What do you do when a cause you deeply cherish betrays you?
What do you do when you spend a lifetime fighting for the Palestinian cause, and then, overnight, it becomes associated with the butchering, beheading, raping and mutilating of 1400 people, including infants, babies, women, rave dancers, families and the elderly?
How do you spin that?
You might try to deny and downplay, but with all the graphic and gruesome videos out there, that’s not easy. And as much as you’d love to erase the word Palestinian next to the word Hamas, you know the connection is a fact.
No, the only real option is to make so much noise that you drown out the horrible news about the mass murder of Jews.
That’s why immediately after October 7, we saw global protests against Israel and in support of Palestinians. This was before Israel launched its counterattacks. And naturally, when Israel did go after Hamas, the attacks against Jews have only accelerated. On streets around the world and across college campuses, Jew haters are now out in full force. The slaughtering of 1400 Jews is all but forgotten; now it’s all about Israel’s reaction to the massacres.
Whether it’s the media jumping to (falsely) blame Israel for the bombing of a Gaza hospital, or the global cries for a “ceasefire” before Israel has even entered Gaza to eliminate the terrorists and deter future attacks, the world is doing all it can to downplay the narrative of “Palestinians as butchers.”
The world’s most popular victims, after all, cannot be allowed to be butchers.
For half a century, Palestinians have managed to charm the global elite with the seductive narrative of glorious, helpless victimhood. In a world that worships the oppressed, especially when they’re not white or western, Palestinians became the forever oppressed.
The influential Palestinian scholar-activist Edward Said’s 1978 book, “Orientalism,” which portrayed the West’s view of the East as demeaning and ignorant, helped shape and popularize the Palestinian narrative. As a revisionist movement began to associate the West strictly with the sins of colonialism, imperialism, racism and capitalist abuse, Palestinians became the Swiss army knife of causes for the virtue signaling set. Accurate or not, they had it all.
Amazingly, Palestinians have managed to hold on to their elite victim status despite decades of terror attacks against Israel. No matter how many Jews they killed, victimhood has defined them. You could have millions of genocide victims somewhere in Africa, or millions of oppressed slaves in China, or millions of refugees in Syria– no group of victims has been able to dislodge the Palestinians from the top of the victim food chain.
Of course, the Palestinians have always had an ace in the hole: the Jews. As long as their enemy was Jewish, Palestinians knew they would continue to have the world’s undivided attention. Have you noticed that we rarely hear about those millions of other Palestinians who live in much worse conditions in Jordan and Lebanon? Why should we? There are no Jews involved.
The world’s oldest hatred, in short, has fueled the remarkable run of the world’s most coddled victims.
October 7 introduced 1400 complications.
Suddenly, for one gruesome day, Jews were the oppressed and Palestinians were the oppressors. This was no garden variety Palestinian attack where a few Jews get killed, or a few hundred Hamas rockets are neutralized by Iron Dome and bomb shelters. We’ve gotten used to those. No, this was the mass slaughter of Jews by Palestinians in the most barbaric way possible. This was evil in concentrated form.
Put it this way: In Israel, when one Jew dies from a terror attack, the whole nation mourns that one life.
Now go to October 7 and do the math.
October 7 has become the biggest wake-up call in modern Jewish history because the level of horror reached unimaginable proportions. It’s the worse of the worse of the worse. It’s impossible to find words in the English dictionary that would go too far to describe the horrors.
That’s why I’ve seen Jews from the left who usually instinctively take the Palestinian side go eerily quiet. Like many of us, they’re numb. They’re dizzy. They’re disgusted. As a friend says, it’s Jewish primordial rage.
Fox News war correspondent Trey Yingst was so repulsed by a video of the bloodbath he couldn’t share details with the audience.
The furious backlash we’ve seen against university presidents, Hollywood celebrities, politicians and many others, including Jews, who have failed to unequivocally condemn the atrocities of October 7, or, worse, joined the anti-Israel brigades, is due precisely to the unspeakable nature of the atrocities.
How could any human being not condemn the ghoulish, intentional slaughtering of 1400 human beings? The need to even ask that question is why so many Jews these days have such a short fuse.
Indeed, October 7 was so horrific it threatened to ambush the Palestinian cause itself. These activists are not stupid. They’ve seen the videos. They know what happened. Because the savagery was done in the name of Palestinians, they saw the danger that their cherished cause could be forever contaminated.
So what did they do to save the world’s most popular victims? They did what people have done for centuries: They changed the subject and blamed the Jews. That always works.
Creative Artists Agency’s (CAA) Maha Dakhil is stepping down from the agency’s internal board after she accused Israel of “genocide” in a couple of since-deleted social media posts.
Dakhil, whose clients include Tom Cruise, Natalie Portman Olivia Wilde, and Reese Witherspoon, shared a post on Instagram from a “Free Palestine” account stating, “You’re currently learning who supports genocide.” Dakhil shared another post stating, “What’s more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.”
She issued an apology on Thursday, telling Variety that her posts were a “mistake” and used “hurtful language.” “Like so many of us, I have been reeling with heartbreak. I pride myself on being on the side of humanity and peace,” the agent said. “I’m so grateful to Jewish friends and colleagues who pointed out the implications and further educated me. I immediately took the repost down. I’m sorry for the pain I have caused.”
According to The Wrap, Dakhil is stepping down from CAA’s internal Agency Board as well as from her position as one of the leaders of Motion Pictures. She will, however, continue to represent her clients. Deadline reported that “an internal note” from CAA confirmed the changes.
Variety reported that “some CAA employees and dozens of industry colleagues were offended and saddened by the posts, which they found to be antisemitic. Others were shocked that a prominent dealmaker would wade into such a painful and incendiary issue in a public way.” The outlet also noted that no one in the agency issued a formal complaint against her over the posts. The agency, per The Wrap, has opted to show “forgiveness and a belief in redemption and personal growth.”
Hamas’s massacre of 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 has catapulted the alleged state-sponsor of terrorism Qatar and its ownership of the Maybourne hotel in Beverly Hills into the spotlight for the oil-rich nation’s role in financing the jihadi terror movement that rules over the Gaza Strip.
The Jewish Journal obtained an October 13 letter authored by Rabbi Pini Dunner, from the Beverly Hills Synagogue, to members of the Beverly Hills City Council outlining the need to not ignore Qatar’s history and ownership in Beverly Hills.
“I am writing to express my profound concerns about the ownership and possible terrorist connections of The Maybourne Hotel in Beverly Hills,” Dunner wrote. “The Maybourne Hotel is owned by the royal family of Qatar, who are on record making overtly anti-Semitic statements. Just to be clear: overtly antisemitic, namely against Jews, not against Israel – although clearly, this amounts to the same thing.”
He added, “It is a fact that Qatar financially supports Hamas. Nothing happens in Qatar without the consent of the Royal family. The recent horrifying Hamas terrorist atrocity in Israel, which resulted in the death of over 1,000 innocent lives and the abduction of 150 Israelis into Gaza, further exacerbates the gravity of this connection.”
Beverly Hills City Councilmember John A. Mirisch, a former mayor of the city, was the first politician to slam Maybourne owner Hamad bin Jassim’s antisemitism, who is known by his initials HBJ, in an August Jewish Journal investigative report. Mirisch urged a City Council investigation into HBJ’s antisemitism.
Mirisch told the Journal on Monday. “I’m grateful to Rabbi Dunner for raising the issue and letting his congregation and the Beverly Hills Community know about the role Qatar has been playing in the Middle East, along with their business interests within our City.”
He added, “I support his call for a boycott until Qatar, like their neighbor Bahrain, decides to follow the path of peace and regional cooperation. Qatar needs to recognize Israel and to stop its funding of terrorist organizations like Hamas. It needs to stop its massive lies about Israel and its continual manufacturing of propaganda.”
Mirisch has been the animating force in Beverly Hills to hold Qatar’s dictatorship responsible for its antisemitism and sponsorship of terrorism, according to Yigal Carmon, the former counter-terrorism advisor to two Israeli Prime Ministers and tough critic of the Aal Thani family that controls Qatar.
Mirisch added that “I would definitely like the City to make a formal statement, but I don’t think I have the support of a majority of the Council. I don’t think the City generally books City-sponsored events at the Maybourne, but this should be codified.”
He continued, “As mentioned, I also called for a separate resolution from the Council in which we would ask the State Department to expel the Qatari consulate from Beverly Hills. I don’t think I have Council support on that either.
“We need to continue to make our Community aware of the ongoing support of Qatar for Hamas, as well as their anti-Israel and antisemitic behavior. Clearly, especially in these traumatic times, our residents should have the ability to choose if they want to patronize businesses whose owners promote and support groups who call for Israel’s destruction.”
Dunner noted in his letter that “I understand that Beverly Hills, like any other city, has multiple economic and business interests. However, as a community, we have a responsibility to be informed about and reflect upon the sources of our investments and affiliations. It deeply concerns me that funds spent at The Maybourne Hotel by Beverly Hills residents and visitors to our city could end up in the hands of Hamas, a vile and murderous terrorist group. I therefore urge the City Council to: 1. Immediately inform Beverly Hills residents about the ownership and affiliations of The Maybourne Hotel. 2. Consider the implications of allowing The Maybourne Hotel to operate within our community and the message it sends to the world.”
HBJ told the Kuwaiti media outlet Al Qabas last year: “Imagine oil [was sold] by some Jews…what would be the price of a barrel oil? It would be the most expensive thing in the world.” The prominent think tank the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) first located and translated HBJ’s antisemitic comment. MEMRI’s president and founder, Yigal Carmon, penned an August article on HBJ titled “A Terror Enabler In Beverly Hills And Bel Air – Part I.”
When asked about the boycott campaign targeting the Maybourne and Qatar-owned hotels, Paula Fitzherbert, global head of communications for the Maybourne and other Qatari-owned luxury hotels, told the Journal, “We won’t be issuing a comment.”
Fitzherbert also represents Claridge’s, The Connaught, The Berkeley, The Maybourne Riviera, and The Emory.
When asked about HBJ and Qatar’s alleged sponsorship of Hamas, Sharona R. Nazarian, an Iranian-American Beverly Hills City Councilmember, told the Journal, “I am outraged by anyone that would associate or affiliate with the radical terrorist organization of Hamas. These troubling associations must be investigated.”
Nazarian continued that “We are a strong and united community. Let us continue to be focused on the release of the innocent civilian hostages held captive in Gaza by Hamas overseas and the path to bring them home safely as we focus on a path to peace.”
The Mayor of Beverly Hills, Dr. Julian Gold , and the Vice Mayor, Lester Friedman, as well as Councilmember Lili Bosse, did not immediately respond to Journal press queries.
The Beverly Hills City Council passed a precedent-setting US city resolution last week, condemning the Iranian and Qatari governments for supporting the militant group Hamas, which massacred civilians in Israel.
“The City of Beverly Hills unequivocally condemns those who have supported Hamas, harbored Hamas, and who have after the fact celebrated the death of the Jews and praised the Hamas terrorism attacks in state sponsored media, including the Islamic Republic of Iran and Qatar,” read the resolution.
Mirisch’s campaigning got the language against Qatar into the resolution.
Rabbi Dunner ended his letter by noting: “Beverly Hills has always been a city that champions tolerance, diversity, and respect for all its residents and visitors. We cannot allow our community to inadvertently support agendas that are at odds with these cherished principles. I implore the council to take this matter seriously and address it promptly. Residents deserve to be informed, and more importantly, we all deserve to make choices that align with our values and conscience.”
Press queries sent to Qatar’s consulate in Beverly Hills and embassies in London and Washington were not answered. HBJ is listed as a diplomat at the Qatari embassy in London.
HBJ and his son attempted to buy the Manchester United football team in the United Kingdom. After HBJ and his son, Sheikh Jassim, withdrew their bid to buy the club in October, the Manchester Evening suggested the Journal report, coupled with MEMRI revelations about HBJ’s antisemitism, played a role in the collapse of the deal.
According to Manchester Evening News article, which hyperlinked to the Journal’s August report, “It would be remiss to overlook the fact the Glazers are Jewish. Hamad bin Jassim, the father of Sheikh Jassim and former prime minister of Qatar, has been accused of antisemitism by the Middle East Media Research Institute.”
Many of us wonder how anyone can possibly not think what we think in life. How can this person really believe vaccines have microchips or cause autism, how can that friend think climate change isn’t real, how can a professional basketball player possibly think the world is flat, and how can so many out there demonize Israel on a daily basis? How do they come to such different conclusions? Don’t they see what I’m seeing? That’s just the thing: they don’t.
For those of you who missed the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” let me give you the nickel version. If you and your friend each started a social media profile at the same time, and each of you added the exact same friends, as soon as you each start to browse and scroll through your feeds, your social media learns what you click on, notices what you like, and even calculates how many seconds you pause before continuing the scroll of your finger or your mouse. Immediately your two profiles begin to diverge, like a parallel “Sliding Doors” reality creating its own new threads. Within days or even hours, you will no longer have the same content. It will be almost unrecognizable that you have the exact same friends connected, because your content will completely differ. You paused to read about how vaccines kill, and went down the rabbit hole clicking on similar links, you will now mostly be given anti-vax content. You clicked on how Israel is an “apartheid” state imprisoning the Palestinians, full of other triggering words like “occupation” and “war crimes,” so you will now be given more anti-Israel content.
The social media platform has no political agenda, and is incentivized to get you lost in its vortex of both right and left-wing content, or even true and false content. It is merely designed to keep you engaged as long as possible. And nothing keeps people engaged more than sensationalist images and stories. What used to be clickbait articles are now more often lazily-shared memes of graphs and photos. Anyone from a third-grader to a luddite grandparent could easily create something as simple as a meme or a video testimonial. After that, it’s easy to share the content, however made-up, and let the algorithm and the impatient gullibility of mankind engage with that post and help it go viral.
Confirmation bias is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, “the fact that people are more likely to accept or notice information if it appears to support what they already believe or expect.” People are almost all susceptible to this, myself included. You read what you think or know to be correct about something, and thus you are reluctant to believe or even dismiss evidence to the contrary. You read articles more carefully if they agree with your belief system. It is a combination of your conscious and subconscious mind ensuring that most data conform to any strongly held beliefs. Social media algorithms remove the remaining choice we had left, to see those contrary opinions and facts. We never get the chance to even choose to read the information, because it feeds us what its calculation believes we want to read, to keep us engaged at all times. That’s the endless feedback loop, reinforcing your confirmation bias.
One recent case of confirmation bias was the bombing of a hospital in Gaza allegedly killing 500 civilians. Why would the world immediately report that this was an Israeli air strike? Because the Gazan media machine reported it as such. Is there free press in Gaza? Nope, it’s controlled under the iron thumb of Hamas. Why would the Western media not therefore take those reports with a grain of salt, knowing it is extremely motivated propaganda? Because the definition of insanity is famously said to be “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Somehow, the world’s press has time and time again reported lies about Israel that they have then needed to quietly print corrections about later, and time and time again they continue to not vet their sources. It would be like calling an election for a certain candidate based solely on that candidate’s campaign manager telling you that they won. This world is full of insanity, as it has recently continued to prove.
People who are aware that the context of these Gazan or Qatar sources are Hamas, and know that Israel, with its freedom of speech and free press, is the first to admit when it makes a grave error in combat, and punishes members of the population or army if they commit crimes, did not rush to judgement. On the other hand, people who were anti-Israel were already more likely reading sources that jumped on the Gazan allegation with the incorrect information, and it reinforced their confirmation bias that it was an Israeli war crime. This includes the BBC which until 10/22/23 stubbornly refuses to refer to Hamas as a terrorist group, even though the UK officially does, and incorrectly jumped the gun and “speculated” this was an Israeli attack. The BBC, under massive pressure, finally agreed to stop calling Hamas a “militant group” and stated they will change the vernacular to “proscribed terror organization.”
It doesn’t help when news organizations hire people who are supposed to be impartial journalists, and it turns out they are anything but. The New York Times recently rehired Soliman Hijjy, a journalist who has a history of publicly praising Hitler multiple times, and pay him to report on Gaza as recently as his false claim that Israel bombed the hospital. The BBC have not one but six reporters under internal investigation after they were found to have praised Hamas for the civilian attacks.
Let’s step back a moment for a quick summation of Hamas history. It was founded in 1987, and has always tried to prevent any potential peace process with Israel. Throughout the country’s history, the Jewish state has overwhelmingly desired peace with its hostile neighbors. Polling is frequently done in Israel, and each time most Israelis desire peace even at the cost of losing land in a two-state solution. What has changed over the years is the growing, earned cynicism that Israel cannot shake its own hand – there simply has been no partner to make that peace with. During the Clinton Oslo Accords, the Israeli government shook hands with the father of airplane hijacking, terrorist Yasser Arafat, and were starting the process of giving up “land for peace.” Already at that point in time, Hamas objected to any treaty being made with even the most peace-loving form of Israeli government, and their sole objective was the total annihilation of the Jewish people. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a chant that many like to naively pretend is about freedom for the Palestinians, when in fact it is a chant referring to a completely Jewish-free country. Their call and charter is to wipe Jews off the map in all of Israel, and upon success to continue with Jews and Christians in the rest of the world. This is not speculation. It is why it is designated a terrorist organization by America, Canada, the UK, the EU, Japan and other countries. These are not freedom fighters looking for a good deal, they are genocidal maniacs.
In 2005 under immense world pressure, Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving it to run itself. It was given huge sums of money from various parts of the world including Israel in an attempt to help it thrive. In 2006 there were so-called elections in Gaza, and Hamas by hook or (more aptly) by crook won their election, and became the autocratic governing body in Gaza in 2007. Imagine if instead of a Democrat or a Republican taking the highest office it was Isis. At the time I remember saying out loud, “at least now the world will no longer have any confusion or ambiguity when it comes to knowing who the enemy is, because Hamas is a proud and official terror organization, so nobody could possibly give them credibility.” How stupidly naïve I turned out to be, because the world finds a way to forget, confirmation bias slips nicely to fit each person’s narrative, and history is damned to repeat itself yet again. In Nazi Germany, many locals ratted out their Jewish neighbors, or turned a blind eye and said nothing as they were rounded up to be erased from their existence, and now countless people in America and Europe tell themselves this is a “conflict” that’s too complicated to follow, so they say nothing as Hamas commits barbaric acts of rape, murder, torture, and infanticide. In the cases of many on college campuses and beyond, they even go the next step, and wave pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian signage with fervor, ironically blending the two causes that if you better understood matters conflict with one another.
In the 10/30/23 issue of People magazine, they profiled a Palestinian who loved Gaza, the late father of Yasmine Mohammed. Because she lives in Canada, she feels safe enough to say things he could not living under Hamas:
All my dad ever talked about was rewinding the clock. He wanted to take Gaza back to how it was before the Hamas terrorists overtook the land. My dad always wished that the people of Gaza could fight back against Hamas. It was frustrating for him. It was, and still is, dangerous. Anything bad you’d say, they’d come after you. To see people calling Hamas freedom fighters – after everything they’ve done – is an insult to Palestinian people. My dad always prayed for peace for Gaza. He believed in a two-state solution.
This Shabbat, my beloved peace-seeking Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky (Bnai David Judea) told us that he met up with a dear Palestinian friend of his, and they had lunch and cried over the tragic events in Israel. This man has children in the Israeli army, risking their lives in the fight against Hamas. To be rooting on Hamas is not only a desecration of humanity, it is an insult to the countless Palestinian victims of the terror group itself. This is why many Jews have taken the common “Free Palestine” signage that is used to vilify Israel, and have attempted to turn it into the more intellectually honest “Free Palestine From Hamas.”
Ever since Hamas took over the Palestinian people in Gaza, any chance of success was erased for that citizenry. The money given to help them thrive was mostly stolen by Hamas to create weaponry. Remember when Israel was recently pressured to turn the water back on in Gaza, as they were attempting nonviolent tactics to free the hostages? Go ahead and guess what percent of the water supply Israel still has control over. I’ll give you a minute…10%. That’s it. What happened to the other 90%? The water pipes created to give clean water were mostly dismantled by Hamas, to create more bombs. There is no free press, and any time you hear the words Gazan Minister of ______, it is the talking piece of Hamas. They also hold influence and even control over Al Jazeera, which comes out of Qatar, so when you see any of those as your sources, you are actually reading Hamas propaganda that has served its purpose and gotten to your smartphone or newspaper. Even if evidence shows otherwise, as with the hospital that was proven to be a rocket by the Palestine Islamic Jihad (another USA designated terrorist organization with the mission statement to eradicate Israel), the damage is done, and countless people’s algorithm have already reinforced their confirmation bias that Israel is the bad guy. It’s like a cop who arrests the drug dealer the one time he wasn’t actually guilty. In that cop’s mind, maybe he was innocent that time, but he certainly is guilty most of the time. That one instance changes nothing in the cop’s future view of the drug dealer. Likewise, nobody who thinks the worst of Israel saw the story corrected, and changed their worldview of the flawed but free-speech-filled democracy in the Middle East. Maybe they didn’t blow up this hospital this time, but the next time one is reported they will jump to the same conclusions without hesitation, and often with zeal.
Another way the damage is done is that countless others refuse to believe the American and UK official reports that this was in fact not Israel. So in their minds and their newsfeeds, they continue to reinforce the same false narrative that Hamas gifted them. In a truly reprehensible piece of history repeating itself, a modern version of Holocaust Denial is happening in real time, as there are people — including consistent Israel-basher Susan Sarandon — who share propaganda that the acts of terror against Israel have largely been Israeli lies. Apparently Sarandon thinks that all women in the #MeToo movement should be believed, except when they are Israeli rape victims, because those are likely often lying to gain sympathy. This is ironic, considering how proud Hamas has been to video and publicize their acts of terror; so to have people both defending as well as denying those very actions is not only reprehensible, but completely insane.
Official statements released after the October 7 horrifying terror attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens can be quite telling. South Africa victim-blamed Israel entirely, and countries including Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE basically said a whole lot of nothing, with some expressing regret over civilian deaths, and some saying the only solution is a two-state peace. How is that continued suggestion helpful? Who are the individuals and governments around the world suggesting Israel make peace with? Hamas, whose very charter says, “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea?” They are the governing body clenching an iron fist around the Palestinian throats. How is screaming at Israel to make concessions or peace with an entity whose only goal is Israel’s total annihilation supposed to be constructive? Yossi Klein Halevi, a supporter of a two-state solution and highly involved in efforts of dialogue and coexistence with Palestinians wrote in a recent essay (Jewish Journal, 10/20-26/23):
Whatever one’s politics, we know that it wasn’t Israel’s policies that provoked the massacre but its existence. The massacre was not an expression of desperation but of genocidal intent. The tactics exposed the goal. The point-blank mass murder of civilians wasn’t a political problem requiring a political solution, but an existential threat requiring a military response.
Perhaps it’s my own personalized algorithm, but I haven’t seen any posts about Biden’s speech on October 19, so let me say this: THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT. You have many within your own party who are not fans of Israel, and you risk further alienating them from your administration, but you did so anyway, so THANK YOU. There are neighboring countries unfriendly to Israel which you are knowingly pissing off by publicly hugging and standing by Israel, and for this I THANK YOU. You want to give humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but only if it actually gets to them, and is not stolen by Hamas as usual, and for this I THANK YOU. As much as I am frustrated and crying over the portion of humanity which either attacks Israel with its words or looks away when it is attacked, I want to give credit and praise when our friends have our back.
Last week at my poker game, a dear non-Jewish friend entered the room and got everyone’s attention, and sincerely told us how deeply sorry he is for the horrors happening to our friends and families in Israel. That same week at work an older nursing instructor gave me a bear hug, and told me that she never really understood the dynamics in Israel, but that I inspired her to take the time to really read up on it, along with my posts, and she couldn’t be more sorry for the injustices happening there to the Jewish people. And my President, who many Republicans and moderate Democrats worried would not be a good and loyal supporter of Israel, visited the country in wartime, hugged Israeli leaders in front of cameras, and stood by them giving the full support of the USA to defend themselves and eradicate Hamas. I hope many of those same skeptical voters will appreciate what he’s doing, though if they don’t it’s likely due to what each and every one of us have: a narrative set in stone, and newsfeed algorithms helping confirm our own unchanging bias.
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.
On Oct. 10, a StandWithUs pro-Israel rally in Westwood drew supporters of Israel of all ages. Photo by Ryan Torok
Dear Friends,
We are going through one of the most horrific times in Jewish history since the Shoah.
Horrific, for two reasons. First, we are horrified by the atrocities committed on and after Shemini Atzeret October 7th. The heartless massacres in the criminal abductions continue to haunt us.
We also horrified by the vociferous support of the atrocities in our country, principally on college campuses. As one commentator said – “close your checkbooks.” I would add that we should consider disenrolling our children from schools where there exists a critical mass of faculty and students who can hold large demonstrations showing their support of terrorist atrocities. (Would those schools tolerate the Ku Klux Klan demonstrating support of atrocities? I think not.)
If we are not going to pull our students out, then we must train our students to stand up and stand with Israel.
On that note, we at Ohr HaTorah will do our part in fighting the disinformation and misinformation that is plaguing in our country. You will find here links to two talks I gave, one on Friday night and went about morning. We will be posting the Q and A to those two sessions ASAP.
C
In addition, based the questions and feedback we received, I will make a series of short videos addressing particular questions.
I want to repeat here one piece of guidance I offered in my Shabbat thought last week:
We ought not argue with a person who does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. That is a belief, and we typically cannot talk someone out of a basic belief. Either someone believes that Israel has a right to exist, or does not, or is not sure.
If a person does believe in Israel’s right to exist, or even if they are not sure, then your conversation with them can make a difference.
Here is one issue. Israel is being accused of war crimes. You can see a description of “war crimes” as defined by the U.N. here:
Paragraphs 2.A.4: Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
Israel uses very careful intelligence and only attacks targets out of military necessity.
2.b.9: Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives
Hamas used mosques and schools to launch rockets and house military units. Such usage by Hamas makes those places legitimate military objectives.
Paragraph 2.b.23: Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations.
Hamas utilizes the presence of civilians to make areas immune from military operations. This is a war crime.
After you read up on war crimes, ask whether launching rockets and other explosives into Israel civilian areas (since 2005, especially 2007) are war crimes. Clearly, they are. Ask why the U.N. has never declared them war crimes.
Especially ask a person whether the terrorist atrocities committed on October 7 and 8 (and continues) are war crimes? Emphatically, they are.
Ask why the U.N. has not formally declared them as such. Ask what they think about demonstrations and petitions supporting or ignoring clear war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.
And what they think about Israel being accused of war crimes, when by the U.N.’s own definition, Israel is not committing war crimes.
Only ask questions. Don’t argue.
We will offer more guidance in the fight against disinformation in the weeks to come
Thoughts on Parashat Noah 2023 (adapted from previous versions)
I imagine warring bands of murderous maniacs, spreading ruination everywhere they went. Anyone who stood up to them was hacked down. Just about everyone eventually joined the frenzy. Something like the zombie shows, except in this case, the zombies win, and the murderous hordes are not zombies. These are mobs of human beings, but they have gone very, very bad.
We’ve seen awful, horrific evidence of this maniacal evil in the atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7. The wound is fresh, so horrific, so painful that we might forget that Hamas is yet another in a long line of incarnations of evil.
We’ve seen awful, horrific evidence of this maniacal evil in the atrocities committed by Hamas on 10/7. The wound is fresh, so horrific, so painful that we might forget that Hamas is yet another in a long line of incarnations of evil. We see this humanity-gone-bad in the depredations of Nazism and the bloodlust reigns of Stalin, Mao, Imperial Japan, Pol Pot, the Kims of North Korea, and Saddam Hussein. We see this in the genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, and the Balkans. We see it in the crazed viciousness of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Slavery and the destruction of indigenous populations. Every time I dig into world history, I see it. The Armenian genocide. The Mongols. The Russian depredations in Ukraine. The list is long.
Imagine that the background of our Torah portion is that these maniacal tribes are winning their war against humanity and are closing in to murder the final remaining other tribes and everyone in their path. You might write, as the Bible does, that “the world had become corrupt and was filled with violence.” If you believed in a God that acted in history, you might pray that this powerful God would wipe out this heinous humanity and all its cruelty. (If you have trouble imagining this, go watch Darren Aronofsky’s movie “Noah.”)
The Bible, in the Noah story, imagines this depravity and its consequences in its own way. Humanity, the Bible tells us, has been an awful error. The solution will be that human beings, made from earth and water and animated by spirit, would be dissolved back into the earth from which they came, and ultimately into the abyss of water that existed before creation. The spirit, trapped in a form that became monstrous, would be released back to God. The form would crumble. The spirit of God would hover silently again over the face of the waters. Cries of savagery would be stilled.
The bone chilling story of an ancient flood seemed to inhabit the minds of everyone in the ancient world of the Middle East. The “Black Sea Deluge” theory holds that the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus around 5600 BCE, flooding an ancient littoral civilization within months. Others believe that the Mesopotamian Rivers overflowed and deluged the cradle of civilization for centuries. Plato taught that the ancient island city of Atlantis fell out of favor with the gods and sank into the Atlantic Ocean (of all places). Whatever the source of the ancient Middle Eastern cultural memory of the flooding, The Deluge became part of the collective memory of that part of the world. Everyone knew it happened. Why it happened was the question. Ancient mythological systems came up with a variety of answers; for example, human beings were too noisy and disturbed the dreams of the gods.
The biblical author(s) held that this flood was an act of God to reverse creation. In other words, the Bible rewove an ancient tradition of a flood to support its theory that, referring to the human being, “every form of the thoughts of his heart are all bad, all the time” (Genesis 6:5). It took 10 generations, from Adam to Noah, for such a complete human degeneration that would require creation to be reversed to a watery silence.
As in other flood stories there was a “last good man.” In some flood stories, this person was hidden by a renegade god to survive the flood, much to the displeasure of the other gods who wanted to do away with all of humanity.
In the biblical story, it is the one God who is looking for the righteous person, the one who walks with God, to regenerate humanity out of the havoc and debris. The regeneration of humanity told in our Torah portion is bizarre and seems to forebode something awful. The parsha ends with the tower of Babel story. The Midrash on this tale foreshadows the fascist state.
The God of the Bible has apparently learned a lesson and waits patiently, 10 full generations, for the next chapter of the regeneration of humankind – the election of Abraham and Sarah.
There would be 10 generations from Noah to Abraham. Abraham would “walk before God and be whole.” Abraham would teach his descendants, spiritual and biological, to keep God’s way and the righteous law. The Bible, as literature and philosophic psychology, sees the human being as fallen but also able to stand up again. To achieve moral standing, however, we would need a teaching – a vision and a path so strong and clear that this teaching would guide us in turning back the flood of destructiveness.
People would learn to stand up against hordes that want to destroy humanity. We would also learn to turn back the destructive flood that rises within each of us and among us. It is in our nature to be destructive, but it is also within our nature to transcend our nature. Chaos, too, can be reversed. Entropy is not the ultimate law of the universe.
People would learn to stand up against hordes that want to destroy humanity. We would also learn to turn back the destructive flood that rises within each of us and among us. It is in our nature to be destructive, but it is also within our nature to transcend our nature. Chaos, too, can be reversed. Entropy is not the ultimate law of the universe.
New tribes would come into being, holding the line against evil, fighting evil regimes, making room for teaching the vision and the way.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Saturday, standing on the flatbed of a yellow Penske truck snaking along Constitution Avenue NW, a young Arab American boy led a sea of Muslim activists in a death chant for the destruction of the state of Israel and the removal of the seven million Jews who live there, as controversial political activist Linda Sarsour led the march like a field marshall.
In his age-appropriate squeaky voice, he yelled: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
On cue, waving Palestinian flags furiously in the air, the hundreds of adults around him bellowed: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Anti-Israel rallies like the one I attended, exploding around the world, aren’t just filled with innocuous “pro-Palestine protestors,” as media report. Walking 10,000 steps with these protestors, I saw that these anti-Israel marches are largely financed, organized and directed by Muslim leaders, like Sarsour, in the Woke Army, an unholy alliance of hard-left organizations and Islamist groups that believe in political Islam.
They rage in blood libel, spreading lies about Israeli Jews directing a “genocide” of Palestinians with no accountability on the Hamas terrorist organization for years of failed political leadership in Gaza and now the Oct. 7 barbaric assault on civilians in Israel. The cast of characters in the D.C. rally are a window into the same kind of roll call in cities across the world of groups with different names – like the extremist organization Hizbut Tahrir – but grounded in the same movement of political Islam born out of grievances and hate of Israel and Jews.
Around the world, these Islamist leaders are participating in dangerous information warfare, deploying stochastic terrorism, which weaponizes the media to foment ideologically motivated hate and violence. And none of it will help Muslims, Arabs or Palestinians.
As a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, I have studied these organizations for 21 years since my friend and colleague Daniel Pearl’s murder by Pakistani extremists in 2002 for being a Jew and son of Israel. On Saturday, I immediately recognized the leaders of the Woke Army, dotting the one-and-a-half-mile route the marchers took from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol over several hours, past Smithsonian museums and federal offices. How they responded to my questions about Hamas reveals how rigid they are in their tyranny of thought, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for war and conflict.
First, who were they?
The Muslim brothers – and one sister, “Sister Linda” – leading the march are leaders of groups with an alphabet soup of aspirational names – American Muslims for Palestine, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Dream Defenders, Emgage, MPower Change, Muslim Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and United States Council of Muslim Organizations. They are today carrying out the legacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 upon the ashes of the dismantled Ottoman Empire with a mission to promote a puritanical interpretation of political Islam and reestablish Islamic states.
They are six decades in the making in the United States since the early 1960s when my parents and their generation of Muslims immigrated to the U.S., mostly as students. My parents, born in India, didn’t practice a fundamentalist belief in Islamism, and my parents raised me with a belief in the separation of mosque and state and a sense of humanity for all people. Many of these groups have hubs in northern Virginia, where I now call home.
They aren’t kitchen table organizations. This is the total annual revenue of the Muslim organizations that supported the anti-Israel protest in DC: at least $34 million in 2021, the latest IRS data available.
Along those 10,000 steps that I walked with them, not a single one of these Muslim “brothers” and one “sister” once condemned the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians or expressed any sorrow to the victims. What they did though was threaten President Joe Biden’s political future for daring to stand with Jews and the state of Israel.
“Biden, Biden, you’re a liar!”
Atop the flatbed, near the boy, stood Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, like the star quarterback in a homecoming parade, only he sported a keffiyeh, the black-and-white scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian “resistance.” Beside him, Taher Herzallah, director of outreach and grassroots organizing at American Muslims for Palestine, issued orders to staff. Just three days earlier, he had accosted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in the U.S. Capitol, hurling invectives at her, including, “Murderers go home!”
Now, the rally’s chief chanter, Mohamad Habehh, director of development at American Muslims for Palestine, led the crowd in hyperbolics about Israel: “How many kids are killed today? Israel is a racist state! Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is a terrorist state!”
At the intersection of Constitution Avenue NW and 12th Street NW, where the IRS building stands, I spotted a woman who stuck out like a sore thumb, dressed in Barbie pink over her jeans. She was Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, a “peace group” that has traveled to Iran and Gaza, treated like VIPs by the Islamist regimes in power. She gave a thumbs up that she was supporting the march.
“Do you believe in the existence of the state of Israel? I asked. She wouldn’t answer, saying, “I’m livestreaming,” and then proceeded to join the chant, “Free, free Palestine!”
There, at the intersection, was the manifestation of the “red-green alliance” in the Woke Army, the red the hard-left, the green the Islamists. Down the block, an anti-Israel Jewish woman joined the march, wearing her black shirt, emblazoned with the message, “Jews Say Cease Fire Now,” from a protest that blocked the halls of the U.S. Capitol, organized in part by “Jewish Voice for Peace” and “If Not Now,” useful fools in the Islamists’ strategy to destroy Israel.
Down a few blocks, Herzallah, who harassed Greene in Congress, stepped off the truck to pace the marchers behind a long banner with “American Muslims for Palestine” across the front. He huddled with a woman, carrying a loudspeaker. She was none other than Sarsour, the controversial co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March, which rallied a “resistance” to newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. More recently, she has been publicly quiet, and so her appearance as a field marshal for the protest is significant. Back then, she blocked Israeli feminists from participating because she considered them “colonizers” and “white supremacists.”
Now, I asked her, “Linda, do you condemn the violence against the Israeli citizens?” She scampered over briskly to a volunteer in a yellow vest, gesturing toward me.
The security detail wore initials on the front of their vest: “DSA.” The back of the vest explained the acronym: “Democratic Socialists of America.”
With instructions from Sarsour, “DSA” volunteers started stepping in front of me to block my camera as I recorded the anti-Israel protest. “We were instructed to obstruct your path,” one of the men told me, his earrings glittering in the sun. “That’s generally the tactic,” he said, with a smile.
It was the hard-left acting as security detail for the Islamists.
In the crowd, members of Young Muslims, preaching a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, started shouting my name to heckle me. I walked over to them and asked them if they wanted to talk. They turned away. One directed me to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, now huddled on the side with Sarsour. I asked if he had a comment on the attack by Hamas on civilians.
His response: “Asra, if you want to put the camera down, I’d be happy to speak to you.”
Again, the camera.
Hamas terrorists used their camera as a weapon to film their murderous ambush, like terrorist porn. As truth-tellers, we must never relinquish the power of the camera.
Some years ago, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American activist for women’s rights and human rights in Iran, launched a social media campaign, #MyCameraIsMyWeapon, and she curated images and videos of women in Iran daring to defy Islamic sharia rules demanding they cover their hair. The images of the women and girls with the wind in their hair have almost toppled the autocratic regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran that Code Pink, Hamas and many of the leaders there on the streets of D.C. support. The camera is such a threat to authoritarians, like the kind at the march, that the government of Iran just sentenced two journalists who published photos of the young woman, Masah Amini, killed after being harassed by the morality police for her hijab.
As the marchers moved onto Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Sarsour got instructions from a local police officer about where they should next go and jogged back to direct the marchers, hands in the air, like an air traffic controller, to turn right onto 3rd Street NW, so the flatbed truck could park directly behind the U.S. Capitol.
As I asked Herzallah if he condemned Hamas’ terrorism, he smiled strangely and feigned grabbing at my phone and camera.
On 3rd Street NW, another notorious leader in the Islamist movement in America – Hatem Bazian, known as, “Hate‘ em Bazian” by adversaries for his vitriol against Israel as founder of Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine – joyfully recorded the anti-Israel protest on his camera.
I asked him: “Do you condemn Hamas?” He responded: “I condemn hummus.”
I asked again. He looked me in the eye and responded glibly, “I like falafel.”Does he condemn the attack on Israeli civilians? “I like the 49ers,” the San Francisco football team.
He then turned his camera on me, and I spoke to his audience to condemn Hamas and its attack on civilians. He said I was “funded by Islamophobia organizations,” the catch-all smear by these intellectual and religious cowards in refusing to acknowledge and defeat Islamist extremism.
Like anti-Israel protests around the world from London to Australia, the D.C. protest was orchestrated by Muslim leaders in an anti-Israel, anti-Jew political wing of the Woke Army, an unholy alliance between hard-left groups and Islamist organizations with a mission to destroy the state of Israel, remove the Jews who live there, force a “right of return” by Palestinians and impose a system of political Islam in governance.
In front of the U.S. Capitol, on the yellow flatbed Penske truck, Sarsour threatened Biden politically for supporting Israel. “He forgot that I’m a voter and you’re a voter…I’m not going to forget.” She said “our voters” in swing states, “we will not forget.” She added “neo-liberal Democrats” to “our opposition.” She demanded that Arab Americans and Muslim Americans quit if they work for the Biden administration, “complicit in the genocide of our people.”
“Linda Sarsour is not with you!” she yelled, speaking about herself in the third person.
One of leaders rallied the gathered to call their congressional representatives to support an “immediate deescalation and ceasefire” in Israel and “occupied Palestine,” blatantly biased language against Israel. What’s more, the bill is called “House Resolution 786.” I knew the significance right away. So did everyone in the crowd. In Arabic numerology “786” is shorthand for “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem,” or “In the name of Allah,the most Gracious, the most Compassionate.” Muslims use it in passwords and atop exams to invoke divine blessing. My physical education student teacher asked me politely in seventh grade why I put it atop my PE exams. It’s a divine good luck charm. It’s also weaponized by the bad guys for their divine mandate for evil. The terrorists who kidnapped my friend and Wall Street Journal colleague, Daniel Pearl, used “786” in their passcode for their ransom notes. Now it was atop a resolution in the U.S. Congress that essentially gives cover to Hamas.
I wonder how many of the bill’s cosponsors and their staff know the Muslim touchstone with the bill’s number.
On Saturday, the battle cry, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” was repeated in city centers around the world as the real goal. In D.C., Bazian lamented, “I am a refugee…I want to go back to my lemon trees,” in the city of Nablus on the West Bank. Years ago, I actually went to Nablus to track Bazian’s footsteps to understand his wound. Palestinians live there in a bustling town. He could go back any time. In a symbol of my support for the people of Israel and opposition to Hamas, I wore an Israeli Defense Forces hoodie at the protest that I had purchased on that trip at a Palestinian second-hand store outside Bethlehem.
In London, the Guardian reported “marchers” chanted the “controversial slogan” from the river to the sea on a route from Hyde Park to the government district, Whitehall. Peppering its coverage with photos of attractive young women and a good-looking family, the Guardian only mentioned lightly that march organizers had “drawn close scrutiny” for “links to Hamas” and “support for the terrorist organization.”
The AP was similarly cagey about organizations behind the marches, citing generic references: “thousands” of marchers in Dublin, Ireland; a “pro-Palestinian gathering” in Paris and “pro-Palestinian demonstrators” in the French cities of Marseille, Rennes, Montpellier, Dijon and Lyon; “demonstrators” in Düsseldorf, Germany; “several hundred people” in Rome; “tens of thousands of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags” in Barcelona; and “thousands” in Australia.
These were not spontaneous grassroots outpourings. The D.C. rally and events across the world were organized by an Islamist AstroTurf political movement, led by organizations with global networks and multimillion dollar budgets.
All a journalist would have to do is study the signs to see the muscle behind these campaigns: “Freedom for Palestine,” with “Socialist Worker” across the top of the sign; “Stop the massacre,” with stopwar.org.uk across the bottom. “Free Palestine” had “www.palestinecampaign.com” printed across the bottom of one poster. Around since 2009, Palestine Campaign’s handle on X, the social media platform, is @PSCupdates, and it organized its campaign with the #FreePalestine hashtag, as well as #Nakba75, in a reference to the Arabic word for “humiliation.” It posted a message, featuring former Labour Party chief Jeremy Corbyn as “one of our staunchest supporters.”
In the crowd in D.C., one man held a sign about the “ummah” being one. That’s the Muslim community. For Islamists, they use the concept of one “ummah” as a bludgeon to silence critics of their extremism, like Muslim reformers and ex-Muslims. It’s an illusion, created with the help of videographers and photographers they hire to create a myth of marching millions.
What must Jews, Israelis, Muslim reformers, ex-Muslims, Arab rationalists and others do to counter this hateful propaganda and AstroTurfing? They must claim the streets of our cities and the halls of political power with a spirit of moral courage, intellectual clarity and post-traumatic growth, as Noa Tishby, an Israeli actress and former special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel, did in her address to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.
“If you hide behind words like ‘militants,’ ‘it’s complicated,’ ‘well but the occupation,’ ‘resistance’ or ‘decolonization,’ if you can’t unequivocally condemn rape, beheading, or torture of innocent and the kidnapping of grandmothers, some Holocaust survivors, some from their sick beds, then you are witless pawns in a propaganda machine you don’t even know you’re being played by,’” she said.
This is the most challenging speech I’ve ever delivered, but it’s time the world wakes up to what the Jewish community has been saying all along.
What we experienced on and since October 7 was sadly, predictable. We’ve warned of the danger of radical Islam or, more accurately,… pic.twitter.com/RTjPUuyEnB
That propaganda machine is playing out on the streets of our nation’s cities by Islamists in the Woke Army, like the ones who claimed Constitution Avenue NW on Saturday. We must inoculate ourselves, refuse their propaganda and fill the streets and halls of power with our voices of truth, moderation and humanity.
Asra Q. Nomani is a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the author of Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Destroying America’s Freedom. She is cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement and the Pearl Project, which is dedicated to exposing anti-Semitism and remembering the legacy of journalist Daniel Pearl. To support the Pearl Project’s investigative reporting, please contribute here. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani.
