Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 21, 2025

02/21 Links Pt2: Columbia students, stand with humanity and against barbarity; BBC removes Gaza doco following ‘terrorist propaganda’ claims

From Ian:

David Friedman: Columbia students, stand with humanity and against barbarity

To Columbia’s faculty and administrators: Academic freedom is not a shield for moral abdication. If you champion free speech, wield it with integrity to denounce terrorism unequivocally. Silence in the face of terror is not neutrality; it is a dereliction of duty.

To the members of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace (a grotesque misnomer for those who promote violence), Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and others who rally behind Team Mohammed: When you chant “violence is the only path forward," you are glorifying the murder of Sara and Matthew and the kidnapping of Sagui. You are celebrating the kidnapping, torture, and butchering of innocent children, parents, and grandparents. When you shout “Globalize the intifada!” you are endorsing not just past atrocities but future violence against Jews worldwide, including in the United States.

Your allegiance to a cause that sanctifies bloodshed is a stain on your humanity. If you genuinely believe in these causes, reflect deeply on the moral abyss you have embraced. And if your support is merely performative or driven by peer pressure, know that you are pawns in a dangerous ideology that would discard you as readily as it did the lives of innocent mothers, children and elderly, and fellow Columbia students.

To those at Columbia, and on campuses elsewhere, who remain indifferent—who just want to focus on classes, social lives, and future careers: Your desire for normalcy is entirely understandable and while we sympathize with you, we also encourage you to heed the post-World War II words of regret from German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist…then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Today’s targets are Jews; tomorrow, it could be you. This is your moment to educate yourself on a critical issue of our time and become engaged.

To all Columbia students, faculty, and administrators: Now is the time to reject the moral rot of excusing barbarism and supporting terrorism. Instead, act to honor the lives of those like Sagui and the legacies of those like Sara and Matthew as well as Ariel, Kfir and Oded. Stand with humanity and on the right side of history. Choose moral clarity over moral equivalence. Choose courage over complacency. History will judge us all—may it judge us favorably.

Gil Troy: Campus intifada shaped a generation of thoughtful, passionate, and proud Jewish students

These violations of academic standards, classroom etiquette, administrative and professorial responsibility, and basic decency constitute mass educational malpractice.

Garbage in, garbage out. Three generations of activist professors, imposing their oppressed-oppressor and settler-colonialist binaries often targeting Israel, have raised students and teachers who parrot these lies. They think teaching involves radicalizing the classroom, even if they harm some students.

Four factors ripped the mask off Canadian niceness. A rapidly growing, rabid, pro-Palestinian movement of Muslims has been raised to despise Jews, not “just” Israelis, and import thuggish mob politics into Western democracies. Second, the campus’s illiberal liberals obsess about Israel.

Convinced that Israel is committing genocide, they decided that, from “woke” kindergarten to “woke” math, all protests are legitimate. Third, the media firestorm delegitimizing Israel’s actions and demonizing Netanyahu’s government, while minimizing Palestinian crimes, makes Israel look hateful.

Finally, Canada’s weakening national identity and many Canadians’ polite passivity tolerates the intolerable, even as their Jewish neighbors suffer.

All, however, is not lost. At the University of Ottawa, when anti-Zionist goons tried banning me from campus, top administrators, including President Jacques Frémont – a human rights expert – appeared, so the masked cowards didn’t.

At McGill last year, an older non-Jewish colleague approached a Jewish colleague whose “Zio-courses” were protested, found four tall, strong professors nearby, and assured their buddy they had his back. I kept meeting non-Jewish students and professors resisting these outrages, while in Ottawa, many non-Jewish religious leaders attended my talk – on the holiest day of the North American year, Super Bowl Sunday, hours before kickoff.

Most importantly, I met wonderful students. They love Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people and Western values. They laugh off many of their fellow students’ excesses. They refuse to be cowed. They reassured me – and us – that they made new friends, discovered community as extended family, and clarified who they are, what’s important to them, and who they want to be.

They are this moment’s pearls – produced by the grit of Jew-hating oysters – reflecting the best of us and our civilization. Their world has been “turned upside down,” as one student told me. But many students landed on the right side of history and are making their stand.

Fetterman: Palestinian support of Hamas comes with ‘accountability’

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) condemned the scenes in Gaza on Thursday, where Hamas paraded the coffins containing what were believed to have been the remains of four Israeli hostages down the streets of Khan Younis to cheers from Palestinian locals. Three of the bodies were identified as Oded Lifshitz, Kfir Bibas and Ariel Bibas.

Speaking to Jewish Insider from the Capitol on Thursday evening, the Pennsylvania senator said Hamas’ hostage transfer ceremony that took place earlier in the day was indicative of the level of support the terror group has among the Palestinian people. Fetterman argued that such support came with “accountability” attached to it.

“I think it just really reflects just how much of a lot of the population in Gaza supports Hamas and the kind of terrible things that they do. Every time they have these releases, they have people cheering it like they’re cheering for the [Pittsburgh] Steelers or something,” Fetterman said.

“It just reinforces that they actually really want that kind of leadership. Maybe there’s some accountability with everything that happened. I mean, you elect terrorists and you cheer them,” Fetterman continued. “It seems it might attach some accountability to a lot of it. If you’re cheering at dead babies and children, I think there’s some accountability in all of it.”

Fetterman also took issue with the prisoner release that Israel had to adhere to in exchange for the remaining hostages, specifically criticizing the release of Mohammed Abu Warda, a former Hamas commander responsible for several suicide bombings that killed a total of 45 Israelis, as part of the deal.

“I read that the IDF identified that that actually wasn’t them,” Fetterman said, referencing that the coffin containing what was believed to be Shiri Bibas’ body instead held the body of an unknown Palestinian. “They had to release a prisoner that was involved in 45 killings. I just look forward to those prisoners, the ones that killed people, I hope Israel follows up and wastes them. You know, they should never forget and forgive. I fully support that.”

“The fact that they kidnapped, tortured and murdered children, I’ll never understand why you still have people in our country to protest and support that kind of absolutely vile, repugnant stuff. It’s almost normalized in the media,” he added.

02/21 Links Pt1: Sixteen Months of Lies About Everything; Israel confirms Red Cross received remains Hamas claims is Shiri Bibas

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Sixteen Months of Lies About Everything

The revelation that Hamas lied about how and when and by whose hand the Bibas children were killed has some crucial implications for any remotely intellectually honest person.

To put a fine point on it: Hamas lies about everything, and therefore Hamas has lied about everything. Hamas propaganda has shaped the world’s understanding of this conflict, and every syllable of it has been false.

One is tempted to interject here that an intellectually honest person would have already come to this conclusion and therefore perhaps there are precious few minds left to be changed. But integrity compels us to say what is true anyway.

Hamas’s lies about the Bibas family were shocking even by Hamas standards. Shiri and her two sons Ariel and Kfir were taken from their homes on Oct. 7, 2023 when Ariel was 4 and Kfir was less than a year old. Throughout the war, Hamas claimed they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Yarden, Shiri’s husband and the kids’ father, was also taken hostage but held separately from his family. Hamas taunted him repeatedly, once even on camera for a propaganda video, about his family’s fate. Yarden was released this month.

Yesterday, Hamas returned the bodies of Ariel and Kfir and a third hostage, Oded Lifshitz, as well as a body they claimed was Shiri but turned out to have been a random unidentified Palestinian woman.

That wasn’t the only surprise revealed during Israel’s forensic examination of the bodies. The boys were not killed in an Israeli airstrike; they were murdered by their Palestinian captors, who strangled the children with their bare hands and then mutilated their bodies in order to try and obfuscate their cause of death.

The claim that the Bibases were killed in an IDF airstrike was believable enough—and therefore was widely believed. Even if that had been true, it wouldn’t have mitigated Hamas’s responsibility one iota. But since much of the world, from media to governments to activist organizations, was looking for any excuse to absolve Hamas and the Palestinians and to cast Israel’s counteroffensive as overly aggressive and counterproductive to boot, its underlying assumptions were accepted and repeated and shaped debate over the war even within Israel itself. And since Israel and the U.S. are democracies, public debate shapes war policy and outcomes as well.

In this way, Hamas has stage managed the war to an unprecedented degree.

It’s not as though we hadn’t caught Hamas in lies throughout the war, of course. After all, there are two kinds of Hamas statements: lies that have been exposed and lies that have yet to be exposed.

Jonathan Tobin: The unavoidable necessity to draw conclusions about Palestinian Arab society

But recent events should reinforce the willingness of the administration of President Donald Trump to envision a future for Gaza in which the Palestinians—like the Germans of 80 years ago—are forced to pay a price for their crimes. As historian Andrew Roberts wrote recently in The Free Press, rather than damning Trump’s plan as “ethnic cleansing,” there are clear precedents for this sort of accountability that have been accepted by an international consensus.

More than that, the latest Palestinian celebration of terror and hate should force those members of the civilized world to stop giving them a pass for their behavior.

There may well be many Palestinian individuals who are appalled by what their society is doing. That’s true—not only in terms of the unwillingness to give up “resistance” that amounts to a justification of genocide of the Jews but also what it’s done to their own people. But they have failed to make themselves known or to push back against the culture of terror.

It’s also true that resisting Hamas and the other terror organizations, including the supposedly “moderate” Fatah that controls the Palestinian Authority, would be difficult and extremely dangerous. But in the past, the world has shown no reluctance to judge nations and peoples by their willingness to do just that.

Even in Nazi Germany, where a totalitarian government controlled every aspect of society and fear of the Hitlerian regime was justified, some resisted. And, of course, there were instances of “righteous gentiles” who sought to save Jews from death, even though they were rare in Germany and most proved unsuccessful.

Despite the nearby presence of Israeli forces and even financial rewards offered for anyone who would help one of the hostages escape, there appears not to have been one taker among the Palestinians in Gaza. It would have been a perilous thing to accept that offer. But we have learned that many of the hostages were held by civilians in their own homes, not only in Hamas’s tunnels. They were forced to cook, clean and watch after kids. Yet not a single Palestinian Arab seems to have been willing to save one of the hostages, even those harbored in their homes. There is also the fact that some of the worst of the Oct. 7 outrages were conducted by civilians and not the Hamas assault forces.

When it comes to the Palestinians, all of the well-meaning rhetoric about common humanity was defeated by a collective mindset that, like that of the Germans, demonized Jews.

Drawing conclusions about the Palestinians need not obligate us to mimic their hatred by dehumanizing them. But it does oblige us to be honest about their national culture and demand that it be changed before they are allowed to have any power to inflict further harm on others or themselves.

Faced with total defeat and with their country in ruins, the Germans did change and put their Nazi past behind them, even if not all of those responsible for the Holocaust were held accountable. The Palestinians, however, will never change until the civilized world stops coddling them and making excuses for their culture of death, hate and intransigent dedication to perpetual war on the Jews.

After the latest examples of their collective depravity—the slaughter of an old man, a young mother and her two babies—they should be made to see that a failure to transform their national culture will be punished with policies that will have permanent consequences for their national life and ambitions. The alternative is to doom both Israelis and Palestinians to another century of pointless conflict and more sick exhibitions of hate such as the one that Hamas staged to celebrate the deaths of innocents.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Ponder How the Bibas Boys Died

I have spent my life witnessing and reporting on the most atrocious crimes, from Bosnia to Somalia, Syria to Algeria and now Ukraine. After Oct. 7—after seeing the burned kibbutzim and gathering the testimonies of survivors—I was often asked if I had ever experienced anything similar. When I think of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their mother, Shiri, I now answer: No, I’m not sure I have ever encountered such horror.

Consider those phrases “child hostage” and “baby hostage.” In other wars, the death of a child is the ultimate shame, and some remnant of humanity—or rationality—generally prevents captors from bothering with an infant. They abandon the baby. They leave it behind or on the roadside. Someone less hardened might even leave it wrapped in a blanket outside a church, a mosque or a home. Here, they deliberately took the time to abduct these two terrified little beings clinging to their mother.

What went through these men’s minds as they dragged them away like animals? Did they understand the Jewish devotion to children? Had they seen, during their surveillance, how Jewish children are cherished, how beautiful little boys are with their long hair cut the day they are given honey-covered letters to make them love Hebrew? Did they foresee the images of Kfir, 9 months, and Ariel, 4, covering the walls of our cities? Did they revel, in advance, at the outpouring of “Jewish emotion” that this insult to the world’s innocence would unleash? I don’t know.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Several buses exploded in various locations across central Israel on Thursday evening in a planned mass terror bombing attempt. At least three bombs exploded buses in the area of Bat Yam, Israel Police said.

The initial assessment from the security establishment is that the plan for the attack came from Iran, and was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the West Bank. Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) identified Iranian involvement in the West Bank by supplying weapons, training terrorists to carry out attacks, and assembling explosive devices, according to Maariv.

Iran also transferred large amounts of money to terror cells in West Bank, Maariv added.

The bombs were set to explode at "around 9 or 10am, but were set incorrectly," according to Maariv, and were composed of non-standard explosive material, including fertilizer and urea.

Three bombs exploded, two were disabled.

Outside October 7, this would almost certainly have been the worst terror attack in Israel's history.

Shmuel Hanavi bus bombing

The worst bus bombing during the second intifada was the Shmuel Hanavi bombing in August 2003, which killed 23 and wounded 130. Judging from the photos of the buses that exploded on Thursday night, the force of these explosions were far higher than the second intifada bus bombs. TI don't see how anyone could have survived these blasts. Five simultaneous explosions could have killed at hundreds of people.

Before October 7, the worst terror attack was the Coastal Road massacre which involved bombs and shootings, killing 38.

This is a huge deal, somewhat overshadowed by the Bibas family news. An investigation must occur to see how the bombs were smuggled on without anyone (save one passenger) noticing.

That the attack was foiled is nothing short of a miracle. But Israel's response must be as harsh as if it had succeeded.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

People really need to understand the Palestinian honor/shame mentality.

To Hamas and Palestinians in general, humiliation is worse than death. This is why "honor killings" exist - a twisted morality where one's personal honor justifies murdering a family member.

The 1948 war was not simply a defeat - it was a "nakba," a catastrophe. Not because of the number of refugees but because they lost a war to the weak, dhimmi Jews whom they had treated as second class people for centuries.

They project their immoral mindset onto Israelis as well.

To the Palestinian mind, humiliating Israel is what makes the Gaza war a victory. Gaza could be a parking lot but they would still look at this as a win.

The entire sham of swapping hostages for murderers is designed to humiliate Israel. Spreading out the releases, doing them on Shabbat, sending the wrong body instead of Shiri, the reprehensible festivals surrounding the release of hostages and bodies - all of it is designed to maximize humiliation of Israel.

The honor/shame mindset is highly attuned to symbolism, and the grotesque Thursday ceremony with the coffins was rich in symbolism for Hamas meant to humiliate Israel - symbolism that practically no Israeli noticed.

The staged show was held in the Bani Suhaila cemetery east of Khan Yunis. This was chosen to shame Israel because that was where the IDF searched for hostages and hostage bodies but was not successful in finding any. It was also an area where, according to Hamas, they successfully ambushed IDF soldiers.

The Hamas articles happily admit that every aspect of the show was calculated to send messages to Israel of Hamas victory. The audience was chosen to represent a wide variety of Gazan society to emphasize that Hamas still controls everyone in the sector. "Leaders, scholars, government officials, clans, mukhtars, families of martyrs" plus released prisoners were at the macabre ceremony.

As one "analyst" says, "The scenes will reinforce the narrative of resistance, and will have an impact in shaking the unity of Israeli society, which was brutalized at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa flood, but now has begun the countdown to its psychological and existential loss and the reality of its existence on this land."

Kidnapping and murdering children, even Jewish children, is also shameful. Hamas therefore needs to change the narrative to make it appear honorable.

Read this account carefully:

A leader in the Al-Mujahideen Brigades revealed, during preparations to hand over the bodies of four Israeli prisoners, new details about the Israeli prisoner Shiri Bibas and her children, as well as the circumstances of their captivity.

In televised statements, the leader said, "When we captured her, we kept her children with her out of compassion, and we provided a safe and comfortable place for them, similar to how they would live in their own home. We treated her well, as instructed by our noble religion."

He added, however, "But due to the brutal bombardment by the Nazi army with a missile from an F-16 aircraft, the house was completely destroyed and leveled to the ground. This attack led to the death of the family and the martyrdom of those who were holding them captive."

The leader also disclosed that the prisoner, Shiri Bibas, was enlisted and worked as a secretary in the office of the commander of the Southern District in the Gaza Division, which is part of the Israeli army's Southern Command.

In these paragraphs the terrorists justify abducting Shiri as a combatant, claim that kidnapping her children was an act of mercy for her, that they treated her well and she was murdered by the IDF. All of these lies serve the single purpose of avoiding shame and shifting the shame onto Israel.

Lies are an integral part of honor/shame culture, because when the truth is shameful, lies are the only way out. This is why the Palestinians are so wedded to the word "narrative." Narrative is simply twisting history to achieve honor and avoid shame.

We can now expect Hamas to repeat the sickening ceremony when they insist that the woman whose body they sent instead of Shiri be swapped for Shiri herself. And they will then create a narrative around this woman as a heroic martyr who was unjustly killed by Israeli Nazis for being kind to her Jewish captives.

What people don't get is that there is no ceasefire. The public humiliation and abuse of the hostages in front of worldwide media is another phase of the war.

It is a war only being fought by one side, so it is easy for Hamas to declare victory.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

This week, Morocco hosted the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, with representatives from ministers of transportation of many countries participating.

Israel's Transportation Minister Miri Regev attended, causing controversy. Moroccans protested her presence and demanded that Morocco arrest her.

The BDS movement was upset at the Palestinian delegate, Tarek Hosni Salem Zaarab, the Palestinian minister of transport. They declared any Palestinian participation to be "normalization" and a violation of BDS principles.

An official from the Palestinian ministry of transportation defended Zaarab's attendance. His justification for attending reveals how the Palestinians look at international events and conferences.

Most attendees go to these conferences to learn, to meet colleagues, to compare notes, to hear about new ideas, to create standards and to sign resolutions promising that their nations would work hard to improve themselves.

Not the Palestinians. Their attendance at every international forum has nothing to do with sharing ideas or learning from peers.

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Muhammad Hamdan, said that the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Minister attend all international conferences to convey the Palestinian voice and the suffering of the Palestinian people, "and this participation comes to confirm the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state and obtain their rights."

Mohammed Hamdan added, in a comment to Ultra Palestine: "We are present in all places, and wherever we can find a way to do so, to convey the Palestinian voice everywhere."

We've seen this before. The "State of Palestine" eagerly attends every international forum it can find, but it never shows interest in participating. Their attendance has two political purposes: to pretend like they are a real state, and to spread anti-Israel propaganda.

As I wrote in 2017:

Since the PLO started to join world bodies, it has consistently used its position to do only one thing: bash Israel.

It has used UNESCO for years to deny Jewish heritage and history in the Middle East. It has tried to hijack refugee conferences, conferences on children, Human Rights Day, and conferences on women - all to pursue an anti-Israel agenda.

It gets farcical. The "State of Palestine" has used its position to bash Israel at climate conferences and even a recent conference dedicated to saving the world's oceans. It has nothing positive to add to these venues - they are merely excuses to find more ammunition against Israel.

As far as I can tell, this is 100% consistent. The entire point of gaining recognition as a state in international forums is to add new platforms to attack Israel.

It is yet more evidence that the Palestinians aren't interested in building a state, but in destroying one.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/20 Links Pt2: The Great Erasure Is Here; Sky News Australia Antisemitism Summit; The Terrorist Propaganda to Reddit Pipeline

From Ian:

Their Time Is Up

Enough with the sophistry about international laws and human rights. The crucibles in which these ideas were forged, raging with the fires of century-old conflicts, have now cooled down and crumbled. To pretend as if we must now take seriously a torrent of treaties long after the framework guaranteeing their efficacy—if such a framework ever existed in earnest—is sheer lunacy. We’ve seen the United Nations. We’ve seen the International Court of Justice. We’ve seen the Red Cross. To take any of these decrepit and callous concubines of evildoers seriously is not an option any morally or intellectually serious person should ever entertain.

Enough also with the insufferable ululations about Jewish morality and its arc which somehow always bends towards having mercy on the monsters who devour our children. As my dear friend and teacher Rabbi Meir Soloveichik noted in a celebrated article more than two decades ago, hate, too, is a Jewish virtue. The very next holiday on the Jewish calendar, in fact, Purim, is a celebration of the time, long ago, when Jews arose and dispensed with 75,000 of their pursuers, realizing that justice meant not only reversing Haman’s evil decree but forcing all those who were only too eager to partake in the slaughter to face the consequences of their actions. Like them, we, too, are fighting millions of little Hamans, murderous marauders who will grow emboldened the more we offer them mercy.

Which brings us back to earth, to the realm of the real, the practical, and the political. President Trump’s proposal to empty Gaza of its inhabitants is, if we’re honest, more merciful than any Gazan deserves, offering the savages who heard Kfir Bibas sob without showing a shred of basic human decency the one thing that precious baby will never have—a chance of a good and peaceful life elsewhere. Nevertheless, we must embrace this proposal, because at its heart is the one true and inescapable sentiment: Israelis can no longer be expected to live in proximity to those who desire nothing more than their death.

Negotiating with some other Palestinian group won’t do: The PLO, the PFLP, et al are merely a different shade of murderous. Nor is there much value to the fantasy that the same patient reeducation that cleansed so many Germans of the Nazi inflammation might work in Gaza, too. Gazans aren’t, as some Pollyannish accounts would have us believe, long-suffering innocents who had the misfortune of living through decades of Hamas indoctrination; they’re faithful adherents of a stern interpretation of a still-young religion who believe there is glory in putting the enemies of God to the sword. We can, and should, respect their fierce heart. We can, and must, insist that their hands be nowhere near our necks.

Sadly, Israel is showing a growing lack of resolve which is no longer possible to ignore or explain away as some clever bit of tactical genius. Is it possible that Bibi Netanyahu is playing a very long game of five-dimensional chess with the world, holding out on the real prize, which is smiting the regime in Iran? Maybe! But meanwhile, closer to home, nothing is done. A few days ago, a very wise friend wrote to share this startling thought: for the past 18 months, we’ve all listened to Israel’s best and brightest, including Netanyahu himself, go on the sort of podcasts beloved by the self-appointed best and brightest of the American Jewish community, saying that if only they had the proper American support, they would’ve waged a very different war against Hamas.

Now, American support is manifest. Now, an American president possessing uncommon moral clarity and candor is advocating for the opening of the gates of hell. And rather than live up to a year of tough talk, Israel equivocates, looking weak, wounded, and confused. Those exploding beepers were a marvel. The killing of Nasrallah was a thing of beauty. But you don’t win wars and secure the peace with a sprinkling of daring commando acts or a dash of excellent air raids. You win wars and secure the peace by making your enemy realize that they had lost, and in the Middle East, as anyone who has ever consulted a history book could tell you, that means only one thing: seizing land.

Israel, then, must annex Judea and Samaria right now, if only to appear as certain of its right to its ancestral homeland as, say, Senator Tom Cotton. It must enthusiastically advocate for Trump’s plan, or some other arrangement that leaves Gaza empty of Gazans. It must take one long look at Kfir Bibas’ coffin and realize precisely what happens when evil is met with too many clever arguments and not enough swift deeds.

Seth Mandel: The Great Erasure Is Here

Hennigan notes that the word “Mossad,” which is in Sabra’s backstory, isn’t mentioned in the movie. He doubted she’d even be back in another film and observed that “Unless Trump also takes over Marvel Studios, Sabra is definitely not getting her own movie.”

A couple points here. First, the comics industry was built by Jews. Everyone making movies about comic-book heroes, and raking in the dough from ticket prices and licensing agreements, is doing so on the backs of the Jews who made it possible. As has been noted, “Jews created the first comic book, the first graphic novel, the first comic book convention, the first comic book specialty store, and they helped create the underground comics (or ‘Comix’) movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Many of the creators of the most famous comic books, such as Superman, Spiderman, X-Men, and Batman, as well as the founders of MAD magazine, were Jewish.”

Is this the “cultural genocide” I’ve heard so much about from smug college kids? It must be.

Indeed, the founder of Marvel Studios itself is Israeli, though Avi Arad left the company two decades ago, before it was bought by Disney. The current president of Marvel Studios is Kevin Feige, and it is safe to say he knows exactly what he’s doing. Nothing in a Marvel Studios production is an accident; every detail is intentional.

A second facet to this, one buried in the details but interesting to ponder nonetheless, was discussed by a writer for Gizmodo. The piece regurgitates long-debunked Hamas propaganda about the conflict, though the flip side of that coin is that the writer is therefore fairly straightforward in justifying the Sabra hate.

The writer notes that at one point the comics made sure to show Sabra expressing guilt over harming innocent Palestinians. “But in the years since that issue, as Sabra was moved even more specifically in the direction of being a supportive agent of the Israeli state, her reconciling with her duty and her nation’s ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people all but vanished, even as international criticism of Israel’s government has grown.”

That is, Sabra was problematic because she wasn’t entirely a symbol of Jewish guilt. “While many of Marvel’s national heroes have worked with their governments at times in their careers, Sabra was introduced as not just Israel’s national hero, but an agent of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. That gave her an explicit connection to the actions of the Israeli government that, if anything, Sabra… has been pushed further and further into embracing after she was first introduced.”

Sabra, then, is a patriotic Israeli. She’s a hero, but only to those who believe the Jews deserve same rights to self-determination and security as everyone else. Which is, apparently, not many people in Marvel Studios’ target audience.

Stephen Pollard: ‘For Peter Beinart, focusing on the right of Jews to be secure from terrorists is immoral’

That has been given full rein in his latest book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. This is a book that not only need never have been written but that does not need to be read.

Its most obvious pointlessness is that it is simply boring, a predictable regurgitation of every slander against Israel. We get ethnic cleansing, apartheid, massacres and all the usual stuff. Why bother with Beinart when this is the everyday diet of the media? Beinart jazzes it up with a rant against anyone even vaguely associated with speaking up for Israel in the wake of the October 7 massacre. If that sounds repulsive, it is because it is. Beinart goes through the motions of condemning what happened on October 7 but spends far longer attacking those who have stood up for Israel since then. As he writes at the start, in his “note to my former friend”: “I consider your single-minded focus on Israeli security to be immoral and self-defeating.” Think about that for a second (because that is all it is worth). For Beinart, focusing on the right of Jews to be secure from terrorists is “immoral”.

If you’re worried about the impact on Jews of having to live alongside Palestinians in a single state – if you’re worried, that is, that they would be slaughtered – then don’t be, because Beinart says it worked in South Africa so it will work in the new not-Israel state. And that’s it. That is the entire basis on which he thinks the world should take the leap into deciding that the Jews no longer need a state.

Actually, that’s not quite it because we are all wrong to have noticed an increase in antisemitism since October 7. It hasn’t happened. We know this because Beinart asserts it, and he is so much wiser than the rest of us. Chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are “ironic” because “there already is a country that extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan”. Oh, clever point! It’s not about Jew hate at all but rather is used by those crafty Zionists: “Labelling the slogan antisemitic — even genocidally antisemitic — turns public attention away from how Israel is treating Palestinians now, especially in Gaza, and redirects attention toward how Palestinians might treat Jews were they in charge. It replaces the actual subjugation that Palestinians experience as an oppressed people with the theoretical subjugation that Jews might experience were the shoe on the other foot.”

Beinart uses the same logic to defend usage of the phrase “intifada” and other slogans such as, “when people are occupied, resistance is justified”. Indeed for Beinart the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” is actually worse and more threatening than “intifada” or “resistance is justified.”

Perhaps one should feel sorry for Beinart, who is so consumed in his loathing of Israel that he appears to have lost all sense. He writes that spraying anti-Zionist graffiti on the walls of an Israeli embassy and a synagogue are equally fine because “they are both, in their essence, Zionist institutions.” Despite him insisting that Zionism is entirely separate to Judaism, a synagogue is nonetheless a “Zionist institution”. Go figure.

But in any case, none of this is antisemitic, he maintains, just as nothing we have seen on campus since October 7 is about Jews: “The data is clear: the vast majority of campus progressives distinguish between Jews and Israel.”

But how can one feel sorry for someone who now devotes his life to spreading such calumnies about Israel, about Jews, and about those who speak up for Israel and Jews. As for whether to shake Beinart’s hand: would you?

02/20 Links Pt1: The death of the Bibas family is a stain on the human conscience; The Dark Side of UNRWA; 3 buses explode in planned terror attack

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Civilization weeps

After the heartbreak comes a profound anger. The return from Gaza of the bodies of the murdered Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her small children, 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel—after a grotesque Hamas propaganda stunt displaying their coffins and accusing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of killing them—has triggered in the already deeply traumatized Israeli people a bottomless grief and a demand for justice at long last

Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were also murdered on Oct 7, 2023. The suffering of her husband Yarden, who was released from Hamas captivity only three weeks ago, is unconscionable.

Oded Lifshitz, aged 83, the fourth hostage whose body was returned with the Bibas family and who had made it part of his routine living near the Gaza border to drive countless Arabs from Gaza to hospital appointments in Israel, had his kindness repaid when they burned down his home, took him and his wife hostage and then murdered him.

The fate of all the other individuals slaughtered, raped, tortured, beheaded, burned alive and kidnapped into Gaza in the Oct. 7 atrocities is no less shattering.

But the terrified face of Shiri Bibas cradling her children as they were dragged into Gaza will haunt many of us forever. The Bibas family will remain a symbol of the unspeakable evil visited upon Israel on that black day and that it continues to confront.

It’s also a symbol of the West’s descent into inhumanity and its tacit endorsement of barbarism. In city after city, people whose faces were contorted with hatred and rage tore down posters of baby Kfir and other hostages from public places.

What kind of people feel such hatred and rage at pictures of babies, children, women and men who have been kidnapped by barbaric savages?

This was a mass outbreak of a collective pathology. It has illustrated the extent of the West’s crisis of civilization. And at the heart of that crisis lies the attitude to Israel and the Jewish people.

The hostage posters were torn down because for supporters of the Palestine cause, nothing can be allowed to challenge their narrative of hapless Palestinians and Israeli colonizers who drove them out of their ancient homeland and have oppressed them ever since.

Every part of that narrative is, of course, a lie. The Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel—the only people for whom it was ever their national kingdom. Palestinian identity is a fiction cooked up in the 1960s between the Egyptian-born “Palestinian” terrorist leader Yasser Arafat and the Soviet Union.

Brendan O'Neill: The death of the Bibas family is a stain on the human conscience

Staggeringly, some in the West conspired with Hamas’s treatment of baby Kfir as a ‘coloniser’ deserving of captivity. People ripped down posters of Kfir in cities across the West. Nora Berman reported seeing a likeness of him ‘ripped in half’ just weeks after the pogrom. A mural in London featuring Kfir was vandalised. At Harvard University, an image of Kfir was defaced and a poster of his brother, Ariel, was blacked out with paint. As the Jerusalem Post rather politely put it, ‘Harvard’s so-called enlightened community appears to have lost its moral compass’.

Think about the moral delirium it must require, the sheer political savagery, to deface an image of a baby Jew who had just been kidnapped in the worst pogrom since the Nazi era. The Westerners who raged against posters of Kfir – and the other hostages, too – were essentially swearing fealty to Hamas. They were giving brute expression on the streets of the West to Hamas’s bigoted belief that there are no innocent Israelis. To its twisted conviction that every inhabitant of the ‘Zionist entity’ is a legitimate target, from the nine-month-old baby who has never uttered a word to the 84-year-old man who campaigns for peace.

This imposition of collective guilt on to all Jews in Israel was echoed on those weekly marches too, where Israel was damned as a criminal state ailed by ‘genocidal mania’, a state whose destruction would be a boon for Palestinians and for humankind. ‘Progressives’ had no time to comment on Kfir and his family – they were too busy agreeing with Hamas that the Jewish State is a pox and its people a plague. Meanwhile, Western leaders said next to nothing about the Bibas family. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten about little Kfir Bibas’, Israel’s ambassador to the UN raged during yet another UN discussion about the problem of Israel last month. ‘But I promise you, we haven’t’, he said.

The death of the Bibas family is a stain on the entire human conscience. An Islamist death cult came for a family of Jews and the self-styled virtuous of the West either said nothing or made excuses for it. Kfir’s short life and awful death is as much an indictment of our own civilisational disarray as it is of Hamas’s barbarism. It shows, too, why Israel must survive and flourish. Next time someone asks you why there needs to be a Jewish State, tell them it’s because there are people who are happy to kill a baby Jew and others who are happy to deface images of that baby Jew. It’s this hatred that makes Israel essential.

The Bibas family symbolised the horror of October 7

As I write these words, the heavens are crying. Coffins of (supposedly) four Jewish hostages, Shira Bibas and her babies Kfir and Ariel and Oded Lifshitz are being transferred in a sick display from the monsters in Gaza via the useless puppets called the International Red Cross, home to Israel.

The video of a terrified young mother being abducted into Gaza holding her two red-headed babies, surrounded by men forcing her to cover up and giving her orders in Arabic and English is one of the most well known images from October 7. The Bibas Family became a household name and few of us could see redheads without thinking of them, wondering what had become of them.

For Israel and Jews worldwide, the Bibas children were the symbol of the hostages, taken from their homes in pyjamas, some by gunmen, some by mobs of civilians. The whereabouts of Shiri and the children were a mystery since the day a video emerged of them having been taken to Khan Yunis by the terror group “Kataib Mujahadin”.

Over a year ago, Hamas claimed Shiri and the children were killed by an Israeli airstrike but provided no proof. They forced father Yarden, released just a few weeks ago, to film a video in captivity blaming Israel for the deaths of his wife and children.

The civilian hordes who came through the fence to rape, loot, murder, kidnap and steal destroyed not only families, but also the dreams of the most peacenik Israelis, those who for years had sent kites of peace over the fence, who dreamed of shared industrial zones, planned joint photography exhibits, and drove sick Palestinans to hospitals. Those like Lifshitz, 84 at the time of his kidnapping, who was a dedicated peace activist who spent decades driving Palestinians to medical appointments in Israel and working towards peace.

Queers For Palestine Insist Will Be Just Fine In Gaza, Once Trump Empties It (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Queers For Palestine Insist Will Be Just Fine In Gaza, Once Trump Empties It

New York, February 20 - Activists in a sexual-identity movement that attempts to ally disparate, even clashing, causes in progressive politics assured the public today that, contrary to accusations of hypocrisy from critics, they fully intend to spend time in areas now under Hamas rule, where, contrary to the assertions of those critics, they expect to come to no harm, because they will time their visit to those areas for after the homophobic and transphobic population has been cleared out under the US president's proposal.

Leo Schumaker, a Queers for Palestine spokesperson, lambasted defenders of Israel this morning and those who question the organization's choice to support the Palestinians, a society that oppresses and even murders homosexuals and other sexual "deviants." "Zionists distort the reality," he argued. "We are perfectly willing to go to Gaza, and we will be just fine. As long as we do so once the Palestinians there have left."

Schumaker further charged this critics of his movement engaged in dishonest argument. "They say Hamas would throw us off buildings if we went to Gaza," he claimed. "But now there aren't so many buildings in Gaza, so that's not a significant risk. If I fight for Palestinians because they need liberation, that won't harm me even if, if liberated, they would torture and kill me, because I don't intend to be there when they're liberated. Only once they've left, which, of all people, Donald Trump might make happen. It's a queer world, but it's the one we inhabit."

"Our critics are the hypocrites," he added. "They claim to be worried about 2LGBTQIA+but are actually only interested in bashing Palestinian aspirations. That's totally different from Palestinians using us as tools to advance their agenda in the West while not supporting our struggle at all."

QFP activists appeared unbothered at the suggestion that removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip might constitute ethnic cleansing. "Palestinians have to leave Palestinian areas all the time if they're gay or transgender," observed Maddie Holden, a chapter coordinator. "They go to Tel Aviv, where they can live and even thrive. What's a few more million Palestinians leaving for a better life? They can come to the US, where we welcome everyone - well, until Trump cut down on migration. Such a homophobic thing to do."

"As for those who fled to Tel Aviv to get away from that..." Holden shrugged. "You can't make an omelet without throwing some eggs off buildings."

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Ultra Palestine reports on explosions in Gaza since the ceasefire. It says they are all from Israeli muitions, but the details sound more like Hamas booby-traps.

Ezz El-Din Hijazi (23 years old), one of the victims of the occupation’s remnants, sustained injuries to his face and parts of his body, and a broken foot, as a result of the explosion of what he describes as a “foreign object” in the city of Rafah.

Hijazi was helping a relative retrieve some belongings from his destroyed home in the West Rafah area when he saw a child playing with a strange object that he says looked like “a water regulator with a small light bulb in it.” He added that he feared for the child, so he pulled it away and threw it away. A short while later, an explosion occurred, and the 12-year-old child was killed, while he was seriously injured.

What bomb remnant would look like a water regulator with a light bulb?

When an explosion happens inside a house or inside the rubble of a house, chances are very good that it came from Hamas, which proudly hid booby-traps in walls and closets. It even took videos of hiding these bombs.

Most of the examples in the article appear to have been inside houses. While it could be that some are from Israel, these are areas that were booby-trapped.

The article says that Rafah and northern Gaza are the most dangerous places - and the IDF mentioned months ago that practically every building in the north of Gaza was booby-trapped, while the New York Times reported last June that there were hundreds in Rafah as well.

I predicted a month ago that Hamas and Hamas-tilted media will blame Israel for these deaths. I'm not wrong.

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From Reuters:

For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria's capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.

The father and son fled Syria in the 1990s, after then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad lifted a travel ban on the country's historic Jewish community, which had faced decades of restrictions including on owning property or holding jobs.

Virtually all of the few thousand Jews in Syria promptly left, leaving less than 10 in the Syrian capital. Joseph and Henry - just a child at the time - settled in New York.

If you think that Jews were treasured members of Syrian society before Hafez Assad, you would be mistaken.

As this 1825 newspaper article shows, a Reverend W. B. Lewis went to Damascus to try to convert the Jews there to Christianity. His visit was unsuccessful, though - because all the prominent Jews of the city had been put into prison.

Lewis had also reported on the horrendous condition of the Jews of Palestine,

The Jews at Jerusalem, (I speak even of European Jews) are liable to be stopped by the lowest of the country, who, if he pleases, may demand money of them as a right due to the mussulman ; and this extortion may be practised on the same poor Jew over and over again in the space of ten minutes.

The Jews are fond of frequenting the tombs of their forefathers, especially on particular days, to read their prayers of remembrance of the dead. Here advantage is taken of them again. They are rudely accosted and pilfered, and if resistance is made, they are beat almost to death, and this not by common highwaymen or Bedouin Arabs, but by men they may have been in the habit of seeing and talking with every day.

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Last May, Israel sent a letter to UNRWA demanding that they evacuate from their buildings in Jerusalem that were built on state land or land belonging to the Jewish National Fund before 1948.

UNRWA's response to these charges are interesting in that they do not deny them. Instead, they attempt to deflect them.

From the (anti-Israel) Jerusalem Story site:

Israel claims UNRWA’s headquarters is located on state land. In fact, the property was leased to UNRWA by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1952, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. According to Fowler, UNRWA pays a symbolic annual rental fee of 2,500 Jordanian dinars (approximately $3,525) to Jordan, which is deposited into an escrow account.

“We remained in exclusive possession of the compound without interruption until 1967, and then continuously after 1967, since Israel occupied the territory. And we have not had any challenges to our possession of the compound from the Israeli foreign ministry,” Fowler said, noting Israel’s foreign affairs ministry is the interlocutor between UNRWA and the State of Israel.

UNRWA also operates a vocational school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kufr ‘Aqab called the Qalandiya Training Center.

“We were granted exclusive rights to use the land by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1951, with the specific goal of providing technical training for Palestine refugees,” Fowler said. “And exactly the same as with [the headquarters] we’ve had exclusive possession since then that’s not been interrupted after 1967.”

We know that the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property took control of Jewish-owned property and leased them to Arabs or to UNRWA, but it claims that "with few exceptions, [Jordan] held that property in virtual trust and did not try to alter its title or ownership. "

If it became Jordanian state land, then it became Israeli state land in 1967. If the lands were considered still owned by Jews, then the land is still owned by Jews today and they have the right to evict UNRWA.

Either way, UNRWA's arguments do not seem to have any legal basis. Paying rent to Jordan which has no legal claims on the land would not seem to give UNRWA the right to stay there forever. And even if Israel didn't previously challenge the ownership of the lands it does not affect their legal status.

One other argument seems to be a bit stronger:

Ardi Imseis, former legal counsel and public policy advisor to UNRWA and currently a member of the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, argues that international law always trumps domestic law. In fact, the occupier’s domestic law is not relevant.

“The privileges and immunities of the United Nations are very clear: The property and assets of the United Nations are immune from all forms of interference—no matter who holds the property,” Imseis told Jerusalem Story, citing the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN of 1946, to which Israel is a party.

The Convention does indeed seem to say that UN facilities cannot be evacuated against their will. But in this case, where UNRWA pays Jordan a token amount for the lease, it doesn't make sense since Jordan renounced all responsibility for the territories in 1988. UNRWA, by paying Jordan, is pretending that Jordan is the owner even when Jordan no longer makes that claim (except in certain religious sites in Jerusalem.)

Certainly UNRWA doesn't recognize Israel's sovereignty over the parts of Jerusalem over the Green Line. But this is hypocritical as well - it clearly recognized Jordan's annexation of east Jerusalem as legally valid to the point of paying Jordan to lease lands in Jerusalem, but it doesn't recognize Israel's own annexation of the same land.

At the very least UNRWA should be trying to pay Israel, which took over the functions of the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property. But if Israel would accept payment it might then be agreeing that UNRWA has a legal right to the land, meaning that under the convention Israel would not be able to retake it.

The only remaining question is whether Jordan's original lease of these lands to UNRWA was legal to begin with. If it wasn't, it seems strange to say that the UN can freely operate on stolen lands forever. It sort of contradicts the UN charter.

The UN Convention mentioned earlier obviously didn't envision a situation like that. But it sure appears to be be the case that UN is operating on land it never had the legal right to use.

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Propaganda as modern terrorism: The grotesque Hamas stage for the Bibas babies (update)

Today, Hamas made the handover of Oded Lifshitz and Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri Bibas into a hideous spectacle where it tried to turn even the most depraved terrorist actions into propaganda.

Here was the stage Hamas set up:

The main backdrop shows a vampire-like Netanyahu with the words "The war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi Zionist army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes." Kfir, Ariel, Shiri and Oded are shown.

Beneath it a poster said, "We never forgive nor forget. Al Aqsa Flood was our promise."

There are four coffins on stage next to models of American missiles.

On the left was a poster of "Zionist Nazism in numbers" with the typical bogus Hamas statistics.

On the right is a poster showing a Palestinian as a tree with deep roots facing Israeli tanks and a series of coffins with the Israeli flag on them, with the caption "The return of war = the return of your prisoners in coffins."

In a further cruel joke, Hamas' news media stated "The resistance was keen to respect the sanctity of the dead and their families, and placed their bodies in four coffins before handing them over to the Red Cross."

Respect for the dead? What should have been the respectful handing over of the bodies of innocents was a circus of Hamas evil, attended by released Hamas terrorists to cheer the proceedings.

Hamas claimed on October 7 that it doesn't attack babies. Yet it brought the Bibas family into Gaza.

Days later, Hamas reiterated, "The resistance does not target children, and the Western media must be accurate and not biased towards the Zionist narrative." Yet it kept the babies.

Hamas claimed that Israel killed the hostages in November 2023 in airstrikes. Yet even if true, they chose to keep them as bargaining chips to force Israel to release more murderers - some of whom also murdered children.

After Hamas claimed that the Bibas family was killed in an airstrike, they took video the father Yarden being told that his family was killed by Israel. It is unfathomable cruelty.

Hamas claims to have respect for the dead. This stage, by itself, shows that this is a cognitive war and there is nothing that is beneath Hamas.

Everything they do, everything they say, is meant to cause pain to Jews. Sometimes the pain is in terror attacks, sometimes it is in disgusting propaganda to blame the victims for their own deaths. But all of it has the same goal.

The handovers of hostages and their bodies is just as much terrorism as the airplane hijackings, suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other attempts by Hamas to harm Jews.

Hamas and its supporters must be utterly defeated, uprooted and destroyed.

UPDATE: Hamas even turned the coffins of the Bibas babies into propaganda.