Anti-Israel Activists Cheer D.C. Murder of Israeli Couple

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

Elias Rodriguez opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum, killing two, a soon to be engaged Israeli couple, and wounded two others, but few media outlets reported his political orientation and his background. Or the outpouring of support from the anti-Israel Left.

In 2023, stickers reading “Exterminate Zionists” and the name of the Party for Socialism and Liberation appeared at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Rodriguez had been a member of the affiliated University of Illinois at Chicago and had been a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. According to Rodriguez’s manifesto, he became radicalized 11 years ago and was convinced that killing Israelis, Americans and Jews was the right thing to do. That was the same year that he was being quoted as taking part in protest rallies and speaking on behalf of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

PSL claims that Elias Rodriguez only had a “brief association” with the Communist group, but even according to their timeline, the terrorist was with the organization for at least 3 years.

And likely more.

Rather than disavowing him, members of the pro-terrorist movement cheered his crimes.

Palestine Action US, which currently uses the Jihadist name ‘Unity of Fields’, distributed an illustrated version of the D.C. killer’s manifesto under his headline of “Escalate for Gaza”. It described the murder of an Israeli couple attending an event at a Jewish museum as “the rightful execution of the two nazi pigs” and hailed “the resistance that Elias will inspire.“

Rep. Rashida Tlaib had previously held an anti-Israel event featuring Palestine Action US, the Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Islamist group EMGAGE.

The Bronx Anti-War Coalition declared correctly that “what Elias Rodriguez did is the highest expression of anti-Zionism” and “we need more Elias Rodriguez in this world.” Its rallies have featured banners with pictures of Islamic terrorist leaders and calls for joining Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’.

PSL tried to deny its link to the murderer, but did not condemn it. Rodriguez was simply implementing the PSL’s enthusiastic support for the mass murder of Jews, and the Communist terrorist switched from cheering the attacks from the sidelines to actually engaging in them.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a Communist party with Trotskyist roots. Its most publicly visible face are the anti-war ANSWER coalition protests after 9/11. After Oct 7, PSL focused heavily on anti-Israel rallies. At a rally after the Hamas Oct 7 attacks, a PSL speaker celebrated that Hamas had “liberated an area that is actually larger than the Gaza Strip.”

He joked about the Nova festival massacre that “there was sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang-gliders.”

Participants gleefully chanted “700” in reference to the then reported number of Israeli victims.

One of Rodriguez’s reposts was titled, “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For Hamas.”

He also reposted speeches by former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah along with Iranian slogans such as “De@th 2 Amerikkka” and “Death to Israel”.

PSL’s official response on Oct 7 described the Hamas atrocities as “a counter-offensive by Palestinian resistance forces” and argued that the “actions of the resistance over the course of the last day is a morally and legally legitimate response.” And it declared that, “resistance to apartheid and fascist-type oppression is not a crime!”

Rodriguez’s manifesto was titled “Escalate for Gaza. Bring the war home.” That’s been the premise of the pro-terrorist rallies, including by his old organization.

While PSL may seem obscure to most Americans, its presidential candidate appeared on the ballots of 7 states, including California, New York and Florida, Its presidential candidate Claudia De La Cruz however works for an organization funded by a Maoist millionaire operating out of Communist China which has been accused of acting as a front of the regime.

Like PSL, the People’s Forum described Oct 7, as an “unprecedented liberation struggle” by “Palestinian resistance factions”.

“We give our heart, we give our life, we give our blood to the Palestinian people,” Manolo De Los Santos, a founding director of The People’s Forum declared at a pro-terrorist rally in Manhattan. “We will use whatever we have in our hands. A rock or something else. We will defend the Palestinian people.”

The anti-Israel Left is rapidly rationalizing and even celebrating the murder of an Israeli couple because that is what they intended all along. They were never going to draw the line at blocking highways while glorifying Hamas. The goal was to get useful idiots like Elias to carry out attacks.

Why did a Latino man travel across the country to murder the couple? Because he had been indoctrinated into believing that it was the right thing to do by a network of terrorist groups pretending to be “pro-palestinian” or concerned about “human rights”, when what they actually wanted was a pretext for street and then terrorist violence and finally a revolutionary takeover.

While America has seen numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, the rate of individual Communist attacks has declined. The red-green alliance between leftists and Islamists is partly a means of revitalizing the terrorist capabilities of the Left. That’s why they’re celebrating Rodriguez’s murders because they’re not an outlier, the murders are where they want America to go.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

Visas for Terrorists, No Visas for Israelis

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

There was outrage after the move to deport foreign campus terrorist supporters, including Momodou Taal, who had to take their cue from Hamas and tweeted “absolutely anyone the US calls an enemy is my friend”.

A basic condition of visa travel and resident alien status is that the temporary visitors to this country may not commit crimes or advocate for illegal terrorist groups.

But the efforts to remove Taal, Mahmoud Khalil, a top activist in a Columbia University group that had celebrated the Oct 7 attacks and called for the destruction of America, and Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese Hezbollah supporter who attended Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, were condemned by Senate and House Democrats, the media and even some liberal Jewish groups like the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs as a violation of the First Amendment rights of terrorist supporters who were being “punished for their speech”.

And those defending the rights of foreign nationals to assault police officers as “free speech:” were not all that long ago cheering visa bans for Israeli Jews.

After Oct 7, two Israeli musicians recorded “Harbu Darbu”, a hip-hop song that went viral for celebrating Israeli soldiers and calling for the destruction of Islamic terrorists. Next year, when Ness and Stilla, the musicians behind the song, tried to visit the United States to take part in a Miami concert sponsored by the Israeli consulate, their request for a visa was denied by the Biden administration because of the passionate lyrics of the anti-terrorist song.

Lior Narkis, a popular Israeli musician, who had formerly represented Israel in Eurovision, was blocked from performing even though he had already legally entered the United States by blocking him from receiving a performer visa. There was no reason for such a move by the Biden administration except to specifically stop the planned concert from taking place.

None of the media outlets or organizations clamoring for the right of Islamic terrorist supporters to come here on visas and terrorize Jewish students on campus objected to blocking pro-Israel musicians from coming to perform here.

And when the Biden administration announced that it would be restricting Israeli Jews opposed to Hamas from coming to America, the move was met with cheers from many of those now decrying the suspension of visas for terrorist supporters.

In December 2023, Secretary of State Blinken announced “visa restrictions” were being imposed on those he falsely described as “extremist settlers” who were “involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank, including through committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services.”

The Biden’s administration’s ‘Jew Ban’ was not only extended to Israeli shepherds who were defending themselves against Islamic violence, but to non-violent protesters opposed to Blinken’s policies.

The unprecedented sanctions hit goat farms, a baker who had shot a terrorist while serving in the army in 2016, and an Israeli mother of 8 who had worked with sexual assault survivors and was protesting the aid trucks that Biden was sending to Hamas.

“From the moment I founded Tzav 9, it was solely to bring our hostages home. We wanted to stop aid to Hamas and prevent harm to our soldiers. Our actions included all parts of the nation – hostage families, bereaved families, right-wing and left-wing alike – all participating in the most legitimate actions with zero violence. Now, we face sanctions, personally targeting me,” Reut Ben Haim, a protest leader who had a 6-month-old baby and a husband serving in Gaza, said.

100% of the individuals and 85% of the organizations sanctioned under Biden's Executive Order 14115 were Jewish. And there was not a single word of protest against this 'Jew Ban' from those who had previously protested against Trump's 'Muslim Ban'.

The same people who claim they want to protect Taal and Khalil’s “freedom of speech” were enthusiastic about imposing sanctions that banned Reut from getting a visa or even having a bank account by falsely listing her as a “transnational criminal organization” for engaging in peaceful protests.

In sharp contrast to the Columbia U rioters and other pro-Hamas campus groups, Reut Ben Haim and Tzav 9 were not engaged in violence. And yet the media and leftist organizations, including the anti-Israel lobby J Street, hailed the crackdown on supporters of Israel. Shomrim: the Center for Media and Democracy, an extremist group, even spied on Reut to determine if she was still getting money despite the sanctions.

When Trump eliminated those sanctions on taking office, the media, including Politico, NBC News, Reuters and AP, which has a history of Hamas ties, falsely accused Trump of causing violence by dropping sanctions on a housewife with a baby.

Because it was never about free speech. It was about supporting terrorism.

Even ordinary Israelis reported being targeted with questions about whether they had served in the military, had seen combat, had shot any terrorists or guarded captured terrorists An Israeli woman trying to visit as a tourist described being interrogated for half an hour for details about her service before being told she was ineligible for a visa. A real estate VP was debriefed for hours about his time in Gaza causing him to miss his flight. A tech company executive said, “I feel as if questions were copied from the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.”

Even while this was going on, the Biden administration had provided a ‘green card’ to Mahmoud Khalil and welcomed countless Muslim terrorism supporters into the United States.

Those who defend campus Hamas supporters do not object to blocking people from receiving visas and coming to this country over their views or their connections to foreign organizations, as long as those views are pro-Israel and that foreign organization is an army fighting against Islamic terrorists. They only object to blocking and rescinding visas to supporters of Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups for their violent assaults, threats and campaign to destroy America and Israel.

Those who support Taal, Khalil and other campus terror supporters are not doing so because of some abstract commitment to free speech. They had plenty of chances to stand up for free speech. The only speech they support is the speech that they already agree with. And that speech is aimed at destroying America and Israel.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

The Divide Among American Jews

November 28, 2023 By Howard J. Warner

This week was a sad awakening for me.  I attended a discussion group regarding the situation in the Mideast at my synagogue.  Of the ten attendees I was the only one to express concern about the level of anti-Semitism which was occurring around the USA.  Others that spoke expressed their concern about the aggressiveness of the Israeli government and negative treatment of Arabs.  

I entered the room somewhat depressed that so many people will die because of the Oct 7^th attack but left even more upset.  These people were approaching the issue based upon their dislike of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and admiration for the socialist origins of Israel rather than the present facts...........

Ultra-Orthodox groups such as the Satmar Hasidim and Neturei Karta (an offshoot of Haredi Jews that originated in Jerusalem in 1938) reject political Zionism and therefore reject the state of Israel............... The alliance between Marxism and Islam has encouraged young Jews to carry signs saying “Jews for Palestine” because they are ignorant of its meaning.  ............Christians regularly tell me of their support for Israel.  But among middle-aged and older Jews I find lukewarm support with some hesitant to express strong support for the Gaza incursion.  ............In Israel it is apparent that some on the political Left has recognized that their strategy for “land for peace” and coexistence with Palestinian Arabs has not succeeded.  .......To Read More.....

My Take - One thing is clear.   If anyone ever wondered why Israeli politics is so complicated with all those political parties in their Knesset it's because Jewish views are in no way monolithic, even at the expense of the nation of Israel.