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DEBUT ISSUE • MARCH 2024

CHRISTIAN SUPPORTERS MOBILIZE WHILE ISRAEL BATTLES HAMAS WHAT’S THE STORY WITH UNRWA? NINE CURRENT BIG LIES ABOUT ISRAEL, AND WHAT THEY MEAN MY ISRAEL STORY: PASTOR JOHN HAGEE, COACH BRUCE PEARL THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS HELPING YOUR MEDICINE CABINET?

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I n S ide

What’s The Story with UNRWA?

Nine Big Lies being told about Israel… and what they mean

My Israel Story

It isn’t that nobody knew…

Pastor John Hagee Coach Bruce Pearl

“It is not enough anymore to say we love Israel… This nation needs action…in a very practical way.” Juergen Buehler, Executive Director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem

4 About Israel InSight 62 Reading Israel

Escaping the Nova Festival Massacre on Oct. 7

Red Cross seen as AWOL for Israeli hostages in Gaza

Knowing who is native: Indigenous Peoples Embassy opens in Jerusalem

“Friendshoring” medical manufacturing to Abraham Accords countries

56 Israel Business 74 Seeing Israel

61 Biblical Calendar: Adar 75 Israel Marketplace

On the cover: At the November 2023 Rally Against Antisemitism on the National Mall in Washington Israel InSight • March 2024

The Beginning

A time such as this.

This has been a constant refrain at Christian events celebrating Israel — that this is a new day, when the Christian world stands up for Israel and the Jewish people, expressing love and solidarity, because these are special times.

And now, Israel finds itself at war — with a terror organization in Gaza that wants to eliminate Israel, Hezbollah to the north is itching for a fight, anti-Israel rallies all over the world are calling for Israel’s destruction, and the mainstream media are all too happy to paint Israel as the heavy in this fight, having to be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge anything bad that Hamas does — and the good that Israel does.

This is not a time to remain silent.

And with that, we launch Israel InSight, a new magazine for Israel’s Christian friends — and anyone else who would like to be better informed about Israel.

Israel InSight will educate about what is going on in Israel and explain controversial issues. We will highlight the amazing and selfless things that Christians throughout America are doing to promote Israel, ensure its well-being, and sustain the miraculous ingathering of the exiles as we witness Jews from all over the world returning to their Biblical homeland. Through our award-winning experienced news staff, we’ll also provide news and commentary that goes well beyond the often-superficial, and sometimes erroneous, coverage of Israel found in the mainstream media. We also will highlight the deep connections between Israel and the United States, through business, culture, cooperation and joint ventures. We will also highlight American organizations that are doing great work in Israel, amazing things that Israel does around the world, and how one can get involved in a wide range of ways.

We will also have stories about interesting people and places in Israel, ways to support Israel, and how the Jewish and Christian communities can work together.

Israel InSight will recognize and celebrate the support Israel gets from the Christian community, and hopefully will be a bridge between the Jewish and Christian communities, who need and desire to understand each other better. Naturally, we will be heavy on war coverage for the moment — but hopefully, victory will come, the hostages will be home, peace will reign and we can focus more on the lighter things.

It is an important time to be well-informed, so please subscribe today, and tell your friends. Come along on this journey, as a reader, subscriber and supporter. Israel InSight is in sight — and we can’t wait for you to take a look.

Lawrence Brook Publisher/Editor

We thank our many, many friends in the Christian community throughout the region who have been so helpful with their feedback, suggestions and insights as we launch this important publication, and have been patient as we negotiated a Covid-induced delay and other hurdles. All in God’s time.

March 2024 • Israel InSight

PUBLISHER/EDITOR Lawrence M. Brook ASSOCIATE EDITOR Richard Friedman ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ADVERTISING Lee J. Green CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ginger Brook SOCIAL/WEB Eugene Walter Katz CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rivka Epstein, Nathan Klein, Tally Werthan, Bebe Hudson, Belle Freitag, Claire Yates MAIN OFFICE P.O. Box 130052 Birmingham, AL 35213 205/870.7889 TOLL FREE 866/446.5894 israelinsightmagazine@gmail.com israelinsightmagazine.com ADVERTISING Advertising inquiries to 205/870.7889. Media kit, rates available upon request. SUBSCRIPTIONS $24/year Subscribe online, call 205/870.7889 or mail payment to the address above. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission from the publisher. Views expressed in Israel InSight are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. We retain the right to refuse any advertisement.

Eagles Wings plans large mission for 20th anniversary of Prayer for Jerusalem Day Eagles Wings is planning a Watchmen on the Wall Solidarity Tour to Israel this fall, and Bishop Robert Stearns says this is a “pivotal moment” as “our most significant trip yet.” The trip will be a declaration to Israel and the Jewish community that “we stand with you.” It will also commemorate the 20th anniversary of Eagles Wings’ annual global Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, held the first Sunday in October. The tour begins in Tel Aviv with orientation and a visit to Jaffa. There will be a stop at Independence Hall, where Israel’s declaration of independence was announced in 1948, on the way to Jerusalem for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. There will be a visit to Eagles Wings partner Abraham’s Bread, which feeds the poor daily, then the group will visit with the Christian community while touring Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. The next day will be in Jerusalem, at the Western Wall and the Old City, the Jerusalem Market as everyone prepares for the Sabbath, and the Garden Tomb. There will also be visits to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were

found, Masada, the Dead Sea and Ein Gedi Nature Reserve. Returning to Jerusalem, the group will visit the Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, the Palm Sunday walk and the Cardo, along with stops along the Via Dolorosa. Then, the Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem begins, with a Watchmen on the Wall commissioning ceremony. “Together with believers from the nations we will stand within Zion’s gates and pray for the peace of Jerusalem as Watchmen on the Wall,” Stearns said. After some Awake Jerusalem events, there will be a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, where the group will hear from a Holocaust survivor. The group will then head to Caesarea, the Carmelite monastery Muchraka, where Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal, and a baptism service in the Jordan River. Staying in the Galilee, the group will visit Nazareth and Magdala, Capernaum and the Mount of Beatitudes, leading to a boat ride on the Galilee. Reservations are already being accepted, with early bird pricing through April 1.

When Irish Hoops aren’t smiling In the EuroBasket 2025 women’s basketball qualifiers, Ireland tried to figure out a way to not have to play Israel, amidst calls in Ireland for a boycott. Ireland refused to host the Israeli team, so Latvia stepped in and the match was held in Latvia on Feb. 8. According to Basketball Ireland CEO John Feehan, Fiba Europe had told Ireland that they would face a hefty fine and be expelled from the 2025 competition if they did not play Israel. That would remove Ireland from international competition for five years and “we’d be effectively getting rid of a generation of players.”

Amidst that, a couple days before the match, Israeli player Dor Saar said it was motivation for Israel, as Ireland “are quite antisemitic.” Ireland is seen as one of the most hostile European nations toward Israel. Basketball Ireland took umbrage at Saar’s comments, using that as the reason they would not engage in prematch protocols with Israel, including formal handshakes, exchange of gifts and lining up for the national anthems at center court. Most international media coverage

ICYMI

In Case You Missed It Viewers of the Super Bowl on the Paramount streaming platform — but not the main CBS broadcast — saw a commercial calling attention to Israelis still held captive by Hamas in Gaza, sponsored by the Israeli government. That night, over 10,000 people filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, according to Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee, who cited foreign influence over American media and said the ad “undermines the integrity of broadcast standards.” On Jan. 26, Imam Fadi Kablawi spoke at Masjid As-Sunna An-Nabawiyyah in North Miami, Fla., saying “Hamas is going to finish Israel, and they are going to start going to Europe and America. It is going to take a long time, digging a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean, dude.” He also said Zionists were responsible for assassinations and bombings all over the world, including Sept. 11.

After Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva compared Israel’s war against Hamas to the Holocaust, Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz summoned the Brazilian ambassador to an unusual public reprimand. Held at Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Katz, the son of Holocaust survivors, declared Lula persona non grata in Israel “until he retracts his Israel InSight • March 2024

Big Issues

The real story behind the headline or the 30 misleading seconds on the evening news…

What is the story with UNRWA?

United Nations agency exists to help Palestinians continue a war to eradicate Israel By Jonathan Tobin

Sadly, so is most of the discussion about holding UNRWA accountable.

(JNS) — Let’s not get caught up in the details of the controversy that made headlines this past weekend about An unaccountable U.N. agency the fact that 12 employees of UNRWA — the U.N. refugee Much to the dismay of Israel-haters like Rep. Alexandria agency dedicated to assisting the Palestinians — took part Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the Biden administration anin the Hamas pogroms in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The nounced that it was suspending funding of UNRWA. But New York Times broke the story, and many of the governments that are the principal funders of UNRWA, including when the details are drilled down, it turns out that the United States is continuing to pay the money it already pledged the United States, which is the largest donor giving $422 but will only put a pause on sending cash for new projects. million to it in 2023, have since expressed various levels of The same is true for Germany and Canada, as well as some concern or outrage. other donor nations. The government of the Netherlands No one who knows anything about UNRWA can pretend has suspended all funding but other countries, like Ireland, to be surprised by what happened. The noSpain and Turkey, are refusing to take any tion put forward by some of its apologists actions to hold UNRWA accountable. The United Nations that the people who took part in the terror If the past is any indication of the future, attacks are just a tiny minority of its 13,000 resettles millions of even those who have spoken out about this, employees is not to be taken seriously. As refugees around the like the United States, will eventually, even The Wall Street Journal subsequently reworld — except for if quietly, resume full funding of UNRWA. ported, it is estimated that approximately the Palestinians, who As part of his policies that attempted to 10 percent of UNRWA employees are either hold Palestinians and their enablers acactive members or have ties to Hamas or are kept as perpetual countable for their support for terrorism Palestinian Islamic Jihad. refugees and rejection of peace, former President For years, it has been well known that Donald Trump cut all ties with and funding UNRWA facilities, including schools and for UNRWA in 2018. Unfortunately, among the first actions other places that are supposed to be devoted to charitable when Joe Biden took office in 2021, he reversed that move purposes, have been used by Hamas to store weapons or and restored funding. Biden and his foreign-policy team are otherwise assist terrorists. Its education programs are as steadfast supporters of the United Nations and everything it bad as those run by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority does, regardless of the fact that it has long been a cesspool when it comes to indoctrinating young Palestinians in of antisemitism. hatred for Israel and the Jews. UNRWA’s creation in 1949, Even those administration officials who have been the coupled with its actions and the infrastructure it has built most outspoken in reaffirming Israel’s right to self-defense up since then, is dedicated to perpetuating the conflict with — like John Kirby, the communications director for the Israel. Forget philanthropy or — as every other refugee agency in the world focuses on — resettling those displaced National Security Council, who has also denounced Hamas by war in some safe place where they can make a new start and supported the goal of its elimination — also defended UNRWA. According to Kirby, UNRWA does “amazing in life. work” saving lives. Incredibly, he even gave it credit for That said, the notion that anything is shocking about the wanting to investigate the problem. fact that a few of the UNRWA staff were caught taking part The reason for this is that UNRWA has made itself indisin the Oct. 7 attacks, including direct participation in kidpensable to the business of caring for Palestinians in Gaza. napping and mass murder, is a joke.

March 2024 • Israel InSight

It is, as it has been for the last 75 years, the primary conduit of assistance to a population that has been made dependent on the international community for all services, including employment. As such, it can and does present itself to the world as the embodiment of philanthropy, providing sustenance to an enormous number of people in need. That is why any effort to investigate its activities and penalize it for its close ties to terrorists is always derailed by invoking its good works and the notion that if it were shut down, millions would starve. So, even when UNRWA is caught red-handed storing rockets to be fired at Israel or even having its staff actively taking part in the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the odds that Photo by Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock its parent organization or the various nations that A Palestinian man outside the United Nations Relief and Works have spent billions of their citizens’ taxpayer dollars Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Gaza on funding it will do anything other than slap it on City protests cuts to aid on June 20, 2023. the wrist are negligible. imprisoned and forgotten. As with the rest of his policies that ignored the advice of the foreign-policy establishment and the “experts,” Trump Nor was Europe the only region where there was a refhad it right on UNRWA. The only theoretical hope for ugee crisis. When Britain abandoned its rule of India, the there to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians must subcontinent was partitioned into two separate nations start with the abolition of institutions that not only provide — largely, Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The drawing assistance and employment to terrorists but have as their of those lines on the map created 14 million people who purpose the perpetuation of a futile quest to destroy the found themselves on the wrong side of the new borders and one Jewish state on the planet. UNRWA must not merely be became refugees. More than 1 million people died in the defunded. It must be abolished. ethnic and religious violence there as massive populations scrambled to find new homes.

A world full of refugees

The very fact of its existence is a function of the way the international community has acted to prevent a resolution of the conflict. When UNRWA was created by the United Nations in 1949, the plight of refugees was among the world’s most pressing problems. Up to 60 million people were displaced in Europe during and immediately after the Second World War. That included those Jews who had survived the Holocaust seeking to go to Israel or the West, as well as millions of others who had been uprooted for one reason or another. Among them were ethnic Germans who were thrown out of their homes throughout Eastern Europe, including traditionally German regions like East Prussia. As Europe adjusted to new borders largely imposed by the demands of the Soviet Union, many people were forcibly evicted and told to move to places where their ethnicity would be welcomed. Any who resisted were not supported by the international community. They were violently repressed,

Arab and Jewish refugees

Coming around the same time as the catastrophe caused by the partition of India was the refugee problem caused by Britain’s leaving another of its former possessions: the Mandate for Palestine. The United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states: one for the Jews and one for the Arabs with Jerusalem being an international enclave. While the Jews accepted the partition scheme, the Arabs did not. The leaders of the Palestinian Arabs — like the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini — declared war on the Jews. Neighboring Arab nations supported them and invaded the newborn State of Israel on its first day of existence in May 1948. The Arab war to destroy Israel not only failed; the fighting led hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the former Mandate to flee. A small minority were forced out by Israelis during bitter fighting in some areas. But most of them left out of fear of what would happen to them if they fell under the rule of Jews (and with the expectation that they would take Israel InSight • March 2020

over all the land once the Jews were “thrown into the sea”). That was mostly the product of projection since in many instances Jews captured by their foes were massacred. But it was also the result of propaganda from the Arab side in the fighting in which they sought to demonize their enemies and strengthen the will of the Palestinian Arabs to fight. During the same period as approximately 700,000 Arabs became refugees, some 800,000 Jews either fled or were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Muslim world where they had lived for centuries. The very different disposition of those two populations says all anyone needs to know about the next 75 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Jewish refugees were resettled in a massive philanthropic project funded by Jews around the world. Most of those refugees went to Israel, where they faced hardships in what was then a very poor and embattled country. Today, their descendants make up about half the Jewish population and have contributed enormously to its defense and flourishing as a modern state. Others found new homes in the United States and other parts of the world. Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives. Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it. And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA. It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world. The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps. By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are

March 2024 • Israel InSight

Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

Israelis protest against UNRWA at their offices in Jerusalem on Feb. 5, 2024.

the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees. Of all the tens of millions of refugees of the 1940s, the only ones whose descendants have not been resettled are the Palestinians. A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective — the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews — will be achieved. Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think they are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war. So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

It isn’t that nobody knew

David Bedein has been sounding the alarm over UNRWA for decades By Judy Lash Balint

(JNS) — Palestinian children in United Nations Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says. “In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.” The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the same location where Palestinian terrorists breached the southern border and invaded Israel Photo courtesy Center for Near East Policy Research on Oct. 7. But the Center for Near East A school play performed at the UNRWA Nuseirat School in Gaza, in which Policy Research released the prescient students hold an Israeli hostage at gunpoint, April 2016. footage in 2018, some five years before countries, including the United States, suspended funding great-grandparents left more than 75 years ago. In fact, to UNRWA following allegations that the agency’s employ- most of those homes no longer exist. ees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. The report added that UNRWA perpetuates Palestinian The CNEPR, which has since been renamed the Nahum dependency without seeking realistic solutions to the plight Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, has tried for of refugees, including resettlement. In language that could decades to raise the alarm about hatred and incitement fes- describe present-day conditions in Gaza, the report warned: tering in the 59 UNRWA refugee camps scattered through- “Refugees, encouraged by UNRWA to see themselves as out Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Those entitled to a return that will never happen, believe they are warnings, its director told JNS, have fallen on deaf Israeli being cheated. As a result, they are filled with frustration governmental ears. and rage, and turn to radicalism.”

Refugee limbo

“They’re told that it was Israel who inflicted those indignities,” David Bedein, director of the present-day center, More than 20 years ago, the center issued a 37-page told JNS. “They didn’t know that it was the United Nations scholarly report about UNRWA. Despite its findings about keeping them in refugee camps.” UNRWA that could have directed policy, Israeli policymakAll of the center’s research shows that Palestinians are ers and leaders in other Western countries that fund UNR“indoctrinated with the idea that Israel stuck them in those WA largely ignored those and subsequent materials that the camps, ” Bedein added. Jerusalem-based center issued. Last month, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Multiple spokespeople for the Israeli government did not that 12 UNRWA employees were involved directly in the respond to a JNS query about whether Israeli policymakers Oct. 7 attacks, and some 10 percent of the agency’s staff has were aware of the findings in the center’s report. ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (The center reThe 2003 report described how UNRWA is predicated port noted in 2003 that “most” of the 23,000 UNRWA emupon the belief that Palestinians have a “right of return,” so ployees are refugees and “they too are often associated with the agency keeps them in “temporary” limbo until, it says, terrorist groups such as Hamas” and that refugee camps are they can return to the homes and villages in Israel that their sites for bomb manufacture, recruitment and dispatching Israel InSight • March 2020

After Oct. 7, many Christian groups took action By Liza Ashley

(JNS) — In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and the subsequent onslaught of antisemitism, Christians have an opportunity to write a new chapter in their history; one in which they show up as allies and friends of the Jews. Thousands of Christians around the world are doing just that. The long and painful history of Jewish-Christian relations has seen few heroes and many moral failures. Both Protestantism and Catholicism, at different moments in their history, adopted antisemitism as doctrine. One famous example was Pope Paul IV’s On Oct. 26, the Philos Action League distributed white roses to Cum Nimis Absurdum, in which he called for Jews Jewish institutions across the country as a symbol of solidarity to live in ghettos and wear identifiable garments so from the Christian community. This was received at Chabad they could be spotted from afar — ideas Hitler would at Tulane University. Wendell Shelby-Wallace of Philos said later coopt. the Tulane deliveries “were most special, considering what happened just moments before we arrived,” as three Jewish Around the same time, Martin Luther published students were injured by anti-Israel demonstrators just off “On the Jews and Their Lies,” in which he instructed campus. all Christians: “First, to set fire to [the Jews’] synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever safety on other campuses. Father Dave Pivonka, president will not burn, so that no man will never again see a stone or of the university, explained: “Our radical fidelity to Christ cinder of them.” and the Catholic faith demands of us fraternal charity toIn our own day, the nausea-inducing videos pouring out wards our Jewish brothers and sisters, as it does towards all of London, New York City, Sydney, Los Angeles and all over people.” the world serve as a wake-up call for anyone who naively At the same time, several Christian-led advocacy cambelieved “never again” meant never again. Since Oct. 7, an- paigns have worked to combat the shifting narrative and retisemitism has increased as much as 1,200 percent. center the massacre of over 1,200 Jews by Hamas. In Times Nonetheless, Christians are rising to the horrible occasion. Square, Christians United for Israel launched a national campaign with their “Don’t Look Away” ad, imploring peoIn recent weeks, Jewish university students have faced unthinkable threats and hostility. One of the most poignant ple not to forget the Oct. 7 atrocities. Since then, CUFI has continued to post educational content, call for prayers and examples came from Cooper Union College in New York encourage people to support Israel and the Jewish people in City, where several Jewish students were forced to hide in the face of antisemitism. the library while pro-Hamas “protestors” pounded on the locked door. At Cornell University, which has more Jewish On Oct. 26, the Philos Action League — a global network students than any other Ivy League school, a barrage of of Christians committed to combatting antisemitism — orcredible threats of murder, rape and other forms of violence ganized a day of solidarity. Hundreds of Christians showed against Jewish students led the police to lock down the uni- up in almost 200 cities around the world to bring a card and versity’s kosher dining hall. white roses — a nod to the Nazi-era White Rose resistance movement — to their local Jewish community. While the responses from these universities and many others have been lackluster at best, Franciscan University of The same week, Franciscan University and the Philos Steubenville announced the creation of an expedited trans- Project held a conference called “Nostra Aetate and the fer system for Jewish students fearing for their lives and Future of Catholic-Jewish Relations at a Time of Rising

March 2024 • Israel InSight

Mollie Adams and Springhill Avenue Temple Rabbi Edward Boraz lead Hatikvah at the end of Mobile Stands with Israel, coordinated by the Mobile Area Jewish Federation and local Christian leaders, and held on Nov. 2 at Cottage Hill Baptist Church. Among the speakers was new Pensacola Israeli emissary Mia Slonimski, and during the memorial prayer led by Ahavas Chesed Rabbi Steve Silberman, there was the reading of a lengthy list of names of people she knew who were murdered on Oct. 7.

Antisemitism.” The conference, originally scheduled to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, providentially aligned with the current crisis. The event featured many Catholic and Jewish intellectuals, and culminated in the “Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism,” the most robust Catholic theological document condemning antisemitism to date. It has so far been signed by more than 350 leading Catholic voices. In the quiet corners of their churches, thousands of congregations and worship movements big and small have voiced their support for Israel and stood in solidarity, generosity and prayer with their Jewish neighbors. The Evangelical worship movement Upperoom announced a “Night of Hope for Israel” in Dallas, Texas. Jentezen Franklin, New York Times bestselling author and lead pastor of the Free Chapel church, shared with his one million followers his congregation’s campaign to raise money to build an Eshkol Resilience Center in the south of Israel to help families affected by the massacre. The Friday following the attacks, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church in Georgia partnered with a local Jewish communi-

ty for a night of prayer for Israel. In Arizona, Christ Church of the Valley opened its services with a call for moral clarity. “I want to make one thing clear: Hamas is an evil terrorist organization that attacked Israel… They raped women. They burned babies,” lead pastor Ashley Wooldridge said. “And my concern as a pastor, when I look at the situation, is we can’t defend against evil if we don’t define evil, and it breaks my heart that there are so many people… even here in the United States, that will not acknowledge the evil that has happened.” Hundreds more churches, from California to New York and everywhere in between, showed similar solidarity. The darkness shows no sign of waning, but Christians everywhere have brought a ray of light by demonstrating their commitment to changing the script of Christian-Jewish relations. Perhaps, years from now, when history asks, “Where were the Christians?” we’ll finally be able to answer: “Right in the thick of it.” Liza Ashley is associate director of the Charles Malik Institute and regularly writes on topics relating to culture, religion and foreign policy. Israel InSight • March 2024

The

9 Big Lies against Israel

and what they really mean

By Gil Troy

In 1917, California’s isolationist senator Hiram W. Johnson captured the cynicism of politics — especially during wartime. “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” he said, echoing earlier sages, as America embarked on a “war to end all wars,” which we now call World War I. While fabricating here and there may be every general’s pastime, Palestinian terrorists and their enablers have taken lying to a whole other level. Yet, despite building so much of their case on a foundation of falsehoods, they keep conning the world. Everyone “knows” that Israel occupies Gaza — despite Israel disengaging from it in 2005; that “From the River to the Sea” envisions a democratic Palestine — when it envisions an exterminated Israel; and, most outrageously, that hundreds of innocent Israelis, young and old alike, deserved to be massacred, maimed, raped and terrorized — while others deny all the evidence that the atrocities happened. This primer picks nine of the most popular New Big Lies Palestinians and their enablers propagate. Let’s leave the number 10 for more godly commandments, while stressing that despite being debunked repeatedly, these lies have countless lives.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”

lahs’ death cries seriously. It’s actually bigoted not to take them at their word, to decide “they can’t really mean that.” “From the River to the Sea” leaves no rooms for Jews — or the Jewish state.

“This is what decolonization looks like”

The world is a tough place. Over the centuries, powerful countries have colonized other places, sending explorers, then groups of settlers, away from the mother country to Give the Palestinians credit here: At least they’re honest. establish settlements, usually in order to extract resources. Well, some Palestinians prevaricate. They claim the slogan Inevitably, especially as national self-determination became imagines a secular democratic state with Jews and Arabs a virtue, colonization led to decolonization. living together. In fact, the phrase’s history is exclusionary On one level, decolonization is simply a historical proand exterminationist. cess, whereby people in the colonies rebel, or the empire In 1964, three years before the Six-Day War, the slogan collapses. Over the decades, scholars defined decolonizawas popularized by the Palestinian activists and terrorists tion as a state of mind, too. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), born who founded the Palestine Liberation Organization. Their in Martinique, helped make decolonization trendy among war aims were not to liberate the “occupied territories,” some of the most settled and privileged people in the which Israel only secured three years later. They wanted — world’s richest and most expensive universities. and still do — to liberate the world from Israel itself. SimiAs a psychiatrist, Fanon observed that colonized people larly, since Hamas emerged in the late 1980s, the slogan has often internalized a sense of inferiority. As a revolutionary, been a Hamas and Islamic Jihad mainstay. he wanted those colonies to break free — even violently. Oct. 7 offered at least one clear lesson: If your enemy Considering violence cleansing, restoring some balance, calls for your destruction — your enemy is calling for your some dignity to the powerless, he called violence “man recdestruction. Jews should take the Palestinian death cries reating himself.” seriously, and Americans must start taking the Iranian mulFanon built on Marx’s binary, dividing the world between

March 2024 • Israel InSight

the oppressing ruling class and the oppressed proletariat. For Fanon, the forever-guilty oppressor was the colonizer, the forever-innocent oppressed was the decolonizer. For the colonized, Fanon preached, “there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of strength.” Fanon remains remarkably influential today. Call them woke. Call them postmodern. Call them identitarians. Today’s campus commissars have combined Marx’s seesaw between the oppressor and the oppressed with Fanon’s colonizer-decolonizer dynamic and deification of violence. These people frame the world — and America — as being caught in a zero-sum power struggle. The oppressive colonizers in this Manichean, black-and-white world are always guilty, while the oppressed are forever pure and innocent, no matter what they do. Viewing the world through this distorting prism, Israel is always guilty, the Palestinians forever innocent. As a result, the Oct. 7 barbarian bloodbath was exhilarating, joyous, justified. One influencer even injected the Hamas-romanticizing term “settler babies” into the mix. To see the world this way requires much fanaticism, many simplifications, multiple distortions and, at the end of the day, a very, very bruised soul. But those blinders explain how so many feminists fail to see Hamas’s rape culture and child abuse, how so many liberals fail to acknowledge the despotism, how so many humanists fail to cry out in shame and horror as Palestinian marauders crossed every civilizational red line.

“Israel is practicing apartheid”

The Jews seem to have magical powers. Over the centuries, Jews attracted all kinds of labels: Jews were too rich and too poor, too capitalist and too socialist, too traditional and too modern, too anxious to fit in and too eager to stand out. Today, the Jewish state has similar plastic powers. As trends change, Israel is deemed guilty of the most heinous of national sins. Today Israel is a white-supremacist or, even better, Jewish-supremacist state, and a settler-colonialist enterprise. In the 1990s, Israel was racist, colonialist, and imperialist, as well as guilty of “ethnic cleansing” once the Balkan mess introduced that phrase into the international vocabulary. But since the 1970s, as the international community justifiably turned away in disgust from apartheid South Africa, Israel has been called an apartheid state. Apartheid was a system of racial differentiation — apartness — based on all kinds of racial classifications and perverse beliefs that whites and blacks and colored people were not equal. The Apartheid Wall in Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum lists 148 laws sifting people into different racial

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categories to keep them apart and calibrate who deserved which privileges — and which restrictions. Israel has never passed one law defining people by racial categories. In fact, Israelis and Palestinians are involved in a national conflict, not a race war. Moreover, if Israel’s goal was an apartheid state, it’s done an awful job. Israeli Arabs enjoy equal rights and have served as Supreme Court judges, Knesset members, key members of the last coalition. With about 20 percent of the population, Israeli Arabs are overly represented in Israel’s medical system: About 20 percent of the doctors, as much as 40 percent of the nurses and 43 percent of the pharmacists are Israeli Arabs. Finally, if Israelis hate Arabs so much and see them as inferior, why was there so much excitement about the Abraham Accords, and why are Hamas and Iran trying to subvert a Saudi Arabian deal with Israel? Maybe Israelis don’t hate Arabs — but only pass laws protecting themselves against enemies who seek to destroy them?

Photo by Lev Radin/Shutterstock.

In an anti-Israel “Christmas is Canceled” protest, hundreds marched on Rockefeller plaza and in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 25, 2023.

“Israel is carrying out genocide”

Genocide, literally tribe-killing, is defined as a systematic series of violent acts “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” For decades, Palestinians have been crying “genocide,” claiming Israel seeks to wipe them out. Yet the Palestinian population has at least quintupled since 1967, from just over 1 million to nearly five-and-a-half million people. Zionists are even worse at genocide than they are at apartheid. Pure hatred often involves projection: You hate in others what you hate in yourself, you imagine your enemies would do to you what you would do to them if you had a chance.

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These false cries that Israelis are targeting Palestinians for genocide reflect the sweeping, categorical and thus genocidal tendencies in the Hamas charter, in the Oct. 7 sadism, and in too many twisted corners of the Palestinian national soul.

“Israel is engaged in disproportionate bombing”

When terrorists attack your civilians, then hide behind their civilians, what can a serious military do? Inevitably, some of those human shields will die. Moreover, when you have an air force, and you have a choice between bombing an enemy from the air and sending your troops in door-to-door, what’s the moral call? A leader’s primary moral responsibility is to the led — and a defender’s primary moral responsibility is to defend those unfairly and viciously attacked. In April 2002, Israel chose to send reservists into Jenin to apprehend terrorists instead of bombing from the air, U.S.-style. The result was a Palestinian ambush that killed 23 Israelis. Israel’s supporters may have felt momentarily pure — but 23 families were scarred for life that day. When an enemy attacks and then cowers in mosques and hospitals and kindergartens and schools, those protected places become military objectives. Complaining about a “disproportionate response” from a regular army when fighting terrorists embedded in a city is in essence complaining about any response from the army. When your enemy calls for your annihilation, acts on it, then vows to try again and again, it’s unrealistic to expect no collateral damage. Let’s be clear: The moral onus for every death, every injury, every misfire, remains on Hamas for initiating this conflict. It’s unfair to forget that ultimately war is a clash of

powerful, ugly forces. If you want to win, it’s logical — and moral — for your own side to mobilize as much force as it can, within the bounds of reason of course, while not being immediately criticized, as Israel is.

“Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza since 1967”

In June, 1967, threatened by three Arab armies, Israel fought for its life and more than tripled its size. It won the Golan Heights in the north from Syria. It took over Gaza and the Sinai in the South from Egypt. And it reunited Jerusalem, while securing the biblical lands of Judaea and Samaria from Jordan — which had, ahem, occupied what it called its “West Bank” territories, with no international authorization, since the Jordanian Legion invaded to its west during the 1948-1949 Israel War of Independence. While Israeli governments over the years wavered, using various legal theories including the laws of occupation to define Israel’s relationship to all the territories, calling them “occupied” was triply problematic — especially to historians. First, in defending itself legitimately, Israel seized territory from a hostile neighbor with no legal claim on it. From 1949 to 1967, the Jordanian conquerors ignored the U.N. 1947 Partition Plan to make those areas an independent Arab state. The United Nations never recognized Jordanian sovereignty there, making the territories truly disputed, not occupied. Second, this was no colonial expedition, going to some exotic locale in pith helmets and safari suits. Jews had international rights to the territories and a deep history there, especially the biblical territories of Judaea and Samaria, which were deemed Jewish and open for Jewish settlement under the 1920 (often overlooked) San Remo conference and, subsequently, the British Mandate. Third, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan presciently noted in 1980, calling Israel an “occupier” implicitly compared Israel’s far more benign, legitimate and rooted policies “to the Nazi practice of deporting or murdering vast numbers of persons in Western Poland — as at Auschwitz — and plans for settling the territory with Germans.” This false comparison, Moynihan noted, played “perfectly into the Soviet propaganda position” and the Palestinian projection that “Zionism is present-day fascism.” Today, alas, the occupation preoccupation has become the main launching pad not only for the Bash Israel Firsters, but those hyper-critical Jews who habitually doubt Israel. Moreover, Palestinians use the words “occupation” and “settlements” promiscuously, to delegitimize anything Zionist. Israel is “occupied,” all of Israel. Every Israeli is a

“settler.” The plundered kibbutzim of the southwest Negev are “settlements,” despite lying in pre-1967 Israel, within the “Green Line,” the borders from the 1949 armistice with Jordan, hastily drawn in green pencil. This sweeping Big Lie helped legitimize Hamas’s savagery, deeming every Israeli, every Thai volunteer, every tourist an “occupier” deserving of any violence Hamas and the other Palestinian murderers could mete out.

“Israel’s so-called disengagement from Gaza just turned it into an open-air prison”

In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza, uprooting over 9,000 Israeli citizens living in 25 settlements scattered through Gaza and northern Samaria. Amid the anguish, military strategists lobbied intensely to keep a strip of land for defensive purposes — the Philadelphi corridor. The Duke of Disengagement, Ariel Sharon, resisted. He claimed that if Israel retained even one grain of Gazan sand, critics would claim it was still “occupied.” And he was confident that once Gaza was no longer occupied, Israel could live in peace as the Gazans prospered. If there is one word that best explains Israelis’ current frustration and fury, it is “disengagement.” Eighteen years ago, there were some weapons in Gaza, no tunnels and a limited terrorist infrastructure, because Israel still retained some control. Yet, almost immediately after withdrawing from Gaza, primitive Qassam rockets started bombarding Israel — while critics kept bombarding Israel with the o-word, the occupation charge. The violence against Israel — and the criticism — intensified when Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, killing fellow Palestinians brutally. Under the gun, now facing an implacable foe vowing to exterminate the Jewish state and the Jews — see the Hamas Israel InSight • March 2024

Damaging the symbol of the cross

Red Cross failure regarding Israeli hostages brings disrepute

By Jonathan Feldstein

There are reports circulating in Israel of high-level talks involving negotiations to release more of the hostages brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, and held captive in Gaza since. Reports of the hostages’ conditions from the over 100 who have been released are horrifying. They have suffered physical and psychological torture, starvation, held in underground cages in complete darkness, and suffered violent sexual assaults including gang raping women. Speculation is that many are dead, as some of the hostages’ bodies have been found, littered across Gaza as if

trash rather than human beings. When Israel launched its military operation, it had two goals: to eradicate Hamas and remove it and its leaders from any ability to ever control Gaza and its population or threaten Israel, and to free ALL the hostages. Over the course of a week in November, Israelis were glued to the TV every night as Hamas paraded out more hostages, mostly women and children, under the voyeurism of the world media. But some 130 hostages remain in captivity: Arab and Jewish Israelis, and non-Jews of other nationalities. Still, many of the hostages are women and children, one of

Tenn. Christian group urges churches to halt Red Cross support A Hamas terrorist releases Israeli hostages to the Red Cross in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 28. As this has been the only role the Red Cross has played regarding the hostages, many have derided the organization as little more than an Uber. Credit: Flash90. A Christian organization in Tennessee is calling on all other Christian organizations to withhold financial support to the Red Cross and the United Nations because of how they have ignored their mandates when it comes to Israelis held hostage in Gaza. Laurie Cardoza Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, said on Dec. 19 that “Hamas has infiltrated hospitals and schools where they are holding innocent men, women, and children hostage and the International Red Cross has utterly failed in its mission to secure the release or even inform the Israeli government, as well as the other nations whose citizens are being held captive, of the status of the hostages. I am calling on the international Christian community to hold the United Nations and the International Red Cross accountable by withholding all funding until they do their job.” PJTN is an international Evangelical Christian organization whose mission is to educate Christians about their biblical duty to stand with their Jewish brethren and Israel against the rise of global antisemitism. It was recently reported in The Jerusalem Post that Ahmad Kahlot, the director of a Gazan hospital, admitted to joining Hamas in 2010 at the rank of brigadier general and divulged that Hamas had set up a military operations center in the hospital to attack Israel. Additionally, he admitted that many of the hospital staff

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doubled as members of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, including doctors, nurses and paramedics. Cardoza Moore wondered, “did those paramedics happen to be members of the International Red Cross as well? Was Hamas using International Red Cross ambulances not only during the hostage exchange, but also in the hostage taking? This is ludicrous, and the world, including the UN Secretary General Gutierrez, remains silent.” Additionally, Reuters reported that the International Red Cross chief has stated that the crisis in Gaza is a “moral failure of the international community.” Cardoza Moore said “the last organization which should be judging the war as an ‘utter failure’ is the ICRC. Not only is the ICRC complicit in failing to do its part to end the atrocities against the hostages, but so is the United Nations after Israeli soldiers found UN bullet proof vests stored in a Hamas location in Gaza.” She also noted that the nation assisting with negotiations between Israel and Hamas is Qatar, which is one of the shareholders of the largest textbook publishing company in the world, Pearson/Savvas publishers. PJTN has been tracking antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-America propaganda in those texts, which are used throughout the United States. She added, “it is clearly time for both national and international Christian organizations to publicly condemn these organizations and to withhold all funding from these supposed life saving and peace making bodies for their unmistakable human rights violations.”

Photo by Flash90

A Hamas terrorist releases Israeli hostages to the Red Cross, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Nov. 28, 2023.

whom is a year old, doesn’t even know his name, and who one horrific difference. The Red Cross, which is supposed to has spent a third of his life in captivity. protect the welfare of hostages and others, provided vehicles with clear windows, not remotely attempting to provide While Israelis celebrated the return of all the hostages, we were impacted by the psychological warfare that Hamas any privacy or dignity for the hostages or their well-being. inflicted. Manipulating the hostages until the last moment, It’s as if they were flaunting their prime-time shuttling of hostages to get maximal world attention, and take credit, armed and masked terrorists “escorted” the hostages, inmore than doing their job. structing them to wave for the camera. It’s not the first time that the Red Cross The terrorists handed off the hostages to It’s time for Christians has abandoned its responsibilities, and the representatives of the International Comto re-claim what the Jewish people. During the Holocaust, the mittee of the Red Cross, as if batons in a Red Cross avoided taking more aggressive cross stands for, and it relay race, a scene rehearsed night after action on behalf of the Jews of Europe and night. Israelis who watched the spectacle isn’t abandonment even issued a report whitewashing the Nazi understood that Hamas was trying to apof the Jews concentration camp Terezin. Only decades, pear humanitarian, and that the Red Cross and six million Jews later, the ICRC admitwas inept, playing the role of useful idiot ted its wrongdoing. or complicit partner to Hamas’ evil. They did nothing until that point to see or assess the well-being of all the hostages, Watching the hostages being released put a spotlight not providing needed medical care, or anything else that is on the Red Cross’ inaction. Visiting Israel, the head of the not only their mandate but their responsibility. ICRC balked at taking responsibility for advocating on The ICRC’s mission is to “alleviate human suffering, pro- behalf of the hostages, claiming that Hamas won’t allow it, rather than insisting Hamas comply. In another shocking tect life and health, and uphold human dignity,” especially instance, a Red Cross representative horrifyingly chided during armed conflicts and other emergencies. It has an families of hostages to “think about the Palestinians.” annual budget of $2.4 billion. By their own measure of fulfilling its own mission, they have been nothing but an Looking at its (in)action today, it seems that the Red expensive abject failure relating to the hostages. Cross is spending more time defending its shameful record than it is actually doing its job. Early on I realized that the Red Cross was serving as nothing more than a glorified Uber service. Yet there was Israelis and Jews are typically not familiar with ChristianIsrael InSight • March 2020

ity, yet many have a reflexive negative stereotype based on millennia of persecution. Historically, Jews feared Christians, their churches, and were revolted by the cross and everything it represented as a symbol of hatred to Jews. At a time when Christian support for Israel and the Jewish people is at historically unprecedented highs, this should bother Christians deeply. I have asked Christian friends if it angers or hurts them to see the cross, the penultimate symbol of their faith, being used to promote discrimination against Jews and Israelis. It’s not a time for Christians to turn the other cheek, but to reclaim what their faith stands for as represented by the cross, and affirming that to be a Christian means to love and support the Jewish people. As much as it is shameful that the Red Cross has failed the Jews so abysmally again, another shame of the Red Cross is that the symbol of the cross has been hijacked by the ICRC to portray a negative reflection on Christians. As I saw the hostages being released, I saw terrorists hiding behind their masks, and the ICRC staff hiding behind the purported neutrality of their cross. I realized that while some Israelis will recognize the Red Cross’ symbol, for many it is equivalent to seeing something Christian. With many Israelis not knowing much about Christianity, or having much interaction with Christians, for many the treacherousness of the Red Cross complements the historic reality of Christians persecuting Jews. Even though the Red Cross doesn’t represent Christianity, it is time that Christians take back their cross and what it represents. I realize that some will find it unusual, even off-putting and say it’s not my place as an Orthodox Jew to tell Christians what to think or do. There’s surely something

to that. But because I am concerned about building bridges between Jews and Christians which includes breaking down barriers and how Jews look at and perceive Christians and Christianity, I care. Maybe it comes across with great hubris to say if I were a Christian I’d do so and so. Nevertheless, if I were a Christian, I’d: • Urge Christians to flood the virtual gates of the ICRC, demanding that they do their job and stop their history of antisemitism. • Implore Christians speak out publicly against the Red Cross, and its history of antisemitic bias that continues to play out today. • Tell Christians to stop giving to the Red Cross, anywhere, unless there is a complete and permanent overhaul of their anti-Israel bias everywhere. • Beseech Christians to sign the petition demanding that the Red Cross support the well being and freedom of ALL the hostages. I don’t know if it’s possible or has any legal basis, but if I were a Christian, I would initiate a lawsuit against the Red Cross, barring it from using the word “cross” or the symbol of a cross anywhere because of the slanderous way it reflects on Christians and Christianity. These are big wishes, but Jews and Christians worship a big God. If we come together, these are little things we can achieve. And if not, I am sure that $2.4 billion can be used better by defunding the whole organization. May all the hostages be released soon. Jonathan Feldstein is president of the Genesis 123 Foundation in Israel.

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Built in Mississippi, sailing for Israel Navy receives landing craft constructed in Pascagoula

On Aug. 8, the Israeli Navy received the first of two landAccording to the Israel Defense Forces, the team of the ing crafts built at Bollinger Shipyards in Pascagoula. landing craft consists of dozens of naval combat soldiers, with a quarter of them being female. The commanding offiThe ceremony dedicating the INS Nachshon was led by cer has the rank of Lieutenant Commander. the Commanding Officer of Haifa Naval Base, Rear Adm. Tal Politis, and senior officials in the procureThe IDF stated that the crafts “will act as ment delegation of the Ministry of Defense. a central pillar in adapting the Israeli Navy to the modern and multi-arena battlefield. Rabbi Steve Silberman of Ahavas Chesed in Among other things, the landing crafts will Mobile attended the ceremony, along with his serve as a logistical axis for transporting wife, Manette. Silberman said there were brief equipment as well as the soldiers in near and remarks, then the American flag was raised as far areas.” the Star Spangled Banner played. The American flag was then lowered, replaced by the Politis said the craft’s completion “marks a Israeli flag as Hatikvah was played. significant milestone in adapting the Navy to the modern battlefield.” “Jewish, Israeli, American and maritime history were changed at a shipyard in Pascagou- Rear Adm. Tal Politis, Haifa The Israeli Navy used landing craft from the Naval Base commander, la,” Silberman remarked. “A high-tech vessel beginning in 1948, but the last of their crafts designed and constructed in accordance with speaks at the ceremony was decommissioned in 1993 when it was Israeli specifications by American engineers and American determined that there was no need for newer models. In workers, financially underwritten by American foreign asrecent years, the Navy sought to restore that capability. sistance for Israel, showcases cooperation, friendship and a Vice Admiral David Saar Salama, commander in chief of shared goal of Israel’s safety and wellbeing.” the Israeli Navy, told the first crew of the Nachshon that The project began four years ago, and was financed they “have a great privilege today, writing a chapter in the through U.S. military aid to Israel, almost all of which must history of the Israeli Navy.” He referenced the craft’s name, be spent in the United States. The Nachshon is about 95 as a midrash says that the Red Sea did not part when Moses meters long, 20 meters wide and weighs about 2,500 tons. waved his staff over it, but only after Nachshon wandered It arrived in Israel on Sept. 28, just before Sukkot, accominto the sea up to his head. “You are the pioneers of the way, panied by missile ships, a submarine and regular security the first to jump into the water and carve a new path in the vessels of the Israel Navy. heart of the seas,” Salama said. Israel InSight • March 2020

SUPPORTING Israel

Native to the Land

Indigenous groups from around the world open Indigenous Embassy in Jerusalem By David Isaac

(JNS) — Wearing colorful traditional costumes, native peoples from around the globe made speeches, sang, danced, beat drums and, in one case, sounded a giant ram’s horn on Feb. 1 to celebrate the inauguration of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem. The embassy will serve as a much-needed antidote to the false claims by the Palestinians that there is no evidence of any Jewish life in Israel prior to 1948, when Jews ostensibly arrived as colonialist invaders. The embassy is in part due to the efforts of the Indigenous Coalition for Israel, a New Zealand-based group founded by native Maori to counter the false narrative about the Israel-Palestinian conflict that has “taken hold amongst indigenous peoples” and “has often bled into antisemitism,” its website says. “We recognize that Jews are the indigenous people of

this land, and we stand with you and your struggle,” ICFI co-founder Sheree Trotter told the 200-plus audience, noting that the Land of Israel is the place where the Jewish “nation was forged, its language and sacred literature developed, the beliefs, customs and traditions began. It is the most sacred place in the world to Jews… This deep connection to a particular land and its ancestors are defining features of indigeneity.” Trotter expressed her hope that the embassy would become an information hub and welcoming space for indigenous peoples visiting Israel, and act as a center to “galvanize” global indigenous support. The embassy will develop a digital production department to counter misinformation about Israel prevalent on social media and “to tell the story of our indigenous friendship.” The embassy will also host academic symposia and become a tourist attraction. “We plan in time to have an NGO presence at the United Nations,” she added.

Native American tribes establish ties to Israel In November 2008, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana signed a formal declaration establishing ties. The tribe has done trade missions to Israel, looking to diversify their businesses. The Coushatta also declared May 14, Israel’s independence day according to the secular calendar, as Stakayoop Yanihta Yisrael, the Day to Honor Israel. For many years, Chief Joseph Riverwind of the Arawak Taino Nation, and his wife, Laralyn Riverwind, ambassador-at-large for the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee, have been building bridges with Israel. They told the Jerusalem Post that they were inspired by the story of an exiled people who returned and rebuilt their homeland and traditions. They bring indigenous groups to Israel to help counter the spread of anti-Israel narratives. In September 2020, the Northeast Alabama Cherokee issued a declaration of support for the “sovereign Jewish nation” of Israel and the recognition of Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel. Since then, tribal Photo courtesy John Buhler/AITF leaders have taken part in numerous Israel ceremonies Northeast Alabama Cherokee Chief Larry Smith and Seth in the region, from the Alabama Capitol to the region’s Penn with the declaration of ties with Israel, September 2020. Israeli Consulate, and with local Jewish communities.

March 2024 • Israel InSight

The opening of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem, Feb. 1, 2024.

While not an embassy in the ordinary sense — it will not represent governments of the indigenous peoples’ host nations or the indigenous peoples themselves — it has been recognized as an embassy by the State of Israel. The audience cheered when they learned from Gil Haskell, Chief of State Protocol for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, that the Indigenous Embassy was the 100th embassy to be opened in the Jewish state. The embassy will be hosted at the Friends of Zion Museum in the center of Jerusalem. Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, told JNS that when she was approached by indigenous groups wanting an embassy she immediately knew where to go. “I called up the Friends of Zion Museum and said here’s an opportunity to change the narrative that Jews are somehow foreign occupiers of our own land.” “We are grateful to the ICFI leadership for pursuing this initiative, especially during a time of war. The Jewish people are the indigenous people of Israel, and so we are thrilled with the support of the global First Peoples community,” Hassan-Nahoum said. Mike Evans, founder of the museum and a well-known Christian evangelist, told JNS he agreed right away. “I said yes, 100 percent. Our vision is to build bridges. And this was a huge bridge. There are almost a billion indigenous people in the world. This has great potential,” he said. “The Bible says, ‘Comfort ye my people, saith your God’,” Evans told those gathered, quoting Isaiah 40:1. “You’re go-

Photo by Yossi Zamir

ing to be an enormous comfort to the nation of Israel. And you are going to be the ambassadors to your nations.” Many of the indigenous representatives present similarly were motivated by religious belief. Xami Thomas, a representative from the Khoi, an indigenous people numbering some 15 million and divided into 20 or so tribes spread throughout southern Africa, Botswana and Namibia, told JNS, “Remember, God said to Moses, ‘Go tell Pharaoh that Israel is my firstborn,’ so we regard Israel as our big brother. And we love the Jewish people… We don’t just see this as a way of coming to support Israel but also to make sure to let Israel know that her enemies are far fewer than her friends.” Addressing the audience, Thomas apologized for “the horrible thing that the ANC [African National Congress] government did to this glorious nation. We are sorry. They do not represent all the Khoi or all the people of Southern Africa. They did not consult us and the allegations are without any substance,” referring to the genocide case his country brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. “Anybody who says that Israel is not indigenous doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Because if Israel is not indigenous there is no indigenous nation on the earth,” said Thomas. Greg Motu, a pastor of a Baptist church in New Zealand and a member of the Maori tribe, also spoke of the spiritual influences that brought him to support Israel. When the British missionaries arrived, they taught the natives “the Israel InSight • March 2024

MY Israel STORY

Pastor John Hagee speaking at the 2022 Christians United for Israel Washington Summit.

Pastor John Hagee

Founder of Christians United for Israel by Menachem Wecker (JNS) and IIS reports

As an 8-year-old boy, John Hagee sat at the kitchen table listening on the radio to the formation of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948. “Never did I think that I would one day stand in the holy city as a participant in history,” he told JNS. “I was simply awestruck.” One of the best-known Christian Zionists, the pastor — founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel — has met all 11 Israeli prime ministers since Menachem Begin, including Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has known since 1985. But the pinnacle of his Israel experiences — what he calls participating in history — came in May 2018 when David Friedman, then Washington’s ambassador to Israel, invited Hagee to offer a prayer at the opening ceremony of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. That was an “exceptional honor and privilege,” Hagee told JNS. “Since CUFI’s founding, our position has always been that Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, and the U.S. should acknowledge that in word and deed.” In a wide-ranging interview with JNS, Hagee reflected on

March 2024 • Israel InSight

Photo courtesy CUFI/Oren Cohen

why he first visited Israel in 1978 and what it has been like to return countless times over the past 45 years. He also discussed his decision to become a man of the cloth and, over the years, one of Israel’s most prominent supporters.

At home in a foreign land

Growing up in East Texas, Hagee aspired to serve in the military, and he received an appointment at 17 to go to West Point. “Ministry was the farthest thing from my mind,” he told JNS. One night at a church service that initially felt like thousands before it, he felt the desire very strongly to know God. “From one breath to the next, I could not imagine my life without Him,” he said. “Everything changed.” Hagee turned West Point down to attend seminary. In March 1958 — just before he turned 18 — he preached his first sermon “and never looked back.” As a devout Christian, he made no distinction between biblical and contemporary Israel. “The modern State of Israel is, and has always been, central to my worldview and my faith,” he told JNS. “I learned Israel’s story as found in the Bible and her history as found in the pages of books, and still learn and study her contemporary challenges as described in the pages of newspapers and articles.” In a 2007 interview in Hadassah magazine, he recalled an evening in his childhood when his usually unemotional father was listening to the radio broadcast of the United

Nations voting on the establishment of Israel. He had tears in his eyes, calling it the greatest day of the 20th century. It was not until 1978, when he was in his upper 30s, that Hagee had the financial means to travel the world, and he opted to visit Israel for the first time. He wanted to see where Jesus had lived and taught, as well as visit the Sea of Galilee and the Western Wall. “It is foreign to arrive in a foreign land and feel completely at home, and it is unusual, yet impossible, not to leave a piece of your heart in the land once there,” he told JNS. “I arrived in Israel a tourist, and I left a Zionist.” There is no substitute for visiting Israel, but one need not travel to the Holy Land to “understand its vital importance to all Christians, appreciate its modern incarnation and love its people,” Hagee said. “Since the time of God’s covenant with Abraham, Israel has always and forever shall be.” On his visit to Israel 45 years ago, Hagee experienced a “turning point in my life,” standing before the Western Wall for the first time. “As I prayed, I looked to one side and saw a Jewish man engaged in fervent prayer. And in that moment, I came to understand that he and I were spiritual brothers, but that I knew very little about him, and he may very well be scared of people like me,” said Hagee. “In the subsequent days, I bought as many books as I could to understand as much as I could about the history of the Jewish people.” He came to appreciate the extent of Jewish suffering under those claiming to bear Christianity’s banner. He talked to his wife Diana (née Castro) and arrived at a decision.

“While I didn’t know how or what exactly we were going to do, the Lord had placed it upon my heart to be a healing and uniting force between Jews and Christians,” he said. In 1981, he hosted the first Night to Honor Israel, and in 2006, Hagee founded Christians United for Israel. “Today, I believe CUFI’s greatest achievement is that its existence has changed the way many Jews and Christians regard each other,” he said. “Now more than 10 million Christians have come to understand the importance of standing with our Jewish brothers and sisters in both good times and bad.” It wasn’t easy. Hagee is fond of recounting how the first Night to Honor Israel came about. In June 1981, Israel had bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s regime was reported to be working on a nuclear weapon. Israel was condemned around the world, but Hagee was convinced Israel had done the world a favor, and decided to organize an event to publicly thank Israel. He invited numerous churches to take part, and got no response. He then approached the Jewish community in San Antonio. After initial skepticism, they joined in the event, leading to Hagee’s long friendship with Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, who died in 2021. Hagee received a lot of hate mail over the event, and the evening itself ended with a bomb threat. He vowed to keep holding the event each year, until the antisemites “get used to the fact” that it wasn’t going away. When the United States-led coalition faced off against Iraq years later after the invasion of Kuwait, they were thankful to not be facing a nuclear-equipped Iraq. In February 2006, when Israel was again facing threats, he called on 400 Christian leaders from around the country, giving them two tasks — speak with their Congressional representatives about the importance of Israel, and hold a Night to Honor Israel in every state. That was the formation of Christians United for Israel. The next year, he was the keynote speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee national conference.

I arrived in Israel a tourist, and left a Zionist

‘More times than I can count’

Photo courtesy CUFI/Oren Cohen

Pastor John Hagee and wife Diana welcome Ukrainian refugees to Israel.

“I’ve been privileged to have visited Israel more times than I can count,” Hagee told JNS. “What is most unique about Israel is not how it has changed, but how it has retained its character and ethos.” Israel has grown dramatically over the past nearly Israel InSight • March 2024

half-century. “Its modern cities have grown from nearly nothing at all,” he said. “The desert has truly bloomed in the Jewish state. Israel has become one of the most prosperous and powerful nations in the world.” Yet the core values that drive Israel and protect it have not changed in the 45 years Hagee has visited, he said. Stateside, however, Christian views of Israel have evolved quite a bit. Christians have long doubted that their faith had much of an impact on Israel, and did not translate that faith into action, Hagee said. That has changed. “Millions of Christians across the country have come to understand that our mandate is not to just pray for something to happen — though this is vital — but also to be agents of change for something to happen,” he said. “Yes, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and we also do what we can to confront and combat antisemitism, whether it be in churches, communities, campuses or Congress.” Hagee Ministries has donated more than $120 million to Israeli humanitarian causes, and more than $9 million to help Ukrainian Jews make aliyah, according to Hagee. “Support for Israel amongst Christians is a deeply-held religious belief, but without education about Israel’s modern struggle, there could be no action in support of the Jewish state,” he said. An overwhelming majority of evangelical Protestants (79%) view Israelis favorably, as does 69% of mainline Protestants, and 69% of Christians overall, according to a Pew Research Center report released in April 2019. (Among those groups, positive views of Palestinians were much lower: 35%, 38% and 41%, respectively. Meanwhile, 57% of the religiously unaffiliated viewed Israel favorably, and 54% saw Palestinians favorably.) As Christians become more “biblically literate,” they reject replacement theology, which holds Christians to supersede

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March 2024 • Israel InSight

Jews, and as they learn more of Israel’s ancient and modern history, many become pro-Israel activists, Hagee told JNS. He declined to comment on domestic Israeli issues, such as judicial reform, which has divided many Israelis. “Israel is a democracy, and, as in all democracies, there are times of great challenge,” said Hagee. “But at the end of the day, truth will find its way and will bring unity and healing to the nation.”

‘God’s grace and time’s march’

Hagee has brought thousands of Christians to Israel over the years and has found common themes in their experiences. “Israel releases a healing force that heals the body and comforts the soul,” he said. “There is not a time that one soul has left that sacred soil without having been changed forever.” One standout Israel experience came in 2021 on a visit with Nikki Haley, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now a Republican presidential candidate. Hagee remembers vividly when Haley hugged a woman whose home had been destroyed by one of thousands of Hamas rockets. “There, amidst all that destruction and pain, these two women from wildly-different backgrounds understood each other completely. I saw in Nikki’s eyes how deeply she felt for this woman, and I was moved as I witnessed this brokenhearted woman find just a bit of comfort in that heartfelt embrace,” he said. Hagee encourages all people of faith to do “everything in their power” to visit Israel but said trying to describe a first visit to Israel is like attempting to convey adequately in words what it’s like to hold one’s child for the first time. “There are two constants in this world: God’s grace and time’s march. It doesn’t seem like my first visit to Israel was so long ago, but my focus is on each day and the days ahead,” he said. “Every trip to Israel is more meaningful than its last, and every time I leave, I am eager to return.” He takes large groups “to discover the joy and beauty of Israel.” “The memories and moments that stand out from my visits to Israel could fill a book,” he said. “I pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And because my hope is in God, I know Israel shall remain strong and prosperous, and I have every confidence that Israel’s best days are ahead of her.”

By Steven Leonard/Auburn

Coach Bruce Pearl with players from Auburn and the Israel U-20 squad before their August 2022 game in Israel.

Coach Bruce Pearl “loud and proud” about Israel Auburn basketball coach works to bring people of different backgrounds together With hostility to Israel prevalent on so many campuses around the country, it might seem hard to believe that a college basketball coach would lead chants of “Am Yisrael Chai,” the people of Israel live. But Auburn’s Bruce Pearl isn’t one to sit down and be quiet. Recently, he has been navigating a time where his attention is split. It is the thick of basketball season, and he has guided a team picked sixth in the Southeastern Conference in the preseason into a contender for the conference championship, ranked No. 14 at press time. But he is also heavily involved in defending Israel, as a prolific Tweeter and frequent speaker. Especially during the offseason, he speaks about Israel at churches and synagogues, and marvels at how amazing America is, that he can coach basketball and be embraced as an outspoken Jew in Alabama. At the Final Four in 2019, Pearl said he is grateful for “the religious freedom I have to be a practicing Jew in the

Christian community. I can tell you down South it is so comfortable there because we share the same God. And my Christian brothers embrace that. It’s a wonderful thing.” Pearl was born in Boston in 1960, and from an early age wondered why different people could not just get along. Sports was where he found the best form of coexistence — he said it did not matter what color someone was, “can you guard somebody? Can you rebound?” Though a great athlete as a child, he did not play basketball in high school, as a football injury his freshman year ended his competitive career before it got started. He decided to attend Boston College, figuring “I’m going to show them Jewish kids can be tough, we can get along.” He added, “That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life, trying to break stereotypes down.” He became a manager for the men’s basketball team after failing to make the team as a walk-on, and soon became an assistant coach. After graduation, he was an assistant coach at Stanford and Iowa. In 1992 he became head coach Israel InSight • March 2024

at Southern Indiana, taking a team that won 10 games the Recalling the 2009 Games, Pearl said “the experience our previous season and going 22-7, on the way to nine straight players had there was off the charts.” It was also his first tournament appearances and four conference titles. In time in Israel, having intended to go earlier, but basketball 1995, they won the Division II national championship. got in the way. Now, he frequently travels to Israel. He took over Milwaukee in 2001, winning conference “To take 12 Jewish men to Israel and to come back to the tournaments and getting to the Sweet 16 in 2005, and in U.S. as mensches was incredibly meaningful,” he said. “To a foreshadowing of his SEC days, included a tournament wear USA on our chests and to have a Star of David in our upset of Alabama, and going full circle, defeating Boston hearts was special,” he said in a 2019 interview. College in the next game. Pearl then left for Tennessee, where he took a 14-17 team Blazing Basketball Trails in Israel In 2022, Pearl was able to fulfil a long-time dream of takto a program-best 22-8. In 2008, he became the sixth-fastest ing his college basketball team to Israel. coach to win 400 games. A recruiting scandal forced him out in 2011, so he spent time as a marketing manager for a College teams can take one international trip every four company in Knoxville. years, and Auburn’s most recent trip was to Italy in 2017. “These foreign trips have been one of the greatest teaching In 2013, he spoke at a basketball tournament for Cooper moments I have been a part of in 40 years of coaching colYeshiva in Memphis, where he apologized to the students, lege basketball,” Pearl said. “Israel has not saying he felt that he had let those students been your typical destination for college down by reaching the pinnacle of the basFor college basketball basketball teams. Yet, Israel is one of the top ketball world as a Jewish coach, and then teams, “Israel has 2 or 3 countries in the world in its quality with one bad decision threw away his posiof competition and support for professional never really been tion as a role model. basketball,” which he said is important, as an option, and now After three years out of coaching, he was many universities have a hard time finding hired by Auburn in 2014. He vowed to reit is a great option.” quality opponents on overseas trips. build Auburn’s program, but his first season In 2008, he took his Tennessee team on a there was his first with a losing record as head coach. trip to the Czech Republic and Germany, and included visBy 2017, things had turned around, and the 2017-18 team its to the Dachau and Theresienstadt concentration camps had the best record in two decades. In 2019, Auburn became the second team in history to defeat the three winnin- on the itinerary. In a 2008 interview with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, he said he visits a concentration camp gest programs in a single season, Kansas, North Carolina every time he goes to Europe, and many of his players didn’t and Kentucky. That season, Auburn also became the first know anything about the Holocaust. team from the state to make the Final Four. “For me as a coach and a teacher, my whole thing is to His passion for Israel comes from his grandfather, Jack bring my team together, to accept each other’s differences, Perlmutter, who came to America from Europe in 1909, and to tolerate one another, and that helps us become a great worked as a plumber. team,” he explained. “During Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967, I saw my Papa cryWhen he got to Auburn, he was determined to put Israel ing as he watched the evening news. He told me about Israon the map for universities looking for an overseas experiel and how she was under attack,” Pearl said. He was afraid that if he went to bed, when he woke up the next morning, ence. Before then, Connecticut was the only Division I-A team to go to Israel, in 1998. The Toledo women’s team Israel would not be there. traveled to Israel in 2011, and the Wheaton (Ill.) College “I sense that my Papa was passing down to me, his only men’s team visited Israel in 2016. grandson, a love for my heritage and for Israel.” Working with Athletes for Israel, he called the trip BirthIn 2009, Pearl coached the U.S. men’s basketball team to right for College Basketball, after the Birthright Israel trips a gold medal in the World Maccabiah Games in Israel. His organized for Jewish college students, and said that after son, Stephen, now Auburn associate coach, played on the Auburn’s groundbreaking trip, Israel will become “one of 2009 team, and was an assistant coach on the gold medal the most sought after and impactful foreign trips in the winning 2017 team. future.” Played every four years, the Maccabiah is known as the The first-ever Israel trip by a Power Five team was broad“Jewish Olympics” and is one of the largest international cast back to the States on ESPN. sports events in the world.

March 2024 • Israel InSight

In 2023, Arizona and Kansas State made the journey to Israel, and expanded it into an Abraham Accords event as the first-ever American college basketball teams to play in the United Arab Emirates. When Auburn arrived in Israel, one team member — Lior Berman of Birmingham — was already there, having participated in the Covid-delayed 2022 Maccabiah Games, where the U.S. team won its fourth straight gold medal, going back to Pearl’s 2009 team. Auburn played three games in Israel. They defeated the U-20 national team in Jerusalem on Aug. 2, 117-56. On Aug. 7 in Tel Aviv, the match against Israel’s All-Star Select Team was tighter, but Auburn pulled away in the second half for a 107-71 win. The biggest challenge came in the final game, against Israel’s national team. The national team, which would represent Israel if it qualified for the Olympics, is comprised of professional players, led by Deni Avdija, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft, and current Washington Wizards player. He led the game with 25 points. Former Boston Celtics draft pick Yam Madar was also on the team, and scored 24. Still, Auburn held its own, leading 41-40 in the

second quarter and cutting its deficit to one in the fourth quarter, before falling, 95-86.

Should be seen as normal

Unlike many campuses, Auburn does not have active anti-Israel groups, but a few days before the team headed to Israel, the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Auburn to either cancel the “propaganda tour,” or at least ditch their Israeli “handlers” and meet with average Palestinians. Pearl took umbrage at the request. Since he was an assistant coach at Stanford for a trip to Japan in 1982, through many other foreign trips including Auburn’s trip to Italy in 2017, “nobody asked me who we were going to talk to, or where we were going to go.” He asked, “Why is it okay for someone to ask me who I’m going to be talking to and where I’m going to be when I go to Israel?” The team did travel to Bethlehem, which is under Palestinian Authority rule. They walked through the marketplace, which Pearl said doesn’t look much different than the Old City in Jerusalem, and the team visited the Church of

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Israel InSight • March 2024

BUSINESS Israel

Israel inside: Intel announces $25 billion investment (JNS) — Intel Israel and Israeli government authorities on Dec. 26 announced plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat. “The global company Intel’s choice to approve the unprecedented investment of $25 billion right here, in Israel, is important and significant,” according to a joint statement by Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, the Israeli Economy Ministry and Israel Tax Authority. “Such an investment, at a time when Israel is facing a war against absolute evil, a war in which good is obliged to defeat evil… is an expression of confidence in the State of Israel and the Israeli economy,” said Smotrich. The Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and one of the world’s largest and most prominent semiconductor chip manufacturers. Under the terms of the agreement, Israel will provide Intel with a $3.2 billion grant over several years. Intel will undertake to hire thousands of Israeli high-tech workers, and also buy products and services from Israeli companies and contractors. The company’s obligation to meet these goals are a condition for receiving the grant. The new factory is expected to begin operating in 2028, and to remain in operation at least until 2035. “This is an expression of great confidence in the Israeli economy and exactly reflects the strength of the free econo-

my that we have built here, and the technological economy that we are developing here,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in June of the prospective investment. According to Intel Israel’s Corporate Responsibility Report published that month, the company posted record exports of $8.7 billion in 2022, accounting for 1.75 percent of Israel’s GDP and 5.5 percent of Israeli high-tech exports. The company employs around 10,000 people in Israel directly and another 30,000 indirectly. The chip-making giant has one plant already in operation in Kiryat Gat and is currently constructing another plant there at an investment of $10 billion. In a statement earlier this year, Intel said that its Israel operations “played a crucial role” in its global success. “Our intention to expand manufacturing capacity in Israel is driven by our commitment to meeting future manufacturing needs… and we appreciate the continued support of the Israeli government,” the company said. Intel’s involvement in Israel began in the 1970s when it established its first development center in Haifa. Over the years, Intel has expanded its presence in Israel with multiple R&D facilities in Haifa, Jerusalem and Petah Tikvah. These centers are involved in developing and designing advanced technologies for various products, including processors, chipsets, communication technologies and software.

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Healthy Friendshoring

Pills for Peace: Effort would shift pharmaceutical manufacturing from China to Abraham Accords countries When the Covid pandemic hit and supply chains started getting strained, especially for pharmaceuticals, it quickly became apparent how much the United States relied on China for medicines and health care equipment. Dr. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), Rep. Diana It soon became apparent that breaking the Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, dependence was not only a matter of supply USIEA’s Heather Johnston, Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.), and Rep. Randy and demand, it was a national security issue — Weber (R-Tex.) on the 2023 USIEA Congressional mission. what if future disagreements caused China to if China ceased exporting its pharmaceutical ingredients, cut back supplies to the U.S., as it often did for its own use “military hospitals and clinics would cease to function withduring Covid? in months, if not days.” A bill has been introduced in Congress to address that Moving production from China would also cut intellectusituation, and to bolster peace in the Middle East through al property theft, Johnston said. the Abraham Accords in the process. According to USIEA, China was responsible for 95 perThe United States-Abraham Accords Cooperation and cent of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent of hydrocorSecurity Act of 2024 would authorize the establishment of tisone, 70 percent of acetaminophen, over 40 percent of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration bureau in the Abrapenicillin, and 40 percent of U.S. imports of heparin. ham Accords region, to “friend-shore” the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, improving supply Johnston has long been involved in Middle East projects chains and reducing dependence on possibly adversarial to promote peace. Two decades ago, the Johnstons became countries. friends with Ron Nachman, mayor of Ariel, the “capital of Samaria.” They suggested that a leadership center be built in On Jan. 31, Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) introduced the bill, with Reps. Rick Allen Ariel, based on their Christian retreat, JH Ranch, in Califor(R-Ga.), Andy Harris (R-Md.), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), Scott nia, but the Ariel center would have a curriculum to instill Israeli pride based on lessons from their Biblical heroes. Peters (D-Calif.), and Randy Weber (R-Tex.) as original co-sponsors. Rep. Donald Davis (D-N.C.) has since signed They soon became involved with the Judea-Samaria on. Chamber of Commerce, an effort to sow the seeds of peace on the ground, bypassing the corrupt Palestinian Authority The bill was promoted to Congress by the United States by promoting joint business ventures between Israelis and Israel Education Association, which is based in Alabama. Palestinians in the territories. Heather Johnston, founder of the non-profit organization, noted that during Covid, more than 150 common medicaThe USIEA was founded to bring high-level Congrestions were in short supply, including ulcer and severe aller- sional leaders to Israel, but unlike other tours that avoided gy medications. “Covid laid bare the alarming vulnerability the territories, the USIEA tours included that area, to help to America’s pharmaceutical supply chain and its overdelegislators get the full picture of the region. pendence on China.” Early USIEA tours are credited with building support for Johnston cited testimony before the U.S.-China Economic Iron Dome in Congress, and participants on the trips led and Security Review Commission in 2019, by Rosemary the effort to dramatically increase funding for its developGibson, author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of Ameri- ment. ca’s Dependence on China for Medicine.” She testified that The pharmaceutical effort, which they refer to as Israel InSight • March 2024

“friend-shoring,” would involve the Abraham Accords countries, as well as Egypt and Jordan. Having an FDA bureau in the region would be a “staging ground” for that cooperation. In 2023, Harshbarger and Vargas were on a USIEA trip to Israel, along with Allen and Weber. However, USIEA started working on the idea even before Covid, after a 2019 Congressional trip to Israel. “America’s national security is at stake if we do not safeguard our essential medical and pharmaceutical supply chains,” said Heather Johnston, Founder and CEO of USIEA. “By friend-shoring to our Abraham Accords allies, we not only diversify and fortify these lifesaving supply chains, but we gain newfound access to medical advancements, technological breakthroughs, and innovation emanating from this region.” The idea is to combine the research being done in Israel with funding from Gulf states, and the need for jobs in places like Jordan and Egypt. The United Arab Emirates have significant pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities, and collaboration agreements with AstraZeneca. They have already invested billions of dollars in expanding physical and intellectual infrastructure for medical technology. Many American pharmaceutical companies have offices in Bahrain, and Morocco is becoming an African hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing. Israel has a large research system, and was the world’s foremost source of trial information about the Covid vaccine’s effect on large populations. Harshbarger said she and Vargas “believe this legislation is advantageous for current Abraham Accords members and serves as an incentive to other countries to join the Accords to benefit from an FDA presence in the region. This way, other economies can also help ensure the safety, quality, and effectiveness of medical products and food produced in their countries for approval to export to the United States.” The proposal “has the potential to improve Americans’ access to essential medical and pharmaceutical supplies, while working in tandem with Israel and the Arab nations who are seeking peace, normalized relations, and economic opportunities,” Johnston said. “Having a USFDA branch in Israel would be another great way of strengthening U.S.-Israel cooperation,” said Gideon Israel, president of the Jerusalem Washington Center, who was involved in previous such efforts over the last decade. “It would be a shame if an office isn’t opened [in Israel] now

March 2024 • Israel InSight

that there is congressional support on both sides of the aisle for such a move,” he added. The FDA operates regional offices in China, India, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico and Belgium, but none in the Middle East. An office was briefly opened in Amman but was subsequently closed. The bill has a series of steps, including developing a list of essential products in the region, collaborating on good manufacturing processes, sharing regulatory information and offering technical assistance in manufacturing. Despite the war in Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that virtually every leader he has spoken with in the Arab world supports moving forward with normalization with Israel.

Administration hindering research

Last June, the Biden administration reinstituted a ban on U.S. taxpayer funds being used on any research, development or scientific cooperation projects conducted in what are referred to as the territories — the West Bank, Golan Heights or eastern Jerusalem. Those restrictions had been eliminated by the Trump administration in October 2020, in a ceremony held at Ariel University, a large university in the heart of the West Bank. There are three science and technology foundations that provide grants to bilateral U.S.-Israeli projects, and when they were founded there was little to no infrastructure in the territories. Ariel University was established in 1982 and is now a major research center. According to Ari Sacher, senior policy advisor for the United States Israel Education Association, Ariel’s collaboration with U.S. universities went up “exponentially” after 2020, with seven proposals being granted funding in 2021. There were 32 proposals sent in 2022 and 60 submitted last year. Collaborations underway with Ariel include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a mechanism for drug resistance in cancer cells, the University of Rochester on a new therapeutic modality for affective and cognitive function, and Biomirex on a targeted delivery system for pancreatic and triple-negative breast cancers. Sacher said that the foundations’ charters have not been altered from the 2020 prohibition on discriminating based on geography, but after the Biden administration’s decree, the percentage of proposals involving Ariel University that were approved plummeted. “Artificial political lines should not block access to critical science,” Sacher said. “America, Israel, and the world simply have too much to lose.”

ISRAEL INNOVATION

Advances in early detection of Alzheimer’s, preventing memory deterioration (JNS) — Tel Aviv University researchers have found a method of preventing memory deterioration in the animal model of Alzheimer’s disease, the university announced on Feb. 13. The study, conducted in collaboration with the Hebrew University and published in Nature Communications, builds on the discovery by TAU professor Inna Slutsky’s lab in 2022 of a brain pathology in the animal model that long precedes the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms. According to Shiri Shoob, the doctoral student who led the current study, these physiological changes, which include an accumulation of amyloid-beta deposits and abnormal accumulations of tau protein, as well as a decrease in the volume of the hippocampus, can show up 10 to 20 years before the onset of the cognitive decline and memory impairment more commonly associated with the disease. During sleep, and especially during sleep induced by general anesthesia, the pathology causes “silent seizures,” which look like an epileptic seizure in terms of brain activity. Normally, activity in the hippocampus decreases during sleep and under anesthesia. Believing that there are mechanisms compensating for this pathology during wakefulness, thus prolonging the pre-symptomatic period of the disease, in the current study the team mainly focused on deep brain stimulation (DBS) using electrical signals to the nucleus reuniens. The nucleus reuniens is located in the thalamus, which is responsible for sleep regulation, and is a key component of a network of structures in the hippocampus and cortex, playing a vital role in cognition. “When we tried to stimulate the nucleus reuniens at high frequencies, as is done in the treatment of Parkinson’s, for example, we found that it worsened the damage to the hippocampus and the silent epileptic seizures,” said Shoob. “Only after changing the stimulation pattern to a lower frequency were we able to suppress the seizures and prevent cognitive impairment. We showed that the nucleus reuniens had the ability to completely control these seizures. We could increase or decrease the seizures by stimulating it.” According to Slutsky, epidemiological studies have provided evidence for a link between aging and a phenomenon

Professor Inna Slutsky.

Photo by Jonathan Bloom

called postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD), in which cognitive problems arise following surgery under general anesthesia. “In young people, the symptoms usually pass very quickly, but in older people, the chance of cognitive impairment increases, and it may last a long time. Our research indicates a potential mechanism underlying the phenomenon,” she said. “We found that suppressing the thalamic nucleus reuniens — by pharmacological or electrical means — successfully prevented both pathological activity in the hippocampus during anesthesia and cognitive impairment following anesthesia,” she added. “In addition, we identified a relationship between certain pathological activity in the hippocampus during anesthesia in the presymptomatic phase of Alzheimer’s to memory problems in a more advanced stage of the disease. This indicates a potential [method] for predicting the disease in the dormant state, before the onset of cognitive decline.” The researchers hope that their findings will speed the start of clinical trials in humans, potentially leading to advancements in early detection of Alzheimer’s, prevention of dementia symptoms associated with the disease, and progress in treating POCD. Israel InSight • March 2020

New Exhibit Showcases Kings David, Solomon Armstrong International Cultural Foundation will hold the world premiere of its newest Biblical archaeology exhibit, “Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered” on Feb. 25 at Armstrong Auditorium on the campus of Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, Okla. The exhibit includes over three dozen artifacts from the period of the united monarchy in biblical Israel, and will mark the world premiere of the extraordinary Ophel inscription, which some have linked to the biblical Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon. Other significant artifacts on display include two bullae, small clay seal impressions, attesting to Eliakim, the servant of King Hezekiah and associate of Isaiah the prophet. The exhibit features about three dozen artifacts from 10th-century B.C.E. archaeological sites, including Jerusalem, Timna, Lachish and Khirbet Qeiyafa, many discovered by Eilat Mazar in the City of David. Also featured are two large dioramas of the 10th-century kingdom of Israel and the city of Jerusalem, as well as interactive displays and educational videos and timelines. “This exhibit is totally unique,” said Brad Macdonald, curator of the exhibit. “This is the first time such a diverse collection of 10th-century artifacts and archaeological features have been collected in one place and presented in the broader scientific, historic and biblical context to showcase the monumental nature of

March 2024 • Israel InSight

Ophel Pithos inscription

the kingdom of Israel during the reign of kings David and Solomon.” The artifacts are iron, pottery, stone and textiles. The exhibit will also feature elements of monumental Jerusalem, including a Phoenician-style capital discovered in Jerusalem. There will also be virtual reality tours and video presentations. The exhibit is presented and funded by the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation in association with Jerusalem’s Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology, the Israel Museum, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is Armstrong Auditorium’s third exhibit of biblical artifacts, following “Seals of Jeremiah’s Captors Discovered” (2013-2015) and “Seals of Isaiah and King Hezekiah Discovered” (2018-2019), which won an Oklahoma tourism award for Outstanding Temporary Exhibit. “Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered” will be on display in the Grand Lobby of Armstrong Auditorium through Jan. 17, 2025. Admission is free beginning Feb. 26. The opening reception on Feb. 25 is at 1 p.m., and advance reservations are required.

5784

The Biblical Calendar “Be Happy, It’s Adar’.”

The Hebrew month of Adar I begins on February 9 this year, 2024 on the common calendar and 5784 on the Jewish calendar. The major holy day this month is Purim — which is celebrated during Adar II, as this is a Leap Year on the Hebrew calendar. Because the Hebrew calendar is based on the moon, adjustments have to be made. A lunar month is 29.53 days, so Hebrew months are 29 or 30 days, depending on a range of factors — so 12 months is from 354 to 356 days — not the 365.25 days of the solar calendar. Muslims, who also use a lunar calendar, ignore that and have shorter religious years, which is why their holidays move around the secular calendar. But in Judaism, Passover is the spring festival, Sukkot is fall harvest — Sukkot can’t slip to February. For that reason, in seven out of every 19 years, there is a Leap Month, a second Adar — which is really Adar I. The “regular” Adar is called Adar II, and will begin on March 10. That is why Passover was really early last year, and will be about as late as it ever gets this year. Fast of Esther: Usually held the day before Purim. This year, the date moves from the traditional 13 Adar and will be on March 21. When Purim is on a Sunday, one does not do a fast on a Saturday, so it is moved to Thursday. The fast commemorates how Queen Esther fasted for three days, and asked all the Jews to do the same, before she approached King Ahasveros to plead for the Jews to be permitted to defend themselves from Haman. One did not just walk in and approach the king, even the queen could not normally do so, and if the visit were unwelcome, death would follow. As one of the four minor fasts of the year, it lasts from sunrise to sunset, and fasting in Judaism also includes a prohibition of drinking, even water. One is expected not to fast if it would adversely affect one’s health. Purim: One of the most joyous festivals in the Jewish year, when the events of the Book of Esther are commemorated. Through a series of twists and turns, a Jewish orphan, Esther (Hadassah in Hebrew), becomes the queen of Persia during the reign of Ahasveros. Her uncle, Mordecai, reminds her to never forget where she came from. Mordecai then learns of a plot by the king’s most trusted advisor, Haman, to kill all the Jews, partly because Mordecai re-

fused to bow to him as a god. The king, not knowing Esther’s background, had agreed to let Haman have his way. Haman set the day for 14 Adar by picking lots, or “pur,” at random. Esther approached the king and invited him and Haman to a banquet, and then a second banquet. It was then that Esther pleaded for her life and the lives of her people. The astonished king asked who would want to kill his queen, and she accused Haman. Because the king’s previous order could not be revoked, the king ordered that the Jews could defend themselves, and they defeated Haman’s forces, with Haman and his sons hanged on the gallows he had built for Mordecai. Today’s observance of Purim can be explained as a mix of Halloween, Mardi Gras and April Fool’s Day, in celebration of the Jews’ survival over our enemies. During Purim celebrations on 14 Adar, March 24 this year, it is common for costumes to be worn, and there are often carnivals and parties. Central to the observance is reading the megillah, the scroll of Esther, in its entirety. When Haman is mentioned, it is traditional to make loud noises to drown out Haman’s name. A traditional cookie is Hamantaschen, a triangular cookie filled with preserves, chocolate, even a Hershey’s Kiss, the shape reportedly echoing the triangular hat Haman wore. In Hebrew, they are known as Oznei Haman, Haman’s ears. One part of Purim practice is Adloyadah, meaning “until one does not know.” One is to drink until one can not discern the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordecai.” However, the ancient rabbis, who emphasized moderation and foresaw the existence of DUI laws, said one should have only one drink more than that person would normally consume. There is also the practice of Mishloach Manot, gift packages of a couple varieties of food to friends and family, and charitable donations. Purim is not a work-restricted day, there is no need to take a holiday from work or school. Though God is credited with the miracles that allowed the Jewish people to survive, God is not mentioned once in the megillah. There is also a celebration called Shushan Purim for walled cities, on 15 Adar, March 25 this year. Today, Shushan Purim is observed only in Jerusalem. Israel InSight • March 2020

Anti-ISRAEL Bias

Coming soon to a campus near you?

“Israelism” a dishonest smear of Israel and its supporters

By Ellen Ginsberg Simon

I would like to take five minutes of your time to shred this movie on every level. Humor my ire. The fallacies are never ending, the reduction of millions of people to the opinions of two is laughable, the inclusion of every woke, liberal slogan is just irritating, and the childish gloss over history so monumentally flawed that one wonders if the filmmakers insultingly think everyone who watches it is an uneducated dolt. In light of the current scene on college campuses, I suppose I can appreciate their low estimation of their target audiences. The greatest irony of all, however, is that a movie claiming to pierce the veil of generations of “propagandizing” to American Jewish youth itself is quite possibly one of the most blatant works of anti-Zionist propaganda I’ve seen since the Ayatollah’s latest rant on X. In their attempt to depict American Jewish education as a monolithic curriculum of youth movements, camps, and nefarious Jewish crafting projects, the film makers seem blind to the fact that they employ the stories of merely two American Jews and two Palestinian activists to represent the experiences of millions upon millions of people, as if entire cultures can be reduced in such an absurdly simplistic manner to the anecdotal experiences of two — did I mention it was two? — random Jewish kids. I do not accuse work of being propaganda lightly. Having been educated at Oxford’s Middle East Center, however, I am rather adept at recognizing propaganda related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when I see it. I was forced to live and breathe it for two years. So let’s start at the very beginning. I’ve been told by Julie Andrews that it’s a very good place to start.

Several months ago, I wrote about the disinformation campaign being peddled by the film “Israelism.” Well, I invested the $5 to watch it so you do not have to waste your money, time, or energy trying not to hurl a glass at your TV screen in disgust. A brainchild of some the most virulently anti-Zionist activists on the scene today (think Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, Peter Beinart and Jeremy Ben Ami, each of whom get a cameo), the film purports to tell the story of how American Jews are indoctrinated from childhood to believe in Israel’s centrality to their Jewish identity, its necessity for the security of the Jewish people, and its utter perfection and flawlessness. It fictionalizes a monolithic Jewish community, as if Jewish people across America all grow up under one form of education, one set of beliefs, one political and religious perspective, and one set of opinions. Naturally, those opinions and beliefs are simplistically and mindlessly accepting of everything Israel does and stands for, blindly loyal to a country across the world. It contends American children are so blindly loyal to Israel that they grow to feel such an irrational connection that they are willing to enlist in the IDF and die for this foreign land and foreign people. It then portrays the so-called moral awakening of a handful of Jewish 20-somethings who reached college and had their minds blown by learning the words apartheid, colonialism, and occupation “for the first time in their lives.” You read that correctly. They quite literally took the most ignorant, self-satisfied Jewish kids they could find, and put them on display to speak for all Jewish youth worldwide. As a Jewish woman who once was a Jewish child educated Cherry picking and selective editing in the same country, I can say this film does not speak for What is the definition of propaganda? me. I’d wager it does not speak for 90 percent of American The Cambridge English Dictionary defines propaganda Jews. One of its most dangerous aspects is the fact that it as: information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only givportrays a teeny, inconsequential group of woke, poorly eding one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, ucated Jews as a significant movement.

March 2024 • Israel InSight

or in some other way spread with the intention of influenc- Jewish youth are awakening to rebel against those lies grossing people’s opinions. ly overstates the significance and size of this movement of self-loathers. Cornell West applauds the “new day” when No sentence better describes the content of “Israelism.” young Jews are undergoing a “moral and spiritual awakenIt does not offer a balanced review of a highly complex ing” to realize they do not want to perpetuate the hate Jews conflict. Rather, it cherry-picks stories, quotes, and bits of have faced. Noam Chomsky comments that Israel knows history to repaint reality into a grotesque, Picasso-esque patchwork mosaic of misrepresentation, bedtime fairy tale, there is a sea change in the air in the younger generation, implying fear. and insulting demonization. Let us be clear about one aspect of the current crisis The disingenuous nature of the film shines through in its facing Jews. These children may be loud on campuses right editing of statements by the purported purveyors of the now, but make no mistake. They do not represent anything evil, Zionist narrative — respected individuals like Abe Foxman, retired CEO of the ADL, and Rabbi Bennett Mill- more than a fraction of the weakest minds who fell prey not to fairy tales told by their Hebrew School teachers, but rather. The filmmakers actually hoodwinked respected Jewish er to the reams of anti-Zionist propaganda peddled on U.S. community members into participating and then did a college campuses by Students for Justice in Palestine and transparent hatchet job editing their comments to make other Hamas and Qatari-funded quasi-terthem seem like purveyors of a despicable rorist organizations. The idea that Jews plot to mind-control Jewish youth with the ever-wicked Birthright trips. They are obnoxiously loud because their might need a place voices are augmented and magnified by Even their very best efforts to cut and of refuge in the those who take advantage of their naivety paste sound bites to makes Israeli students, world is chalked up and pliant minds. Hillel directors and community leaders look to “paranoia” about reprehensible fall surprisingly flat, however, These kids swallowed propaganda, alright. because they are so laughably obvious. An Unfortunately, the propaganda that hooked antisemitism Israeli young adult employed by Hillel at them was the one that erases the legitimacy the University of Connecticut jokes that he is trying to help of Israel and sides wholesale with a Palestinian narrative the “P.R.” image of Israel — cue the dystopian, somber mu- that is not even honest about the history of the region’s sic. One of the film’s protagonists — a girl named Simone wars. They are so weak-minded, they do not even grasp Zimmerman who co-founded the anti-Zionist group If Not which propaganda has brainwashed them and the extent to Now (but whose family’s name literally adorns a synagogue which they are being used to harm their own people. in Jerusalem) shows a blue crayon drawing she made in In a stellar moment demonstrating a complete dearth of Jewish day school of a map of Israel as proof that she was self-awareness, Simone Zimmerman states, “How is it that never taught that Jews did not own all of the land. I am, like, the best the Jewish community has to offer, I’ve It is slightly hard to believe, however, that someone who been through all the trainings and the programs, and I don’t was admitted to UC Berkeley never once learned that Israel know what the occupation is, I don’t know what the settlewas any more complicated territorially than in the crayon ments are.” drawing she made in third grade that she proudly displays Oh honey. You are FAR from the best the community has as proof of her indoctrination. Apparently, she never to offer. learned anything about the Occupied Territories until she Simone reeducates herself by taking a tour of the West went to college, a college noted for its anti-Israel activism Bank with an anti-Zionist organization, as if replacing one and currently under Department of Education investigation form of purported indoctrination with another is a sound for Title VI violations related to its antisemitic hostile enviform of rounding out one’s education. The film shows a loronment. cal Palestinian describing how Jews poison their water wells The audience is left to wonder whether she is simply with chemicals and dead animals, and everyone on the tour obscenely ignorant and uneducated (believe me, in light of shakes their head in disgust. what we have seen in the past few months on college camIf you’re going to trounce out time-worn blood libels from puses, I do not discount the possibility) or simply lying to medieval Europe, I’d like a refund of my $5 now please. make her point. The two protagonists of the film — Simone and Eitan Not only does the film generalize regarding how millions — are juxtaposed with two Palestinian activists, Beha and of American Jews are raised and come by their knowledge Sami. The latter two ostensibly represent the Palestinian of Israel, but its conclusion that a whole new generation of Israel InSight • March 2024

GAZA WAR COVERAGE

Four Months of Disinformation By Karen Bekker

own course for the future. In 2006, when the people of Gaza had the opportunity for independence, and the opportunity (CAMERA) — Since the barbaric Hamas attack on Isto build a peaceful and prosperous society, they elected rael on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 men, women, and children were tortured, raped and killed and over 200 more Hamas, a group dedicated to the destruction of Israel. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas acted on that sentiment, and taken hostage, MSNBC has churned out multiple biased everything that is happening today flows from that decision. and distorted reports, featuring some of the worst anti-Israel propagandists, such as Rula Jebreal, Noura Erekat, and But MSNBC commentators repeatedly ignored this, blaming Israel’s siege or occupation, rather than the election of Ilan Pappé. While Mehdi Hasan’s recent departure from Hamas, for the attack as well as for the current war. This the network is a positive step, it does not go far enough to type of omission is a form of disinformation. address the problems there. Many of the network’s other anchors and commentators continue to distort events relatAnother recurring issue is the elevation of Jews who hold ed to the war with Israel that Hamas started. fringe positions and have limited credentials, such as Sarah Schulman, a fiction writer who teaches at Of course, the reporting has not been the College of Staten Island, Daniel Levy, universally bad. For example, on Oct. 14, MSNBC routinely presented as an “Israeli peace negotiator,” José Díaz-Balart hosted Israeli spokesperplatforms fringe who never negotiated anything that was son Eylon Levy. Díaz-Balart also allowed Israeli soldier Rudy Rochman to provide the anti-Israel voices, who successful, Masha Gessen, a staff writer at the New Yorker, Simone Zimmerman, perspective of a soldier preparing for the give misleading and co-founder of the fringe group IfNotNow, ground invasion, as well as to speak about erroneous information or even MSNBC’s own Peter Beinart. The his experience defending Israel on Oct. 7 vast, vast majority of both American and Isand to describe the atrocities he witnessed that day. That same day, reporter Raf Sanchez described the raeli Jews support Israel in its defensive war against Hamas. But MSNBC presents such guests as if they hold expertise preceding week as “a nightmare that Israel can’t wake up or authority, creating a false impression of a division in Jewfrom.” On Oct. 15, Katie Phang interviewed ADL CEO Jonathan ish opinion about the war. Such individuals represent a tiny and extreme minority opinion at best, and are not represenGreenblatt who told her and her audience, “anti-Zionism, tative of the Jewish community. I’ve long said, is antisemitism. I was wrong. Anti-Zionism A third recurring problem is that MSNBC commentators is genocide.” On Oct. 26, Mandana Dayani appeared on presented Hamas casualty statistics without caveat, emphaMorning Joe, talking about her experience as a Jew who fled Iran and how, in light of that experience, she perceived sizing the alleged number of civilian and child casualties, without noting that Hamas itself does not distinguish the worldwide reaction to Oct. 7. Memorably, correspondent Martin Fletcher movingly spoke about his own family between civilian and combatant casualties, without noting that Hamas recruits child soldiers, without noting that members who had been taken hostage by Hamas. Yet, some specific problems have recurred. One theme in some of those casualties have been caused by shortfalls of the coverage was commentators who ignored or minimized Palestinian rockets, and without noting the numbers of combatants the IDF claimed to have killed. This is another the 2005 disengagement, when Israel withdrew every last example of an omission that is itself a form of disinformacivilian and soldier from Gaza, leaving Gaza with a greention, as it skews people’s perceptions of events. CAMERA house agricultural business, a beautiful coastline for tourism, and the opportunity for the people there to chart their noted at least two cases in which MSNBC falsely character-

March 2024 • Israel InSight

ized the entire Hamas-supplied casualty count as “civilians.” it. Nor do we know how many of the casualties were killed by misfired Palestinian rockets. Moreover, Hamas uses Other type of errors were made as well. A partial list of child soldiers, which is itself a war crime precisely because some of MSNBC’s worst reporting is below. it makes them targets. Obeidallah then went on to make • On Oct. 9, just two days after the worst attack on Jews an apples and oranges comparison to the number of chilsince the Holocaust, as previously noted by CAMERA, Joy dren killed in the Ukraine war. But at the very start of the Reid and her guests Peter Beinart, Ayman Mohyeldin, Ali Ukraine war, women and children were allowed to flee to Velshi and Lt. General Stephen Twitty ignored Hamas’s neighboring states, to get out of harm’s way. In comparison, dedication to genocidal violence as expressed in its charter as NPR reported, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and in its leaders’ rhetoric, omitted any mention of offers “said in October that he rejects Palestinians being displaced, of Palestinian sovereignty and independence, and sought to saying it could forever undermine the push for Palestinian imply that the carnage was inevitable due to Israel’s actions. statehood.” In other words, foreign leaders are keeping Gaza In doing so, they excused and justified Hamas’s barbaric children trapped in a war zone, yet Israel, again, is blamed attack, instead blaming Israel for the attack on itself. for the consequences. • On Oct. 29, Ayman Mohyeldin hosted Sarah Schulman, a novelist, a professor at the College of Staten Island (part of CUNY), and an advisory board member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Schulman has no qualifications as an analyst on the Middle East, and gained notoriety only due to her association with a fringe group that, while purporting to be Jewish, has, in the past, proudly stated that its members in fact need not be Jewish. Mohyeldin allowed Schulman, unchallenged, to falsely claim, “for 75 years Palestinians have been murdered and displaced and incarcerated.” Schulman went on to falsely claim that Gaza has been under “occupation,” even though every single Israeli, civilian and soldier, was withdrawn from Gaza in 2005. Schulman claimed that “the conditions have been created that are completely untenable and they exploded,” and that “the violence is a consequence of the oppression,” even while insisting that she was not “excusing” Hamas’s attack.

• On Nov. 10, Dean Obeidallah, a guest on Joy Reid’s program, claimed that up to that point in the war, the IDF had killed “upwards of 4000 children.” There was not then, and still today is not, any way to know how many of the casualties are children, other than by taking Hamas’s word for

• On Nov. 11, Ayman Mohyeldin did a nine minute segment on conditions in the Gaza hospitals, featuring Hamas propagandists from the NGO Doctors without Borders, without mentioning IDF claims or evidence that Hamas was operating out of hospitals, especially Al-Shifa. On the same date, Mohyeldin also featured a two-anda-half minute segment on the Bedouin population of Israel that presented a completely distorted picture. The segment included NBC correspondent Jay Gray reporting that 15 Bedouins were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks and seven captured as hostages, as well as an interviewee who complained of rocket fire. But which party committed that attack, which party took those hostages, which party is firing the rockets that fall on them, MSNBC doesn’t say in this report. (After this report was broadcast, one of the hostages that it featured, Samer al-Talalka, tragically, was mistakenly killed by IDF fire.) Even worse was Mohyeldin’s criticism of Israel over the Bedouin community’s nomadic, off-thegrid lifestyle. When Israel tried about a decade ago to get the Bedouin into permanent housing, where they would have had electricity, running water, bomb shelters and Iron Dome protection, that plan was widely condemned as “ethnic cleansing” and abandoned. But again, Israel is blamed for the result. • On Nov. 12, Peter Beinart advocated that Marwan Barghouti be released from Israeli jail so that he would be able to assume a leadership role in the Palestinian Authority. Beinart neglected to mention that Barghouti has been convicted of murdering five people, downplaying his actions by saying only that Barghouti was “involved in armed attacks in the Second Intifada.” • CAMERA has previously described Ilan Pappé as “among the most extreme of a group of radical Israeli histoIsrael InSight • March 2020