The Big Story
The nationwide protests against Israel have claimed their first victim.
A 69-year-old Jewish man, Paul Kessler, died on Monday in what police have labeled a homicide, after he was struck by a pro-Palestinian protestor during a confrontation at a Sunday demonstration in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Witnesses told the local ABC affiliate that pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators had gathered on opposite street corners, before the larger pro-Palestinian group crossed the street and began “antagonizing” the pro-Israel group. As the verbal exchange escalated, one of the pro-Palestinian protestors hit Kessler, who was waving an Israeli flag, in the head with a megaphone. Video of the aftermath shows an injured and bleeding Kessler lying on the sidewalk before being rushed to the hospital. The anti-Israel chants continued shortly after the ambulance carrying Kessler left, and he died a day later of a “blunt-force head injury,” according to authorities. An Instagram ad for the pro-Palestinian protest, surfaced by Christina Buttons on X, had warned attendees not to engage with pro-Israeli “hecklers,” whom it described as “crusty old racist white men.”
Warnings notwithstanding, years of propaganda demonizing “racist” whites—crusty, old, and male or not—as threats to the physical safety of people of color can make restraint in such situations elusive. More generally, the tenor of protests in cities and on college campuses across the country has been escalating with rhetorical demonization and intimidation edging closer or crossing over into physical violence. At Harvard, a student who had exercised his right to film anti-Israel protesters was mobbed by activists who screamed “Shame!” in his face while surrounding him and blocking his path, which was captured in a video that circulated last week. In another video posted on Monday, a young woman of color in New York City can be seen physically assaulting another woman who had attempted to prevent her from tearing down Israeli hostage rescue posters. The video shows the two struggling over a poster before the young Black woman, dressed in some sort of goth outfit, grabs the other woman, who appears to be white, and throws her to the ground before immediately protesting that she’s the real victim: “Do you know how scary it is to be Black and to get dragged off for no reason? No, you don’t!” We aren’t yet seeing anything on the order of the rioting and destruction that characterized the “mostly peaceful” riots in the summer of 2020, but there seems to be the same underlying pattern of quasi-sanctioned public disorder and aggression toward officially disfavored identity groups.
No charges have yet been announced in the killing of Paul Kessler, though law enforcement has reportedly questioned a suspect in the case who is said to be cooperating with authorities. Kessler was described to NBC News as having been “passionate” about progressive causes.
IN THE BACK PAGES: A writer from a southern Israeli kibbutz describes life after Oct. 7
The Rest
→U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have been attacked by Iranian proxy forces 38 times since Oct. 17, leading to 46 reported injuries, according to a Monday announcement from a Pentagon spokesman. Twenty-four of those service members have been diagnosed with “traumatic brain injuries,” and two have been evacuated to Germany for further treatment, while one contractor died of a heart attack. Half of the attacks have come since Oct. 26, when the United States struck two Iran-linked targets in Syria “to deter Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities,” in the words of President Joe Biden. For The Scroll’s view, consult the following post from U.S. Air Force veteran and military analyst Patrick Fox (click the image to view the post on X):
Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/06/us-troop-attacks-middle-east-00125539
→Israel will have “security responsibility” for Gaza for “an indefinite period,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an overnight interview with ABC News. In an Oct. 30 article for Haaretz previously covered by The Scroll, Anshel Pfeffer argued, citing Israeli government and defense sources, that the most likely plan would be a limited period of occupation by the IDF followed by a transition to an international peacekeeping force and then the transfer of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, which was previously run out of Gaza by Hamas following a brief, intense war between the two groups in 2007. Netanyahu also for the first time acknowledged a limited degree of responsibility for the Oct. 7 attacks, which other Israeli leaders, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, had already done, but which the prime minister had refused to do till now. Netanyahu also indicated that he could be open to short pauses in the fighting to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid, saying, “We’ve had them before.”
Read more here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-keep-security-control-in-gaza-indefinitely-after-war-netanyahu-says/
→A subsidiary of the Democratic dark-money giant Tides organized a blockade of the Port of Tacoma, Washington, on Monday, to obstruct the delivery of U.S. military aid to Israel, The Post Millennial reports. The protest was organized by the Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC), which is a “fiscal sponsorship” of Tides, an arrangement that allows the group to receive donor funds from Tides without registering as an independent nonprofit. This means that legally, there is no distinction between Tides and AROC, and AROC’s “employees” are actually employees of Tides. As The Scroll has repeatedly pointed out, Tides is a behemoth within the shadowy world of progressive nonprofits and counts among its donors George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, and Peter Buffett’s NoVo Foundation. According to a press release from the U.S. Coast Guard, several protesters breached the fence surrounding the port, climbed aboard the MV Cape Orlando, and began tampering with the ship’s mooring lines. They are now under investigation for “potential violations of federal law.”
Read more here: https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-arab-advocacy-non-profit-org-blocks-ship-delivering-supplies-weapons-to-israel-from-leaving-tacoma-port
→Quote of the Day:
The person responsible for the Jewish community’s security interests appears to have connections to two different groups of law enforcement and intelligence elites, just as Soufan does. One, in the U.S., insists that “white supremacists,” rather than Islamist terror groups, mobs chanting in favor of Hamas, or governments like the one in Doha are the main threat to Jews and communities in America. Another, namely the one in Doha itself, actively supports Hamas, sheltering its leadership and negotiating on the Islamist group’s behalf.
That’s Tablet’s Armin Rosen writing about David Masters, national director and CEO of the Secure Community Network, an umbrella organization that works with U.S. law enforcement to protect Jewish communal institutions. Masters also served as president of the Soufan Center from 2016 to 2022 and as executive vice president and later counsel for the Soufan Group from 2015 to 2020. The Soufan Center and the Soufan Group are the nonprofit and for-profit wings, respectively, of the security consulting empire founded by former FBI agent Ali Soufan. The Soufan Group runs the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS), which trains Qatari security forces and employs senior members of the Qatari political and military establishment, while QIASS and the Soufan Center co-organize the Global Security Forum, an annual “policy festival of Qatari regime self-aggrandizement” at which Masters has appeared as a speaker. Qatar, as Scroll readers are surely aware, is one of the primary funders of Hamas and currently provides shelter to the terror group’s top leaders.
Read the rest here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/should-jewish-communal-security-be-entrusted-to-qatar
→Thousands of Israelis attended rallies across Israel over the weekend for the second straight week in support of the families of the hostages, including 200 who gathered outside the Netanyahu family residence in Caesarea to call for the prime minister to resign. In Jerusalem, some of the protestors clashed with police, who in turn described the protests as “a political protest against the government and government policy.” While the protests are still fairly small in absolute terms, they have become a focal point for families pushing the Israeli government to agree to a deal with Hamas that would lead to the release of the remaining 241 hostages, as well as an outlet for broader anger at the Netanyahu government. If the war in Gaza goes on for months, as multiple Israeli officials have said they expect it to, the protests are likely to grow in size and intensity.
→Headline of the Day
In Protests Against Israel Strikes, G.O.P. Sees ‘Woke Agenda’ at Colleges
As the Mideast war escalates, the party’s politicians and activists are casting antisemitic incidents and progressive protests as part of a larger cultural battle over education.
That’s the New York Times, issuing its marching orders for how reasonable American liberals should think about the college students who have projected “Glory to the Martyrs” on campus buildings and denounced dead Israeli women and children as “settlers.” The key thing is that one should not think about it as “part of a larger cultural battle over education”—that’s what Republican “politicians and activists” do.
→Amir Tabon, a diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, narrowly escaped death on Oct. 7 when Hamas invaded the Nachal Oz kibbutz in southern Israel, where Tabon lived with his wife and two children. On Tuesday, Tabon published the following thread on X, which doubles as a moving personal reflection and a window into the mindset of pro-peace, center-left Israelis after one month of war (click the image to view the thread on X).
→And here, read Shany Mor’s essay in Mosaic on the three wars that shaped the modern Palestinian predicament: https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2023/11/ecstasy-and-amnesia-in-the-gaza-strip/
TODAY IN TABLET:
What Now? by Tablet Magazine
How to feel, and what to do, one month after the massacre
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
In a Scroll exclusive, a writer from a southern Israeli kibbutz writes of life after the Oct. 7 massacre: “We go from one funeral to the next trying to comfort the families, but we struggle to find words of condolence.”
This is a story about a community. This community is neither famous nor rich, but it has been my home for the past 45 years. The community I call my home is called Sha’ar HaNegev (Gateway to the Negev) Regional Council. It is a rural community and encompasses 10 kibbutzim and one moshav, with a population of about 9,000. Most of the kibbutzim are on the border of the Gaza Strip or within several kilometers of it. We were a thriving and proud community; our children and grandchildren studied together at the regional school, we celebrated together, we went on trips together, we worked together, and our children married each other. That was all before Oct. 7.
Now my community is devastated and scattered all over Israel. The survivors have been evacuated to temporary accommodations; some fled with only the clothes on their backs. Their family and friends were massacred, their homes and property destroyed. They sit shiva for the dead by putting up tents on hotel lawns, each tent marked with the name of a murdered loved one. They don’t know if or when they will be able to return home, but they all dream of their kibbutz as it was before Oct. 7.
We are fortunate that the terrorists did not infiltrate our kibbutz, but most of the families with children have evacuated the kibbutz, including my three daughters and six grandchildren. Instead of the laughter and voices of my grandchildren, we now hear bombs and rockets.
As more bodies are identified each day, I have become numb from pain, unable to comprehend the horrendous slaughter of innocent babies, children, young adults, parents, and grandparents.
The gate of our regional school is locked, and no one knows when the school will reopen. Thousands of children are without school. Children and teachers were massacred or taken as hostages. Entire families were slaughtered. How do you explain such a thing to a child? We try to protect our children from the atrocity of Oct. 7, but they can tell by our faces and by the way we whisper among ourselves that something is very wrong. This will be their legacy.
The only time we see people from our community is at funerals. We go from one funeral to the next trying to comfort the families, but we struggle to find words of condolence. The victims cannot be buried on their kibbutz because the area has been closed off by the Israeli Army. Their bodies are scattered over Israel in numerous cemeteries.
Hamas used the home of one couple they murdered as a center of operation to plan the massacre of others on the kibbutz. Our second daughter and their second daughter were good friends. We used to joke about how similar our families are; both of us mothers were Americans who volunteered on a kibbutz in the 1970s, both fathers worked in agriculture, both families had three girls who went to the same school. Both fathers were fans of Mark Knopfler, and they both listened to a transistor radio while showering.
Now there are no jokes.
So many people have died, it’s hard to keep track. My husband recently attended a funeral for a friend of his who was slaughtered in his home. They were from the same army unit and fought together in the Yom Kippur War. Just a month ago there was a ceremony with his unit observing 50 years since the Yom Kippur War. Yom Kippur broke out on Oct. 6, the Hamas slaughter on Oct. 7.
This man was buried alongside his grandson, who was also massacred.
I don’t know how we as a community will be able to heal. Maybe some will return and try to rebuild their kibbutz. Some will never return. The people of my community will carry with them this horrific trauma for the rest of their lives.
To this Back Pages “writer from a southern Israeli kibbutz”, from the safety of my American home, in my mind your words appear like fields of broken hearts. Broken hearts all around. And for what?
To my fellow goy I ask, please choose:
Civilization or barbarism?
Enlightenment or 7th century dogma?
Tomorrow’s promise or history’s darkest page?
Equivocation is the breeding ground of monsters my brothers.
And monsters dwell within the hearts of every human being.
Choose.
“What Now” is an excellent resource in dealing with anti Semitism