More than 180,000 people across France march against soaring antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war

SYLVIE CORBET and BARBARA SURK

Updated Sun, November 12, 2023 PST

1 / 16

France March Against Antisemitism

Thousands gather for a march against antisemitism in Paris, France, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. French authorities have registered more than 1,000 acts against Jews around the country in a month since the conflict in the Middle East began. (AP Photo/Sylvie Corbet)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS (AP) — More than 180,000 people across France, including 100,000 in Paris, marched peacefully on Sunday to protest against rising antisemitism in the wake of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, representatives of several parties on the left, conservatives and centrists of President Emmanuel Macron's party as well as far-right leader Marine Le Pen attended Sunday’s march in the French capital amid tight security. Macron did not attend, but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against “the unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism.”

However, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, stayed away from the march, saying last week on X, formerly Twitter, that the march would be a meeting of “friends of unconditional support for the massacre” in Gaza.

The interior ministry said at least 182,000 people marched in several in French cities in response to the call launched by the leaders of the parliament's upper and lower houses. No major incident has been reported, it said.

Paris authorities deployed 3,000 police troops along the route of the protest called by the leaders of the Senate and parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, amid an alarming increase in anti-Jewish acts in France since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas after its Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but given its own World War II collaboration with the Nazis, antisemitic acts today open old scars.

Holding a French flag, Robert Fiel said marching against antisemitism is “more than a duty.”

“It's a march against violence, against antisemitism, against all (political extremes) that are infiltrating the society, to show that the silent majority does exist,” the 67-year-old said.

Family members of some of the 40 French citizens killed in the initial Hamas attack, and of those missing or held hostage, also took part in the march, which Paris police said drew 105,000 participants.

Patrick Klugman, a lawyer and a member of “Freethem” committee working to obtain the release of people held by Hamas and other groups in Gaza, said the large participation in the march is meaningful and symbolic in reassuring Jewish communities in France.

“I am very proud of my country because of this mobilization,” Klugman said. “I feel less alone than in the past weeks and days.”

Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France known as CRIF said he was encouraged Sunday's show of support, but the question remains, he told French broadcaster BFM at the march, “what will be done (against antisemitism) tomorrow?”

Tomer Sisley, an Israeli and French actor insisted the massive show of solidarity proves that majority of French citizens are against violence and hate against any religious and ethnic group.

“We’re not Jews, we’re not Muslims, we’re not Christians,” Sisley said. "We are French and we are here to show that we are all together.”

French authorities have registered more than 1,000 acts against Jews around the country in the month since the conflict in the Middle East began.

Former French president Francois Hollande said “there are many French flags in the protest but what unites us is not just a flag, it’s what it represents, it’s the value of freedom and the value of human dignity."

In a letter addressed to the French on Sunday, Macron vowed that perpetrators will be prosecuted and punished.

“A France where our Jewish fellow citizens are afraid is not France,” Macron said in the letter, published in Le Parisien newspaper. He called on the country to remain “united behind its values ... and work for peace and security for all in the Middle East.”

Macron said he will attend “in my heart and in spirit,” but not in person. “My role is to build unity of the country and to be firm on values,” Macron said Saturday on the sidelines of Armistice Day commemorations to mark the end of World War I.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen attended Sunday's march amid fierce criticism that her once-pariah National Rally party has failed to shake off its antisemitic heritage despite growing political legitimacy.

After arriving to the march with the president of the party, Jordan Bardella, Le Pen dismissed critics and said that she and the party members are “exactly where we need to be.” She called on other politicians “to take a break from fomenting political controversies” during the march.

Le Pen and other far-right officials showed up at the end of the march, hundreds of meters away from government members and other officials who led the demonstration.

Borne, who is the daughter of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, tweeted “the presence of the National Rally is not fooling anyone.”

The president of the Paris region council, Valérie Pécresse, a former conservative presidential candidate, denounced “hypocrisy,” saying that National Rally officials ran against her in past elections “who were clearly antisemitic people and Marine Le Pen never sanctioned them.”

As of Saturday, officials counted 1,247 antisemitic acts since Oct. 7, nearly three times as many as in the whole of 2022, according to the Interior Ministry.

Sunday's march in Paris appears as the biggest gathering to denounce antisemitism in France since a 1990 demonstration against the desecration of a Jewish cemetery.

France has banned a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, although supporters have marched in several French cities in the past weeks, including thousands demanding a cease-fire in Gaza in a protest in Paris last Sunday.

————

Surk contributed from Nice, France. Video journalist Nicholas Garriga in Paris contributed reporting.

Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators Smash Grand Central, Vandalize New York Times

368

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Associated Press

JOEL B. POLLAK

10 Nov 20233,240

3:50

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators smashed a door at New York City’s Grand Central Station on Friday night and briefly forced the closure of the transportation hub as they marched through the streets of Manhattan for the second night in a row.

ABC-7 New York reported:

Service at Grand Central was limited on Friday after pro-Palestine protesters flooded the streets.

The pro-Palestinian rally started at 5 p.m. Friday at Columbus Circle, with thousands marching through the streets demanding a ceasefire overseas.

Marchers then made their way to the New York Times building, vandalizing the front with a red tint before heading to Grand Central.

CBS New York reported that there were several arrests, and violence elsewhere related to the demonstrations:

 

The NYPD says demonstrations are being held just about every day in the city and stretching police resources. Each precinct now has one supervisor and eight uniformed officers on standby, ready to respond to planned or pop-up demonstrations, according to police sources.

…

Police say around 9:30 p.m., some demonstrators staged a sit-in at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue and refused to comply with officers’ orders. Police also say there were altercations between some demonstrators and bystanders.
A number of people were detained for disorderly conduct.

The New York Post reported that the protesters also spattered the front of the New York Times building with red paint, burned an Israeli flag, and chanted for the destruction of Israel:

The mob was part of a “Flood Manhattan for Gaza” protest that initially converged on Columbus Circle earlier in the evening, where they set fire to an Israeli flag and taunted a small faction of counter-demonstrators before marching through Manhattan and splattering fake blood on the New York Times building.

“We don’t want a Jewish state. We want ‘48!” the anti-Israel protesters chanted at the starting point, referring to Palestine before the establishment of Israel.

On Thursday night, pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the lobby of the New York Times itself. They vandalized police cars outside the building, painting “FREE GAZA” on them.

UNITED STATES -November 9: Pro Palestinian protesters invaded the lobby of The New York Times, set off a smoke bomb, and vandalized a police vehicle. Hundreds of New York City high school students walked out of class Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. (Photo by Kerry Burke/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

The Times noted that several of its own employees were among the demonstrators:

As the protest wound its way up Eighth Avenue toward Times Square, it paused in front of The New York Times, where a group of journalists and writers had also gathered in the lobby to demand The Times’ Editorial Board call for a ceasefire.

Outside the building on West 40th Street, a police cruiser’s back window was smashed, and the vehicle was graffitied with the words “IDF KKK.”

The increasing vehemence and violence of pro-Palestinian protests has gained attention around the world — including in Israel, where it has, ironically, reinforced a sense that Israel has no choice but to fight Hamas terrorists, since nowhere else in the world is safe for Jews.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Centuries of Wahhabi Jihad

By Seth Grossman

On October 7, some 3,000 Hamas fighters crossed into Israel.  There they killed roughly 350 Israeli soldiers and policemen.  They then murdered more than a thousand mostly unarmed Jewish men, women, and children.

Hamas then crowded its own women and children into buildings it used to hide its fighters and store its weapons.  This supported its “victim” narrative by keeping its civilian deaths higher than those of Israel.

God’s Terrorists, a book by British historian Charles Allen, suggests that today’s war in Israel has little to do with the “occupation” of Palestine or Arab refugees.  It is instead part of a worldwide “modern jihad” that has been going on for nearly 300 years.  Allen wrote that book in 2006.  He did it to explain why “Islamic extremists” based in distant Afghanistan murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

According to Allen, it began in the 1700s, when Muhammad al-Wahhab and other Islamic scholars in Arabia were angry and disgusted with their Muslim leaders.

The core Muslim belief is that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad was his last messenger.  All humanity must obey the eternal and unchanging laws of Allah.  Those laws, the “sharia,” are understood, applied, and enforced by an “ulama,” a close-knit group of Islamic scholars, teachers, and judges.  Most are Arabs in and around Mecca and Medina.  That is because they naturally speak the language of the Koran and other books that teach the words and deeds of Muhammad.

Al-Wahhab believed that if all Muslims submitted to sharia and got all humanity to do the same, Allah would bless the world with peace and harmony.

However, Al-Wahhab thought this was not happening because most Muslims and their leaders had gone astray.  Some believed in un-Islamic local customs and superstitions.  Many wanted the freedom, wealth, and comforts of the modern Christian world.  Others wanted peace and friendship with Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists instead of jihad.

As a result, the “Nasrani” (Nazarenes) dominated the world.  Christians had reconquered the once Muslim lands of Spain, Portugal, and Eastern Europe.  Islam was also losing land and followers in India, Africa, and the East Indies.

Al-Wahhab and his colleagues formed a new doctrine and movement to purify Islam and save the world.  They called themselves “Unitarians” or “Salafis.”  Outsiders called them “Wahhabis.”

Wahhabis wanted to restore Islam to what they thought it was when Muhammad was alive.  That included subjugating women and suppressing music, dancing, literature, and free speech.  

Wahhabis did not tolerate dissent.  They despised any Muslim who disagreed with them as much as any “kaffir” (non-believer).  Wahhabis even declared jihad against the Ottoman sultans, who were the “khalifas” or spiritual leaders of the Islamic world!

Wahhabis promised wealth, power, and submissive women to every man who joined their jihads.  They also promised eternal life in paradise to those who died fighting with them.  The Wahhabis cleverly used bribes and deception to divide, weaken, and defeat their enemies.

In 1740, Al-Wahhab forged “a remarkable partnership” with a desert tribal chief named Muhammad Ibn Saud.  Al-Wahhab’s daughter married Ibn Saud’s son.  Their combined families quickly achieved spectacular success.

They equipped their fighters with European rifles.  Then they quickly conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the whole Arabian Peninsula.  From there, they threatened Turkish control of Egypt and Iraq.

The Wahhabis also indoctrinated many pilgrims who came to Mecca from British India and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).  Those visitors began their own “modern jihad” when they returned home.

This provoked a long international “war on terror” 200 years ago.  In 1815, the Ottoman Turks invaded Arabia.  They arrested, tortured, and killed every Wahhabi they could find.  In many areas, they simply executed every male over the age of ten.  They paraded Abdullah Saud, the great-grandson of Al-Wahhab, in chains through the streets of Cairo and Istanbul.  Then they beheaded him and tore his body to pieces.

During this time, the British, Hindus, Sikhs and moderate Muslims fought the Wahhabis in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  In 1831 and again in 1857, they killed thousands of Wahhabi fighters and most of their leaders in two particularly brutal wars.

However, the Wahhabis survived.  In British India and Pakistan, the Wahhabis used public relations and the British legal system to win sympathy and political support.  They also established a sophisticated school in Deoband, India to peacefully promote their doctrine.  More than a hundred years later, their “talibs” (students) from that school inspired and led the Taliban in Afghanistan.

For years, what was left of Wahhabis and the Saudi family in Arabia lived quietly in remote areas.  However, in 1901, they made a spectacular comeback.  That was when 21-year-old Ibn Saud took control of his family.  Ibn Saud used modern methods, later used by communists and fascists, to create a new Wahhabi “Ikhwan” or “Brotherhood.”  He persuaded young Wahhabi men to give up their nomadic lifestyle and tribal loyalties.  Ibn Saud won their loyalty and had them live in permanent military settlements he built for them.  Ibn Saud educated them and their sons in the same Wahhabi schools.  They all submitted to the strict discipline of Wahhabi sharia.  There was little crime, corruption, or favoritism.

Ibn Saud and his successors generously shared their wealth with members of their brotherhood.  At first, that wealth came from taxing or plundering other tribes.  Since the 1930s, most of that wealth came from oil.

This inspired Wahhabis to set up similar “brotherhoods” throughout the Islamic world.  A Muslim Brotherhood was set up in Egypt in 1928.  These Wahhabi brotherhoods worked closely together.  They also shared new confidence that the thousand-year era of Christian dominance was almost over.  Years later, al-Qaeda was a perfect example of how well these brotherhoods worked together.  Osama bin Laden was in the Saudi Brotherhood.  Mohammed Atef and Ayman al-Zawahiri were in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin led the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza in the 1960s.  At that time, Gaza was part of Egypt.  Yassin formed a Palestinian branch of that Brotherhood only after Israel occupied Gaza in 1967. 

Yassin also promoted a new weapon of modern jihad: babies.  Yassin had eleven children.  There were about 400,000 Arabs in Gaza when Israel first occupied the territory in 1967.  There are more than two million today.  Half of them are less than 18 years old.

In 1987, Yassin made Hamas a separate organization so that his bombings and murders would not cause “charities” of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to lose international funding.  However, the charter of Hamas is far more Islamic than Palestinian.  Its preamble praised Muslims as “the best nation” of mankind.  It also declared that Islam would “obliterate” Israel, just as Islam “obliterated” previous Crusader kingdoms.

In 2007, Charles Allen warned that “the Wahhabis cult” was winning its “modern jihad” in Europe and America as well as in Pakistan and the Middle East.  Sadly, events in Israel and the rest of the world during the past month are proving that he was right.

Image: David Stanley via Flickr (cropped), CC BY 2.0.

Islam is Not a Religion

By Sloan Oliver

What is Islam?  To answer that question, it’s more important to know what Islam isn’t.  Islam is not a religion.  It is an authoritarian, political ideology that forcibly imposes itself on all aspects of any society unfortunate enough to be under its yoke.  Islam demands complete subjugation by its adherents.  Under Islam, there is no democracy, there is no free speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no minority rights, and there’s no right to love whoever you desire.  Islam allows no dissent.  It is a complete and total way of life that glorifies oppression, slavery, and death.  Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, cultural, and military components.  The religious component is the veil that hides the dangers of its all-encompassing ideology.

Islam was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed.  From its beginnings, Islam never attempted or bothered to convert “non-believers” by friendly persuasion.  Instead, Islam converted non-believers by conquest and forcible conversion, or you were slaughtered.  By the mid-8th century, Islam had conquered all the lands from the Indus River, in the east, across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, in the west.  During that period of conquest, if subjects didn’t convert to Islam, they were put to the sword.  To this day, most of those lands are still under the control of Islam.  There are few exceptions: Spain and Portugal, which during the 15th century, managed to free themselves from the scourges of Islam, and Israel.

Modern day Islam is just as oppressive and dangerous as was 8th century Islam.  That’s because culturally, Islam still enforces the same tenets they did 1,200 years ago.  What are some of those tenets, practices, and ways of life?  Islam enforces edicts against homosexuality to the point of executing homosexuals.  As for women, of the ten worst countries for women’s rights, seven of them are Muslim.  The Quran clearly states that women are subordinate to men, and men may beat their wives (Quran 4:34).  With Islam, there’s a fine line between oppressing women and enslaving them.  Islam practices female genital mutilation, a barbaric practice (look it up and be disgusted).  Other realities for women in Islamic countries include: women must be escorted in public, largely because it’s too dangerous for them to walk alone (rape and assaults are common); women must cover their bodies from head to foot; and very few education opportunities which result in limited employment opportunities.  

Today, in the year 2023, Islam practices slavery (here, and here), the actual commodification of other human beings, and the world stands silent.  It also engages in jihad, rape, and pedophilia—yes, it’s acceptable to rape children (bacha bāzī). Also, see this clip, from CNN no less:

Today, Islam beheads its enemies (Dec 27, 2019 in Nigeria), burns people alive in cages, amputates the hands of criminals, and engages in “honor” killings of female relatives (Texas 2008).  There’s nothing honorable about a father (or a brother) who kills his daughter (or his sister) because he doesn’t agree with her actions.  Adulterers (and even some female rape victims) can be stoned to death, and polygamy is allowed.  Earlier this year, an Iranian couple was sentenced to ten years in prison for dancing in public.  To say that Islam has nothing in common with Western culture is an understatement.  Islam vehemently opposes, and wants to destroy, Western society.  Proof of every vile, barbaric, and evil practice engaged in by Muslims was rolled up into one event—Hamas’s attack last month on Israel.

For much of America’s history, we didn’t concern ourselves with the evils of Islam.  We didn’t worry about it largely because we’re an ocean apart, and Islam’s 12th century society couldn’t much affect or threaten us.  Nevertheless, America’s first foreign war was fought in the early 19th century against the Islamic states along the Barbary Coast of North Africa.  Also, throughout most of the 20th century, our focus was on the evils in Europe—Nazism and communism.  It wasn’t until the 1970’s that most Americans became aware of the dangers of Islam.  That was when the Arabs used world oil markets to achieve their political goals.  Then, in 1979, Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.  Ever since then, the Middle East and Islam have played a central role in America’s foreign policy. 

A problem with American foreign policy is that no president, from Nixon all the way through to our current crumbling commander, has properly understood Islam, the best example being Bush’s post-9/11 statement: “Islam is a religion of peace.”  That was an idiotic statement, given that 3,000 Americans had just been slaughtered in the name of Islam.  The United States’ lack of understanding wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t in the 21st century—but we are.  And a 12th century ideology of hatred and death is a huge problem given modern technologies which gives Islamists the ability to wander the globe killing, maiming, and enslaving in the name of their ideology.

You might wonder what I have against Islam, but let me ask this question: Knowing the profoundly immoral nature of tyrants and authoritarian regimes, would you be alright if Nazism or communism ruled over two billion people on the planet?  I’m guessing most people would say “NO” to both, because the evils of these ideologies have no place in a civilized society of unalienable rights.  Well, the evils of Islam are just as bad—perhaps worse—as the evils of any totalitarian form of rule ever devised by man.  Islam doesn’t want peace; it preaches struggle, constant struggle, because it is an ideology that uses religion. 

Many people might disregard the dangers of Islam, as we do have Muslims here in America, and we don’t see things like Muslim men buying children, or public beatings by administrators of Sharia “justice.” But, Muslims are a small percentage of our population at this moment. Anywhere Islam is the majority, there is oppression, conflict, and struggle.  Think of the wars and conflicts being fought on this planet; then, think of the countries that have large Muslim populations, and you’ll find those two maps overlay one another.  From Nigeria in Africa, to Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, and to the jungles of the Philippines, Islamic societies are engaged in armed conflicts to suppress and oppress those populations.  And also don’t forget, a small number can be very dangerous: the 9/11 attack was carried out by only 19 Muslims.

In Islamic countries, conflicts, struggles, and oppression have been ongoing for centuries; no end in sight, and it’s important to remember that above all, Islam is an ideology as dangerous and evil as any ideology ever conceived, using religion as a scapegoat.

Image generated by AI.

remember the saudis invasion of america sept 11

Blue State Blues: 50 Years of Excuses for Palestinian Terror Are Enough

223

Mark Kerrison / Getty

JOEL B. POLLAK

10 Nov 2023662

8:14

We don’t hear much about the Palestinian cause, between wars.

The late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said defended Yasser Arafat — who was then still a notorious terrorist, not yet a corrupt kleptocrat — by saying that his sensational violence at least kept the Palestinian cause from disappearing entirely from the world’s consciousness, and kept the Palestinian diaspora unified, even at the moral price of backing terror.

Said wrote that 50 years ago. But it is almost exactly the same argument used by the Hamas leaders who spoke to the New York Times this week, telling the western public that without their attack on Israel — with all its horrific atrocities — that the Palestinian cause would have been forgotten, left behind in the progress of the Abraham Accords and in the excitement of a “normalization” deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It is worth asking whether the Palestinians could have done something else in those 50 years to advance their cause, beyond killing Israeli civilians. Or whether violence against Israelis is the Palestinian cause, and how it came to be that way.

After all, you never see pro-Palestinian activists doing much to help “Palestine” between wars — and this time, they started marching after the terror attack, not the Israeli response.

It is easier to destroy than to create.

Let’s rewind to the beginning.

Israel is the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people, and has been for many thousands of years. Jews have lived there continuously for millennia, and even during periods of exile and dispersion, they still faced Jerusalem during prayer — as Jews still do today.

The idea of creating a Jewish state emerged in the late 19th century as a response to persecution in Europe, and Jews began moving back.

A generation or so later, in the early 20th century Arabs living in the region began to feel their own national stirrings, and the Palestinian Arabs were no different — though initially, they wanted to be part of a broader Arab empire, not a separate state.

When the British took over from the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, with a Mandate from the League of Nations, they struggled to reconcile promises to both sides.

The dilemma was difficult to solve, but dividing the land seemed the least bad option. This was acceptable to the Jewish side, which simply wanted sovereignty of any kind — especially with the growing danger to Jews in Europe.

But the Arabs — who were only known as “Palestinians” much later — clung to the idea that there could be no Jewish state at all, and not even any Jewish immigration, not even refugees from the Nazis.

The man most responsible for this intransigence was named Hajj Amin al-Husseini. The British sought to appease him by appointing him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He abused that position to foment riots against Jews, most notoriously in the Hebron massacre of 1929. The British tried to keep the Arabs onside in the Second World War by banning Jewish immigration, but al-Husseini sided with Hitler and the Nazis anyway.

There has never really been a reckoning with this history. The Palestinian Arab leadership collaborated with Hitler and made sure, through pressure on the British, that Jews had nowhere to escape.

After the war, the Germans were “de-Nazified” through public acknowledgment of Hitler’s crimes. But that never happened in the Arab world, which still incubated Nazi antisemitism alongside radical Islamic sentiments.

In 1947, the newly-formed United Nations tried to tackle the same problem that had vexed the British, and came up with the same answer: partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

But the Arabs decided to destroy the Jewish state rather than build their own, and declared war. They lost, and the same pattern has repeated itself for decades. The Palestinians have aways rejected statehood in favor of violence.

Up to 2000, it was possible to believe that some Palestinian grievance justified the rejection. But when then-President Bill Clinton offered Arafat nearly all of the West Bank, and shared sovereignty over Jerusalem’s holy sites, and possible compensation for Palestinian refugees, Arafat walked away. He then launched a cynical and destructive campaign of terror that Hamas, the Islamist rival of Arafat’s nationalists, continued.

That shattered the Israeli left, which had long supported compromises with the Palestinians, believing that peace was possible. For the last 23 years, Israelis have been looking for a workable alternative to solve the problem — from building a barrier along the West Bank, to unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, to making peace with the other Arab states in the hope that the Palestinians could eventually be persuaded to set war aside.

Yet the Palestinian leadership had other ideas — boosted by Iran, which continued to fund and arm terror groups.

In 2001, at the UN World Conference Against Racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa, global anti-Israel activists seized on the idea of casting Israel as the new “apartheid” state — which, like South Africa, had to be dismantled. It was an idea without merit, but the symbolism appealed to western leftists.

I happened to be at the World Conference Against Racism, which ironically saw a shocking outbreak of anti-Jewish hatred. Anti-Israel activists literally broke up a meeting to discuss antisemitism, which had nothing to do with Israel.

The same impulse persists in the efforts of anti-Israel activists to tear down posters of Israeli hostages: there can be no acknowledgement of Jewish victimhood, which is part of Israel’s reason for being.

But ask these activists what they have actually done to help “Palestine,” and you will find no answers. They have not invested in economic development; they have not donated to Palestinian schools. A few may have donated to Palestinian relief efforts, but none has given thought to building Palestinian institutions.

The one question that unravels them, every time, is: “What kind of Palestinian state do you want?” They don’t know.

They just want to “free Palestine,” and “from the river to the sea,” which the president of Harvard admitted this week was an antisemitic slogan: it envisions the destruction of Israel and the genocide of its Jews.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh recently urged followers to imagine a post-Israel “Palestine.” He wants an Islamic state. The likely outcome: Gaza. a complete wreck, a constant threat to its neighbors.

The world has heard Palestinian excuses for terrorism for 50 years. The difference now is that those same excuses come from Ismail Haniyeh rather than Edward Said — both from comfortable exile.

The only portion of the Palestinian Arab population that has moved beyond this are the Israeli Arab citizens, who are deciding, in the face of Hamas terror, that they would rather be Israeli than Palestinian. Their “free Palestine” is Israel.

There is talk about what to do with a post-Hamas Gaza. The White House wants it run by the Palestinian Authority, which has never worked. My preference would be to pay Gazans to relocate to the West Bank and annex Gaza to Israel, solving the problem of Palestinian geographic contiguity.

What do the Palestinians themselves want? We don’t know. They don’t either. Again, it is easier to destroy than to create. But “no more Israel” is not an acceptable answer.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Dem Sen. Coons: Hamas Is Messing up Talks to Get People out of Gaza by Trying to Get Terrorists Out

2

IAN HANCHETT

10 Nov 202322

1:43

On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) stated that one issue complicating negotiations to get Americans out of Gaza is the fact that Hamas is trying to get injured terrorists released.

Coons said he hopes there is a “several-day pause” to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, get dual citizens out of Gaza, and free hostages.

Later, co-host Sara Sidner asked, “There are still U.S. citizens in Gaza who want out. There [are] a couple in particular that we are aware of, [one] is stuck there and saying that the State Department is just not doing enough to try to help them get out. What needs to be done to finally get out more Americans, get them to safety, as they wait there in the midst of this war?”

Coons answered, “One of the challenges is our partner in the region, Egypt. The bipartisan group of senators with whom I traveled to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia pressed President El-Sisi to allow, out of Gaza, more Palestinians, in particular, Palestinian Americans. Coming to an agreement between Hamas and Egypt and Israel about who is released has been devilishly difficult. Hamas is trying to get their wounded fighters released so that they can be cared for in hospitals outside of Gaza. So far, there have been some releases, but, obviously, opposition by the Israelis to releasing Hamas fighters. So, it’s been a difficult series of negotiations.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Her (KAMALA HARRIS) more radical positions, such as support for the Obama administration’s Iran deal, prosecuting a journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s collection and sale of aborted babies’ body parts (while receiving campaign donations from them), and defending Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, may indeed sit well with a great many leftists, but her actions as Attorney General of California may not. While in that position, Harris jailed hundreds on marijuana charges and authorized anti-prostitution sting operations which, according to SF Weekly, disproportionately targeted Latino men (a crucial Democrat demographic). In addition to this -- though she later admitted it was a mistake -- she prosecuted and jailed the parents of truant teens. She even refused to release the names of Catholic priests accused of sexually molesting children, abnegating law enforcement’s most basic and humane duty -- regardless of anyone’s opinion of the Catholic Church.

Muslim Democrats ‘Horrified’ by Plan to Halt Palestinian Immigration to U.S.

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Celal Gunes/Anadolu/SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

10 Nov 20234,451

3:09

Muslim Democrats Andre Carson, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar say they are “horrified” by GOP plans that would halt Palestinian legal immigration to the United States.

This week, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and other House Republicans introduced legislation to ban the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from providing green cards, visas, refugee status, and parole to Palestinians.

Zinke’s legislation also would revoke visas for Palestinians in the United States, thus making them eligible for deportation.

“This legislation keeps America safe,” Zinke said of the legislation. “I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States.”

In response, Carson, Tlaib, and Omar issued a joint statement where they called Zinke’s legislation “xenophobic, punitive, and [an] unconstitutional measure.”

“As the three Muslim Members of Congress, we are horrified by Rep. Ryan Zinke’s recently introduced bill to pause all visas, refugee status, and granting of asylum for individuals holding a passport issued by the Palestinian Authority indefinitely — and to revoke others,” they said:

Let’s be clear: using the full power of the state to target and persecute a particular ethnic group or nationality is fascism and pure bigotry. This legislation—by a former cabinet official no less—directly violates the U.S. Constitution, and would illegally destroy the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian immigrants who live in and contribute to American society. Though intended to target Muslims, this bill will also hurt Palestinian Christians, who will be targeted by these provisions. History will harshly judge this xenophobic, punitive, and unconstitutional measure. [Emphasis added]

…

We call on the leadership of both parties to vocally and specifically condemn these comments and legislation, to make clear that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate has no place in our politics, and to name it when it happens. [Emphasis added]

Despite claims that Zinke’s legislation is “unconstitutional,” the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Hawaii that the president has extraordinarily broad discretion under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) to exclude aliens when he believes doing so is in the nation’s interests.

Since Zinke introduced the legislation, House and Senate Democrats have sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to provide Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to Palestinians in the United States — a policy that the far-left Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is currently lobbying for.

Giving TPS and DED to Palestinians would ensure they cannot be deported from the United States.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

Exclusive – World-Renowned Expert on Urban Combat: Hamas ‘Creating’ Civilian Deaths to Stir World Against IDF

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Lynsey Addario/Getty Images Reportage

JOSHUA KLEIN

9 Nov 20232,723

15:18

Despite the “nightmare” of tunnel warfare, the mission being carried out by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appears “very successful,” though Israel doesn’t have unlimited time, according to retired United States Army Major and urban warfare expert John Spencer, who deemed Hamas an “existential threat” whose strategy is to “create their own civilians’ deaths and get the world to react,” in order to prevent the IDF from eliminating their military capabilities — “and it is working.” 

He also accused those protesting Israel’s supposedly “disproportionate” response to Hamas of having “no understanding of war, the laws of war or how the world works,” and that the terror group would “slaughter” the protesters, if given the opportunity, “for not being radical Islamic followers.”

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, retired U.S. Army Major John Spencer, a world-renowned expert on urban combat who serves as chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, delved into the various warfare tactics at hand during the current Middle East conflict.

IDF’S STRATEGY

Spencer, a founding member the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare, deemed the IDF’s activity against a plainclothes enemy embedded amongst civilians “very precise.” 

“Of course, very costly,” he said. “But it’s not unlike any other urban battle I’ve seen.”

While Gaza is a “very highly dense place,” he noted, “cities like Baghdad, Mosul, and Raqqa are more dense,” though that “doesn’t mean it’s not any harder to operate in it.”

“From the ground perspective, as somebody who teaches this to armies around the world, I think they have been very deliberate in their approach to go through the steps that would be required to accomplish the mission they have stated, whereas a lot of militaries aren’t as clear in their objectives,” he said.

Citing a Vietnam-war saying, “you have to destroy the city to save it,” Spencer said the fact is unfortunate, “but it’s the reality of urban fighting.”

The saying conveys that there is a defender inside the city, which, in order to clear out “you basically destroy the city.” 

“And there’s nothing I’m seeing now that changes that paradigm,” he added.

Deeming the IDF’s battle against Hamas “enemy–centric,” in that the mission to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities is “very clear,” the retired Army officer explained that the task cannot be done [entirely] from the air, though an air campaign can be used “to attrit rocket sites, command-and-control centers, the ability to communicate, and the ability to move — even underground.” 

“As far as I can tell,” he assessed, the mission being carried out by the IDF appears “very successful.” 

“Now they’ve moved forward methodically surrounding the city; the step that we call ‘isolate’ the city,” he explained, with reports indicating that the northern part of Gaza is now completely cut off. 

“And I’m sure that means both on the surface and underground, because isolating the surface doesn’t mean you’ve isolated the underground,” he added. 

But Israel’s current conflict with the terrorist Hamas group is actually the Jewish state’s fight against an “existential threat” that’s been “allowed through U.S. encouragement” to fester, and October 7 was a result of that. 

“Hamas has in their charter the complete destruction of Israel and the slaughter of the Jewish people, and it tried that on October 7 on as many as they could,” he added.

UNDERGROUND WARFARE

Despite the difficulty in fighting Hamas, Israel is not facing “mission impossible,” Spencer asserted. 

IDF finds Hamas tunnel (IDF)

Having “traveled the world, and been in tunnels all around the world,” as well as having “studied the way militaries approach, or don’t approach, underground warfare,” he concluded that the IDF are “leaders of the world in developing technologies, tactics and trained personnel for this specific mission.” 

“They have one of the biggest underground units, the Yahalom, which is a special forces engineering unit.”

They also have modern day “tunnel rats,” dog units, and a “complete major organization that does experimentation and research to develop things,” he noted.

Spencer highlighted the challenge of underground warfare, where “nothing that any military developed for the surface of the Earth for fighting works.” 

You can’t see down underground without special night vision because there’s no ambient light, which is what most of most night vision goggles use. You can’t navigate down there because there’s no satellite transmission. You can’t communicate because there’s no satellite or line of sight radio frequency down there that will work. Many places down there you can’t breathe. Many of your munitions can’t fire down there because the concussion will blow your eardrums and give you basically a concussion, without special equipment. 

In addition, he explained, such depths can’t be reached with aerial technologies. 

“Hamas dug deeper and deeper because of the fact that bunker buster bombs can go about 100 feet underground,” he said, “and the IDF has already found some Hamas tunnels 200 feet underground, below where any bunker buster can get to [or] any munition.”

The Israeli military believes, he noted, that there are likely tunnels even “300 feet” beneath the surface. 

While the IDF “has some of the greatest equipment and little robots they can send down, drones that bounce off walls, remote control cars, and dogs,” with 300 miles of such tunnels, “you’ll quickly run out of that capability.”

“And sending somebody into a tunnel is the last resort, so you always seek a way not to go into a tunnel,” he explained. 

However, he noted, the IDF has some personnel that can, including “everything from special forces throughout Sayeret Matkal, to the special soldiers that have been trained for it.” 

Another issue is the presence of captives in such tunnels.

“We’re 99 percent sure all hostages, or a majority of them, are underground. So even some of the historical methods in which militaries used to deal with tunnels — whether it’s to explode them or neutralize them by putting tear gas in them or flooding them or something similar, you won’t initially be able to do because you have to map and navigate the tunnel to see if there are hostages down there,” he said.

GAZA, PALESTINE – 07/19/2023: A fighter from Izz al-Din al-Qassam stands in front of a tunnel during an exhibition of weapons, missiles and heavy equipment for the military wing of Hamas in the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, during the commemoration of the 2014 war that lasted 51 days between Gaza and Israel. (Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Calling such a scenario a “really wicked problem” and a “nightmare to fight in,” Spencer explained why previously common methods are not feasible under current conditions:

Even the basic military, what we teach every soldier in every military in the world, is to fire and move. In a tunnel there’s no fire and move. There’s just fire down the tunnel and maybe fire back at you. You can’t flank them. You can’t move around them. You can’t surprise them. So it’s really a nightmare of a place to have to go fight or have to even enter. You can’t even breathe down there without special breathing equipment, depending on the depth that it goes and the ventilation that it has.

However, he insisted, the presence of hostages underground is not an impossible problem to solve, rather it merely means that forces must move slower and the mission will take more time. 

“Israel developed the world’s first hostage rescue teams that the rest of us have now copied. So they have hostage rescue teams and many special forces units that all have underground training,” he said. “They can put a drone into a tunnel beforehand to see if there’s a hostage down there before they do something to it.” 

He expressed his belief that for the IDF to accomplish its objectives, it would need several months, “based on other examples.” 

“Although the hostages make this situation very unique — there’s no historical precedent for that at this scale — I would say it will take months.” 

“I don’t think years, just months,” he said, “but definitely not days, and unlikely weeks.” 

However, he maintained, the real question is how much time they have, and not how much time it will take. 

“No military gets unlimited time, and Israel doesn’t have unlimited time,” he said. “So that means you’re going to have to make a lot of decisions about risk, and take risks and make hard military decisions.”

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

With many concerned for civilian casualties, Spencer insisted that “all the laws of war that were created — really, strengthened — after World War Two, have gotten a lot stronger.” 

“No more carpet bombing of cities like the U.S. and every other country involved in WWII were trying… whether it’s the London Blitz or Dresden or what the U.S. did to Tokyo,” he stated. “The idea that you can bomb your enemy to your goals has really happened very few times in the history of wars and worked.”

In addition, he stated, such a strategy “definitely wouldn’t accomplish the Israeli mission of destroying military infrastructure and capability.” 

“You have to use joint power: air, land, sea, and cyber,” he explained, “but you have to get in there and clear, destroy tunnels, destroy Hamas members, and destroy Hamas rockets.”

“So from a military analyst perspective I think they’re doing pretty good,” he added.

Regarding civilian casualty numbers, Spencer noted that they are “not unlike other battles” in recent history. 

“In the Battle of Mosul, there were 10,000 civilian casualties in a city of 1.4 million civilians where ISIS kept the civilians there for a long time before they could start to evacuate,” he said. “But by sheer numbers, they evacuated 80 percent of the urban areas. And while that’s still hundreds of thousands of people, militaries are never able to empty all of the cities, it just never happened.” 

“Even in WWII in the Battle of Aachen, where we cleared the city four times, there were still hundreds of civilians in the city and lots of civilian casualties,” he added.

He also pointed to when U.S. forces “surrounded Fallujah, and spent six months — that Israel doesn’t have — to empty 90 percent of the civilians there,” yet there were still many casualties. 

“So there are a lot of similarities,” he noted.

According to Spencer, when an enemy chooses to defend from urban terrain and use human shields, the results we see are “not abnormal.”

“Really, the civilian casualties are 90 percent of the casualties of modern war, not military,” he explained, “because modern war fights are happening in cities, not fights for cities, which is really ancient, fighting for cities.”

Today, in contrast, militaries fight in cities for a variety of reasons, he noted. For example, Hamas militants “can gain a large amount of power [by fighting] in urban environments.” 

“They take away the attacker’s military superiority, just to bring the fighting close and have a slugfest,” he said. “So that means more and more warfare.” 

“But out of the last 20 years, 90 percent of the casualties of war have been civilians,” he added. 

Spencer also explained that “everybody” misunderstands the notion of proportionality.

“We should not be comparing the amount of Palestinian civilian deaths to the amount of Israeli civilians killed on October 7 — 1,400 versus supposedly 10,000 (I’m highly doubtful that’s an accurate number, but it doesn’t matter),” he said. “That’s not the way war works. That’s not even close to the definition of proportionality — it has nothing to do with it.”

“Every civilian death is, of course, a loss, but people that want the end of the conflict because of the fact that it’s not ‘proportional’ to what happened on October 7, have no understanding of war, the laws of war or how the world works,” he added. 

Reflecting on his having taught strategy at West Point for years, Spencer determined that Hamas’ strategy is to “create their own civilians’ deaths and get the world to react,” in order to prevent the IDF from eliminating their military capabilities, — “and it is working.” 

“Despite the fact that I can tell every news agency in the world that what we’re seeing in Gaza is not unlike what we’ve seen in battles against ISIS in Mosul, Raqqa, Syria, and Marawi — nobody cares,” he said. “They’re still saying, ‘no, no, stop.’” 

“That’s the Hamas strategy, to get so many civilians killed that the IDF will have to stop, and Hamas gets to live to fight another day,” he added. 

Another Hamas strategy he indicated is that of buying time. 

“Most defenders in history lose, but one of the goals can be just to buy time,” he said. “So Hamas is going to use guerrilla warfare, use complex urban terrain and snipers, ambushes, IEDs, and pop out of tunnels, just to slow the IDF down, so that they can’t achieve their goal quickly.”

“The IDF needs time — and Hamas’ strategy is to take that time away from them, by putting all these pressures, getting every Palestinian, every Muslim of the world, to force international leadership to try to encourage the IDF to stop,” he added. 

In light of the above, Israel should “absolutely” be given the time and space to achieve its goals. 

To even destroy the tunnels, you’ve gotta clear the tunnel. You’ve gotta make sure there’s no military equipment, hostages, or fighters, in them. Then they have to destroy the tunnels, and that would be historic because even some of the ways militaries have destroyed tunnels aren’t an option to fully destroy 300 miles of tunnels. One of the only options is to flood them with seawater — which would necessitate time.

And while the IDF needs to be given the time, he acknowledged, it is crucial to “not allow Hamas’ strategy of buying time to succeed.” 

DEMONSTRATIONS

On protesters who have come out in large numbers against Israel’s response, Spencer suggested “they have no clue of what war looks like,” despite possibly being well-intentioned. 

“War happens in cities, and though it may appear like the IDF is indiscriminately bombing the cities of Gaza, that’s not the case and I have seen nothing that shows that,” he said. “In fact, this looks very similar to most U.S.-backed operations.”

“It’s what happens when an enemy embeds itself in a civilian population and the civilians are in an urban area,” he added. “Every strike is a targeted military target, but this is what war looks like.”

Addressing the “double standards” of those who protest Israel’s fight against Hamas while ignoring significantly controversial events such as the recent move by Pakistan to expel 1.7 million Afghan refugees, Spencer explained that the IDF, for various reasons, is “held to a standard above and beyond any other standard that we hold any other military in the world.” 

“It’s scrutinized and held to a standard that isn’t actually within the laws of war,” he said. “It fights in that limelight, at a standard that nobody else is held to.”

However, he noted, Hamas would “slaughter” those protesters “for not being radical Islamic followers.” 

“They would slaughter them — do horrific things — just like they slaughtered the people on October 7.,” he added.

Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

UK Strips Visa From Migrant Caught Celebrating Hamas Terrorists

33

Leila Dougan/Gallo Images via Getty Images

KURT ZINDULKA

11 Nov 202374

2:40

In the first action of its kind since the murderous October 7th rampage by Hamas terrorists in Israel, the Home Office has revoked the visa of a man who expressed support for the Islamic terrorists.

According to a report from The Sun, Britain’s most circulated newspaper, a foreign national has had his right to remain in the UK revoked over celebrating Hamas, which is a banned terror organisation in the country.

The man, who remains unnamed for legal reasons, was also caught supporting Palestine Islamic Jihad, which is classified as a banned proscribed terrorist group as well.

The Hamas-supporting migrant is said to have left the UK after a case was opened against him and Home Secretary Suella Braverman subsequently scrapped his visa, thereby prohibiting him from returning.

He is reportedly the first foreigner to have had his visa revoked after the British government warned it would remove migrants who supported banned terror groups in the wake of the October 7th Hamas attacks that killed over 1,400 people in Israel.

Commenting on the decision to revoke the Hamas-sympathiser’s visa, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said: “There can be zero tolerance for visitors to the UK who abuse the privilege of a visa and endorse evil terrorist acts.

“To any individuals considering following suit in the coming days and weeks: be in no doubt that we will continue to revoke visas wherever required. We will not tolerate extremism on our streets.”

The disclosure came ahead of a large-scale pro-Palestine demonstration on Armistice Day on Saturday, which many in the UK have branded as deeply disrespectful for coinciding with ceremonies to honour the fallen war dead who served Britain in combat.

According to The Sun, there have been over 100 arrests at pro-Palestine protests over the past month, including for supporting proscribed terror groups such as Hamas.

A report earlier this week from The Telegraph claimed that at least three of the organising groups behind Saturday’s protest had direct links to Hamas, including the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), which was reportedly founded by former Hamas commander Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, who was granted British citizenship in the early 2000s.

Commenting on the visa revocation of the Hamas sympathiser, Strange Death of Europe author Douglas Murray praised the Home Secretary’s actions but said: “Now let’s have some more”.

Netanyahu Rebukes Macron over ‘Babies and Women’: Hamas, not Israel, Causes Civilian Casualties

396

Chesnot / Getty

JOEL B. POLLAK

10 Nov 2023598

3:42

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron early Saturday morning after Macron called on Israel to stop killing Palestinian “babies and women,” declaring that Hamas was to blame for all civilian casualties.

Macron gave an interview to the BBC, as follows (original emphasis):

Israel must stop killing babies and women in Gaza, French President Emmanuel Macron has told the BBC.

In an exclusive interview at the Élysée Palace, he said there was “no justification” for the bombing, saying a ceasefire would benefit Israel.

While recognising Israel’s right to protect itself, “we do urge them to stop this bombing” in Gaza, he said.

But he also stressed that France “clearly condemns” the “terrorist” actions of Hamas.

In response, Netanyahu issued a statement:

“The responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas – ISIS and not with Israel.

It must be remembered that Israel entered the war due to that terrorist organisation’s brutal murder of hundreds of Israelis and holding hostage more than 200 Israelis.

While Israel does everything in its power to avoid harming civilians and urges them to leave the battle areas, Hamas – ISIS is doing all it can to prevent them from moving to safe areas and uses them as human shields.

Hamas – ISIS is cruelly holding our people hostage – women, children, the elderly – and thus committing a crime against humanity.

Hamas – ISIS is using schools, mosques and hospitals as terrorist command centers.

The crimes being committed today by Hamas – ISIS in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and all over the world.

The leaders of the world should be condemning Hamas – ISIS, not Israel”.

Hamas launched a massive terror attack on Israel on October 7, murdering over 1,400 people, wounding thousands more, and taking at least 240 people hostage. It also uses “human shields,” deliberately placing civilians in the line of fire, hoping to protect itself from attack — or, alternatively, to use civilian casualties to drum up international pressure to stop Israel from defending itself.

Real Admiral Daniel Hagari of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) … said that Israel had “prioritized evacuation efforts over other missions.” He said that the Israel Air Force dropped over 1.5 million flyers warning Palestinians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, which is where Hamas’s strongholds are located, and to move south, beyond the Wadi Gaza wetlands, for their own safety. He added that Israel had made 20,000 personal telephone calls to civilian residents of Gaza, telling them to evacuate the area.

Macron also supported a ceasefire in his BBC interview, though a ceasefire would effectively mean a victory for Hamas.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Is Congress Ready to Take on Pro-Hamas Nonprofits?

“Some organizations that have celebrated the unspeakable acts of terror ... currently enjoy tax-exempt status in the United States,"

November 8, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield 10 Comments

Newsletter

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has made exposing pro-terror nonprofits abusing the tax system into a major focus. Now Congress is showing signs of a willingness to act.

Last month, Rep. Jason Smith, the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a message.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) released the following statement blasting organizations and U.S. universities for their statements, or failure to condemn statements issued by student organizations, of support for Hamas and the barbaric acts of terrorism committed against the Jewish people in Israel.

Chairman Smith said, “To say I am disgusted by statements of support for Hamas that we’ve seen in recent days is an understatement. Celebrating, excusing, or downplaying the horrific rape, torture, and murder of innocent people is the same thing as supporting violence, or even calling for it. Releasing such statements, or failing to condemn them, is unforgivable and runs counter to our values as a nation.

“Some organizations that have celebrated the unspeakable acts of terror that claimed the lives of 30 Americans and hundreds of Israeli men, women, and children currently enjoy tax-exempt status in the United States, and their statements call into question the academic or charitable missions they claim to pursue. University administrators, for example, have weaponized their institutions to attack speech and free inquiry as ‘violence,’ yet fail to condemn actual violence that threatens our way of life all while their institutions enjoy lucrative federal tax-exempt status.

The Wall Street Journal notes that, “Mr. Smith’s comments have more weight than most because he is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy. That includes policies governing nonprofit organizations, including colleges and universities as well as groups issuing statements and staging rallies throughout the U.S. Statements celebrating Hamas’s violence, Mr. Smith adds, “call into question the academic or charitable missions they claim to pursue”—in other words, their tax breaks.”

As we have repeatedly demonstrated, including in today’s article, supporting terrorists is inconsistent with tax-exempt status.

The illegal pro-terrorist activities of both JVP and IfNotNow, as well as many other groups in the anti-Israel network, reflects the refusal of the IRS to enforce the tax code against the Left.

The IRS had previously found that the tax code bans funding of anti-war groups or any organization whose “primary activity is the sponsoring of…protest demonstrations  in which demonstrators are urged to commit violations of local ordinances and breaches of public order.”

Such organizations don’t “qualify for exemption under section 501(c)(3) or (4) of the Code.”

That means the groups engaged in illegal pro-Hamas protests, should lose their tax exempt status.

In a previous article, I argued that Congress could end the pro-terror tax code loophole.

These are only a few of the examples of IRS approved 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups or those funded by them celebrating Hamas atrocities. This is in clear violation of the tax code which bars such activities.

IRS regulations specifically state that “exempt purposes may generally be equated with the public good, and violations of law are the antithesis of the public good”

Is supporting terrorists part of the public good? It’s not.

Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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