Situational Update

• IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari posts: I went to the underground tunnel in Gaza where Hamas executed six Israeli hostages.
  • Watch the video here on X, and here on YouTube
• The Times of Israel writes: The tunnel was seen littered with bottles of urine, women’s clothes, and large blood stains on the ground, where the hostages were murdered. Additional details reported about the conditions which the hostages were kept in:
  • They had barely enough food to sustain themselves
  • There were no air vents making it extremely difficult for them to breathe
  • They had no access to showers or toilets
  • All six were held in a small and narrow tunnel, barely two-people wide and too low for them to stand fully upright
  • There were no toilets or showers in the tunnel
  • The hostages washed with water from the bottles they drank from
• [BREAKING TODAY] Bloomberg reports: Israel proposed giving Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza in exchange for the group freeing the hostages it holds and giving up control of the strip, a senior official said, even as doubts deepen about the two sides’ ability to reach any cease-fire accord. “I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, whoever wants to join him,” Israel hostage envoy Gal Hirsch said in an interview Tuesday in the Bloomberg News Washington bureau. “We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.” Hirsch said he put the offer of safe passage on the table a day and a half ago and declined to characterize the response so far. He reiterated that Israel would also be willing to release prisoners it holds as part of any deal.
• Israeli media outlet YNet reports: Yahya Sinwar resurfaced with a rare communication while Israel conducts an extensive manhunt in Gaza for the man responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre; Sinwar congratulated Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on winning the ‘renewed trust’ of his people in the election, referred to Israel’s ‘genocide’

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,667 Israelis dead including 706 IDF soldiers (341 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: +3 since Sunday)
  • On Sunday, Marc Schulman writes that a Jordanian truck driver arrived at the truck inspection checkpoint, exited his vehicle, and shot three crossing employees. Among other things, this checkpoint serves as a crucial conduit for aid to Gaza. Three Israeli were killed instantly. Until now, the Jordanian border has been relatively quiet. The victims were Yohanan Shchori (61), a father of six from Ma’ale Efraim; Yuri Birnbaum (65), from Na’ama; and Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer (57), from Ariel.

    

    • StandWithUs posts: Adrian’s son, Sebastian (28), survived the Hamas terrorist massacre at the Nova Festival in southern Israel. He was a friend of Almog Sarusi, who was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza and whose body was later recovered in an IDF mission. Today, his father Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer (57) a forklift operator at the Allenby Crossing between Jordan and Israel, was murdered in a terrorist attack when a Jordanian terrorist began open firing.
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,271 (no since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 427 (no change since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,431 (+6 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 658 (no change since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 41,020 (+159 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 94,925 (+527 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
  • We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Hostages (no change since Sunday)

• There are currently 97 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
• On October 7^th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
• During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
• 146 hostages in total have been released or rescued
  • The bodies of 37 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 101 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
  • 31 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
  • Thus, at most, 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] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: One Year Since October 7th – with Douglas Murray

• Since October 7th, on this podcast we have tried to present Israel’s dilemmas and challenges as Israel responded to a genocidal attack from Gaza and what is now a multi-front war. We have tried to do this by talking to Israelis – Israeli journalists, political figures, historians and other thought leaders, and different people from Israel’s civil society. We have tried to provide historical context and perspectives from various actors in the U.S.-Israel relationship from both sides of that relationship. We did not think we would still be recording these episodes – with this focus – for one year. And yet, here we are — approaching the one-year anniversary of October 7, which will be regarded as one of the darkest days in Jewish history (and one of the darkest days in the history of Western Civilization). Most of our episodes have been shaped by weekly and daily news developments. But as we approach the one-year anniversary, we wanted to take a step back, and spend extended time with a few of our previous guests and thought leaders who are not our go-to analysts. We asked each one of them to take a longer horizon perspective, to look back at this past year and the year ahead.
• Link: One Year Since October 7th

Rocket Alerts

• Since Sunday, Hezbollah has caused 117 rocket alerts

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

What We Are Reading

How Israel learned to fight Hamas deep underground by Jake Wallis Simons in The Telegraph

• Initially bamboozled by an elusive enemy moving like ghosts, Israeli forces came to realise the tunnels were Hamas’s centre of gravity.
• A new doctrine was developed to deal with them. This involved co-ordinating air support, special forces, regular infantry, armour and naval assets on the surface and in the tunnels.
• Before the new tactics were developed, the approach was simple. A “technological blanket” was placed over Gaza, allowing commanders in the field to call in an air strike on any position within three minutes.
• Nothing is sacred in Gaza. According to IDF commanders, there is “not one mosque, school or hospital that does not contain a Hamas shaft”, with openings even discovered inside graves.
• The tunnels mostly rely on solar power, but energy is also allegedly syphoned out of schools, mosques, municipal buildings and United Nations facilities above ground (a Hamas intelligence centre was allegedly discovered beneath an UNRWA headquarters in February, its power cables threaded into the building).
• Compared to the volume of studies into combat on the surface, in the air, at sea and in space, there is very little research on underground warfare. One model was the campaign conducted against the Americans in tunnels on the island of Iwo Jima by the Japanese during the Second World War.
• Not expecting the IDF to enter the tunnels, Hamas had permitted no Palestinian civilians to shelter there. This allowed the soldiers to enter the labyrinth and shoot on sight, while watching out for Israeli hostages.
• One aspect of the labyrinth that took the IDF by surprise was the location of the various underground headquarters. They had expected them to be deeply buried, but figures like Rafa’a Salameh, the Khan Younis commander who played a key role in planning October 7 and was killed in an air strike in July, used offices buried just 50-65 feet below his family home.
• According to Israeli intelligence, many terrorists have blended into the civilian population in humanitarian zones and plan to return to their tunnels once Israel withdraws. For this reason alone, the network must be destroyed.
• Link: How Israel learned to fight Hamas deep underground: The Telegraph

Sinwar’s secret plan to ‘smuggle hostages to Iran’, by Elon Perry with The Jewish Chronicle

• During a 15-minute press conference for the foreign media in Jerusalem last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu astounded the audience by claiming that Hamas was planning to smuggle hostages out of Gaza using the much-disputed Philadelphi corridor.
• What was the background to this claim? Intelligence sources have told the JC that Sinwar’s plan was to smuggle himself and the remaining Hamas leaders along with Israeli hostages through the Philadelphi corridor to Sinai and from there to Iran.
• Sinwar sees only one way out – to save his own life by abandoning the battlefield and fleeing Gaza. He has not insisted on the withdrawal of IDF forces from the Netzerim crossing, as there is no possibility of smuggling or escaping from Gaza through this crossing.
• In a stormy meeting held in Israel this week to discuss the tragedy of the murder of the six abductees, most members of the Cabinet agreed that a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi corridor, could reinstate Hamas rule, which has proven over the last decade that its focus is not on peace but on the elimination of Israel. Netanyahu informed President Biden of this in a classified internal document back on May 27 and again on August 16, when he responded to Hamas’s demands during the failed negotiations. These turned out to be a waste of time because Sinwar had decided in advance not to agree to any deal or compromise if he did not get full control of the Philadelphi corridor.
• Netanyahu argues that the corridor is the “oxygen pipe of Hamas” that has enabled its strengthening over the years. Egypt, which was supposed to monitor the corridor to prevent smuggling, failed due to the corrupt Egyptian officers who were assigned to guard the corridor. It was discovered that they were in receipt of large sums of bribery money from Hamas.
• Link: Sinwar’s secret plan to ‘smuggle hostages to Iran’: The Jewish Chronicle

To End the War In Gaza, Pressure Hamas’ Sponsors, Not Israel, an Opinion by Arsen Ostrovsky and Asher Fredman in Newsweek

• Time and time again, Israel has offered unprecedented strategic and security concessions to free the remaining hostages and achieve a pause in hostilities, yet the one constant has been Hamas intransigence and rejectionism—and the international community’s lack of moral backbone to hold them accountable.
• The fact of the matter is, Israel has responded positively to every international proposal since November last year, including the most recent framework that President Biden submitted on May 31, as well as “the final bridging proposal: put forward on Aug. 16. In his visit to Israel and the region on Aug. 19, Secretary of State Blinken even confirmed that Netanyahu accepted the bridging proposal and that “it’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”
• It is hardly surprising therefore, that Hamas continues to reject every proposal put before them, when they know they can sit on their laurels and wait for the international community to up the pressure on Israel. By focusing its attention on Israel, the U.S.is empowering Hamas and removing any incentive for the terror group to compromise or reach a deal.
• The U.S. must show Doha and Ankara that there is a costly price to pay for failing to pressure Hamas, which knowingly-executed a U.S. citizen in cold blood. There are numerous steps that the Biden administration and Congress can take. Congress should demand regular reports on any and all entities providing material support to Hamas in Qatar and Turkey (as well as in additional countries such as Malaysia, Algeria, Egypt and Lebanon), in order to examine their eligibility for sanctions. Sanctions should also be placed on Qatar’s Al Jazeera for its terror support.
• Link: To End the War In Gaza, Pressure Hamas’ Sponsors, Not Israel

Urban warfare expert debunks lies about Israel, explains how it shows restraint in Gaza, by Dave Gordon, Special to National Post

• John Spencer is one of the world’s preeminent experts on urban warfare. He’s been inside Gaza three times since December, embedded with the Israel Defense Forces, analyzing the war against Hamas from multiple angles. He interviewed the prime minister, the IDF chief of staff, division commanders, brigade commanders, battalion commanders, “all the way down to soldiers in the field.”
• Throughout his Gaza investigations, he observed clear and consistent following of legal requirements, and what is militarily referred to as “civilian harm mitigation steps.” Among these, were evacuating civilians from certain areas by handing out maps of safe areas, real time population tracking methods and warning shots on roofs.
• “If Israel was trying to conduct civilian harm there, nothing shows that. Not my on-hand research, or the numbers. Very few people have the understanding of everything that’s come before every large-scale military operation, against a defending urban enemy,” Spencer said.
• Each Israeli strike has a “proportionality analysis,” he said, including the threat level and target value, the number of civilians nearby, the ability to act without civilian harm, and potential measures to prevent civilian harm.
• Israel takes all of this seriously, he said. “There has been no actual evidence — unless you believe TikTok videos — of Israel targeting civilians, or any prohibited target.”
• One big problem is that Israel is “horrible at communicating operations to the public,” Spencer said. If he had the ability to change things, he would “assign more resources to winning the battle of narratives on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis.”
• “Under the social media algorithm-driven confirmation bias, if you had negative ideas about Israel, it’s going to feed you that. Then you’re going to infer what you want.”
• Link: Urban warfare expert debunks lies about Israel, explains how it shows restraint in Gaza: National Post

Biden is rewarding Hamas by Meir Ben Shabbat in Israel Hayom

• While Israeli officials continue to debate the cabinet’s decision to oppose withdrawing IDF forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s deputy chief in Gaza, reiterated that this issue is merely one of several demands his group has put forward as conditions for a deal. “We stress that any agreement must encompass a full cessation of hostilities, complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah crossing, unimpeded return of displaced persons to their homes, aid and relief for Palestinians, Gaza’s reconstruction, and a prisoner exchange,” al-Hayya stated.
• This stance isn’t new. What stood out in its presentation was the self-assurance displayed by the senior Hamas official, during a week when he and his associates were expected to be on edge, fearing repercussions for the killing of six hostages.
• Hamas assumes that a final American proposal will inevitably come at Israel’s expense. The primary pressure to reach an agreement is already being applied to Israeli leadership. Hamas faces no consequences for prolonging the process, and as long as it holds hostages, it can always resume negotiations from where they left off.
• …the logical step would be American support for Israel’s justified position. Such backing might even help advance negotiations.
• It’s time for the United States to fully leverage its influence over Hamas. One approach is to push for the removal of the group’s leaders from Qatar. Washington should demand this from Doha. This leadership bears equal responsibility as the Gaza-based leadership for the October 7 terror attack and subsequent war crimes.
• From Israel’s standpoint, its next moves in Gaza should serve three objectives: further degrading Hamas’s remaining military capabilities, undermining its governing capacity, and increasing pressure to facilitate the release of hostages.
• To achieve these goals, Hamas must be entirely stripped of control over supplies entering Gaza. This is the group’s lifeline and the primary means of maintaining its authority.
• Another strategy worth exploring is the one proposed by former National Security Council head, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Giora Eiland: evacuating northern Gaza’s residents, sealing it off as a military zone, and halting supplies to the area.
• Link: Biden is rewarding Hamas

Egypt Has Violated Its Peace Treaty With Israel. It Must Face Consequences by Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the FDD

• Revelations about dozens of Hamas tunnels—some of them quite large—are raising questions about Egypt’s adherence to the agreement that has yielded Cairo billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds. The tunnels, stretching from Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, are believed to have served as military supply lines for the terrorist group. In addition to likely facilitating the import of hard currency to pay Hamas fighters, the tunnels played a role in allowing the group’s leaders and fighters to rotate in and out of the enclave for training and guidance from its patrons.
• Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will.
• Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?
• Link: Egypt Has Violated Its Peace Treaty With Israel. It Must Face Consequences

Antisemitism

BBC ‘breached guidelines 1,500 times’ over Israel-Hamas war by Camilla Turner and Patrick Sawer with The Telegraph

• The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war, a damning report has found.
• The research, led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, also found that Israel was associated with genocide more than 14 times more than Hamas in the corporation’s coverage of the conflict.
• Two leading Jewish groups, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the National Jewish Assembly, added their voices to calls for an independent review, while Lord Austin, a former Labour minister, accused the BBC of “high-handed arrogance” for continually dismissing questions over its impartiality.
• A team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research, which used artificial intelligence to analyse nine million words of BBC output.
• Researchers identified a total of 1,553 breaches of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, which included impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest.
• It also found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.
• The report claims that a number of BBC reporters have shown extreme hostility to Israel, including BBC Arabic contributor Mayssaa Abdul Khalek, who is said to have called for “death to Israel” and defended a journalist who tweeted: “Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned.”

  

• In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, the BBC was widely condemned for failing to call Hamas “terrorists”. In late October, the BBC said it would describe Hamas “where possible” as a “proscribed terrorist organization”.
• However, the report identified Hamas being described as a “proscribed”, “designated” or “recognised” terrorist organization just 409 out of 12,459 times (3.2 per cent) over the four-month period.
• “Such conduct not only breaches the BBC’s Royal Charter but also calls into question its suitability for continued public funding.”
• Link to the full report: The Asserton Report, The Israel-Hamas war and the BBC
• Link: BBC ‘breached guidelines 1,500 times’ over Israel-Hamas war: The Telegraph

When We Started to Lie: I watched as the goal of mainstream journalism shifted from describing reality to ushering readers to the correct political conclusion. By Matti Friedman with The Free Press

• The most important thing I saw during my time as a correspondent in the American press, it seemed to me, was happening among my colleagues. The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on Planet Earth—was being replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that left little room for dissent. The new goal was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion, and if this sounds familiar now, it was both new and surprising to the younger version of myself who was lucky to get a job with the AP’s Jerusalem bureau in 2006.
• By selectively emphasizing some facts and not others, by erasing historical and regional context, and by reversing cause and effect, the story portrayed Israel as a country whose motivations could only be malevolent, and one responsible not only for its own actions but also for provoking the actions of its enemies. The activist-journalists, I found, were backed up by an affiliated world of progressive NGOs and academics who we referred to as experts, creating a thought loop nearly impervious to external information.
• As we’ve seen since October 7, the echo chamber has now expanded to include much of the United Nations apparatus and supranational legal institutions like the International Criminal Court—which can cite reporters citing human rights groups citing reporters, who then report that international courts agree with their opinions, now referred to as “international law.” As a result, it has become nearly impossible for a normal person to understand what’s going on, or identify the many real problems here in Israel or anywhere.
• What’s possible to see now, and which wasn’t apparent to me 10 years ago, is that these instincts shape almost every area of coverage, and that Israel was just an early symptom. This is why the growing derangement about Israel and the plummeting credibility of the press have progressed in tandem over the last decade: These are related phenomena.
• This thinking also explains why the growing fear of violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists, a fact of life throughout much of the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly the West, has to be presented whenever possible as a figment of racist imagination—a fictionalization that requires intense mental efforts and serves as one the key forces warping coverage of global reality in 2024.
• It took me several years at the AP, and then a few more after I left, to grasp the change and put it into words. What was true of the Israel story ten years ago is now true of almost everything. Most journalists have abandoned “What’s going on?” for “Who does this serve?” The result is that huge swaths of the public know what they’re supposed to support, but lack the tools to grasp what’s going on.
• Link: Matti Friedman: When We Started to Lie

Why I Am Resigning as a Brown Trustee by Joseph Edelman in the WSJ

• As a member of the Brown University board of trustees, I disagree with the upcoming divestment vote on Israel… I find it morally reprehensible that holding a divestment vote was even considered, much less that it will be held—especially in the wake of the deadliest assault on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. On Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was invaded and brutally attacked by Palestinian terrorists. Twelve hundred innocent people were slaughtered, some of them raped and burned alive, and more than 250 were abducted to Gaza and held as hostages. Israel, like all nations, has a moral duty to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks, and that is exactly what it has been doing. It is revealing that of all the countries in the world, only Israel is expected to restrain itself because of the civilian lives that will tragically be lost in war.
• Brown’s leadership admits the looming divestment vote is designed to buy good behavior from pro-Hamas activists, many of whom are adherents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which seeks the destruction of the Jewish state through political and economic warfare. BDS is an attempt to normalize antisemitism in mainstream American institutions. More than a dozen U.S. states have passed laws treating BDS as a form of discrimination.
• It’s no coincidence that leading pro-boycott groups have ties to terrorist organizations that seek the annihilation of the Jewish people. In the end, that is the goal of the BDS movement, and I can’t accept the treatment of a hate movement as legitimate and deserving of a hearing. Brown’s policy of appeasement won’t work. It’s a capitulation to the very hatred that led to the Holocaust and the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7.
• Link: Why I Am Resigning as a Brown Trustee

Jewish students deserve protection, by my longtime friend William Daroff in The Jerusalem Post

• Hillel International has documented over 1,800 antisemitic incidents on college campuses since October 7, the highest number ever recorded in a single academic year. This staggering statistic represents countless Jewish students who face harassment, intimidation, and violence simply because of their identity.
• Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, ADL, AJC, Hillel International, the Jewish Federations of North America, and others have issued a set of urgent recommendations designed to protect Jewish students and ensure that our campuses remain places of inclusivity and respect. These guidelines are not just suggestions: They are a blueprint for safeguarding the rights and well-being of Jewish students in this challenging time.
• Administrators need to ensure that campus security is properly prepared and trained to handle any violations and must reaffirm the rejection of efforts such as the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate and delegitimize Israel and its supporters.
• The upcoming anniversary of the October 7 Hamas massacre is a date that all universities must prepare for. We anticipate that this extraordinarily tragic day could be utilized as a flashpoint for protests and potentially disruptive activities on campuses across the country. We already know that on many campuses anti-Israel student groups have begun preparations for such activity. It is imperative that universities ensure that any such activities do not interfere with the operations of the campus or the rights of Jewish students. Proactive planning and communication will be key to mitigating potential conflicts and ensuring that the day does not devolve into chaos.
• A brave group of Jewish UCLA students took their university to court this summer because of the discrimination and harassment they faced on campus during last year’s anti-Israel encampments. The appalled district court judge found that “in the year 2024, in the United States of America… Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating: Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.
• Following the ruling, the president of the University of California system directed its 10 campuses to enforce a new ban on encampments and face masks during protests. Many more universities that last academic year failed to protect Jewish students, should look at their own actions with the same incredulity and then repent, by adopting and enforcing similar bans. As we move into this new academic year, we must not allow the past year’s unacceptable surge in antisemitism to be repeated.
• Link: Jewish students deserve protection: The Jerusalem Post

The Chaos Continues at Columbia by Emma Green in The New Yorker

• Mid-morning on the first day of classes at Columbia University, the grounds department got the call. “Alma Mater,” the famous sculpture of a woman wreathed in laurel that sits in front of Lowe Library, had been splattered with red paint, presumably by a protester who objects to the university’s refusal to divest from Israel. The paint dripped down “Alma Mater” ’s forehead to the tip of her nose, onto the marble platform upon which she rests—which, as one grounds worker noted, is hard to clean. “We did the best we can on the floor,” he told me. “We used hot water with a power wash.” Students stood around watching as they worked. “It made me feel unsafe,” the grounds worker said. He was worried that they’d think, “ ‘These guys are cleaning something that we did’ ”—and that the workers would be blamed for erasing their act of dissent
• New school year, same problems. Three weeks before classes started, Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, resigned her post and left academia altogether. On her way out, she visited the well-travelled stations of doomed university presidents: testifying before Congress, insisting that Columbia protects students from antisemitism; calling the cops on protesters who refused to vacate their tent encampment on the lawn in the heart of campus; facing a vote of no confidence from a group of faculty, who accused her of an “unprecedented assault on students’ rights.” An interim president, Katrina Armstrong, the head of the school’s medical campus, has been installed. But she faces the same intractable question: what can a university do about student protesters who believe, correctly, that violating school rules is the best way to bring attention to their cause?
• While media coverage of campus demonstrations tends to focus on the top ranks of universities, the effects of the protests tend to be most keenly felt by lower-level workers. That’s what happened this spring, when a group of about fifty protesters barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, one of Columbia’s academic buildings. Four workers—three janitors and a public-safety officer—were inside when the takeover started, and they had to “fight their way out,” according to the president of the Transport Union Workers local, Alex Molina, who also works as an electrician on campus.
• Workers told me that, at times, they’ve felt like students see them as the enemy, perhaps because they conflate uniformed guards with police. In the spring, protesters would often scream that “we’re a part of the problem, we’re a part of the genocide,” one longtime security officer told me. On the first day of classes this week, a group of protesters gathered outside the gates at 116th and Broadway, blocking students from coming onto campus. “We’re the ones getting the brunt of the attitude and the anger and frustration,” the officer said. “Without us, this place doesn’t really run.”
• After Hamilton Hall was occupied this spring, John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, which represents Columbia’s staff, along with tens of thousands of workers for New York City’s subways and buses and commuter trains, made a plan for what to do if something like that were to happen again. “We’re not going to let a bunch of freaking trust-fund babies hold our members against their will at Columbia,” he told me.
• Link: The Chaos Continues at Columbia

I fear that progressivism has become the very thing we fought against in an Opinion by Brianna Wu in The Boston Globe

• I knew something was wrong with the left when feminists I knew personally, people who had fought alongside me for abortion access, were dismissing a video of a terrified young woman, taken prisoner by Hamas, being dragged from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, her pelvic area covered in blood, as “not rape” and “legitimate resistance.”
• I watched people who had worked with me on social media harassment policy cheer as terrorists in paragliders slaughtered civilians at the Supernova festival. And I saw a propaganda machine start to spin up and rebrand the perpetrators of Oct. 7 as the victims of Oct. 7.
• In the past 10 years, I’ve moved into the public policy realm. While my job is to help progressives win elections, I’ve become more and more concerned about the people I’m standing next to.
• There’s a term for the problem with progressivism: the “purity spiral.” Leftists have no mechanism to hit the brakes on bad ideas so they continue drifting leftward. What starts as a good cause, such as looking at police violence targeting Black communities, continues to move further and further to the fringe, where supporters begin to advocate the defunding of all police. Today we are at the terminal stage of the worst ideas.
• The casual antisemitism I’d looked past in progressive spaces became impossible to ignore. I started asking questions in meetings with fellow progressives when they suggested members of Hamas were heroes. “What happens to the 7 million Jews in Israel if Hamas succeeds?” “How does this end in anything but a second Holocaust?” The answers I got inevitably lapsed into a predictable pattern, revisiting a misleading and inaccurate history that reframes terrorists as heroes.
• These same forces are disrupting the Democratic Party in Massachusetts as well. I have Jewish friends who are reluctant to attend their local Democratic town halls, alienated by the causal antisemitism and dismissal of their voices. At some point, if the Democratic Party truly stands for inclusion, we have to acknowledge the bigots sitting beside us.
• Link: I fear that progressivism has become the very thing we fought against

An open letter to Sarah Friedland, the Jewish director who condemned Israel by Ben-Dror Yemini in YNet

• Jewish-American director Sarah Friedland dedicated her victory speech at the Venice Film Festival to protest Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza; It’s too bad she neglects to mention the actual facts as she focuses on being hip and happening
• No, Sarah Friedland, you are not brave. You are part of the herd mentality. It’s fashion. It’s tradition. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You said there, on stage, that: “As a Jewish American artist working in a time-based medium, I must note, I’m accepting this award on the 336th day of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Genocide? All the claims of “genocide” have already been refuted in at least five research articles that examined the data. And who provides the data? Hamas. One of the most murderous organizations to emerge in the current century, one in a long line of jihad organizations, sowing destruction, death and ruin wherever they operate.
• Because instead of fighting radical Islam, which is the main enemy of most Muslims, you and your progressive friends are becoming the propaganda mechanism of Hamas. And no, Israel is not to blame for what happened and is happening in the Gaza Strip. It’s Hamas, which if it could would carry out genocide against anyone it considers an infidel
• Winston Churchill once said: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last.” Just listen, Sarah, to what the leaders of jihad are saying. If you, and any decent person, prefer to ignore what they say, they will come to eat you too.
• Link: An open letter to Sarah Friedland, the Jewish director who condemned Israel

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, and the Times of Israel