KIBBUTZ NIR OZ AND SDEROT – On this, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024, the image that is difficult to forget is found on a bed at Nir Oz.
It is of a child’s clothing, fresh out of the laundry: a stack of tiny, carefully-folded underwear, toddler-sized, placed on the corner of a bed. The child’s clothing is covered in ash and dust and dirt, frozen in time. There’s a Cookie Monster shirt, and what looks like some little dresses. All unused, all untouched since October 7.
The room that it is in resembles the inside of a long-unattended pizza oven – blackened and blistered from the Hamas attack. Bits and pieces of a former life are seen everywhere: broken dishes, a melted television, charred children’s toys.
No shell casings or bodies can be seen – those are long gone. But thirty people were slaughtered in Nir Oz, some still in their beds. Children, too. In the abandoned homes of the 400 people who once lived there, we wonder if the shadows on the walls and the floors are bloodstains.
The room is surveyed by resident Rita Lifshitz, who looked after the seniors at this kibbutz, but is showing some Canadians a massive crime scene on this day. She finally speaks: “It’s like a holocaust.”
As artillery shells explode a few kilometres away, Lifshitz takes us to the rooftop of a mamad (a shelter) that is closest to the fence that separates the kibbutz from Gaza. We can see a small vineyard alongside the fence. An elderly man, Amitai Ben Zvi, used to sit here, watching the sunsets over Gaza, looking West over the Negev. He was one of the first to be killed by Hamas.
From where we stand, Gaza is just a kilometer or so away. It looks quite lovely, from here. Certainly not an “open-air prison.”
Rita points towards Rafa in the South, and Khan Younis to the North. Just an hour or so earlier, about five kilometers South of us in Kfar Aza, three young IDF soldiers were killed by a Hamas rocket barrage. And, right around the same time, Hamas was at a negotiating table in Egypt, claiming to be seeking a ceasefire.
Back at the kibbutz, Rita sounds wistful. “We are still standing,” she says, waving an arm in the direction of the ghosts of Nir Oz. “We will rebuild.” She pauses. “We hope to live in peace with the Palestinians. We want to live in peace. We don’t want terror.”
All of that is no doubt heartfelt, but when you walk through Nir Oz it feels like you are trampling on an fresh grave. It feels like war tourism and a transgression. But every Israeli you meet wants you here, to bear witness. Over and over, they mention the protests and the campus occupations in Canada and elsewhere.
“We don’t understand what the students are talking about,” says Rita. “They need to see what happened here.” She regards the gaggle of Canadian journalists She points at us. “You need to tell the world the real story about Hamas.” Some of us nod and say that we will. We will try.
Sderot isn’t a kibbutz – it isn’t a farm community, but it’s also in the Negev desert – the population is about 33,000. In Sderot, the images to remember are not a child’s underclothing, covered in ash. The images are found in different places.
One is found on the South edge of town, where Greisha Yakubovich now stands.
Yakubovich was born in the former Soviet Union, and came to Israel as a child. He served in the IDF as an officer, and has worked for thirty years to provide Gaza – where he was long stationed – with food, water and power. He points at a row of tall concrete barricades.
Put in place a few weeks ago, the barricades were required to prevent Hanna’s rockets from hitting two of Sderot’s newest kindergartens, Meitar and Tzlil. Hamas has outposts within eyeshot, within range of artillery, to the West.
Says Greisha, pointing at the kindergartens: “Until October 7, nobody imagined it could happen here. Nobody expected a kindergarten would become a target.”
But Hamas targeted and targets kindergartens.
Greisha goes to speak again, and then stops as a loud siren is heard. It isn’t a warning to head to a bomb shelter – it is precisely 10 a.m. on May 6, the time when everyone and everything stops in Israel to remember the six million victims of the Holocaust.
But not everything stops. As the siren rings out, a barrage of gunfire is heard. Is it Hamas?
It isn’t. It is the IDF. Hamas knows that all of Israel would come to a halt at ten o’clock. So the IDF commenced firing artillery to deter them – to literally provide cover fire for ten million people.
That reality of this place has necessitated other unsettling changes to everyone’s lives, including those of children. At the Good Wishes Park for example – in the shadow of the Chabad Center of Sderot – bomb shelters have been painted to look like play structures for children.
Greisha looks at them, and wonders aloud: “Why can’t Hamas do the same thing? Why don’t they create shelters for the children in Gaza?” He pauses. “But they don’t.”
They don’t. They haven’t. And they never will.
HOSTAGE SQUARE, TEL AVIV –
They haven’t missed it. They’ve seen what’s happening on our campuses.
They’ve seen and read the news reports – reports showing over-privileged white Gen Z and Millennial types in keffiyahs, demanding if the visitors to their campus encampments, their “Little Gazas,” are Jews. They’ve seen the chanted tributes to Hamas and Iran and the horrors of October 7. They’ve seen all that.
And they’re disgusted. They’re shocked. They’re appalled. They’re absolutely baffled why young Canadians – and young Americans, and young Europeans – are openly expressing so much contempt towards the Jewish state.
In other circumstances, at other times, Israelis are used to seeing protests against them in Canada and the United States and Europe. Those protests have been happening, more or less continuously, since Israel was founded in 1948. They’re not new.
But the anti-Israel encampments at places of higher learning in North America – the pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-terror encampments, in too many cases? That, they can’t believe. That is new.
At a table selling T-shirts and bracelets to raise funds for the families of the 128 October 7thhostages, Judy Goldman shakes her head. Goldman is a former Montrealer, and still has family in Toronto and the Vancouver area.
She’s present this day with a dark-haired friend, whose son, 23-year-old Yosef Haim Ohana, is still being held hostage by Hamas. Her friend doesn’t want to talk about politics, she says. But Judy does. She has a few things to get off her mind.
“I am shocked by what I have seen at these campuses,” she says. “Shocked. It is pure anti-Semitism.
“Anti-Semitism is always there. It bubbles underneath the surface. Any excuse can bring it out. But I’m very surprised to see what young Canadians, at universities in places like Toronto, are doing.” She shakes her head again.
She continues: “It’s shocking, because universities are supposed to be places where morality is taught. And what’s happening in those places is just outlandish. It shouldn’t be happening! At places like McGill, too, which I know well.”
It’s normal for young people to be preoccupied with issues like climate change or the future, says Judy. But to praise Hamas, who slaughtered 1,200 men, women, children and babies on October 7, 2023? “It is absolutely beyond words,” says Judy.
A few feet away, at a booth that has been set up for the hostages taken from the kibbutz Nahal Oz, Iris Shellhav Nahal is talking to whoever will listen. She’s wearing a T-shirt bearing the images of some of her neighbours who were killed or kidnapped on October 7.
“It’s terrible,” she says of the encampments and protests. “What I have seen? It’s not good. Where did [the students] get these terrible ideas? They’re ignorant. They don’t know history – they don’t know what Hamas means to us!”
Iris softens a bit and leans back in her chair. “Some of the students, I’m sure they’re not bad people,” she says, pausing. “But how can they say we are so terrible when we are the ones who were attacked first? It’s just terrible.”
Next door, there is a booth to promote the memory of the victims of the Re’im Music Festival on the 7th. There’s an older man sitting there, but he doesn’t speak English. Two women who are present, Liora and Aziza – they speak a little English, but not so well, they say – won’t give their last names. “It makes me mad,” says Liora of the encampments. Says Aziza: “We know kids who were killed at the music festival. Why don’t these kids in Canada and America understand? They look like our kids.”
Asked why they think young people in Western universities have embraced the hateful rhetoric of Hamas and its ilk, all of the women have theories about that, too. They speculate that there are many anti-Israel Muslims or Arabs at North American universities who have manipulated the protests they see in TV. They also wonder if the ones camped out have been brainwashed by their professors.
At the same booth where Judy Goldman volunteers, a lovely woman from Manchester is working. Her name is Sara Omer and she still has a thick Manchurian accent.
Sara explains she has three sons in the Israel Defence Force, one stationed this day in the South of Gaza. He’s been sleeping under the stars, she says, and he’s excited that some toilets and showers have finally been shipped in. She smiles when she talks about him.
Sara’s husband was killed in military action a few years back, and she works with the hostage families, she says, because she understands what it means to lose someone to the fight for Israel.
She doesn’t, however, understand how any North American young person can raise their voice in support of a racist, hateful death cult like Hamas.
“I read the New York Times every day, ” Sara says. “I read over the weekend was that in Columbia University 60 per cent at the encampments are just outsiders. They’re not students. They’re outsiders and they’re coming and they’re firing up the others.
She goes on: “And some of the students who were interviewed – they don’t even know what they’re protesting. They don’t understand.”
“It makes my blood boil.”
Two things to conclude with: everyone here – everyone this writer spoke to – is here because they want to be. Not only do they not work for the Netanyahu government – they’re furious with the Netanyahu government. They want the hostages home, now, and feel the Israeli Prime Minister has botched the job.
The other thing: everyone here is carefully watching what is happening in North America, at supposed places of higher education. They haven’t missed it.
And they don’t understand it. At all.
Some shots from kibbutz Nir Oz, where dozens were slaughtered or taken by Hamas.
The picture of that family? Every one of them was slaughtered here.
It was happy and sad. Happy, because I fulfilled the promise I made to my Dad 20 years ago. Sad, because we all love them so much.
The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protestors are getting paid to protest.
Not all of them. But enough of them – enough to raise concerns about the “reality” of what we are seeing on our TV and computer screens, says the evidence and experts.
This newspaper first revealed in January that Israel-hating protesters were getting paid to show up. We detailed how a group called the Plenty Collective in Victoria, B.C. was paying out $20,000 a month to people to attend carefully stage-managed anti-Israel protests in and around that city. The “protesters” were actors, in effect, and were being given food, drink and professionally-produced signs and banners.
We also reported that it was happening in bigger cities like Montreal, as well. There, the city has been divided up into precincts by paid organizers, each acting as a “captain” responsible for quickly putting together protests in select neighborhoods. Sources there told us protestors were getting $150 per event.
Then, in the past week, other media published similar reports. The New York Post revealed that anti-Israel “fellows” at three U.S. colleges were getting paid via the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights – in some cases getting as much as $5,000 (Can.) a week in exchange for just eight hours of agitating.
That revelation was followed by the Daily Mail detailing a report authored by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). That report showed that the main group behind the occupation of Columbia University and other campuses had received more than $3 million (U.S.) a year from charities linked to Hamas.
In the 73-page report, ISGAP revealed that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – with chapters in Canada and the United States – had been funnelled millions via myriad non-profits like the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), Tides, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
In their report, ISGAP said: “It is clear that individuals who previously worked for Hamas-linked charities are now a driving force behind [campus protests]. The Department of Education (DoE) should carry out an immediate investigation into which universities are funding and/or supporting SJP activities and instruct those universities to cease such funding and/or support…ISGAP calls for SJP (and its affiliated organizations) to be banned and for Jewish students to be protected.”
As this newspaper reported in January, groups like B.C.’s Plenty Collective were using their non-profit status to financially assist other anti-Israel “partners” in that province. After this newspaper published our report, the Plenty Collective hurriedly returned thousands to one of its largest donors.
And, now, an expert who runs a Beverly Hills firm that openly acknowledges it pays for protests, called Crowds on Demand, says he has no doubt that the practice of paying people to show up at protests is much more widespread than anyone knows.
Adam Swart, who operates his firm in Canada as well as the U.S., has been providing paid-for crowds for everything from red carpet events to audiences at speeches since 2012. And, in an interview with the Toronto Sun, Swart said “extremely lucrative offers” have been made to Crowds on Demand to provide bodies. So far, he’s declined, he says, but he generally defends the practice.
Swart says there is no doubt the anti-Israel side has lots of money, too. Says he: “There’s obviously money in these protests. In my business, I know that some of the professional banners that these people have – those are $200 and $300, and the signs can be up to 100 bucks. Someone’s paying for that, here in the United States. So, you have essentially an unlimited amount of money coming in to potentially violent organizations that are tax exempt nonprofits here, and are social advocacy groups in Canada.”
The Canada Revenue Agency, which oversees such groups, was asked by the Toronto Sun whether they have any active investigations into funded protests in Canada.
At press time, they had not replied.
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Who benefits from these metastasizing campus encampments? Who loses?
The losers are easy to spot. They’re the families who scrimped and saved and borrowed to send junior to an Ivy League school – only to learn that he/she/they have adopted Yasir Arafat’s fashion stylings, and are sleeping through final exams in a tent beside a guy who now calls himself “ISIS Bro.”
The losers also include the university presidents, who fret about “free speech” while losing scads of support from alumni, public opinion, GOP congressmen, new students and assorted millionaires/billionaires with big social media followings.
And the losers also include (sadly, unfairly) Joe Biden, who is in danger of being defeated by the same addled crew who tipped the scales against Hillary Clinton in the electoral college in 2016 – clueless, gormless Bernie Sanders-loving Gen Z crypto-fascists who blame Jews (here) for the decisions of an Israeli government (way over there).
The winners are equally easy to spot.
As “encampments” spread at American and Canadian post-secondary institutions – and we use quotation marks around “encampments,” here, because they’re actually illegal occupations which claim to oppose illegal occupations – one group, in particular, is deliriously happy about the Infant-fada. And that’s Iran’s H Team: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and haters. They’re overjoyed.
Just read up on what they’ve been saying. Steven Stalinsky did. He’s the executive director at the Middle East Media Research Institute in the U.S., and he published an important Wall Street Journal piece last week, titled “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests.”
It makes for fascinating reading. A sampling of what the H Team are saying:
• Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said “we should salute…the many people demonstrating in America” because they “apply pressure on their governments.”
• Hamas’ leader abroad, Khaled Mashal, urged Jew-hating supporters to protest “in cities everywhere.” Hamas’ friends were “the global Left,” he said, and noted that they’d shifted public opinion against Israel.
• Another Hamas leader, and former Palestine Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called the protestors “resistance abroad…strategic allies” in creating a global caliphate and “this great victory.”
• And, not be outdone, Iran’s Supreme leader and the erstwhile boss of Team H, Ali Khamenei, went to the trouble of posting in English on X alongside videos of Western student protestors: “See what is happening in the world. In Western countries, in England and France, and in states across the US itself, people are coming out in huge numbers to chant slogans against Israel and America. US & Israel’s reputation has been ruined. They truly have no solution.”
Khamenei has a “solution,” of course. It’s the same one Adolf Hitler had.
Reached in Washington, D.C., Steve Stalinsky is clearly concerned. What the protesters are demanding goes far beyond a ceasefire, he says. It’s about delegitimizing and destabilizing Israel and her Western allies.
Says Stalinsky: “The rhetorical support that Hamas and Hezbollah are receiving from these protests, whether it’s a Columbia or a McGill or any university on the continent at the present time? [Iran, Hamas et al.] are surprised how successful it is. It’s not totally spontaneous, either. Some elements are, but there’s also a lot of activity that has been going on online. And there’s been years of preparation in going after this younger generation.”
The younger generations – Gen Z and Millennials – were particularly susceptible to Internet manipulation by Iran and its proxies, he says. The pandemic pushed them online, where their favoured research methodologies became watching TikTok videos manufactured in boiler rooms in Tehran.
Western governments have been “a huge failure” in fighting the online manipulations of the forces of Jew hatred, Stalinsky says. “Hamas, Hezbollah have indicated that these protests and rallies – the histrionics coming from these students – has been very influential. And it’s mind-boggling to me.”
He continues: “There’s been failure in governments and academia. But there’s been a total failure in the media, too – because they’re not reporting how terrorist groups are openly supporting the campus protests. And the media are not reporting what’s going on on the ground, either, about how students are expressing support for Hamas and other jihadi groups, right out in the open.”
“It’s hate speech. And it’s being ignored by the adults.”
Time to wake up, adults. Because you’re losing the fight, too.
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