What Happened Today, Special Edition: Israel at War Day 19
October 26, 2023
The Big Story
You may have noticed by now that something is off on American college campuses. After nearly a decade of escalating radicalism in the name of “justice,” “liberation,” and “emotional safety,” American universities greeted the mass murder of Israeli Jews three weeks ago by cheering for the murderers and seeking opportunities to terrorize Jewish students on campus.
On Wednesday, the headlines came from The Cooper Union, the New York art college, where a viral video clip showed several visibly Jewish students locked inside the school’s library, where they had apparently been corralled by administrators, while anti-Israel protesters banged on the door and shouted “Free Palestine!”
The NYPD announced on Thursday that the students were not “barricaded” in the library and that no physical threats had been made; the protestors clarified that “many students of all backgrounds were in the library at the time,” not just Jews; the university released a flat statement after the fact noting that all the students had “dispersed.” We at The Scroll would be more inclined to take these pleas for calm seriously if they were consistently applied. Instead, for years we’ve watched as institutions have seized on even demonstrably fake or staged “hate incidents” as pretexts for demanding evermore conformity, funding for politicized pseudo-scholarship, and commitments to ensure that no “minoritized” student is ever made to feel uncomfortable. When the students are pro-Israel Jews, however, the message seems to be: Quit your whining and get back to class.
And it’s not just The Cooper Union. On Tuesday night, anti-Israel groups at George Washington University projected “Glory to the Martyrs” and “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now” on the sides of campus buildings.
Large crowds at Brown University marched and chanted “From the river to the sea.” Anti-Israel protesters at NYU held signs saying “Please Keep the World Clean,” with images of a Star of David in a trash can, and they ripped down Israeli-hostage rescue posters. Even at Jewish Brandeis University, the student government couldn’t bring itself to pass a resolution condemning Hamas.
Hey, we get it. Some issues, like the sources of inequality in a vast, multiethnic society like America or the identification of proliferating gender identities, are simple and should be enforced by fiat rather than debated, lest someone be emotionally harmed. Others, like the livestreamed torture, murder, and kidnapping of Jewish civilians, or whether those responsible should be referred to as “terrorists,” require more nuance. You wouldn’t want to embolden the far right!
The list above is not exhaustive—we know you haven’t got all day. It fails to account for all the cowardly statements from university presidents or the bloodthirsty and insane pronouncements of esteemed faculty members or the renewed commitments to “free speech”—mocked for years as an outdated, reactionary concept—coming just in time to protect the Islamic Resistance Movement’s fellow travelers from the pitchforks of the American citizenry. But we hope it will serve as a useful refresher on just what our university system has become. These students didn’t come up with their ideas on their own. They are merely repeating, with refreshing candor, what the adults in the room have taught them.
IN THE BACK PAGES: Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on what the Israelis and the Zionists got wrong about the Palestinians
→George Soros donated more than $1 million to the two progressive “Jewish” NGOs that staged last week’s anti-Israel occupation of the U.S. Capitol, Townhall reports. Jewish Voice for Peace received $650,000 from Soros’ network of philanthropies, including the Open Society Foundations, the Open Society Policy Center Inc., and the Foundation to Promote Open Society, between 2017 and 2021. JVP’s partner in the Capitol protest, IfNotNow, received $400,000 from the Foundation to Promote Open Society between 2019 and 2021. The Scroll previously reported that JVP and INN both received substantial gifts from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Tides Network, a Democratic dark-money group whose branches have received millions in funding from the Open Society Foundations and from Peter Buffett’s NoVo Foundation.
Read more here: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2023/10/25/soros-money-anti-israel-groups-n2630228
→Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech on Wednesday evening, in which he invoked the biblical prophecy of Isaiah and pledged that the “children of light” will triumph over the “children of darkness.” Netanyahu said that the date for the Israeli invasion of Gaza had been set in consultation with the war cabinet and the IDF chief of staff, and he promised to “extract a full price from the murderers” behind the Oct. 7 terror attacks. The prime minister’s bombastic religious rhetoric raised some eyebrows on the American left, where it was interpreted as a dog whistle to Christian Zionists in the Republican coalition, but it can equally well be read against the backdrop of the Biden administration’s repeated public demands for Israel to delay its invasion—demands for which Washington has provided an ever-shifting array of reasons and rationalizations. If a classic rule of statecraft is to speak softly and carry a big stick, Bibi’s grandiosity suggests a man desperate to counter the growing impression that his stick is being swung by a committee in the Pentagon.
→Israel conducted its largest ground raids to date into northern Gaza late Wednesday and early Thursday morning. Tanks and infantry from the IDF’s Givati Brigade tore down sections of the border fence and “struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,” according to an English-language X post from the IDF. No Israeli casualties were reported. As The Jerusalem Post notes, such raids are common in counterterror operations, such as the siege of Mosul, Iraq, or the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, allowing attacking forces to gather information and weaken enemy defenses prior to larger troop movements.
→The IDF plans to use experimental “sponge bombs” to clear Hamas’ tunnel network in Gaza, according to a report in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph. The weapons, which have been tested and used in training exercises but never before in combat, are designed to seal off tunnel entrances with an explosion of foam that rapidly expands and then hardens, preventing ambushes while soldiers move through the tunnel network. Hamas’ dense, sophisticated network of underground tunnels, which allows for the movement of fighters and supplies without exposing them to Israeli surveillance and fire, is one of the group’s primary military assets in defending Gaza against invasion. As John Spencer wrote in a recent article for West Point’s Modern War Institute, “This expansive underground complex is the wicked problem—one for which no perfect solution exists—awaiting Israeli ground forces.”
Read more here: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/underground-nightmare-hamas-tunnels-and-the-wicked-problem-facing-the-idf/
→Quote of the Day: “The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.”
That’s U.S. National Security Advisor Jacob Jeremiah (“Jake”) Sullivan in an essay in the recent print issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, which hit newsstands five days before Palestinian jihadists slaughtered 1,400 Israelis. The passage has since been scrubbed from the Foreign Affairs website, as have a number of other embarrassingly wrongheaded passages from the essay that are thankfully preserved for posterity in the print edition. In another since-deleted gem, Sullivan bragged that when Biden came into office, “U.S. troops were under regular attack in Iraq and Syria” but that “such attacks, at least for now, have largely stopped” (U.S. troops have been attacked in Iraq and Syria on at least 13 occasions since Oct. 7). You can read more about the Talented Mr. Sullivan, a “once-in-a-generation intellect” and “potential future president,” in Tablet Deputy Editor Jeremy Stern’s new profile.
Read the rest here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/george-kennan-who-wasnt-jake-sullivan
→The Iranian foreign minister and representatives from Hamas visited Moscow on Thursday, where they met with officials from the Kremlin. Russia, which has traditionally maintained cordial relations with Israel, has openly sided with the Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah “Axis of Resistance” during the current war, a reflection of both Moscow’s anger over Israel’s support for Ukraine and the Kremlin’s increasingly close defense cooperation with Iran, which has supplied Russia with battlefield drones for its war effort. Russian officials added that a visit from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas could follow in the coming days. Sixteen Russian citizens were killed in the Oct. 7 attack, while another eight are missing and believed to be held hostage.
TODAY IN TABLET:
Hamas Killed My Wokeness, by Alex Olshonsky
I’ve found a home on the progressive left for years—even after I noticed a common blind spot around Jewish issues. But the reaction to the murderous attacks on Israeli civilians was the final straw.
The Protests of Fools, by Bernard-Henri Lévy
Demonstrators in the streets of Paris once chanted ‘We are all Jews.’ Today they cheer on Jewish slaughter.
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.
The following essay, by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, was first published yesterday on X, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Follow him @HusseinAboubak.
What Zionists Get Wrong
The occupation is not Israel’s fault. But everyone is complicit in the system that made it necessary.
By Hussein Aboubakr Mansour
Some time ago, I wrote that one day, I was going to share some of my criticisms of Israel and the Zionist communities. And I guess today is as good as any.
It is almost undeniable that Israel and its supporters became comfortable subduing and dominating the Palestinians and maintaining a low-intensity conflict rather than attempting to solve the conflict. On this point, Israel’s critics are correct, and the Israeli society and state did incorporate into themselves the principle of open-ended military control, regulated violence, and coercion of the Palestinians as the only alternative to peace. The disagreement then lies in the ascription of motives: Israel’s critics insist that Israelis do so as a matter of preference and will. That is, Israel is a racist state and society that wants to oppress and dominate the Palestinians and keep their land. Here, the entire situation becomes very relevant to the theoretical leftist models of Saidian Orientalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, etc. On the other hand, Israelis insist that this is not what they want, but it is a difficult choice forced on them by the corrupt, murderous Palestinian leadership, strong hatred, antisemitism, social unrest, and, quite literally, an undying popular culture of terrorism indoctrinating every Palestinian since their childhood in textbooks, poetry, religion, arts, etc. Thus, the Israeli elaborate system of social control and military coercion is a tragic necessity for the physical security and the survival of Jewish citizens of Israel and not a preference.
The battle then between the Palestinians and the Israelis happened entirely inside the ideological sphere of the left—that is, most of both sides have invested their moral legitimacy in the left and are contesting the axiological identity of their efforts vis-à-vis the left’s political categories: who represents real justice? Who is the real racist? Who is the oppressive? Who is the indigenous? Which violence is terrorism, and which is decolonization? etc.
I’m not going to comment on the inter-ideological Palestinian-Israeli conflict within the left, for as far as I’m concerned, I hope the ship of the left sinks to the bottom of the ocean with all its passengers. I will, however, comment on the first question of reality and motive.
While the reality of Israeli subjugation and domination of the Palestinians is unquestionable, when it comes to motive, I wholeheartedly agree with Israel. Israelis, in general, did not choose this, do not want this and hate the situation which was forced on them by the Palestinians. Most Palestinians do not want peace, at least in the way Israelis understand it, in terms of letting them keep their heads above their necks. Most Palestinians do not and will not, as a matter of principle, accept the existence of Israel on any part of what they believe to be their historical Wakanda, and prefer continuous armed struggle rather than mutual recognition. On top of this, the historically corrupt, criminal, and irresponsible behavior of Palestinian leadership, which repeatedly prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state and preferred supporting terrorism, doesn’t provide any political opportunities for the possibility of peace. These conditions have created a toxic popular Palestinian national culture that is militant and antisemitic and glorifies terrorism with constant outbursts of murderous violence by both Palestinian militants and civilians against Israeli civilians, women and children included.
This very difficult reality seems to many people unsolvable, and thus, Israelis as a state and society structured themselves in a way that allows them to continue their lives with minimal disruption and maximum security. The strategy they landed on is occupation. With time and worsening conditions, and with the Palestinians slipping deeper and deeper into insanity along with the wider Arab and Muslim world, the occupation grew into an elaborate and sophisticated administrative and military system of social control with the objectives of securing the lives of Israelis, preventing disruption of Israeli lives, and allowing the Palestinians to go on with their lives as normally as possible as long as it doesn’t interfere with the first two objectives. The core of this system is the interdependence of the three objectives in a way that creates a system for rewards and punishments for the Palestinians; the less secure Israelis are, the harder the lives of Palestinians will be. It is important to mention that the PA, starting from the Second Intifada, decided to co-opt and turn the system around as a reward and punishment for Israelis; the longer we don’t have a normal state (as the corrupt PA understands that), the less secure Israeli lives will be. The PA foolishly didn’t understand that it wasn’t really pushing against a system but digging it in. That is, Palestinian violence only enforced the premise of the system.
For Hamas in Gaza, the rise of the genocidal terrorist organization led to the Israeli policy of blockade, which was, for the Israelis, the only response to the ultimate threat. And none of this even starts to capture the larger regional and international dynamics and power struggles (Arabism, Cold War, Islamism, Iran, etc.) to which the conflict is central.
So far, none of this is controversial. Where is the criticism?
It is that Israel and the world pro-Israel Jewish community at large got very, very comfortable with the situation the way it is, having confidence that Israeli technological superiority is the only possible solution. It learned how to live with it and didn’t try to explore any way to change the Palestinian conditions that created this reality to begin with. For most, even those who won’t say it out loud, the Palestinian culture of violence is due to some inherent, mystical Palestinian core of antisemitism, hatred, and Arab barbarity. At best, it’s not the responsibility of Israelis to try to change this (Why can’t those people help themselves?). At worst, it’s an unchangeable nature of what the Palestinians are. In other words, it’s not the responsibility of Israelis to find a way to reach Palestinian children to tell them that the lovely character of Mickey Mouse isn’t really a Jew-killing jihadist.
This brings us to inter-Jewish politics, which resulted from this. Following the post-Oslo eruption of Palestinian violence, Israeli society generally internalized the bitter reality of Palestinian society and politics, and large numbers lost faith in the promises of the Israeli left of peace and coexistence. This moment resulted in the serious return of a certain fantasy on the Israeli right and their American Jewish supporters—that since the Palestinians are so stupid and so bent on self-destruction, Israel should aim at annexing the West Bank permanently. The Israeli left was strongly opposed to this vision; however, given the fact that there was no way to solve the conflict anyway and that there was zero hope the Palestinians would change politically or socially, it was meaningless and inconsequential to pick a fight with the right over this. In other words, since the actions or inaction of Israel cannot really affect the conflict, the Israeli left had no interest in polarizing their constituents over an issue that seemed theoretical. Thus, support for settlements continued regularly both under right and left Israeli governments. The right cheered on Palestinian behavior, including the popular support for Hamas, since it is pretty much a Palestinian march towards self-destruction.
At no point did Israelis or American Jews seriously consider, or even entertain, helping push back among the Palestinians themselves or support social forces that want to change the conditions that created this reality. Israelis, nearly half of whom were descendants of survivors of concentration camps run by people who loved Wagner and Kant, became comfortable with being the “protectors” of Western civilization, the forward base of liberal democracy, the best line of American defense and better than five aircraft carriers in a sea of barbarism, rather than trying to find one of those barbarians to talk to. Abundant resources are spent on making hasbara TikTok videos for American teenagers rather than finding a path among the Palestinians out of a culture of death.
Let me give you an example: sometime before the Abraham Accords, I reached out to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, sharing some ideas about what they needed to do in terms of PR and outreach programs in Arabic and offering my help. I offered vision and solid ideas about how Israel needs to start establishing its narrative culturally in Arabic on a real level. The response of the ministry was that they had no budget for any of this, and whatever it is they do in Arabic online are volunteer efforts. They told me, however, they have a huge budget for PR in English, most of their budget actually, and they would love to work with me on English language stuff (making TikTok videos for American teenagers, I assumed).
It’s the same experience I have with the American Jewish pro-Israel institutions and foundations. I came close to begging for support for Arabic programs in which there was no interest. The many opportunities I found, however, were to speak to the American public and American politicians about the extent of antisemitism and glorification of violence in Palestinian and general Arab culture. Not with the hope of changing anything, not with the aim of fixing anything, but to rally strong support for Israel.
I’m going to say this, and I know that it may upset many people, but no one is innocent.
Every time I walk the halls of Congress, going to different offices to show them Palestinian school books, Palestinian TV shows, and Palestinian cartoons indoctrinating the children to hate Jews to the point of murder, I feel a little disgusted with myself. The reason is that I know we are not doing anything to help those children. We are not really trying to change the lives those children will have. No, we are not. We are just showing how awful the Palestinians are and how much support Israel needs to continue subduing them. Support the oasis of “Western civilization” amid a sea of barbarism.
I’m not even going to start with the Jewish left that prefers to maintain its spot on the wagon of the international left, even as the latter is working hard to lock the Palestinians in the same culture of violence and militancy. The lives of Palestinian children destroyed by the philosophy of decolonization don’t matter. What matters is that we maintain our good ties with the prestige of the Ivy League and the social justice religion, even as we find ourselves sitting in the same banquet halls with Qatari princes.
Most Israelis and Jews never recognized, and refuse to recognize, to what extent the fate of their children became intertwined with that of the Palestinians. Palestinians are imprisoned, abused, and destroyed by a political culture locked in a corrupt political system, interlocking with big-power global interests, and Israelis are locked in with them, and no amount of technological superiority will fix that, or will it overcome the power of ideology.
I’m going to say this openly: the international structure in which Qatari money, Arab interests, the international left, Iranian influence, PA corruption, etc. are all factors helping keep the Palestinians in the misery they are, is a structure in which Israelis and American Jews and their interests are also present. The Jews who want to keep their status with the Democratic Party, the same party that lets the PA get away with Pay For Slay and child indoctrination, aren’t they benefiting from this system? The right-wing Zionists who are watching Palestinian nationalism dissenting further and further into the irredeemable, aren’t they benefiting?
Lastly, I want to share something very personal.
Not too long ago, a friend of mine who had worked with the U.S. special operations that targeted the leaders of ISIS was telling me about how, since now all ISIS leaders are paranoid about a nighttime U.S. raid, some of the wives go to bed with a suicide vest on. They sleep among the other wives and the children, and they are instructed to self-detonate if the Americans come. That way, the Americans die and the whole family become martyrs in heaven. My friend told me that many chicken out, some get shot, and some get to actually do it. It is a grim, miserable, and monstrous reality that makes a woman kill her own children and herself in this way. I then started to think of my own mother, who had just passed away not long before I heard that story. And it broke my heart to think, had my own mother been in the right circumstances, the right place, and with the right man, she could have been talked into doing something like that.
But my mother was not a monster, and I have met a lot of simple people in the West who also, under the right circumstances, could be talked into committing horror. (Think about those who joined cults, Johnstown, Manson Girls, etc.) This doesn’t negate their individual responsibility, but we all would be lying to ourselves if we imagine that the responsibility is theirs alone.
When Israelis and the Jewish world care about the opinions of Palestinian teenagers as much as they do about American genderqueer teenagers, maybe then things might start looking differently.
Let me re-clarify for people who can not read; I’m not saying that Isrealis or Jews caused, or made, or like this reality and structure of global toxicity. I’m saying they got comfortable with it, learned to live with it, built their life around it, and accepted it to the point that it is no longer visible and is just accepted as fate. A while ago, a known Jewish American kippah-wearing diplomat picked a fight with me on twitter (with me, of all people) because I tweeted about Qatari support for Jew-murdering Hamas and defended the beauty and openness of Qatar. He, unwittingly, had forgotten that a couple of weeks prior he personally told me he was working on getting consulting contracts from Qatar. I’m using this individual as a mere anecdote and an example. The news about how Bibi wanted to aid Hamas in destroying the changes of Palestinian nationhood altogether is another.
The Torah tells us to fight any philosophical trend that threatens to physically or culturally eliminate the Jewish People There can be bo negotiations with Hitler’s heirs and disciples
Don't blame Israel and the west for not throwing money and time away on a culture whose leaders value death over life ,historically speaks in a language of reason to the West but incites anti semitism in its native language-this has been the tactic of the Arab world for decades and shows no sign of abating.