Judy Z

RETIRED! VP | Opinions are mine | RTs are not endorsements

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

BREAKING: Hezbollah has killed a United Nations soldier in Lebanon by launching two rockets at them.

The world should be outraged. Instead, we will hear either attempts to blame Israel, or total silence.

[Richard Marceau @richardmarceau]

Excellent editorial in the @globeandmail

« [Carney] should have said: “If you oppose Israel’s existence, if you demonize Jewish-Canadians, you are wrong, you are hateful and I stand against you.“ »

https://t.co/Iwr5cUmCQl

[Duncan Dee 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @duncandee]

A must read by @afsbookstagram in the @TimesofIsrael : "Oh, Canada - A quiet decency was supposed to set us Canadians apart. So how can this beloved country expect its Jews to accept fear as the price of living here?"
https://t.co/4RsR14BTjs

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

An event about Jewish history at the British Museum had to be cancelled because of security concerns.

Why threaten an event about history? Maybe it’s because the Free Palestine movement is based on lying about it.

[Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر @emilykschrader]

The fantasy that the post-Khamenei regime would somehow moderate is collapsing in real time.

According to new reporting, Iran’s new leadership is even more IRGC-controlled and is already rebuilding its military infrastructure after the war. A senior Israeli official says the regime has resumed production of “critical” weapons systems, including new ballistic missiles, launchers, and anti-aircraft systems, not just repairing old stockpiles.

At the same time, the regime is reportedly reconstituting proxy networks, escalating arrests and executions internally, tightening internet controls, and doubling down on anti-Western and anti-Israel ideology.

The problem was never just Khamenei. It’s the entire Islamist system. And yet the West is already talking about sanctions relief and another deal while the regime rearms.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Arbel Yehoud was sexually assaulted by terrorists almost every single day during her 482 days of captivity with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Romi Gonen was raped by four different men on separate occasions during her captivity in Gaza, including a “nurse” who was supposed to care for her wounds.

Sasha Troufanov said that his PIJ captor repeatedly tried to force him to perform a sexual act on himself. He was filmed while showering.

Alon Ohel was sexually abused by his captor while showering.

Guy Gilboa Dalal said his Hamas captor sexually assaulted him after a shower, holding a gun to his head and a knife to his throat.

Amit Soussana was sexually assaulted by her captor while held hostage.

Dafna Elyakim, 15, said her captor touched her constantly and told her she would stay in Gaza to marry him and have his children.

Rom Braslavski revealed that PIJ terrorists sexually abused and humiliated him.

Aviva Siegel told the UN that she saw a young girl in captivity crying after her captor followed her into the bathroom and forced her to perform oral sex.

Ilana Gritzewsky woke up on October 7 in Gaza, half-naked, her breasts exposed and her pants pulled down, surrounded by seven terrorists.

Agam Goldstein-Almog testified that she witnessed another hostage being forced at gunpoint to touch, and be touched by her captor.

These are only the stories we know. Hundreds more will never be heard, because most of Hamas's rape victims were murdered. On October 7, countless bodies were found without underwear, with mutilated genitalia, or with broken pelvises.

Several Nova survivors also testified that they heard terrorists gang-raping women and men during the massacre.

How many more testimonies do you need to believe that Hamas and PIJ used rape as a weapon of war?

[Embassy of Israel to the USA @IsraelinUSA]

Emily Hand was 8 years old when she was abducted by Hamas into Gaza on October 7th, 2023.

After enduring unimaginable pain and months of darkness - Emily found solace in the waves. 🌊

🎥 @HaGalSheli

[Maarten Boudry @mboudry]

A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one not made publicly available, to protect the privacy of the victims.

The worst part of this video is not what it displays, but who is displaying it: the perpetrators themselves. Gleefully. Sadistically. Unabashedly. Most of the footage was filmed by Hamas terrorists on their GoPro bodycams, some also by ordinary Gazan civilians on their cellphones.

Even the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities, but Hamas brags about theirs for the entire world to see. The killers are euphoric throughout the massacre, and their relentless, ecstatic cries of "Allahu Akbar" (punctuated by the occasional "Kill the Jew!") are simply nauseating.

Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear — one with his eye socket hanging out of his face — asking his brother whether he thinks they're going to die, while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade in their saferoom helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter.

Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another "Zionist colonizer" getting what he deserved, right?https://t.co/JvfJEtk8LA
Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy.

There is some evidence of sexual violence in the video — the charred corpse of a young woman with her legs splayed and her genitals exposed — but not much. Apparently even Hamas draws a line somewhere: they are not as proud of raping Jewish women as they are of murdering them. Or, more likely, they simply didn't want to embarrass the delicate sensibilities of their legions of useful idiots in the West.

But yes — there was rape. Not "rape" in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a new damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women's rights NGO. (video summary here: https://t.co/LTTjiO1s7E)

Across its 180 pages, the report describes "a recurring pattern of rape and gang rape; sexual torture; mutilation; targeted shooting to the face, head and genital area; forced nudity; binding and restraint; genital burning; objects inserted into intimate areas; post-mortem sexual humiliation; and execution during or after sexual assault."

And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like "take off your pants," "lie down," "spread your legs," and "don't make trouble." I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases?

I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game.
https://t.co/PoKUfIHeXV

[Mazelit Airaksinen 🎗🇺🇸 🇮🇱 @Mazelit_]

FOOTAGE: When Hamas kidnapped 9-year-old Ela Elyakim on 10/7, they were taken to a house in Gaza.

"Do everything we say, or we will kill you" the Palestinians told Ela and her older sis Dafna.

They forced Ela to record this while in captivity.

Never forget Hamas kidnapped children🎗️

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

BBC BROKE EQUALITY LAW AND GOT CAUGHT

Carrie Gracie spent 30 years at the @BBC. She spoke fluent Mandarin. She ran the Beijing bureau. She was one of four international editors, two men and two women.

Then in 2017 the BBC was forced to publish salary data. Gracie looked at what her male equivalent, the North America editor, was earning. He was on nearly double her salary. She had explicitly said equal pay was a condition of taking the China role. The BBC agreed. Then quietly paid her far less anyway.

She asked for equal pay. The BBC offered her a raise that still left her below the men. She turned it down. She resigned from the China post in January 2018 and published an open letter telling the licence fee public exactly what their broadcaster was doing.

The BBC then put her through nearly a year of an internal grievance process that went nowhere. It took three meetings with the Director-General and the threat of an employment tribunal before she got a public apology and the backdated pay owed to her. The total came to £361,000.

She donated every penny to the Fawcett Society (@fawcettsociety), the gender equality charity. She said the fight was about principle, not the payout.

A publicly funded institution, legally obligated to follow equality law, paid women less than men in identical roles, got caught, dragged it out for a year, and only coughed up under threat of a tribunal. That is not a pay oversight. That is a policy.

Gracie did not ask for a favour. She asked for what she was owed. The BBC made her fight for it like it was a privilege.

Sources: @BBCNews, @guardian, @thetimes, @Independent.

[Israel Defense Forces @IDF]

⭕️ Sirens sounded in the areas of Manara, Margaliot, and Misgav Am, after 2 projectiles were launched from Lebanon toward Israel.

This constitutes a blatant violation of the ceasefire understandings by Hezbollah.

[Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow]

What’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz and on the negotiating table (if there even is one)? Last night on @foxnewsnight #FreeIran

[Andreas Fagerbakke @afagerbakke]

Pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in Nigeria.

[Masih Alinejad 🏳️ @AlinejadMasih]

Today, right after the call of “Allahu Akbar” at dawn, the regime in Iran, placed a noose around this young man’s neck and kicked the chair from under his feet, so he would struggle, suffocate, and die.
Yes this is happening in 21st century. They executed him because he went to protest with empty hands and said he wanted freedom.

His name is Amirali Mirjafari.
He was only 22 years old.
They called him a “leader” of the protests.

But they never said when he was arrested, how he was tortured, or how he was tried.
Because everything was done in silence, a silence enforced by threats against his family.

They imprisoned him in silence.
They tortured him in silence.
They tried him in silence.
And they executed him in silence.

Dozens of protesters have been executed the same way.
Yet many political leaders in the West, who suddenly worry about “international law”, after a military strike against Ali Khamenei and members of IRGC have not said a single word about these barbaric killings.

Why?

Why is there silence when young civilians are hanged for demanding freedom?

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

Why is the mob allowed to stand outside Toronto Jewish schools and intimidate children?

[Casey Babb @DrCaseyBabb]

Yesterday in Ottawa, on my way to dinner, I passed this demonstration outside city hall. Palestinian flags, mixed in with Iranian regime flags, and signs like this one — “Death to Israel.”

On top of that, as this hate movement passed through the streets, the entire downtown core was hit with antisemitic graffiti and stickers, many of which I removed, calling for the release of senior Hamas official Hussam Abu Safia.

These people are using our freedoms to take away our freedoms. They’re using our apathy and suicidal tolerance to advance ideologies that will destroy us. And they’re exploiting our societies to advance the agendas of the world’s most dangerous people.

The longer we allow this to go on — the harder it will be to unwind the damage. Stopping this isn’t hard and it isn’t complicated — it just takes a bit of chutzpah. Let’s figure it out and end this madness.

[Tali Goldsheft @TaliGoldsheft]

Amazing letter by @Cornell President rejecting the resolution. Should be read by all:

Dear Zora,

Thank you for conveying SA Resolution 61: Calling for the Termination of Cornell University’s Partnership with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology While Preserving Cornell Tech. I reject this resolution, which fundamentally conflicts with Cornell’s principles of academic collaboration and our core commitment to academic freedom.
Cornell Tech is not a political entity. It is an academic partnership, created through shared investment by Cornell University, the Technion, and the City of New York for the benefit of the city and the state, according to a negotiated set of conditions that govern its development and the terms of its 99-year ground lease on Roosevelt Island. As one of Cornell University’s many international partnerships and collaborations, Cornell Tech deepens, enriches, and strengthens the ability of our students, faculty, and staff to pursue knowledge and advance the university’s academic mission. The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, the core international partnership upon which Cornell Tech is based, is an extraordinarily valuable collaboration focusing on education and research in health tech, media tech, and urban tech, and supporting the development of new startup companies.

Severing our relationship with the Technion—or with any entity affiliated with governments, institutions, or enterprises with which some of our community members disagree—as a statement of political protest, would not only hinder our research, teaching, and public engagement; it would imperil our academic principles.

Our university, like all of our peer institutions, regularly faces pressure—from across the political spectrum, from within and beyond our own community—to make academic decisions according to political priorities. The phenomenon is not a new one: universities have grappled with such pressures from governments and societies for as long as the institution of the university has existed. When we yield to these pressures and proscribe specific collaborations or collaborators on grounds other than merit, we compromise our principles of academic freedom, undermine our own institutional excellence, and damage public trust in our work.  
Moreover, this resolution inaccurately asserts that “the continued operation of Cornell Tech as a Cornell University campus does not require an ongoing partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.” Cornell Tech, while part of Cornell, is a joint effort of the university, the Technion, and the City of New York. It is no more possible for Cornell to unilaterally terminate that effort and claim full control of the campus than it would be for the Technion or the City of New York to do the same.

Finally, I am deeply troubled by the selective manner in which this resolution singles out the Technion, alone of Cornell’s many international partners, for censure. Cornell currently maintains 159 active agreements with institutions in 59 nations and regions; all of these institutions have some government affiliation, and many conduct research with military and security applications. Cornell itself has military research contracts, conducts research with potential military applications, and has relationships with companies whose products are used in military contexts. Cornell also has relationships with institutions in countries whose governments have been accused of human rights violations—as our own has been. 
None of these publicly available facts are mentioned in the resolution; only our partnership with an Israeli institution is targeted for erasure. The political bias evident in this selective approach is deeply disturbing, and the resolution is incompatible with both the Student Assembly’s purpose and Cornell University’s core values. I reject it fully and forcefully.

Sincerely,

Michael Kotlikoff
President and Professor of Molecular Physiology
Cornell University

[Kevin Vuong 🇨🇦 @KevinVuongxMP]

This is what leadership looks like.

More 🇨🇦 leaders—police chiefs, mayors, and others—can learn from EPS Chief Warren Driechel’s example.

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

The confirmation by Hamas, PIJ and local Gazans that many so-called Gaza "journalists" killed were active combatants should be a major story. These are not Israeli claims. So far not a single mainstream news outlet has covered this. @jaketapper @JDiamond1 @halbfinger