What the hell is going on?

One-third of the Gazan casualties do not exist, Khamenei’s Zionist conspiracy theory about “a major flaw” in Western universities, Israel is being accused of “scholasticide,” and more.

By Joshua Hoffman, FUTURE OF JEWISH 14 April 2024

Editor’s Note: “What the hell is going on?” is a weekly series in which we bring you the most bizarre, outlandish, and surreal developments from around the Jewish world during the past week.

The Islamic Republic of Iran launched some 185 drones, 110 surface-to-surface missiles, and 36 cruise missiles at Israel on Saturday night — yet many in the mainstream media have dismissed the Iranian regime’s first-ever attack on Israel as “limited.”

U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres put it best: “Critics cannot help but downplay the actual wrongs against Israel and overplay the fictional wrongs by Israel.”1

Meanwhile in Iran, someone wrote on a wall (in Arabic): “Hit them, Israel. They don’t have the balls to retaliate.”

Because most of the Iranian people know damn well who is actually the evil party here.

Graffiti on a wall in Iran that says, in Arabic: “Hit them, Israel. They don’t have the balls to retaliate.”

A video clip aired by Iran’s state TV service claiming to show fiery destruction in Israel due to a massive Iranian missile and drone attack is months-old footage of a fire in Chile, a reporter for a fact-finding division of the BBC clarified Sunday.

Shayan Sardarizadeh posted screen captures from the video broadcast by Iran alongside shots from the same video circulating on social media earlier this year.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said last week that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death.2

In other words, one in three “dead Palestinians” in Gaza (who much of the world has been obsessively commiserating over) do not even have names or birthdates. Because they do not actually exist.

This makes the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in Gaza less than one-to-one, a feat never accomplished by any military in modern warfare history.

As one social media user observed: “The only genocide since October 7th is of the truth.”3

The San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum asked for submissions from Jewish artists.

Of course, anti-Zionist Jews submitted anti-Israel art, expecting to be denied so they could claim censorship — yet the curator accepted their submissions, so they demanded that the museum must boycott Israel and reveal its anonymous donors, and also said that they cannot exhibit near Zionist artists (and other absurd demands).

The museum refused their “requests” (obviously) so they withdrew their submissions — and are still claiming they were censored.4

The absurdly antisemitic organization Amnesty International published a quasi-report about the death in custody of Walid Daqqa, “a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after 38 years of imprisonment” — adding that it is “a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life.”

They forget to mention his crime: Daqqa held an Israeli 19-year-old named Moshe Tamam hostage for two days and then gouged out his eyes, castrated him, mutilated his body, and finally shot him in the chest and dumped his body.

What Amnesty International really meant is that Daqqa’s crime is a cruel reminder of the Palestinians’ disregard for Israelis’ right to life.

As one social media user commented on Amnesty’s “report”: “Former billionaire and businessman died at the age of 54 following an American invasion of Pakistan” — alongside a photo of Osama bin Laden.5

After the world lambasted Israel for “purposely targeting” World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, here is what last week’s IDF’s investigation into the incident found:

Hamas purposely drew fire to one of the World Central Kitchen vehicles. (The IDF noticed suspicious activity as the vehicle was joined by a convoy of several other Hamas vehicles.)
Hamas terrorists climbed onto and into one of the World Central Kitchen vehicles and fired several times indiscriminately into the air to ensure the IDF would see them.
The convoy then split up and entered a hanger, where it became difficult to distinguish between Hamas vehicles and the World Central Kitchen vehicle.
The IDF attempted to call both the World Central Kitchen workers and World Central Kitchen headquarters on two separate occasions to confirm whether they were with the Hamas convoy, but their calls remained unanswered.
When the vehicles left the hangar more than an hour later, the IDF drone unit misidentified the World Central Kitchen vehicle for a vehicle from the Hamas convoy and mistakenly struck.6

And then a photo came out of Gaza showing a World Central Kitchen worker hanging around with Hamas.

People are taking to social media to complain that Israel has “obliterated” thousands of buildings in Gaza, and human rights groups are calling Gazan cities “unlivable.”

“You would have to be the dumbest person alive to believe Israel was only targeting terrorists,” wrote one social media firebrand.

Eylon Levy, one of Israel’s spokespersons, had this to say: “I don’t know, you’d have to be pretty dumb to believe terrorists can fight urban warfare battles out of civilian buildings and they’ll still be standing.”7

Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei posted on one of his social media accounts that there is “a major flaw in Western universities that causes science to become a tool in the hands of the Zionist powers.”

As one social media user replied: “Nice to see Khamenei is following in the footsteps of his Nazi heroes. I strongly urge him to abandon all nuclear physics that have been tainted by ‘Zionists.’”8

A peaceful protestor in Toronto, Canada was detained for holding a sign that said, “Hamas is a terrorist organization,” while draped in the Canadian flag.

Yes, you read that correctly: A peaceful protestor in Toronto, Canada was detained for holding a sign that said, “Hamas is a terrorist organization,” while draped in the Canadian flag.

photo: Salman Sima/X

More than 1,600 North American professors signed an open letter, accusing Israel of “scholasticide” — a term that was coined by Palestinian professor Karma Nabulsi, who defines it as “a reference to a pattern of Israeli colonial attacks on Palestinian scholars, students, and educational institutions going back to the Nakba of 1948, and expanding after the 1967 war on Palestine and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.”

As such, the letter claims that Israel is carrying out “systematic attacks on educational life in Gaza” while noting that all 12 universities in Gaza have been either destroyed or damaged since the Israel-Hamas war erupted six months ago. (Yes, that is what happens when you turn civilian infrastructure into jihadist depots.)

In other news, Israel is also being accused of Zionist bromide, cyanide, pesticide, and every other word that ends in “ide.” You know, like “genocide.”

Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran at the U.S. public radio institution National Public Radio (NPR), wrote an article suggesting that the organization lost its way “when it started telling listeners how to think,” adding:

“More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed.”

“That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7th, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”9

Just another reminder that Right-wing antisemitism is mainly confined to internet trolling losers, whereas Left-wing antisemitism is hijacking major Western institutions right before our eyes.

In another unfortunate example, some iPhones are automatically showing users a Palestinian flag emoji when they type the word “Jerusalem” on their phones.

A Palestinian flag appears as an emoji when an iPhone user types “Jerusalem.” (photo: Screenshot X)

To support “the people of Palestine,” so-called “pro-Palestinians” are encouraging people to buy keffiyehs (Palestinian scarfs) which, of course, are made in China.

As one social media user said: “From the Yellow River to the South China Sea.”10

In response to a potential hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week: “The ball is in Hamas’ court and the world is watching to see what it will do.”

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I am pretty sure that the world already watched what Hamas did on October 7th. Even then, not all of us (at least those of us in Israel) have the luxury of being foolish enough to expect that the world’s fifth-most active terrorist organization is suddenly going to act in good faith.

And it is not just Hamas. Last week, a former Israeli hostage held in Gaza said that Palestinian civilians “negotiated with Hamas to sell me,” adding: “When they were paid, I was taken straight into a tunnel.”11 These are the people with whom the Biden administration wants Israel to make peace.

Then, last Monday, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller made clear that the Biden administration is ruling out an Israeli group operation in Rafah — Hamas’ last major stronghold in Gaza — under any circumstances, raising doubts whether the U.S. still supports Hamas’ removal from power in the Strip.

As one social media user commented: “The point is that the administration is saying, you can have an abusive, antagonistic relationship with us that we pretend doesn’t exist, and lose the war, or you can have an abusive antagonistic relationship with us that we admit exists, and win the war.”12

And for good measure, a photo below shows the scene outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The State Department’s Diplomatic Security is responsible for safeguarding embassies in America, yet it enables Hamas supporters to spread blood libels and harass everyone going in and out of the building.