Archive | 2024/02/08

Hamas zgadza się na rozejm, ale na własnych warunkach. Postulaty są nie do spełnienia

Niszczenia w Strefie Gazy po izraelskich nalotach/MOHAMMED SABER /PAP/EPA


Hamas zgadza się na rozejm, ale na własnych warunkach. Postulaty są nie do spełnienia

Marta Urzędowska


Terroryści z Hamasu odpowiedzieli na ofertę rozejmu złożoną przez Izraelczyków za pośrednictwem amerykańskich i arabskich mediatorów. Poza wymianą izraelskich zakładników na palestyńskich więźniów domagają się wycofania izraelskich sił z Gazy, co dziś wydaje się nierealne.

Szczegóły oferty podaje Reuters. Porozumienie, które próbują wynegocjować Amerykanie, Katarczycy i Egipcjanie, to szansa na wstrzymanie walk w Strefie Gazy, gdzie od czterech miesięcy trwa krwawa wojna. Zaczęła się atakiem Hamasu na Izrael, w którym terroryści zabili 1,2 tys. osób, a 250 porwali do Gazy. W odpowiedzi izraelska armia prowadzi w enklawie naloty i inwazję lądową, w których zginęło ponad 27 tys. Palestyńczyków, w większości cywilów.

Izrael: Kilkudziesięciu zakładników nie żyje

Opisywane przez Reutersa porozumienie ma dać szansę na przerwanie walk i uwolnienie zakładników, którzy nadal pozostają w rękach palestyńskich terrorystów. Około połowy porwanych zwolniono w listopadzie, przy poprzednim zawieszeniu broni i wymianie zakładników na palestyńskich więźniów w izraelskich więzieniach.

W środę izraelskie władze poinformowały, że spośród 130 zakładników, którzy nadal pozostają w Gazie, co najmniej 30 nie żyje, choć nie podano, czy zginęli z rąk terrorystów, czy w izraelskich nalotach. Według niepotwierdzonych źródeł cytowanych przez „Guardiana” być może nie żyje też 20 kolejnych porwanych, co oznaczałoby, że do uwolnienia zamiast 130 osób pozostało ok. 80. Nie poinformowano, czy zabici zakładnicy to cywile, czy żołnierze.

Porozumienie, które dziś jest negocjowane z Hamasem, opracowane zostało przez Izrael, USA, Katar i Egipt i tydzień temu przekazane terrorystom, którzy jednak – jak podaje BBC – potrzebowali dłuższego czasu na zastanowienie, bo propozycje były „niejasne i mętne”.

Jak informuje stacja, umowa prawdopodobnie objęłaby sześciotygodniowe zawieszenie broni, podczas którego pewna liczba zakładników zostałaby wymieniona na więźniów. Jednak poza tym terroryści domagają się, by izraelskie siły w pełni wycofały się z Gazy.

Hamas domaga się też pomocy w odbudowie enklawy i pozwolenia mieszkańcom, których setki tysięcy uciekły przed wojną na południe enklawy, by wrócili do domu. Terroryści chcieliby też, by ranni w Gazie mieli zapewnioną możliwość przewiezienia ich do szpitali za granicą.

Postulaty Hamasu nie do spełnienia. Izrael nie wycofa się z enklawy

Choć Izrael i USA poinformowały, że przyglądają się odpowiedzi Hamasu i propozycjom terrorystów, jasne jest, że nie wszystkie postulaty będą mogły zostać spełnione. Amerykański prezydent Joe Biden nazwał propozycje Hamasu „nieco przesadzonymi”, co sugeruje, że Izraelczykom może być trudno spełnić te żądania.

Szczególnie trudny jest warunek wycofania izraelskiej armii z Gazy. Izrael od początku zapowiadał, że wojna w enklawie potrwa do czasu, gdy Hamas zostanie w pełni unicestwiony, a izraelski premier Beniamin Netanjahu jeszcze w ostatnich dniach przypominał, że izraelskie siły będą wojować do „ostatecznego, totalnego zwycięstwa”.

Izraelczycy na pewno nie odpuszczą też polowania na najważniejszych przywódców grupy, wśród nich na Jahję Sinwara, który osobiście zaplanował atak z 7 października i który ukrywa się w tunelach na południu Gazy – najpewniej w Chan Junus.

Jasne jest też, że nawet gdyby wojna miała się trwale zakończyć, izraelskie siły nie wycofają się w pełni, bo muszą pilnować bezpieczeństwa na miejscu. Choć Izraelczycy zapewniają, że nie chcą ponownej okupacji Strefy Gazy, jednocześnie podkreślają, że będą pilnować, by po pierwsze, Hamas już nigdy nie urósł w enklawie w siłę, a po drugie – by miejscowi terroryści już nigdy nie zagrozili państwu Izrael.

Blinken z Izraelczykami opracują odpowiedź dla Hamasu

Postulat Hamasu, by Izraelczycy całkowicie wycofali swoje wojska z Gazy, jest sprzeczny również ze stanowiskiem Ameryki – Waszyngton, choć apeluje do izraelskich sił, by skuteczniej chroniły palestyńskich cywilów, jednocześnie nie odmawia Izraelczykom prawa do walki i nie domaga się trwałego rozejmu.

W regionie przebywa amerykański sekretarz stanu Antony Blinken, który razem z Izraelczykami zastanawia się, jak zareagować na propozycję Hamasu. Amerykański dyplomata przyznał we wtorek w Katarze, że „nadal pozostaje wiele pracy do wykonania”. Jednocześnie dodał, że wierzy w szanse dogadania się co do wymiany zakładników na więźniów, choć przyznał, że osiągnięcie trwałego pokoju będzie wymagało od regionalnych przywódców „trudnych decyzji”.

Amerykanom zależy na rozejmie w Gazie, by uspokoić napięcia w całym regionie. Miejscowy konflikt rozlewa się bowiem także na inne kraje – sojusznicy Hamasu w Jemenie, Syrii, Iraku i Libanie również uderzają w interesy Izraela i USA, a ponieważ są wspierani przez Teheran, z każdym dniem rośnie ryzyko wciągnięcia Ameryki w dużą wojnę w regionie.

Hamas: Niech Ameryka zdecyduje, czy chce by ta wojna trwała

Terroryści nie tracą rezonu. Ważny przedstawiciel biura politycznego Hamasu, Muhammad Nazzal, w rozmowie z Al-Dżazirą przekonywał, że nie ustąpią choćby na jotę. Zapewniał, że – w porównaniu z przekazaną im propozycją Izraelczyków, ich własna wersja projektu porozumienia jest „bardziej szczegółowa” i zawiera „czasowe limity”. – Żaden z tych detali nie może być naruszony. Izraelska maszyna śmierci musi zostać zatrzymana, chcemy zobaczyć, jak izraelskie siły okupacyjne wycofują się całkowicie ze Strefy Gazy – wyliczał dodając, że „odpowiedź Hamasu jest realistyczna, a żądania – sensowne”.

Jednocześnie Nazzal pożalił się, że Izraelczycy „nie podchodzą do dealu poważnie”, ale zapewnił, że – jeśli rozejm wejdzie w życie – będzie go pilnować pięciu „gwarantów”: Katar, Egipt, Turcja, Rosja i ONZ. – Spodziewamy się, że ruszą negocjacje. A kiedy już się rozpoczną, wszelkie przeszkody da się ominąć, trzeba tylko dograć szczegóły – dodał.

Na pytanie Al-Dżaziry co sądzi o wypowiedzi Bidena, że terroryści swoimi postulatami przeholowali, stwierdził, że „nie spodziewał się po amerykańskim prezydencie niczego lepszego”. – Jest całkowicie uprzedzony, jest zaangażowany w wojnę w Gazie, daje Izraelczykom polityczne i prawne wsparcie i popiera wszystko, co robi Netanjahu – wyliczał. – Oczekujemy od administracji USA ostatecznej decyzji: Chcą, żeby ta wojna była kontynuowana, czy chcą trwałego rozejmu? – dodał.


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White People Are Going to Colonize Mars, and Other Fears From Today’s Campuses

White People Are Going to Colonize Mars, and Other Fears From Today’s Campuses

EMILY BENEDEK


When Ilya Bratman—the Moscow-born linguist and head of eight CUNY and SUNY Hillels—looks out at the students facing him, he sees a familiar threat

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City University of New York (CUNY) alumni who support Palestine, protest outside of Chancellor office of CUNY at Midtown Manhattan in New York, United States on December 05, 2023. / SELCUK ACAR/ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES

It was a belated awakening. For many American Jews, Oct. 7 uncovered the deep rot in the elite institutions they had invested in for decades, psychically and financially. A recent poll found that 73% of Jewish students experienced or witnessed antisemitic incidents since the beginning of this academic school year, a 22-fold increase over the year before. Jewish students have been punched, spat upon, assaulted with sticks, shouted at, and corralled by students in kaffiyehs.

But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the DEI regime has fostered the flourishing of campus antisemitism under the Palestinian banner. Having established Jews as members of the “oppressor” class and defined “justice” as the dismantling of this class, the officially sanctioned ideology has given license to the Palestinian vanguard to demand fulfillment of the progressive promise, “by any means necessary,” while turning Jewish students into piñatas.

In New York City public colleges, a kippa-wearing, red-headed leprechaun named Ilya Bratman—former U.S. Army tankist, applied linguist, long-distance runner, and immigrant from the former Soviet Union—has witnessed up close the socialization of young Americans into this toxic worldview. A teacher of English composition at Baruch and John Jay colleges who holds a Ph.D. in education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, he also serves as executive director of Hillel at eight CUNY and SUNY colleges.

On the day we met, Bratman was hosting dinner for 200 Jewish students at a synagogue on 23rd Street near Lexington Avenue. After passing a phalanx of security guards into a social room, they began filling their plates with grilled meat and salads prepared by Bratman’s favorite Georgian caterer.

The narrative of victimhood has become welded to these young people’s identity, leading to a sense of grievance toward America.

After the students use cookie cutters to shape chocolate chip cookie dough into Stars of David, Bratman grabbed a microphone and stepped forward. “Last week, everybody was already seated in my 8:00 a.m. class, and a student comes in and she says to me, “Wow, I can’t believe you bombed that hospital last night and killed all those people.”

The social room, for the first time, went dead quiet.

The student of course was referring to deaths and injuries at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, whose courtyard was hit on Oct. 17 by a rocket misfired from inside Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but which was widely misreported as having been the result of an Israeli missile.

Bratman’s reaction, as a teacher, was to affirm the importance of sound reasoning and argumentation—and, of course, language. “I told her, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you forgot completely everything I taught you about the accusative voice and the proper use of the pronoun ‘you,’ because you just said that ‘I’ did this,” he recounted. “‘I’ bombed the hospital. What hospital? Where? Who?’”

He went on. “Did you hear that Hamas said they did it?” Bratman said he asked the student, referring to a conversation Israel had recorded between two terrorists apparently acknowledging the bombing was an own goal.

The student’s response was emblematic of the sectarian worldview into which young Americans are regimented, whereby the value, even the truthfulness, of an argument or action is assessed based on the identity of its author, rather than on its own merits. “I will never believe that,” she told him, “even if they came to my face and say, ‘Hamas, we did it.’ I will never believe it.”

Bratman told me the students think he’s a fool to read the newspapers and interrogate different sources in search of the truth. They tell him that mainstream media is all fake news, and they get their information from TikTok, which is real people talking about real things. “I’ve seen it,” they tell him. “On Instagram, on TikTok, I’ve seen it.”

“They don’t read anything. They just read headlines and pictures and memes. And they base their whole worldview on a set of memes.”

Ilya Bratman was born in Moscow. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1992 with his parents, graduated from college at the University of Pittsburgh in 1999, then joined the U.S. Army, where he served four years in active duty and four years in the reserves.

Bratman believes strongly in America and the American dream. Teaching American students in New York City has brought him face-to-face with an entirely different worldview—one that appears to be particularly common among students from officially sanctioned “minority” backgrounds. The students don’t appreciate what a gift they’ve been given to live in America. Instead, they are lost in a zero-sum game of calculating relative oppressions. This fixation stops them from learning, Bratman believes, in part because it assures them that they will fail.

In his composition classes, he explained, he tries to get his students to create and support an argument. One week, he asked them to write about space exploration. Should we go to space? Or should we not?

One girl argued in favor of space travel because “white people will move to space, maybe to Mars, or wherever,” creating a gap, or an opening into which the “indigenous brown and black people can move up in the class structure and fill that gap left behind by the white people who will move to Mars.”

“There’s a lot to unpack there, isn’t there?” Bratman responded. “First of all, the belief in this structure where white people are on top, everybody else on the bottom, and the only way to move up is if the white people leave.”

Another girl wrote that no, we should not have space travel because then the white people would colonize the Martian people, as they always do, and ruin the Martians’ lives.

Bratman said he asked, “Does it help you to blame somebody? Do you actually become better? Do you strive further? Do you succeed better because you can blame someone?”

He told me the students have no answer, but they know life “is a victimhood competition. I’m a victim and therefore you owe me, and therefore I don’t have to do anything because I cannot succeed.”

The narrative of victimhood has become welded to these young people’s identity, leading to an increased detachment from, and a sense of grievance toward, America—the irony of course being that they and their parents chose to immigrate here. One girl in the class told him: “I am here in this country against my will.” Bratman asked her: “Who’s holding you? Tell me, please. I’m frightened for you,” showcasing his high-energy, high-drama style. “Everybody’s laughing, and I asked her, ‘Where are you from?’ And she says, ‘Haiti.’ OK. ‘And where were you born?’ And she says, ‘Brooklyn.’”

“So you’re actually from Brooklyn. Your parents are from Haiti,” he repeated. “Who’s holding you back? Do you really want to go to Haiti today? You should actually go and see what life is like in a noncapitalist, depressed country that is in a desperate economic struggle. Or go to Gaza to a totalitarian, autocratic, hateful, homophobic nation. Or go to North Korea, go to Iran, go to all the places as a young woman, and see what life is really like.”

“None of that is understood,” he told me. “The students are pawns of teachers who want them to believe they can never succeed. And these teachers have been spectacularly successful at convincing them it is true.”

Bratman teaches his Jewish students to adopt a different approach to the world—one anchored in tradition, learning, and the study of Jewish texts. At the dinner in the 23rd Street synagogue, he invited the students to let him know if they’d like to join him in studying Pirkei Avot in honor of IDF soldiers called up for duty. He also has a club of about 80 boys who are laying tefillin every day.

Bratman told me that, in spite of the recent stresses, he’s not worried about his Jewish students. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are rational people who go out and get jobs, they get married and I go to their weddings and brises.”

But there is something terribly wrong with the others, he believes. “A lot of these students, they’re nice, they’re wonderful people, right? But they look at me as a Jew, and say, ‘well, you know, because you’re supportive of this Israel story and Israel narrative, you kind of stand with the oppressor, you know, and I’m Hispanic or Black and I have to stand with the oppressed. Or I’m gay and I have to stand with the oppressed.”

Bratman’s worry is that these students, by adopting a worldview of grievance, are keeping themselves down with imaginary obstacles and denying their own volition. “What they don’t understand is that [these invented obstacles] are all surmountable. It’s my mission to uplift and empower these young people to actually strive for the opportunities that exist and to dispel the false and limiting idea that it’s all impossible.”

Bratman told me he had a student at John Jay whom he will never forget, a student struggling mightily at school. “I had many conversations with him,” Bratman said. “I’d say, ‘come, come on, keep going, keep going.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m thinking of dropping out.’”

“And I’m like, no, no, get through this class. I got you. I got you. And I carried him through this course. And on the last day he came to see me, and he said, ‘I dropped out of all the classes except for yours. Everybody in my family, including my mother and my grandparents—I don’t know my father—my uncles and everybody said, ‘What are you doing? Why are you going to college? You can get a job now for $20 an hour, and when you graduate, you’re gonna get a job for $20 an hour. What’s the purpose?’”

Bratman seemed genuinely sad—not angry or offended, just sad—about what he heard next. “No one ever believed in me,” the student said. “I can’t believe that the first and only person who’s ever believed in me is a white Jew.”


Emily Benedek has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Mosaic, among other publications. She is the author of five books.


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Julia Sebutinde, who voted with Israel on all counts at ICJ, elected court’s vice-president

Julia Sebutinde, who voted with Israel on all counts at ICJ, elected court’s vice-president

LEON KRAIEM


She will serve alongside Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam, who was elected president of the court. They will hold their positions for three years.

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Julia Sebutinde, the only judge on the International Court of Justice to vote against all the provisional measures levied at Israel over its war in Gaza and alleged violations of the Genocide Convention. / (photo credit: INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE)

Julia Sebutinde, the Ugandan judge who was the only member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to vote against all of that court’s provisional measures in South Africa’s case against Israel alleging genocide in Gaza, has been elected by her peers to serve as the ICJ’s vice-president. She will serve alongside Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam, who was elected president of the court. They will hold their positions for three years.

Sebutinde, until January a relatively obscure figure on the international scene, rose to prominence when she rejected all nine of the court’s ‘provisional measures’ to respond to the genocide against Palestinians alleged by South Africa. The court did not rule on the merits of the case— that determination is reserved for a later stage in the proceedings— but ruled that South Africa’s allegation was at least plausible on its face. 

Though South Africa had requested that the court order Israel to cease all military activity in Gaza, the court did not make this demand, nor did it point to any specific activity by Israel that it considered a violation, or even a plausible violation, of the genocide convention. Rather, the court merely ordered that Israel take all necessary measures to prevent or punish violations of the genocide convention, facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, preserve evidence of possible acts of genocide to be investigated in the future, and report to the court in a month about its doing so.

All but two of the panel’s seventeen judges voted in favor of all six of the court’s provisional measures. The only judges to vote against any of them were Sebutinde, who voted against all of them, and Judge Aharon Barak, the legendary and controversial Israeli legal scholar whom the country appointed as an ad-hoc judge for this case, a prerogative of states on trial at the court.

Even Barak, however, voted in favor of the measure demanding efforts to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid as well as a measure demanding Israel “take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.” Only Sebutinde rejected all the measures outright.

The judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands. (credit: THILO SCHMUELGEN)

Sebutinde’s dissent rejected South Africa’s case, raised issue of hostages

In her dissent, which ran six pages and was filed alongside the court’s majority’s opinion, Sebutinde wrote that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is essentially a political one, not the sort of disagreement that the ICJ is meant to litigate, and that South Africa failed to demonstrate genocidal intent by Israel in its war with Hamas, even by a mere plausibility standard, noting the measures Israel takes to minimize civilian casualties. 

Sebutinde also wrote that, even if genocidal intent had been proven plausible by South Africa, the provisional measures requested by that country’s legal team, and the ones ultimately indicated by the court, would not follow from those findings. She also took issue with the measures themselves as essentially just recapitulations of Israel’s existing commitments under the genocide convention itself. Provisional measures should not be redundant, she wrote.

The Ugandan judge also made a point of including in her dissent “a word about the Israeli hostages that remain in the custody of their captors,” noting that “it was brought to the attention of the Court that South Africa, and in particular certain organs of government, have enjoyed and continue to enjoy a cordial relationship with the leadership of Hamas. If that is the case,” she wrote, “ then one would encourage South Africa…to try [to] persuade Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the remaining hostages.” 

Sebutinde will serve alongside Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam

Sebutinde’s vice presidency will coincide with Judge Nawaf Salam’s term as president of the court. Salam, who hails from Lebanon, voted in favor of all the court’s provisional measures in the Gaza case. 

The International Court of Justice in The Hague is the only international court to adjudicate disputes between nations. It was founded in 1945 and is one of the six organs of the United Nations, serving “first, to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States; and, second, to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by duly authorized United Nations organs and agencies of the system.” 

It is separate from the International Criminal Court, also a UN-administered international body located in The Hague, which tries individuals for crimes against international law. 


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