A pair of conservative online pundits are taking aim at conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and other pro-Israel conservatives, while defending former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial comments.
Brothers Keith and Kevin Hodge, known online as The Hodgetwins, accused Shapiro of disloyalty to the United States and “bias” regarding the current war between Israel and Hamas.
In a video posted on Youtube Wednesday, the twins defended Carlson, after the former Fox News host came under fire for his criticism of Shapiro and other American supporters of Israel.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and right-leaning online personality Dave Rubin both chastised Carlson for his comments.
“My friend @benshapiro is an American patriot who cares deeply about our country,” Friedman tweeted. “Anyone who has listened to him over the past 22 years knows that. He wakes up every morning thinking about how he can advance American security and prosperity.”
Rubin called Carlson’s comments “a seriously low-I.Q. take” and “dishonest.”
“You’ve got to do a little bit better than that.”
The Hodgetwins, however – whose Youtube channel has nearly 2.7 million subscribers – lauded Carlson, while accusing Shapiro of not being loyal to the U.S. and claiming Israel is guilty of war crimes in the conflict with the Hamas terror organization.
Former Harvard University President Claudine Gay commented on her resignation on Wednesday, admitting that she made mistakes but insisting she was the target of a sustained campaign of lies and personal insults, AFP reported.
Gay stepped down on Tuesday after coming under attack over plagiarism accusations as well as her response to anti-Israel demonstrations on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war.
"Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument," she wrote on Wednesday in The New York Times.
"They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence," added Gay.
"It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism," she wrote.
Gay, who made history as the first Black person to be president of Harvard, argued she was targeted because she believed "that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation's oldest university."
Gay courted controversy starting with her initial response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, including her initial refusal to condemn the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust or the 34 Harvard student groups that published a statement in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, blaming Israel for the Hamas slaughter of over thousand of its own citizens.
The antisemitic controversy came to a head on December 5, when Gay, along with MIT President Sally Kornbluth and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, testified before a congressional hearing on the issue of antisemitism on college campuses.
All three university presidents gave similar answers to Rep. Elise Stefanik in which they failed to unequivocally condemn antisemitism or even calls for genocide against Jews.
In response to a question about whether such calls for genocide violate Harvard's code of conduct, Gay responded that this depended on the "context" and whether or not the genocidal language turned into action.
Former staffers of ex-President Barack Obama have come out against Joe Biden's Israel policy, as the country's war with Hamas continues.
On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to the Associated Press. That prompted the Israelis to carry out extensive airstrikes and a ground offensive in Gaza.
Following the attacks, Biden, who recently called himself a Zionist, has faced criticism for reiterating Washington's support of Israel, which has long been an ally of the U.S. He said that Israel has the right to defend itself, proposed $14 billion in aid and provided weapons. He has also resisted calls for a ceasefire.
Now, pressure on the president has increased from within his own party. On X, formerly Twitter, Tommy Vietor, who was Obama's assistant press secretary then special assistant, shared a Mother Jones article about the conflict with an extract which appeared to criticize the mounting death toll in Gaza.
The extract said: "In the early days of the war, Biden underscored the scale of the Hamas attack by saying it was equivalent to 15 9/11s for a nation of Israel's size. The equivalent figure for Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have been killed, is now approaching 900."
Meanwhile Jon Favreau, Obama's former director of speechwriting, shared a post by Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid reporting on Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticizing the U.S., and added: "By all means, let's send this government more money and weapons without delay. What on Earth are we doing here?"
Three Jewish travelers were ordered off a JetBlue flight this week after being told that an amicably arranged seat swap with another passenger made the flight crew uncomfortable.
The Forward (bit.ly/4aBWUuJ) reported that the incident took place on a December 31st red eye from Palm Springs to New York’s JFK Airport, when an elderly Orthodox Jewish man tried to take an apparently vacant seat in order to avoid sitting next to an unrelated female passenger in his assigned spot. After being told by a flight attendant that he couldn’t stay in the seat he had chosen, the Jewish man tried sitting in a different spot, only to be rebuffed by the flight attendant a second time. Attempts by his traveling companions, two Orthodox women, to explain the man’s religious concerns to the flight crew fell on deaf ears, prompting passenger Ron Passaro to voluntarily trade seats to accommodate the Jewish man’s request.
Passaro’s girlfriend, Rachel Sklar, shared details of the incident on X, formerly known as Twitter, explaining that the Orthodox man was assigned to 18A, a window seat, while she was seated in 19B, next to the man’s daughter in 19A. Passaro traded his aisle seat -20D – with the Jewish man and it seemed as if the problem had been settled with little fanfare until the plane’s captain and a member of the JetBlue security team approached the Orthodox passengers and ordered them off the plane.
“What *was* unusual here – this was resolved pretty easily (my boyfriend gladly switched seats once he realized what the need was) and everyone was seated & waiting,” tweeted Sklar. “Then they were kicked off.”
JetBlue security told the group that the crew was “not comfortable” with their presence on the flight. Attempts by the man’s companion to allow them to remain on the flight asking if they appeared “dangerous” or “unsafe,” fell on deaf ears. A security member can be heard on an audio recording captured by Sklar that “changing seats is a violation when it comes to weight imbalance.”
Sklar also tried to intervene, explaining that passengers were happy to accommodate the man’s request. But her efforts also proved fruitless, with JetBlue personnel insisting that the problem was weight related and had nothing to do with religion. The Orthodox passengers, who were described by Passaro as “svelte,” were eventually removed from the plane, saying that they felt that they were being targeted because they are Jewish.
“They said obviously this is clearly anti-Semitism and I was like ‘It sure seems like it to me.’” said Sklar. “The whole thing was really upsetting. It seemed very unnecessary and kind of bewildering.”
Sklar was mystified by JetBlue’s actions, saying that she has had flight attendants cheerfully make seat changes to accommodate her allergy to cats.
“Flight attendants have a lot of discretion,” said Sklar. “They can switch people around. The weight thing didn’t make any sense.”
The “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.
Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, has learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet said.
Congo has high levels of inequality, and 52.5 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Food Programme.
Meanwhile, Gaza is facing a growing humanitarian crisis amid the Israel-Hamas war, which was sparked on October 7, when thousands of terrorists stormed the border and rampaged through southern Israeli communities, massacring some 1,200 and kidnapping approximately 240 more as hostages in the Strip.
UPDATED: Explosions in Iran:* Multiple explosions have killed approximately 100 people—per initial reports—and wounded nearly 200 near a cemetery in Iran where a ceremony was being held to mark the 2020 assasination of the country's top commander Qassem Soleimani.
Iranian state television reported multiple explosions during the ceremony in the southeastern city of Kerman.
The deadly cemetery blasts were caused by explosive devices triggered remotely by terrorists per local media.
100 people are reported killed in two explosions that occurred in the central city of Kerman during the fourth anniversary of the death of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
State TV says two explosions were heard near Soleimani’s burial place. The live broadcast showed thousands of mourners participating in the commemoration, with ambulances on site.
The semi-official Nournews says “several gas canisters exploded on the road leading to the cemetery.” A local official is quoted by Iranian state media as saying “it is not yet clear whether the explosions were caused by gas cylinders or a terrorist attack.”
State TV shows Red Crescent rescuers attending to wounded people at the ceremony, where hundreds of Iranians had gathered to mark the anniversary of Soleimani’s death. Some Iranian news agencies said at least 50 people were wounded.
“Our rapid response teams are evacuating the injured… But there are waves of crowds blocking roads,” Reza Fallah, head of the Kerman province Red Crescent tells state TV.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran’s theocracy.
Ninety years ago at Harvard University, campus administrators had what some historians call “friendly” relations with Nazi Germany.
Whether Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation was catalyzed by a plagiarism scandal or her much-criticized lack of response to calls for the genocide of Jewish students, the university already has a century-old history of repressed antisemitism, historian Rafael Medoff told The Times of Israel.
“What today’s Harvard administration has in common with its predecessor in the 1930s is its reluctance to reject an evil regime and its supporters,” said Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
“In her recent congressional testimony, Gay’s instinctive response was to equivocate when asked about restricting those who advocate genocide of the Jews,” said Medoff.
“Now pro-Hamas non-university groups are being allowed to march on the Harvard campus,” said Medoff, whose center has researched the ties of American university leaders to Nazi Germany for two decades.
In the past few years, Harvard made efforts to atone for its history regarding slavery, including renaming buildings and erecting historical plaques. However, the university maintains a fellowship and professorship named for Alfried Krupp, a top Nazi industrialist.
According to some critics, including the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy, Harvard’s response to antisemitism cannot be disconnected from billions of dollars that Mideast regimes — some of them totalitarian — have donated to Harvard in recent decades. Top donors include Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, where Hamas leaders are said to be hiding.
On December 27, a prominent international partner of the school — the Lauder Business School in Vienna, Austria — severed ties with Harvard “in solidarity with the Jewish student community,” according to a statement.
