The Guardian May 23, 2025
But endorsing murder because of the other side’s atrocities is a sure path to a bloodbath. That is wrong on two counts.

First, there is no evidence that the gunman acted because of Israel’s critics as opposed to Israel’s conduct.
Second, it cheapens the concept of antisemitism to equate it with legitimate criticism of Israeli war crimes.

Antisemitism is a real and growing problem but if the concept is misused to deflect condemnation of Israeli atrocities, it weakens protection for Jews around the world. There are lessons to be drawn from this tragedy.

Critics of the Israeli government’s atrocious conduct in Gaza should be clear that their focus is the authors:
1. Netanyahu, the generals directing the slaughter,
2. and the soldiers carrying it out,
3. but not the Israeli people,
4. not people who happen to work as civilians for the Israeli government,
5. and not Jews.

The Israeli government might also reconsider its policy of endless reprisals.

Not that I am holding my breath in anticipation, but it is nice to think that the needless and unjustified killing of these two young embassy workers could prompt a rethinking of the government’s own callous treatment of Palestinian civilians, whose horrible and mounting death toll is also needless and unjustified.

The Jerusalem Post May 23, 2025
U.N. cannot dismiss grief and struggle of Israeli people.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. But neither should the cries of grieving parents of hostages.

Israel far and away had the highest level of enmity toward the organization, with no other country coming within 15 percent of Israel’s disapproval rating of the global body.

The reason for that large gap was showcased this week, when Tom Fletcher, the U.N.’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, went on the BBC. He said on Tuesday
1. “There are five trucks just sitting on the other side of the border right now,”
2. “They have not reached the communities they need to reach. This is baby food, baby nutrition.
3. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.”

Needless to say, 14,000 Gazan babies did not die in two days.

Israel has historically not felt adequately represented by the U.N.

Look no further than the infamous UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 which equated Zionism with racism, a bastardization of the concept from people who seemed not to understand its very roots and importance to an often marginalized and massacred people.

To be an effective international broker, the U.N. cannot dismiss the true grief and struggle of the Israeli people, as it has. The horrors of this war do not extend only to one side. The U.N. has no right to gaslight us about our history and our hostages.

The heart of Israel is and will remain with the hostages. We know what an attack is.

The Jerusalem Post May 23, 2025
Propaganda against the Jewish state

To many Israelis, this is part and parcel with the propaganda
1. disseminated widely against the Jewish state,
2. cynically manipulating public perception by fudging facts amidst the fog of war
3. and trying to appeal to emotion by drastically and dramatically overstating the damage done on the ground.

This distortion does nothing to aid the cause on the ground.
To call it a well-intentioned attempt to rally people against the very real suffering in Gaza is to miss the point.

It is alarmism in search of a good cause, an extreme amplification that smacks of scapegoating.

It is the boy who cried wolf.
Exacerbate the issue by exploiting the most vulnerable to raise the stakes geopolitically and emotionally, then claim yourself as the savior.

It calls into question the motives of representatives of a supposedly peace-oriented organization, whether they are trying to achieve actual results or grandstand for what amounts to geopolitical clout and cultural cachet.

Israel at the U.N. feels like it is unduly maligned, its very soul and essence disturbingly distorted by people who only wish it harm.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. But neither should the cries of grieving parents of hostages.

In March, Ayelet Samerano, the mother of a hostage, spoke to the United Nations Human Rights Council: “I know what an attack is.
1. An attack is when terrorists, including UNRWA employees like Muhammad Abu Itiwi, enter a music festival and murder innocent young people.
2. An attack is when a U.N. social worker, paid by this organization, kidnapped my son into Gaza:
3. A U.N. employee who took upon himself to do good, yet did evil.
4. No, UNRWA is not under attack. UNRWA is the attacker.”

Attacking a UK prime minister that helps..

Netanyahu accuses Starmer of being on 'wrong side of humanity' and siding with Hamas

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7804k13x52o.amp

n an interview for BBC World Service's Newshour programme, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the current Israeli administration as a "gang of thugs".

He was asked about remarks by the Israeli education minister, who had said Olmert should be ashamed of a previous interview with the BBC, where he argued that what Israel was doing in Gaza was "close to a war crime".

"This is nonsense, they are a group of thugs that are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu - this is a gang of thugs," Olmert said.

"Of course they are criticising me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticising and opposing these atrocious policies."

Ehud Olmert the first Israeli premier to be imprisoned:
Olmert is not an uncontroversial figure in Israel and internationally.

He was convicted of corruption in 2014 and in 2016 became the first Israeli premier to be imprisoned, capping a years-long legal saga that forced him to resign in 2009 during an intense round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, then released early, in 2017

Olmert and Qudwa have been traveling all over Europe in recent months, promoting their “peace initiative” which is based on the generous but failed peace proposition that Olmert presented in 2008 to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas never rejected the peace plan He just didn’t react and waited for Olmert to step down

Wow! As Israel faces diplomatic 'tsunami' Olmert adding fuel to the raging terror volatility... former failed prime minister at that — now an expert.

Netanyahu is on the failed list too. perhaps next to be imprisoned.
Most believe, he cares: more about holding power than defeating Hamas, winning war, freeing hostages.

From: The Jerusalem Post May 23, 2025
Ehud Olmert's Gaza statement is more media spectacle than political dissent: — Editorial

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert crossed the line this week in his interview to the BBC

There are many ways to dissent in a democracy. That is our strength, but there are also lines – of responsibility, of timing, and of loyalty – and crossing those lines carries a cost. This week, former prime minister Ehud Olmert crossed that line.

In an interview with the BBC, Olmert denounced Israel’s conduct in Gaza in sweeping, unrestrained terms:
1. not in the Knesset,
2. not in the Israeli press,
3. and not to the people who live with the consequences.

He spoke instead to an international broadcaster, eager for condemnation and slow to understand the context or the cost.
When Israeli leaders, past or present, choose to denounce their own country in the pages and studios of foreign media, it is no longer internal critique.

It is a political act performed for an audience:
1. hungry for confirmation of its worst assumptions,
2. quick to strip complexity and to amplify blame,
3. and entirely free of responsibility.

Ehud Olmert's Gaza statement is more media spectacle than political dissent: — Editorial

The gap between protest and political ammunition:
This is not about silencing disagreement. Israelis argue with passion, conviction, and pain. We protest.

We publish. We fight over the soul of this country. That is our right and often our obligation.
But dissent belongs inside the civic conversation, not handed over to those who will use it to harm us.

Olmert’s words were not a call to conscience. They were not a principled act of protest.
They were the outsourcing of internal reckoning to those who bear none of its weight and will gladly weaponize his words.

I say this from experience. When I lived in London and had The Times or The International Herald Tribune delivered to my door, I saw how eagerly they seized every opportunity to run a caustic piece against Israel.

1. It didn’t matter who was in power, Left, Right, moderate, or hardline.
2. It didn’t matter what the context was.

If the criticism came from within Israel, especially from someone with stature, they’d rush to print it.
Not to grapple with complexity, but to feed a narrative of Israeli wrongdoing, they were always hungry to serve.

You want to protest, protest. You want to write, write. But write here. Speak in Hebrew. Speak to the people whose fate is bound up with yours, not to those who cheer when our standing crumbles or those who read our grief as weakness and our struggle as failure.

This isn’t protest; it’s spectacle. And in Olmert’s case, it’s a spectacle that betrays more than it reveals. This is not moral courage. It is civic abandonment. Because in moments like this, the question of where and who you speak to is not incidental; it is everything.

I came here from Britain eight years ago, not because I had answers, but because I couldn’t stand on the outside and speak as if I understood.
I came because I believed that to carry the weight of this country, you have to live it, with all its pain and all its possibilities.

If you want to shape its future, you stay in the conversation, even when it’s hard.
You speak to your own people, not over them, not past them, and not in places where your words become someone else’s weapon.

That is where responsibility begins, and that is where it must remain.

Day 595 Israel’s PM wedged and in the firing line:
Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure on all sides as he prepares to launch an intensified campaign to wipe out Hamas at all costs.

Irish songwriter and activist Bono calls for Hamas to release hostages, Israel to be released from Netanyahu

the U2 musician said, during a speech at this year’s Ivor Novello awards:
1. “Hamas, release the hostages, stop the war
2. Israel, be released from Benjamin Netanyahu
3. and the far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts,”

Bono’s latest comments follow those made in an interview with The Associated Press last week, where he expressed concern that the world war heading for a third world war.

U2 has previously expressed sympathy with the Israeli youth murdered by Hamas and changed the lyrics to the song ‘Pride’ to pay tribute to those killed at the Nova Music Festival.

From: The Times of Israel May 23, 2025
Security lapses in D.C. museum killings Failure at the Capital Jewish Museum Washington D.C.

‘He never should have made it inside that building’ The timeline of the attack is relatively clear and, to security analysts, troubling:

According to reports, the attacker shot his victims, the couple Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, on the street outside the museum as the event, organized by the American Jewish Committee, was winding down.

He then walked inside the museum, where an eyewitness said organizers offered him water and he remained for around 10 minutes until police arrived and he confessed to the shooting.

Both elements of the incident — that the attacker was able to reach his victims outside the event and then proceed inside for an extended period of time — indicate missteps, according to security professionals.

Paul Goldenberg, the former head of the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, said:
His behavior was almost literally screaming that there’s an issue here,”

Goldenberg said that in a widely circulated video of the suspect entering the building, he appeared nervous and disheveled, with jerky movements.

After the shooting, Gurwitz and the museum’s board said in a statement they were “heartbroken by the murders,” vowing to reopen in the coming days “with all necessary security in place.”