ASF’s Hamas War Resource Page
Table of Contents:
- ASF Sephardi House Fellows at Yale and Cornell Testify to the US Congress
- March for Israel Speech by Dr. Mijal Bitton
- Articles by or about ASF Sephardi House Fellows at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and other Campuses
- Interviews with ASF Staff & Sephardi House Fellows
- Intro to Sephardi Ideas Monthly’s Context for the Conflict
- Articles by ASF Advisors and Partners
- Instagram Posts
- American Sephardi Solidarity with Israel
ASF Sephardi House Fellows at Yale and Cornell Testify to the US Congress:
Talia Dror (ASF Sephardi House @ Cornell University ’22-’23), “From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing,” House Ways and Means Committee panel on “Campus Free Speech During Israel-Hamas War,” 15 November 2023.
Sahar Tartak (ASF Sephardi House @ Yale University ’22-’23), “Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus,” House Committee on Education & the Workforce – Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, 14 November 2023.
March for Israel Speech by Dr. Mijal Bitton:
On 14 November, over 290,000 Jews (including the American Sephardi Community) came together in Washington, D.C., in the largest gathering in American Jewish history, to march for the America-Israel alliance. One of the most memorable speeches was by Dr. Mijal Bitton, a fiery young Jewish leader and thinker, ASF Broome & Allen Fellow (2018), and inheritor of the Classic Sephardic Tradition from her family, including her Great Uncle, Hakham R’José Faur. We invite you to listen to her impassioned address celebrating Israel, “A Nation of Lions, a nation of lions!” and the “extraordinary country that has blessed us with freedom that our ancestors could not have dreamed of,” the United States of America!
Articles by ASF Sephardi House Fellows at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and other Campuses:
“What I learned at Harvard”
By Sarah Shiloah Boxer, The Times of Israel
Sarah Shiloah Boxer, an ASF Sephardi House Fellow ’21-’22 at George Washington University, is now a second-year law student at Harvard:
While I spent the last 48 hours sobbing next to my parents, calling family members, frantically checking the news and social media for updates to gain the illusion of control, and sitting quietly in shock, my peers at Harvard were drafting a statement rationalizing the massacres, rapes, and torture without so much as a sentence expressing empathy or condemnation. Educated “human rights defenders” that I share classes with, people in the human rights student organizations I am a part of, and those who call themselves my friends – celebrating publicly as my people are being slaughtered, tortured, and brutalized in cold blood in their homes. Acts reminiscent of pogroms.
They are conflating the liberation of the Palestinian people with the indiscriminate violence of Hamas – a terrorist group. They are cheering on documented, transparent war crimes and violations of international law. And these people call themselves progressives and defenders of human rights. Antisemitism runs so deep. I have never felt so angry or betrayed in my life.
For me, as I am sure for many in the diaspora, October 7th signified a turning point. No longer will I sit quietly. No longer will I shy away from sharing my identity or heritage. No longer will I give people the benefit of the doubt when they dip into antisemitic tropes and rhetoric. No longer will I welcome into spaces I hold dear people who want me, my family, and my community dead. I refuse to sanitize my identity and my family’s history to make others more comfortable.
These people have shown us who they are.
“Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?”
By Sahar Tartak, Yale Daily News
Sahar Tartak, an ASF Sephardi House Fellow ’22-’23, is a Sophomore at Pierson College, Yale University:
This sort of barbarism went on throughout Israel this weekend, committed by Hamas terrorists from Gaza intent on killing as many Jews as possible. Yes, they raped women. Yes, they kidnapped children. Yes, they beheaded men. Yes, they cheered the whole time. It’s all on video. Over 1,200 are dead, not to mention those kidnapped and maimed. This is terror, and Hamas is a designated terrorist group — as described by the United States, European Union and dozens of other countries.
Many Yalies have been frantically calling their friends and relatives in Israel, myself included. I fell into my mother’s arms (and many others’) crying this week. She escaped Iran, the very regime that supported, funded and supplied this weekend’s massacres. We’re all crying, and we don’t know what to do. People are hunting us.
You can imagine my horror to find that Yalies4Palestine decided that the murderers are absolved of their responsibility in an Instagram post that holds “the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence,” thereby justifying the use of unlawful violence against civilians (again: terror). An original Y4P post called on “the Yale community to celebrate the resistance’s success.”
Do you know who I hold responsible? The men with the guns and axes who raped the women, killed the children and abducted the grandmothers.
“I Said Hamas Raped and Beheaded. The Yale Daily News Issued a Correction”
By Sahar Tartak, The Washington Free Beacon
In an Oct. 12th op-ed written for the Yale Daily News, ASF Sephardi House Fellow (’22-’23) and Yale undergrad Sahar Tartak called attention to “the student group Yalies4Palestine” blaming the Israeli victims for their plight and arguing that “the Israeli Zionist regime [is] responsible for the unfolding violence.” Yalies4Palestine even obscenely urged the Yale community “to celebrate the resistance’s success.” The Yale Daily News in turn proved itself to be a platform for the “resistance” by censoring Tartak’s piece, adding a note that her column had been “edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.” Concludes Tartak:
I wish I could write off my classmates’ foibles as youthful stupidity, but I see professional journalists making the same mistakes. It’s not an accident: The Yale Daily News is their breeding ground, and in a few years, the editors who wrote and approved that correction will go on to careers in the mainstream press.
[Note: The public backlash to censoring Tartak compelled the Yale Daily News to retract their “correction.” The editor’s labyrinthine explanation can be read here].
“Jewish Students Meet Hostility at Yale”
By Sahar Tartak and Netanel Crispe, Wall Street Journal
In the past month, Yale has become a hostile environment for Jewish students. We’ve seen multiple protests with hundreds of students yelling “resistance is justified”; a petition with 1,200 student and staff signatures accusing Israel of genocide and Yale of “criminalizing” Palestinians’ “right to resist”; the words “I [heart] Gaza” and “love 4 Gaza” written in chalk throughout campus, and Instagram posts by the student group Yalies4Palestine declaring “the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence” and calling on “the Yale community to celebrate the resistance’s success.”
After the speeches ended on Monday, we entered the hall. Our stomachs dropped at the sight of nearly 200 fellow students, some of whom we had regarded as friends, along with professors we had looked up to in esteem. We asked the moderator and two of the speakers if they were willing to denounce Hamas unequivocally. All three turned their backs on us. So has our university.
“Why don’t you see me?”
By Netanel Schwartz, Yale Daily News
Netanel Schwartz, an ASF Sephardi House Fellow ’22-’23, is a Junior at Timothy Dwight College, Yale University:
I’m reading the Yale Daily News. I am thinking: where is the word “innocent?” Where is the word “civilian?” Where is the word “massacre?” The News has avoided these words. I hear them the loudest.
I am not on a bench on Cross Campus. I’m in Haifa, where my aunt is texting me how she is doing: tragedy, tragedy. I’m on Israel’s border with Lebanon, where one of my cousins is deployed as a medic. I’m on the border with Gaza, where another cousin of mine is waiting for orders, which way to go — in or out, home or hell. She is 21 years old.
I’m with my uncle Shelomo Sammy Susan in October 1973, almost fifty years ago to the day. He is killed defending his people, forced from the synagogue to the battlefield by a surprise attack on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He has come to this land all the way from Casablanca, married and fathered a son, and I am with him as he dies for them.
I’m in San Diego, describing to my mother over and over the maimed limbs of her country, the gaping wounds from which it bleeds. Ima, I sigh, when she asks me “how many” for the third time. Ima, Ima. It’s as if I’m explaining to her the nature of blood itself: how it flows, how much. “Ya Allah, ya rab!” I tell her, in the little bit of Moroccan Arabic I’ve inherited from my grandparents. Who am I to measure these things for her? I know nothing.
“What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech”
By Gabriel Diamond, Talia Dror, and Jillian Lederman, The New York Times
Clarifying that threats that are backed by the willingness to do harm are not to be confused with free speech, Gabriel Diamond, Jillian Lederman and Talia Dror, an ASF Sephardi House Fellow at Cornell, argue that “Universities need to get back to first principles and understand that they have the rules on hand to end intimidation of Jewish students.” Diamond, Lederman and Dror embrace the idea that “Free speech, open debate and heterodox views lie at the core of academic life. They are fundamental to educating future leaders to think and act morally.” The problem is that “open intimidation of Jewish students” and “mob harassment must not be confused with free speech.”
“Former CMU student sues university over ‘anti-Jewish discrimination and retaliation’”
By David Rullo, The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle
Yael Canaan (left), ASF-World Jewish Congress – North America’s Remembering the Forgotten Jewish Refugees, Moise Safra Center, 28 November 2023 (Photo courtesy of Zakaria Siraj)
ASF Sephardi House Fellow Yael Canaan is leading the fight against antisemitism at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) drawing a link between antisemitism on campus and the university accepting nearly $600 million in funding from Qatar, one of the world’s leading purveyors of antisemitism. CMU also has a satellite campus in Doha. Canaan, with the support of the Lawfare Project, filed a 39-page federal complaint against CMU detailing the “pervasive anti-Jewish discrimination” that she experienced at the university.
Interviews with ASF Staff & Sephardi House Fellows:
Aryeh shares stories of real-time heroism from his family and community and provides essential information for understanding how the attack fits into the larger regional war between the forces of Islamic tolerance and Islamist intolerance.
Tepper and Thomas affirm the values of civilization against barbarism, while Tepper concludes by pointing to the price that Israel has paid for allowing political expediency to trump considerations of competence, let alone excellence, in public life.
Morning Joe on MSNBC: “‘Universities need to step up’: Students say what’s happening at schools isn’t free speech”
America Reports on Fox News: “Cornell student slams ‘hostile’ campuses: We’re paying a fortune to be indoctrinated“
Intro to Sephardi Ideas Monthly’s Context for the Conflict
Israel’s war against Hamas, the evil Islamist “Resistance” Movement of Gaza, is not a new war. According to the 7th article of Hamas’ Charter (1988), the war against Israel was launched nine years before the re-founding of the State in 1948:
[Hamas] is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Muslim Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and after.
1939 is nine years before there was a single Palestinian refugee, and twenty-eight years before Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in a war of self-defense.
The Muslim Brotherhood is mentioned three times in Article 7. The Muslim Brotherhood is the mother organization founded at the beginning of the 20th c. that gave birth to “Islamism,” a radical, extremist, and violent form of Islam that has taken different forms, from Al Qaeda to the Islamic Republic in Iran to Hamas.
The intellectual godfather of Islamism is the Sunni-Egyptian scholar, Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). The present-day, long-time Shi’a ruler of Iran, Ali Khamenei, translated four of Qutb’s books into Persian. Hamas is aided materially and strategically by the Iranian regime. Hamas and the Iranians both subscribe to the same revolutionary, extremist, and violent interpretation of Islam that transcends the traditional differences between Sunnis and Shi’a and that has been destabilizing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa for the past five decades. In the words of Yusuf Ünal, a scholar of the Iranian regime:
The historical relations between Islamists in Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have been the subject of a small number of studies in Iran and the Arab world. However, the influence of Sayyid Quṭb on the Islamist movement and the revolutionaries of Iran is still not acknowledged sufficiently and remains largely unknown. ~“Sayyid Quṭb in Iran: Translating the Islamist Ideologue in the Islamic Republic.” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (November 2016)
We need to remember that this war is itself a battle in a larger regional war that the Islamists would like to engulf the entire earth. Hamas’ material defeat will not be the end; the Iranian regime will still rule and various forms of Islamist ideology will continue to be taught.
The Islamists declared war on Jews, fellows Muslims, and the rest of the civilized world a long time ago. Considering recent events and the challenges looming over the horizon, we would do well to know who they are.
Those interested in learning more about Islamist ideology, from its premier thinker to its place of birth to Islamism’s most consequential practitioner, will find below three pieces that were published by Sephardi Ideas Monthly as part of the series last year, “Understanding the Civil War in Islam: The Forces of Islamic Tolerance against Islamism.”
- Islamist Intolerance: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Scribbler – An examination of Sayyid Qutb’s career and ideas, from a Cairo literati to a political revolutionary
- Birthplace of the Brotherhood: Understanding & Overcoming Islamism in Egypt – An interview with Tarek Heggy, an Egyptian liberal and expert on Islamism
- Islamism in Iran: The Qutb & Khamenei Connection – Delineating the influence of Qutb’s thought on the Iranian regime
Articles and Interviews by ASF Advisors and Partners:
“From Hamas to redemption, through the eyes of Ethiopian Jewry”
By Rabbi Dr. Sharon Shalom, The Times of Israel
Jewish refugees from Ethiopia await the arrival of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir after Operation Solomon, Absorption Center, Hadera, Israel, 9 January 1991 (Photo courtesy of Israel Government Press Office)
Exploring the Torah portion of Noah and the story of the primordial flood, Rabbi Dr. Sharon Shalom notes that the Hebrew word chamas, meaning violence, appears at the beginning of the Biblical tale. Chamas is the same Hebrew word that Israelis use today to denote their barbaric Islamist enemy. With the atrocities of Chamas playing in the background, inthe Biblical tale, chamas leads to the corruption of the earth and the great, planetary flood. From here, R’ Shalom derives two fundamental and ultimate alternatives for human life: the way of chamas, “men who are righteous in their own eyes [who] commit acts of robbery, murder and violence,” and the way “of redemption… based on a conception of shared fate and a focus on the future when, as Isaiah wrote, the world will be ‘full of knowledge of the Lord.’”
“Muslim Americans Against Hamas”
By Zainab Khan, The Wall Street Journal
The WSJ article features a five year old photo of the ASF’s Ruben Shimonov conducting an ASF-MALA event, Maktub (Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy), at the Center for Jewish History. Ruben, who now serves as the ASF’s National Director of Sephardi House & Young Leadership, is the creator of the Convergence exhibit now on view in the Leon Levy Gallery. (Photo courtesy of MALA/WSJ)
Zainab Khan, Co-Founder of the Muslim American Leadership Alliance, a long-time partner of the American Sephardi Federation, and participant in the ASF/Jazz Leadership Project/and Combat Antisemitism Movement’s inaugural Omni-American Future Project event, writes in The Wall Street Journal that American Muslim leaders should have quickly condemned Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7th attack “as an affront to the sanctity of human life according to our faith. With a few notable exceptions, prominent Muslims chose instead to make excuses and equivocate.” Khan attributes the equivocation to “an irrational ideological fixation on Zionism, which has no effect on most Muslims” and “an activist-fueled dehumanization of Israelis.” “To my Jewish friends, I am sorry. My organization remains committed to protecting you and your heritage-without compromise.”
ASF’s Executive Director responds to criticism of Zainab Kahn: