Israel Update: December 29 (day 450)

by | | Israel Updates

Jay Zeidman
Dec 29, 2024

Chag Sameach and Happy Hanukkah!

Tonight, Jews around the world will celebrate the fifth night of Hanukkah. I wanted to share a picture and video of a Menorah made from rocket fragments that is on display in hostage square in Tel Aviv. “In each fragment – a story of survival. Pieces of Iranian ballistic missiles, fragments of UAVs from Yemen, and rockets from Lebanon have been transformed into a symbol of hope, light emerging from darkness,” the menorah’s inscription says. The menorah was created by artist Eli Gross.

Situational Update

 

  • Saturday marked the sixth straight day that Iranian backed Houthi rebels from Yemen launched ballistic missiles towards Israel. According to AIPAC, the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air defense system, and Israel’s Arrow long-range anti-missile system, worked to track the incoming missile and shoot it down outside of Israeli airspace. It marks the first time the American missile defense system has been used to protect the Jewish state since it was positioned in Israel in October — another remarkable demonstration of how a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and the work we do together helps save lives.
  • Rocket and drone alert sirens triggered by attacks from Yemen have sent millions of Israelis running for shelter in the middle of the night almost every night for the past 10 days. In the past month, the Houthis have fired 10 ballistic missiles and at least nine drones at Israel.
  • In response, FDD writes that the IDF carried out a new round of airstrikes targeting the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen on December 26. The IDF said on the afternoon of December 26 that Israeli “fighter jets conducted intelligence-based strikes on military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime on the western coast and inland Yemen.” The strikes targeted sites at the port of Hudaydah and two other ports on the western coast of Yemen. The IDF has hit Hudaydah’s port in previous attacks. Israel asserts that the Houthis use the ports on Yemen’s western coast to smuggle Iranian weapons.

The Numbers

 

Casualties

 

  • 1,818 Israelis have been killed including 823 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+2 since Wednesday)
    • Reserve Captain Amit Levi, 34, (left) was killed by a sniper in central Gaza.
    • Major Hod Shriebman, 27 (right), was killed during combat operations in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. Just three months ago, Shriebman married his partner, who shared photos on Facebook, celebrating their “happy day.”
    • The Times of Israel reports: An 83-year-old woman was stabbed and killed in a terror attack in Herzliya on Friday. The assailant, a 28-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank, had been a Shin Bet informant and was transferred to Israel after his cover was blown, the security agency said. The victim, Ludmila Lipovsky, a Holocaust survivor, had just left her assisted living complex and was waiting for a ride to a doctor’s appointment at the time of the attack, Hebrew-language media reports said.
  • The South: 391 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+2 since Wednesday)
  • The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Wednesday)
  • Additional Information (according to the IDF):
    • 2,501 (+7 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 473 (+2 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
    • 5,541 (+19 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 809 (+4 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 45,361 (+102 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 107,803 (+176 since Wednesday) have been injured during the war.
  • Facts about the Gaza Casualty Count:
  • The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Hostages (no change)

 

  • There are currently 96 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
  • 7 hostages are Americans: Meet the Seven American Hostages Still Held By Hamas
  • On October 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
  • During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
  • 145 hostages in total have been released or rescued
    • The bodies of 38 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
  • 8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
  • This leaves 100 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
    • At least 34 confirmed bodies are currently being held in Gaza
    • 30-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
    • Thus, at most, 50-70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
    • Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Listen

 

[PODCAST] Jewish Onliner: Hamas’ Death Toll Manipulation

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  • In this episode of Oy Vey Today, we delve into the groundbreaking report by the Henry Jackson Society, which exposes how the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry has manipulated and disseminated disinformation about the Gaza death toll. This manipulation is aimed at portraying Israel as a perpetrator of war crimes, a claim that the evidence does not support.

Watch

 

According to the IDF, 𝟴𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬+ 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗛𝗲𝘇𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗵 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗗𝗙 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗻. Since October 2024, IDF forces operated against Hezbollah in more than 30 areas across southern Lebanon. The troops identified and destroyed terrorist infrastructure, eliminated terrorists, and located and confiscated numerous weapons. The confiscated weapons were used by Hezbollah to attack Israeli civilians and were intended to be deployed as part of Hezbollah’s ‘Conquer the Galilee’ invasion plan. Hezbollah’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded as a result of the IDF’s ground operations.

  • 6,840 RPG launchers, rockets, and anti-tank missiles
  • 9,000 explosive devices
  • 60,800 communication devices, electronic equipment, computers, and documents
  • 2,250 mortar shells and trajectory missiles
  • 2,700 rifles
  • 2,860 additional weaponry items
  • 300 observation tools and binoculars
  • 60 anti-aircraft missiles
  • 20 vehicles

Rocket Alerts

 

  • +439 rocket alerts since Wednesday
  • Since 12/1 there have been 1,117 rocket alerts from the Houthi rebels in Yemen
  • It is worth noting that for every rocket alert/siren, Israelis have only seconds to drop what they are doing and run to the nearest safe room (mamad in Hebrew) or communal shelter. The alerts of recent days often come in the middle of the night. One can only imagine what it is like to live like this on a day-to-day basis, especially with young children.

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

Reports, Opinions, and Analysis

 

‘Terrorists posing as patients’: Inside the IDF’s largest Gaza raid yet by Yoav Zitun in Ynet

  • The IDF reported on Saturday that it completed a focused operation targeting a Hamas command center within the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. Over 240 suspects were reportedly apprehended.
  • Among those detained were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including 15 individuals connected to the October 7 attacks on Israel, as well as engineering and anti-tank missile specialists and the hospital director, suspected of Hamas ties. Some suspects reportedly attempted to disguise themselves as patients or escape using ambulances.
  • Initial interrogations conducted on-site by Unit 504 investigators and Shin Bet operatives revealed that many of the terrorists exiting the hospital had participated in terror activities in the area. This marked a significant achievement for Unit 504, which handled the largest single-day concentration of detainees since the start of the war.
  • During the operation, terrorists fired anti-tank missiles at forces near the hospital and attempted additional terror attacks. IDF and Shin Bet personnel sustained no injuries, and the attackers were swiftly neutralized. Israeli Air Force aircraft also struck and killed terrorists attempting to flee the area.
  • In the weeks leading up to the operation, the IDF coordinated with COGAT to evacuate 350 patients, caregivers and medical staff from the Kamal Adwan Hospital. Additionally, tens of thousands of liters of fuel and hundreds of food and medical supply packages were delivered to the hospital.
  • During the operation, 95 more patients and staff were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital, accompanied by 5,000 liters of fuel, two generators and additional medical supplies to ensure its essential functionality. Hundreds of civilians were also evacuated safely via designated routes.

Eitan Fischberger posts on X detailed information to prove that the Kamal Adwan Hospital Director is a Colonel in Hamas.

  • But first, it’s worth noting that the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hamas Colonel. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, published two op-eds in the New York Times
Image
  • Eitan’s Substack provide the links to all the screenshots included in his X thread about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya being a Colonel in Hamas, as well as the ones referring to Kamal Adwan Hospital as a military hospital.
  • Link: Kamal Adwan Hospital Director is Hamas Colonel

Israel Among the Nations: Israel’s defense of its national home has provoked a Western political and cultural intelligentsia for whom the defense of the nation has become an offense against an always unifying humanity. By Richard M. Reinsch II with the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas

  • Israel fully understands, as it must, that the defense of the country remains a vital necessity in a world of ceaseless Islamic terrorism.
  • Israel’s confrontation with both the governing elite of Europe and Progressive politicians in America who have morally condemned Israel for disproportionate responses to the terrorist attack could prove even more significant than Israel’s war against Hamas, Hezbollah, and their master, Iran. By “more significant,” I mean “significant for America and Americans.” Guiding these elites’ reactions and judgment is a progressive, humanitarian ideology that dethrones patriotism and the defense of one’s national home, leaving them incapable of understanding a country that means winning a war, imposing terms on the enemy, and bringing peace to its people.
  • The United Kingdom has now suspended 30 of the 350 weapons licenses that it provided to Israel. This hardly endangers the Israeli war effort, but the justification provided by U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy cited a potential “risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.” When asked to name any provisions of international law or the laws of war that Israel had violated, Lammy declined to answer, merely stating that the loss of life in Gaza had been unsatisfactory for the current government. As the kids say on social media, “Tell me that you think Israel has committed war crimes without telling me that you think Israel has committed war crimes.”
  • Left unmentioned by Lammy and Macron is that the context of Israel’s assault on Hamas featured a terrorist enemy that had constructed hundreds of miles of underground tunnels and had deliberately established itself among civilians in Gaza. What did they expect Israel to do? De facto – permit Hamas to escape?
  • European elites and American progressives have absorbed the delusions of humanitarian ideology and the dangerous categories of identity politics.
  • Israel’s defense of its national home has provoked a Western political and cultural intelligentsia for whom the defense of the nation has become an offense against an always unifying humanity, of which it is the harbinger and avant-garde.
  • The proud nation-state Israel represents the opposite lesson of what European humanitarians have drawn from the history of Jews in modern times. Israel has been built by struggle, sacrifice, and pride. The near destruction of the Jewish people by Hitler’s Germany is frequently invoked as the founding impetus for the unifying goals of the European Union. The villain in the EU’s political narrative of unity is the nation, the so-called springboard of naked aggression and warmongering on behalf of the superiority of a people.
  • Regarding America’s reaction, the Biden administration has been deeply divided amongst itself as certain staff members, many of them junior level, protested mightily against President Biden’s early support of Israel in the wake of October 7th.
  • The concern for Palestinian civilians seems to mask an ideological belief, otherwise called “settler colonialism,” that Israel is a primeval oppressor that must be eradicated if justice is to be achieved.
  • This led President Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to state that Israel must accept a cease-fire and bring an end to the current hostilities. Yet, the Biden administration knew that Hamas, not Israel, was the chief impediment to any cease-fire.
  • How does a nation make peace with assassins? How does a nation make peace with a terrorist enemy that refuses to accept an Israeli state within any borders? The Biden administration offered no answers to these questions. Instead, it has chosen to apply maximum public pressure on Israel for purely domestic political reasons.
  • The only cease-fire that Israel can legitimately accept is surrender and the return of all hostages without conditions. The one-sided concern for Palestinian civilians seems to mask an identity politics belief, now regnant in progressive circles, that Israel is a settler colonialist oppressor that must be morally refuted if justice is to be achieved.
  • Israel’s defense of its collective existence could portend not only the defeat of its enemies but also remind a deeply confused and morally troubled West that it cannot hide behind humanity and escape from itself.
  • Israel witnesses to the apostles of humanitarianism and identity politics that the modern Western nation, at its best, provides a politics of sanity and prudence because it first provides countless citizens a home, citizenship, and the possibility of the common good.
  • Link: Israel Among the Nations

Khamenei’s Brilliant Failure: His strategy against Israel and the United States was working—until Hamas attacked Israel by Reuel Marc Gerecht in Dispatch

  • Through this “Axis of Resistance,” the clerical regime could harass Americans in Iraq and Syria. Ever fearful of escalation, Washington never took the fight back to Iran directly—with the exception of President Donald Trump’s decision in 2020 to kill in Baghdad Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and the operational mastermind behind Iranian strategy. The axis was designed to keep America fatigued in the Middle East, to keep it leery of deeper intervention.
  • With time, the axis would only get stronger; the Zionists and Americans weaker. For years, this approach worked.
  • The key component in Iranian calculations was Tehran’s decision over the last 10 years to enhance Hezbollah’s already large stockpile of missiles. It gave the clerical regime—in the eyes of the Iranians, the Hezbollah leadership, and many Israelis and Americans—a check on Jerusalem and Washington.
  • With Iran’s axis appearing ever stronger, the kingdom hedged its bets even before October 7 and the destruction of Gaza, and became wary of the Abraham Accords. Riyadh gladly accepted Chinese intercession to restore diplomatic relations with Tehran in March 2023.
  • For revisionist powers, anti-Americanism is the binding agent. The Islamic Republic, which had repeatedly sought great-power friends since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989, proved its worth on the ground, starting when Suleimani went to Moscow in 2015 and made the case for direct and immediate Russian intervention to save their mutual ally, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
  • All of this came undone when the Israelis proved, even against American resistance, that they still retained the capacity and fury to obliterate Hamas and neuter Hezbollah at stunning speed, leaving the group’s vaunted missilery of near zero strategic use against the Jewish state.
  • For the first time, after Israel’s last reprisal, Iranian VIPs began openly speculating that the Zionists might have the capacity to off the Islamic Republic’s senior officials whenever they wanted. The nuclear discussion in Tehran exploded when all realized that only a nuke could restore Iranian deterrence against Israel and the United States, and yet, despite the tens of billions of dollars spent to develop a nuclear weapon, the clerical regime still didn’t have the bomb.
  • And what Israel set in motion, the Turks capitalized on.
  • Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proved a patient foe of Assad and Iran. He didn’t tremble before Vladimir Putin. He knew the advantages he had in a deeply fractured Syria where Assad’s forces, even with Iranian and Russian support, were never able to oust his military or his local Syrian allies. He correctly assessed Russian and Iranian weakness. Most decisively, he did what no one else in the Sunni world had been able to do: He successfully used insurgent warfare against Shiites.
  • The 85-year-old supreme leader is now flailing, unable to give speeches that aren’t immediately dismissed. Unforgivably for an Islamic revolutionary, he misjudged the Jews and he was too clever with the regime’s nuclear ambitions. In retrospect, he should have put aside his concerns about latent American power and pushed the envelope during Biden’s presidency as there was likely nothing there that would have pushed back.
  • Link: Khamenei’s Brilliant Failure

Massive intel breach: How the IDF blocked Hezbollah’s doomsday attacks on Tel Aviv by Yonah Jeremy Bob in the Jerusalem Post

  • According to the military, its intelligence branches spent years separately diagnosing each level of Hezbollah’s firepower: mortars, short-range rockets, medium-range rockets, and precision and long-range rockets.
  • Further, military intelligence identified where these items were located and how to strike them, or follow their movements if they were mobile.
  • The fact that the top three full tiers of Hezbollah’s commanders were all eliminated in a matter of weeks was not luck, but a measure of the long term investment in intelligence collection, analysis and precision by the military.
  • All of this led to the IDF preventing Hezbollah from being able to carry out its own doomsday plans of cutting Tel Aviv skyscrapers to pieces with its 150,000 rocket arsenal.
  • Link: This is how the IDF blocked Hezbollah’s doomsday attacks on Tel Aviv

The Curious Case of Iran’s Destroyed Nuclear Site by Andrea Stricker with FDD

  • On October 26 2024, the day after Israel conducted a massive counterstrike against Iranian missile and military sites, open-source sleuths noticed something strange: A building was unexpectedly missing within Iran’s Parchin military complex.
  • The relatively small, 40-meter-long building, known as Taleghan 2, was located southwest of several destroyed Iranian missile facilities — and happened to be used for experiments during Iran’s pre-2004 nuclear weapons program.
  • That Taleghan 2 was intact prior to the Israeli strike is certain. But satellite imagery acquired by the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security, dated October 27, indicated that a large crater had replaced most of the building.
  • So much is now known about the building and Iran’s nuclear weapons program, then titled the Amad Plan, thanks to the Israeli Mossad’s 2018 seizure of an archive of documentation from a Tehran warehouse detailing the regime’s work on nuclear weapons.
  • What had become of the equipment at Taleghan 2? Was it still present at the site during Israel’s strike? Iran, meanwhile, remained silent on the matter. Then an Axios bombshell on November 15 confirmed, according to several former and current US and Israeli officials, that Israel had struck Taleghan 2 to disrupt new Iranian weaponization work. “They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon,” a US official said. “It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
  • Israeli officials told Axios in a follow-up report that the destruction of the equipment inside Taleghan 2 created a “bottleneck” that Tehran would need to overcome to successfully build nuclear weapons. Moreover, the Israelis believed they could detect required foreign procurements.
  • The IAEA never visited Taleghan 2, nor did it go to other Amad Plan sites in the same vicinity, among numerous related sites located elsewhere.
  • Iran, for its part, busily cleaned and removed debris from the site days after the strike. It has not yet acted on threats to retaliate against the Jewish state once more.
  • Still, even if Iran presses ahead with weaponization, military strikes on Iran’s program are no small feat. To be fully successful at destroying, rather than just damaging, the facilities, Israeli military capabilities may be inadequate. Rather, full success requires a joint US-Israeli bombing campaign lasting many days or weeks, and a steady effort to prevent Tehran’s nuclear reconstitution. These difficulties explain why Jerusalem and Washington have never acted.
  • In the end, absent other meaningful options and bolstered by opportunity, a war-weary Israel may need to make the toughest choice of all. It may have to lead the way to eliminating Tehran’s nuclear threat — and accepting a level of uncertainty about the success of this mission.
  • Link: The Curious Case of Iran’s Destroyed Nuclear Site

Antisemitism

 

USAID-backed report about famine in Gaza taken down after criticism from U.S. ambassador to Israel by Gabby Deutch with The Jewish Insider

  • A report from a U.S.-backed agency alleging that famine is advancing in northern Gaza was taken down on Tuesday night after facing criticism from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew.
  • Lew stated that the report, published by the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), relied on “inaccurate” information and called its publication “irresponsible.”
  • Hours after Lew’s statement — a rare public rebuke by a U.S. diplomat of an American agency — FEWS NET removed its report warning of famine in northern Gaza from the FEWS NET website, a USAID spokesperson told Jewish Insider.
  • The FEWS NET report described a “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas of North Gaza Governorate,” and stated that 65,000 to 75,000 civilians remained in the area, “including civilians who have been unable to or prevented from evacuating.” But according to Lew, that figure is “outdated and inaccurate.”
  • Despite the organization being funded by USAID, “it provides independent and neutral analyses of food security,” the USAID spokesperson said. A disclaimer on the FEWS NET website describes the organization as a USAID project while noting that information published on it is “not official U.S. government information and does not represent the views or positions” of USAID.
  • Link: USAID-backed report about famine in Gaza taken down after criticism from U.S. ambassador to Israel

The Truth About That Famine Report by Seth Mandel in Commentary

  • USAID, in reviewing the report, noted that FEWS’s numbers were wildly inflated and demonstrably false, rendering the conclusions unreliable. USAID directed FEWS to fix the errors and rerun the numbers using the correct information, with help from the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, who had access to the most updated on-the-ground information. FEWS refused and released the flawed report anyway. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage its credibility, USAID asked FEWS to retract the false report.
  • Most media outlets portrayed the incident as a case of political interference.
  • You have to make it to paragraph 21 of the Associated Press’s writeup of the incident to see that the previous 20 paragraphs paint a false picture:
    • “USAID in its statement to AP said it had reviewed the report before it became public, and noted ‘discrepancies’ in population estimates and some other data. The U.S. agency had asked the famine warning group to address those uncertainties and be clear in its final report to reflect how those uncertainties affected its predictions of famine, it said.
  • So what happened here is that a bunch of FEWS researchers deliberately misled the public, and the result was so skewed that a U.S. agency led by Samantha Power—a longtime vocal critic of Israel inside and outside the U.S. government—couldn’t abide its publication.
  • Part of the problem with the report was that it put the population of the area in question at 65,000-75,000. Lew provided the actual population data: 7,000-15,000.
  • So there are two potential explanations for what happened: Either FEWS accidentally used outdated information because it couldn’t keep up with the movement of the population in a war zone and then refused to correct it because they preferred their original conclusions, or FEWS deliberately used numbers from before the population shift so it could falsely accuse Israel of something that wasn’t happening.
  • FEWS would not be the first, nor will it be the last, such humanitarian agency to detonate science and truth in the name of anti-Israel activist politics. That is, in fact, becoming the norm. But unlike, say, UNRWA or the Red Cross in Gaza, FEWS has not been coopted by Hamas. Sadly, it didn’t have to be—it volunteered itself as a sacrifice to Hamas’s cause. And that’s even worse.
  • Link: The Truth About That Famine Report

Shelf censorship: How US publishing boycotts Israel and its supporters by Liel Leibovitz in Israel Hayom

  • To build on this momentum, his publisher, Wicked Son, sought to place an advertisement in “Shelf Awareness,” an influential industry newsletter reaching 600,000 readers, primarily bookstore owners and managers. Initially, the publication’s advertising representative agreed to run the ad within days.
  • …the representative soon contacted Lévy’s publisher to announce the advertisement’s rejection and promise an immediate refund. The reason? The ad would cause “unwanted trouble” for their customers.
  • When Melanie Notkin, representing the publisher, pressed for clarification, she recorded a conversation that merits careful attention for its surreal quality: the mere presence of “Israel” in a pro-Israel book’s title would provoke anti-Israel elements within publishing, making the ad untenable
  • A sampling of incidents from just the past year demonstrates how American publishing – an industry that achieved its zenith in the 1950s and 60s under significant Jewish leadership – has devolved into an openly antisemitic environment that enables persecution of Jews without pretense.
  • Consider Elisa Albert, a progressive feminist author. In September, she welcomed an invitation from New York State’s prestigious literary festival to moderate a panel on adolescent girls…her that fellow panelists – acclaimed authors Aisha Abdel Gawad and Lisa Ko – had withdrawn, refusing to share a platform with a “Zionist.”
  • the industry now maintains blacklists of those deemed unemployable: Kirchick uncovered a list of over 200 editors, writers, and industry professionals suspected of excessive Jewish pride, complete with color coding to denote varying degrees of Zionism and support for Israel.
  • This hostile atmosphere peaked at the National Book Award ceremony, the industry’s Oscar equivalent honoring each year’s most distinguished authors.
  • Award recipients, one after another, mounted the stage to speak not about their work or any other global injustice, but about Israel. At least two winners claimed from the podium that genocide was occurring in Gaza. “I hope each of us can love ourselves enough,” declared another winner, “to rise up and ensure the genocide stops.” The hostages, needless to say, went unmentioned, as did Oct. 7 victims.
  • This same animosity infected PEN America, perhaps the country’s largest and most influential writers’ organization. This February, over 1,500 organization members signed a letter demanding immediate condemnation of Israel and calling on the organization to “wake from its passive, lukewarm, fence-sitting, self-satisfied and mediocre approach and take concrete steps against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
  • Again, one might expect a serious organization to state unequivocally that anyone truly committed to literature cannot engage in one-sided propaganda, especially when that side represents a murderous terrorist organization. One might expect champions of free expression to rise against those who persecute others for their identity or beliefs. One might expect a forceful statement that boycotts fundamentally contradict art’s universal spirit, which should evoke common human emotions and bridge all divides. But PEN America did none of this. They didn’t even defend themselves by citing their numerous anti-Israel statements. Instead, the organization capitulated to pressure and issued a sharp statement calling for immediate ceasefire.
  • Even this proved insufficient: more than half the organization’s writer and editor members announced they would refuse nomination for PEN America’s official awards, the organization’s annual crown jewel. “Writers with conscience,” several departing members wrote in an official statement, “don’t debate facts. There is truth and there is fiction, and the truth is that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
  • The upheaval achieved its goal: for the first time in almost three decades, the organization announced cancellation of its main festival due to protests.
  • “Do we stay and fight to reclaim positions earned honestly through hard work, or do we leave and establish our own parallel institutions, as we did in the first decades of modern Jewish existence in America? I won’t presume to judge either way, but I can tell you what I did – which was to leave quickly and establish my own publishing house, which is thriving. So now, as someone once said, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.”
  • Link: Shelf censorship: How US publishing boycotts Israel and its supporters

Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, and the Times of Israel