#chief rabbi of gaza

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jon Levine

Rep. Jamaal Bowman and his campaign were duped by the parody social-media account of the fake “Chief Rabbi of Gaza.”

The phony X account of “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” is infamous for spouting anti-Zionist vitriol to ensnare unsuspecting progressives unaware that it is satirical.

The rabbi messaged Bowman about sponsoring a fundraiser for his Democratic primary campaign.

5Bowman’s X account and the fake “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” were in talks to hold a fundraiser.

Under Hamas rule Jews were not allowed in Gaza, and the only ones there now are hostages and IDF soldiers attempting to rescue them — something Bowman evidently didn’t pick up on when he began corresponding with the account.

Bowman, a member of the far-left House “Squad,” has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel and defenders of Hamas in Congress.

He is currently locked in a fierce primary battle with Westchester County Executive George Latimer, with polls suggesting Latimer could beat him badly.

If you don't know "Rabbi Linda Goldstein," read the rest of the article. And there is more here. And follow "her" on X.

[eretzyisrael]

by Kassy Akiva

In February, Albanese spoke to Harvard University students that Israel did not have a right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists who were raping, murdering, and burning homes and people.

“It didn’t have the right to act in self-defense, meaning waging a war because it couldn’t wage a war against the people it maintains under occupation,” she said. “What Israel had to do was to repel the attack on its own territory, arrest and detain and treat humanely the people who had been arrested and ensure justice.”

Her assistant maintained interest, even after being told it was a speech defending “intifada.”

“[W]e want to hear about the ‘Morality of the Intifada,’ which Zionists have co-opted and turned into a dirty word,” Goldstein wrote. “There is also a small honorarium available.”

De Martin responded days later, asking if Albanese could speak on May 7. “If I understood correctly, you would like Ms Albanese to deliver a keynote speech of around 15/20 minutes to the students,” De Martin said. Regarding the honorarium, De Martin said Albanese could not accept only officially but asked for it to be transferred to the “fellowship of her volunteer.”

“Moreover, concerning the honorarium, she cannot take honorarium for anything she does in her official capacity,” De Martin wrote. “However, she kindly asks for this honorarium to be transferred to the Fellowship of her volunteer which supports her mandate work. Could you please provide some detail on the sum of the honorarium? The research institute will then send you the invoice for payment.”

Sara Troian, another research assistant for Albanese, told the Daily Wire that the special rapporteur “never agreed to Linda Goldstein’s request,” even though emails show her team asked for a Zoom link. She added that she wanted the honorarium to be sent to her university to fund her work.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱 🚨 ZIONIST WHO CONDONES RAPE OF PALESTINIAN WOMEN DURING WAR IS APPOINTED CHIEF MILITARY RABBI

Barbaric Israeli Military Chief Rabbi Sparks Outrage with Writings on Defending Israel by "Raping women".

The appointment of Eyal Karim as the Israeli military chief rabbi has ignited a scandal due to his past writings permitting soldiers to rape women during wartime.

Despite this, 150 Zionist rabbis have come to his defense, arguing that challenging his appointment based on his "legitimate Torah positions" would have severe consequences for the Torah world in Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.

Karim, now a brigadier general, holds a prominent position offering spiritual guidance to Israeli soldiers involved in terrorizing Gaza.

Via @QudsNen

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, two Palestinian terrorists from the city of Hevron had carried out a combined, multi-scene terrorist attack in the city of Ra'anana, killing one woman in her 70's and wounding at least 17 more people. The exact details are still being investigated, but the two terrorists are said to be from one family, 24 and 44 years old, they were denied a work permit in Israel due to terrorist activity in the past, but someone in Ra'anana agreed to hire them illegally. They have both been arrested. The combined method they used was a stabbing and vehicular terrorist attack, they stabbed people, stole the first car, used it to run people over until they crashed it, then they stole a second, then a third car, and continued ramming into people across several streets, before they were stopped. 7 of the injured are reportedly kids, and at least 3 are seriously wounded.

As 136 hostages are still held captive in Gaza, 100 days after Oct 7, we got some data on the treatment of those released roughly 50 days ago: 85 are still under a nurse's supervision, 2 are still hospitalized, 54 are receiving mental health treatment of one type or another, only 18 have returned home, all the rest are still displaced, out of 40 kidnapped kids, 38 were released, but only 21 have returned to the education system, some in their own schools, some in schools improvised for their evacuated community.

In Turkey, an Israeli soccer player, Sagiv Jehezkel, who plays for a local team, scored a goal for it, and raised his hand, revealing to the cameras that on his bandage, he wrote "100 days," drew the Star of David, and added the date of Oct 7. It's obviously a gesture to the Israeli victims of Hamas, the ones murdered during or hurt by the massacre, and the ones still held in captivity.

For this, Sagiv was condemned by the Turkish Football Association, suspended from his team, which annoounced he'd be fired, and then he was ARRESTED and interrogated by Turkish police. For making a humane gesture to honor his country's victims. This is how Sagiv was portrayed in an antisemitic Turkish cartoon, with blood dripping from his lips, evoking the antisemitic image of the Jews who feed on the blood of non-Jewish kids:

Sagiv has been released after an appearance at court, and flown back to Israel immediately, but the head of the Israel Football Association said they're still worried for 2 more Israeli soccer players and 2 Israeli basketballers, who are currently playing for Turkish teams.

Shabak, the Israeli equivalent of the FBI (also sometimes referred to in English as Shin Beit), has confirmed today that Iran is operating social media platforms in Israel, that allow it to harass the families of the Israeli hostages, and Israeli security forces (for example, by exposing their addresses, or sending them flower bouquets with offensive messages). The Islamist regime of Iran is also using these to collect from surveys personal info on Israeli citizens.

I wanna share with you this screenshot from the article, as a reminder that just because someone says online that they're Jewish, or puts "Jewish" in their account name, doesn't make it so.

The chief rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, in protest of his country's decision to file a false lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice, has changed the customary prayer for the well being of the country. He said: "This government is on the wrong side of history. Its support of Iran and its proxies - Hamas and Hezbollah - encourages a global Jihad,and harms Jews and innocent people worldwide. It's impossible to pray for such a government."

This is 36 years old Osama Abu Assa.

He was a Bedouin, from the village of Tel Sheva. On Oct 7, he was at the Nova music festival, and one of about 367 people who were murdered there. I got to hear several people talking about what a huge heart Osama had, how he was all about giving to others and helping people. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

A known parody X account by the name of "Rabbi Linda Goldstein," who is described in her bio as the "Chief Rabbi of Gaza," invited Francesca Albanese, to speak on the "morality of intifada" at Columbia University at Goldstein's invitation - with a "small "honorarium available."

Albanese serves in the role of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Goldstein said on X that the UN official initially agreed to speak on campus "but when the encampments were broken up and the honorarium dried up, she backed out."

Read More: JPost

H/T @scartale-an-undertale-au

[mirkobloom77]

‼️🇵🇸🇮🇱 Israeli army ‘urgently needs’ more soldiers as Gaza killing continues, is resorting to using over retirement age and ultra-orthodox jewish people

[Plain text: Israeli army ‘urgently needs’ more soldiers as Gaza killing continues, is resorting to using over retirement age and ultra-orthodox jewish people]

🔸 Source: Al Jazeera

🔹 Extra context:

-> Ultra-orthodox jewish Israelis are usually exempt from military service, however, the Israeli army is attempting to get them to join the troops. These people have on multiple occasions refused this, with Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, declaring that “If they force us to go to the army, we’ll all go abroad”.

-> This is happening as Palestinian fighter groups, despite numerous attempts to eliminate them by the Israeli army, continue striking at occupation forces. Very recently, ten soldiers died in the same day in Gaza, marking the deadliest day for them since January.

-> Not only that, but Hezbollah has been escalating it’s attacks on Northern Israeli territory. Earlier this month, it launched dozens of rockets at military bases and other places, setting massive fires, and today they released detailed footage of Haifa and it’s surroundings, using aircraft that went undetected by Israeli authorities, so much that it was able to return to Lebanon completely fine.

[seldarinesorcerer]

Ipcha Mistabra

In the Talmud, in Tractate Bava Metzia, Abaye and R. Pappa, two 4th century Babylonian rabbis, got into an argument. And like many arguments in the Talmud, what they disagreed about was which of two earlier authorities held differing opinions on a matter of Jewish law. You could see it either one of two ways – say you have an argument with your brother, for example, about a disagreement that went on years ago between your great aunt and your great uncle. You say it was your great-uncle that loved the Red Sox and your great-aunt who loved the Yankees, but your brother says it was the other way around (she loved the Red Sox) – and then he throws in the fact that Ted Williams was a better baseball player than Joe DiMaggio, now you have a full-blown rabbinic kerfuffle.

Getting back to the case of Abaye and R. Pappa, they were attempting to establish the basis for determining a fair market price for olive oil, which was a precious commodity in the ancient near east. It turns out that olive oil was sold filtered, no sediments were supposed to be in it; and the authorities carefully watched the seller’s and the purchaser’s assumptions about how much of this excess material got through the process anyway, got mixed in, and they’d establish the price based on their divergent assumptions. 

So after Abaye lays out his reasoning, lines up which side took which role in the argument, R. Pappa turns around and says “You’ve got it totally backwards - how they argued it out,” and he offers an 180-degree differing explanation about who (more than a century earlier) took which position and what was motivating them.

"Ipcha Mistabra" – the Talmud says. It’s Aramaic for “Things can be understood the other way around.” It’s the Talmud’s way of saying, hey, you might think that, here, this is the logic behind a certain dispute, but guess what! I’m going to illustrate an opposing, maybe counterintuitive, way of looking at the disagreement. You can see it from a different angle entirely.

Ipcha Mistabra

An editorial writer in Haaretz on August 1st this past summer (Haaretz being a totally secular newspaper) used the term to make his point. He suggested that in political circles we should all be asking what may be counterintuitive, even shocking – about why Netanyahu would assassinate the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, if the guy was a key player in negotiating a diplomatic solution to the hostage crisis and ending the war? (Keep in mind this was before the assassination of Nasrallah and the Hezbollah decapitations in Beirut!) The guy who got killed, Ismail Haniyeh, was a bad guy, for sure, but do you assassinate one of their chief negotiators? At the time, most commentators just drew the conclusion that Israel may have overshot its goals, made a tactical blunder. But the same writer went against the grain, by suggesting that Netanyahu intended it, he did it deliberately – he “outsourced” a tenet of Israeli escalation domination strategy to Iran – by calling its bluff – letting Iran figure out at what level – it would decide to retaliate. The reasoning for this, he continued, is that the Israeli prime minister actually wanted Iran to bear the risk of confronting the US. Force Iran to think about a larger war it can’t control by upping the stakes for itself and its proxies and sucking America into it. And, at the same time, the Israeli prime minister would divert attention away from the war in Gaza!

But I’m not bringing this up to get into politics, we have enough of that. See, what I’m curious about is this way of thinking – going with what’s counterintuitive that’s happening right in front of us. We’re often so sure about how things have reached the stage they’re in right now – but just suppose we pause to ask an alternative set of questions? In the dazzling novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, a young woman from East Berlin falls in love with an older married man from the “other” side, only a year or so before Germany is reunited. As the wall falls, her reality and her fantasies disintegrate, better yet, are subsumed within a new mental mapping – and all that remains of a long, illicit affair is a ritual they go on performing whenever they part company (in Erpenbeck’s words): “When they leave a place together, he holds out her coat, she slips into it front-wise, briefly holds him in her arms, then slips it off and puts it on the right way.”

Ipcha Mistabra

I can remember, when I was a child, I used to walk down this (what I thought was a) long hall and peer behind the thin glass of a mirror on the wall, to see if there was something there looking through it – back at me.

Getting to the Truth is more than simply arguing the other side of a debate (that’s hard enough, standing in someone else’s shoes); sometimes it’s looking at the obverse of what we think we know – for everything we commonly think of as true and solid – there may be, in fact, something more unsettling to it. 

At the end of July, it was reported that William Calley died in a hospice in California. For those of you born long after the Vietnam War, Mr. Calley was synonymous with the My Lai massacre, the mass murder of a village filled with defenseless women and children, although in so many ways his conviction told us something more. It stood in for a senseless war fought by Americans for a regime that was terrible and corrupt – a war that our society eventually came to realize it should have no part in. It unmasked a larger issue: that something in our own society was rotten, had failed, and we needed to look ourselves in the mirror. Coincidentally, the same day that it was reported that Calley died, it was also reported that a Palestinian prisoner was abused in the crudest way by Israeli soldiers, and were it not for a whistle-blower, there was a likelihood that others would get away with this abhorrent behavior, and, in fact, probably already have. And yet, there were loud protests in Israel by people who think it’s somehow unfair to accuse prison guards who, after all, are put in charge of the worst of the worst.

Ipcha Mistabra

What do these moments mean for our hopes and illusions in a larger sense? How do they speak to our commitments to one another, to making a better world? Can we, in these Days of Awesome, marshal the fortitude to peer behind the hell-scape of the kibbutzim that were devastated on October 7th, the charred remains of homes, the wreckage of a dance festival? Is there a way to see behind the mirror – or maybe it’s for this very reason that we cover the mirrors in a house of mourning? And then there’s the cruelty to the hostages that keeps us looking away.

Ipcha Mistabra

Have you read Percival Everett’s great literary invention, called James? It takes Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and turns it around, so that we explore, we come to know what’s behind the opaque figure of a slave, however benevolent, the character of Jim is in the original famous book. In Everett’s telling, that same Black human being, invested with dignity and chutzpah is brazen enough to steal… a pencil! He’s hidden it away deep in his pocket, because if he’s caught with it, he’s liable to get hung. The pencil is more valuable than anything else – and in Everett’s words, he writes “himself into being.” In fact, James’ supple use of language is his character’s animating force – he’s not just intelligent, but he’s a human being with his own desires and imagination. What you get is there’s another side to Twain’s story. And, I’d also go so far as to say that Huckleberry Finn in each telling of the story is a child who’s a tabula rasa – he’s malleable, sympathetic, not yet formed, our humanity without the artifice of race, that reflects what could someday be true of all of us. But in the meantime, it’s James who comes into focus in this new telling. 

Ipcha Mistabra

The same pattern of obfuscation-and-recovery holds true for Viet Than Nguyen, the writer of the wonderful novel from a few years ago, The Sympathizer, but who also wrote a scholarly nonfiction work entitled Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and The Memory of War. He calls attention to the design of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, its shiny black granite surface, as bringing not just the names of those lost American soldiers front and center, but, we, the viewers, see ourselves observing it. The wall provokes anxiety – there’s a mirror effect – and suddenly we are implicated; and it subverts the patriotic American framing of this war being our tragedy. We’re looking away! We’re omitting the memories of millions of dead Vietnamese, after all. He calls it a “disremembering”.

I was talking to a rabbi in my community about this, and he told me that he and his wife had taken a trip to Vietnam this past spring. He said that he was hoping naively, as a Jew living at a time when our own prospects for tomorrow are in question, to understand how and to what extent the Vietnamese have come to terms with the past and embraced a different future... But in wishing to see things all “repaired”, he very well could have been disremembering too. I wonder how the Vietnamese will write “themselves into being” again? 

So we know right now we’re standing at a crossroads in modern Jewish history. It’ll take decades to sort it all out: what we in the Jewish world should want, whom it is we think we serve, whom we fail to serve, and the memories that cloud our vision. There’s that mirror we hold up, as does Sarah in Genesis 21, with the opening line:

ויהוה פקד את־שרה כאשר אמר ויעש יהוה לשרה כאשר דבר 

It’s translated “G-d remembered Sarah just like God had said,” but it’s more than remembering – the verb פקד means “G-d performed an accounting, (as if there was something yet owed).” And the commentator Malbim explains that although G-d had predicted the birth of a child in Sarah’s old age, to her it was – until this point – lacking in credibility, unresolved – what with her passive husband yielding to her jealousy, nonchalantly leaving Hagar with her toddler out in the cold, the family in turmoil. After all, Sarah famously laughs out loud, she finds G-d’s prediction funny, even a bit disturbing. In this troubled Torah narrative, amidst her doubts, the future hangs in the balance.

Nachman of Bratslav teaches that when we are despairing, at odds with the people around us, we can become like a blank slate, a book that’s empty – Every one of us can be like “a human being,” שאין לו ספר. There’s nothing in the book – it’s vanished! An empty Torah scroll! So, he says, we begin, this is where we find ourselves, at this place of no place, but we still have this blazing desire in our hearts, a yearning to learn! Maybe we forgot something? 

And how does Nachman set it up? He says it’s like this: that somewhere out there in the world there are two tzaddikim, two righteous people, they’re conversing with one another, however – the only thing is – they’re walking along on two separate paths, this one tzaddik over here on this side of the world and this other tzaddik miles and miles away. Maybe it’s a bit like being online? But he goes on to say that this one tzaddik over here poses a question and the other one over there offers an answer, a way to figure it out. A question and an answer, but again – it’s just speech, our voices, often cacophonous, nothing more than that – but they can add up. It’s the vibrations that unite, and they can produce the purest Sound, the Voice of G-d. And it’s this Voice that ultimately connects one to the other, Nachman says – it’s this Voice that then gets written down as a ספר זכרון, we call the Book of Remembrance. We remember!

We may have during a long, hard year forgotten something about ourselves, what we really stand up for. It’s possible. We may have, on the arduous path – amidst our arguments, our public statements, our gatherings in solidarity or in protest – lost track of who we are, where we can vibrate with the Truth – where the Truth of humanity is. James Baldwin said it: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 

Ipcha Mistabra

Things can sometimes be explained the other way around, in a way we have as yet not fathomed, or refuse to see. We may never have expected it, we may never have imagined an entirely different future, or maybe we disremembered it all along! – but somehow, in seeing things differently, it might yet help us to get at the Truth. 

On this Yom Kippur, may we loosen the shackles of ideology, slacken just a little bit the cords of fear and recrimination and sanctimony, and help our adversaries, our neighbors, even the ones we love who’ve hidden their faces from us at times – to write ourselves “into being”. May we all be written and sealed for a year that gives us new life and hope and, G-d-willing, a focus on peace.

Amen.

[violottie]

The zionist settler colony and regime is a white surpemacist establishment. zionists are white supremacists. (caption under reel)

from essad_68, 19/Feb/2024:

🇵🇸Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to “liberate” black people in Africa, after killing over 10,000 children in Gaza within 100 days.

⏩ Let’s be clear: Israel is not Africa’s friend, and here are some separate yet related facts to support this statement:

⭕ Haftom Zarhum was the first African refugee to be lynched by Israelis in a public place in full view of CCTV cameras, but he would not be the last. It is worth noting that Zarhum was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, yet all the perpetrators saw was the colour of his skin. The following year, two Israeli teens killed another African refugee, Babikir Ali Adham-Abdo, beating him to death right outside of the city hall of Petach Tikvah, a Tel Aviv suburb. Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕ On March 17, 2018, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called black people “monkeys” and the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word in his weekly sermon. Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕️ On March 19, 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a public speech that the arrival of non-Jewish African refugees was “much worse” for Israel than “severe attacks by Sinai terrorists.” Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕️ Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew anywhere in the world has the right to immigrate to Israel. But there’s one notable exemption: Ethiopian Jews. For years, Ethiopian Jews have been blocked from joining their relatives living in Israel, while other white Jewish migrants and refugees from Ukraine have been welcomed in their thousands. Put simply, Ethiopian Jews have the wrong skin colour for Israel’s ethno-religious demographic project to be considered fully Jewish. Source: TheNewArab. For Israel, black Ethiopian Jews are not Jewish enough.

⭕️ In 2019, further Black Lives Matter protests took place after 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli Solomon Teka was shot and killed by an off-duty Israeli police officer. Source: TheNewArab. For Israel, black Ethiopian Jews are not Jewish enough.

[collapsedsquid]

“We prefer dying to serving in the Israeli army,” said Yona Kruskal, 42, a father of 11 and full-time seminary student, as he blocked traffic in Jerusalem with about 200 others last week in one of the frequent protests against the conscription law. “There’s no way you can force us to go to the army, because we are hell-bent that the army and religion contradict one another.” As the Haredim scuffled with police at the protest, other passersby berated them, chanting “Shame! Shame!” “My friends are sitting in Gaza while you’re here, sitting on the ground,” one man yelled. A woman screamed at the protesters that her son was serving in Gaza to protect them. [...] One of the country’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, said this month that the Haredim “will all move abroad” if forced to enlist. The comment drew both condemnation, for encouraging Israelis to leave during a national crisis, and ridicule, because many secular Israelis would have no problem with the Haredim  leaving en masse, said the Israel Democracy Institute’s Malach.

[salvia-plathitudes]

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by reports of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals

The protesters called on Schumer – who is among a minority of Democrats to recently criticize the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – to stop arming Israel’s military, which relies heavily on US weapons, jet fuel and other military equipment.

“We as American Jews will not be used, we will not be complicit and we will not be silent. Judaism is a beautiful, thousands-year-old tradition, and Israel is a 76-year-old colonial apartheid state,” Morgan Bassichis, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, told the crowd.

“This is the Passover that we take our exodus from Zionism. Not in our name. Let Gaza live.”

The mass arrests came after the seder rituals. Speakers included journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University and Barnard College over the protests that have rocked US campuses in recent days.

Rabbi Miriam Grossman, from Brooklyn, led a prayer before the first cup of ritual wine. “We pray for everyone besieged, for everyone facing starvation and mass bombardment.”

Klein spoke after eating the bitter herbs that represent the bitterness of slavery at the seder. “Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews.”

Jewish communities have often used Passover to protest about global injustice. Tuesday’s protest, organizers said, was inspired by the 1969 Freedom Seder, organized by Arthur Waskow on the anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s death. The original Freedom Seder sought to connect the Jewish exodus story with the struggle for civil rights in the US and against the war in Vietnam.

One protester, a 31-year-old Jewish woman who asked not to be named for security reasons, said: “Passover is about liberation. In our family, Palestinians have always been part of our celebration and mourning. The call for liberation is more important now than ever … As Americans, the billions of our tax dollars in the Israeli military bill is outrageous and horrifying.”

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jon Levine

A parody social media account of the fake “Chief Rabbi of Gaza” has duped another Squad member.

The re-election campaign of stridently pro-Palestinian Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) was considering a possible fundraiser with “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” — a bogus X account that spews anti-Israel bile to catfish eager-to-believe progressives.

The account — which previously fooled Bush’s congressional comrade Rep. Jamaal Bowman — reached out to Team Bush on June 23 with the fundraising idea, exchanges shared with The Post reveal.

“I’ve been bouncing around different cities since my congregation was displaced from Gaza after Israel’s invasion on October 7,” Goldstein wrote in an email to Ronika Moody, Bush’s finance and engagement director.

Also – would [Bush] travel to the Gaza border for the fundraiser? The optics could be incredible!”

Moody responded on June 27, writing, “Cori is interested in hosting in Gaza and it’s something she has been trying to plan. Unfortunately, we have not been successful with that opportunity as of yet.”

“Theme is Gaza?” Moody asked.

Goldstein — who has boasted of using a menorah made of missiles and digging terror tunnels into American universities among other outlandish antics — suggested the fundraiser’s theme could be “the morality” of intifada.

[eretzyisrael]

by Melanie Phillips

he outspoken chief rabbi of South Africa, Dr. Warren Goldstein, has once again given voice to crucial truths that others have shamefully ignored.

He accused both Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, of being indifferent to the murder of black Christians in Africa and the terrorism threat in Europe while being “outright hostile” to Israel’s attempts to battle jihadi forces led by Iran.

“The world is locked in a civilizational battle of values, threatened by terrorism and violent jihad,” said Goldstein. “At a time when Europe’s very future hangs in the balance, its two most senior Christian leaders have abandoned their most sacred duty to protect and defend the values of the Bible. Their cowardice and lack of moral clarity threaten the free world.”

Goldstein’s blistering accusations were on the mark.

Christians in Africa have been subjected to barbaric slaughter and persecution by Islamists for decades. Two years ago, Open Doors, an organization that supports persecuted Christians, observed: “In truth, there are very few Muslim countries—or countries with large Muslim populations—where Christians can avoid intimidation, harassment or violence.”

In January 2024, a report for Genocide Watch confirmed that, since 2000, 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered by Islamist groups in an ongoing attempt to exterminate Christianity. In addition, more than 32,000 moderate black Nigerian Muslims and non-faith individuals have been massacred.

According to a report in 2020 by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Christians in Myanmar, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam are being persecuted.

These facts were reported in June by Peter Baum for The Daily Blitz. Yet the mainstream media all but ignore these atrocities. There are no marches in Western cities to accuse these countries of facilitating crimes against humanity. There are no NGO-inspired petitions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare these countries and groups guilty of genocide.

Instead, the media and Western elites demonize Israel as the pariah of the world for defending itself against these genocidal Islamists. This unique and egregious double standard is the hallmark of classic antisemitism.

The attitude of the church leaders is even more astonishing. The hundreds of thousands of victims of this persecution are their flock. The goal of this onslaught is the wholesale destruction of the faith they lead.

Yet from Welby and the pope have emerged little more than occasional expressions of measured concern. And even then, they usually refuse to call out what’s happening by its proper name—the Islamist war to eradicate Christianity and destroy the West.

The 10-month war against Israel by Iran and its proxies following the Oct. 7 pogrom is a crucial front in that onslaught against Western civilization. Yet as Goldstein said, the pope and Welby have stood passively by while African Christians are “butchered by jihadi groups with direct ties to Israel’s enemies in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The jihadi ideology, he said, was also a clear and present danger to Europe. As a result of open-border policies, immigrants poured into the United Kingdom and across Europe, many of them “brandishing a violent jihadi ideology deeply hostile to Christianity, liberal democracy and western values.”

The result has been surging antisemitism leaving Diaspora Jews living in fear. Yet on the ideology fueling this civilizational onslaught, Welby and the pope have been silent. Instead, they have recycled the Islamists’ propaganda that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel with lies.

[communistfeminist]

Regarding Zionists' baseless claims of "mass rape" by Hamas and other Palestinian liberation forces of settler women...

There have been zero substantiated reports connecting Hamas or any other Palestinian resistance organization to rape or sexual assault in any capacity SINCE THEIR INCEPTIONS DECADES AGO. These accusations are textbook colonial propaganda predicated on ANTI-ARAB RACISM and ISLAMOPHOBIA.

Israelis have been so blindsided by Al-Aqsa Flood and do not want to believe that the Palestinians are capable of such a sophisticated, surgical military operation, and so are resorting to the age-old, RACIST technique of portraying colonized/Eastern people as violent barbarians who want to rape their precious white women.

DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA.

As is often true of empire propaganda, what Israel accuses Palestine of doing, THEY DO THEMSELVES. It is simply projection. In fact, the IOF's chief rabbi Eyal Karim was once asked about wartime rape and responded by saying that, in the spirit of maintaining soldiers' morale during armed conflict, it was permitted to "SATIFY THE EVIL INCLINATION BY LYING WITH ATTRACTIVE GENTILE WOMEN AGAINST THEIR WILL."

How can you call yourself a feminist and support the settler-colonial entity of Israel, which in the past 48 hours ALONE has killed at least 687 people in Gaza, including 140 children and 105 women?

[beardedmrbean]

Videos showing pro-Palestinian student protesters who set up an encampment on Columbia University's campus forming a human chain against people they say are Zionists have gone viral on social media.

Hundreds of protesters formed the blockade against "a small group of Jewish students," Sahar Tartak, the editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, alongside a clip.

Another video posted on X by Jessica Schwalb, a reporter with the Columbia Daily Spectator, a student newspaper, showed one person calling for others to form the human chain because of "Zionists that have entered the campus."

"Can I get everyone's attention?" the person can be heard saying in the video.

The person then calls on others to repeat: "We have Zionists who have entered the camp. We are going to create a human chain where I am standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe upon our privacy and try to destruct our community. Please join me in this chain."

At one point, a man can be seen confronting a protester and asking: "Excuse me, do you see what you're doing to us? Do you see how hostile this is and you're asking me not to record?"

Protesters can then be seen linking arms and taking steps forward, chanting: "We ask that you please respect our privacy and our community guidelines which you have so far disrespected and leave our camp."

Tensions on university campuses have been high over the past six months as Israel continues its war in Gaza.

The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials. It erupted after Hamas' unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people and saw about 250 others taken hostage.

Last Wednesday, students at Columbia set up a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on campus to protest Israel's ongoing military action in Gaza and Columbia's "continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine."

The university called in New York police to clear the encampment on Thursday. More than 100 students were arrested, and the university has said they have been suspended.

Student protesters have since resumed their encampment, saying in a statement that they "demand [their] voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza."

There have been reports of Jewish students facing harassment on campus, prompting condemnation from the White House and other officials.

In a statement, the student protest coalition said it was "frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us." A reporter for NBC wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that they didn't see a "single instance of violence or aggression" at the student encampment on Thursday and Friday.

On Sunday, a rabbi associated with the university urged Jewish students to go home, saying recent events "have made it clear that Columbia University's Public Safety and the NYPD [New York Police Department] cannot guarantee Jewish students' safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy."

A Columbia spokesperson told Newsweek on Sunday that the university is acting on students' concerns.

"Columbia students have the right to protest, but they are not allowed to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students and members of our community," the spokesperson said. "We are acting on concerns we are hearing from our Jewish students and are providing additional support and resources to ensure that our community remains safe."

The university cancelled in-person classes on Monday, with university President Nemat Minouche Shafik saying it was an effort to "deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps."

Shafik said that a "working group of Deans, university administrators and faculty members will try to bring this crisis to a resolution" in the coming days. "That includes continuing discussions with the student protestors and identifying actions we can take as a community to enable us to peacefully complete the term and return to respectful engagement with each other," she said.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said on Sunday that the NYPD has increased the presence of officers around the Columbia campus to "protect students and all New Yorkers on nearby public streets."

He said the NYPD cannot have a presence on the campus unless it is requested by senior university officials but that officers "stand ready to respond if another request is made by the university, as they did on Thursday."

The Columbia student protesters' statement late on Sunday said they will continue to peacefully call for "divestment from genocide."

"At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life," it said. "Our members have been misidentified by a politically motivated mob, doxxed in the press, arrested by the NYPD, and locked out of their homes by the university. We have knowingly put ourselves in danger because we can no longer be complicit in Columbia funneling our tuition dollars and grant funding into companies that profit from death."

It added: "We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students—Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black, and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country."

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Tragically, an IDF helicopter attacked a building in Gaza that had Israeli soldiers inside. At least one of them was killed. I've heard people claiming that there's no such thing as mistakes or collateral damage, that if Palestinian civilians get killed, it's because Israel wanted that, but this is a reminder that mistakes DO happen, and that every army, no matter how good, will get some people killed that it never intended to. This soldier's family asked for his details not to be published. May his memory be a blessing.

Israel is going to open a border crossing into Gaza, which had been closed since the Oct 7 massacre and Hamas attacks on the border crossings, in order to make the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza even more efficient.

A man shot at a Jewish synagogue in the US last night, on the first eve of Hanukkah, while shouting "Free Palestine." If it's anti-Zionism, not antisemitism, why do these incidents keep happening?

We're hearing here in Israel more and more reports on canceled Hanukkah festivities and candle lighting due to different claims, but the bottom line remains heartbreaking no matter which excuse is used. The biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust led to further punishment of Jews.

Here's extra Hanukkah candles for all Jews out there, please know that here in Israel, we are always with you!

In NYC, a shop that's a part of an Israeli company decided to have a special sale to raise money for the Israeli rape victims of Hamas. Two of the shop's employees resigned. Reportedly, they're women. The Jewish community replaced them with volunteers.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sent a letter to media organizations, including the New York Times, warning them about their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, since their reporters were "clearly embedded with Hamas."

For anyone who still doesn't understand why most Jews have been upset since Oct 7:

Following the discussion in congress about antisemitism, where the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn couldn't bring themselves to denounce a call to genocide the Jews as harassment, Rabbi David Wolpe, a member of Harvard's committee to combat antisemitism, resigned, saying it became evident to him he couldn't help create the change he was hoping for.

I mentioned Gal Eizenkott in my daily update post yesterday, the 25 years old son of Israeli minister Gadi Eizenkott, the IDF's former chief of staff. Gadi is a part of Israel's war cabinet, the small team making the most essential decisions on the fighting. The IDF's spokesman, Daniel Hagari, mentioned yesterday that Gal didn't have to serve in this war, he volunteered to.

This is not that important in the larger scheme of things, but since I've shared vids of IDF soldiers helping Palestinians in Gaza, why not also one of IDF soldiers helping animals in Gaza? Especially since I love donkeys. They are SO sweet. Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza found, during a break, a donkey that was abandoned in a field, with its legs tied together by a rope. The soldiers set it free:

This is 68 years old Dror Kaplun.

He was believed to be kidnapped by Hamas. Last night, Israeli archeologists working on the scene of the Hamas massacre managed to find frgaments of his bones next to the fence of his kibbutz. He was the son of Holocaust survivors. His wife Marcel was also murdered. May their memories be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

🔅 WED morning - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

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⭕ SUICIDE DRONE attack at Eilat by IRAQ SHIA (Iranian) MILITIAS, interception failed but drone missed, hitting the sea.

 ▪️ON THE ULTRA-ORTHODOX DRAFT.. the Attorney General: The recruitment of 3,000 yeshiva students must be started immediately, all the ultra-Orthodox who are required to be drafted must report to the recruitment center, any budget that concerns those who do not enlist must be stopped.

.. COMMENTARY:  One of the principles for rabbis ruling for a community is not to attempt to uphold a law that the community will not keep - turning the community as a whole into violators.  Apparently the justice system believes if they declare it will happen?  Whether you agree with drafting Torah students or not, saying “do this” to a large group who is already refusing is… silly.

 ▪️RELATED - POLITICS & CONSCRIPTION LAW CHANGES.. Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Edelstein in the conscription law debates: "Either the adjusted conscription law will pass with broad agreement or the law will not pass at all."  (Hint: there is no broad agreement possible.)

.. The MK says: “I know that the High Court's ruling will not bring even one recruit - I will continue the committee's deliberations on the way to a correct, agreed upon and historic (conscription) law.”

 ▪️LEGAL WAR BLOCKERS.. The military attorney's office ordered not to eliminate Gazan citizens who participated in the Oct. 7th massacre. The reason: they are not defined as Hamas terrorists.  From the interpretation of the military attorney's office for the laws of war, it is claimed that only those who belong to a fighting force can be killed intentionally in war. Targeted elimination is a preventive measure, not a punishment, and therefore, since the "civilian" is not part of the fighting force, he cannot be killed in retaliation.

If the Shin Bet and the IDF learn of the location of Gazans who have murdered, looted, raped or kidnapped Israelis, they do not have legal authorization to eliminate them. (N12)

🔥ARSON ATTACK.. Overnight a huge wildfire fire broke out near the "Ofrit" base on Mount Scopus, believed to be started by Molotov cocktails from nearby Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem.  Damage to the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus campus.  Brought under control.

 ▪️AID - WATER.. In an official letter sent from the Office of the Minister of Defense to the Chief of Staff, the head of the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Energy, the request is made - the desalination plant in Gaza must be connected to electricity for the first time since the beginning of the war, due to a humanitarian need that would allegedly prevent the sewage from flowing into the sea.

🔅 WED morning - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

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▪️AID - FOOD.. for the 5th time so far, the United Nations threatens to suspend its humanitarian activities in the Gaza Strip, if the security of the aid workers does not improve while being attacked by Hamas again and again (( and therefore complaining to Israel? )). Over 1,500 trucks are backed up by Kerem Shalom.

▪️AID - ORDER 9 COMMENTS: The State of Israel continues to provide aid to an enemy that continues to spit in its face. Risking soldiers for treats to the terrorist organization that massacred our children is a terrible crime. The State of Israel must immediately stop aid to Hamas in its current form.”

▪️PROTEST - RETURN THE HOSTAGES!  Sderot Reger in Be’er Sheva.  Small crowd.

▪️IDF MANPOWER CHANGE - COMBAT PROFILES TO COMBAT.. hundreds with a combat profile destined for the intelligence and tech services will serve as combat fighters. Senior officials explained this is a change from the "small army" concept: "It would have been better for a genius to be in cyber and not a fighter in the paratroopers or in an elite unit”, with the idea "it is better for the army to have them in the offensive cyber at the expense of another fighter in the paratroopers or even in an elite unit”.  

But with the extended need for combat infantry, the combat rating must override the education and intelligence rating.

Intelligence unit 8200: “This may harm the quality of soldiers in our unique roles.”

▪️NOT WHAT THEY THOUGHT - CAPTURED TERRORIST DIET & THE COURT.. The Israeli Association for Civil Rights petitioned the High Court that the diet being served to mass murdering baby killing captured Oct. 7 massacring terrorists was “not healthy” and “included too many processed meats - unhealthy”.   The Prison Service sat with professional nutritionists: Instead of 4 slices of bread, they will get 3 in the meal with plain tahini.  Instead of processed meat (sausages), lentils.  

“The minister (Nat. Sec. Ben Gvir) made the conditions of the terrorists worse and is not ashamed of it. The food provided is the minimum required. If the judges want to care for the well-being of those who perpetrated the massacre - let them declare it in the hearing."

♦️IDF ATTACKS.. 3 airstrikes one after the other in a fire belt layout in the Al Dahani area in Rafah.

♦️COUNTER-TERROR - SILWAD (Ramallah area).. firefight.

⭕ HOUTHIS SAY.. struck cargo ship MSC Sarah V in the Arabian Sea, using new ballistic missile system.

⭕ HAMAS ROCKET.. at Sufa, near Gaza town.