The Big Story
In the last several days, Iran’s proxy forces have stepped up their attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets throughout the Middle East. On Friday, two American bases in Iraq came under rocket fire. Yesterday, an American warship intercepted three missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthi group off the coast of Yemen, believed to be aimed for Israel, while Iranian proxies attacked two U.S. military targets in Syria. Two other U.S. bases in Iraq were struck earlier in the week. On the Israeli-Lebanon border, meanwhile, the daily exchanges of fire between the IDF and Hezbollah continued, while Iran issued threats to hit Israel from “all sides” unless it abandons its Gaza campaign. Also on Friday, the head of the Iranian armed forces, Mohammed Bagheri, said in a statement on Iranian state television that U.S. aid to Israel will be considered by Iran as “participation by the American government in the Zionist regime’s crimes,” further adding to fears that the Gaza war devolve into a wider regional conflict.
One of the running themes of The Scroll over the past two weeks has been how the Obama-Biden push for American rapprochement with Iran, ongoing even as Iranian proxies strike American targets, has helped to create the current chaos in the Middle East. To briefly recap: the United States has funded, directly and indirectly, Iran and its regional empire of terrorist proxies, on the theory that by empowering Iran and using Washington’s leverage with its traditional regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, to force them to accept this arrangement, the U.S. could induce Iran to become a partner in maintaining a stable regional balance of power, which would in turn allow Washington to effectively wash its hands of the Middle East. This sounds reasonable enough until you consider that Washington’s would-be partner in this endeavor is a revisionist, millenarian terror state that may soon be armed with nuclear weapons (if it isn’t already), and which openly proclaims the goal of eradicating Israel. For a good idea of what happens when you give these people money, look no further than what happened in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Now the United States is stuck trying to keep a lid on a conflict in which it is effectively playing both sides, hobbling its ally while attempting to deter the traditional enemy it has been trying to make into a friend. Washington wants Israel to focus on Gaza and Gaza only, and Israel has no choice but to listen. “We rely on [the Americans] for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli lawmakers earlier this week. Washington must hope that Iran, too, will listen to reason. Given how many other assumptions behind the last decade of Obama-Biden Iran policy have turned out to be false, the Scroll wouldn’t count on it.
Read more here: https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2023/10/u-s-warship-intercepts-missiles-fired-by-iran-backed-houthis.php
IN THE BACK PAGES: Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters.
→The New York Times has rehired a Hitler-praising Palestinian journalist to cover Israel’s war in Gaza, just one year after cutting ties with him over his praise of Hitler. Photojournalist Soliman Hijjy, a Gaza-based stringer who has received nine byline or contributor credits in the New York Times since Oct. 12, was last seen working for the Times in 2021, when he helped produce a video feature on alleged Israeli war crimes that was denounced at the time as an anti-Israel “hatchet job.” A 2022 investigation by HonestReporting into a different Hitler-praising Times stringer, who posted on Facebook that “Jews are sons of the dogs” and “I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did,” revealed that Hijjy had posted “How great you are, Hitler” on Facebook in 2012, repeating variants of the post in 2018 and 2020. Sounds bad, you might say, but which Hitler? Adolf, the National Socialist dictator of Germany from 1933-1945, best known today for starting World War II and perpetrating the Holocaust. We know because Hijjy included a picture. HonestReporting notified the Times about its discovery, which said it had reviewed Hijjy’s pro-Hitler posts and “taken appropriate action.” Hijjy did not contribute to the Times again until the outbreak of the current war.
The paper famously has a zero-tolerance policy for hate. The Times ousted two editors over a 2020 Tom Cotton op-ed that called on the National Guard to quell rioting in American cities, reasoning that the article put the lives of Black Times staffers in danger, and in 2021, it forced award-winning science reporter Donald McNeil to resign for committing racial microaggressions against high schoolers during a $5,000-per-person Times-sponsored trip to Peru—a crime for which McNeil was denounced in a letter to management signed by 150 of his colleagues.
Read more here: https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/08/28/unearthed-another-hitler-praising-new-york-times-gaza-journalist/
→Hamas released two American hostages to the Red Cross on Friday for “humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless,” according to a statement from the terror group. The release of the hostages, Chicago natives Judith Raanan and her 18-year-old daughter Natalie, was mediated by Qatar, the Gulf emirate that hosts most of Hamas’ senior leadership, including the leader of its Politburo, Ismail Haniyeh. YNet News reports that the timing of the release was meant to put pressure on Israel to abandon its expected ground invasion of Gaza. Hamas has threatened to execute its more than 200 hostages if Israel moves forward with its invasion.
Read more here: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkyhjlkzp
→Hamas fighters had been planning the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel for at least three years, in cooperation with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and other elements of the Iran-backed “Islamic Resistance,” according to a report from an IRGC-affiliated news agency. The report from the Iranian agency Tasnim, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, notes that drills for the attack began in December, 2020, and that Hamas’ name for the operation, Al-Aqsa Flood (“Al-Aqsa Storm” in Farsi), had been decided years in advance by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei also referenced the establishment of a joint command and control center to coordinate the efforts of all elements of the “resistance,” a euphemism for Iran’s regional network of proxy forces that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shiite militias in Iraq. The report undermines contentions by Hamas apologists in the West that the Oct. 7 attack was revenge for a 2021 incident in which Israeli police forcibly dispersed protesters from the Al-Aqsa compound.
Read more here: https://www.memri.org/reports/exclusive-report-iranian-news-agency-tasnim-mighty-pillar-maneuvers-were-resistance
→The president of the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, announced on Thursday that his foundation would be supporting “immediate humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza and the Middle East” and dedicating its resources to “provide life-saving support and other essential needs to the affected Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Walker made no mention of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, whom Israel has demanded be released before it restores humanitarian aid to the territory. Walker, described by the New York Times in 2019 as “the man with $13 billion checkbook” for his role leading the philanthropic giant, founded by one of America’s most notorious antisemites, spoke earlier this year at the conference of the Jewish Funders Network, “a global community of private foundations and philanthropists whose mission is to promote meaningful giving and to improve philanthropy in the Jewish world,” according to the network’s website. There, Walker chided attendees that they had “missed the mark” in failing to keep extremist rhetoric out of the public square.
According to sources, Walker’s invitation came at the suggestion of Rachel Garbowe Monroe, president and CEO of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, who introduced him at the event. Neither Walker nor Garbowe Monroe responded to requests for comment.
The Ford Foundation is a major funder of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both of which regularly criticize Israeli “apartheid,” and it has more recently donated millions to the Tides Center, part of the dark-money Tides Network that, as the Scroll reported yesterday, funnels money from progressive billionaires such as Peter Buffett and George Soros to anti-Israel NGOs, including IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized the Oct. 18 rally at the U.S. Capitol against the Israeli campaign in Gaza. (The Tides Center has also referred to Israel as a “settler colonial” and “apartheid” state on its website.) The Ford Foundation ceased all of its philanthropic activity in Israel in 2011. Walker was scheduled to visit Israel this summer but canceled for unspecified reasons, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Reached by the Scroll, Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, said that it was an evolving situation and declined to comment at this time.
Read more here: https://www.fordfoundation.org/news-and-stories/stories/ford-foundation-responds-to-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/
TODAY IN TABLET:
Our Support for Israel Is as Important as That for Ukraine, by Boris Johnson and Bernard-Henri Lévy
The West is fighting for its future, and these are the front lines
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.
Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters
Yazmeen Deyhimi’s journey from a young ADL 'No Place for Hate' intern to Hamas campaigner to apologizing on social media is a study in the profound political confusion of the campus woke
By Armin Rosen
Yazmeen Deyhimi, who the organization Stop Antisemitism identified as one of two New York University students caught on video tearing down flyers depicting the faces of people Hamas kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, began volunteering for the Anti-Defamation League when she was just a freshman in high school. While still a young teen, she “took part in the ADL Peer Training Program,” according to a short biography of Deyhimi included in the ADL of New York and New Jersey’s announcement of its 2019 high school summer intern class. “She quickly joined the No Place for Hate Committee and has been committed to help facilitate events such as Unity and Equality Days,” the blurb continued.
The then-high school junior was a Girl Scout, as well as a tennis instructor for the underprivileged. “She is,” we learn, “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”
The ADL could not have been expected to know that a bright and socially conscious high school student from the extremist hotbed of Port Washington, New York, would proudly announce a sociopathic lack of sympathy for Jews in terrorist captivity four years later. At the same time, Deyhimi’s story is a look into how little sticking power the ADL’s brand of consensus-seeking, center-left politics might have in the long run, even with people who volunteered with the group through most of high school. “We fully condemn her actions and hope that the apology she issued is the first step towards working to repair the harm and deep hurt her actions caused,” an ADL spokesman told Tablet by email when asked about Deyhimi.
“As a matter of policy, ADL does not comment on personnel matters," the ADL spokesman wrote. "However, we will say that ADL and our staff are steadfast in our support of Israel, that our body of work speaks for itself, and that we are grateful for the tireless efforts of the entire ADL team in the wake of the largest mass murder of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Deyhimi’s apology, which came after she was widely identified by name on social media, opened with the acknowledgement that “My actions that were caught on camera are a poor representation of what I believe: all innocent lives—Israeli and Palestinian—should be spared and all terrorist organizations should be condemned and punished.” The sentiment is blameless, of course. Who could argue otherwise?
In her apology, the NYU junior proved herself to be a fluent writer of officialese, proof her education at a hyperselective American college did not go to waste. What do young high-achievers learn at expensive universities these days—aside from, perhaps, the necessity of supporting terror attacks against Israeli families, children, and old people, of course—if not the language of virtuous self-presentation, a survival skill in a world in which one might flip from being a victim to victimizer in a hot minute? Handling these kinds of passages is a delicate art, worthy of the courtiers of Versailles.
As the NYU junior continued, “I have found it increasingly difficult to take my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times. I find myself more and more frustrated about the time we currently find ourselves in.”
The honesty is laudable, and it is hard not to identify with it, whatever your beliefs about the war: Everyone is at least a little frustrated right now. People want to repair a horrific breach in reality, wherever they are and however they can, even if their real motive isn’t to improve much of anything in the external world but to quiet their own inner turmoil. All the better if one’s emotional pain-relief racks up the maximum number of points on the great peer group-social, media-victimhood scoreboard.
While tearing down flyers of kidnapped Jews isn’t most people’s idea of helping the situation, or seems a strange way of assuaging an individual sense of helplessness, the thought process Deyhimi describes in her apology is chillingly legible, common to people of good and ill intent on both sides of this awful conflict. We all want to do something, don’t we? But do what? Hard to say, now that “reality” is an increasingly vague chaos in which our own ever-multiplying “identities” can seem like the last pillars of certainty.
Deyhimi’s trajectory tracks with that of a generation of rising elites for whom staid, establishment institutions have served as a pipeline to a much edgier, more militant set of values, which themselves are admission tickets to prestige institutions. Thirty student groups at Harvard, including, initially, the university’s Amnesty International chapter, signed on to a statement endorsing Hamas’ slaughter of 1,400 Israelis—many of them believing, no doubt, that a public display of fealty to a terror group wouldn’t hurt them in the elite job market.
After all, no one suffered for endorsing demonstrations by BLM members at which multiple police officers were murdered; or by embracing the violent riots that followed the death of George Floyd; or the nightly firebombing of a Portland courthouse by antifa members; or antifa violence more generally. Fanonist principles are regularly endorsed in dozens of classes, along with attacks on the “colonial mindset” and “white supremacy.” How could a young up-and-comer at a place like NYU or Harvard go wrong by endorsing the anti-colonial struggle of Palestinian freedom fighters?
In this particular crisis, however, the students guessed wrong about the grown-ups. Suddenly, and perhaps even unfairly, the rules have changed. The president of NYU’s student bar association had a job offer at the white-shoe firm of Winston and Strawn rescinded after she spoke up for Hamas’ right to resist Israel’s alleged occupation of Gaza by whatever means it chose. She expected, in this case wrongly, that holding doctrinaire Fanonist beliefs would be consistent with working one of the least-radical jobs one can possibly imagine, namely that of a corporate lawyer. Davis Polk, another behemoth of the straight-laced legal world, has also withdrawn job offers for Harvard and Columbia law students over their public backing of Hamas.
Many skilled and experienced lifelong operators within elite spaces appear to have perceived no contradiction between enjoying the benefits of the current system of status distribution while also acting in ways that are boldly disconnected from any previous, widely accepted system of morality. But maybe things are changing.
Young careerists at expensive universities should probably think twice before committing to support terrorist groups like Hamas—or to oppose them for that matter. The near-universal silence of university presidents, not to mention DEI officers, about the massacre of Jews suggests that the old new math continues to prevail on campus. One shudders at the consequences if an NYU student were caught tearing down posters in favor of Black Lives Matter, or flyers commemorating the victims of homophobia or police violence; their academic futures would already have vaporized. They might even get accused of having perpetrated a bias incident.
Meanwhile, it is unclear what kind of discipline Deyhimi will face for her actions. Perhaps the school will treat the flyer tear-down as a rash emotional reflex triggered in the intensity of the moment, extending a sense of nuance and understanding that isn’t typically applied to incidents of this kind in 2023.
When reached by email, NYU spokesperson John Beckman declined to say whether NYU was treating the flyer tear-downs as a hate incident. “We take the matter seriously, and we're looking into it," Beckman told Tablet.
One day people will look back and realize that the Scroll was the single finest source of daily socio-political analysis out there during this troubled time
Re: article penned by Johnson & Levy:
It is worth noting that both these war fronts, Israel and Ukraine, were aided and abetted largely by reckless Western powers and policies, weakness and corruption.
The continuous baiting of Russia by NATO to tease membership to Ukraine, just for starters, and the obsessive and delusional efforts of the West working to elevate Iran, the #1 sponsor of terror in the world, into a hegemonic power over the Middle East.
These two war fronts are the fruit of all these insane Western powers efforts over the last 15 years, the “chickens coming home to roost”, if you will.
They have a lot of nerve in my book to make out as if they are now championing noble causes, when in reality they have the blood of all those Ukrainians and Israelis all over their hands.