Latest news with #Jew
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
The Deadly Virus of Anti-Semitic Terrorism
Yesterday's violent attack in Boulder, Colorado, at a weekly Jewish-community gathering to support the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, left eight people hospitalized. One of the victims is a Holocaust survivor, according to a local rabbi. Jewish leaders nationwide are demanding greater government action to protect the community, which is still reeling just two weeks after the killing in Washington, D.C., of two young staff of the Israeli embassy, gunned down outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The anti-Semitic motivation of these attacks is clear. Such homicidal hate crimes have no justification; indeed, their collateral damage is to destroy the space for any reasonable debate about how Israel has conducted its war in Gaza. The two attacks are linked not only by their motivation, but by their horrific, performative intimacy. Terrorism always aims to shock with the gruesomeness of bloody murder—one thinks of the Islamic State decapitation videos. Yet terrorism typically wields the threat of random violence, the notion that any innocent might be caught in its vortex of cruelty. These attacks are different because they were directed very specifically at people the attacker took to be Jewish. Their intimacy was precisely intended to inflict horror on a particular community and imply that no Jew could be innocent. In Boulder, the suspect in police custody has been charged with a federal hate crime. He has been named as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, and used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn his victims. He reportedly yelled 'Free Palestine!' during the attack. The attacker's method had an improvised yet theatrical quality; even if its symbolism was not consciously intended, the effort to incinerate Jews has a hideous historical echo. In the case of the D.C. attack, the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, drove from Chicago to the Capital Jewish Museum. There, he allegedly found and killed two Israeli embassy staff—according to reports, shooting his victims multiple times like a mob executioner. Authorities say the suspect also chanted 'Free, free Palestine' when he was detained, adding, 'I did it for Gaza.' Pervasive anti-Semitism is what enables attackers to believe that they are striking back at Israel by trying to kill any Jew, anywhere. This hateful mindset assigns responsibility for specific Israeli policies to Jewish people all over the world. Jews thus stand condemned purely for being Jewish. This is a sure tell of anti-Semitic unreason—given that neither American Jews, nor Israelis themselves, are of one mind on anything, let alone the Netanyahu government's Gaza policy. The Colorado victims were meeting in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The D.C. victims were working to advance their embassy's diplomatic mission. Both sets of people belonged to the best traditions of dialogue and peaceful advocacy, the absolute opposite of irrational hate. The personal, proximate violence that these attackers used was designed to create a spectacle that makes all Jewish Americans feel vulnerable. Both alleged perpetrators pointedly had no intention of trying to escape from the scene of these crimes. The attacker in D.C., after all, concluded his attack by going into the Capital Jewish Museum, where people aided him, thinking that he was seeking refuge from the violence outside; he was detained only after he identified himself as the assailant and yelled pro-Palestinian slogans. The Boulder suspect was easily detained after witnesses identified him to arriving authorities. The premise of these attackers' grotesque performance is that killing Jews, any Jews, is justified and good. Terrorism usually seeks to cloak its hate in a higher cause. But these recent attacks dispense with the pretense. 'Free Palestine,' in the mouth of these attackers, is a threat of extermination, the expression of an eliminationist project. With the horrible intimacy of their point-blank shooting or flamethrower immolation, the perpetrators appear to think they have begun that project. Although a graphic description of these attacks—a fleeing victim hunted down or burned alive—may risk the crimes' glorification or mimicry, their qualitative horror should not be glossed over. As far as we know, these assailants are not part of a larger terrorist scheme. The 'lone wolf' phenomenon makes preventing this kind of violence more difficult; with no organizational footprint for intelligence services to track, nothing in the profile of either suspect raises any obvious flag that would have provided a possible warning of such an attack. Buttressing support and protections for the Jewish community is important, but will be imperfect. The solution is simply to delegitimize, constantly and forcefully, these acts—without qualification or broader discussion. Public discourse must maintain a strong distinction between what Israel does and who Jews are. To do otherwise is to side with this terror. Article originally published at The Atlantic
New York Post
4 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Israel-hating elites stoked the flames that led to the Boulder firebombing
On Sunday, a terrorist in Boulder, Colo., aimed a flamethrower and lobbed Molotov cocktails at demonstrators — including a Holocaust survivor — marching in solidarity with the innocent hostages Hamas took from their homes in the world's only Jewish-majority state nearly two years ago now. 'End Zionists!' the man now in custody for burning at least eight allegedly shouted. Everyone knows what that really means. Advertisement Just as, for everyone paying any attention, Sunday's events came as no shock at all. For so many of our self-professed betters, the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli civilians — whose only crime was living in their ancestral homeland — did not serve as a harbinger of moral clarity, but as an excuse to scrutinize the Israeli response to Hamas' barbaric attack on its citizens. From Oct. 8, 2023, onward, Western elites in the press, academia and entertainment industry have been working feverishly toward a perverse objective: using the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust to further villainize the world's most historically persecuted people. Advertisement Mission accomplished. In the span of just 11 days, Israeli embassy workers were gunned down in the streets of Washington, DC, by a man yelling 'Free Palestine!' and pro-Israel laymen were burned in Boulder — and not as a matter of tragic happenstance. A victim of the attack getting taken away in a stretcher. CBS News No, the emergence of the professional Jew hunter in America was a predictable, even inevitable, consequence of the blood libels hurled in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack. Advertisement For the better part of two years now, journalists have breathlessly parroted every last claim of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry almost as quickly as they rushed to condemn the Trump administration for identifying Sunday's attack as an act of terrorism. Prestigious Ivy League professors and their students have celebrated the massacre of Jews with impunity. And actors and musicians have used their enormous cultural power to act as Hamas' unwitting propagandists. Advertisement Jew hatred is the world's oldest, most powerful and pervasive bigotry, flourishing in cultures all around the world and dating back thousands of years. It is a universal language spoken by the far left and far right, Islamist radicals and Hollywood stars, ignorant know-nothings and supposedly learned public intellectuals. That's why it's so dangerous. When those with a microphone indulge the impulse to blame Jews for their own misfortune and excoriate them for reacting to it, they are indulging the worst of a relatively broad base of society. Publicly denying the Jewish right to self-defense dehumanizes Jews and Zionists and justifies further recriminations against them. And hurling unfounded accusations of systematic war crimes, as the International Criminal Court and assorted world leaders have done, feeds into the worst stereotypes associated with the antisemitic sickness, especially when other tragedies, wars and actual war crimes across the world go unremarked upon. An Israeli flag placed at the scene of the attack in Boulder. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt Is it any surprise that the use of the word 'genocide' to describe Israel's defensive actions has whipped up people — including, presumably, the Egyptian national accused of carrying out the Boulder attack — into an antisemitic frenzy? Advertisement Of course not. After all, why shouldn't the country's conspiracy theorists, kooks and vicious bigots take up arms to carry out their own personal pogroms when the American upper crust itself has identified Israel (of all places) as the locus of evil in the world? It's an obvious question that few are asking — for obvious reasons. Advertisement The wealthy, famous and influential cohort in control of the country's most powerful institutions are unwilling to take responsibility for creating the dangerous atmosphere in which Jews are being maimed and murdered. Hence the 'shock' that a Holocaust survivor could be injured in Boulder and a young, happy couple could be sent to their graves in the middle of the nation's capital. Their professed surprise at the horrors unfolding across the country is not just an indictment of their naivete, but an admission of complicity in them. Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Michigan antisemite was plotting to massacre kids at Jewish daycare, tried to buy assault weapons: feds
A Michigan antisemite was plotting to massacre kids at a Jewish daycare and tried to illegally buy assault weapons after hurling threats at the preschoolers, federal prosecutors have revealed. Hassan Chokr, 35, was out on bail when he drove through the parking lot of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, outside Detroit, and shouted antisemitic slurs and threats as parents dropped off their kids in December 2022, authorities said. He pleaded guilty to federal gun charged on May 28. US Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr said Chokr's attempted gun purchase was part of what authorities believe was a larger plot 'to follow through on his menacing threats against parents and preschoolers as they walked into a place of worship.' Immediately after his antisemitic rant, he drove to a gun shop in his nearby hometown of Dearborn — which is home to the country's highest portion of Arab Americans — and tried to buy three semiautomatic weapons. 3 Hassan Chokr police mugshot Oakland County Jail The Michigan man lied on the gun application, stating that he wasn't convicted of a felony and didn't have any pending felony charges, according to the Department of Justice. But Chokr was already convicted in 2017 of felony theft. He also had a pending assault with a dangerous weapon charge. While awaiting the results of a background check during the firearms purchase, Chokr stated 'It ain't a fair fight out here' and that he was 'going to even the score' and 'even the playing field real soon brothers, real soon,' according to court documents. The gun store owner also overheard Chokr say that he intended to use the weapons for 'God's wrath.' The federal background check detected the felonies, and he was denied the purchase. The feds showed surveillance images from inside the store where he tried out a Del-Ton AR-15-style assault rifle, a Landor Arms automatic shotgun and a Glock pistol. 3 Chokr was seen trying out guns in a firearms store in Michigan. Carlson, Frances (USAMIE), Carlson, Frances (USAMIE) 3 An image released in one of Chokr's cases. Carlson, Frances (USAMIE), Carlson, Frances (USAMIE) Prosecutors previously said Chokr had 'posted videos and statements on Instagram where he talks about buying guns.' One of the posts said ''Your Jew tactics will only backfire on you, you have no place on this earth, Jew [expletive], Jew mother [expletives]. A storm is coming to wipe you all out of our lives,'' according to prosecutors. At a court appearance after his arrest, Chokr pulled down his pants and exposed his rear-end to the judge to protest his arrest. He now faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Atlantic
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Performative Intimacy of Anti-Semitic Terror
Yesterday's violent attack in Boulder, Colorado, at a weekly Jewish-community gathering to support the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, left eight people hospitalized. One of the victims is a Holocaust survivor, according to a local rabbi. Jewish leaders nationwide are demanding greater government action to protect the community, which is still reeling just two weeks after the killing in Washington, D.C., of two young staff of the Israeli embassy, gunned down outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The anti-Semitic motivation of these attacks is clear. Such homicidal hate crimes have no justification; indeed, their collateral damage is to destroy the space for any reasonable debate about how Israel has conducted its war in Gaza. The two attacks are linked not only by their motivation, but by their horrific, performative intimacy. Terrorism always aims to shock with the gruesomeness of bloody murder—one thinks of the Islamic State decapitation videos. Yet terrorism typically wields the threat of random violence, the notion that any innocent might be caught in its vortex of cruelty. These attacks are different because they were directed very specifically at people the attacker took to be Jewish. Their intimacy was precisely intended to inflict horror on a particular community and imply that no Jew could be innocent. In Boulder, the suspect in police custody has been charged with a federal hate crime. He has been named as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, and used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn his victims. He reportedly yelled 'Free Palestine!' during the attack. The attacker's method had an improvised yet theatrical quality; even if its symbolism was not consciously intended, the effort to incinerate Jews has a hideous historical echo. In the case of the D.C. attack, the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, drove from Chicago to the Capital Jewish Museum. There, he allegedly found and killed two Israeli embassy staff—according to reports, shooting his victims multiple times like a mob executioner. Authorities say the suspect also chanted 'Free, free Palestine' when he was detained, adding, ' I did it for Gaza.' Pervasive anti-Semitism is what enables attackers to believe that they are striking back at Israel by trying to kill any Jew, anywhere. This hateful mindset assigns responsibility for specific Israeli policies to Jewish people all over the world. Jews thus stand condemned purely for being Jewish. This is a sure tell of anti-Semitic unreason—given that neither American Jews, nor Israelis themselves, are of one mind on anything, let alone the Netanyahu government's Gaza policy. The Colorado victims were meeting in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The D.C. victims were working to advance their embassy's diplomatic mission. Both sets of people belonged to the best traditions of dialogue and peaceful advocacy, the absolute opposite of irrational hate. The personal, proximate violence that these attackers used was designed to create a spectacle that makes all Jewish Americans feel vulnerable. Both alleged perpetrators pointedly had no intention of trying to escape from the scene of these crimes. The attacker in D.C., after all, concluded his attack by going into the Capital Jewish Museum, where people aided him, thinking that he was seeking refuge from the violence outside; he was detained only after he identified himself as the assailant and yelled pro-Palestinian slogans. The Boulder suspect was easily detained after witnesses identified him to arriving authorities. The premise of these attackers' grotesque performance is that killing Jews, any Jews, is justified and good. Terrorism usually seeks to cloak its hate in a higher cause. But these recent attacks dispense with the pretense. 'Free Palestine,' in the mouth of these attackers, is a threat of extermination, the expression of an eliminationist project. With the horrible intimacy of their point-blank shooting or flamethrower immolation, the perpetrators appear to think they have begun that project. Although a graphic description of these attacks—a fleeing victim hunted down or burned alive—may risk the crimes' glorification or mimicry, their qualitative horror should not be glossed over. As far as we know, these assailants are not part of a larger terrorist scheme. The 'lone wolf' phenomenon makes preventing this kind of violence more difficult; with no organizational footprint for intelligence services to track, nothing in the profile of either suspect raises any obvious flag that would have provided a possible warning of such an attack. Buttressing support and protections for the Jewish community is important, but will be imperfect. The solution is simply to delegitimize, constantly and forcefully, these acts—without qualification or broader discussion. Public discourse must maintain a strong distinction between what Israel does and who Jews are. To do otherwise is to side with this terror.
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
‘Pogrom at the Opera': Rowan Dean on Jewish hatred following October 7 attacks
Sky News host Rowan Dean reminisces on the hateful crowd chanting occurring on the steps of the Sydney Opera House just days after Hamas' terror attack on October 7, 2023. 'Australia's greatest night of shame – the vile Jew hatred on October 9, 2023,' Mr Dean said. 'The same spot that saw the most grotesque scenes, including crowds chanting obscenities toward Australian Jews, waving flags and placards, and calling out all sorts of religious chants. 'The Jew hatred on display on October 9, 2023, long before Israel had gone anywhere near Gaza, was described by The Spectator Australia as a 'pogrom at the Opera'.'
