Harassing Chelsea Handler

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The assault on Israel comes from many directions. There are the reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post who transmit Hamas reports on civilian casualties as fact, while raising a skeptical eyebrow at the numbers of Hamas operatives killed that the IDF has released. There are those students, on more than 50 American campuses, who invade classrooms in an attempt to intimidate Jewish and pro-Israel professors, who harass Jewish students, scream in their faces, steal mezuzot from outside their rooms, and prevent them from attending class, or from using the library, or from returning to their dorms. Some Jewish students have even been physically attacked, roughed up, punched, hit in the face with flagpoles. The pro-Hamas students scream their antisemitic rage at their schools’ administrators, demanding that they yield to demands to cut all ties between their institutions and Israel. None have done so as yet. Students at Columbia, Yale, and other schools have set up large tent encampments in the middle of their campuses, refusing to leave until, as they put it, “our demands are met.” The police have been finally called in to remove those encampments, and to arrest their occupants, at several of the affected institutions.

Now these antisemites, so many of whom have since October 7 slithered out from under the rocks, have adopted a new tactic: they have started to interrupt the acts of performers who have dared to openly express support for Israel. The winsome comedian Chelsea Handler was a recent victim of this tactic during her appearance in Richmond, Virginia. More on the attempt to embarrass and harass her, and to shut down her performance, can be found here: “Anti-Israel Protesters Interrupt Chelsea Handler Comedy Show Because of Her Support for Jewish State,” by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, April 22, 2024:

Several women interrupted Chelsea Handler’s comedy show in Richmond, Virginia, on Friday night in a coordinated effort to protest the Jewish comedian’s support for Israel since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The incident took place at Handler’s show Little Big Bit**h at the Altria Theater. In a video that was shared on social media, one female audience member at the show stood up and shouted at Handler, “Murder. Mass Murder.” The pro-Israel comedian first replied, “I can’t hear you,” before adding, “Oh, honey, please. This is not what this night is for.” She then asked security guards to remove the protester from the audience.

“Mass murder”? Is the IDF really committing “mass murder”? If it is hellbent on doing so, then why, just in the first month of the Gaza war, did the IDF drop 14 million leaflets, send six million messages, and make four million phone calls, all to warn Gazan civilians both to leave northern Gaza that would soon become a battleground, and also warn them, with greater specificity, to get away from buildings — schools, apartment buildings, mosques, hospitals — where Hamas had embedded both its operatives and its weapons, and therefore, they were soon to be targeted?

And if Israel is guilty of “mass murder,” as that first protester insists, then why is it that the ratio of civilians-to-combatants killed in the Gaza war is so low? The UN has reported that in all the wars fought since World War II, that ratio has averaged 9:1 —that is, nine civilians killed for every combatant. In Afghanistan, the Americans managed to bring that ratio down to 4:1, and in Iraq, to 3:1. But no other army in the world has brought that ratio down to just a bit more than 1:1, as the IDF has managed to do in Gaza. According to Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan, the IDF is “the most moral army in the world” because of this longstanding policy of warning civilians, and unavoidably, enemy combatants as well, about imminent targets. John Spencer, professor of urban warfare studies at West Point, who has been studying the IDF for years, has written that “the IDF has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties in urban warfare than any other military in the history of war.” It would have been most satisfying if Handler had responded to her first tormentor with that information.

Female demonstrators in the audience also yelled “Palestinian babies — you’re a genocide supporter” and “Free Palestine.” Some audience members who got frustrated by the show’s interruption helped authorities identify the protesters and were told by one of the activists, “You guys should be this angry about genocide, not people standing up.”…

“Genocide”? Israel makes colossal efforts to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas does everything it can to maximize them. The terror group has even shot and killed civilians who were trying to flee northern Gaza, as the IDF directed, and left their bodies, as a warning to others, on the main north-south corridor of Salah al-Din Street that those fleeing had been using.

It might also be noted that nothing in Israel’s history suggests the country carries out a “genocide” against Arabs. In 1967, when Israel took over Gaza, there were 400,000 people in the Strip. By 2005, when Israel relinquished Gaza, there were 1.2 million people in Gaza. When Israel took over the West Bank (a/k/a Judea and Samaria) in 1967, it contained 900,000 Arabs; now there are three million. As for Israel within the 1949 armistice lines, in 1948 it held 160,000 Arabs; today there are two million Israeli Arabs. Genocide? What genocide? Chelsea Handler, put these dates and figures on a notecard, and be ready to pull it out and quote those irrefutable and most telling numbers, the next time someone shouts “Genocide” at you.

There is no “genocide” being perpetrated by the IDF. The only real genocide in the area was that attempted by Hamas operatives — raping, torturing, murdering — on October 7.

“These are protestors who are AGAINST the indiscriminate slaughter of human beings,” the organization added, before telling Handler: “YOU owe Palestinians an apology. YOU owe every single orphaned Palestinian child AN APOLOGY. YOU owe HUMANITY an apology. Demand a Free Palestine.”…

“Indiscriminate slaughter” by Israel? With the IDF warning civilians in Gaza away from danger with those millions of leaflets, of messages, of phone calls? With Israeli pilots calling off their airstrikes when they spot too many civilians near the target? The civilians who have died in Gaza are owed much more than an “APOLOGY,” and not from Chelsea Handler or any other supporter of Israel. It is Hamas that ought to be begging forgiveness for having brought so much woe to the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, whom the terror group has ruled over with an iron fist in time of peace, killing any Gazan who dared to question its murderous despotism, and in time of war, using those civilians as dispensable human shields.

Chelsea, hold onto those note cards. When the crazies again stand up from the audience to scream at you an disrupt your act, take out those cards, and calmly provide the facts. First, read out the numbers of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza in 1967 and in 2005, the number of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank in 1967 and today, the number of Israeli Arabs in 1948 and today. Second, list all the ways that the IDF warns civilians away from places soon to be targeted, and describe the colossal extent — how many leaflets dropped, how many messages and phone calls made — of those warnings. Third, ask your would-be tormentors if they will, then and there, denounce Hamas for raping, torturing, and murdering 1,200 Israelis on October 7. And would they care to make an appeal to Hamas to release the ever-diminishing number of hostages who are still alive?

That’s enough for now. That’s more than enough.