Hamas rejects proposed deal for the Israeli hostages
We still know next to nothing about the current state of the remaining Israeli hostages Hamas and other Gazans took on October 7. That’s about five and a half months ago. It’s pretty much a certainty that many are dead, but how many? I believe many are alive, being kept that way because of their great value. Hamas doesn’t value them as human beings but rather as pawns of great price, to be exchanged for prisoners – including many murderers – held in Israel.
Hamas is well aware of the precedent of prisoner releases by Israel in order to get hostages back. The most notorious one involved a single hostage, Galid Shalit, who was returned in an exceedingly lopsided deal:
[The Shalit deal was] a 2011 agreement between Israel and Hamas to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners — almost all Palestinians and Arab-Israelis … Two hundred and eighty of these had been sentenced to life in prison for planning and perpetrating various attacks against Israeli targets.
Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari was quoted in the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat as confirming that the prisoners released under the deal were collectively responsible for the killing of 569 Israelis. The agreement came five years and four months after Palestinian militants captured Shalit in southern Israel along the Gaza Strip border.
It was a costly deal then, and turned out to be even more costly in terms of the future, because many of those released – including Sinwar – were involved in the planning and execution of the October 7 massacre. How could it have been otherwise? What were the Israeli authorities thinking when they negotiated that deal? Part of the reason they did it was intense political and emotional pressure from many Israelis. And note how long the negotiations took – over five years between Shalit’s capture and his release.
More:
While in captivity, Hamas refused to allow the International Red Cross access to Shalit, and the only indications that he was still alive were an audio tape, a video recording, and three letters.
The International Red Cross has had no access to the current hostages, nor is the organization even asking for it, as far as I know. And Shalit’s family got more evidence of life than the current hostage families are receiving. Hamas thinks it is holding a very very strong hand, and that strength also involves the neutrality or even the approval of much of the international community. The only pressure Hamas faces is military pressure from Israel, and the UN and most countries on earth – including the US under the Biden administration – are determined to get Israel to relax that pressure.
Yesterday’s UN Security Council resolution – from which the Biden administration abstained – demanded a ceasefire and hostage release, but did not make the first demand contingent on the second and was therefore worse than useless. Hamas believes it can get its ceasefire and continue to hold the hostages.
So why negotiate? And predictably, yesterday Hamas rejected a hostage deal that seems to me to have been unconscionably favorable to the terror group:
Hamas informed the mediators on the hostage deal that it would maintain its original position regarding a ceasefire, Reuters reported on Monday. This includes the withdrawal of IDF troops from the Gaza Strip, returning Palestinians to their homes, and exchanging prisoners.
Hamas’s response comes after Israel agreed on Saturday to a compromise proposed by the US regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released and was waiting for the terror group’s response.
According to Israeli media on Sunday, citing Israeli officials, Israel reportedly agreed to release some 700-800 Palestinian prisoners in return for 40 hostages.
The Palestinian prisoners in the recent exchange proposal are reported to have included many murderers, just as with the Shalit exchange. And of course, 40 hostages are only about a third of those Hamas holds (dead or alive). The hostages are money in the back for Hamas, and their worth increases over time, with interest. Why should they acquiesce before all their demands are met?
Netanyahu responded today [emphasis mine]:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released on Tuesday, “Hamas’s position clearly proves that Hamas is not interested in continuing negotiations for a deal and is an unfortunate testimony to the damage created by the Security Council’s decision.
“Hamas once again rejected any American compromise proposal and repeated its extreme demands: an immediate end to the war, a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip, and the remaining in power so that it could repeat the massacre of October 7 again and again, as it had promised to do,” the statement continued.
I have to say it is also “unfortunate testimony to the damage created by” the Shalit exchange and other such prisoner exchanges. Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel when the negotiations were concluded, although he didn’t hold that position when they began. Ehud Olmert did.:
Unofficial talks between Israel and Hamas [on Shalit] began on 1 July 2006, six days after the abduction of Shalit, mediated by Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist, co-director of the Israeli-Palestinian think tank IPCRI—the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information. On that day, Baskin arranged a telephone conversation between Hamas Government spokesman Ghazi Hamad and Noam Shalit, the father of the soldier. …
On 9 September 2006, Baskin arranged for a hand written letter from Shalit to be delivered to the Representative Office of Egypt in Gaza, the first sign of life from Shalit and the proof of an actual channel of communication had been established. … In the end of December 2006 the Egyptians presented the agreed formula for a prisoner exchange in which Israel would release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit in two phases. This was the same agreement reached five years later.
After Olmert resigned from office on corruption charges and following elections in Israel which brought Netanyahu to power, Deckel was replaced by former Mossad agent Hagai Hadas who worked primarily though the good offices of a German Intelligence Officer, Gerhard Conrad. Hadas resigned in failure in April 2011 and was replaced by Mossad Officer David Meidan. Meidan took over on 18 April 2011, he was contacted by Gershon Baskin the very same day. The secret back channel run by Baskin and Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad was authorized by Netanyahu in May 2011.
Netanyahu responded to a pilgrimage march, called by Shalit’s father for his release, by saying he was willing to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit, but that top Hamas leaders would not be among those released. Shalit’s father had previously blamed the US for blocking talks on his son’s release.
The Baskin–Hamad secret back channel produced a document of principles for the release on 14 July 2011 which was authorized by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ahmad Jabri. In August 2011, Egyptian-moderated negotiations on determining the list of names of the prisoners to be released began with Hamas represented by Ahmed Jabari and three other Hamas officials and Israel represented by David Meidan and two other Israeli officials. Haaretz reported that Israel proposed a prisoner swap, and threatened that if Hamas rejected the proposal, no swap would occur. Hamas responded by warning that an end to negotiations would lead to Shalit’s “disappearance”. Negotiations were hung up over disagreements between the two parties regarding Israel’s unwillingness to release all of the so-called “senior prisoners” into the West Bank—a demand Hamas rejected—and regarding the particulars of releasing prisoners who were leaders of Hamas and other organizations.
Netanyahu seems to have caved to the pressure, because in the end 280 of the prisoners released were serving life sentences for being involved in lethal terrorist attacks on Israelis. The decision was put to a vote by the Cabinet. Twenty-six members voted to approve it, while three opposed it:
[The three in opposition were] Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon, and Minister of National Infrastructure Uzi Landau. Ya’alon (Likud) argued that the prisoners would “go back to terrorism” and that they would destabilize the security situation in the West Bank. Landau (Yisrael Beiteinu) warned that the deal would be “a huge victory for terror” and that it would encourage more abductions of Israelis.
Well, they get to say “I told you so,” although I imagine that’s scant comfort. And if Netanyahu was going to approve the recent deal, it sounds as though little has been learned on this score since 2011 – except by Hamas.
At the time, there was a great deal of disagreement over the deal. One of the players, Dan Schueftan, whom I’ve seen and heard making statements opposing any present-day deal, called the Shalit swap deal at the time “the greatest significant victory for terrorism that Israel has made possible since its establishment.” He gets to say “I told you so” as well.
And then there’s Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University. At the time of the Shalit deal he said this:
Here we see the basic dilemmas between the individual and the collective, and we see victim pitted against victim. Gilad Shalit is a victim who was violently kidnapped, in a way that Israelis do not consider to be a normative means of struggle. Therefore, one side says, he should be returned at any price. But the families of those killed in terrorist attacks and the people who were wounded in those attacks are victims, too, and they say that no price should be paid to the murderers. And it is truly a dilemma, because no side is right, and no side is wrong.
I beg to differ, at least somewhat. I see it as a disagreement about the “collective” itself and what the result will be of its actions, including results for individuals. It seems to me to be inevitable and inarguable that releasing so many violent terrorists to return one hostage will guarantee more hostages – individuals – of the same sort and in the same predicament. Therefore it pits one present innocent victim against future innocent victims who will be victimized as a result of the release. That hurts more individuals – although not this particular individual, Shalit – and it also harms the collective as a whole. It seems to mean that one side is right – although rational and cold-blooded – and one is wrong.
I am very glad that I’m not in charge of any such negotiations, however. And I’m extra-glad not to know anyone taken hostage, and might even be found among the “release them at any price!” contingent if I did. But governments must resist such demands if that sort of desire to free the innocent conflicts so strongly with the need to avoid rewarding the hostage-takers and emboldening them to continue in their vicious path.
Baltimore bridge collapses after being struck by cargo ship
The Francis Scott Key Bridge along I-695 in Maryland collapsed into the Baltimore harbor following a “ship strike” early Tuesday morning, setting off a search and rescue mission for those who plunged into the chilly waters.
A livestream of the bridge at about 1:30 a.m. showed a cargo ship colliding with a support beam, causing the bridge to break apart and fall into the Patapsco River. Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time, but no update on casualties has been offered.
Eight members of a construction crew that was doing routine work filling potholes on the bridge fell into the water, Paul Wiedefeld, secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation, told reporters. Six of these members were unaccounted for, while two were rescued. One of the rescued members was in the hospital, while the other refused treatment.
When asked about how many vehicles went into the water and the condition of those people that were in the vehicles, Weidefeld said no information was available at this time.
If this had happened in the daytime, I’m fairly certain the toll would have been much greater.
I know next to nothing about bridge design or the navigation of cargo ships. But when I heard this news, I wondered whether there’s a way to make bridges less vulnerable to a single strike such as this one. Here’s a relevant article:
The bridge did not appear to have pier protection to withstand the cargo ship crash, according to a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Professor Roberto Leon, of Virginia Tech, said he reviewed the video of the crash Tuesday.
“If a bridge pier without adequate protection is hit by a ship of this size, there is very little that the bridge could do,” Leon said.
Maryland recently retrofitted another bridge with pier protection devices for about $100 million, he said.
It’s expensive, but the price would pale in comparison with expected losses from the damaged bridge, including additional miles driven, fuel and business costs, he said.
Yes, but this sort of event is highly unusual, isn’t it? And since no one could predict which bridge would be hit, the protection retrofitting would have to be done for every bridge. It still might be worth it, though – and my guess is that the ultimate cost of last night’s collapse could definitely include lawsuits by families of the dead and injured.
The cargo ship is reported to have lost power before hitting the bridge. Of course, a ship can’t stop on a dime even with no power; it will keep going for quite some time.
The ship’s crew issued a mayday call moments before the crash took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, enabling authorities to limit vehicle traffic on the span, Maryland’s governor said.
It appears to have been an accident, but I’ve seen plenty of chatter online speculating otherwise. I subcribe to the accident explanation.
Recycling research in DEI – andMad magazine
Here’s another case alleging research misconduct by a DEI academician:
The chief diversity officer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, LaVar Charleston, who also teaches at the university’s school of education, has a decades-long track record of research misconduct, according to a complaint filed with the university on Wednesday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis. That misconduct includes presenting old studies as new research, which he has done at least five times over the course of his career.
The complaint, which was filed anonymously, implicates eight of Charleston’s publications, many of them coauthored, and accuses him of plagiarizing other scholars as well as duplicating his own work. It comes as the university is already investigating Charleston over a separate complaint filed in January, alleging that a 2014 study by him and his wife—Harvard University’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston—is a facsimile of a study he published in 2012. …
Charleston also appears to have recycled findings and interview responses from his 2010 dissertation, which involved a survey of black computer science students, in four subsequent papers: the 2012 and 2014 studies that were the subject of the previous complaint, as well as two additional studies published in 2016 and 2022.
Each study is framed as a novel survey addressing a gap in the scholarly literature. None cite Charleston’s dissertation or indicate that they are drawing on previously published material.
Plagiarism-detection software has been around since the early years of the 21st century. But I don’t know if and when its use became commonplace in evaluating academic hires or new research by established professors. I also don’t know whether these programs would catch what Charleston is alleged to have done, which is a kind of self-plagiarism.
I do know what it reminds me of, though. When I was a child my brother used to get Mad magazine, which I would peruse, and even in early adulthood I’d occasionally come across it. Thus it was that in 1973 my then-boyfriend (and husband-to-be) happened on an issue that contained what we both considered a clever and funny spoof on academic writing. My boyfriend was a Ph.D. student at the time and so the whole thing struck a responsive chord with both of us, and over the decades we’d sometimes have occasion to remember the piece.
And so, by the magic of the internet, I’ve managed to find it again. You can view it here. You can even read it if you enlarge the graphic. It’s called “Rewriting Your Way to a Ph.D.,” and here’s an excerpt:
It should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of connivance in his soul that breezing through school without ever cracking a book is a cinch if one remembers two simple facts: (1) The first theme you wrote in second grade can be rewritten to fill every assignment you’ll be saddled with later on, merely by adding some appropriate big words and twisting the subject matter around a little! And (2) teachers seldom read the trash turned in by students anyway! All that really counts is filling lots and lots of pages with words, thus “proving” that you’ve emerged with a clear grasp of whatever it is you’re supposed to be grasping.
The writer proceeds to show how it’s done, with several series’ of essays, including a sequence beginning with a second-grader’s report on his summer vacation visit to his uncle’s pig farm and progressing to “A Qualitative Analysis of Swine Vision As It Pertains to Human Behavioral Response in Osborne County, Kansas” by the same author.
Life imitates art.
Open thread 3/26/24
Once again: on caring about how Jews vote
Back in December I wrote a lengthy post on the “Jewish vote” – how much people seem to care about that statistic, and the amount in terms of numbers. I strongly suggest you read that post now; it’s not particularly long but it covers a fair amount of territory.
I noticed in today’s open thread that the subject came up once again, as it so often does.
For example, commenter “Rufus T. Firefly” asks this question in response to commenter “sdferr’s” mention of Israel’s reaction to the Biden administration’s abstention in a Security Council vote on the Gaza War:
Yet, do you predict there will be much change in the voting habits of Jewish Americans this November?
The response from “sdferr” went like this:
It’s not within my ken, rufus — quite apart from my general reluctance to make predictions.
Even so, the way matters between the Bidenettes and Israel are going I won’t be surprised if Jewish voters start to change their preferences in large numbers this election season.
“Rufus T. Firefly” replied:
Unfortunately many people prefer punishing an enemy to embracing a compatriot. I think far too many American Jews still enjoy the two dimensional cartoon of an evil Trump coming for their freedoms over the reality that his administration was one of the most beneficial for the Jewish American cause in U.S. history.
Again, I suggest anyone interested in this topic read my post from this past December. But I also want to call your attention to a poll taken a month ago in New York City, a solidly blue town:
In a poll conducted by Siena College and released on Tuesday, a group of New York Jewish voters were asked about various public policies in the state of New York as well as candidate preferences for the upcoming national elections. The results were surprising – according to the poll, New York Jews prefer Trump at 53 percent and Biden at 44 percent.
Make of it what you will – after all, it’s only one poll. But it was taken before things got even worse in terms of this administration’s attitude towards Israel. I can’t find any other recent polls on the subject.
Like sdferr, I’m reluctant to make predictions. But the poll is very interesting. Of course, as I’ve pointed out many times, the more religious Jews are the more they are likely to vote Republican. For example, in 2020:
Orthodox Jews, however, stand out as a small subgroup (roughly one-in-ten Jewish adults) whose political profile is virtually the reverse of Jews as a whole: 60% of Orthodox Jews describe their political views as conservative, 75% identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP, and 81% approved of Trump’s job performance at the time of the survey.
A majority of all Jews surveyed, including more than half of Democrats, said they considered Trump friendly toward the state of Israel. Yet only about one-third (31%) said he was friendly toward Jews in the United States, and 37% described him as unfriendly toward U.S. Jews; the remainder saw him as neutral. Orthodox Jews, again, were a major exception: 77% said Trump was friendly to Jews in the United States, and nearly all the rest said he was neutral. Just 2% of Orthodox respondents described him as unfriendly to Jewish Americans.
And in October of 2020 came this poll result:
The survey from the community’s Ami Magazine found that a whopping 83 percent of Orthodox Jews said they will vote for Trump, compared to just 13% who said they’d support the Democratic Party’s nominee, Joe Biden. Four percent of respondents are undecided, with just 20 days remaining until the election
The poll also found that 76% of respondents believe the media is unfair to the president, while 14% said they believe that the press is mostly fair to Trump.
I will also reiterate that most Jews in the US live in large blue cities and vote pretty much as other residents of those cities vote. And a great many Jews are ethnic Jews only.
NOTE: I also strongly recommend this previous post of mine.
The Biden administration follows in Obama’s footsteps and abstains in the UN regarding Israel
It’s all just propaganda anyway. Votes like this in the UN have no teeth and are just ways to show Israel how little support it has and how much support Hamas has in the international community known as the UN:
The United Nations Security Council on Monday passed its first resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza after the U.S. abstained from the vote on Israel’s war against Hamas.
The final vote was 14 in favor, no votes against and one abstention. After the vote, the council broke into applause.
The resolution calls for an immediate cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and for the immediate release of all hostages.
The vote comes just two days after Russia and China vetoed a resolution from the U.S. that tied a cease-fire to the release of hostages.
Why didn’t the administration veto this more recent resolution? Could it possibly have something to do with the importance of the vote in the state of Michigan in November? (And yes, that’s sarcasm; of course it does.)
This is the sort of ridiculous posturing involved:
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington could not agree with the resolution because it did not condemn Hamas for Oct. 7. But she said they “fully support” other critical objectives in the measure, allowing for an abstention.
“This should be a season of peace,” she said of Ramadan. “This resolution rightly acknowledges that during the month of Ramadan we must recommit to peace.”
“Recommit” to peace with an entity – Hamas – that has zero interest in peace unless it’s the peace that comes with the Islamic domination of the entire region and then hopefully, after that, the world (although actually, the Muslim world itself is rent by bitter and violent divisions).
This was Netanyahu’ response to the US abstention:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he will not send a delegation as planned to Washington after the United States refrained from vetoing a U.N. Security Council proposal calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, said that Washington’s failure to block the proposal was a “clear retreat” from its previous position, and would hurt war efforts against Hamas, as well as efforts to release over 130 hostages in Gaza captivity. …
The White House denied that the U.S. abstention reflected a change in American policy.
It actually doesn’t represent a change; the administration has given a purposely mixed message ever since Israel began its operations in Gaza. And it continues the policy of the Obama administration in the UN, in which Obama’s parting shot – after the 2016 election of Trump but before Trump had been inaugurated – was to abstain in a Security Council vote about Israel’s settlements. The abstention was seen at the time as unusual and highly significant (I went into this in detail in the post I just linked).
In other news about the war in Gaza, we have this about the ongoing battle in al Shifa Hospital [emphasis mine]:
“Right now, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are barricading themselves inside Shifa hospital wards. Hamas is destroying Shifa Hospital,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in an English-language video statement. “Hamas is firing from inside the Shifa emergency room and maternity ward and throwing explosive devices from the Shifa burn ward. Terrorists hiding around the hospital fired mortars at our forces, causing extensive damage to the hospital buildings.”
The IDF said the number of confirmed members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad captured by troops at the Gaza City medical center had risen to 500, out of over 800 suspects arrested since the raid began last week.
Hamas has said that at least 13 patients have died during the ongoing IDF raid, alleging that they were deprived of medication or that their ventilators stopped working after Israeli forces cut hospital electricity, The New York Times reported.
International law stipulates that while a medical facility is a protected site in conflict, it loses that status if it is used for military activity. Israel has offered evidence Hamas uses such facilities as cover for terror purposes and says the group plunders humanitarian aid to take supplies for its fighters, depriving the civilian population.
Going to the Times article just linked, I found this headline and subtitle: “Witnesses Describe Fear and Deprivation at Besieged Hospital in Gaza: Several patients have died as a result of the Israeli military assault, the Gazan authorities say. Israel says the operation is targeting Hamas leaders.” The emphasis in the headline – all that many people read – is on the suffering patients at the hospital. The statement that several patients have died as a result of the Israeli assault (rather than as a result of the Hamas occupation of the hospital to use it as a terrorist base) is given pride of place, and is only identified as a statement by “Gazan authorities” rather than adding that these authorities are Hamas. And then, in a sort of “on the one hand and on the other hand” approach, the Times adds that Israel says that Hamas leaders are being targeted in the operation, as though this is just a contention open to debate rather than an obvious fact.
Appeals court in NY eases up ever-so-slightly on Trump
The decision went like this:
The Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division agreed to block former President Donald Trump’s $464 million bond if he posts $175 within the next ten days for his New York civil fraud case.
Trump’s lawyers asked the court to lower the bond of pause payment, which was due today.
The decision continued the restrictions on Trump and several others in the company (including family members) from doing business in New York by applying for loans, or serving as officers of any corporation, for varying amounts of time. At this point I can’t imagine why they – or anyone else, for that matter – would want to do business in New York after a persecution such as this.
And perhaps that’s why the judges voted to make the process slightly less Draconian: they probably realize the danger the case presents to investments in NY if people are scared away. It doesn’t really change the basic injustice, however. And $175 million only seems small compared to the original figure. But it’s still an absurd amount in an absurd case that’s right out of the trials in the Alice books and only a few steps away from the Stalinist show trials; the torture here is only mental and financial so far, and the potential punishment isn’t death.
Jonathan Turley has this to say:
…The true sunk costs of this controversy are likely born by Democrats who are seen as engaging in raw lawfare. Turning the New York legal system into an inescapable political vortex is repellent for many citizens and companies alike.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 25, 2024
Yes, “repellent for many” – but for how many? It should be repellent for all.
ADDENDUM: And let’s not forget the other NY lawfare against Trump, the hush money case that’s due to start next month.
Open thread 3/25/24
Interlude
It’s been raining today.
The Jewish holiday of Purim begins tonight: escaping destruction
Jewish holidays began at sundown and end at sundown, and Purim is no exception. This year it has special resonance:
It commemorates the (Divinely orchestrated) salvation of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian empire from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day.” Literally “lots” in ancient Persian, Purim was thus named since Haman had thrown lots to determine when he would carry out his diabolical scheme, as recorded in the Megillah (book of Esther).
It’s quite a story, which you can read at the link. It contains this extremely interesting part [emphasis mine]:
Haman was hanged, Mordechai was appointed prime minister in his stead, and a new decree was issued, granting the Jews the right to defend themselves against their enemies.
On the 13th of Adar, the Jews mobilized and killed many of their enemies.
There was no International Court of Justice back then, but Jews are still fighting to defend themselves and fighting for their right to do so.
Did this really happen?:
The historical reality of this biblical episode has often been questioned, and the actual origins of the Purim festival, which was already long established by the 2nd century CE, remain unknown.
But whether it happened in Persia at that time and in quite that way, many groups in many times and places have tried to eliminate the Jews. This has happened for millennia, in both the European arena and the Middle East. For the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe, the evidence is both genetic and historical.
Persia is of course modern-day Iran, which remains the source of a great deal of Jew-hatred and supports Islamic terrorist groups in many countries dedicated to killing Jews. But Jews in Persia have a long history:
The history of the Jews in Iran dates back to late biblical times (mid-1st millennium BCE). The biblical books of Chronicles, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, contain references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia. In the book of Ezra, the Persian kings are credited with permitting and enabling the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple; its reconstruction was carried out “according to the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia” (Ezra 6:14). …
Jews who migrated to ancient Persia mostly lived in their own communities. The Persian Jewish communities include the ancient (and until the mid-20th century still-extant) communities not only of Iran, but also the Armenian, Georgian, Iraqi, Bukharan, and the Mountain Jewish communities.
Jews had been leaving Iran for a while even before the ayatollahs took over in 1979, but the pace accelerated after that:
According to the first national census taken in 1956, Jewish population in Iran stood at 65,232, but there is no reliable data about migrations in the first half of the 20th century. David Littman puts the total figure of emigrants to Israel in 1948–1978 at 70,000. …
While many Jews in Iran lived peacefully after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iranian Revolution “radically altered the status of the country’s Jewish community”. In 1979, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a fatwa decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Nevertheless, emigration continued. At the time of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, 60,000 Jews lived in Iran. However, about 30,000 Jews left within several months of the revolution.
When Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and the new Islamic Regime under Ruhollah Khomeini was brought into power, the Jewish population in Iran began to look for routes out of the country. Although, Ayatollah Khomeini had proclaimed that the rights of Jews were to be protected, the new government would not issue Iranian Jews passports and barred them from leaving the country. The Jewish population began to fear for their lives because many Jewish leaders were killed in the revolution because of their support for Zionism and their disapproval of Jews being considered as second class citizens. Thousands of Iranian Jews began to look for ways in which they could smuggle themselves and their families out of the country. Most Iranian Jews had to leave their homes and possessions in order to leave Iran illegally as selling all of their possessions would alert to the authorities that they were trying to leave the country. Leaving the country was very dangerous as many of the roads out were being watched by the government and, if caught, one could face imprisonment or death.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish flight from Iran began in earnest after the May 1979 execution of Habib Elghanian, a philanthropist and leader in Iran’s Jewish community, on false charges of spying for America and Israel. The execution of Albert Danialpour case on 5 June 1980, further encouraged emigration. According to activist Frank Nikbakht, Jews sought to escape the country’s strict sharia laws, which were designed to humiliate and disadvantage the Jewish population.
It’s estimated that in Los Angeles there are now about 100,000 Jews of Iranian descent.
But back to Purim. It has the interesting characteristic of being a holiday on which it is obligatory to become drunk. There has been a great deal of verbiage trying to explain this. Here’s one effort.
Happy Purim!
The Moscow massacre: who are the perpetrators?
Last night there was a horrific massacre at the start of a concert in a large venue in Moscow. The fog of war is still operating, but it appears that at least a hundred people were killed and that the death count may go well beyond that, with many more injured. The attack came from masked gunman who shot concert-goers, ignited a fire in which some were also killed, and sparked a stampede (my guess is that some died that way; according to some reports some exit doors were blocked from the outside).
This sort of m.o. bears the signature of Islamic terrorism, which has struck in Russia before. And quite quickly the terror group ISIS-K claimed responsibility:
Within hours ISIS put out a statement of responsibility through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
But such is the state of the world today that the immediate response of many people – and this most definitely includes many commenters on blogs on the right – is to reject the idea, despite its having the force of logic. I’ve seen a lot of insistence that the true culprit was the CIA or in particular the Ukranians; the latter claim is from many people in the anti-Ukraine wing of the right. Of course, there’s also that constant culprit who rules the entire world and is responsible for every ill in it: Israel and/or the Jews as a whole. I will assume there are people who think Trump is behind it, although I doubt many think the perp is Putin – whose reputation rests at least in part on keeping Russia safe from this sort of thing.
ISIS-K was so annoyed at having its moment in the sun challenged that it issued another announcement, with photos:
ISIS has now released an additional Statement in which they claim Responsibility for the Terrorist Attack last night against the Crocus Concert Hall in the Russian Capital of Moscow; while also Posting a Picture of the Attackers only minutes before the Shooting began, in which… pic.twitter.com/zmsH9degmD
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 23, 2024
And of course Putin has tried to implicate Ukrainians in some way:
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Saturday suggested that terrorists who killed at least 133 people in Friday night’s attack at a Moscow concert hall were helped by someone based in Ukraine, without providing evidence.
Ukrainian officials have denied any involvement in the massacre …
Putin said 11 people have been detained in the killings, including the four gunmen. “They tried to hide and moved toward Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border,” Putin said in a speech on Russian television Saturday.
“Our military services, our emergency services … our investigators are working on finding out … who gave them transportation, … who gave them weapons,” Putin said…
Ukraine, which has been defending itself from Russia’s full-scale invasion for two years, has repeatedly denied any links to the attackers, with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry labeling Moscow’s accusations as a Kremlin attempt to mobilize Russian citizens against Ukraine and to try to distance the international community from Kyiv.
In his speech, Putin did not blame any specific terrorist group for the massacre.
This is the sort of situation that is tailor-made for confirmation bias and conspiracy theories fostered by previous and current propaganda.
Another fact pointed out and made much of is the idea that the US warned Putin of a threatened attack (perhaps targeting concerts) and he pooh-poohed it. However, that was two weeks prior to the attack itself, and the warning specifically stated that it was for 48 hours, and that period was certainly over by the time of the attack.
Russia says it has apprehended four of the terrorists involved:
The four suspects were stopped in the Bryansk region of western Russia, “not far from the border with Ukraine,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said. They planned to cross the border into Ukraine and “had contacts” there, state news agency Tass said, citing Russia’s FSB.
How did they connect the suspects to the killings? How did they track them? They were described as “foreign nationals,” but their nationalities have not been specified. And Bryansk is just as close to Belarus as it is to Ukraine – perhaps a bit closer, actually.
I think we’ll never get the full story.