Fintan O'Toole, We Don't Know Ourselves

At Amazon, Fintan O'Toole, We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. #CommissionEarned

Taliban destroyed education for over a million girls in Afghanistan

Ironically, it's the UN that first reported this, considering such an awful outfit does nothing genuine to defend women's civil rights from Islamofascism:

The Taliban’s ban on women receiving above a secondary has deprived 1.4 million Afghan girls of education since 2021, according to research from the United Nations.

The Afghan government first banned girls from attending secondary school in March 2022, later going on to prohibit women from attending university classes in December of that year. As a result of the bans, girls over the age of twelve have had education opportunities restricted, with 300,000 more girls being affected by the ban since the U.N.’s last count in April of 2023, according to a press release from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

[...] Aside from banning girls from having access to secondary and higher education, the Taliban has also banned females from teaching male students, according to the press release. This change has contributed to the drop in total education enrollment in primary schools from 6.8 million boys and girls in 2019 to 5.7 million in 2022.

“In just three years, the de facto authorities have almost wiped out two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan, and the future of an entire generation is now in jeopardy,” the press release states.

But don't expect Kamala Harris to speak in defense of women in Afghanistan if she becomes president. And don't expect the UN to come to their rescue either. They're all just big talk and nothing else. For now, it's terrible what Joe Biden led to shortly after he become the fraud-in-chief of the USA.

Vincent Lupiano, Nazi Gold and the Murder of an Entire French Town by SS Division Das Reich

At Amazon, Vincent Lupiano, Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane: Nazi Gold and the Murder of an Entire French Town by SS Division Das Reich. #CommissionEarned

Richard J. Evans, Hitler's People

At Amazon, Richard J. Evans, Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich. #CommissionEarned

Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

At Amazon, Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. #CommissionEarned

Marybeth Hicks, Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid

At Amazon, Marybeth Hicks, Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom. #CommissionEarned

Sloane Crosley, Grief is for People

A wonderful book. She writes so effortlessly, but with tremendous power.

At Amazon, Sloane Crosley, Grief is for People. #CommissionEarned

The transcript of Netanyahu's speech to Congress

Here's a transcript of Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on the 24th of July (via Daniel Pipes). It makes for very recommended reading.

Update: and here's also an important article about 4 survivors of the sexual violence committed by the Hamas minions on October 7, 2023.

Pro-Hamas vandals burned American flags in the District of Columbia

While Benjamin Netanyahu was giving his very impressive speech at Congress on Wednesday, the anti-Israel crowd in the USA predictably went about not just scrawling hateful graffiti against Israel, but also burning American flags and vandalizing USA symbols:

The Liberty Bell replica outside Washington, DC’s Union Station was defaced with pro-Hamas symbols and anti-Israel messages, including one that read “F–k Israel,” during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

As thousands of protesters descended on the capital on Wednesday, the demonstrations quickly turned to vandalism around Union Station, where the anti-Israel crowd targeted landmarks to spread hateful messages against the Jewish state.

The Liberty Bell reproduction at the site was defaced with countless graffiti with messages like “Abolish Israel,” “All zionists are bastards” and “F–k Capitalists.” [...]

The protesters at Union Station were also seen burning American flags and an effigy of Netanyahu, with DC police, Capitol Police and US Park Police reporting 23 arrests following a chaotic clash with law enforcement.

Their antics continue to be despicable, and drew outrage from the GOP. Joe Biden's vice president Kamala Harris, who's not supported by a lot of the far-leftists, belatedly condemned the violence that took place at the station:

Vice President Harris has released a statement condemning violent anti-Israel rioting that disrupted Washington D.C.'s busiest station.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee released the statement Thursday, hours after the violent protests against visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington, D.C. we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric," Harris said. "I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews.

The protesters spray-painted monuments and pulled down American flags flying outside Union Station, eventually lighting them on fire amid cheers and chants against Israel.

Unfortunately, Harris, even before these terrible incidents, did too little on her part to prove she abhors the behaviour of such repellent creeps, and it wouldn't be surprising if any presidential campaign she leads, assuming she becomes the candidate to replace Joe Biden, does nothing convincing to oppose what's happened so far.

Don't be shocked if soon enough, similar monsters in Europe will be burning the French, Italian and Dutch flags too. Such leftists are that horrific.

Update: and on that note, Muslims in France have been acting horrific for the gazillionth time, during the Olympics in Paris, and it's predictably making everything truly awful. Not that the Olympics have really been worth watching for a while now.

Update 2: the Israeli government warns that Iran has predictably also been making threats against the Israeli atheletes competing at the Olympics.

Update 3: some police officers described how they came under assault by these pro-Hamas protestors at Union Station.

Christopher F. Rufo, How the Radical Left Conquered Everything

At Amazon, Christopher F. Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution

At Amazon, Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

William Manchester, The Death of a President

William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963.

Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, Mapping Political Violence

At Amazon, Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy.

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage

At Amazon, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. #CommissionEarned. 

This AI-based beauty contest must've been rigged in more ways than one

An AI-generated Muslim woman became the first winner of an AI-based beauty pageant:

CNN reports that the world’s first AI beauty pageant has concluded with the crowning of Kenza Layli, an entirely AI-generated Moroccan Muslim lifestyle influencer. Organized by Fanvue, an influencer platform for both AI and human creators, the Miss AI contest opened in the spring and attracted entries from approximately 1,500 AI programmers worldwide.

Kenza Layli, the winning AI contestant, was created by Myriam Bessa, founder of the Phoenix AI agency. As the creator of the winning entry, Bessa will receive a $5,000 cash prize, support on the Fanvue platform, and the services of a publicist to raise Layli’s profile. The runners-up in the competition were AI contestants Lalina Valina from France and Olivia C of Portugal.

I'm sure this was no accident. So now AI is being exploited for normalizing the Religion of Peace and pushing its agendas, subtle or otherwise. It only takes the flavor out of such farces, which do not replace real beauty pageants, and only suggest AI is being used for political propaganda instead of fun pastimes.

Pro-Hamas demonstrators in NYC burned American flags on the 4th of July

New York City establishment leaders continue to make an utter embarrassment of the region as their shoddy policies on crime enabled pro-Hamas agitators to perform anti-American acts in addition to anti-Israel acts on what was once a very special day:

Pro-Palestine protesters took to the streets of New York City on Thursday and were seen burning an American flag in Washington Square Park, video shows.

Video footage posted to Twitter by Oliya Scootercaster shows the chaotic scenes from pro-Palestine activists rally on Independence Day in the liberal city. Protesters appeared to begin their gathering in Washing Square Park for their “Flood July 4th for Gaza!” as a large crowd was seen waving Palestinian flags and chanting “shut it down.”

See more at the article. NYC's left-wing establishment sure knows how to drain all the happiness out of a wonderful holiday, all for the sake of the woke directions they've been taking for quite some time now. And the worst part is how they've allowed only so many Islamofascists and their sympathisers to reside in what's now a collapsing metropolis.

NAACP doesn't care about Black Jewish lives

Morton Klein tells how the so-called civil rights organization NAACP refuses to defend the lives of Black Jews in Israel, and doubtless the rest of the world:

Do black Jewish lives matter? How about the lives of non-Jewish black African students and black Jewish Ethiopian-Israelis brutally murdered by Hamas and by Gazan civilians? Or the lives of a black Jew and Bedouin Muslim who Hamas has held in captivity for a decade? Or the lives of any of the dark-skinned Jews that make up about half of Israel’s population? Or any Jewish lives?

Apparently, Derrick Johnson, president of the pro-black civil-rights group, the NAACP, doesn’t think so. When did the NAACP start making foreign policy decisions? Did it ever scream about the hundreds of thousands of truly innocent civilians in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere being massacred?

[...] Adding insults to injury, the NAACP president parroted Hamas’ false, grossly overstated casualty figures (whitewashed as “U.N. figures” and already disproved) and mendaciously blamed an Israeli airstrike in which Israel used the smallest possible ordnance to kill two senior Hamas terrorists in Rafah for Gazan casualties caused by a Hamas weapons stockpile catching fire more than one mile away. In addition, Johnson merely called Oct. 7 a “tragedy” while calling the war in Gaza “unspeakable violence affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable.”

Johnson has it backwards. He failed to mention that Oct. 7 was the “unacceptable, unspeakable violence against innocent civilians” in which Hamas and Gazan civilians massacred and tortured innocent Jewish babies, children and civilians from several dozen countries in the most horrific manners imaginable. He didn’t even mention the victims or the perpetrators.

On Oct. 7, Ethiopian-Israeli Samuel Golima, a soldier, and police officer Orel Abraham, both Jewish, were killed while fighting Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel. Yet NAACP’s president wants to disarm brave black Israeli soldiers like them—the defenders of innocent people against Hamas.

Moreover, Hamas murdered at least 10 Ethiopian Jews on that horrific day. What about them?

Israeli towns where large numbers of Ethiopian Jews reside, such as Sderot and Ashkelon, have been longstanding, prime targets of Hamas’s tens of thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians in the past 20 years. Yet the NAACP president wants to end Israel’s ability to eliminate the Hamas perpetrators of these terrible attacks.

On Oct. 7, Hamas also took two black Tanzanian agricultural students (Joshua Mollel and Clemence Felix Mtenga) who were on an exchange program in Israel and brutally murdered them. Why doesn’t the NAACP president scream about this? And why does he demand that Biden disarm Israel so that Hamas can do this again?

Hamas also captured Ethiopian-Israeli Jewish hostage Avera Mengitsu a decade ago. Mengitsu is believed to still be in Gaza. Why hasn’t the NAACP president been calling this unspeakable and demanding that Biden reinstate maximum sanctions on the terror group’s funder: Iran?

Hamas also captured Israeli-Bedouin Hisham al-Sayed a decade ago and is believed to be still holding him captive. Again, why the deafening silence from the NAACP when it comes to demands on Biden for action against Iran that could enable his freedom?

On Oct. 7, Hamas also took six Bedouin Arab-Israelis hostage (later releasing two in the innocent-hostages-for-Arab-terrorists exchange) and murdered 21 Bedouin Arab-Israelis. What about them?

The NAACP's ignorance of these horrors practically makes all such activist groups in the USA look bad, biased and worse. Why, it practically suggests they only believe American Black lives matter. If anything, NAACP only demonstrated how corrupt they truly are, and another left-wing movement that doesn't deserve any funding, based on where they're going. For all we know, they may not even care about Blacks living under Ignacio Lula da Silva's rule in Brazil now. Or even Black lives in Cuba, which is still run by communists. What that would suggest is that only in the USA does anything matter to NAACP, until they decide otherwise. What an utter disaster.

Noa Argamani was held hostage in house of al-Jazeera photographer

One of the Israeli Hostages that was Rescued yesterday during the Joint-Operation in Central Gaza, 26-Year-Old Noa Argamani was being held Captive in the Home of Abdallah Aljamal, a Photojournalist and Writer/Editor for both Al-Jazeera and the Palestinian Chronicle. During the… pic.twitter.com/1755PL8X9X

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 9, 2024

According to this information, the now thankfully rescued Argamani was held prisoner in a house run by an al-Jazeera journalist:

According to a report by the Arab media, former Israeli hostage Noa Argamni, who was rescued in a daring raid by the National Counter-Terrorism Unit on Saturday, was apparently held captive for 8 months in an Al-Jazeera cameraman's house. "26-Year-Old Noa Argamani was being held Captive in the Home of Abdallah Aljamal, a Photojournalist and Writer/Editor for both Al-Jazeera and the Palestinian Chronicle, " Open Source Intelligence Monitor said in a recent post on the social media platform X.

Amid escalating tensions with Qatar over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet voted unanimously to close Qatari television network Al-Jazeera's operations in Israel, after Israel's parliament recently passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security during the ongoing war against Hamas.

This continues to speak volumes about what even news "journalists" can be like, and do. If the monster who enslaved Argamani and others was killed in the raid, he's no loss.

In related news, while Almog Meir was rescued, it's sad to learn that his father died before he may have heard the thankful news of his son's rescue:

In a tragic turn of events, Yossi Meir, 59, father of hostage Almog Meir Jan, died just hours before his son was rescued in the daring Israeli raid in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. Almog's parents were divorced, and his father lived in Kfar Saba.

Family members tried to reach him when they learned of Almog's release from Hamas captivity but were unable to make contact. When IDF representatives arrived at his home to deliver the joyful news, they discovered his body.

Family members arrived at his Kfar Saba home after learning of his death. His sister Dina shared, "He died of cardiac arrest, he died from grief. He didn't get to know that his son was released from captivity." His sister-in-law Yaffit added, "He constantly sat by the television to stay updated on what's happening with his son, but sadly he didn't make it. His sister visited him on Thursday, and he probably passed away at night, and we didn't know."

Very sad. And we have Islam and its apologists to blame for all this. On which note, Argamani and the other hostages were forced to read the koran while in captivity:

The hostages who were freed from captivity during Saturday’s rescue operation in Nuseirat told the medical teams that they were emotionally abused while in captivity and that the terrorists forced them to read the Quran and learn Islamic rulings.

It's to be hoped they'll describe all that without reservations in future interviews, because everyone needs to know what the koran says about non-Muslims, sexual violence and jihadism, in example.

Miriam Libicki still retains her far-left positions

I'd noted before that the comics artist Libicki, whom VanCAF had to apologize to for nearly banning from their convention, was far-left, and in the following news from Stir, it appears she's still sticking by her positions that're damaging to Israel, regrettably enough, while promoting another GN she's been working on:

Following the incident, the American-Israeli graphic novelist is using her heightened profile to raise funds for The Mother’s Call, a collaboration of women peace advocates in Palestine and Israel.

Well if this is correct, she - and the magazine - are continuing the notion of legitimizing the fabrication of an Arab/Islamic state called "Palestine", and quite possibly not acknowledging that it's a name the Roman empire gave to the land to belittle it. So, while what VanCAF did was offensive, how beyond this can I really care about Libicki if she's not going to reevaluate her politics and whether it's healthy to take up such ideologies to begin with?

In a phone call with Stir, Libicki explained that she had exhibited at every Vancouver Comic Arts Festival since 2012 until 2022, when two members of the public confronted festival volunteers about her inclusion. “There was no confrontation at my table, but they complained to the show in a very hostile and discomforting manner,” she recalled. “They were complaining that I was a Zionist and it was Zionist propaganda, and I shouldn’t be allowed to exhibit at the show.” Libicki said she was told that the pair would be banned from attending the festival in the future.

On this, a vital point must be made there's antisemites out there who don't give a damn how far-left a person of Israeli descent could lean; they'll consider them scum anyway. That said, people like Libicki most likely don't respect the meaning of "zion", which is simply a synonym for Israel, and even nationalism/patriotism. Interesting how the 2 people spoken of aren't identified clearly. Were they Moslems obsessed with antisemitic viewpoints? If Stir omitted any details themselves, that's wrong, but if Libicki did too, that's also troubling.

In 2023, Libicki said, she missed the initial call for applications, and was turned down for an exhibition table by organizers who said they needed to review the previous year’s incident. This year, Libicki said organizers initially refused her a table, but finally agreed that she could attend if she exhibited only But I Live. “I was okay with that because I do know that this year things are different,” she said.

And what does that mean? That her GN about army service is taboo? Well that too is wrong, because it's also a form of censorship. If she or anybody else wanted to publish and exhibit a GN about Islamic terrorism, all of a sudden, just like that, the subject is completely off limits in virtually every way? There's at least a few GNs from past years since 9-11 like Frank Miller's Holy Terror that're doubtless banned from these festivals, and it won't be a shock if openly right-wing writers are too. For all we know, Will Eisner's last GN, The Plot, will doubtless never be exhibited or spoken about at VanCAF so long as they keep this up, and if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were still alive and said even one single word considered Wrongthink, they'd be banned too. Something tells me Libicki won't stand up for such folks either.

According to Libicki, this year’s show went without incident until half an hour before its closing, when she was approached by two people who began asking her questions about her work and her background. “They had the briefest interaction with me at my table…and then they enacted basically the exact same scene [as 2022] to volunteers and VanCAF staff and Roundhouse staff,” she said. “It was not a confrontation with me.”

Libicki said that she had no contact with VanCAF before the organization posted its “accountability statement” days later. “They never told us formally that there was a complaint against me. They never told me that I was banned before that announcement went up.”

Libicki said all her communications with VanCAF since May 25 have been through her lawyer: “When they took down the statement on Wednesday [May 29], that was after my lawyer sent them a letter. And when they put up the apology, they did run it by my lawyer first….The apology did not get any more personal to me than that.”

I get it, the attack came from behind the back (or more specifically, the scenes), which is surely even more cowardly. But anybody who thinks Libicki is worth supporting from a common sense perspective would do well to ponder the following, where she puts more of her leftism on display:

Libicki said she is now speaking out not just for herself, but to stand up for other individuals who may find themselves in similar crosshairs. “This could happen to anybody with some sort of identity that is politicized or politically marginalized,” she said. “It means that if somebody else decides your identity is a political problem, then we’re going to ban you instead of them. That could easily apply to, you know, a Palestinian person. It could have been a right-wing pro-Zionist activist who complained about a Palestinian person being there, and created a disturbance. Or, you know, famously in the U.S. and in our country, things like drag queen story hour—trans people and drag performers existing is a political problem for some people. So then they are called a safety hazard, when it's actually not them that is a safety hazard, it’s the people who decided that their identity is a political problem.”

Libicki said she has decided to use the attention the situation has brought her to raise money for peace activists in Israel and Palestine. She is selling a series of five watercolour artworks of seahorses, and will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to The Mothers’ Call, a grassroots collaboration between Women of The Sun in Palestine and Women Wage Peace in Israel.

“What I stand for is peace and justice, and that Israel and Palestine belongs to everyone who lives there, of all religions and backgrounds,” she said. “Maybe with all the added attention, maybe some of the pieces will sell, and I would then be able to send on the money, and it could be a good outcome.”

Wow, this is exactly what led to the October 7, 2023 massacre and the 2015 Bataclan bloodbath in the first place, to say nothing of moral equivalence espoused by somebody who clearly doesn't have the courage to discuss what the Islamic koran/hadith contain about Jews and anybody else considered an "infidel". Also intriguing is how she implies "right-wing pro-Zionist activists" are troublemakers, but not "Palestinians"? Regrettably, it appears she's sticking tight to her left-wing ideologies, right down to how she even drags the drag-queen and transsexual ideologies into this whole mess, and it strongly hints she doesn't have much respect for parents who find it all a horrible influence. Even the part about "peace and justice" is ambiguous, because if the Islamic religion advocates jihadism (religious/holy war), how can you just talk about peace so superficially? Does Libicki even believe in justice for Armenians, considering the tragedy they suffered at the hands of the Islamic Ottoman empire during WW1, and are still suffering now via Azerbaijan? Would she even work with 911 Families to develop a GN about their experiences and what led to the tragedy of the World Trade Center in 2001? Regrettably, if her viewpoints are any indication, chances of that are very slim.

In addition to raising money for The Mothers’ Call, Libicki is hoping that other organizations can learn from what she went through. “I do feel like what happened at VanCAF is something that could be a warning to other arts festivals about not losing their heads when somebody who they might happen to politically agree with has a bullying campaign against them,” she said. “There was a campaign in the week between the festival and when they put out that statement, where they were just being dogpiled by certain people, who were not a lot of people, but were just very loud. And then it was the added temptation of the fact that many of their politics, the people on the board happened to agree with. They couldn’t see that this was bullying tactics, and that the people who were calling for them to do things that were wrong and unfair and illegal. I think that's something that can happen and possibly has and is happening to other arts festivals and nonprofits. And so they should look at VanCAF as an object lesson in what not to do and why not to do it.”

Well is she and/or the festival going to support and invite any conservative/right-wing artists and writers in the future? Unfortunately, I have a sad feeling that won't be the case at all. What VanCAF did was wrong. But beyond that, any support I can offer Libicki will have to stop right then and there, because it's clear she's not willing to reevaluate her ultra-leftist standings, and is continuing with uninformed, narrow visions that have done more harm than good for Israel and other places in danger of Islamofascism. I just hope she's glad some more Israeli hostages have been rescued from Hamas captivity in Gaza. Yet if Libicki's rhetoric is any indication, she won't do any projects with hostages rescued from Islamic jihadists any more than she'd be willing to work with 911 Families and Bataclan survivors in France.

4 hostages rescued in Gaza

Some very fortunate news has just come up, as at least 4 hostages were rescued from the Gaza area:

On Saturday morning, in a joint IDF, ISA and Israel Police (Yamam) complex, special, daytime operation in Nuseirat, four Israeli hostages were rescued.

Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40), were kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization from the 'Nova' music festival on October 7th.

The hostages were rescued by the IDF, ISA and Yamam counterterrorism forces from two separate locations in the heart of Nuseirat.

They are in good medical condition and have been transferred to the Sheba Tel-Hashomer Medical Center for further medical examinations.

"The security forces will continue to make every effort to bring the hostages home," the statement stressed.

Thank goodness and the Lord for bringing about this rescue. Now, let's hope others will turn up alive and be saved from captivity as well.

Update: more information to consider:

Argamani, has been one of the most widely recognized hostages since she was abducted from a music festival in southern Israel. The video of her abduction was among the first to surface, images of her horrified face widely shared — Argamani detained between two men on a motorcycle, one arm outstretched and the other held down as she screams “Don’t kill me!”

Her mother, Liora, has stage four brain cancer and in April released a video pleading to see her daughter before she dies.

Let's hope that now, she can see her daughter and have a good reunion.

Marjorie N. Feld, A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism

At Amazon, Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism. #CommissionEarned

VanCAF apologizes to artist Miriam Libicki for blacklisting her over her Israeli army service

A few days after the disgusting news that the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival in Canada banned artist Miriam Libicki over her service in the Israeli army, her left-wing positions notwithstanding, the Times of Israel/JTA now reports the convention's apologized for their abominable behavior, which did as much a disfavor to WW2 Holocaust and 9-11 victims as it did to victims of the Hamas on October 7, 2023:

A Vancouver comics festival apologized to a Jewish artist it had banned over her past Israeli military service and a Seattle museum announced it was recommitting to an exhibit on antisemitism that prompted a staff walkout, in two reversals of North American arts-world sanctions connected to the Israel-Hamas war.

Both the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival in Canada and the Wing Luke Museum in the United States had faced significant backlash over the actions they took because of pro-Palestinian activism.

“VanCAF has lost and continues to lose the trust of many we have sought to serve,” the Vancouver festival said in a social media apology late Sunday, days after announcing that it was banning American-Israeli comics artist Miriam Libicki following activist complaints over her past IDF service.

The festival didn’t name Libicki in either its initial statement banning her — which it quickly removed from social media following backlash — or its lengthy new apology. But the ban referenced Libicki’s previous IDF service, which she has turned into a comic, while the apology referenced another specific work of hers: “But I Live,” a collaboration with Holocaust survivors.

After criticism from both Libicki and leaders of major Canadian Jewish institutions, VanCAF said in its apology that “the vast majority” of people involved in the ban have resigned from its board. The group said it was entering a new “transition period” as a result of the fallout, and added that it has no full-time staff and it is entirely volunteer-run.

Those who left the convention's board are no loss, and do not belong in the entertainment business in any way, shape or form. Yet even now, much like Bud Light's transsexual scandal a few years ago, maybe anybody planning to boycott VanCAF should continue to do so, and definitely sit out this year's festival, which, for all we know, could end up being the last, if sponsors wise up and pull funding for them.

“Conflating the political with the practical safety of those attending our festival was the wrong stance to take,” the apology noted. VanCAF said it had issued the ban as a result of safety concerns after deeming that pro-Palestinian backlash to Libicki’s presence at its last two festivals had created a “volatile atmosphere.”

(A synagogue in Vancouver was targeted in an arson attack last week, elevating alarm after shooting attacks on Jewish sites in Toronto and Montreal. Authorities in Vancouver are investigating the arson as a hate crime.)

VanCAF is one of a growing number of arts institutions to face turmoil over the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which has left some Jews feeling uncertain about their place in the arts world.

In Seattle, the Wing Luke Museum, an Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander heritage museum in Chinatown, will move forward with an exhibition on how the region’s Asian, Jewish and Black communities have all jointly responded to hate. The announcement came days after several museum staffers walked off the job, objecting to what they said were “Zionist perspectives” in the exhibit; the museum had temporarily shuttered following the walkout.

“We remain committed to the exhibit’s core message of confronting hate,” the museum said in a joint statement with the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, an exhibit partner, and the Black Heritage Society. “We acknowledge the complexity of this deeply challenging work. We understand that the bigotry, bias, and racism that affects our communities goes well beyond us to touch many. Though recent events have caused significant harm, we are undeterred.”

The three groups also said they would make some unspecified changes to the content, “offering additional framing on its genesis, the initial public reaction, and the history of our communities working together” before the exhibit reopens June 30. Staff had objected to some of the exhibit’s descriptions of modern-day antisemitism, including the inclusion of campus protests over October 7, and had demanded that the museum make changes including acknowledging a lack of Palestinian perspectives. The exhibit had been in the works since before October 7.

If the aforementioned pro-palestinians who caused a ruckus were to antagonize early comics contributors like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (one of whom was Canadian-born), were they still alive today, would that sit well with VanCAF's management, which committed an act of cowardice if the above news is correct? What they should really be doing is hiring security to keep out any and all of these obsessed troublemakers, and should be vetting all workers they hire to make sure they're not obsessed with censoring anything positive in regards to Israel, and/or censoring any objective and critical view of Islam. There's a cartoonist named Bosch Fawstin, who's a former Muslim from regions like Albania, who's bravely criticized the Religion of Peace which he left, and people like him, tragically, are blacklisted by these pretentious festivals. All this cowardly panic is not helping to defeat jihadism at all, and the failure to seriously confront issues like Islamic terrorism have the effect of making movies and comics about the Holocaust look like a joke. If modern showbiz writers won't confront a modern issue, how can we believe they really care about a past one? Also consider issues like the Korean and Vietnam wars practically vanished from entertainment nearly 3 decades ago, are rarely discussed since, and WW1-related issues like the Armenian Genocide by Turkey's Islamic Ottoman empire, are also banned from study, in film, comics and other mediums in the west. This is exactly why the war against terrorism's been lost for many years.

For now, it remains to be seen if the "unspecified changes" the aforementioned groups announced they'd make will be honest ones. And if they continue to tiptoe around serious issues, they've effectively failed their mission, and VanCAF should continue to be boycotted to boot.