Media recommendations, vol. 25
Genocide in Gaza, BibiLeaks and Title VI in the U.S.
Two reports this month, one from a United Nations Special Committee and the other from Human Rights Watch, document Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. That’s where we begin.
Al Jazeera produced a sharp video on that UN report, which argues that Israel’s war on Gaza is “consistent with genocide.”
Reuters reports on how Hamas-led forces are now trying to stop gangs from looting aid convoys.
Fighters from Hamas and other Gaza factions have formed an armed force to prevent gangs pillaging aid convoys in the embattled territory, residents and sources close to the group said, after a big increase in the looting of scarce supplies.
Since being formed this month amid rising public anger at aid seizures and price gouging, the new force has staged repeated operations, ambushing looters and killing some in armed clashes, the sources said.
Hamas' efforts to take a lead in securing aid supplies point to the difficulties Israel will face in a post-war Gaza, with few obvious alternatives to a group it has been trying to destroy for over a year and which it says can have no governing role.1
Details are now available about the document leaks in Israel by an aide of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is known as BibiLeaks. Unsurprisingly, the leak is related to the prime minister’s primary strategic goal: remaining in power as long as possible. The Times of Israel’s report is clear.
Information released by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court on Sunday demonstrated that the apparent motivation behind the leak of a highly classified military intelligence document to Germany’s Bild newspaper in September was to alleviate public pressure and criticism against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the murder of six high-profile hostages by Hamas in late August.
According to details released by the court, Eli Feldstein, a former spokesman and aide to Netanyahu and a central suspect in the affair, leaked the document to Bild in order to change the public discourse over the fate of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza; have Hamas leader Sinwar blamed for the impasse in hostage release negotiations; and imply that protests demanding the release the hostages were playing into Hamas’s hands.2
Jewish Currents has a terrific story on how pro-Israel organizations are using Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act to suppress and ban pro-Palestine advocacy. Here’s the key paragraph.
Ever since students began protesting Israel’s devastating war on Gaza—which experts call a genocide—Title VI has been central to pro-Israel groups’ attempts to silence such dissent. In November 2023, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hillel, the Brandeis Center, and the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher launched a new helpline to allow students to report what they define as antisemitic incidents, seven of which later became Title VI complaints. Since the threshold for filing a case at OCR [Office for Civil Rights] is very low—anybody can file a civil rights complaint, even if they have no connection to a school—Zionist actors have rushed to use the complaint system for their own ends. For instance, Zachary Marshall, the editor of the conservative website Campus Reform, filed at least 30 civil rights complaints at multiple schools, most of which target pro-Palestinian statements, protests, and social media posts. “OCR has been completely caught off guard by this exploitation of Title VI,” said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at the civil rights group Palestine Legal.3
Our final story comes from The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reporting about a new Gaza course (“Gaza, Indigeneity and Resistance”) at Cornell University. (Disclosure: Our two sisters and one brother-in-law attended the university as undergraduates in the mid-to-late 1990s.) The administration doesn’t want the course but can’t oppose it under academic freedom. The professor proposing the course is Jewish; so are Cornell’s provost and a contract faculty member who complained about it.4
[The course] will include an examination of the United Nations 1948 convention on genocide in the context of the post-Oct. 7 war in Gaza. It also includes readings by Ilan Pappé — an Israeli anti-Zionist academic who accused Israel of genocide three days after the Oct. 7 attack — and Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, who wrote a foundational text laying out the argument that Israel is a settler-colonial project.
The course description asks students to explore “the proposition that Indigenous people are involved historically in a global war against an ongoing colonialism” including in Gaza. [Dr. Eric] Cheyfitz has written repeatedly that he considers Israel’s war against Hamas to be a genocide, that Israel is a “close fit” with Nazi Germany and, in 2014, that “Gaza has become an extermination camp, run by Jews.” Israel rejects the genocide charge.
Last week, New York Rep. Ritchie Torres called Cheyfitz a Hamas apologist on the social network X. Torres, one of the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, shared a graphic from the controversial anonymous watchdog group Canary Mission, which maintains public dossiers on pro-Palestinian activists.5
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Reuters story is here: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-led-force-targets-gangs-looting-gaza-aid-convoys-2024-11-19/
Times of Israel story is here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-aide-leaked-stolen-doc-to-try-to-skew-hostage-deal-debate-in-pms-favor/
Jewish Currents’ story is here: https://jewishcurrents.org/civil-rights-law-pro-palestine-speech-israel-trump
Here’s JTA’s story on the Cornell University course: https://forward.com/news/673783/cornells-handling-of-a-new-course-on-gaza-could-preview-campus-israel-battles-under-trump/
Ibid.