I can certainly appreciate them protesting outside of the Infernal Revenue Service building in Philadelphia. What they are protesting, however, is not something I support.
Protesters block traffic in Center City, calling for an end to war in Gaza
Organizers said the action is part of A15, a global campaign calling on U.S. officials to stop supplying arms to U.S. and end the taxpayer-funded siege in the Gaza Strip.
Why do the left support the Palestinians, and the Arabs in general? The Advocate is a very leftist homosexual rights publication, but even they can’t stomach the idea of “Queers for Palestine”:
Queers for Palestine?
By James Kirchick | January 28, 2009 | 12:00 AM EST
Of all the slogans chanted and displayed at anti-Israel rallies over the past month, surely “Queers for Palestine” ranks as the most oxymoronic. It is the motto of the San Francisco–based Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), a group advocating financial divestment from the Jewish State. QUIT contends that Zionism is racism, regularly demonstrates at gay pride marches, organizes with far-right Muslim organizations, and successfully lobbied the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission to boycott the 2006 World Pride Conference due to its location that year in Jerusalem.
When I heard about the hunger strike by the Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine, I asked, admittedly mockingly, for them to define exactly what they meant by a hunger strike. I did point out, at one point, that human beings going more than three days without water can lead to serious problems or even death.
Of course, they never answered, so I didn’t know exactly what they meant. But I got an answer, of sorts, from The Harvard Crimson:
More Than 30 Harvard Students Hunger Strike for 12 Hours in Solidarity With Brown Protesters
By Michelle N. Amponsah and Azusa M. Lippit, Crimson Staff Writers | Monday, February 12, 2024
More than 30 pro-Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike Friday in solidarity with 17 students at Brown University who refused to eat for eight days to pressure the Brown Corporation to divest from Israel.
If the Brown University hunger strikers really did refuse to eat for eight days, that is something of an accomplishment. Eight days is not enough for a reasonably health person to starve to death, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable after three days or so. But the Crimson telling us that 30 pro-Hamas Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike is just plain mockworthy. I’ve gone through plenty of 12-hour-workdays in which I had nothing to eat because I was just too plain busy to take a lunch; that’s something that can happen in the ready-mixed concrete industry.
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and millions of Catholics around the world will be engaged in a 12-hour fast; it’s something we also do on Good Friday. Me? I’m giving up soda for the entire seven weeks of Lent; do I get some kind of political credit for a 46-day Mountain Dew strike? 🙂
Nineteen students at Brown began the strike — which was originally indefinite — on Feb. 2, ahead of the Brown Corporation’s planned meetings beginning Feb. 8.
The students intended to strike until the Brown Corporation considered a resolution to divest from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine,” but they ended the strike[1]Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor … Continue reading after Brown University president Christina H. Paxson denied their request, citing “now-obsolete demands,” per the Brown Daily Herald.
The 17 students ended their strike at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, along with the Harvard demonstrators and more than 200 other Brown students who fasted for 32 hours in solidarity.
The Brown Daily Herald Editorial Page Board included an editorial documenting the history of hunger strikes at the University and beyond, noting that very few hunger strikers actually starved themselves to death. But the hunger strike, while an extreme method of peaceful protest, relies on the people against whom they are striking to actually care about whether the hunger strikers suffer, or even whether they live or die.
References
| ↑1 | Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor journalism from these Harvard journalism students! |
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Our constitutional rights under the First Amendment include the right of peaceable assembly, and this demonstration on the University of Pennsylvania campus in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia has been reported to be completely peaceful. But, in speaking their piece, the demonstrators, which included some Penn faculty, have exposed themselves to criticism of their message, and, unfortunately for the supporters of the Palestinians and Hamas terrorists, some of that criticism could come from deep-pockets donors. We have covered the backlash of deep-pockets donors against the outbreak of anti-Semitism on our college campuses, as recently as yesterday, but some people just don’t listen. From The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper:
Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine hosts College Hall protest, blocks main entrance
Is it any surprise, any surprise at all, that the United Nations agency which has been ‘helping’ the Arabs in Gaza would ‘help’ Hamas in their October 7th attack on Israel? These idiots dedicated relief workers live among the ‘Palestinians,’ are sympathetic to them, probably sleep with some of the Gazans, and are exposed to the same propaganda that the Islamist radicals spread throughout Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
U.N. agency in Gaza fires employees over alleged involvement in Oct. 7 attack
By Geoff Brumfiel | Friday, January 26, 2024 | 2:17 PM EST
TEL AVIV, Israel — The main United Nations agency that provides aid to Palestinians in Gaza has fired multiple employees following allegations that they were involved in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 people in Israel.
“The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on 7 October,” said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees, in a statement.
“To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay.”
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for “an urgent investigation by UNRWA regarding the involvement of its employees in the terrorist events of 10/7.”
“It is important that UNRWA conduct a thorough internal inspection regarding the activities of Hamas and other terrorist elements in its ranks in order to ensure that the organization’s humanitarian activities are not abused,” it said in a statement.
Neither Israel nor the United Nations immediately provided further details on the allegations against the UNRWA employees. . . .
Twelve UNRWA employees were allegedly involved, according to the U.S. State Department, which also said it has temporarily paused additional funding for the U.N. agency “while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”
Early reports had at least 29 Americans killed in the October 7 attack. The Wall Street Journal reported:
In other words, workers for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, used dollars provided by the United States and American taxpayers to kill and capture American citizens.The White House said in mid-December that eight Americans, including three male soldiers, remained hostage, but later in the month, U.S. citizens Gad Haggai, 73 years old, and Judi Weinstein, 70, were declared dead. The husband and wife were killed on the day of the attack and their bodies were taken to Gaza and are still held by Hamas, a spokesman from their kibbutz said.
But let’s be honest here: Hamas are able to exist because the surrounding population support them, support them with food, clothing, shelter, water, and concealment. That’s no surprise: every army or guerrilla group do the same thing, depending upon civilian support. And that means that all American dollars sent to UNRWA have gone in at least some respects to support Hamas. You have been taxed to help kill Americans!
The United Nations were formed by the Western democracies, by the nations which enjoyed the fruits and ethics and morality of Western civilization, in the aftermath of World War II, but other than our Security Council voting status, the vast majority of the UN member nations are not Western democracies, and want no part of — save our economic largesse — Western civilization.
I have long said that the conquering Israelis should have expelled every last Arab from the territories they conquered in the Six-Day War of 1967. It would have been a horrible humanitarian disaster, but such would have left the Jewish State with shortened, more defensible borders, and the displaced Arabs would not have been living under Israeli occupation. If Israel was not willing to expel the Arabs, then they should have just annexed what they wanted — primarily all of Jerusalem, the eastern part of which was under Jordanian control prior to the war — and left the Arabs to live in their own state in 1967.
The Israelis somehow thought that the Arabs would slowly emigrate, rather than live under occupation, but in that, they forgot Jewish history, how very few Jews fled Europe even faced with pogroms, discrimination, murders, and even the Third Reich. We’ve all heard about the Jewish refugee ship, the MS St Louis, turned away from ports in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, but out of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany, the ship carried only 937 passengers. Most European Jews thought that they could ride out the storm of Naziism, with some casualties, but mostly their communities and their people would survive intact. It was simply outside their paradigm that the Nazis really did intend to kill them all.
Knowing that part of their history, the Israelis of the late 1960s should have realized that the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs could, and probably would, do the same thing, try to ride out the storm at anchor.
From The Atlantic:
Some Palestinians Want to Leave Gaza. Let Them.
No one should be trapped in a war zone.
by Joshua Krug | Monday, January 22, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST
Recently, I reached out to a prominent Palestinian activist to learn about his experiences in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. He told me that his apartment had been destroyed, and that he lives in a tent with his family. They are under the near-constant threat of bombings, are often hungry, and are worried about starvation and sickness. He wants to leave the enclave—but right now, he can’t.
Several other Palestinians I’ve talked with also want to leave Gaza, and have also encountered closed borders. They of course want the violence to stop, and do not want to be permanently shut out. But above all, they want to be safe. (And I have withheld their names to protect their safety.)
An article in The Guardian this month featured a U.K.-based Palestinian who said his family members were killed in Israeli air strikes and echoed the above sentiments: “I’m not sure why no schemes have been introduced, nothing to evacuate people. I don’t even hear humanitarians talk about this any more.”
Alas! The Atlantic now requires readers to either subscribe or “start a free trial”. Fortunately, the article is also in my msn.com, and can be read for free here.
I am an American Jewish academic based in Germany, and I oppose the forced relocation of Palestinians from their land. Gaza is central to Palestinian history, and I would like people there to survive and thrive right where they are. Still, life—rather than land—should be the ultimate value, a simple fact often lost in the heated debates around the current conflict. I hear calls for a cease-fire and for the surrender of Hamas, but almost never for a safe path out of an active war zone. Palestinians deserve a state of their own, and the opportunity to take refuge outside a war zone rather than serve as martyrs for “the cause.”
There are never calls for “a safe path out of an active war zone” because none of the neighboring nations want the ‘Palestinians.’ Letting the ‘Palestinians’ leave concomitantly means having a place for them to go, and none of their neighbors want people they consider to be murderous trash living in their countries.
The Six-Day War is within living memory in the Arab states, but so is Black September. ‘Palestinian’ guerrilla fighters under Yassir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization escaped east of the river into Jordan used the Hashemite Kingdom as a base to attack Israel, but their presence and politics were leading them into calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy and King Hussein. Finally, open warfare broke out between the PLO and Jordanian forces.
Jordan and the other Arab nations get it: admitting large numbers of ‘Palestinians’ means a very probable eventual attempt to overthrow their governments.
Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.
Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.
With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” (Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director) said.
(Egyptian President Abdel Fattah) el-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself … and would strike Egyptian territory.”
“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”
President el-Sissi regards Hamas as just another part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group Egypt has long attempted to suppress.
The ‘Palestinians’ have created trouble wherever they’ve gone, and the other Arab nations really want no part of them; to put it bluntly, they see the ‘Palestinians’ as trash. And nobody wants to live next to a landfill.
We had previously reported on Hamas’ claim that “the fate of many of the remaining 136 Israeli hostages still in captivity has become unknown,” naturally blaming Israel for it.
The terrorists had just released photos of three of the hostages, saying that their fate would soon be revealed, so this is no surprise to anyone:
Hamas says two Israeli hostages are dead, as IDF calls videos ‘psychological torture’ of captives’ families
By Andrew Carey, Lianne Kolirin and Tara John, CNN | Tuesday, January 16, 2024 | 6:03 AM EST
(CNN) Israel said Monday that Hamas is carrying out “psychological torment” as the militant group released a third video in the space of 24 hours featuring the same three hostages being held in Gaza, the last of which appears to show two of the hostages dead.
“Hamas are hit badly by the IDF and all that is left for them is to bring psychological torment to the families [of the hostages], leaving the IDF to clarify things for the families later,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Monday. Continue reading
While the Islamists may lie to people for tactical reasons when it comes to their situation on the ground, they have been very honest about their policies and goals. What I cannot understand is how or why Western liberals just can’t believe them. Hamas has told the world that their goal is to expel all of the Jews from the Levant, to make it an Islamic waqf.
Gaza hostages’ fate unknown, Hamas spokesman says
In his first televised appearance for several weeks, Abu Obeida said many of the hostages “may have been killed,” blaming their fate on Israel.
By Alex Winston | Sunday, January 14, 2024 | 8:35 PM Jerusalem time | Updated 9:32 PM Jerusalem time
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, said on Sunday that the fate of many of the remaining 136 Israeli hostages still in captivity has become unknown.
In his first televised appearance for several weeks, Abu Obeida said many of the hostages “may have been killed,” blaming their fate on Israel. Continue reading
A liberal friend of mine in the 90s complained during one of our seemingly endless conflicts that “We did the flyin’ while the bad guys did the dyin’,” combitching that we just weren’t fighting fair! For some cockamamie reason, she seemed to think that military conflicts should be fair. Could someone show me a drill sergeant who would train his soldiers that a fair fight was a good idea? Continue reading
