposition and voting against Fatah — against corruption, against nepotism, against the failure of the peace process, and against the lack of leadership,” Mustafa Barghouti, an outspoken, independent Palestinian politician then and now, told CNN at the time.
That analysis was echoed by a conspicuous onlooker. President George W. Bush had pushed for Palestinian elections, in part as an outgrowth of his administration’s ideological zeal for spreading democracy in the Middle East through whatever means necessary. As Hamas’s victory became clear, Bush said the vote reflected Palestinians’ disenchantment with their prevailing leadership, who had been elected a decade prior in the wake of the signing of the Oslo accords.
More..
free
https://wapo.st/3RkpFDq
What, then, happened after the elections? This report is from the Human Rights Watch from June 2007
Gaza: Armed Palestinian Groups Commit Grave Crimes
During recent fighting in the Gaza Strip, armed Palestinian groups have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, in some cases amounting to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.
In internal Palestinian fighting over the last three days, both Fatah and Hamas military forces have summarily executed captives, killed people not involved in hostilities, and engaged in gun battles with one another inside and near Palestinian hospitals. On Saturday, armed Palestinians from Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade used a vehicle with a “TV” insignia to attack an Israeli military position on the border with Gaza.
(snip)
On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra’fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building. On Monday, Hamas military forces attacked the home in Beit Lahiya of Jamal Abu al-Jadiyan, a senior Fatah official, captured him, and executed him on the street with multiple gunshots. On Tuesday, there were reports of additional killings of individuals not involved in hostilities.
In addition, Fatah and Hamas forces engaged in battles in and around two Gaza Strip hospitals on Monday. After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building, killing one Hamas and one Fatah fighter. At a hospital in Beit Hanun, three family members with ties to Fatah, `Id al-Masri and his sons, Farij and Ibrahim, were killed, and others wounded. Hospital officials reported that the three were being treated for injuries sustained earlier. One was reportedly shot at close range.
More..
https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/06/12/gaza-armed-palestinian-groups-commit-grave-crimes
This is not a whatabout. This is a realistic vision of what will take place in the "concept" of From the River to the Sea.
Back to my earlier comment: what will happen to the Israelis currently residing in the area by the sea?
We know what happened in one day
Brutality of Hamas attack seen at Israel morgue
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/10/30/morgue-burial-israel-hamas-attack-pkg-sidner-lead-vpx.cnn
So, go ahead, keep chanting for a "Free Palestine" but, if you care, and dare, read what you are promoting.
Accounts of Sexual Violence by Hamas Are Aired Amid Criticism of U.N. - NYT (Graphic)
The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.” Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations. “Horrific things I saw with my own eyes,” he said, “and I felt with my own hands.”
Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads. Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.
Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.
Israelis and many Jews around the world say they feel abandoned by an international social justice community — women’s groups, human rights groups, liberal celebrities, among others — whose causes they have supported in crises around the world. On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EE0.hQj2.PZZNKp6wZ27E&hpgrp=ar-abar&smid=url-share
First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head - graphic
She had, he says, the face of an angel. Night after night Yoni Saadon, 39, wakes in anguish to the faces of women. First, that of the young woman hiding next to him under the stage of the Supernova festival where he had been dancing to electronic music as the sun rose on October 7 and Hamas militants opened fire. “She fell to the ground, shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too,” he said. “I will never forget her face.
Every night I wake to it and apologise to her, saying ‘I’m sorry’.” After an hour, he peeked out. “I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head.
(snip)
The horror did not end there. Hiding in bushes, he saw two more Hamas fighters. “They had caught a young woman near a car and she was fighting back, not allowing them to strip her. They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her and her head rolled along the ground. I see that head too,” he says.
(snip)
Eight weeks after the attack in which 1,200 were killed and 240 taken hostage, there is mounting evidence of widespread rape on October 7. Israeli police have begun their biggest investigation into sexual violence and crimes against women. “It’s clear now that sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrify and humiliate people,” says Shelly Harush, the police commander leading the investigation. The first indications came on the day itself when Hamas livestreamed some of the horrors it was perpetrating. Footage showed several women stripped of their clothing. One video showed a young woman with bloodstains on the crotch of her underwear.
(snip)
“Opening the body bags was scary as we didn’t know what we would see. They were all young women. Most in little clothing or shredded clothing and their bodies bloodied particularly round their underwear and some women shot many times in the face as if to mutilate them. “Their faces were in anguish and often their fingers clenched as they died. We saw women whose pelvises were broken. Legs broken. There were women who had been shot in the crotch, in the breasts … there seems no doubt what happened to them.”
More..
https://archive.is/DMI2e#selection-2826.0-2826.1
The Sunday Times of London
From Which River to Which Sea?
When college students who sympathize with Palestinians chant “From the river to the sea,” do they know what they’re talking about? I hired a survey firm to poll 250 students from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S. Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).
But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions.
Would learning basic political facts about the conflict moderate students’ opinions? A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.” Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.
(snip)
In all, after learning a handful of basic facts about the Middle East, 67.8% of students went from supporting “from the river to sea” to rejecting the mantra. These students had never seen a map of the Mideast and knew little about the region’s geography, history or demography. Those who hope to encourage extremism depend on the political ignorance of their audiences. It is time for good teachers to join the fray and combat bias with education.
Mr. Hassner is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
https://archive.is/aJvDh
If you cannot open at the link, here is the free link
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b?st=77xhqyo91zv1ps3&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The New Antisemitism Is the Oldest Kind
(snip)
How innocent the moment seems. That was the postwar “Gentleman’s Agreement” version of American antisemitism—gentiles relaxing up-island, on their fourth glass of Chablis. The word “Jew” wasn’t mentioned. In the Martha’s Vineyard iteration—post-Auschwitz—American antisemitism often had a discreetly covert quality. It emerged from a kind of sly politesse because, after all, everyone at some time or other had seen the films from the Nazi camps—the ones that Gen. Eisenhower had ordered his troops to watch. In Elia Kazan’s 1947 movie based on the Laura Hobson novel “Gentleman’s Agreement,” desk clerks fidget and look away when Gregory Peck, as a journalist pretending to be Jewish, pushes them about renting a room.
(snip)
The antisemitism that has poured forth onto the country’s streets and campuses in the autumn of 2023 is a different thing—a reversion to a politics of aggressive, unapologetic hate. The ominous historical regression at work in the latest Jew-hatred takes up the themes of the mid-1930s, the spirit of Hitler’s brown shirts and Kristallnacht. Of course, the new Jew-haters—especially young people on campuses—think of themselves as perfectly virtuous. What is a thousand times worse, they think of their Jew-hatred as righteous. It’s morally fashionable among them.
(snip)
Why did Hamas attack on Oct. 7? Israeli oppression? Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, two years after the Israelis withdrew. Under decent, intelligent leadership—with a touch of vision, with investment by oil-rich Arab states—Gaza might now be a Mediterranean Singapore. Instead, Hamas has maintained Gaza as an anguished slum, an ongoing dramatization of the Palestinian victimhood that is the source of Hamas’s power and raison d’être.
(snip)
Students at Harvard and Columbia don’t protest the region’s routine inhumanities. They do so only when there are Jews around to blame and to hate. It’s the Israelis’ Jewishness that brings the demonstrators out. This isn’t “a new antisemitism.” Antisemitism is never new. It’s an ancient beast that awakens from time to time and exhales such filth as “Gas the Jews” and “Hitler was right.”
https://archive.is/UGLCd
UN Women finally condemns Hamas attacks, sexual violence on October 7
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, or UN Women, has condemned the Hamas October 7 massacre in a Friday statement, nearly two months after the terrorist organization’s brutal rampage of rape, murder, and kidnappings.
“We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7,” UN Women wrote. “We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks.”. The women’s rights organization made a similar statement in late November condemning the Hamas attacks, but quickly deleted the post. Earlier, on November 8, UN Women made an X post highlighting Isra al-Modallal, the first female spokesperson for Hamas.
(snip)
The initial reaction from UN Women to Hamas’s attack came on October 7 from Bahous, who took to X to write, “The escalation of hostilities in #Israel & the Occupied Palestinian Territory #OPT is gravely concerning. It is imperative that all civilians, including women & girls, are protected.”. Bahaus proceeded to call for “immediate de-escalation,” but did not name, or assign any blame, to Hamas.Not until nearly two weeks later did UN Women first make an X post wherein the organization called for a release of the hostages taken by Hamas.
Infographics videos highlighting the sentiment of neglect and betrayal felt by many Israeli women, such as one posted to the Instagram account “tiroche_art_auctions,” have gone viral in recent weeks on social media. Trends, such as the X hashtag, #metoo_unless_ur_a_jew, have likewise been spread to underscore the perceived apathy on behalf of leading women’s organizations to the sexual assaults endured by Israeli women.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-776233
Profile Information
Member since: Mon Jan 12, 2004, 02:09 AMNumber of posts: 47,510
