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On Friday, October 27, the nations of the world voted in the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 120 to 14, for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza … Israel’s UN Ambassador responded with utter disdain, accusing those who voted in favor of the “ridiculous resolution” of supporting “the defense of Nazi terrorists” over Israel. In Gaza, Israel’s response to the global call for a truce was to escalate its bombing and expand its ground invasion … According to Save the Children, Israel has killed more children in Gaza in three weeks than have been killed in all global conflicts since 2019. The UN vote makes it clear how diplomatically isolated Israel and the United States are … The countries that voted for a truce included many traditional U.S. allies …

Gideon Levy, an influential Israeli author and journalist, succinctly explains the mindset by which Israeli Jews accept their government’s harsh, decades-long apartheid rule over non-Jews. For years Levy has been a prominent and respected writer and journalist in Israel. Runtime: 6:45 mins

Elected officials in New York City condemned Islamophobic comments by a Jewish former State Department staffer after videos showed him berating a halal food cart vendor on the Upper East Side. The man in the videos, Stuart Seldowitz, praised the killing of Palestinian children and made disparaging remarks about Islam. The videos show him berating the man on multiple occasions. Seldowitz held positions in the State Department across administrations of both parties, including a post in the Office of Israel and Palestinian affairs, but is no longer employed by the government. An online biography that has since been deleted said that Seldowitz had a nearly 30-year career with the State Department and New York State. Seldowitz is heard in one of the videos saying, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”

A former adviser to Barack Obama said that killing 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough” during a racist and islamophobic rant to a food vendor. In videos shared on social media, Stuart Seldowitz can be heard asking someone off-camera whether they raped their “daughter like Muhammad did” … Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Obama, a senior political officer and was deputy director in the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003 … “You support killing little children. You’re a terrible person,” Mr Seldowitz said. The vendor replied: “You kill children, not me.” Mr Seldowitz said: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.”

A new survey found that young women are much more likely to politically identify as liberal while young men are more likely to identify as conservative or align with MAGA Republicans. The survey, which was conducted by Change Research and shared with Teen Vogue, found that overall, young women, transgender people and nonbinary people trend more politically left than young men. Nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — of women respondents identified as either progressive or liberal, while 13 percent identified as moderate and 11 percent identified as conservative … On the other hand, men were more likely to lean right: 13 percent of men surveyed identified themselves as libertarian, 18 percent said they were conservative and 11 percent aligned themselves with MAGA Republicans …

The head of the French Jewish community castigated a former prime minister on Monday for comments made during a recent television interview in which he suggested that Jewish financial clout in the United States muzzles dissenting voices in culture and the media. Dominique de Villepin … served as France’s prime minister from 2005-2007 and was previously both interior minister and foreign minister … De Villepin did not mention the word “Jew” in his answer … “We can see in the background how heavily financial domination over the media and the worlds of art and music weigh,” de Villepin said. “They cannot say what they think because the contracts stop immediately. The financial rule that is imposed on the United States in cultural life weighs heavily. Unfortunately, we also see it in France.”

Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday. Musk backing an antisemitic post on the platform last week has led several companies including Walt Disney and Warner Bros Discovery to pause their advertisements on the site formerly called Twitter. X has struck back and sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform with a report that said ads for major brands including Apple and Oracle had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

… The truth is that the White House cannot force Israel to do its will – the Israeli lobby holds the more clout in Congress than any White House team. Thus, `no exit’ from the Israeli crisis is readily to be seen. Biden ‘made his bed’ with the Netanyahu cabinet and must live with consequences. Impotence then, as the Democratic Party fractures beyond the simplistic division between centrists versus progressives. The polarisation emanating from the ‘no ceasefire stance’ is having stark destabilising effects on politics, both in the U.S. and Europe. Impotence then, as the shape of the Middle East crystallises into sharp antagonism towards the West’s perceived accommodation of the mass slaughter of Palestinian women, children and civilians … It is this issue which will come to haunt Biden personally, and the West collectively in the future.

The great Voltaire wrote ‘show me whom you cannot criticize, and I will show you who rules you.’ So true. Anyone who dares criticize Israel’s Biblical punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza outdoor prison is immediately subject to a storm of calumny and threats. No matter that this mass punishment violates the 4th Geneva Convention and other international law, nor that it violates the US’s own arms export act, and has bred deep disgust around the globe for the United States and engendered rising anti-Semitism, terrible retribution is falling on Gaza’s Palestinians – who are now being bombed and shelled out of their homes for a second time … As Pat Buchanan observed, ‘Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory.’ From the president on down to lowly journalists, failing to support Israel is a career-ending move.

Mark Weber, historian and IHR director, addresses the international “Identitarian Conference” (“Congreso Identitario”) in Guadalajara, Mexico, May 2015. He speaks forthrightly about the challenge and dangers of Jewish-Zionist power. He also delivers an insightful analysis of the crisis and malaise of our age, with a look at the rise of “identitarianism” in Europe, concluding with a fervent call for determined and purposeful activism. Finally, in an extemporaneous talk, he speaks knowledgeably about the little-known collaboration of Third Reich Germany and the Zionist movement during the 1930s. With subtitles in Spanish. Runtime: one hour, 15 mins.

On Wednesday, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord revealed that the Department of Defense had failed its sixth audit in a row, with no significant improvements over the last year … In a repeat of last year’s audit, just one in four of the Pentagon’s auditing units received a clean bill of financial health, though auditors made some progress in accounting for the agency’s $3.8 billion in assets. McCord said that a clean audit likely remains years away, according to Reuters. The Pentagon remains the only federal agency to have never passed an audit. Its failure to make significant progress has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who called for an independent audit of the department.

“We” have a “major generational problem,” says ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt. In this leaked audio recording, the chief of the Zionist ADL warns that younger Americans now reject the once routinely accepted Jewish-Zionist narrative on Israel. This is “terrifying,” says Greenblatt. For a long time, he and other Jewish leaders mistakenly saw the propaganda war as a “left-right” issue. That was the “wrong game.” Instead, he says, “the real game is the next generation.” The “same brains” that have been able to suppress unwanted voices in the past, he pleads, must now focus on dealing with this very serious new challenge. ADL agents, he mentions in passing, have infiltrated organizations such as “Students for Justine in Palestine,” that reject the Jewish-Zionist narrative and agenda, and instead are embracing what he calls “Iranian propaganda.”

Over 750 former and current journalists around the world have signed a petition calling on the media to begin using terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions in the conflict with the Palestinians, while blasting international media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. The petition, posted on Thursday, urged an end to what it alleged was the targeting of journalists by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, citing the deaths of dozens of Palestinians working for foreign media outlets during the war … Journalists from Reuters, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The Washington Post are among the signatories … He claimed that many news outlets note that the US has designated Hamas as a terror organization, but don’t note that “leading human rights groups have called Israel an apartheid regime.”

Although they spend a lot of time and resources pretending that they are “democrats” and not racists, Zionists are often, especially in a crisis situation, very clear about what they believe. We see settlers regularly on the streets of occupied Palestine chanting provocative slogans such as “may your village burn,” and “death to Arabs” and also calling for a second Nakba. But the racist and genocidal nature of Zionism goes right to the top. What follows is a series of inflammatory and deeply racist statements by Zionists, all uttered after 7 October 2023 and the launch of the Al Aqsa Storm (also known as Al Aqsa Flood) operation by the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance … These are only a sample of the many genocidal statements issued by Zionist leaders and cheerleaders from the past month alone.

Want to understand why the media we consume is either owned by billionaires or under the thumb of government? The latest developments in the reporting of who was behind the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe provide the answer. Although largely forgotten now, the blasts in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 had huge and lasting repercussions. The explosion was an act both of unprecedented industrial sabotage and of unparalleled environmental terrorism … The United States had both the motive and the means. US officials from Biden down had repeatedly threatened that Washington would intervene to make sure the Nord Stream pipelines could not operate. The administration was expressly against European energy dependency on Russia.

Elon Musk said Friday that X users who deploy the terms “decolonization,” “from the river to the sea” and other similar euphemisms that “necessarily imply genocide” will be suspended from the social media platform. “Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension,” Musk wrote on the platform, formerly known as Twitter. “Anyone calling for a genocide of any people will be suspended,” he replied to a user who asks, “So many influential accounts here support Hamas’ massacre. Will you suspend them?” In his post Friday, he quoted a post from two days ago that said “Yes, ‘decolonization’ necessarily implies a Jewish genocide, thus it is unacceptable to any reasonable person.”

US public support for Israel’s war in Gaza has dropped significantly over the past month, and most Americans now believe Israel should agree to a ceasefire, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The poll found that only 32 per cent agreed with the statement that the US “should support Israel,” which represents a drop of 9 per cent since the same question was asked one month ago. Some 68 per cent of respondents in the poll said they agreed with a statement that “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate” — that number was made up of three-quarters of Democrats and half of Republicans. Those numbers stand in stark contrast to the position of lawmakers on both sides of the political divide … The US government is Israel’s strongest ally, providing almost unconditional political and material support for decades.

Three polls this week asking the same question showed a stark contrast: A substantial majority of American Jews approve of US President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, while majorities of Americans disapprove … A poll released Thursday by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 74 percent of Jewish registered voters approved of Biden’s handling of the war Hamas launched against Israel on October 7 … A Marist poll conducted for public broadcasters NPR and PBS NewsHour and released Wednesday found that 53% of registered voters disapprove of how Biden is handling the war while 41% approve. A Quinnipiac University poll released the same day found that 54% disapprove and 37% approve.

The White House on Friday condemned Elon Musk for endorsing an antisemitic post on social media. Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech advocate, on Wednesday wrote that an X post “said the actual truth,” replying to a user who posted an antisemitic claim that Jewish communities have been “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also spoke of “hordes of minorities that support flooding their country” … White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, that the White House condemns “this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.” … The Tesla and SpaceX CEO later followed up his post to claim that the Anti-Defamation League “unjustly attacks the majority of the West …” …

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and owner of X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, called an antisemitic post on the platform “the actual truth.” The comment stemmed from an X user’s post that claimed Jews “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Musk responded, “You have said the actual truth,” while also criticizing the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group that works to combat hate against Jewish people. “The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat,” Musk tweeted.

Over the centuries, rage and hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has furious hostility toward Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? … Anti-Semitism is not a mysterious “disease.” As Herzl and Weizmann suggested, and as history shows, what is often called anti-Semitism is the natural and understandable attitude of people toward a minority with particularist loyalties that wields greatly disproportionate power for its own interests, rather than for the common good.

A 2002 essay by Osama bin Laden that says “Israel must be erased” and rails against the “Jews, who control your policies, media and economy” has gone viral on TikTok, with some users endorsing its message. The missive by the notorious leader of al-Qaeda was written in 2002 to justify the September 11 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, and lay out the terror organization’s ultimate goals. At the time, the letter was published in full by The Guardian, though the British newspaper removed the article on Wednesday after it began to spread widely online. On Thursday, TikTok announced that it would prohibit videos promoting the letter, according to Reuters. A compilation of the videos endorsing the letter show users saying, “Everyone should read it,” and saying the letter was “eye-opening,” “explains so much” …

The Pentagon announced on Sunday night that it launched another round of airstrikes in eastern Syria, targeting facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups,” referring to the Shia militias that operate in the region. The strikes mark the third known round of US airstrikes in eastern Syria since US troops in the region have come under a spate of attacks due to President Biden’s full-throated support of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza … Iran has denied it is involved in the attacks on US forces in the region. The US says Tehran bears ultimate responsibility since it supports many of the Shia militias, but the Pentagon has previously acknowledged it has no evidence Iran is directing the operations.

Hundreds of Jewish people headed to Tuesday’s pro-Israel rally in DC were left stranded when bus drivers staged “a deliberate and malicious walk-off,’’ a major Jewish organization said. The “anti-protest” left the three chartered flights from Detroit — about 900 people — on the Dulles Airport tarmac for more than seven hours before being sent back home, causing them to miss the entire March for Israel event … The three private planes out from Detroit were chartered by the Jewish Federation of Detroit, which also booked several buses to transport its nearly 1,000 ralliers to the march at DC’s National Mall … The drivers had organized a “mass sick out” day to prevent Jewish ralliers from attending the much-anticipated march …

A new Swedish program on the country’s history is being scrutinized due to portrayals by actors of different ethnicities. The History of Sweden will be broadcast this fall on Sweden’s tax-funded state TV channel Sveriges Television AB (SVT) after nearly three years of production, described by The Nordic Times as the network’s biggest ever historical venture. Criticism has followed the arc of the project, however, due to Black and Middle Eastern actors front and center in previews. Some claim that their appearance is part of revisionist history, and not following proper science or history, and some view it as a major slight towards white Europeans of Nordic descent … As production has continued and publicity for the program has ramped up, more individuals have expressed antipathy toward the depictions shown in pre-released images.

Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen … These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives … The mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.

More than 750 journalists from dozens of news organizations have signed an open letter published Thursday condemning Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza, and criticizing Western media’s coverage of the war. The letter — which said newsrooms are “accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” — is the latest in a string of impassioned collective statements staking out ground in the stateside reaction to the Israel-Gaza war … The latest letter — which includes signatories from Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and The Washington Post — is notable for exposing divisions and frustrations within newsrooms. For some of the journalists, signing the letter was a daring or even risky move.

A number of news outlets have strongly rejected Israeli accusations that four freelance photographers they worked with in Gaza had prior knowledge of the Hamas attacks on 7 October. Israeli minister Shlomo Karhi said “certain individuals” who had worked for Reuters, AP, CNN and the New York Times “had prior knowledge”. All four outlets have denied the claims, which have since been debunked. The NYT said the “outrageous” accusations endangered freelancers. Hamas launched devastating and unprecedented attacks on southern Israel on 7 October …

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on Sunday reacted angrily to the suggestion by Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu that Israel drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, condemning the government for not immediately firing him. Riyadh said Eliyahu’s comment “shows to what extent extremism and brutality have penetrated the Israeli government.” The fact that Eliyahu was only suspended and not immediately fired, the Saudi statement continued, “reflects the Israeli government’s disregard for all values of humanity, morality, religion and law.” Earlier Sunday, Eliyahu said that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.

A military rabbi told a crowd of soldiers Saturday night that the past month of war has been the “happiest of my life” — excluding the wounded, the dead and the hostages — and vowed Israel would conquer the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The military disavowed the remarks by Cpt. Amichai Friedman, the rabbi of the Nahal brigade’s military base … In a video posted on social media, Friedman was seen addressing soldiers from a stage … Another thing we are making clear these days, something more important than anything else: this land is ours. All of it. Including Gaza. Including Lebanon. The entire Promised Land. We’re going to come back big time,” Friedman declared, referencing lands promised to the Jewish people in the Old Testament, but which are not part of the State of Israel.

… My greatest concern watching the Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action. On Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay a “huge price” for the actions of Hamas and that the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On Oct. 28, he added, citing Deuteronomy, “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” As many Israelis know, in revenge for the attack by Amalek, the Bible calls to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.” The deeply alarming language does not end there … I could quote many more … There is still time to stop Israel from letting its actions become a genocide. We cannot wait a moment longer.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned cabinet ministers Sunday to choose their words with care regarding Israel’s war with the Hamas terror group. “Every word has meaning when it comes to diplomacy. If you don’t know — don’t speak,” the prime minister said during Sunday’s cabinet meeting. “We must be sensitive,” he added. The prime minister was referring to recent comments by ministers that are viewed as having caused damage to Israel’s international legitimacy … Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu made waves in international media last week when he suggested one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas could be to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, in comments that Netanyahu quickly disavowed, before suspending him from cabinet meetings.

On Sept. 22, 1947, Loy Henderson strongly warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall that partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was not workable and would lead to untold troubles in the future. Henderson was director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, and his memorandum … stands as one of the most perceptive analyses of the perils that partition would bring. Henderson informed Marshall that his views were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.”

An estimated 300,000 people marched through the British capital on Saturday [Nov. 11], as pro-Palestinian activists made their latest mass call for a ceasefire, with police out in force to prevent clashes with counter-protesters. By evening, 126 arrests had been reported. The “National March for Palestine,” organized by the Stop the War Coalition, set off after a two-minute silence to remember Britain’s war dead on Armistice Day was observed at The Cenotaph war memorial in central London at 1100 GMT. Huge crowds of protesters waved black, red, white and green Palestinian flags and held aloft placards proclaiming “Stop Bombing Gaza” …

A year before the presidential election, three-quarters of Americans (76%) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and the leading Democratic and Republican candidates are viewed broadly unfavorably, according to a new ABC News/ Ipsos poll. Only 23% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction. Republicans are overwhelmingly negative, with 95% thinking things in this country are heading in the wrong direction, followed by 76% of independents and 54% of Democrats, according to the poll. Among the two candidates most likely to face off again in 2024, one in three (33%) Americans view President Joe Biden favorably, while former President Donald Trump is viewed favorably by only 29%, according to the poll.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday warned that the bombarded Gaza Strip was becoming a “graveyard for children,” as he urged an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict … Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed 10,222 people, including more than 4,000 children, in the densely populated and besieged Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Guterres also deplored the killings of media workers. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 36 journalists and media workers have been killed. “More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades,” Guterres said, adding that 89 UN aid workers have also been killed.

Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said 70 per cent of the Palestinian martyrs who have been killed by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since 7 October are children and women, warning that there is no safe place in Gaza. He pointed out that churches, mosques, hospitals and civilian facilities housing displaced people have been targeted, describing the Israeli attacks as collective punishment for Palestinians living under siege. For her part, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, explained that the Israeli aggression resulted in the killing of more than 3,400 children and the injury of at least 6,300 … This toll indicates that 420 children were killed or injured every day …

During the siege in Sarajevo, when I was reporting for The New York Times, we never endured the level of saturation bombing and near total blockage of food, water, fuel and medicine that Israel has imposed on Gaza. We never endured hundreds of dead and wounded a day … Israel’s goal is the murder of tens, probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of those who survive into refugee camps in Egypt. It is an attempt by Israel to erase not only a people, but the idea of Palestine … Mosques, 120 health facilities, ambulances, schools, apartment blocks, supermarkets, water and sewage treatment plants and power plants have been blasted into rubble. … Palestinians are referred to as animals, beasts and Nazis. They have no right to exist. Their children have no right to exist. They must be cleansed from the earth.

Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said on Sunday that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip is “an option”, according to Haaretz. The minister made the comments in a radio interview during which he maintained that “there are no non-combatants in Gaza”, adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute “a failure”. Eliyahu was then asked if, since there are no non-combatants in his view, a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip is an option. “That’s one way,” he responded. When asked about the fate of Palestinians, he said: “They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.” He also said the Gaza Strip has no right to exist, adding that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth”.

A new Data for Progress poll, fielded as part of our national omnibus survey from October 18 to 19, finds that 66% of voters “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the following statement: “The U.S. should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza. The U.S. should leverage its close diplomatic relationship with Israel to prevent further violence and civilian deaths.” This includes 80% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 56% of Republicans. From October 18 to 19, 2023, Data for Progress conducted an omnibus survey of 1,329 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history.

Younger voters are less likely to back Israel, support among Democrats for Israel’s conduct has declined, and Americans overall are wary of being drawn into a Middle East war. Those are three takeaways from a series of polls on Israel, the Palestinians and the war in Gaza that have been published in the more than three weeks since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 … The Economist/YouGov poll and a Fox poll taken from Oct. 7-9 also show greater support among Democratic voters for Israel at the outset of the war, which dropped precipitously by the time Quinnipiac asked its questions late last week.

State Department staffers offered a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in a dissent memo obtained by Politico, arguing that, among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis. The message suggests a growing loss of confidence among U.S. diplomats in President Joe Biden’s approach to the Middle East crisis. It reflects the sentiments of many U.S. diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports … The gap between America’s private and public messaging “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, U.S. interests worldwide,” the document states.

The capital of the United States saw more than 100,000 protesters fill Washington DC’s streets on Saturday afternoon in support of Palestine and to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, becoming what organisers, attendees and observers said was the largest pro-Palestinian protest in US history. The demonstration, which gathered at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington before marching towards the White House, saw people coming from all across the US. It was organised by several groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, the National Students for Justice in Palestine and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Organisers said in a press statement on Sunday that the turnout was over 300,000 … Tens of thousands made their way on buses from all corners of the country.

A large portion of Americans on both sides of the aisle favor getting rid of democracy and imposing violence on their political opponents, among other authoritarian measures, according to a new poll. Thirty-one percent of Donald Trump supporters and 24% of President Joe Biden supporters said democracy is “no longer viable” and an alternative system should be tried, according to an October poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics … When asked whether it is acceptable to employ violence to stop political opponents from attaining their goals, 41% of Biden supporters and 38% of Trump supporters said yes; … 41% of Trump supporters and 30% of Biden supporters said they favor either conservative or liberal states seceding from the union.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been slammed as calling for ‘a holy war of annihilation’ against the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip after he invoked the ‘Amalek’, a nation in the Hebrew Bible that the Israelites were ordered to wipe out in an act of revenge. ‘You must remember what Amalek has done to you,’ he said in a speech yesterday announcing the start of a ground invasion in Gaza, adding that Israeli soldiers were part of a legacy that goes back 3,000 years. Critics have highlighted that the text in the Hebrew Bible which addresses revenge on the Amalek constitutes a narrative of ‘genocide’. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Judaism is not just another religion. Its core values are markedly unlike those of Christianity and the other great faiths. A central message of the Hebrew scriptures is that Jews are a divinely “chosen” people – a unique community distinct from the rest of humanity. Some recent news items reconfirm this point, which is important for an understanding of the reality of cultural and political life in the United States, the US relationship with Israel, and the issue of war and peace in the Middle East and in the world. Runtime: 48 mins.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations called out the organization for its failure to condemn Hamas “atrocities” while donning a Nazi-era yellow star as a stark reminder of what happened in the past when the “world” stayed silent. During a heated address before the UN Security Council, Ambassador Gilad Erdan compared the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack to what his grandfather Chaim and his children endured when they were ripped away from their lives and taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis … The ambassador, along with his delegation, then took out the gold stars similar to the ones Jews were forced to wear by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust to “remind” the group why they were first created.

US President Joe Biden has declared himself a `war president.’ He has ordered two US aircraft carriers, advanced missile systems and 2,000 Marines to the Mideast. It’s full-force war fever in Washington … What we saw was not a political act but a ghastly jailhouse riot by Palestinian refugees caged up in the awful Gaza open-air prison for over 60 years … As the US stumbles into yet another military conflict, we should remember that run amok spending is the greatest threat to US security … America’s Israel lobby is the prime motivator of intense support in Congress and the media for the Ukraine War. The two conflicts are merging into one very expensive pre-election campaign … The US national debt is now $33.6 trillion, a monster deficit that threatens to capsize the economy and crash Wall Street.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) labeled the United Nations the “most antisemitic body on the planet,” after the General Assembly renewed its call for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “Let me just tell you about the U.N. right now,” Graham said in a Fox News interview Monday. “It is the most antisemitic body on the planet.” “To ask Israel to have a cease-fire after their people were slaughtered more viscously than the Nazis, having children beheaded, women raped in front of their parents — the U.N. is wrong,” he added.

A former high-level Israeli official says that Israeli Jews routinely use “the Holocaust” and the charge of anti-Semitism to intimidate and silence critics of Israel’s policies. “It’s a trick. We always use it,” says Shulamit Aloni. When Europeans criticize Israeli policy, she goes on to explain, “we bring out the Holocaust,” and when Americans are critical of Israel’s policies, they are called anti-Semitic. Jews routinely bring up “the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people” to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.” This is effective, she adds, because the Jewish-Zionist organizational structure in the US “is strong and has a lot of money.” Aloni, who held several Israeli government ministerial posts, makes these comments during an interview with Amy Goodman during a “Democracy Now!” broadcast, Aug. 8, 2002. Runtime: 1:47 mins.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem on Tuesday strongly condemned the Israeli army’s bombing of the Orthodox Cultural Center in Gaza City. The [Christian] Patriarchate said the bombing “represents a stark embodiment of Israel’s unwarranted determination to destroy the civil infrastructure and social service centers, as well as shelters for civilians trapped in the besieged enclave.” “Such attacks on civilians, particularly children, and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, cannot be justified on rational or humanitarian grounds and are fundamentally at odds with even the most basic moral values,” it said. The Patriarchate reiterated its demand for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and pledged to continue international efforts to achieve that goal as soon as possible.