#yom benjamin

[americamostbeautiful]

Atonement

Alan Zendell, October 11, 2024 October 12th is the Day of Atonement Jews call Yom Kippur. There’s so much irony in that, it’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps most striking is that it occurs five days after the anniversary of Hamas’ attack that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including children and young people attending a concert. The terrorists committed gruesome acts of savagery…

[mygidon73]

Breaking Israel's Opium Addiction

How addicted is Jerusalem to Washington’s military aid? Israel’s planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Oct. 11, was narrowly averted after President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. While Netanyahu dismissed this claim, members of his own Likud Party are increasingly speaking out against…

[gameofthrones2020]

Israel-Hamas War of 2023

Israel-Hamas War of 2023: On October 7, 2023, at 6:30 AM local time, a Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist group attacked Israel

On October 7, 2023, at 6:30 AM local time, a Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist group known as Hamas announced the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, stating that it had fired over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within 20 minutes. Hams launched over 5,000 rockets due to the limitations of Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, an ante missile defence system that can stop some…

[plitnick]

Hamas attack the result of Washington’s hostility to Palestinian rights

To the extent that Hamas targeted the military, that is very much legal, and an exercise of the right to resist that is granted to people under a belligerent military occupation. The tactic of capturing civilians as hostages is a familiar one in conflicts, but that makes it no less criminal, and given some of the targets, including very young children, no less horrifying. The extensive targeting…

[mariacallous]

Eva Szepesi, 92, is traveling this week to the Nazi concentration camp she narrowly survived, where her mother and brother were both murdered.

Szepesi, who grew up in Slovakia and now lives in Frankfurt, Germany, is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz alive today. Just 50 of them are expected to be present on Monday at the camp in Poland for a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation — down from 300 a decade ago and 1,000 a decade before that.

The ceremony comes amid widespread anxiety over whether knowledge about the Holocaust is diminishing as the number of Jews who survived it dwindles. For Szepesi, however, the history has lost none of its power.

“Auschwitz will stay with me until the last day, the last moment,” she said.

For the first time, this year’s milestone ceremony will not feature any speeches by politicians. In addition to the survivors who speak, the only other addresses will come from World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder, representing major donors to the memorial site, and historian Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Five years ago, Poland’s president Andrzej Duda was the only politician to speak. This year, he is facing criticism over Poland’s pledge not to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant over the Gaza war, in the unlikely event that Netanyahu visits for the ceremony.

“A lot of people are tired of these speeches by officials, functionaries, politicians,” said Yves Kugelmann, the Switzerland-based editor in chief of Aufbau, a magazine started by German-speaking Jewish emigres in 1934. Its newest edition is dedicated to the subject of Auschwitz and memory, and includes contributions by survivors.

“It is important that we have the witnesses talking about what they experienced,” Kugelmann said.

When Soviet troops entered the camp on Jan. 27, 1945, they found 7,000 survivors whom the fleeing SS had left behind.

Twenty years ago, about 1,000 of them attended commemoration ceremonies at the site, in bitter cold. Now, that is the total number of Auschwitz survivors alive worldwide, according to an estimate by the Claims Conference, which negotiates restitution for survivors and recently launched a campaign featuring messages from 80 of them. (The group found last year that there were fewer than 250,000 survivors alive globally.) Most are in their 90s, and relatively few are able to make the trip.

This year’s event is “the last where we will have a visible group of survivors with us,” said Paweł Sawicki, deputy spokesman for the Auschwitz Memorial. “And this is why it is so important to put the entire spotlight on the survivors.”

“They will give the main addresses, and we will not have any politicians giving speeches,” he said, adding, “We do not want to assault this memory by [its] being politically instrumentalized.”

State representatives “will be present, but they will be listening to the voices of survivors,” Sawicki said, noting that it was survivors who in the early postwar years came up with the idea of having a memorial at the site.

Thousands of people are expected to be on hand for the ceremony, which marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (A Jewish and Israeli memorial day for the Holocaust, Yom Hashoah, falls in April.) A heated tent has been set up for participants around the infamous gate to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where, historians say, of the estimated 1.3 million people deported to the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1940 to 1945, 1.1 million were murdered there; around 1 million of them were Jews.

For decades, their stories have been told by the few survivors. In the videos shared by the Claims Conference, one survivor, Alfred Sobotka, shares a photo from his bar mitzvah, and points to his father and brother, both gassed on arrival at Auschwitz.

Another, Alice Ginsburg, recalls “the heart-wrenching experience of being separated from my family” forever.

In just a few words, each of them paints a universe lost.

Szepesi, who also appears in a video, was the only survivor from her immediate family. She was only 12 when she was deported to Auschwitz in November 1944, several months after her family had sent her alone into hiding with relatives in Slovakia.

Very few children arriving at Auschwitz survived. She was selected for work, cleaning ammunition. She clung to the hope of being reunited with her family. Liberation came; she later returned to Budapest, where she met her husband, a fellow survivor named Andor Szepesi. They married in 1951, started a family and eventually applied for asylum in what was then West Germany, moving there in 1954.

Eva Szepesi first went back to the site for the commemoration in 1995, convinced by her daughters Judith and Anita. After the ceremony she spoke with students for the first time; they sat cross-legged on the floor in her hotel and listened, rapt.

“I just started and it all bubbled up,” she recalled. Since that time, she has spoken with numerous school groups, particularly in Germany.

“I start with my happy childhood, which was very short” but had a lasting impact, she said. “I received a lot of love.”

She tells them “that when they experience injustice, they should stand up and not remain silent; they should get informed, not believe everything straight away. And you have to be careful that something like that never happens again,” she said, adding that listeners “always tell me, we will be the witnesses of the survivors when they are no longer here; we will pass it on.”

In 2016, she finally learned the fates of her parents and brother. Her granddaughter researched at the Auschwitz archive and found Szepesi’s mother, Valeria Diamant, on a list of murdered Jews.

“I was so scared,” recalled Szepesi, who had accompanied her granddaughter to the archive. As if in a dream, “I saw my mother’s name with my own eyes.” She scanned the list and found her brother’s name, Tamás Diamant, as well.

She had waited 70 years, hoping her mother would come for her. It turned out she had been murdered shortly before Eva arrived at the camp.

“It’s always a terrible thought for me, that she saw from above that her little daughter marched in, into Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau,” she said.

All Eva Szepesi has from her childhood, aside from memories, is a handful of photos that a neighbor had hidden and handed to her uncle, wrapped in a newspaper, after the war. Szepesi looks at them every day, and even sometimes speaks with them.

The shattering knowledge about what happened to her family brought some closure. But she still asks herself: “My little brother was four years younger, and he was murdered. Why am I allowed to live, and he had to die? But I don’t get an answer.”

Educators and Jewish organizations have been working to devise strategies for teaching about the Holocaust when the last survivors with memory of the Holocaust can no longer tell their stories — a prospect that grows nearer by the day. Virtual and augmented reality is increasingly playing a role, as are the children and grandchildren of survivors.

On Monday, Szepesi will be a guest of the World Jewish Congress, accompanied by her younger daughter, Anita Schwarz.

The return to Auschwitz is “like going to visit my grandmother. That is where I actually felt her presence for the first time,” Schwarz said.

“There are so many young people today who don’t know what Auschwitz is, who can’t relate to it at all,” Schwarz added. “Only when you really come to terms with history, and actually with your own family history, can you understand what it means and that you really have to do something, so it doesn’t happen again.”

[justforbooks]

Yahya Sinwar

Hamas leader who plotted the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered war in the Middle East

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who has been killed by an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip at the age of 61, was the principal architect of the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped 251 hostages, and propelled the Middle East into its greatest peril since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The overall leader of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, he was its key strategist before and after 7 October, Israel’s most wanted man and the ultimately pivotal Hamas figure during ceasefire negotiations. Though presumed to have been hiding for most of the year within Gaza’s vast tunnel network, he was killed alone in a ruined apartment in Rafah, according to the Israeli military.

Despite repeated vows by Israeli leaders to assassinate him during their devastating retaliation for the 7 October attack, and after what Israel announced was the killing of his close collaborator Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, in July 2024, Sinwar was the last survivor of the three Hamas leaders against whom the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for suspected war crimes.

Sinwar first came to prominence in 1985 when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the organisation that would become Hamas in 1987, put him in joint charge of an armed internal enforcement agency known as al-Majd.

He missed direct participation in the momentous Palestinian events of this century’s first decade, including Hamas’s election victory in 2006, the subsequent imposition of an international boycott, and its armed seizure of full control in Gaza in 2007, because he was in jail. In 1989 he received four life sentences for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the execution of four Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. According to his interrogators, Sinwar admitted without remorse to personally strangling one victim with his bare hands.

By a historical irony, he was among the 1,027 prisoners released in 2011 by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The exchange reinforced Sinwar’s belief that such abductions were needed to release Palestinian prisoners. During his 22-year incarceration he assumed a commanding role among Palestinian inmates and tried at least twice to escape. Jail, he later said, had been turned by militants into “sanctuaries of worship” and “academies”. He learned fluent Hebrew, studied Israeli politics and society, and by his own account became “a specialist in the Jewish people’s history”.

Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. His father, Ibrahim, and his mother had been forced to flee Majdal, now Ashkelon, as refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He would tell fellow inmates in prison, said one, Esmat Mansour, that he had been heavily influenced by conditions in the impoverished refugee camp, with its daily humiliation of queueing for food. He was four when Israel overcame Egypt in the six-day war of 1967 and took control of the Strip. He attended Khan Yunis senior school for boys and then the Islamic University, graduating in Arabic language. Sinwar was active in student organisations fusing Islamism with Palestinian nationalism after the perceived failures of the secular PLO. He was briefly detained in 1982 and again in 1988 after Israel’s discovery of al-Majd weapons.

An autobiographical novel he completed in prison in 2004, called Thorns and Carnations, describes the protagonist Ahmed sheltering with his family during the 1967 war, only to find their dreams of Palestinian liberation shattered by Israel’s victory; Ahmed becomes an Islamist after a cousin convinces him of the religious concept of the waqf – the God-given Muslim land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. Infatuated with a young woman, Ahmed ends the relationship – chaste in accordance with strict Muslim custom – because in “this bitter story” there was “only room for one love”: for Palestine.

Also in 2004, Sinwar had a brain tumour removed by Israeli surgeons, detected by a quick-thinking Israeli prison dentist (and later intelligence officer), Yuval Bitton, who had Sinwar rushed to hospital. Over multiple conversations in jail before and after this life-saving episode, for which Bitton was warmly thanked by Sinwar, he recalled the prisoner telling him: “Now you’re strong, you have 200 atomic warheads. But we’ll see, maybe in another 10 to 20 years you’ll weaken, and I’ll attack.”

After his release, Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ political bureau in 2012 and, in what was seen as a shift towards its militarist tendency, to the faction’s Gaza leadership in 2017, replacing Haniyeh, who subsequently succeeded Khaled Mashal as political bureau chief. Hamas was losing popularity after two wars with Israel, in 2008-09 and 2014, and Gaza’s deep impoverishment by the blockade imposed by Israel (and Egypt) since 2007.

Sinwar seemed at times to adopt a relatively pragmatic approach. No ally of Mashal, he worked to restore relations with Iran that Mashal had ruptured by opposing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in his repression of a popular revolt. But he did not demur when Mashal published a (for Hamas) innovative 2017 document which, without recognising Israel, or abandoning its aspiration for the whole land, indicated it would meanwhile accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders – comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In 2018 Sinwar conspicuously appeared at the Great March of Return, a series of unarmed mass protests at the border barrier. Increasingly organised by Hamas, to the chagrin of some civil activists who had devised them, the protests seemed briefly to offer some alternative to armed insurgency, despite the lethal gunfire against them by Israeli troops. Sinwar even wrote (in Hebrew) to Netanyahu, proposing a long-term truce.

But a turning point came in 2021, when Sinwar and Deif are thought to have begun planning for what became the 7 October attack. By then, the 2020-21 Abraham accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain had reversed the Gulf countries’ refusal to recognise Israel unless the Palestinians secured a state. How far this – and the fear in 2023 that Saudi Arabia might imminently follow suit – dominated Sinwar’s thinking is unclear. But in his 7 October speech praising Sinwar and Deif for the attack, Haniyeh excoriated the Arab states for seeking “normalisation” with Israel.

Sinwar reacted defiantly during Ramadan in May 2021 when police raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, after clashes in the city between Palestinians and rightwing Israelis. When police did not leave the compound by a Hamas-set deadline, Gaza militants fired 150 rockets, Israel responded with airstrikes, and there was a short but intense 11-day war. Sinwar warned that Hamas, whose rockets had reached deeper into Israel than before, had enacted a “general rehearsal” for what would happen “if Israel tries to harm al-Aqsa again”.

Less conditionally, in December 2022 Sinwar addressed Israel at a Gaza rally: “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers.” Hamas would name the 7 October attack the “al-Aqsa flood”.

So secretive was its planning that Sinwar kept its timing and scale – though apparently not that something was being prepared – from most of the Hamas external leadership. Western intelligence agencies also believe he did not confide his intentions in advance to Iran or its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

According to a June 2024 Wall Street Journal report, Sinwar described the huge Palestinian losses in a wartime message to Hamas leaders in Qatar as “necessary sacrifices”. In another, on the seizure of women and children as hostages, but without clarifying whether he was referring to Hamas fighters or others who joined the attack and its accompanying atrocities, he said: “Things went out of control … People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.”

Though he told hostages he met in the tunnels that they would be protected and exchanged in a prisoner release, one 85-year-old peace activist, Yocheved Lifshitz, freed in the week-long ceasefire in November, said she had challenged Sinwar on whether he was “not ashamed to do such a thing to people who have supported peace all these years. He didn’t answer. He was silent.”

In 2011 he married Samar Abu Zamar, and they had three children, the fate of all of whom is unknown. Sinwar’s brother (and close ally), Mohammed, is still being hunted by Israeli forces.

🔔 Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, politician, born 29 October 1962; died 16 October 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[militantinremission]

The War in Gaza: Terrorism or Resistance?

Few would disagree that there are No Winners in the newly erupted 'War' between Israel & Hamas. Mainstream Media has already begun to make excuses for the expected carnage that Benjamin Netanyahu will rain on Gaza. The Israeli Prime Minister singles out Hamas for destruction, but is pretty general about his Military Targets; situated among an urban population of over 2 Million Palestinians. What's scary, is how easily News Correspondents & Political Contributors downplay Israeli 'revenge' as Collateral Damage.

58% of Palestinians support Hamas, but Mainstream Media collectively behaves like the Citizens of Gaza are ALL connected to Hamas. The same way that All Black Males are gang affiliated... I guess that's their punishment for voting Hamas into Political Power. The irony lies in the fact that Israel brought Hamas into existence, as a counter balance to Yasser Arafat & The PLO. The Media is already calling Hamas' Attack 'Israel's 9/11'- I find that classification curious. That 2001 Event looks more & more like a smokescreen for a larger Agenda. Despite the thousands of Americans killed, the Legacy of 9/11 are: The Iraqi War & The Patriot Act. There are correlations to point out between the 2 Events.

Benjamin Netanyahu's current political position resembles Rudy Giuliani's position, pre- 9/11. Rudy faced Police Brutality & Corruption in his Administration, while Bibi faces Fraud, Breach of Trust, & accepting Bribes on @ least 3 different occasions. Post 9/11, Rudy Giuliani became 'America's Mayor'. Israelis that screamed for Netanyahu's resignation last week, are now standing behind his 'War' on Hamas. The Patriot Act was what came out of 9/11, & increasing Jewish Settlements appears to be Israel's goal in Gaza. Pro- Israel supporters are calling for the complete destruction of Gaza. There is no regard for the welfare of Palestinians caught in the middle.

The Media Narrative has been Israeli Centered. Big Bad Hamas caught Israel off guard, & wreaked as much havoc as they could. Israel is known for their Security & Intelligence, so it's more than curious how Hamas could execute such a large scale Operation. Over 1,000 Hamas Soldiers stormed breached sections of Israel's Security Fence, along w/ other Soldiers attacking by Air & by Sea. Over 2,200 Military Grade Rockets were launched w/i the City of Tel Aviv. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel's History. The Police & Military were both caught unaware... How?

Benjamin Netanyahu rose to power on the promise that he could protect Israel better than anyone that preceded him. The fact that Mossad, Shin Bet, & Unit 8200 all failed to anticipate such an attack is mindboggling. When we consider the fact that Netanyahu did not anticipate an attack on, or around the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (back in 1973), it's not hard to consider conspiracy theories. Some call it silly to think that Bibi Netanyahu would allow Hamas to breach Israeli territory & kill hundreds, but the alternative is to think that 3 Intelligence Agencies failed to gather Intel on a coordinated attack that took up to 2 Years to plan.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Legacy as Israeli Leader, is a continuous oppression of the Palestinian population. Under his leadership, Israel openly practices a System of Apartheid. Many refer to Gaza as an 'Open Air Prison', while Others call it a 'Concentration Camp'. Despite The 1993 Oslo Accords that laid out the foundation for a 2 State solution, Netanyahu still allows the development of Illegal Settlements in Gaza. It has become so rampant, that Pro- Israel Supporters are calling for the compete removal of All Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Israel's Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant referred to Hamas as 'Human Animals' that will be dealt w/ in a similar manner... Where is the compromise?

It's crazy to say, but Israel is planning a full blitzkrieg on The Gaza Strip. 300,000 Israeli Soldiers have been called to the Gaza Border, following days of incessant bombing on an urban population of over 2 million people. Over 300,000 people have already been displaced. Netanyahu says he issued warnings for Gaza Residents to leave, but where are they going? Access to Israel & Egypt has been completely cut off. Israeli Officials brag how Food, Water, Fuel, & Electricity supplies to Gaza have been shut off. Some News Correspondents mention Israel's clear violation of Human Rights & The Geneva Convention, but most News Reports focus on the Israeli perspective.

Volodomyr Zelenskyy is blaming Vladimir Putin for the War in Gaza; America's focus on Israel means less focus on Ukraine. The Pentagon has a limited surplus of weapons & ammunition. Zelenskyy understands Ukraine's place in the pecking order, so he's probably uneasy. The Geopolitics behind this Event are interesting. GOP Presidential Hopefuls, Sen. Lindsey Graham & Former Ambassador/ Governor Nikki Haley have blamed Iran for financing Hamas (through Hezbollah), & both called for an American attack on Iran. History shows that Israel supported Iran 40Yrs ago. They supplied the Ayatollah Khomeini w/ weapons in his War w/ Iraq. When Iran financed Hezbollah in 1983, leading to attacks on Israeli Occupations & U.S. Marines barracks (in Lebanon), Israel continued to supply Iran.

The U.S. has a Memorandum Of Understanding w/ Israel that promises $3.8B in Annual Military Aid. On top of this, Joe Biden has pledged full support to Israel, & has dispatched the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Gerald Ford w/ a Battleship compliment. No one knows what 'support' Biden intends to give, but his Pro- Israel stance ignores the Palestinian view. Nearly 80Yrs ago, roughly 60% of Palestine was seized & renamed 'Israel' by The British Government (via The U.N.). The Palestinians @ that time, explained that They ARE the Israelites! They are the descendants of those who 'accepted Al Islam' centuries ago. Nearly 60Yrs ago, Yasser Arafat formed The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to fight for the Palestinian Right of Expression on their Own land.

30Yrs ago, Yasser Arafat & Yitzhak Rabin agreed on a 2 State solution, but Israeli Leaders following Rabin have failed to go any further w/ the Oslo Accords. The political rise of Hamas, & their refusal to recognize The State of Israel has been blamed for the breakdown of negotiations. Meanwhile, Palestinians, Black Jews, Hebrew Israelites, & Muslims have all experienced an increase in Ethnic Bias/ Discrimination. Anyone that insinuates Ethnic Bias or Racism in Israel is either treated like a leper, or silenced; but Palestinians have been dealing w/ this Ethnic Bias for nearly 130Yrs.

Israel's problem w/ Gaza, is numbers. While the Israeli population is moderately young, the Palestinian population of Gaza has a Median Age of 19Yrs; half the population is under 18Yrs. This may explain Israel's aggressive stance towards Palestinians. Israel's 'gestapo tactics' run the risk of radicalizing a new generation of Palestinians. Not the best move to make, if Hamas is getting more sophisticated w/ their planning & methods of attack. Whenever Israel goes on the offensive, I always have to look @ their move in respect to 'Greater Israel'. This is Israel's vision for expansion. The Maps that I saw show Israel expanding into Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, & Iraq... I can't help thinking about The Book of Revelations & that 'Battle on the Hill of Megiddo'.

From an Indigenous Black American perspective, Gaza is Must See TV! Israeli UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan made a comment a few years ago, that Black American Men were the greatest threat to Israel(???) American Police Departments, large & small are invited to visit Israel (All expenses paid), to learn the tactics they use on Palestinians. The Israelis learned from American Police tactics on Black Americans, so it appears that they are sharing Tools of Oppression. By the same token, as Malcolm X vocally supported the Palestinian Right Of Expression; Palestinians return the gesture, by teaching Black American Protestors how to handle tear gas & other 'Urban' Police tactics.

The United States & Israel are tethered to each other. European Jews use Hollywood to present specific images & narratives globally. Among the images are: 'America', The Great Society & 'Israel', The Holy Land. Both nations are White Supremacist Republics, so the goals are: Marginalization of the Indigenous People & Appropriation of the natural resources. Israel is practicing the American Model of 'Jim Crow' Anti- Black Racism, much like the Nazis & South Afrikan Boers practiced. America appears to be copying Israel's Urban Assault Tactics. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cop City Development outside of Atlanta, Ga. is the result of those Police junkets to Israel.

The Civil Rights & Black Power Movements inspired Black & Brown People globally. Our current fight against Police Violence & for (lineage based) Reparations is already having a similar effect. That being said, Palestinians live in an environment that can change forever- in a heartbeat. I don't think that they need to draw inspiration from Us, but it's clear that We are in solidarity w/ each other. Mainstream Media is mourning the dead babies in Southern Israel & uttering curses @ Hamas, but they have been silent for years about the dead babies in Gaza. The Zionists are quick to voice their Right to Retaliate, but are silent when asked if Palestinians have the same Right of Retaliation... It's No Fun when the Rabbit has the Gun.

[dragoneyes613]

On May 6, Ben, a Jewish New Yorker who was raised Orthodox, counter-protested a pro-Palestinian rally that was part of the “Citywide Day of Rage for Gaza,” outside of CUNY Hunter College on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The “Day of Rage” coincided with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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The event was promoted by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an anti-Zionist organization spearheaded by Nerdeen Kiswani, a 2022 CUNY law commencement speaker who was caught on video telling a man, while she was holding a lit lighter, that she wanted to light his IDF sweatshirt on fire.

WOL announced the “Day of Rage” rally with an incendiary image of someone covered in a keffiyeh holding a fiery torch, which student groups, Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) and CUNY for Palestine, posted onto their social media. Ben, who said he’d prefer to use only his first name, told The Jewish Press, “This was an angry mob and Within Our Lifetime was inciting a riot with obvious warlike imagery.”

He asked, “Inciting a riot – is that a crime anymore?”

Three months ago, The New York Jewish Week reported that a spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, told them that WOL accounts has been removed for violating its “Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy.”

Ben said a high percentage of the protestors “seemed to be Arab,” and that he believed “a lot of them were definitely not Hunter students…they were much older.”

He was aware of a police presence, and didn’t see violent eruptions at that time.

To counter the pro-Palestinian slogans, Ben chanted back, “Down with Hamas! Victory for Israel!”

Ben said the protestors marched out of Hunter and around the Upper East Side in “a snaky path…probably trying to avoid the police.” He believes they could have been heading towards the Met Gala, where The New York Post reported over 1,000 protestors were being blocked by police. Ben explained, “They got filmed by half the city beating and harassing people, blocking traffic and swarming the Met Gala.”

As Ben followed them along Madison Ave. up toward 86th street, he described the crowd as “all over the place…arguing with people… exchanging insults with pro-Israel people.”

In a video posted on X, two masked men harassed a man with a dog in the street, and one of them threatened to slap the woman he was with.

Ben said a middle aged woman yelled “Heil Hitler!” at him, and a girl whose face was covered in a hijab shouted, “Hitler would burn you all!”

Ben relayed how he “let passion take over. I took out my Israeli flag. I just started shouting, “Nazis, out of the East Side! Nazis, out of the East Side!’” He said he called them Nazis because the “Day of Rage” was on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the protestors reminded him of “the pro-Nazi German American Bund that used to march on the Upper East Side back in the 30s.”

Jewish World War I veterans and gangsters like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel took to the streets to battle them, believing it was their civic duty to fight back.

On 74th and Park Ave., Ben said there were no police in sight and he was assaulted – punched in the body and face, and kicked multiple times by different assailants. When one of them snatched his sudra decorated with the Star of David off his head, he dove into the violent crowd and retrieved it, waving it triumphantly. “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of taking away my symbol,” he explained.

Someone threw a stone at Ben, injuring his right peck. A few people chased him down the street afterwards, but Ben said he walked and didn’t run because he “didn’t want to look like a coward.” Ben noticed that the glasses he was wearing weren’t even broken.

The Jewish Press has confirmed Ben’s account via the video that has been posted on social media.

Ben said that only after he viewed the video online did he see two New York intelligence offices restraining protestors who shoved and cursed at them on 74th street between Lexington and Park avenues.

Ben lost his beloved Chai necklace, which he believes someone could have grabbed off of his neck. He commented, “My uncle who gave who gave me that necklace would be proud that I lost it doing that.”

You can see the video here: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1787671509051298154?s=46.

[cogitoergofun]

On the morning of October 7, over 2,000 Hamas terrorists marched into Israeli towns and kibbutzim in the south of Israel, entered the houses, killed their inhabitants, burned the houses of those who were hiding in safe spaces, and kidnapped over 230 Israelis, including babies, children, old people, and women. Many of those who were killed, burned, and kidnapped were left-wing peace activists: three volunteers who used to drive Gazan patients to Israeli hospitals, one of the founders of Women Wage Peace (which calls itself “the largest grassroots peace movement in Israel”), relatives of leading human rights organizations in Israel who fight against occupation and injustice, and many more.

In fact, the population of the now-destroyed kibbutzim near the border with Gaza included perhaps the most left-leaning communities in Israel, despite suffering for years from rocket fire, burning fields, and terrorists’ infiltration.

Today, when these communities keep burying their dead and look into an uncertain future for themselves and their children, they also have to deal with many other issues. There is the blame game being played by right-wing supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have tried to deflect from his obvious responsibility for this catastrophe. There is the feeling of loneliness in light of the global left’s support of Hamas. And finally, there is the question of the future of the left wing in Israel during and after the war.

A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown.

As I write these words, Netanyahu still hasn’t directly assumed any responsibility for the unbelievable failure of his policies of “divide and rule” vis-à-vis the Palestinians: appeasing Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. In fact, soon after the shocking discoveries of the mass murder in the south during the first few days, the political games in the prime minister’s office resumed as usual. He blamed the IDF and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and insisted that he was never informed of the upcoming attack. At the same time, his multiple supporters started blaming the left for the disaster, mentioning the Oslo peace accords with Palestinians, the unilateral disengagement from Gaza of 2005 (that was actually executed by then–Likud chairman Ariel Sharon and supported by Netanyahu, then a minister in his Cabinet). It’s known that in Netanyahu’s world, everyone who doesn’t align with him automatically becomes “left.”

Nowadays the right-wing goons are not shy about shouting at the relatives of kidnapped Israelis who demand their loved ones’ return and wish that they also will be kidnapped by Hamas. A friend from the south told me that she wasn’t surprised—Netanyahu would not be Netanyahu if he stopped messing with politics even for a second—but still felt betrayed and hurt.

As a matter of fact, it was the left in Israel, as well as some politicians from the center, who repeatedly warned the public of Netanyahu’s warm embrace of Hamas and the free hand that he gave to settlers in the West Bank. In retrospect, the endless warnings and admonitions of Israeli human rights organizations and of left-wing politicians and journalists about the damage done by Netanyahu’s policies toward the Palestinians seem almost a prophecy.

After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israeli politics moved to the right and the left-wing Labor Party lost power for many years to come. It is tempting to think that following the war in Gaza, the political map will bounce back, at least to the center. Yet given the strength of the right wing today and the national trauma of October 7, it’s difficult to see it happening now. Inevitably there will be significant changes in the political map, but it’s unclear whether the left will be able to reinvent itself and regroup in order to have a stake in power.

The liberals’ betrayal

Just recently, when Israel was consumed by its internal rift caused by the so-called “judicial reform” and many thousands of Israelis rallied for their democracy in central squares of their towns, the Mitvim Institute, a progressive Israeli think tank, published a document calling for cooperation with liberals in the European Union and the United States in order to prevent democratic backsliding.

At that moment, it seemed that the shared concern for the future of democracy should bolster this alliance between the left and the center in Israel and the liberals in the West.

But the overall muted reaction to Hamas’s atrocities against Israeli citizens in the ranks of the liberal left and what is perceived in Israel as blind support on campus of a terrorist organization that kills both Israelis and Palestinians had a chilling effect. “We have realized that the Israeli left isn’t part of the international left, and vice versa,” Lilach Wolach wrote this week in Haaretz, in her op-ed titled “All I want to say to the international left is go to hell.”

The left in Israel was never shy about criticizing the policies of Netanyahu’s consecutive governments. In fact, we are the ones who told him repeatedly that his conceptions on Gaza as well as the West Bank were deeply flawed and warned of a great danger to Israel if the Palestinian issue were not resolved.

But at the same time, Israelis who believe in peace and in a two-state solution know that Hamas is a hard-core Islamist terrorist organization that seeks full destruction of Israel, not negotiations or compromise in any form. Hamas terrorists killed both Jews and Arabs, tortured civilians, chased children who hid under their beds. Shouldn’t it have been enough to sharply condemn Hamas without providing ridiculous justifications for this ISIS-like sadism and cruelty?

In the past, during the Oslo Accords, it was Hamas that worked hard to derail the peace process, bombing civilians in Israel on buses and in markets while the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority were struggling with implementation of Oslo. While too many liberals in the West see in Hamas “freedom fighters,” every Israeli sees in it a manifestation of a jihadi version of Islam and a long-term Iranian plan to destroy Israel. And it’s impossible for us to understand how people who deeply care for human rights suddenly became Hamas apologists.

These are not easy days for any Israelis, and especially for those on the left who believe and work for peace with our Palestinian and Arab neighbors. Our ideology and values have not changed, and we still believe that it’s essential to talk to the moderates and achieve a historical compromise with them. At the same time, we also know that this cannot be achieved with Hamas in the picture, and that the bloodthirsty terrorists who called their relatives to share their joy of the killing spree want to live here instead of us, not next to us. Any attempt to explain and gain support for this nuanced position in a black-and-white world of today, both in Israel and abroad, is excruciating.

[zyx204]

Is Netanyahu's Career Over?

This article discussed Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and if his political career is done for. This question is raised due to the recent escalation in tensions following the attack from Hamas. The article states that when looking at history, the last time Israeli intelligence failed to this degree with so many casualties was almost 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on Yom Kippur. This then leads me to my question. With this massive failure, is Netanyahu’s career over? I believe he can still recover from this if he plays his cards correctly. He is going to have to try to connect with central ideas in order to bring conservatives and liberals together to rally around this cause. Similar to how the Bush administration succeeded immediately after 9/11.   

[wandering-jew-has-arrived]

Maybe if Muslims stopped attacking Israel on Jewish holy days, Israel would stop responding in kind.

Ramadan is coming up and I can’t stress enough how much Palestinians have never got the chance to experience one normal Ramadan for 75years

You may not have been subjected to this, but as a person from an Arabic country, every Ramadan from every year there’s always headlines of Israeli iof soldiers or Israeli extremist settlers attacking Palestinians during Ramadan, especially Palestinian worshipers trying to pray in the al aqsa mosque

It’s happens almost every single year

Ramadan is suppoused to be Muslim people’s month of worship, of Baraka and it is very important to Muslim people

But Palestinians never ever experienced a normal Ramadan because Israel attacks them Viciously

Almost

Every

Single

Fucking

Year

And I will dare and say that Israel does it on purpose, it does it every Ramadan on purpose

And now, this year, with Ramadan being only a few weeks away, I doubt that they’ll have a normal Ramadan, not in the West Bank, and not in Gaza

All what I have to say here is that Israel will still follow this trend, something bad is gonna happen this Ramadan, keep an eye on Palestine during Ramadan

[holofirastory]

Netanyahu berkata kecaman UK-Perancis-Kanada beri 'hadiah besar' kepada Hamas

Perdana Menteri Israel Benjamin Netanyahu bercakap semasa upacara tahunan menjelang Hari Peringatan Israel untuk tentera yang terkorban (Yom HaZikaron) di Memorial Yad LaBanim di Jerusalem, pada 29 April 2025. (AFP/Fail) JERUSALEM – Perdana Menteri Israel Benjamin Netanyahu pada Isnin membalas kecaman terhadap serangan tentera negaranya di Gaza oleh pemimpin Perancis, Kanada dan Britain dengan…

[cavenewstimestoday]

Netanyahu's campaign against Iran's nuclear program is muted with Trump in power

World 1 / 5 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the annual ceremony at the eve of Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers (Yom HaZikaron) at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP) FILE – President Donald Trump listens as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in the East Room of…

[mariacallous]

Something strange is going on with Israel, writes Elie Barnavi, a former Israeli ambassador to France and a prominent historian and writer, in his autobiography Confessions d’un bon à rien: In less than a century his country “has gone through the entire sequence of European wars, but in reverse order.” 

Barnavi’s book (which has not been translated into English) was published in 2022. He could not have known at the time that a furious war between Israel and Hamas would erupt in late 2023. Even so, his analysis of Israel getting involved in Europeans wars “but in reverse order” is perfectly applicable to the war now raging in Gaza. To be sure, his vision is pitch dark: Israel’s wars are getting worse, in Barnavi’s view. Therefore, the potential for further escalation of the Gaza war in the wider region is considerable. 

What exactly does it mean to have European wars in reverse order? In Europe, religious wars raged on for most of the 16th and 17th centuries, fought between Catholics and protestants and their regional, princely or city-state backers. The situation only changed after the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, a double peace treaty that put an end to both the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. From then on, states became the predominant actors in international politics. They certainly fought terrible wars, but also managed to contain and prevent them through peace conferences—the Concert of Vienna (1814-15) for example—where European powers guaranteed non-interference in each other’s spheres of influence. Finally, interstate wars in Europe stopped altogether after the Second World War, at least among member states of what has become the European Union. 

Israel, Barnavi argues, took the opposite trajectory. Israel’s wars began as battles between states: the Jewish state against neighboring Arab states, involving one national army fighting another. This interstate warfare ended with the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After that, Israel no longer fought large-scale wars against other states and instead mainly fought Palestinian guerrillas. Even in that new phase, however, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained a conflict between two nations, two national movements, over the same piece of land. Because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, this struggle—which is raging still today—took on a colonial dimension.  

Beyond that, crucially, the war has changed in character. On both sides, politics and society are now deeply divided. Both in Israel and Palestine, the main internal division is between those who are secular and those who are religiously motivated. On both sides, the religious camp seems to be getting the upper hand. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Politico wrote recently, is “losing control” of his government because his far-right, religious coalition partners are uncompromising and pushing their way. For instance, the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir—who both live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank—have publicly called for “migration” of Palestinians from Gaza and building new Israeli settlements there, and have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “Nazis.” Despite U.S. pressure, they have also refused to transfer tax revenues that Israel routinely collects for the Palestinian Authority to the government in Ramallah, Palestine’s de facto administrative capital. Netanyahu obviously no longer controls his own ministers. His religious coalition partners know he will not fire them. If he does, the government would fall and the prime minister, who faces charges on three cases of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, would lose the immunity that currently keeps him out of reach of the judiciary. 

On the Palestinian side, things are no better. For many Palestinians, 88-year old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has lost all credibility. Under his 19-year tenure, the Palestinian cause and the fight against the Israeli occupation have largely disappeared from the international agenda. Hamas puts them back on that agenda. A December 2023 poll showed that Hamas’s popularity was actually growing—even among secular Palestinians who normally do not support Hamas and condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres. This result should be seen as a sign of utter political despair; they have lost hope that less extremist leaders can achieve a just peace with Israel. 

In this way, what used to be a national conflict is increasingly turning into a religious conflict. Barnavi, who has studied Europe’s religious wars extensively as a scholar, writes: “The growing power of fundamentalists on both sides drags us back to the pre-modern, pre-Westphalian era—to the religious wars in Europe of the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century.” 

This is bad news. Europe’s wars of religion were terrible. Everybody was fighting everybody, and there was no restraint in warfare. The French 16th-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne lived through them and wrote about them in his Essays. These wars led him to develop his theory of political governance and change through “petits pas” (little steps) instead of revolutionary, sweeping movements, so as to contain extremism and bloodshed. If religious lunatics have their way, he noted, compromises are no longer possible.  

Barnavi, without mentioning Montaigne, seems to come to the same conclusion. Two countries can negotiate a deal, he argues in his memoirs, with both settling for less than they originally demanded, using rational considerations. But two camps that deeply believe God has given them the land are incapable of doing this, because it requires them to renege on the fundament on which their faith and identity are based. 

The question whether Israel and the Palestinians can get their stranded peace process back on track thus depends less and less on negotiations between both sides—which was the case 30 years ago, resulting in the Oslo peace accords—and more and more on the struggle within the two camps between secular and religious parties. The more intense these internal power struggles become, the less likely the peace process can be put into motion again. This means, of course, that it also becomes more likely that the conflict will be settled militarily.  

European religious wars were eventually stopped because of the emergence of the modern, relatively secular state capable of compromise; its claims of the raison d’état eventually prevailed. The religious war in the Middle East, by contrast, is currently intensifying because the state (or the national movement, on the Palestinian side, which also used to be secular in character) is becoming weaker. 

If both sides are unable to broker a compromise, someone else needs to make sure things don’t spiral out of control, with Israel’s neighbors and other regional powers, including Iran (which is a theocracy itself), getting more directly involved. One can only hope that intensive diplomatic efforts, mainly by the United States and some Gulf states, behind the screens will eventually bear fruit. But thanks to books such as Barnavi’s, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Compromise is now harder than ever.

[culturadealgibeira]

Israel-Palestina: Golda Meir e a Guerra do Yom Kippur, um paralelo com Benjamin Netanyahu

Podes ler o artigo completo e na sua língua nativa no link do seu autor original: https://www.lexpress.fr/podcasts/laloupe/israel-palestine-golda-meir-et-la-guerre-du-kippour-un-parallele-avec-benyamin-netanyahou-QDZVLTT47VHIDDJT6UIXAZ5HRU/ Desde meados do século 20, figuras importantes mudaram o israelo-palestiniano conflito. Esta semana, La Loupe pinta o seu retrato com Frédéric Encel,…

[infosisraelnews]

A Jérusalem, les évaluations sont en cours pour la réaction attendue d'Israël en Iran

Quelques heures avant le début du jeûne de Yom Kippour, le cabinet s’est réuni pour discuter pendant 4 heures, entre autres, de la question de la réaction attendue d’Israël en Iran. Les ministres présents à la réunion ont reçu des avis des forces de sécurité, mais aucune décision n’a été prise lors de cette réunion nocturne. Le Premier ministre Benjamin Netanyahu et le ministre de la Défense Yoav…