A few weeks ago, I was walking to shul with Adi, Natalia and Liam, and from the corner of my eye I noticed the same lawn sign that I’ve seen countless times. You know the one, “In this house, we believe…” and then it lists a slew of causes that it wants us to all agree with. But ask any proud Jew the last few years, and we would tell you, “where are we in that list of marginalized communities and statements?”
As I’ve discussed many times before (E.g. https://jewishjournal.com/…/336832/who-will-speak-for-us/), sure I believe in feminism, sure black lives are important to my family, sure LGBTQ+ rights are of concern, and the list goes on; but the groups that use those slogans are overwhelmingly the same ones that have been chanting for Israel’s demise, and ignore the safety of my religion. (BLM is a gross example of an organization that literally had chapters making posters celebrating the atrocities of October 7). I cannot support any organization that hates my people, (or is ok with us “as long as we aren’t Zionists”) even if I would otherwise support the cause. I would also like people to care about my own rights as a Jew, and my own rights to self-determination with a Jewish country – especially when that country is surrounded by much larger Muslim countries that at best tolerate them, and at worst wish and attempt genocide upon them.
This is why I was so excited to notice a difference in this particular sign. It was on the front lawn of Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, and when I looked closer, it actually represented us! This one included the following two lines among the others:
- “Antisemitism is Racism”
- “Zionism is Self-Determination”
I got in touch with Rabbi Artson, found the wonderful nonprofit that creates it (Artists 4 Israel), and we now have it up on our lawn, photographed here, and I’ll provide more info about the organization in my “Spotlight” section later on. But let’s try to “take back” those signs with these much better ones!
Time to present my latest week of “Chosen Links by Boaz”. Please, if you are intimidated by the sheer number of things I find, realize you do NOT have to read and watch them all. The point is to give you a resource so you don’t need to wade through the din of flawed info out there. Read my post itself; I give short intros of commentary about each link. That alone should prove helpful, and from there you can decide which ones you have the time and energy to read, watch or even skim.
Without further ado…
ARTICLES/THREADS:
1. A good op-ed in The Jerusalem Post describing just how effective Hamas has been at becoming popular around the world; even more than the Nazis ever achieved. “It is particularly effective on university campuses, where the student targets lack intellectual maturity, experience, and depth of knowledge.” Richard Kemp explains:
https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-779122
2. “Iran’s decision not to involve Hezbollah on Oct. 7 has given Israel the opportunity to reorganize its forces and prepare for the multi-front war that awaits us.” Caroline Glick gives a detailed analysis at the doctrines over the decades that led to where Israel is today. Included in this is Israel’s reliance on America. It is imperative they don’t just get out of the war as the world pushes, but actually destroys Hamas:
https://carolineglick.com/rising-from-the-ruins-of-a…/
3a. Sarah Tuttle-Singer is someone great to follow. She is previously from LA, liberal, with a deep love for Israel, and she uses her talent of writing to express her feelings on life over there on a daily basis. Posts like this are necessary to have the finger on the pulse of so many who live there, and are discontent with the right-wing government. Oh yeah, she’s also extremely witty:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C07YZHEtdwy/
3b. Check out this older post from her about how she might be light skinned, but she certainly isn’t “white”; none of us Jews are:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-am-a-light-skinned-jew…/
4. Oh, snap! President Isaac Herzog claps back at the UN with some sharp, and IMO well deserved words:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/…/herzog-three-times-as…/
5. Sharp thread supposedly from an Arab blogger, about all of the things they are shocked to learn that Gaza is given that is BETTER than the rest of the Muslim world. Interesting, though it would help if I knew more about this person:
https://twitter.com/Osint613/status/1739068328285454441
6. Karen Pollock writes a great piece for The Guardian about how anything at all that’s written not even about Israel, but just merely about Jews, or honoring the survivors or the Holocaust, is immediately given the most antisemitic responses she’s ever seen. A sad but important piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/…/antisemitism-holocaust…
7. Hillel Fuld goes on a rant against the hypocrisy of those protesting against Israel:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1Q8GaQN1cz/
8. I don’t know who put this together, but these are a slideshow of Israeli hostages who were released, with their quotes highlighting some of the horror show that they survived:
https://docsend.com/view/kn78sscmprkfenga
9. Yair Lapid with a harsh comparison of Bibi to Neville Chamberlain, saying he needs to step down immediately. “Netanyahu has become the Israeli Chamberlain,” he said. “We need our Churchill.”:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lapid-if-october-7-had…/
10. Shaun King has been removed from Instagram, after consistently lying about many things over the years; even claiming he helped release hostages from Hamas:
https://nypost.com/…/blm-activist-shaun-kings…/
11. Lt Colonel Richard Hecht giving in-depth explanations of what they are finding north at the Indonesian hospital.
https://idfspokesperson.substack.com/p/its-not-just-shifa
12. A call was recorded by a civilian in Gaza, where he complains that the UNRWA are working hand in hand with Hamas. “The situation is terrible because the humanitarian people, those responsible for the humanitarian aid, are thieves,” the frustrated Gaza resident said in the recording.:
https://nypost.com/…/hamas-in-control-of-unrwa-aid…/
13. A beautiful story about Noor, an Arab Israeli Druze restaurant in Northern Israel, that went through the process of becoming kosher to help show their support to the IDF:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-779574
14. The star of My Unorthodox Life is another celebrity to visit Israel recently. This article explains what Julia Haart is seeing on her tour, including visiting communities full of Jews, Muslims and Christians, as well as women and LGBTQ+ people, all banding together in their love for the country:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-779493
15. An amazing article, where French Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois takes his decades of Holocaust research, and analyzes what he sees happening today. He’s particularly annoyed by the recent claims that Jesus was a Palestinian, and Israel would attack him today. “If he had lived in 1942, Jesus would have been deported to Auschwitz, and if he had been born today, he would be the target of missiles or be a hostage in Gaza,” not a long read but a worthwhile one:
https://www.algemeiner.com/…/jesus-would-be-hostage…/
16. This is a great thread written by Dr. Einat Wilf, who’s written a book called “The War of Return”. She analyzes the nomenclature of calling millions of Palestinians refugees, and breaks down why that is a complete misnomer, perpetuated in large part by the UNRWA:
https://x.com/EinatWilf/status/1719719168172237295
17. Many in Egypt still hate Israel, but they have accepted the reality that it will exist. This is the difference this thread gets into – how the Palestinians just refuse to accept the reality since 1948:
https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1739906684795924721
18a. Fern Reiss tells the story of a family of Israeli hostages who were held together, and given some “friendly” advice from their kidnappers that’s quite telling:
https://fernmusing.substack.com/…/war-day-82-more…
18b. “For contrast, there were 900,000 Jews who fled and were expelled from Muslim countries since 1948. There is no UN organization responsible for their refugee status, nor were they supported by UNRWA now or at any point.” Fern does my favorite type of journalism here, giving links for each fact she states along the way. This one is about the crucial topic of the UN and UNRWA:
https://fernmusing.substack.com/…/war-day-83-does-unwra…
19. Former head of the Mossad’s Economic Warfare Division, Dr. Udi Levy, explains just how crucial stopping the money to Hamas is. Fighting them physically is important, but as long as they have tons of money coming in, something that Israel itself was facilitating for years, they will continue to be dangerous. “He reveals that substantial funds are still accessible to the group in Turkish banks and that humanitarian aid intended for Gaza is being diverted to the organization.”:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-779675
20. A reminder of one of the countless biased actions by the UN against Israel. Remember Resolution 1701 about Israel and Lebanon in 2006? Here’s a reminder of what it was, and where the position it puts Israel in today:
https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1739824868630147269
21. “My experience as an Israeli-Arab (some would call it Palestinian), is that we’re being taught to hate Israel from young age. This is fueled by three factors:
1-Ignorance, 2-Obsession, 3-Antisemitism.” I found this short thread by political activist Ali Adi illuminating:
https://twitter.com/AliAdiOK/status/1739909692946567633
22. Investigative Journalist David Collier does a truly impressive job of showing how the BBC frequently ignores any and all context, when it reports on Israel. “There is Israel that traps innocent Palestinians and kills journalists deliberately – there is Hamas who ‘the UK considers to be a terrorist organisation’ – and then all these poor Palestinians being killed by Israel in the middle.” He then researches a recent story of people killed in Gaza, and actually provides context with evidence, something that was never even attempted by the BBC:
https://david-collier.com/bbc-news-missing-context/
23. They say no press is bad press, so congratulations Hamas Senior Leader Ismail Haniyeh, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and supermodel Gigi Hadid, you’re the finalists for this prestigious award! I hope they get Billy Crystal to come out of retirement to host the ceremony:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-779774
24. Remember the tragedy in China about the Uyghur Muslims? Most of the organizations that love to denounce Israel frequently, including the UN certainly don’t seem to, as they rarely bring it up much if at all:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1aSpKOP4um/
25a. There’s no such thing as a “less awful” rape. The very word oozes a visceral reaction from countless people around the globe, who have experienced the worst kind of theft – where one was stripped of their sense of self, personal safety, self-worth, and autonomy. Many never recover from such a thing, never fully trust again, never can enjoy or experience the act of sexual pleasure the same way if at all, nor intimacy. It is not surprising that Judaism punishes the act as severely as murder. But yet, the way these October 7 rapes were performed against Israeli women and children, went to an even more barbaric and heinous level.
Thank you to the The New York Times for covering this brutal story that the world needs to know. Most of humanity that speaks up about sex crimes has remained silent, or woefully inadequate on the matter. The article itself has a paywall so I will share excerpts of it here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1awPfeujyA/
25b. It’s important enough of an exposé that I’ll share it here, for those who can access it:
https://www.nytimes.com/…/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel…
26. This is the detailed investigation into the tragedy where the IDF mistakenly killed 3 Israeli hostages. Clearly there were many reasons to see why the soldiers would have thought it was a trap, and the deaths were a tragedy in the fog of war. However, even as such, Israel’s Chief of Staff concludes that this was and is unacceptable, and they need to do better. Not every country’s army has this much transparency:
27. “I, on my own behalf and that of many Africans, am coming to Israel to express my solidarity with the Jewish people of Israel, who suffered on Oct. 7 an assault that is almost exactly what happened to Africans in Sudan, has happened to African villages for centuries, and is happening now by Boko Haram in Nigeria and by jihadists in Darfur, Western Sudan.” That’s Simon Deng, a former Sudanese slave, who traveled to Israel to express his support to a country that he says was the only one to help his people in their time of need:
https://www.jns.org/…/former-african-slave-leads…/
28. Excellent piece by Rabbi Wolpe for The Harvard Crimson. “People hate Jews because they are communists, capitalists, foreigners, residents, immigrants, elitists, have strange ways, are unassimilated, too assimilated, bankroll the left (like George Soros) or bankroll the right (like Sheldon Adelson). ” If you ever want a relatively easy-to-follow, but intellectually honest tutorial on antisemitism, plus its overlap with antizionism, this would be a great one: https://www.thecrimson.com/…/2023/12/29/wolpe-hatred-jews/
29. Another great piece in the Harvard Crimson is written by student Eric Kalimi, a member of the paper’s Editorial Board. Among other things, he says that it’s pretty offensive how they cherry picked who would write these op-eds on antisemitism. And from what I can tell, only the two I’ve just shared are worthy of the topic. It’s as if they went out of their way to find people to disagree with the Jewish community’s consensus on antisemitism, as if it is a topic necessary for dissent.
Imagine if you asked for views on racism, would that necessitate asking for ones that include those who are pro-slavery? Some things don’t require a cross-section of objectively incorrect or offensive beliefs. And for the record, this student does include empathy toward the Palestinians, and a distinctive voice from his own beliefs, but at least they are within the reason of what most Jews are feeling today:
https://www.thecrimson.com/…/kalimi-mansell-jewish-grief/
30. This is right up my alley. An independent think tank analyzed many reports covering Israel, by the NY Times, Washington Post and CNN. It then provides piece-by-piece evidence and detail, how they were misreporting the facts. This includes the death toll numbers that I’ve often brought up, but also facts about the bombs being used, and many other things being incorrectly reported against Israel:
https://jcpa.org/…/a-coordinated-media-attack-on…/
31. This uses the case of hostage Mia Schem, and demonstrates how anti Israel propaganda completely changes the narrative of her reality. One thing I’ll correct though, is that he says her arm was “blown off”, but later corrects that it was shot and required surgery; she still has her arm thank goodness:
https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1740710454870311326
VIDEOS:
1. I read the transcript last week, but seeing this actually spoken, and aired in England for Christmas…. THANK YOU Stephen Fry:
https://x.com/RachelRileyRR/status/1739452765967908869
2. The farms close to the Gaza border account for almost half of the produce in Israel. This is where they were attacked and many Thai workers were killed and taken hostage. CNN does a good story, showing how most don’t want to work there anymore for safety reasons; and although people are volunteering to help, that will only last so long:
https://www.cnn.com/…/exp-israel-farm-workers-robertson…
3. Julia Haart, the star of My Unorthodox Life, visited Israel and met with this Arab Druze man in the IDF who talked to her about why he proudly joined: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1F0HV4uhv2/
4. This is kind of milk-toast news coverage of the Hamas tunnels, with a safe and boring lack of any stance. However, I share it because I’m glad NBC is at least covering it, and it’s good to see what the tunnels actually look like: https://www.nbcnews.com/…/nbc-news-gets-first-hand-look…
5. French tattoo artist Mia Schem was kidnapped from the music festival, and gave an interview about her experiences being held in Gaza by a so-called civilian family. Here is the full interview in Hebrew, highlights written out in English, and in the post just below there’s a summarized version of the video with English subtitles:
https://twitter.com/AdamAlbilya/status/1740822874506625060
6a. Yes CNN, your Spidey Senses are working; the timing of the so-called apology of Ye (who you so unwokely dead-name as Kanye West) is highly suspicious timing. The mentally-ill, genius rapper did not suddenly become less antisemitic overnight:
https://www.cnn.com/…/kanye-west-apology-jewish…
6b. Want a reminder of how Ye is both clearly mentally-ill, and prone to going on “I’m the victim in this Jew-controlling world” type rants? How about this wacky stream of consciousness by him just mid-December:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735689178141339880
7. Ashriel Moore, who describes himself as a “Proud Hebrew Israelite”, explains why Hamas trying to gain common ground with the Black community due to their skin color, flies in direct contrast to their atrocities against everyone, including the black men and women in Israel:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1XM-P2Ipyw/
8a. Piers Morgan has been a great voice throughout. He will certainly condemn what he dislikes on the Israel side; all the while he is unwavering in his support of Israel defending itself, and Hamas being an evil entity that needs to go. That may seem obvious to many of us, but if those two basic facts were true of all journalists, we would have exponentially less of a media bias against Israel. In this clip he interviews extremist group leader Wahid Asif Shaida, who is literally denying what Hamas proudly bragged about:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C06-1ewAt5X/
8b. Here is the full interview if you wish to have full context, as I generally do:
SPOTLIGHT:
This week’s celebrity/influencer I would like to spotlight is David Schwimmer. If you look at his posts from this year, he doesn’t post often. What’s happening in the world of Israel and antisemitism has clearly motivated him. Over the last 3 months, his last 5 posts on Instagram have been about:
-The horrific acts of October 7.
-Memorializing friend Matthew Perry.
-Decrying the shameful testimony of Harvard, MIT and UPenn.
-Promoting his work on PBS.
-Sharing the exposé by the NY Times about the horrific sexual violence.
Thank you Mr. Schwimmer for caring so much; follow him here:
https://www.instagram.com/_schwim_
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
1. A list of hundreds of businesses owned by reserve IDF soldiers; each could use financial and emotional support. These tens of thousands of reserves are men and women who had to leave their families and jobs, and the least we can do is try to ensure that they can pay the bills when they get back:
https://www.hanochdaum.com/tzav8biz
2. As previously mentioned, this is the organization that created the yard sign that we now have up proudly on our front lawn. As per my discussion with the nonprofit, “Artists 4 Israel prevents the spread of anti-Israel and antisemitic behavior into influential artistic subcultures, and helps heal communities affected by hate. In response to the conflict, we have been specifically focused on our Healing Arts Kits, an art therapy tool that slows or stops the onset of new cases of PTSD in Israel’s children. We are asking people to sponsor Kits and host a packing event in their community.”
For info about those Kits, to get the lawn sign, or more, see below:
https://www.artists4israel.org/
https://www.artists4israel.org/emergencyresources (Healing Art Kits)
https://www.artists4israel.org/boutique (Lawn signs + shirts)
ON A LIGHTER NOTE:
1. Eylon Levy plays into the classic scene from “Love, Actually”, and I totally dig it:
https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1738980787465142562
2. Brett Gelman does silly sketch comedy mocking the revisionist idea that Jesus was born in Israel thousands of years ago, so therefore he must not have been Jewish:
https://twitter.com/brettgelman/status/1739790532258197975
3. Westside Gravy, proud Black Jewish Israeli, sings about proudly wearing his “chain”, aka his Star of David:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1HoBTrt-cd/
4. Can never go wrong sharing Daniel-Ryan Spaulding. Recently he started a series of videos where he explains basic Israel facts to his favorite clueless foil, “Purple Hair Girl”. This one is all about the history of Jews and blood libels:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1163966311153076
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
I wrote an article this week! And I think it’s a damn good one, but that’s definitely media bias for you! Judge for yourself, and read my guide to how I recommend finding accurate info from inaccurate. You too should be able to KNOW YOUR SOURCES:
https://jewishjournal.com/…/366646/know-your-sources/
Boaz Hepner works as a Registered Nurse in Saint John’s Health Center, and provides health education to the community at large. He grew up in LA in Pico/Robertson and lives here with his wife Adi, daughter Natalia, and son Liam. He helped clean up the neighborhood by adding the dozens of trash cans that can still be seen from Roxbury to La Cienega. He can be found with his family enjoying his passions: his multitude of friends, movies, poker and traveling.
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