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Let's talk about the "hostage exchange" Download YouTube 2023-11-26 (#157) < Previous Next > Renny Grinshpan with a few basics about the "hostage exchange" between Israel and Hamas Thank you @heyitsrenny Video Transcription: Coming soon

The Katz family story: Hostages held by Hamas sharing the stories Download YouTube 2023-10-26 (#046) < Previous Next > The story of the Katz family. Lior Katz Natanzon tells about the 6 members of her family who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th and about the nightmare she is going through Video Transcription: Coming soon

Why Israel's Response to Hamas Was Justified by Natasha Hausdorff Download YouTube 2024-01-24 (276) < Previous Next > Natasha Hausdorff on what is a proportional response to a terrorist attack?‎ What does genocide involve?‎ And is South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice justified?‎ Presenters: Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff Editor and Producer: Jimmy Mullen and Porter Kaufman Credits: UKLFI Charitable Trust Video Transcription: welcome to Brin and evat we are absolutely delighted to be joined by Natasha Hof who is an expert at international law and a UK barister and we're going to be talking about the current conflict between Israel and Hamas Natasha would you like to start with the events of October 7 the circumstances that that cause us to uh come together uh now three months after the 7th of October uh are unfortunate to say the least uh it was in the early hours of the 7th of October that Israel experienced an attack uh planned as we now know for at least two years by the internationally prescribed Terror organization Hamas uh an attack that began of course with uh the firing of rockets and air raid sirens and that now appears to have been a cover for Mass infiltrations through the border on a scale uh which overwhelmed uh The Limited Security Forces which were that time uh on a religious holiday um stationed around the Border area and we all know now of the atrocities that were committed by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations and by all accounts also by ordinary civilians who followed through those border breaches when I say this had been planned for a number of years it's important to understand that many people in Israel uh while they would have been shocked that such truly horrific events uh could have happened the nature of what happened uh may not have come as a surprise to many and that is because if you have followed uh the media uh and literature and educational resources uh specifically of of the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip but also across the palestin authority and and the West Bank um the nature of what was perpetrated was not surprising in fact uh it has been part of the um stated agenda certainly of Hamas but also of other Palestinian terrorist organizations uh and it is part and parcel unfortunately of an education system instituted 30 years ago through the Oslo Accords under the control of the Palestinian Authority in which uh suddenly the terrorists that crossed the border on the 7th of October had been educated from a very young age that the highest calling in life was martyrdom and uh that their their highest uh aim ought to be to slaughter as many Jews as possible 3,000 terrorists don't wake up one morning and decide that it's a good day to slaughter Jews and you do not create thousands of people who can perpetrate the kind of atrocities that we saw on the 7th of October cutting the uh belly open of a pregnant woman burning and beheading children maming them in front of their families Mass rape and Slaughter um and uh the mutilation of people uh both dead and alive that is not um conduct that I believe is natural in human beings and it has to be taught and instilled in a very uh concentrated Manner and and with a concerted effort and according to un statistics if we look at the number of children who are educated who have grown up in the unra school system un run schools three out of four of the terrorists who crossed the border on the 7th of October were educated in that school system were educated to commit those sorts of Terror atrocities there are also other factors uh that led to the ability of uh Hamas and other terrorist organizations to infiltrate into Israel to commit the atrocities of the 7th of October and when I say other Palestinian Terror organizations amongst the terrorists that committed those atrocities were pflp members uh the filiates of fata the so-called moderates in the West Bank that run the Palestinian Authority uh and there were Palestinian Islamic Jihad and it's important to remember that all of those terrorists who had previously been convicted and and some of those that planned the attack of the 7th of October were released in the gilad Shalit deal members of of Hamas and the N Force um they had been paid salaries continuously by the Palestine Authority the so-called moderates in this equation these Terror salaries under the pay for slay program which is enshrined in Palestinian law uh are paid to terrorists irrespective of what Banner they coales under and they are paid on the basis of the severity of their crimes how many many Jews they have managed to slaughter and the length of their sentences and so the incentivization of Terror and the education and indoctrination towards Terror that we have seen for a number of decades both contributed significantly to the 7th of October atrocities there is another factor that needs to be taken into account to understand the context uh of those events and that is international pressure for security concessions because was between uh January and August 2023 there were over 400,000 entrances from Gaza into Southern Israel mostly work permits uh permitting people from Gaza to come and work in the communities that lived in the South along the border with Gaza and we now know that these um entrances uh the workers that came over on these permits were Central to the planning of this attack an attack that involved uh units of terrorists spreading out across the southern communities uh with clear instructions uh paperwork that was found on them with maps detailed information house by house on a on a household by household basis how many people how many children whether there was a dog whether was a gun and what they were instructed to do to each family and when one takes into consideration that the people that lived in these Southern communities were amongst uh the most vocal proponents for coexistence for cooperation for initiatives uh for water supply uh in Gaza and uh economic initiatives uh driving Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip uh to hospital uh in Israel across the border when they were coming for treatment these are the people that were attacked uh these are the people that had done more than anyone else in Israel to seek to Foster positive relations with their neighbors uh and they paid for uh that with their blood uh and the security concessions one of which I've highlighted in the context of the permits that permitted people from the Gaza Strip to come into Israel on a regular basis were also unfortunately a very significant factor in the planning and the ability of Hamas to execute about what was the bloodiest day uh in Jewish history since the Holocaust thank you Natasha this it's a a difficult topic especially on a philosophy show because something that we do with all of our guests uh even if we agree with our guests which in this case I do is to present objections um that would be offered on the other side um so I'm going to try and do that even though I don't hold these objections U I don't normally have to give a caveat like that normally in flos we can play with positions but here this is a really serious topic um so one of the objections given and there's many but one of the objections given um is that the empirical data is wrong so these terrible things didn't happen or there's a minimizing so they'll so so objectives will say well there weren't any rapes there weren't um and then it's difficult to it's difficult to to argue against false accusations or false false news being propagated how false denials the case maybe false denials yeah so so so how do you go about trying to defend empirical claims um against people who try to minimize the horrors of of what happened very early in this process uh I was invited to um a debate at University College Dublin in Ireland and the very first uh contribution from the floor in terms of questions uh was where is your evidence to the 7th of October um and while it may have been surprising at the start of uh this process that immediately after those atrocities were committed um in a way we've got used to these false denials and of course that the straightforward answer to that is look at the material that Hamas themselves put out if you don't want to take the word of Israeli survivors Witnesses of the zaka team that collected these bodies and documented and gave interviews explaining uh the aftermaths of these victims of grotesque sexual assaults of gang rapes of broken pelvises of teenage girls uh that were simply left shot in the head after these violent sexual assaults had taken place if you're not prepared to take into account all of that overwhelming evidence and in the context of you know believing victims and uh the modern movement especially in relation to violence against women uh that is extraordinary in and of itself but put all over that aside and look at what Hamas have put out themselves because they haven't hidden their crimes and their atrocities on the contr they have celebrated them they have circulated footage of their atrocities with Glee and they have promised to do the 7th of October over and over again the fact that we also see schizophrenic uh changes to this you know on the one hand they say the 7th of October didn't happen and these are all Israeli lies or the atrocities were not committed or they only targeted combatants and not civilians I mean we know that's not the case because by the same token they also celebrate their crimes so um I I find that uh when dealing with false denials one really has to pick one's battle if people are not willing to engage uh with the obvious and the evidence uh that has been uh transmitted around the world and also compiled uh by the Israeli authorities uh in the sort of 42 minute long uh video of some of the atrocities captured on Hamas GoPros uh and the like um then uh then I think these are conversations that are probably not going to be productive so the Israeli response has been that in order to secure the safety of its citizens um to secure Jewish life not just in Israel but really around the world because Israel is a safe haven for all Jews that it is now imperative to eradicate amas now engaging in its War um there have been some horrible civilian casualties as I think you would find in any War can you tell us a bit about what are the requirements to fight a war that meets the international law standards of a just War uh so just War Theory and and I appreciate it on a philosophy show this is something uh that people will wish to engage in perhaps more so than any practicalities of it um is is very interesting from an academic standpoint um so far as Israel's response is concerned one doesn't need to go uh any further than a very very basic and fundamental uh aspect of customary international law if you will which is self-defense um it is not bestowed on any state this right of self-defense it is an inherent right of self-defense it is considered so fundamental it is recognized in article 51 of the UN Charter as being inherent uh and no one can take that away uh no circumstances can stop a state defending itself and critically defending its citizens that is of course any uh Democratic uh government's primary responsibility and in the context of exercising one's self-defense the rules of armed conflict govern what is lawful and what is not lawful in uh International humanitarian law the laws of war there are three key principles that govern a state's behavior in armed conflict the rule of military necessity means that a state can only undertake action which is militarily necessary to advance its military aims uh a second rule of international uh humanitarian law is the rule of Distinction which means that law- abiding states are required to distinguish between combatants and civilians and only combatants and Military objects may be targeted by strikes um and civilians and civilian objects are not permitted to be targeted uh but they may unfortunately come into a calculation of uh proportionality and the proportionality role is the third key rule in the law of armed conflict and that requires that a strike that is militarily necessary and that targets military infrastructure military targets must nonetheless also be proportionate which means that the anticipated military advantage of a strike uh must be balanced against the anticip ated likely civilian collateral damage the international law uh as a framework in armed conflict works on the Assumption the basis that civilians uh will unfortunately be killed uh in the that is a a gruesome uh deadly uh context that war is and that is perhaps the most misrepresented uh rule of customary international law and the law of armed conflict uh it's frequently suggested that proportionality is about balancing casualty figures on both sides I mean that is um grotesque it is plainly incorrect as a matter of law but also as a matter of of Common Sense uh I'd say it's objectionable uh that there needs to be a uh comparison of casualty figures it leads to the um uh ultimate conclusion that you not enough Jews have died to uh justify Israel's response and taking out uh Hamas that that is not how how uh Common Sense uh operates but it's also not how international law operates um the rule of proportionality as I was describing uh requires uh a balance between the military uh Advantage sought to be gained and the anticipated collateral damage and that is conducted uh on the basis of the information that is known to a military commander in real time it's an intention based uh Rule and Analysis it's not based on on the effects and mistakes are sometimes made especially in the in the dangerous circumstances and the fog of War but uh the real critical thing to assess is how an army uh operates how it goes about selecting strikes and applying the laws of armed conflict and in Israel's case the military Advocate General core uh which is the legal department of the IDF sits outside of the chain of command it is answerable to the Attorney General so that those officers in the mag Corp are able to tell more senior officers in the IDF chain of command yes or no with respect to uh the Striking decisions and what law says and that's critical it tells us that Israel puts adherence to international law extremely highly but I would also uh warrant that uh in Israel's case it goes above the requirements of the laws of armed conflict especially with respect to the principle of precaution which is another aspect of the laws of armed conflict but requires law abiding armies to take precautions to minimize civilian casualties Israel in fact goes over and above uh both requirements of international law and standard practice of modern uh law-abiding armies in the warnings that it issues to civilians in uh the text messages that it sends to individual householders the phone calls that it makes uh the efforts that the IDF have uh undertaken in this Exchange in Gaza as in previous rounds of conflict in the Gaza Strip are unparalleled in the history of warfare uh and uh that is I think also Testament not just to the legal adherence but also the morality the code of ethics that the IDF operates to so one of the arguments put forward is that there isn't proper proportionality here um that too many Palestinian civilians have died specifically children I think the number that's floated is 4,000 Palestinian children have died um in the conflict and the question is how do you do the calculation so suppose there's a famous terrorist or there's a bunch of class terrorist in an area where there's a whole lot of children that's it's in a school um what is the what is the calculation in in in pressing the fire button on on that missile you know at what at what point a different way to phrase the question is at what point is it is it not okay um how many children would you need in the vicinity for it not to be okay and once you reach that answer let's say it's 10 children for everyone from a spider or 100 children for everyone from the sper can't you work your way back and say well you know if it's not okay to kill 100 children surely it's not okay to kill one child so one of the arguments put forward is well ifas has embeded themselves in a civilian ation which it seems is very much a part of their their ethic or lack of Ethics um doesn't doesn't that put further constraints on Israel to do anything at all um that involves Southern in casualties if that were the case it would give Kamas and other uh likeminded terrorist organizations uh immunity so I would say that cannot be the case and it certainly isn't the case in international law when we come to the calcul ations that you've described we are hamstrung in this instance because we do not have reliable numbers of casualty figures coming out of the Gaza Strip what Hamas have been putting out through the Ministry of Health that they control in the Gaza Strip uh are figures that cannot be trusted and critically they do not make um a distinction between civilians and combatants they also do not uh identify how it is that uh these reported casualty figures uh have come about their demise it's important to remember that Hamas have been shooting uh fleeing civilians the United States have confirmed amongst others that this is the case bombing also civilian convoys in the first few weeks of this conflict uh this began uh because they are so desperate to hang on to uh their human shields uh because uh from Hamas this is a win-win situation uh if it drives up casualty figures uh purported casualty figures or real ones then there is international pressure on Israel uh to cease its lawful um objectives of uh of of annihilating Hamas and making sure that the threat against Israeli civilians is taken away uh and if it succeeds in uh dispelling Israeli attacks as it has done in many cases where Israel has had to call off proposed strikes because there were too many civilians in the vicinity then it also succeeds in um uh in its immunity uh from uh from the law otherwise lawful attack on a military uh installation Hamas stronghold or a rocket launch site um the numbers here are are as I say uh very difficult to navigate but it's important to do so in the proper context um even going according to Hamas figes uh and the Israeli figure of 9,000 combatants which it is confirmed it has killed 9,000 terrorists that is identified through intelligence that it knows that it is taken out then we are even according to the K casualty figures that we cannot trust we're looking at a potential civilian to combatant ratio that Israel has estimated of 2 to one now that sounds awful that two civilians are killed to every one combatant and it needs to be seen in its proper context because all war is awful and according to the United Nations the global average for urban Warfare such as this is a staggering nine to one civilians killed so nine civilians to one combatant sorry uh in terms of casualty ratios according uh to the Americans um their statistics for Iraq and Afghanistan are between uh 1 to three and 1 to five 5 to1 3: one so three civilians killed for every one combatant and five civilians for every one combatant respectively so in all of those respects in all of those contexts despite the Hamas tactics here despite the unparalleled and unprecedented challenges that Israel is encountering of Hamas embedding themselves in schools and Hospitals and Clinics and using ambulances to transport weapons and um and fighter and uh it seems now that the tactic that has been uh well documented is that Hamas Fighters dressed in civilian clothes move from house to house every second uh civilian residential house in Gaza it would seem has a weapons caching in it uh Hamas Fighters move between houses and civilian clothing go into a house fire from it and then leave and go on to the next weapons Casher in the next house uh thereby seeking to uh evade um uh attack by pretending to be civilians as well as embedding themselves of course amongst real civilians women and children the sick and the elderly and of course we also know amongst Israeli hostages um Israel has said it knows where yya Sina uh is and it has him in its sights but he has surrounded himself with Israeli hostages seeking to render himself immune from Attack in the context of these tactics the civilian to combatant ratio is remarkable that Israel has been able to achieve but it is Testament to the length that Israel goes to protect the civilians in the Gaza Strip uh not just from Israeli uh strikes but also from attack from Kat themselves now we're speaking on the 15th of janary and uh a couple of days ago the sou African government um put forward its case before for the international court of justice and Israel was able to respond the following day um the afrian government provided Israel with very scant opportunity to put in a defense their papers were filed on the 29th of December and they wanted a hearing within days um which is what they really got um what do you make of the case made by South Africa the South African government claims that Israel is committing genocide a particularly uh egregious thing to say about the only Jewish Nation where people really did endure a genocide um and then what do you make of Israel's response to that case well the reason that South Africa has levied this particular Canard of genocide against the Jewish state is because it provides a hook for jurisdiction at the international court of justice um let me be clear there is no validity No Merit neither the facts or the law as South Africa are seeking to advance it in its case against Israel uh and its victory in uh the application that it made uh against Israel the international court of justice as you say on Thursday last week uh was as a as a public relations exercise this was a set of submissions made the international media and in that respect uh they have um certainly been uh able to achieve a margin of success because the discussion now is as uh as Preposterous as uh as it would uh as as Preposterous as it is uh the discussion is about whether or not Israel is committing a genocide the irony of this should not be lost uh ironic because the term genocide was coined by Raphael lkin in the aftermath of the second world war to give a legal uh lexicon to the annihilation of substantial part of the Jewish people who were exterminated because of their race and so the crime of genocide is about intending to destroy a people in whole or in part because of who they are now I've talked about some of the measures that Israel has taken to protect the Palestinian civilians in Gaza much of the submission that Israel put forward on Friday of last week also evidenced the unparalleled humanitarian efforts and initiatives that Israel has been conducting in the Gaza Strip and that uh coupled with the precautions that are being taken by the IDF uh ultimately put the lie to what the South Africans were seeking to advance in terms of intention um in the context of the 84-page application that South Africa Advanced the intention aspects were covered by a series of misrepresentations of quotes of Israeli officials um where they were talking about Kamas and the South African uh legal team uh presented these quotations as though uh the Israelis were seeking to um eliminate the Palestinian people as opposed to Hamas well the intention is clear from the context of the quotations but it's also clear from the actions on the ground uh that Israel has gone above and beyond to protect the Palestinian people even though Hamas continues to subjugate abuse and uh seek to uh offer them up as um as as civilian uh sacrifices to their war effort um whether or not uh South Africa will be successful in uh what it seeks to achieve even in the immediate term which are provisional measures and this is this is why the case was heard so quickly um when you say that it didn't give Israel a chance to respond I'm afraid it's even worse than that it transpired from uh Israel's submissions on the Friday that the usual course uh which is that one state um interacts corresponds with another to establish uh whether there is a dispute if so what the nature of that dispute between the two states is before an application is brought to the Court of uh the international court of justice it transpires that that that wasn't done and it also uh was part of Israel's case that South Africa has in fact misled the court as to the correspondence that took place Between the States before uh the application was made and the reason this is significant uh is because South Africa has by all accounts jumped the gun has made this application but without following through the proper processes the accepted procedure of engaging with the state of Israel before going to the court which would mean that the court has no jurisdiction to even hear the matter um so we'll have to see what the international court of justice determines but it is of critical importance not just to Israel but to all law-abiding states upholders of the rule of law because the international court of justice is currently being abused by South Africa South Africa that seems to be championing the terrorists Hamas the internationally prescribed terrorist organization and Hamas came out to formerly thank South Africa for their good work at the international court of justice in the wake of their submissions um so the fact that uh the South African seek to promote the cause of Hamas are seeking an order or an indication from the court that Israel should immediately cease its operation in Gaza against Hamas its lawful self-defense um means that uh in very many respects I think there can be arguments that the South Africans are themselves now complicit in the genocide that Hamas began on the 7th of October and is seeking to continue and here we're talking about real genocide acts that a couple with the intent to eradicate Jews and Hamas leadership has been clear about that so in this Topsy Turvy uh World in which we live and this grotesque inversion of hamas's application um the danger of this is is not necessarily strictly for for Israel I mean if if the court um orders Israel to cease it its self-defense that is of course contrary to its inherent rights under international law and I cannot see a situation in which Israel would be able to sit on its hands while its civilians are continuing uh to be subject to bombardment by Hamas and while uh Hamas are continuing to to seek to replicate the 7th of October and while they hold over a hundred hostages that they are are doubtless continuing um to abuse so in those circumstances I cannot uh see what practical impact provisional measures ordered by the court would have other than to utterly undermine The credibility of the court and I think this much has been recognized by the United States by the United Kingdom by Germany who have all come out to condemn what they consider to be a meritless case and Germany in particular has said that it will be making submissions on Israel's behalf if this matter moves past the preliminary stage to the substantive hearings uh the reason we need to watch this space as I think lawyers uh is is not just because of uh potential ramifications for for Israel in international legal discourse but critically also for where the international court of justice is heading because if it has now also become a casualty of lawfare which is an abuse of legal processes and an abuse of legal institutions to promote a political agenda then that is a very sad day for international law and order L return to the humanitarian question um I think think your point is very well put that Israel has aided in humanitarian um efforts one of the objections put forward uh by the pro Palestinian side is that Israel has generated a humanitarian nightmare um by moving large parts of Gaza to other parts of Gaza by um undermining um their productive rights because Hospital facilities that allow for wom to to give birth safety have been undermined um how do you how do you uh weigh up those sort of claims um against against Israel's objective to to eliminate Kamas well I think the first thing is that these claims need to be called out for being false uh in terms of uh the hospitals allegation uh it's clear and there is mounting evidence of Hamas systematically using hospital and medical facilities as Terror command and control centers and as critical parts of its Terror infrastructure this is not just a a violation of the laws of armed conflict it is a grotesque violation when one considers that hospitals in particular are the most protected um buildings in the context of the laws of AR conflict even a military hospital is protected uh if it is being used solely for the purpose of of treating uh military wounded and here Hamas is is abusing the laws of AR conflict uh to further these aims and quite the contrary Israel has been very careful with respect to uh dealing with the terror infrastructure embedded in these hospitals uh in Al sheifer of course rather than bombarding the hospital it went in uh at Great danger and threat to uh to the um soldiers themselves but they went into the hospital with medics with Arabic speakers in order to try and distinguish the uh terrorist combatants from uh the legitimate sick uh and medical star and this I stress was after repeated warnings uh and requests that people Evacuate the hospital uh and that leads me on to the the first point that you uh raised which is to do with the movement of of civilians uh in Gaza let me be clear Israel cannot uh and certainly at the start of this process when it gave the civilian population 3 weeks to evacuate the north of Gaza before it began its operations there against Hamas Israel had no control or power to force civilian movements anywhere it sought to create safe corridors and safe areas humanitarian zones which in fact Hamas specifically fired at Israel from again uh abusing uh the the the very essence of of the laws of armed conflict and the principle of dis of separating between civilians and combatants Hamas does not do that um but quite apart from Israel having any ability to uh to force civilians to move anywhere what it did was was seek to uh provide safe routes for evacuation and encourage civilians to leave the central terrorist infrastructure in the north of uh the Gaza Strip in order to save their lives and for that to be so utterly inverted and used again Israel in this fashion uh is Kafkaesque uh it is um I think also probably unparalleled in in the history of international law that one has such a grotesque inversion of reality and the truth uh and uh it being used to ground allegations of of that nature so that's the first thing that we need to do is call out the falsehoods here and when it comes to balancing well you know that's all to do with the proportionality exercise uh that Israel is required to uh conduct uh and it does so and and we see the results of that um many of of the casualties uh that the IDF have suffered uh as a result of going house to house are because Israel is trying to conduct this conflict in a surgical fashion and ensure that it targets the Hamas terrorists in amongst the civilian uh population that has uh refused to comply uh that has refused to uh evacuate um and uh we're seeing on a daily basis uh the result of that unfortunate um the unfortunate consequences of that but it is a decision that Israel takes because uh it holds so highly the preservation of all civilian life so one move that's often made in these discussions is to claim that Israel has been uh unfairly targeted that the number of resolutions at the United Nations that Target Israel I think far exceeds those against all other countries in the world uh that many of those that sit on human rights councils those states are involved in horrendous human rights trusties that uh in South Africa you find that there's very little condemnation of the treatment of Muslims around the world that no one talks about the weers no one talks about who were being killed in Sudan in fact the South African government provided a safe passage to um someone who was charged with genocide Omar Al Basher um that he was um um allowed to escape um from South Africa despite South Africa signing the Rome statute which would have obliged it to hand a share off to the ICC so there's that claim and the other claim is that whenever any of these examples are brought up the claim is that it's a whataboutism that you're changing the topic in an unfair manner so how do we distinguish between those two things whether one is to provide a context and the other is to unfairly change the topic um the issue here is that it's not simply what about um it's not that you know Israel is a uh violator of international law but so are loads of others and everyone's focusing on Israel it's that um actors like the South Africans but they're certainly not alone and the references that you made to un resolutions are a case in point um they attribute to Israel uh breaches of international law which are simply not true while at the same time ignoring the real real violations of international law and the real abuses of Human Rights the disproportionate focus on Israel um would be terrible uh if Israel was just as much of a human rights violator as all of the others that were lacking in in a lens being placed upon them uh but the reason that it is uh so much worse than that is because of the Fabrications around Israel uh and the uh the human rights situation um this I think uh ultimately can only be explained by uh what has been referred to as a as an evolution of anti-Semitism um a mutating virus that anti-Semitism is it it takes on different forms in throughout the ages in fact uh the late great Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs um the former Chief Rabbi of of the United Kingdom uh talked about this mutating virus that began in in the Middle Ages uh with a focus on Jews as a religion and one had the ancient blood liables of Jews killing Christian children to use their blood to make M for religious rituals he explained that when science took over from religion as the order of the day the hatred of the Jews mutated into a hatred of the Jewish race and so the Cudo science of eugenics was used by the Nazis to justify their hatred of the Jewish race and Lord sax explained that in uh the modern era international law and human rights even had taken over uh from science as the order of the day and so the hatred of the Jews manifested itself as a hatred of the Jewish State and the modern blood lables are those that we see being AED against Israel at institutions like the United Nations ethnic cleansing colonialism occupation oppression apartheid illegality human rights violations War CRI crimes these are the modern blood lials and so it's important not just to point out where the real violation of The Happening which I appreciate as what you refer to as water Bouy but to call out the untruths against the only Jewish State because the blood liable in the Middle Ages was widely believed and these modern blood libl have gained traction because of this process of lawfare which has been decades in the making and because of armies of NOS that manufacture these allegations and and pseudo evidence that they uh seek to put before uh International legal organizations and uh the application that was Advanced by South Africa cited chapter and verse much of uh that false material seeking uh through its application in fact and through the consideration of the court of these reports to to receive the the judicial stamp of approval on these falsehoods that is an integral part of the lawfare process that South Africa have adopted and another important parallel track and aim uh that is uh being sought to be achieved through the through the case at the international court of justice and it's important that we we call that out not just say there is disproportionate focus on Israel but also there is utterly wrongful focus on Israel on the basis of false allegations you mentioned occupation and that seems to be one of the the the feat in this argument um that's been used since the beginning um what what is the argument um that's been put forward for Israel's occupation of Gaza that it is an occupation and has been for decades and and why is it a poor argument well the argument that's Advanced and I don't think it's taken seriously by any um International lawyers wor worth their salt is that um because uh there is a an argument that Israel control again it's it's based on F premises so it runs like this Israel controls uh the Gaza Strip because it controls the uh borders it controls the airspace it controls shipping and what goes in um now that is factually incorrect of course because if anyone looked at a map they would see that Gaza also borders Egypt as well as Israel uh but the reason that it's also uh even if that were the case it would be legally incorrect is because that is not how the occupation uh framework operates uh and that is why the the term occupation here is being used as a as a political term it is without legal basis it is an abuse of international law um under the ha regulations occupation requires effective control well you can see that Israel has not had any control over the Gaza Strip because over the last 16 years Hamas has turned it into a terror base and since Israel withdrew in 2005 and then subsequently there were elections in 2006 and Hamas uh launched a violent takeover a coup in 2007 uh Israel has not had any control of what goes on in the Gaza Strip uh and in excess of its International legal obligations it has however continued to supply um the Palestinians in Gaza uh with uh with supplies with humanitarian supplies with a portion of of its water and a portion of its electricity by no means all of it there was a great deal of factual misrepresentation that is uh that is at issue here but when we look at the concept of occupation I think we need to look at you know where it has come from and what international law says about the legal status of the territory and here where faced with a with another massive misrepresentation and and misapplication of international law there is a universal rule uh that tells us the borders of a state when it comes into existence it is a matter of customary international law it is called ostis Urus and it seems to be applied absolutely everywhere except with respect to the Jewish States so this is a rule that developed uh in the 18th 19th century it was applied in South America the withdrawal of the the Spanish it was applied in Asia in Africa uh the dissolution of the former communist federations and it was applied to all the states that emerged from mandates um the international court of justice recognized the development of this rule oset Urus in the bino Mal uh in the bikin Faso Mali case in the 1980s and it talked about why this rule had come into existence um this rule dictated that uh dictates still that a new state when it comes into existence inherit the pre-existing administrative lines that preceded it um so whatever entity was there before if a state comes in it declares itself within that territory then the lines absent any agreement to the contrary so this is a default rule those administrative lines become the new State's International borders and when the court analyzed the emergence of this rule it talked about the reasons that it had developed to provide stability and certainty and to prevent fractu cdal struggles uh and to provide clean lines well in Israel's case after uh the severance by the British of the uh trans Jordan part of the Mandate which later became the hashimite kingdom uh the eastern boundary of the British mandate in 1948 ran along the Jordan River and all the way south to the red to to the Red Sea uh so when Israel declares independence in 1948 it's the only state the only state to come into existence the Declaration of Independence doesn't make any mention of Borders or boundaries it simply refers to Israel the land of Israel butus works as a default rule it works in the absence of any agreement to the country and according to the application of this Universal rule of customary international law Israel inherited the pre-existing administrative lines of the Mandate as as its International borders now in the context of uh the eastern boundary that included the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the context of of the western boundary with Egypt that included Gaza that was part of the British mandate territory now in 1948 Israel is attacked immediately at its Declaration of Independence and Jordan occupies uh the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Egypt occupies Gaza what happens in 1967 Israel recovers that territory in in Jordan uh from Jordan uh the east east Jerusalem and West Bank that had been ethnically cleansed by the jordanians of their Jews Israel recovers that territory so what is the status of that territory if it was originally Israeli Sovereign territory and then under Jordanian occupation what happens when Israel takes it back we have a parallel example a modern one in the context of Russ Russia and Ukraine so Ukraine's borders were formed according to the rule of oset Urus and that is why it is uh generally accepted that Crimea is part of Ukraine and Russia has occupied Crimea from Ukraine in the same way that Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Israel and if Ukraine were to recover Crimea in the context of this war that Russia has waged against it would anyone accuse Ukraine of occupying Crimea from Russia of course not and yet we have an inversion of international law when it comes to Israel now it's critical to be clear that we're talking about the underlying status of the territory this doesn't presuppose what any political settlement ought to look like uh and plainly when Israel recovered that territory in the West Bank in 1967 it it instituted a temporary Administration it did not apply its law administration and sovereignty in full in the same way that it did in Jerusalem because it anticipated under the land for peace formula that it would uh inevitably provide a portion of that land to Jordan as part of the peace agreement when that peace agreement finally came around in 1994 uh the jordanians didn't want any part of it so that ship sailed and subsequently Israel has consistently sought to negotiate under that land for peace formula uh with the Palestinians and Oslo was the Oslo process was a critical part of that but that's all the politics of this if we're talking about the law and being honest about the application of international law to the status of the territory then this term occupation has no place here it is a political term it has no legal uh basis if it's the case Israel is able to eradicate Hamas what obligations does it have to the Palestinians who reside there what obligations does it have to its own citizens so what should be done going forward that's a big question um when I talked about uh the absence of occupation as a as a legitimate framework in international law um of course that is the case as of uh the 6th of October the 7th of October and suddenly through the the early period uh of Israel's war in Gaza um the situation on the ground is changing all of the time and if and when it gets to a point where Israel does in fact have effective control over some of the territory uh then the legal framework and that position will change um so that's something to be mindful of but in the context of you know what happens essentially the day after this war the day after Israel is able to successfully eradicate Hamas um that is a big question and I think the best uh proposals that I have seen uh that have been muted so far rely on uh Going Back to Basics in terms of the uh culture and the society and the societal building blocks in the Gaza Strip and ensuring that uh rather than a uh terrorist organization an extremist um prescribed group like Hamas uh which is essentially a proxy for the Iranian regime rather than importing the Palestinian Authority who support terrorism through their pay for slay program and their indoctrination program um there ought to be self-governance in the Gaza Strip and security uh and a a provision to make sure that nothing like hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip can ever happen again there are proposals for uh if you will a formulation along the lines of the Marshall Plan uh to rebuild uh German after the second world war that are being muted also uh but they have to be seen in parallel and alongside a densification process a process that grapples with uh the rotten education system the UN rum unra schools that are promoting terrorism and indoctrinating child abuse indoctrinating kindergarten children uh to want to grow up to become terrorists that has to be grappled with because there will never be a solution in which uh the Gaza Strip ceases to pose a threat to Israel while that indoctrination continues and the International Community have to take responsibility for it because it is with International funding of these textbooks and these schools and these un run programs that they have been fueling the conflict and that is something that the world needs to stand up and take responsibility for and make sure that going forward the same mistakes are not repeated well Natasha I want to thank you for an absolutely incredible conversation um you've provided so much light at a time of darkness and I just applaud the work that you continue to do um to ensure that everybody finds out what is really happening in Israel um happening with the law and uh I just wish you all of the best thank you so much it's very good to be with you and I very much hope for better times for all of us

Free Palestine! Wait what? Download YouTube 2023-11-03 (#078) < Previous Next > Free Palestine! Wait what? An argument over the meaning of the "From the River to the Sea" slogan. When you're chanting "from the river to the sea", you're actually calling for 7 million Jews to be killed and the establishment of a jihadist state. Video Transcription: Coming soon

Imagine the horror of the hostages Download YouTube 2023-10-21 (#019) < Previous Next > Bring Them Home Now. The horror stories and the suffering of the hostages. Liri Roman's brother Yarden has disappeared without trace. Eyal Nouri is the nephew of Adina and Saeed Moshe. Moshe was murdered by the terrorists and Adina, aged 72, was kidnapped and taken to Gaza. The entire family of Lior Katz Natnazon was kidnapped: her mother, Efrat Katz, is 68, her mother's boyfriend is 79, her sister Doron is 34, Doron's 2 daughters, Raz, 4 and 1/2 years old and Aviv, 2 and 1/2 years old. The relatives of the hostages tell what they know: that the victims heard the terrorists in the neighbor's house, that the terrorists set the house on fire, Moran Aloni, brother of Daniel and Sharon, and uncle of Yuli, Ema, Emilia and David was told by his sister that smoke was coming under the door and choking them. She proclaimed their love and said they probably wouldn't survive.. Lior Peri's father, Haim, and his friend together with a group of elderly, sick people were abducted. Video Transcription: Coming soon

Satirical Spotlight on Ignorant Pro-Hamas Campus Protests in Western Universities Download YouTube 2023-11-06 (#090) < Previous Next > A satirical take on the ignorance of pro-Hamas Columbia University students. If it weren't so sad, it would be hilarious! Video Transcription: Coming soon

Impression of a Western doctor who worked at Shifa Hospital (France 24) Download YouTube 2023-11-19 (#134) < Previous Next > Impression of a Western doctor who worked at Shifa Hospital (France 24) Video Transcription: Coming soon

What is the proper response by western governments? Download YouTube 2023-11-29 (#165) < Previous Next > According to Human Rights activist Ayaan Hisri Ali, the proper response of Western governments should be to stand up to evil and do what President Biden, Prime Minister Sunak and others did: to state that they stand squarely behind Israel, because this monster is coming for everybody... Video Transcription: Coming soon

The chilling story of 4-year-old Abigail, who was released from Hamas captivity. Download YouTube 2023-11-29 (#166) < Previous Next > The chilling story of 4-year-old Abigail, who was recently released from Hamas captivity, and the survival story of her siblings on MSNBC Those wounds will never heal. Video Transcription: Coming soon

Woke leaders posing as ‘moral superiors’ exposed as ‘real lowlifes’ Download YouTube 2024-01-02 (255) < Previous Next > Spiked Online chief political reporter Brendan O’Neill warns there has been a “complete collapse” of moral authority in the West from the “woke left” since the Hamas attack on October 7. Actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry came under fire on social media for calling out the surge in anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom in his heartfelt Christmas message. “What is my message this Christmas? Simple truth that we are all brothers and sisters. It's naive, but it's as good a message as any other,” Fry said. Mr O’Neill condemned people who took offence to the actor’s message and pointed out the rise of anti-Semitism since Hamas’ attack on October 7. “The kind of people who posed as our moral superiors for the past few decades have been exposed as real lowlifes, I think, who don't actually care about racism, don't care about equality, certainly don't care about Jewish people, and are only interested in using so-called anti-racism as a way of fortifying their own cultural power over society,” he told Sky News host James Macpherson. “They really stand exposed and I think the fallout from the Fry video really demonstrates that even further.” Video Transcription: well while King Charles was giving his Christmas message on the BBC Steven fry was invited to give the alternate Christmas message on channel four the much loved British actor explained that he had Jewish Heritage and asked his fellow Brits to exercise tolerance for each other no matter their race or religion have a listen but whatever our opinions on what is happening there can be no excuse for the behavior of some of our citizens since October the 7th there have been 50 separate reported incidents of anti-Semitism every single day in London alone an increase of 1,350 according to the Metropolitan Police so what is my message this Christmas the simple truth that we're all brothers and sisters it's naive but it's as good a message as any other let's bring in spiked Chief political writer Brendan o Neil Brendan I would have thought that was all pretty good stuff and yet as a result of that rather benign Christmas message Steven fry has received the most vile abuse what on Earth is going on in England yeah you think no one could take offense at a message like that you know Steven fry is famously a National Treasure here he's very Gentile he's he's quite Posh he's loved widely across the country and then he does this alternative Christmas message on the scourge of anti-semitism and the woke mob went absolutely bananas they went crazy they went on the internet they called him every name under the sun words I could never repeat on a show like this uh they called him a narcissist they said he's a genocide apologist in reference to Israel's war with herass they really went for the jugular with Steven fry and these are the kind of people who pose as anti-racists who think everything is racist if you ask ask someone where are you from apparently that's a racial microaggression if you say anything critical about Islam apparently that's islamophobia these people see racism everywhere except when it's staring them in the face and there has been a severe rise in anti-Semitism in Britain over the past 10 weeks and these people just don't want to know they say they care about racism but when it comes to anti-jewish racism they either turn away or they actually justify it as a form of opposition to Israel yeah well it seems like the only form of racism that is permitted and racism is terrible but when it comes to to anti-Semitism somehow everybody just shrugs their shoulders and lets that go but how is it that he can just simply warn people that anti-Semitism is not a great thing and yet for his reward receive abuse doesn't that prove his point that anti-Semitism is rife you can't even warn against it yeah it's so interesting isn't it you know I think since Hams's pogram of the 7th of October we've witnessed something really striking in the west I think which is the complete collapse of the moral authority of the woke left and the woke Elites you know these are the kind of people who for years have posed as caring and loving and wonderful people who just want equality and just want everyone to be treated fairly and nicely we now know uh courtesy of the barbarism of 7th of October what a myth that was because they have made excuses for the pogram of the 7th of October they've said it was a form of resistance there's one journalist here in Britain who it a day of Celebration uh and since then they have turned a blind eye to Soaring an levels of anti-Semitism in Britain and other countries in Europe as well here in the UK there have been 50 anti-semitic attacks a day in London alone that is Crisis level racism and they've turned a blind eye to that as well and then when Steven Fry tried to raise the alarm Bells about it they made fun of him on the internet and they denounced him so the kind of people who've posed as our moral superiors for the past few decades have been exposed as real low lives I think who don't actually care about racism don't care about equality certainly don't care about Jewish people and are only interested in using so-called anti-racism as a way of fortifying their own cultural power over Society so they really stand exposed and I think the fry uh The Fallout from the fry video really demonstrates that even further just before we move on I want to ask you one more question on this topic you wrote regarding the Steven fry Fiasco that confronting islamists and woke anti-semites is the pressing issue of our time now I agree with you but can you talk to me about this Nexus between islamists and the woke left because they would seem to have nothing at all in common and yet they obviously do how does that work yeah they do you know in France they refer to it as the Islam left you know in France uh there are some still still some intellectuals and politicians who are willing to confront this strange Nexus as you describe it and I think the Islam left is is a woke left that has become very sympathetic to radical Islam and as you say it's very strange but I do think they share some things in common both sides are very hostile to Western civilization we know that lots of young people in the west are now educated to turn their backs on Western Civilization to reject the dead white men of of enlightenment and to reject uh uh White authors and so on and so forth they're encouraged to see Western Civilization as a racist construct essentially and of course radical islamists hate Western Civilization as well um they both also think that islamophobia is a crime that should be punishable anyone who criticizes Islam uh should be punished that the work left calls it islamophobia and the islamists call it blasphemy but this it's the same thing they want to silence their critics and I think they both have a problem with Jews you know uh radical islamists are upfront about their anti-Semitism including Hamas they're vant anti-semitic whereas the woke left prefers to attack the Jewish State and to focus its hatred on Israel but both of them have a problem with Jewish people so there are these weird commonalities between the woke left and radical Islam giving rise to what is called Islam leftism and it is something that I think is very worrying and has a destructive impact on our societies

2023 - Jews do not feel physically safe on campus. Download YouTube 2023-10-30 (#066) < Previous Next > At Columbia University, Jews are not feeling safe! Jewish students are receiving death threats from their peers. The university is providing no emotional support or feedback, nor are there any consequences for the perpetrators . The only reponse they get is "you are not experiencing antisemitism". "F** the Jews" are words that were said in Columbia's Law School building. On a Cornell online discussion forum, someone threatened to slit the throats of Jews. Jewish students were scared to leave their rooms and the kosher dining hall was locked down. A mob of anti-Israel students trapped Jewish students in the library. This is happening in America 2023, not 1942 Nazi Europe! Video Transcription: Coming soon

The Last Line of Defense By Bari Weiss Download YouTube 2023-11-18 (#130) < Previous Next > If you view one video this year, it should be this. The battle for America's soul is the battle to defeat antisemitism and woke culture. Bari Weiss, an American journalist, writer, and editor, talks at The Federalist Society . Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture The Federalist Society November 10, 2023 Washington, D.C. By the "The Free Press". The Free Press is a new media company founded by Bari Weiss. Honest. Independent. Fearless. A free press for free people. Join them . https://www.thefp.com/ Video Transcription: Thank you so much. When Jean gave me the list of people who had previously given the Barbara Olsen lecture, I was absolutely sure that you guys had made a mistake in inviting me. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a legal scholar. I'm not a former attorney general. In my time at the Wall Street Journal, I edit dozens of op eds about Chevron deference. But I'm still not sure what the hell that means. I'm also not a member of the Federalist Society. My parents, who are here in the front row, who probably couldn't afford the local country club, raised us on the Groucho Marks line that I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. And then there's the question of my politics. I hear you guys are conservative, so forgive me. Then I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're standing on the ancestral indigenous land of Leonard Leo. I read in ProPublica that this is his turf. But then I Googled Barbara Olsen. I had the privilege of editing some op eds by Ted back in the day, and I knew that his wife had been murdered by Al Qaeda in 911. But over the past few weeks, in my non spare time, I spent a bunch of it reading about Barbara herself. I read about a Texas girl, the daughter of German immigrants, who was ferociously independent. I read about how she, a Catholic, wound up at Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University. And I read about how she, as an intern at the Department of Justice, was apparently the only person with sufficient chutzpah to personally serve the papers at the PLO mission to the UN. And I learned that she was on American Airlines Flight 77 because she was headed to LA to be on Bill Maher's show, and because she had changed her flight so she could have a birthday dinner with Ted. And I learned that she had the composure and the clarity and the courage to call him not just once, but twice in those horrifying moments before the plane slammed into the Pentagon. There is a phrase that Jews say when a person dies, and that phrase is, may their memory be for a blessing. And it's an expression of hope. But it is so clear in the case of Barbara Olsen and the way that the force of her life and her character extends and echoes on, that, it is very much a blessing fulfilled. To say that I am honored to give a lecture in the name of such an exceptional woman would be an understatement. So thank you. It is also, since the massacre of October 7, a date that will be seared into the memory of civilized people alongside September 11. Profoundly fitting. I don't think it's a coincidence that Israel is the only country outside of America which is home to a 911 memorial bearing every single one of the victims names. And, of course, that is what we must talk about tonight. The civilizational war we are in. The war that took the life of Barbara Olsen and 3000 other innocent Americans on that morning of September 2001, and the war that came hideously across the border from Gaza into Israel on that Shabbat morning a month ago. The war that too many foolishly thought had ended, the physical war currently raging in the Middle East. With this. Questions about the right way to defeat Hamas and other members of the jihadi death cult, the kind of Operation Israel should be pursuing in Gaza, how America should abandon its fatal appeasement of Iran, and a hundred other strategic questions. Those are subjects for another speech, and one for which there are many more qualified people to deliver. Tonight, I'd like to talk about the war of ideas, of conviction, and of will that faces us as Americans. I want to talk about the stakes of that war and how we must wage it, fearlessly and relentlessly, if we seek to build a world fit for our children, and if we want to save America itself. By the time Americans woke up on October 7, 2023, it was clear that what had unfolded while we slept was not like previous wars or battles that Israel had fought in its 75 year history. This was a genocidal pogrom. It was a scene out of the places that Jews had fled, a scene out of the history of the Nazi Holocaust, or the European pogroms before that, or of the Farhud, the 1941 massacre of Jews in Baghdad, a city that it's hard to believe now was 40% Jewish at the beginning of the 20th century. All of these scenes reminding us of Israel's necessity. The Hamas terrorists came across the border into southern Israel on foot and on motorbike. They came by truck and by car and by Paraglider, and they came with a plan. They came to Israel to maim and to murder and to mutilate anyone that they could find, and that is what they did. These were Cossacks with smartphones. They called their families to brag that they had murdered Jews. Dad. Dad, I killed ten Jews, said one. Others film the slaughter from their GoPros. Some use cell phones of the victims themselves to upload the footage of their torture and their murder, so their families would have to encounter it first on their Facebook pages. In all of this, the terrorists are laughing, they are euphoric. There is no one who has watched that horrifying, unedited footage who fails to note the hideous glee of the butchers. Some Israels were literally disappeared on October 7. And I'm not talking about the hostages. I'm talking about people that were burned at such high heat that volunteers are still sifting through the bones and the remnant teeth to identify them. But more than 200 people are currently being held hostage by Hamas, and more than 1400 were murdered in those terrible hours. Among the dead are some 30 American citizens, and there are at least ten Americans among the hostages. All of which is why the immediate analogy the world reached for was to 911. As with 911, the terrorists caught their victims by surprise on a clear blue morning. As with 911, the spectacle and the savagery were the point. As with 911, the terrorists notched points on their sadistic scoreboard, taking from us not just precious lives, but our sense of safety and security. They change something within us. But the difference between 911 and ten seven, two massacres of innocent people, symbols to their killers of Western civilization, was the reaction to the horror. The difference between 911 and ten seven was that the catastrophe of ten seven was followed on October 8 by a different kind of catastrophe, a moral and spiritual catastrophe that was on full display throughout the West. Before the bodies of those men and women and children had even been identified, people poured into the streets of our capital cities to celebrate the slaughter. In Sydney, crowds gathered at the opera house, cheering gas. The Jews. People rejoiced on the streets of Berlin and London and Toronto and New York and Paris. Then came BLM Chicago, using the paraglider, a symbol of mass death, as a symbol of freedom. Then came posters across our campuses calling for Israel to burn. Then came our own offices at the Free Press in New York City, vandalized with F Jews and F Israel. Then came Harvard's task force to create safe spaces for pro Hamas students. And then, as thunder follows lightning, more dead Jews. An antiisrael protester outside of Los Angeles killed a 69 year old Jewish man this week for the apparent sin of waving an Israeli flag, though NBC's initial headline made it hard to follow, man dies after hitting head during Israel and Palestinian rallies in California, officials say in lockstep the social justice crowd, the crowd who has tried so hard to convince us that words are violence, insisted that actual violence was a necessity, that rape was resistance, that torture was liberation. University presidents who leapt to issue morally lucid condemnations of George Floyd's killing or Putin's war against Ukraine offered silence or mealy mouthed Pablom about how the situation is complex and how we need to think of both sides as if there's some kind of equivalence between innocent civilians and jihadists. But the most alarming of all were the young people who threw their support not behind the innocent victims of Hamas terror, but behind Hamas and genocide. At George Washington University, just down the road, students projected the words glory to our martyrs and free Palestine from the river to the sea in giant letters. On a campus building at Cooper Union in Manhattan, Jewish students had to hide in the library because a mob was pounding on the door. At Columbia, my old Professor Joseph Massad, called the slaughter awesome. At Cornell, Professor Russell Rickford said it was energizing and exhilarating. At Harvard, more than 30 student groups signed a petition that found a way to blame Jewish victims for their own deaths, saying that they, quote, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for the unfolding violence. At Princeton, hundreds of students chanted, globalize the intefada. Which can only mean one thing, open season on Jews worldwide. At NYU, students held posters that read, Keep the world clean with drawings of Jewish stars in garbage cans. Hip young people with pronouns in their bios are not just chanting the slogans of a genocidal death cult. They are going around and tearing down the photographs of women and children who are currently being held hostage in tunnels that run under the Gaza Strip. And they do so gleefully. They laugh, they mock the nine month old baby who was stolen from his parents. And in doing so, they are tearing down, or at least they are trying to tear down, the essence of our common humanity, or perhaps even the reality that the hostages were taken at all. Or maybe it's that they're trying to extinguish their memory, or the people actually had it coming to them. Or maybe, and I say this as the mother of a young child in whose face I see the face of every single child being held captive. They are trying to tear down the divine image that is at the very root of our civilization's conception of the dignity and the equality of every human life. What could possibly explain this? The easy answer is that the human beings who were slaughtered on October 7 were Jews, and that antisemitism is the world's oldest hatred, and that in every generation, someone rises up to destroy us. They tried to wipe us out. They failed. Let's eat. That's the oldest Jewish joke in the world. But that's not the whole answer. And that's because the proliferation of antisemitism, as always, is a symptom when antisemitism moves from this shameful fringe into the public square, it is not about Jews. It is never about Jews. It is about everyone else. It is about the society or the culture or the country where it is being allowed to proliferate. Antisemitism is a warning system. It is a sign that the society itself is breaking down, that it is dying. It is a symptom of a much deeper crisis, one that explains how, in the span of a little over 20 years, since September 11, educated people now respond to an act of savagery, not with a defense of civilization, but with a defense of barbarism. It was 20 years ago, when I was a college student, that I began to encounter an ideology that drives the people who tear down the posters. It was 20 years ago that I started writing about this ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child. At first, the things I encountered, like postmodernism and postcolonialism and postnationalism, seemed like wordplay or intellectual games, little puzzles to see how you could deconstruct just about anything. But what I came to see over time was that it wasn't going to remain an academic sideshow, and that it sought nothing less than the deconstruction of our society from within. This ideology seeks to upend the very ideas of right and wrong. It replaces the basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric, the powerless good and the powerful bad. It replaces lots of things like that. Colorblindness with race obsession, ideas with identity, debate with denunciation and deplatforming, persuasion with public shaming, the rule of law with the fury of the mob. People were to be given authority in this new order, I learned, not in recognition of their gifts, their hard work, their talents, their accomplishments, or their contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantage their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. And so, as an undergraduate, I watched in horror, sounding alarms as loudly as I could. Back then, I was told by most adults, including Jewish communal leaders, that, yeah, it wasn't great, but don't be so hysterical. Campus were always hotbeds of political radicalism, they said, and this ideology they promised me would surely dissipate as young people made their way into the world. They were wrong. It did not do that. Over the past two decades, I saw this inverted, morally perverse worldview swallow all of the sense making institutions of American life. It started in the universities. Then it moved beyond the quad to cultural institutions, including some that my wife and I know well, like the New York Times, as well as to every major museum, philanthropy, and media company, it has taken root in the HR departments of every major corporation. It is inside our high schools and even our elementary schools. And of course, as everyone in this room knows, it has come to the law itself. When you see a federal judge shouted down at Stanford, you are seeing this ideology at work. When you see people screaming outside of the homes of certain Supreme Court justices, causing them to need round the clock security, you are seeing its logic. The takeover of core American institutions by this ideology is so comprehensive that it's hard sometimes for people to even notice it, because it's everywhere. Now. For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than by equality of opportunity. If underrepresentation is the inevitable outcome of systemic bias, then overrepresentation and Jews are 2% of the American population, suggests not talent or hard work, but unearned privilege. This conspiratorial conclusion is not actually that far removed from the hateful portrait of a small group of Jews diving up the ill gotten spoils of an exploited world. And it's not only Jews who suffer from the suggestion that merit and excellence are dirty wordS. It is every single American. It is strivers of every race, ethnicity, and class. That is why Asian American success, for example, is seen as so suspicious. The percentages are off. The scores are too high. The starting point as poor immigrants is too low. From whom did they steal all of that success? The week since October 7 has been a mark to market moment. In other words, everyone can now see how very deep these ideas run, and we see clearly that they are not just metaphors. Decolonization isn't just a clever turn of phrase or a new way to read novels. It is the sincerely held political view that serves as a predicate to violence. If you want to understand how it could be that the editor of the Harvard Law Review was caught on camera a few weeks ago, physically intimidating a Jewish student, or how a public defender in Manhattan recently spent her evening tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children, it is because they believe this, and they believe it is just. And their moral calculus is as crude as you can imagine. Israelis and Jews, powerful, successful colonizers. So they're bad. Hamas is weak. They're considered people of color, so they're good. And no, it doesn't matter that the majority of Israelis are also people of color. That baby, he's a colonizer first and a baby second. That woman gang raped by terrorists? Shame. It had to come to that. But she's a white oppressor. This is the ideology of vandalism, in the true sense of the word, the vandal sacked realm. It is the ideology of nihilism. It knows nothing about how to build. It only knows how to tear down and destroy. And it has already torn down so very much the civilization that feels as natural to us as oxygen, that takes thousands of years, thousands of nudges of progress, thousands of forgotten sacrifices and risks to build up to. But vandals can make very quick work of that. Reagan used to say that freedom is never more than one generation from extinction, and the same can be said of our civilization. If anything good can come out of the nightmare that began on October 7, it is this. We have been shaken awake. We know the gravity of the stakes, and the stakes are not theoretical. They are real. So what can we do? First, we need to look. We must recover our ability to look and discern accordingly. We must look past the sloganeering and the propaganda and take a hard look at what is in front of our eyes. Look first, of course, at what just happened, at the barbarism that Hamas carried out. Then look at the reaction to it. Take stock of how profoundly the lies and the rot have traveled, how badly the forces of civilization and of good are faring in this battle, how it is that the most educated, the most pedigreed, have become the most morally confused. The suspect in the killing of Paul Kessler is a college professor. To see the world as it is, we have to prize the distinctions that so many have forgotten, the distinctions between good and bad, better and worse, pain and not pain, safety and danger, just and unjust. Friends and enemies. I do not need context to know that tying children to their parents and burning them alive is evil. Just as I don't need a history lesson in the Arab Israeli conflict to know that the Arab Israelis who saved scores of Jewish Israelis that day, are righteous. Look carefully. Look at your enemies and your allies. And I say that to myself more than to you. Many of you have no doubt understood this for far longer than I have. But for many people, especially many people in my cohort, friends and enemies are not who they were, not who they thought they were before October 7. Accepting this might be hard for some of you, as it has been for me, it might mean giving up on nice things, giving up on Harvard, giving up on the club or your New York Times subscription. Sorry, wrong crowd. But you get my point. The point is that things, prestige, they are not the point of our lives. Harvard and Yale don't give us value. We give us value. Something beyond ourselves gives us value. The something that is visible in the faces of so many people before me right now. And in recognizing allies, I'll be an example. Right now, I am a gay woman who is moderately pro choice. I know that there are some people in this room who don't believe that my marriage should have been legal. And that's okay, because we're all Americans who want lower taxes. But I am here because I know that in the fight for the west, who my allies really are, and they are not the people who, looking at facile external markers of my identity, that I might imagine them to be my allies. True allies are people who believe that America is good. My allies are people who believe that the west is good and that human beings are created equal, and that saying so is essential to knowing what we are fighting for. America and our values, those are things worth fighting for. And that. And not any number of nonsensical or at least tertiary culture war issues. That is the priority of the day. The other thing to look for right now is for the good. To look for the good in these moments of darkness and to not lose sight of it. There's a New York coffee shop owner named Aaron de Hahn. He had all of his baristas quit the other day because he put an Israeli flag in the window and began fundraising for Magenda Vida Dome, which is the Israeli Red Cross. So they all quit. But his cafe didn't close. It was quite the opposite. Suppliers sent him free shipments of beans and cups. Community members picked up shifts for him for free. There were lines around the block on the Upper east side just to buy a cup of coffee. His cafe made $25,000 in a single day just this week. American cowboys. I hope you guys have seen these guys on social media. American cowboys from the Great Plains and the Rockies travel to Israel to tend the fields and animals of Israeli farmers who have been killed in the past month. This is the opposite of the cheap solidarity of standing with Hamas that we see across our campuses and in our city centers. This is the essence of the West. This is the essence of the idea that free people and free societies must stick together. It's not just, as James Woolsley once put it, that we're all Jews now. The reverse is also true. Israel is a mirror for the west and for the United States, whose founders saw a version of themselves in the biblical nation that also inspired the modern Zionists, whose descendants are now looking toward America with gratitude, but also with alarm, sensing a shared struggle ahead. So the first thing we must do is look, the second thing that we really, you must do is enforce the law. The wave of the so called progressive prosecutors that have been elected across many of our cities has proven to be an immensely bad thing for law and order in cities across America. It turns out that choosing not to enforce the law doesn't actually reduce crime, it promotes it. And it is no coincidence that many of the same activists who have pushed to defund the police are now the people physically harassing Jews in our streets. Everyone in America deserves equal protection, not only of the law, but from the forces of chaos and violence. In Brooklyn, there have been an unconscionable number of violent attacks against Orthodox Jews over the past decade, and they've been correctly identified as hate crimes. But they're also simply crimes that, if the law were upheld, would be far less likely to happen. Whatever their motivation, masking at protests is illegal in many states so that it doesn't become an attempt at mass intimidation. Allah, the KKK. Now maybe that's a good idea, maybe it's a bad one. But in nearby Virginia, it happens to be the law. And yet, as David Bernstein recently pointed out in Eugene Volak's blog at George Mason University's Fairfax campus, nearly all of the protesters at a recent student for justice in Palestine rally were masked, completely covered. Were they punished for breaking the law? I suspect if they had, we would have read about it. The rallies that we're seeing right now would likely be less susceptible to erupting in violence if the attendants weren't covering their faces. So don't allow selective enforcement of this law or any others. If neo Nazis and white supremacists can't do it, then neither can Hamas sympathizers. The third thing, no more double standards on speech. Public universities are constitutionally forbidden from imposing content based restrictions on free speech, and yet that's precisely what they have been doing. Ask any conservative, and I know a few now who's tried to speak at a public university and had a security fee imposed on them, or had their speech quietly removed off campus into a small, restricted venue. Whether there aren't sorry or had their sorry, I'm going to start that over again. Ask any conservative who's tried to speak at a public university and had a security fee imposed on them, or had their speech quietly moved to an op campus venue. Private universities can legally restrict speech, but their restrictions can't be enforced discriminatorily. And yet they are. I'm just going to give you one quite amazing example from Yale Law School in 2021. In an example I'm sure all of you will know, law student Trent Colbert invited classmates to his trap house in his announcement of a Constitution Day bash hosted by Fedsock and the Native American Law Students Association. It took 12 hours for administrators to process discrimination complaints, Haul Colbert in for a meeting, and suggest his career was on the line if he didn't sign an apology that they wrote on his behalf. The law school dean also authorized a message condemning his language. Why all of this hullabaloo? Because Trap House was a term that some claimed had racist associations with crack houses. But when Jewish students wrote that dean two weeks after the Hamas attacks, detailing the anti Semitic vitriol they had received, they got a formulaic reply from the deputy directing them to student support services for certain students, kid gloves for others, the MA of whatever hate their classmates and professors can dream up. The universities are playing favorites based on the speech they prefer and the racial group hierarchies that they have established. It is a nasty game, and they need to be called out for it's fourth, and this is my last. Accept that you are the last line of defense and fight, fight. If you study history and if you look at where Jews stand, for better and generally for worse, you will understand with almost 100% certainty where a culture, where a country or where a civilization stands, whether it's on the way up or on the way down, whether it's expanding in its freedoms or whether it's contracting them, where liberty thrives, Jews thrive. Where difference is celebrated, genuine difference, Jews are celebrated. And where freedom of thought and of faith and of speech are protected, Jews tend to be, too. And when such virtues are regarded as threats or thrown to the side, Jews will be, too. As goes Ohio, so goes the nation, is the famous political phrase the Jews. Please don't quote me on this. We're Ohio, and nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. The right ideas don't win on their own. They need a voice. They need prosecutors. It's time to defend our values, the values that have made this country the freest, most tolerant society in the history of the world. And to do that without hesitation or apology. The leftist intellectual Sidney Hook, who broke with the Communists and called his memoir out of Step for that reason, used to implore those around him to always answer an accusation or a charge, to never let a falsehood stand unchallenged. We as a culture, are leaders. We have let too much go unchallenged. Too many lies have spread in the face of inaction. Inaction that's come as the result of fear or wanting to be polite no more. You are the last line of defense. Every person is the last line of defense. And we have to think about it that way. Don't bite your tongue. Don't tremble. Don't go along with the little lies. Be the skunk at the garden party. Speak up, break the wall of lies, and let nothing go unchallenged. Our enemy's failure is not assured, and there is no cavalry coming. We are the cavalry, and our civilization depends on us. Now, I'm going to close with maybe something unusual for a Federalist Society lecture, but is a very, very rare thing for me to not be sitting at a Shabbat dinner table on a Friday night as the sun sets. So I hope you'Ll let me close with a Little bit of Torah. Tomorrow, in every synagogue around the world, we'll read the portion of the Torah where Abraham, Abraham's wife Sarah dies at the ripe old age of 127. We read in the BIble that she died in Kyriat Arba, now Hebron, Or Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And we read that when she does as the Bible Says, Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to Bewail her. And the very next verse goes like this. TheN Abraham rose from beside his dead and spoke to the Hittites, saying, I am a Resonant alien among you. Sell ME a Burial site among you so that I may remove my dead for Burial. So that's the first thing he does. He buys a plot of land to bury Sarah. And the Second thing he does Is that he goes to find a wife for his son Isaac. The late, great holy man, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who I was blessed to know, tells us this, about the sequence of events. Abraham heard the Future calling to him. Sarah had died. Isaac was unmarried. AbrahAm had neither land nor grandchildren. He did not cry out in anger or anguish to God. Instead, he heard the still, small voice saying, the next step depends on you. You must create a future that I will fill with my spirit. That is how Abraham survived the shock and the grief, writes Rabbi Sachs. This is how generations of Jews before me have survived. This is how every civilization survives. I am so honored, as I said before, to be here, speaking in this place in honor of someone who stood up courageously for all the things that mattered most, and who was murdered by the enemies that we are fighting still today. Her memory is a blessing for me. There is another phrase, though, that traditional Jews invoke when speaking of someone who has been murdered. And that is HASHeM YikOm Dama. May God avenge her death. We human beings leave vengeance in the hands of God. But fighting. Fighting is for all of us, especially when there is something so precious worth fighting for. Ted once said of Barbara that Barbara was Barbara because America, unlike any place in the world, gave her the space, freedom, oxygen, encouragement and inspiration to be whatever she wanted to be. There is no place like this country. There is no second America for us to run to if this one fails. So get up. Get up and fight for our future. This is the fight of and for our lives.