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Walk a Few Miles in An Israeli’s Shoes by Seth Mandel

Posted By on May 24th, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/walk-a-few-miles-in-an-israelis-shoes/

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has ordered its diplomats around the world to refrain from participating in public events until further notice, according to a leading Israeli broadcaster. The cautionary note comes after last night’s murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington outside the Capital Jewish Museum.

These are, of course, government officials with government-level security. I don’t think most people have the faintest idea of what it’s like for Israelis traveling abroad these days on their own. So here’s a peek at the experience of being an Israeli in the world, via a few stories that demonstrate the point.

Earlier this month, an Israeli tourist attempted to book a hotel stay in the popular Norwegian destination town of Geiranger. The would-be traveler received the following response from the hotel:

“The Norwegian Labor Organization (LO) will soon enforce a boycott that will affect Israeli tourists and Israeli goods due to the catastrophic situation in Gaza. We need to inform you that our staff is organized in LO unions, and they will not break the boycott. I will need to consult with the employers’ organization as I see this as a force majeure situation.”

Force majeure refers to the way unforeseen events can be excluded from normal liability obligations. It seems the hotel could not possibly have expected an Israeli traveler and believes its trade union will be enforcing a boycott against not just Israeli companies and products but people.

Put simply: We don’t serve your kind here.

Of course, sometimes it’s easier to take those discriminatory obligations off the shoulders of your holiday hotels and just ban Israeli passport holders from your entire country. That was the route the Maldives took last month. The Maldives parliament passed a bill to such effect and the president signed it, insisting the ban “reflects the government’s firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.”

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Whatever Happened to ‘Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself’? by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21643/whatever-happened-to-love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself

What instead seems to have been considered important is the great new cause to refabricate society in accordance with a skewed view of social justice that consists not of individuals but groups, and that decides which of those may, or may not, be members of some private global “club.” No wonder Western society, especially in Europe, seems to be bordering on implosion.

“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” — European Fatwa Council Brotherhood, “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America”, May. 22, 1991

It was probably to be expected with the election of Donald J. Trump as US president, and with the fearless leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister, that a repudiation of those policies by opponents in both countries, would focus all their resources on bringing these two statesmen down.

As Netanyahu’s detractors bring one charge after the other in a continual attempt to bring the take down the prime minister, one cannot but wonder who Israel’s real enemies actually are.

It appears that some high-ranking activists are possibly prepared to destroy the nation in pursuit of their ambition for leadership, and to impose their own ideologies on its people. The prime minister and others no doubt see through their bogus proclamations that they are “protecting democracy.

The culture of Western society is Judeo-Christian. Its respect for individuals, its humanitarian morality, the need for empirical evidence, and entreaties such as “Love thy neighbour as thyself”‘ (Leviticus 19:18) — echoed by Mark and Matthew in the New Testament — are the values that have formed the foundation for all education in the West.

As we have seen, however, as recently as this week, however, when two young innocent staffers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., were gunned down, there have been increasing attacks on these Judeo-Christian social values. Both anarchistic revolutionaries and many religious zealots apparently wish to eradicate and replace them, presumably on the way to a world order featuring themselves.

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The pogrom comes to Washington The murder of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky exposes the savagery of ‘anti-Zionism’. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/22/the-pogrom-comes-to-washington/

Two Israeli embassy staffers gunned down in the prime of their lives. Young lovers shot to death for the ‘crime’ of taking pride in Jewish heritage. He had bought a ring and was planning to propose to her next week in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people’s homeland. We need to speak frankly about the vile slaying of Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky in Washington, DC last night. It was, in President Trump’s words, ‘obviously based on anti-Semitism’. It was an act of racist savagery that speaks to the anti-civilisational delirium that pumps in the veins of Israelophobia. It was the pogrom come to Washington.

Ms Milgrim and Mr Lischinsky were staff members at the Israeli Embassy in DC. Last night, they were shot dead as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. It was a cocktail-fuelled reception for ‘young diplomats’ aimed at ‘fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage’. The suspect in this sick crime was reportedly wearing a keffiyeh. ‘Free Palestine’, he hollered as he allegedly put bullets into the embassy staffers. ‘Globalise the intifada’, the drones of the Israelophobic mob have been shouting since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. Well, here it is, being globalised: Hamas-style savagery in the beating heart of the Western world.

America’s politicians are not mincing their words. This was a ‘deadly act of anti-Semitic violence’, says Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. It’s hard to see what else it could be. If you lurk with a gun outside an event at a Jewish museum devoted to celebrating Jewish heritage, and callously butcher those who come out, it’s pretty clear what your motives are. That the suspect was allegedly wearing a keffiyeh and yelling about Gaza is not surprising: Jew hate comes gussied up in the Palestine colours these days. The fascist imagination disguises itself in faux-progressive talk about Palestine.

We await more information about the suspect. It remains to be seen if he worked alone or with others. So far as we know, one man bears responsibility for this savage act: the person who pulled the trigger. But it would be wrong, catastrophic in fact, to overlook the context in which this crime against the Jewish people unfolded. We cannot close our ears to the mood music in our societies – the screeching surround sound, in fact – that at the very least makes outrages like this one that bit more likely.

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Democrats’ Confederacy of Dunces By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/democrats_confederacy_of_dunces.html

Three hundred years ago, the remarkable satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign; that the Dunces are all in Confederacy against him.”

Now, you might not be President Trump’s biggest fan.  Perhaps you are glad that he has returned to the White House but look forward to one of his capable lieutenants succeeding him in four years.  But I would argue that never has a larger collection of absolute idiots assembled to oppose an American leader, and for that reason alone, Donald J. Trump is probably a genius.  (And a very stable one at that!)

Right now, Democrats are waging a public relations campaign in support of criminal illegal aliens.  They are trying to make military-aged males with gang tattoos look sympathetic.  Sure, many of them have been accused of engaging in human-trafficking, drug-smuggling, identity theft, and fraud, but Democrats say these “new” Americans are just like us.  Sure, foreign nationals are regularly accused of rape and murder across the United States, but Democrats are quick to point out that “old” Americans commit heinous crimes, too.  Sure, illegal aliens are a huge financial burden to the prison system, welfare programs, health care, public schools, and local communities, but Democrats insist that it’s “racist” to tell the truth out loud.  

While President Trump is rounding up violent criminals who have no right to be in the United States, Democrats are crying in front of cameras and promising to bring them back to a neighborhood near you.  In four months, they’ve shown more love for foreigners who broke into our country than they’ve ever shown for American victims of transnational cartels!

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At least for now, Trump’s DHS blocks Harvard’s international student money mill By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/at_least_for_now_trump_s_dhs_blocks_harvard_s_international_student_money_mill.html

According to Grok, roughly 27% of Harvard’s student body—or around 6,800 students—consists of people from overseas. Given that they pay full fare (no federal student loans, grants, or scholarships for them), that works out to around $400 million in tuition revenue annually (6,800 x $57,000). Grok also estimates that, of those 6,800 foreign students, roughly 15% come from China.

You can see, then, how important those foreign students are to Harvard. And that’s why it was such a devastating blow when, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote to Harvard this afternoon informing it that, because it refused to abide by its Civil Rights obligations, despite two warnings, the United States government was revoking its privilege (not its right, but its privilege) to host foreign students and workers:

Here’s the letter’s text, in case you can’t get the attachment to open:

I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.

As I explained to you in my April letter, it is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus. All universities must comply with Department of Homeland Security requirements, including reporting requirements under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program regulations, to maintain this privilege. As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege.

The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status.

This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.

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Gaza Comes to D.C. A keffiyeh-clad terrorist pulls a trigger. by Aynaz Anni Cyrus

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/gaza-comes-to-d-c/

On a quiet May evening in Washington, D.C., two Israeli embassy workers were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t “occupiers.” They were a couple—Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim—who had just left a humanitarian event. They were planning to get engaged.

Instead, they were executed in cold blood on American soil.

The shooter? A 30-year-old named Elias Rodriguez, wrapped in a red keffiyeh and screaming “Free, free Palestine” as he opened fire. Not in Gaza. Not in Tehran. Right here—in the heart of the United States capital.

This wasn’t some random act of violence. It was a political assassination. A hate crime. And a terrorist attack fueled by a narrative the West keeps feeding.

Rodriguez wasn’t a mentally ill loner. He had a trail:

He marched in BLM protests.
He dabbled in radical activism with the Party for Socialism and Liberation—the same group that has called for “Intifada” in the U.S.
And like so many today, he was infected with the delusion that terrorism is resistance—and murder is justice when the target is Israeli.

And where is the Left now?

Silent. Absent. Complicit.

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Charles Lipson: Joe Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest scandal in modern US history Who was running America? Who is responsible for the cover-up?

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/05/21/joe-biden-cognitive-decline-biggest-scandal-modern-history/

News of former president Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis prompted Americans of all persuasions to offer prayers and sympathy. Human decency like that, transcending political differences, is laudable. Whatever our political differences, Biden and his family deserve our compassion.

What’s unusual is the scepticism – indeed, cynicism – surrounding the announcement, which came just before the release of a major book about Biden’s cognitive decline and its cover-up. There have been questions about whether officials knew about the cancer while he was in office and hid that from the public. Those doubts have been voiced by numerous specialists, including physicians who held high positions in Democratic administrations.

This cynicism is the bitter fruit of four years of the Biden administration’s deceit on countless basic issues, including the former president’s health. Americans were repeatedly told that “the president is mentally sharp and incredibly energetic”. That simply wasn’t true, and everyone knew it.

Still, some Democrats are attempting to downplay everything that happened over the past four years, as if it is old news that can be safely buried now that Donald Trump is in the White House. They won’t get away with it. The scandal surrounding Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest in modern US political history.

In fact, there are three scandals, each reinforcing the other two. First, and most obviously, there is the blunt fact of the former president’s fading mental capacity. Second, there was the concerted cover-up, both by Democratic politicians and the mainstream media. The third is the still-unanswered question: who was actually making presidential decisions? Who controlled the auto-pen that signed almost every order from the Oval Office? To rephrase Senator Howard Baker’s pointed question during the Nixon-Watergate hearings: “What did the president not know? And when did he not know it?”

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Attacking Jews at Harvard Doesn’t Just Go Unpunished. It Gets Rewarded.By Johanna Berkman

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/attacking-jews-at-harvard-doesnt?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Instead of discipline, the students behind an attack that went viral got a fellowship, accolades—and a commencement spotlight.

In the year and a half since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, there have been so many alarming incidents on college campuses aimed at Jews. Many stick out for their grotesque imagery, for their outrageous slanders, and for their Soviet-style tactics. But the incident that I remember most vividly is the one that took place at Harvard University less than two weeks after Hamas invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more.

No one was physically injured that day. But the fact remained that the incident was wildly beyond the pale: a group of Harvard students surrounding another student, an Israeli named Yoav Segev, repeatedly screaming “Shame!” in his face, blocking his path, and forcing him to leave a part of campus that he was entitled to be in just as much as they were.

Video of the confrontation quickly went viral. You can watch it here.

The incident might have just disappeared from the news, like so many other videos of post-October 7 antisemitism on campus, if not for another shocking fact. The two aggressors who were the easiest to identify, because they were not wearing masks or hoodies and did not have keffiyehs around their faces, were not just Harvard students. They were also Harvard employees.

Ibrahim Bharmal was a Harvard Law School student and an editor at the Harvard Law Review. He was also a law-school teaching fellow in a civil procedure class. Elom Tettey-Tamaklo was a student at Harvard Divinity School. He was also a residential Harvard proctor, someone who advised first-year Harvard College students and lived in their dorm.

In other words, these were not random outside agitators or foolish 18-year-old college students trying to prove their radical clout. They had been chosen by Harvard—Bharmal by its faculty, Tettey-Tamaklo by its administrators—to be leaders, role models, and part of the very fabric of the institution itself.

For those who wanted to simply wave off the outbreak of harassment against Jewish students on elite American college campuses as much ado being done by outsiders, the Harvard video proved otherwise. Yet Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, said nothing publicly about it until three weeks later.

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Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers Jonathan Tobin

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/domestic-terror-is-the-inevitable-next-step-for-hamas-sympathizers/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_medium=email&_

The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that “pro-Palestine” activism is leading to antisemitic violence.

For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters’ support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism—something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their “activism.”

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as their party’s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who “deserved to be heard” and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was more than just mainstreaming Jew-hatred in discourse. As has been the case throughout history, those who speak of their support for terrorism elsewhere often wind up committing it at home.

After the tragic murder on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it’s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel’s existence.

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Gaza Health Ministry casualty numbers ‘deliberately fabricated,’ new analysis reveals By David Isaac

Posted By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/hamas-casualty-numbers-deliberately-fabricated-new-analysis-reveals/

The casualty figures supplied by the Gaza Health Ministry are based on false and misleading data, according to a new report.

Despite the numbers being deeply unreliable, they have been widely accepted to support genocide claims against Israel, “and thereby are a major strategic victory of Hamas’s wartime information effort,” notes the report, titled, “Hamas Casualty Reports are a Tangle of Technical Problems.”

The report was co-authored by Lewi Stone, a professor of mathematical epidemiology in the mathematical sciences department at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and Gregory Rose, an honorary professor of law at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Stone and Rose obtained access to a dataset published in January 2025 by a London-based researcher, who had unique access to time-stamped data from the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The dataset “allowed us to undertake a more in-depth analysis of statistics at different dates of the war across regions in Gaza.”

They used data provided by the ministry itself to show that the Israel Defense Forces took measures to avoid harming women and children in Gaza.

Given that 75% of Gaza’s population comprises women and children, if attacks were random, 75% of the victims should also be women and children, Stone told JNS. But the data shows that 51% of the victims were women and children over the course of 17 months of the war. This disparity suggests women and children fatalities were far less than Hamas has been claiming, and the impact on civilians was likely smaller.

“Moreover, women and children casualties trended to become an increasingly lower monthly proportion of casualties as the war progressed across time, again something Hamas never publicized,” Stone noted.