“Since Oct. 7, about 3,170 new immigrants have made their way to Israel from North America”

ISRAEL HAYOM
Young US Jews embrace Israel amid Gaza war
Efrat Forsher
September 4, 2024

In a striking display of solidarity, hundreds of young North American Jews are choosing to immigrate to Israel despite the ongoing Gaza war. Many of the newcomers are not only committed to building their lives in the Jewish state but are also planning to enlist in the IDF upon arrival. From June to August, approximately 1,500 North American immigrants arrived in Israel through the collaborative efforts of Nefesh B’Nefesh, the Aliyah and Integration Ministry, the Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund-USA, and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael. The majority of the new olim are young adults who have decided to tie their futures to Israel, particularly during this tumultuous period. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Summer influx of Olim arrive in Israel’s busiest Aliyah season yet “On October 7th, my husband and I looked at each other and we both said, ‘We’re still going,’” Hiller-Bersson said from her new home in Modi’in, Israel. “We’d been making these plans for years and we knew moving to Israel was part of something big.”

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“#BringThemHome demonstrates just how hollow and inflamed Israeli public discourse has become. To whom, exactly, is this exhortation addressed?”

TABLET MAG
‘Bring Them Home’ Is Bringing Us to the Brink
Liel Leibovitz
September 3, 2024

…In recent days, a post from an unnamed reservist in Gaza has been going viral in Israel for making a very different argument than the one you hear parroted by self-appointed experts on TV or hear shouted in the streets of Tel Aviv. “The Philadelphi Corridor is more important than hostages,” wrote the reservist. “It’s more important than me and my entire battalion, which has been fighting in Gaza since the beginning of the war.” Approximately every 100 meters, he explained, a tunnel passes through the fence, openings used for smuggling massive amounts of contraband. Therefore, the reservist continued, “leaving Philadelphi for one day means a death sentence for thousands more IsraelisREAD MORE

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CA school district committee leader described Jewish organizations that took issue with the curriculum as “racist Zionists”

LA TIMES
Jewish advocacy groups allege antisemitism behind Santa Ana’s ethnic studies rollout
Gabriel San Román
August 28, 2024

An ethnic studies curriculum at Santa Ana Unified School District is headed for a court battle in an ongoing lawsuit that alleges courses were developed in secret and “infected” with antisemitism…Attorneys also obtained text messages that appear to show senior district officials discussing a strategy of the school board to hold votes on Jewish holidays, like Passover, to approve ethnic studies classes without protest from the Jewish community. “The policy-making committee that was established saw Jews as an obstacle to exclude in the process,” said James Pasch, the ADL’s senior director for national litigation. “Due to that exclusion, the end result was the creation of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel classes being implemented into the curriculum.” READ MORE

NATIONAL REVIEW California School District Tried to Hide Antisemitic Ethnic-Studies Courses from Jewish Taxpayers, Lawsuit Alleges One leader referred to the only Jewish committee member as a “colonized Jewish mind” and a “f–king baby” for expressing concerns over the depiction of Jews in the curriculum. Another individual on the committee reportedly said that “Jews are not a disadvantaged ethnic group in the U.S. because they were never slaves,” that “Jews greatly benefit from white privilege, so they have it better,” and that the school district should “only support the oppressed, and Jews are the oppressors.” Another argued that Jews are “racialized under the white category.”

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“The shift away from Israel among several major unions has been years, if not decades, in the making”

JEWISH INSIDER
Why several leading labor unions abandoned their long-standing support for Israel
Gabby Deutch
August 28, 2024

…The decision by the UAW and other leading labor organizations to call for an end to American military aid to Israel represents a stunning reversal of many unions’ long-standing support for Israel, dating back nearly a century, when American unions donated money to the Histadrut, Israel’s national labor union. “The fact that those seven unions last month, like UAW and SEIU, issued that statement is pretty remarkable, given how much reluctance there’s been, traditionally, to to have any criticism of Israel,” said Jeff Schuhrke, a labor historian at Empire State University. Labor unions’ calls for an arms embargo puts Democrats in an awkward position. READ MORE

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“When Netanyahu spoke to Congress about “total victory,” the political establishment ridiculed and dismissed the prospect of defeating Hamas, instead arguing in favor of a deal with the terrorist group”

JNS
Israel has the right to win
Daniel Greenfield
September 5, 2024

…Kamala and the political establishment are wrong. Israel does not have a “right to defend itself,” it has a right and a duty to go on the offensive and win. It has a right and a duty to utterly defeat and destroy every single Islamic terrorist organization at war with it. It has a right and a duty to secure whatever territory the terrorists were using for their operations, including the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border, through which massive amounts of weapons were delivered to Hamas. That’s the least of what winning means. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, Israel undertook to win. In those first three decades, it won and emerged stronger for it. In the next terrible four decades, it lost land, ambition and safety in a failed search for a peace that could never come on any terms other than its own strength. Defense was traded for offense. READ MORE

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“Every time we hear of another hostage in Gaza that the IDF rescued, it feels like a piece of our soul begins to heal”

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Israel’s true nature shines bright in hostage rescue
Zina Rakhamilova
August 29, 2024

On Tuesday, the IDF announced the rescue of Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a Bedouin-Israeli father of eleven who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 while working as a guard in Kibbutz Magen, near the Gaza border. Alkadi was found alone in a tunnel in southern Gaza, having endured weeks of isolation, confined to total darkness, and forced to witness a fellow hostage die beside him. Watching the videos of Alkadi’s family rushing to greet him in the hospital, seeing him reunited with his brother and his children – one of whom was just two months old when he was kidnapped – was profoundly moving. After his rescue, Alkadi told the media, “Suddenly, I hear someone outside the door speaking in Hebrew. I didn’t believe it, I didn’t believe it. Thank you so much. This is thanks to our army; they do sacred work, they risked their lives.” READ MORE

JNS Hostages’ families burst through Gaza fence during border protest Dozens of families of hostages still being held captive by Hamas since Oct. 7 demonstrated at the Gaza border on Thursday, shouting through loudspeakers in the hope that their loved ones would hear. Some broke through a fence near the border and ran toward the Strip. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersch Goldberb-Polin, 23, shouted, “This is mom, Hersch. This is the 328th day. We’re all here. All the families of 107 abductees who remain in captivity,” Ynet reported. “Hersch, we work day and night, and we will never stop. I need you to know that I bless you every morning and every Friday evening, and I raise my hands toward Gaza, and I give you the blessing, ‘May God bless you and keep you,’” she said.

TIMES OF ISRAEL The Rescue of Qaid Farhan Alkadi: Shattering the Myths of Apartheid On August 27th, in an operation that should have captured the attention of the world, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) achieved what can only be described as a triumph of courage and precision: the rescue of Qaid Farhan Alkadi, an Arab Israeli who had been seized by Hamas and dragged into the infernal depths of Gaza. Yet, this extraordinary event has been met with a curiously muted response from much of the mainstream media. The silence is telling, for it betrays an unwillingness to confront a reality that utterly dismantles the vile and persistent slander that Israel is an apartheid state.

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“Iran seeks as a strategic objective to surround Israel with a crescent of active fronts maintained by Iran and supported by Islamist client militias”

GATESTONE
Iran’s War Against Israel – From the West Bank
Khaled Abu Toameh
August 28, 2024

…On August 25, a committee set up by Abbas to prepare for the return of the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip decided to “contact the political bureau of Hamas and other Palestinian factions in order to agree and reach an understanding with them” on Abbas’s plans to head to the coastal enclave. Abbas, it seems, believes that he can reach an advantageous deal with Hamas, whose members staged a bloody coup against his PA in 2007 and were preparing to assassinate him. The PA will never be able to assume control of the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas’s military capabilities have not been destroyed. Even if Abbas does go back to the Gaza Strip, it is not probable that he would be able to confront Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups there. As in the West Bank, new “battalions” and militias will no doubt spring up in the Gaza Strip under Abbas’s PA to pursue the Jihad (holy war) to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. READ MORE

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IDF exposes Hamas for manipulating public opinion surveys

ALGEMEINER
Hamas Falsified Polling Data to Indicate Higher Support for Oct. 7 Among Gaza Civilians, IDF Says
Corey Walker
August 29, 2024

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that runs Gaza, has been secretly fabricating polling results from civilians of the war-torn enclave in order to hide that the Islamist organization enjoys far less support than previously thought, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF revealed on Thursday that it obtained documents in Gaza showing that Hamas falsified polling data from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR)… According to the IDF, the March 2024 polling results were doctored by Hamas “to falsely boost Yahya Sinwar’s popularity,” referring to the terrorist group’s top leader. A striking 71 percent of Palestinians in Gaza said that Hamas was “correct” in its “decision to attack Israel on October 7th,” according to the allegedly faked polling data. In reality, 31 percent of Gazans expressed support for the Oct. 7 attacks, according to what the IDF characterized as the accurate polling data, representing a difference of roughly 40 percentage points. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG More Than 80 Media Outlets Correct AP’s False Claim That Gaza’s Civilian Deaths Exceed 40,000 More than 80 North American media outlets this week published an Associated Press correction prompted by CAMERA after the wire service falsely reported that the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip has exceeded 40,000…Not even Hamas has claimed that the civilian death toll has now exceeded 40,000. The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza has claimed without evidence that total fatalities exceed 40,000 but their highly disputed data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. According to Israeli figures, more than 17,000 Hamas combatants have been killed. READ MORE

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The fact that Muna had to leave Nablus to find a target proves that the “occupation” claim is a lie. He wanted to kill a lot of Jews. So he set his sights on Tel Aviv.

JNS
Three lessons from the Tel Aviv bombing
Moshe Phillips
August 23, 2024

The fumbled suicide bombing in Tel Aviv might sound as if it was just another one of the countless attempted terrorist attacks that fail for whatever reason and are ignored by the international community. But if you look closer, you see that there’s much to be learned from this incident. Let’s start with the fact that the bomber, Jafar Muna, was a resident of Nablus (Shechem, in Hebrew), a city governed by the Palestinian Authority. Why did he travel all the way to Tel Aviv, 26 miles away, to carry out the attack? After all, if Nablus and other Palestinian Arab cities are “occupied”—as the media and Peace Now constantly claim—why didn’t he attack the “occupiers” right there? Why travel to Tel Aviv, risking capture along the way? READ MORE

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As Moshe Dayan, the famed Israeli Minister of Defense during the 1967 Six-Day War, used to say: “Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”

FUTURE OF JEWISH
No other country is infantilized as much as Israel.
Joshua Hoffman
August 24, 2024

During the last 11 years of living in Israel, I have spoken to many people across the world who, more often than not, talk about Israel as if its roughly 10 million people do not seem to know what’s good for them. It feels like no other country is infantilized as much as Israel. Many Americans, for instance, think they can project whatever tickles their fancy onto Israelis because of the nearly $4 billion in annual military aid that the U.S. offers Israel, yet plenty of them do not realize that this money is not actual aid in the altruistic sense of the word; it is a mutually beneficial arrangement in which the U.S. receives all types of assets (e.g. technology, defense, intelligence) for literal pennies on the dollar. READ MORE

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