By Phyllis Chesler

New English Review

In Memoriam

by Phyllis Chesler Day after day, I stare at their beautiful faces, learn their names, and read about the Israeli soldiers who have fallen i

by Phyllis Chesler

Day after day, I stare at their beautiful faces, learn their names, and read about the Israeli soldiers who have fallen in battle. I try to imagine their lives in all the cities of the land, lives cut so short. I salute them. I weep for them, and will always remember them.

The fallen soldiers are mainly men–boys really–in their early twenties, although some are only 19. Thus far, over 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in battle; 168 in Gaza since 10/7.

Demographically speaking, this is equivalent to approximately 18,444 fallen American soldiers.

In addition, three thousand members of the IDF have been wounded which is the equivalent, demographically, to 110,666 wounded American soldiers.

Although one does not hear about this very much, about 200,000 Israelis have been displaced, pulled back from both the north and the south. This is the demographic equivalent of more than seven–nearly eight–million displaced American civilians.

Imagine the cost of such relocation, imagine the trauma of such internal exile.

This is a nightmare, a horror, a continuation of the atrocities launched by Hamas against Israel on 10/7.

You would not know any of this if all you read was the Western media. With some honorable exceptions, your attention would be primarily focused on the number of Gazans dead–statistics which routinely combine Hamas’s soldiers with pro-Hamas Gazan civilians. Even so, one can never trust the totally untrustworthy statistics issued by Hamas.

Where is the media and activist outcry about the Red Cross’s craven refusal to visit the Israeli hostages and to deliver medicine to the sick and dying? Where is the world’s righteous indignation about the Arab Muslim world’s refusal to allow Gazan civilians even temporary asylum?

Jews have watered our ancient homeland with their blood. Arabs have always, always attacked Jews, whether they lived in Iraq or Syria, in Morocco or Iran, or in the Holy Land. Jihad against the infidel always meant “Kill the Jews first.”

In the 1948 war of Independence, 4000 Israeli soldiers and 2000 Israeli civilians were murdered.

I’ve been told that during the Six Day War of self-defense in 1967, more than 700 soldiers fell in six days but no one knew this, (there were no cellphones), and so “it did not affect morale.”

According to Ambassador Michael Oren, 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. 

So many wars of self-defense, so many false accusations that Israel launched only unjust wars of aggression.

Nine or more wars later–here we are again.

One Israeli told me that his young soldier son has just lost thirteen friends, “real friends,” who have fallen in battle, and “how each funeral is devastating.” But he adds: “When you see the amazing kids this country has raised, you feel even more how lucky they were to grow up in this country and that this truly is a special place worth defending.”

Another Israeli described the unending shiva calls and how “the burial grounds are a place of honor, love, solace, and community. When one visits the homes of the bereaved, the mourners are surrounded by supporters from their towns and loved ones.”

The spirit of the people is amazing. I received a Newsletter about how a platoon of army reservists on their way to Gaza were treated at the Jerusalem market. The entire line of shoppers insisted on paying for their food and would not take “No” for an answer.

A third Israeli broke my heart with her eloquence. She wrote: “These dutiful Israeli soldiers will not grow old. Nor hug their parents again, nor meet someone they will love, nor parent, nor stroll in a Nature preserve in their beautiful land….ever again.”

Finally, the most humbling email I’ve received to date, was from an Israeli mother whose sons were in combat. She said that my words sustained her and functioned as a light in the darkness.

Oh, but they will all be enshrined in both history and memory. However, they were so young! I am about sixty years older than many of them and thousands of miles away. How many universes have been lost? How many future children and grandchildren will never be born?

When will the American government finally understand that Islamist Jihad is a religious war against infidels, (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’i), a war launched by Islamist barbarians? What will it take for Western journalists and academics to understand that the Jihadists are coming for the Sunday people next; that Iran has Europe and America in its gunsights?

Most important, when will our government decide to respond to Iran’s attacks on America?

14/4/2024 | http://antifagruppeweidenneustadt.blogspot.com/2024/04/berlin-hands-off-israel.html

Maybe the reason we’re so angry is because your response to this:

Was a whole lotta this:

And now you have the audacity to cry about Israel striking back. We’re supposed to care about what happens in Gaza. Israel can’t “collectively punish the Palestinians”. That’s just wrong - how dare they.

It’s not like you collectively punished Israelis. It’s not like you collectively punished Jews around the world. It’s not like you’re wishing death on us. No - you would never do that. You’re not antisemitic at all.

Mari Jääskeläinen on Instagram

 Ramones outside CBGB, NYC, 1975.

📷  Bob Gruen

Mia Shem, freed from Hamas captivity, talks about that it was like being kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza.

Maybe a little wake up call for all the bleeding hearts in the West. Hope yall will be ashamed of yourselves by the end of the interview.

Emory University Student: I Have Been Attacked and Defamed for Visiting Israel, by Samantha Strelzer

My name is Samantha Strelzer, and I am the President of the Rollins Student Government Association at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University.

I recently went on a Taglit-Birthright trip to Israel, and since that time, I have been the victim of a harassment and defamation campaign both online and offline. I know that this is sadly an all too common an occurrence, and that across the country, students who dare to express a pro-Israel point of view or visit the Holy Land are ostracized on campus. But I have decided to fight back, because spreading lies and hate to score political points is simply unacceptable.

My chief attacker is actually a fellow board member at Rollins, who did not even have the decency to engage me in conversation before she began to assault and demean my character in public.

First, she falsely accused the State of Israel of a number of crimes, including apartheid and genocide. Then, building off those false and inflammatory accusations, she went on to claim that I, an American Jewish student of Public Health on a week-long educational trip to the region, am actually a “direct contributor to this apartheid and killing of indigenous people.”

My fellow student accused me of “promoting war and genocide,” and of “support for colonial murderers”; she labeled me a “hypocrite and coward,” with “crumbling morals and a weak moral compass”; and she called for me to lose my position as an elected student leader.

Fortunately, her ridiculous comments are all too easily disproved, and the lies she repeatedly tells herself and others reveal only the underlying contempt that she has for the Jewish State, and the antisemitic tendency she is modeling by trying to hold all Jews accountable for Israel’s imagined sins.

As students of social science, we are trained to look at the facts, and this person’s lazy repetitions of lies about Israel are so absurd that they are hardly worth debunking.

But just in case my fellow students are not aware of the facts behind some of those inaccurate distortions, here they are in brief summary.

This person accuses Israel of apartheid, which involves “inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Aside from the fact that the conflict in Israel has never been about race, there are dozens of reasons why Israel is not an apartheid state; for example, Israeli Arab citizens have full and equal rights, and serve in the highest levels of every branch of government, including the Supreme Court and Knesset.

The next accusation, that Israel is committing genocide, is also utterly ridiculous. Genocidal acts are “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such.” Since 1967, the Palestinian Arab population has actually increased by 387 percent.

I humbly suggest that my fellow student retake all of her statistics courses before she makes any more such claims. Her claims that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel, and are colonialist occupiers, are just historically wrong.

But that’s about the State of Israel. What this person is doing to me is antisemitic, and I am calling it out.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in Federally-assisted programs and activities, on the basis of race, color, or national origin. While Title VI does not include religion, discrimination against Jews may give rise to a violation if it is based on race or national origin.

Under Executive Order 13899, when evaluating potential Title VI claims, the government uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Per the IHRA definition, it is antisemitic to, among other things, deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination, engage in blood libels, apply a double standard by requiring of the Jewish state behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or hold Jews (like me) collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

Over the last several years, my state of Georgia has had hundreds of reported incidents of antisemitism, and likely many times that number of unreported events. On campus and off, these incidents have ranged from swastikas and other antisemitic displays in public places; multiples instances of harassment and hostile workplace environments with explicit antisemitism (i.e. celebrating Hitler’s birthday, antisemitic name calling, etc.); and multiple bomb threats (not to mention hate mail) directed at Jewish schools, organizations, and houses of worship. Somehow, very few people — and even fewer people in positions of authority — seem to know about these stories. It is time to change that by speaking out.

For the record, I have never done anything to hurt or demean anyone, and, in fact, I long for the day when there is lasting peace in the region. What my attacker sadly does not understand is that you can be pro-Israel without being anti-“Palestine”; more important, she must learn that you can be pro-Palestine without being antisemitic.

In the meantime, I will not be stepping down, I will in fact be stepping up and speaking out for all those facing harassment and discrimination on campus because of who they are. I can only hope that others in leadership positions, both on campus and off, stand with me.

Samantha Strelzer is the Student Body President at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University.