Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 19, 2025

Latest batch of EoZ Cartoons

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Yesterday, Abd al-Muttalib al-Qaisi, who was driving an aid truck intended for Gaza, stabbed two Israelis to death at the Allenby border crossing from Jordan, turning aid into a weapon.

He left a suicide note that Arabs call an "immortal will" describing why he mounted the attack - and the reason he gave show how incessant anti-Israel lies leads to murder.

His letter said:

Sons of our nation: the crimes that the Zionist occupation is committing in the Gaza Strip will one day reach our countries and homelands, and the backs of our women and children [an Arabic idiom that implies rape and violation - EoZ] , and with our silence, we will become part of what the enemy calls the "Greater Israel" project. Sons of our nation: Until when will our silence continue toward those who occupy lands? And will we remain silent until it reaches our land and violates our sanctities?

In recent weeks, Arab media has been consumed with the lie that Bibi Netanyahu supports a "Greater Israel" project that stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. It is beyond absurd to think that any sane Israeli leader wants to govern a quarter of a billion hostile Arabs. Israel has security reasons to consider annexing parts of the West Bank and Gaza, but the idea of a "Greater Israel" that includes Jordan, parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt is pure fantasy.

Yet the propaganda has been incessant in Arab media, and there has been no pushback in Arabic saying that it is an obvious falsehood.

Al-Qaisi was not Palestinian. He belonged to the Qaisi Bedouin tribe in southern Jordan .He didn't murder Jews out of solidarity with Gaza or Palestinians. He doesn't even mention Gaza in his letter.

His incentive was to protect his fellow Arab tribesmen, women and children from being attacked and violated by Israel, a threat that has no basis in fact but that became a reality to him because of the 24 hour tsunami of lies in Arab media.

The West tends to dismiss Arab propaganda as mere rhetoric, as nothing to be concerned with, perhaps as an amusing anecdote. But it isn't - it is brainwashing generations of people to support terror. The logical conclusion to the absolute knowledge that Israel plans to conquer much of Arabia is to attack Israel today before it gets even stronger.

And it isn't only propaganda in the Arab world. As the genocide libel against Israel gains respect in the supposedly sophisticated Western media, the logical conclusion is to stop that genocide by any means possible - and if murdering Jews in Europe or the US might create a disincentive for supposed Israeli crimes, the incitement to murder Jews gets mainstreamed by the media and NGO lies.

While less blatant than the Arab press, Western media still mainstreams lies that can lead to the same deadly logic. We are seeing a concerted campaign not only to push anti-Israel lies in the West but also to silence the truth. Anyone who disagrees with the maximal anti-Israel position is framed as a "Zionist" and attacked or marginalized themselves. Over time, the ecosystem is not just demonizing Israel but justifying the same kind of murders that we saw at the Allenby Bridge. The worst crimes get inverted into righteous acts.

In this case, the media and NGOs are not just "reporting the facts." By minimizing the other side of the story, they are complicit in future murders..

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

For nearly two millennia the Catholic Church read "Thou Shalt Not Kill" as a prohibition of murder, not a ban on all killing. The Hebrew is clear: lo tirtzach means the unlawful taking of innocent life. Jewish tradition built an entire legal framework around that distinction. Christian thinkers understood it too. Augustine and later Aquinas both drew sharp lines between murder and forms of killing that might be justified – in war, in self-defense, or in judicial execution.

Aquinas went further in a way that today sounds shocking. In the Summa, he argued that because society justly executed counterfeiters for undermining trust in the common good, it was all the more just to execute heretics, who endangered eternal salvation. His analogy only made sense because everyone assumed that counterfeiters deserved death – an assumption woven into medieval law. The Church never applied the commandment against “killing” to such cases. It was always understood as murder.

From the thirteenth century onward the Church cooperated with secular rulers in the suppression and execution of heretics, notably during the Inquisition. This was not treated as a violation of the commandment but as a necessary defense of truth and society. Even into the early modern period, Catholic and Protestant authorities alike justified executions for heresy. The distinction between murder and other forms of killing was taken for granted.

That began to change in the 19th century. Enlightenment thinkers challenged the ubiquity of the death penalty. States gradually stopped executing people for crimes like counterfeiting. The Church, still committed to just war and judicial punishment in principle, began to shift under the pressures of modern warfare. Nuclear weapons, world wars, and totalitarian massacres made the old just war categories look dangerously inadequate.

Vatican II condemned indiscriminate attacks, declaring the destruction of entire cities to be a crime against God and man. The Catechism maintained the legitimacy of defense, but the tone grew more cautious. John XXIII and Paul VI urged disarmament and development. John Paul II went further, declaring war itself “always a defeat for humanity,” and suggesting that modern wars almost never meet the just war criteria. Francis carried the trajectory forward, declaring the death penalty inadmissible and adopting a near-pacifist stance in public appeals.

Through all of this the Church retained the old English formula “Thou shalt not kill” in its catechetical headings, while continuing to teach that what was forbidden was murder. Other Christian traditions moved their translations toward accuracy – “murder” rather than “kill.” The Catholic Church knew the difference but kept the older form for continuity and resonance.

That is what makes the recent papal tweet so significant.

I express my profound closeness to the Palestinian people in Gaza, who continue to live in fear and to survive in unacceptable conditions, forced once again from their own lands. Before Almighty God, who commanded “Thou shalt not kill,” and throughout human history, every person always has an inviolable dignity, to be respected and upheld. I renew my appeal for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a negotiated diplomatic solution, in full respect of international humanitarian law. I invite everyone to join my heartfelt prayer that a dawn of peace and justice may soon arise.
— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) September 17, 2025

For the first time, the commandment itself was invoked directly in opposition to a specific war, and in the blunt, imprecise English of “Thou shalt not kill.” Popes denounced World War I and World War II, opposed Vietnam, criticized the Gulf War and the Iraq War, prayed for peace in Syria and Ukraine – but they did not wield “Thou shalt not kill,” itself as their banner. The choice to do so now, in connection with Gaza, is deliberate.

The effect of the language is unmistakable. By choosing “kill,” the Pope erases the long-standing moral distinction and frames Israel’s military actions as a violation of God’s law. He is not just lamenting civilian deaths, or warning against indiscriminate bombing. He is implying that Israel is deliberately killing innocents, and doing so under the most absolute prohibition in the Bible.

This is deeply troubling given the Church’s history. For centuries Christians accused Jews of violating this commandment in the ultimate way, branding them as “Christ-killers.” Sermons and pogroms turned that charge into violence. Vatican II repudiated the deicide slander and worked to rebuild relations. But the memory of antisemitism is not erased. When a Pope knows the difference between murder and killing, and when the Church itself has preserved that distinction for two millennia, the decision to reach for the broader “kill” – and to do so for the first time in the context of Israel’s defense – cannot be dismissed as careless wording.

Statements like this are reviewed, drafted, and weighed. They are not accidents. Leo's native language is English. Which means that in its modern evolution from just war to near pacifism, the Church has now taken an additional step – turning the commandment itself into a weapon of accusation, and directing it first and foremost against Israel which is going to unprecedented lengths to avoid civilian deaths while trying to defeat Hamas.

Given the history, that choice is not only theologically imprecise. It risks reviving the very old prejudice the Church has worked so hard to bury.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

09/18 Links Pt2: Open season against the Jews; The Guardian’s Descent: Propaganda Masquerading as Journalism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Open season against the Jews

Only America currently stands between Israel and this unconscionable, obsessional and murderous malice of the world against the Jews. That support, though, is itself vulnerable. In 2028, Trump—Israel’s greatest supporter in the history of the presidency—will have departed the White House.

The Democrats are so deeply in hock to their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish far-left that they will be enemies of both Israel and civilization for the foreseeable future.

The Republicans, however, are themselves now badly split between conservatives and conspiracy-theorist, antisemitic crazies—a development which has come into sharper focus since the murder earlier this month of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Whatever the motive for Kirk’s assassin turns out to be, Kirk’s death is a strategic blow to America. Talked of as a future president, he had a unique gift in reaching American youth with a patriotic message of cultural conservatism and Christian renewal. And he was a great supporter of Israel.

Since his murder, however, MAGA’s conspiracy-theorist wing has erupted with a stream of antisemitic claims centered on Kirk’s memory and with deranged fantasies that Kirk was murdered by the Mossad.

The leader of this faction, former Fox News host and current political commentator Tucker Carlson, is claiming to be the true inheritor and guardian of Kirk’s legacy. As such, he is claiming (with no evidence at all) that before his murder, Kirk had turned against Israel. But Tucker himself has platformed innumerable wild and vicious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish claims.

On his Tablet podcast this week with Israeli commentator Gadi Taub, the American political analyst Mike Doran said Kirk’s murder had set in train a struggle for the soul of the Republican Party—over Israel. It’s also a struggle over Israel for the soul of America.

It is beyond remarkable how so much of the world’s agenda now involves hatred of Israel and the Jews.

There are many reasons for this. The rise of Muslim political power in Britain and Western Europe (and increasingly in the United States) has got politicians dancing to the Islamists’ tune and turning their countries into hotbeds of Islamic supremacism and “Gaza first” policies to destroy Israel.

This agenda finds eager acceptance among liberal universalists, whose hatred of the West and the nation-state has led to embrace of the Palestinian cause and belief that preposterous Palestinian lies are the unvarnished truth.

In other words, as I wrote in my book published earlier this year, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They can Save It, the West’s attack on Israel and the Jews can only be explained by its attack on its own core values and identity.

This has erased conscience, justice and rationality in the West. That’s why it’s behaving in this way towards Israel—the great standard-bearer of conscience, justice and rationality.

And as history has shown, every culture that tried to wipe out the Jews has itself been wiped out while the Jewish people have survived. History is once again repeating itself.

Stephen Daisley: Neither Balfour nor Britain created Israel. The Jews did

Balfour guilt has political elites donning their sackcloths and ashes but we would all benefit from regaining a little perspective. Britain did not create the Israel, neither through Balfour nor its administration of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael. Jews created Israel. The Old Yishuv. The early Jewish immigrants from central and eastern Europe. Mizrahi Jews, many driven out of Arab and Muslim lands in which their families had lived for generations. (This is the Nakba people don’t talk about.) Jewish sovereignty was fought and paid and planted and prayed and all too often bled for. It was not a gift, but a reclamation.

The UK had a role, no doubt about that. For all the tensions between the Brits and the Zionists, the arrests and floggings and hangings of Jewish freedom fighters and the Irgun’s and Lehi’s bloody reprisals at the King David Hotel and in the eucalyptus groves of Even Yehuda, the British Army kept enough order to prevent the Arabs of the Palestine territory and surrounding countries from slaughtering the Jews en masse. Orde Wingate trained the Haganah in self-defence and British mahalniks like Tom Derek Bowden flocked to Israel in 1948 when the Arabs tried to exterminate the nascent Jewish state.

But the Britain that issued the Balfour declaration was the same Britain that four years later severed almost 80 per cent of Palestine and handed it to the Hashemites for an Arab state, which is now Jordan. This is why, today, Israel is only a narrow strip and, if the world gets its way, will become narrower still. It was also the British who drastically restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine during the Holocaust, an effective death warrant for desperate European Jews.

If Britain should apologise for anything, it is for the failure of successive governments to live up to the three promises contained in the Balfour Declaration.The first, to “use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of” a Jewish national home in Palestine, was betrayed by the Transjordan separation and is betrayed even now, as British ministers affirm Israel’s right to self-defence from one corner of their mouths while sanctioning it for doing so from the other.

The second promise, that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, is often raised by Palestine activists and other anti-Zionists. While Israel’s management of religious and ethnic differences is as imperfect as any country’s, non-Jews enjoy legal equality and guaranteed rights. For the absence of self-determination for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israelis must take their share of the blame, but it is a share no bigger than that of the Palestinians themselves.

The third promise, the one everyone forgets about, was that “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” would not be adversely affected. Yet Britain has watched as ancient Jewish civilisations have been all but erased in countries like Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, and closer to home it is failing to deter antisemitism in UK institutions and at street level.

When the Telegraph interviewer put to him that Jews needed a homeland, Charles Dance replied: “It’s all very complicated.” Conscience is a fickle fellow indeed. Dance can rest assured that his conscience is clear. The Balfour Declaration did not create Israel and the Britain that produced Balfour no longer exists.

Shorn of our empire, our defences depleted by elite preferences for much-hailed but seldom-seen soft power, we are now a mid-level power at best. We can no more “unpick” the 1917 declaration or redraw the Middle East map than we can rule India or pack off convicts to New South Wales. A Foreign Office statement today carries less weight than the paper it is printed on. Such are the wages of an empire’s death.

Without realising it, progressives like Dance are hankering for a new imperialism, an enlightened imperialism, in which the solution to the Middle East crisis resides in London or some other European capital. If only the government would denounce Israel more, sanction Israel more, betray Israel more, Britain’s recalcitrant child would finally fall into line. Only Israel isn’t our child, she is a sovereign and independent nation and will remain so for as long as her people are willing to fight for her.

We are no longer in the business of nation-making. We can barely keep our own nation together. The past can be celebrated or lamented, critiqued and revised, but it cannot be undone. The Jewish people built their own state, but the Balfour Declaration will remain a record of a gone-forever moment when Britain’s word carried moral weight throughout the world.

The Guardian’s Descent: Propaganda Masquerading as Journalism

At the heart of the film lies an old poison dressed in new rhetoric: collective Jewish guilt. A B’Tselem activist declares, “As an Israeli Jew, I belong to the collective perpetrating this genocide. It is done in my name.” This is not moral courage — it is the most lucrative pose in the propaganda business: the token Jew who profits by smearing his own people. These opportunistic traitors thrived in Nazi Germany as Judenräte and Jewish Ghetto Police, and in the Soviet Union as “useful Jews” like Trotsky, weaponized for the regime’s purposes and later discarded. It’s nothing new: fascists and communists alike have always used Jewish faces as props to legitimize their war on Jewish survival.

Cassel ties a neat bow on his story: “We spoke with dozens of people across Tel Aviv and found little concern for Palestinians in Gaza.” This is confirmation bias disguised as discovery. The reality is that Israeli society is saturated with grief, argument, and mourning. Hostages dominate headlines. Protests fill the streets. Israelis argue ferociously, care deeply, and worry about the world’s opinion. But nuance spoils propaganda, so it ends up on the cutting-room floor.

B’Tselem’s Sarit Michaeli accuses Israelis of collective guilt, while Matthew Cassel nods along, blaming not only Israel but the international community for enabling a so-called genocide. This is not journalism — it is the laundering of antisemitic propaganda through token voices and selective editing.

The final twist is to widen the circle of guilt. After branding Israelis as genocidaires, Cassel and his B’Tselem chorus declare that the “international community” is also to blame. This is the propaganda endgame: if you don’t denounce Israel, you too are complicit. Western readers, watching from their sofas, are recruited into the script. Your government, your taxes, your silence — all framed as participation in Jewish crimes.

This is blood libel evolved for the 21st century. Yesterday, it was the village Jew accused of poisoning the wells. Today, it is the Jewish state accused of genocide — and anyone who doesn’t join the mob becomes an accomplice. This isn’t journalism. It’s a sadistic inquisition, and The Guardian has chosen to play inquisitor with glee.

The Aftermath: Manufacturing a Mob Against Jews
The Guardian doesn't just tell a story — it manufactures a mob. Within twenty-four hours, Cassel's "documentary" had nearly a million views, 26,000 likes, and more than 5,600 comments. Scroll through them and you see the result: a chorus of digital pitchforks, parroting the script they've just been fed.

"Israelis will forever have to reckon with what we have done to Palestinians."

"The victims of genocide turned into perpetrators of genocide."

"Nazis could have parties beside concentration camps, just like Israelis on the beach."

Hollywood vs. Hollywood: Battle Brewing Between Stars, Studios & the Pro-Palestinian Press

The article then folded in the celebrity boycott letter, presenting it as a “new pledge to boycott working with Israeli film institutions and companies.” Noticeably absent? Any mention of Paramount’s unequivocal statement rejecting the boycott — released days earlier. In other words, The Hollywood Reporter chose to present a picture of unified anti-Israel solidarity in Hollywood, when in fact the industry itself was already fracturing.

This isn’t an isolated case. A wider snapshot of the outlet’s coverage shows a consistent pattern: lionizing Palestinian filmmakers while nit-picking Israeli ones. One glowing feature was headlined: “Amid the Tragedy of War, Palestinian Filmmakers Are Finding a Way to Break Through.”

By contrast, a recent review of Barry Avrich’s “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue,” which documents Israeli general Noam Tibon’s desperate effort to save his family from Hamas terrorists on October 7, was dismissed as offering a “tense but oversimplified snapshot.” One criticism leveled at Avrich was that he focused “too much” on October 7 so that “nobody needs to think of anything that came before or after.”

Before? What exactly does The Hollywood Reporter believe happened “before” October 7 that could possibly contextualize the butchering of Israeli families in their homes? The implication is as grotesque as it is telling.

This is the deeper problem. We could say that Hollywood’s most prominent industry voice has traded neutrality for selective outrage, but the truth is The Hollywood Reporter was never neutral. Like much of Hollywood, it has long been sympathetic to left-wing and progressive causes.

But to suggest this is simply more of the same would be a mistake. In aligning itself with the pro-Palestinian cause as framed by Hollywood’s loudest activists, The Hollywood Reporter is not being “progressive.” It is lending its voice to a movement from which its celebrity backers will eventually distance themselves — when the wind shifts, or when they realize they are alienating their employers and fans.

Publications don’t have that luxury. Unlike actors insulated by a bubble of self-congratulation, The Hollywood Reporter is still an industry institution. Its credibility is supposed to rest on professionalism, not posturing. By choosing sides, it risks a stain that will be far harder to wash off.

The actors flaunt the pins, the filmmakers sign the pledges, and The Hollywood Reporter cements the narrative — one it may find impossible to rewrite when the curtain falls.

09/18 Links Pt1: The West Is Playing a Dangerous Double Game with Qatar; Two soldiers murdered in terror attack at Allenby Crossing; Four soldiers slain in Gaza

From Ian:

Stefanik asks AG Bondi to probe medical charity over Hamas propaganda claims

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., requested that Attorney General Pam Bondi undertake an investigation into Doctors Without Borders under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

In a copy of Stefanik’s letter reviewed by Fox News Digital, she accuses Doctors Without Borders, often known by its French acronym MSF, of having gone on a media offensive against U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, accusing the organization of "orchestrated killing."

Stefanik claimed the attacks "mirror propaganda continuously pushed by Hamas and threaten to undermine the only large-scale humanitarian food operation currently working in Gaza."

GHF has distributed 167 million meals to Gazans since it started operations in May. During the same period, less than 18% of aid sent into Gaza by the U.N. has reached its destination due to theft and armed looting, per the United Nations Office for Project Services.

Stefanik stated in her letter to Bondi that by "using its platform and resources to amplify Hamas-aligned disinformation," MSF "may cross well into unlawful activity." Stefanik noted, the Anti-Terrorism Act "makes clear that no individual or organization may provide material support to a designated terrorist group, including through propaganda."

Stefanik pointed out several indicators that demonstrate MSF "are in fact not neutral in the Gaza conflict and in fact only seem to promote Hamas-supported rhetoric." She said MSF "has made no reference to hostages illegally held by Hamas in Gaza," and has not "campaigned for them to receive medical treatment."

Stefanik described several hostages who required specialized care. One hostage was being treated for cancer on Oct. 7. Another lost his hand during a grenade explosion at the Nova festival. A third was kidnapped while nine months pregnant and gave birth while held captive. "None is included in MSF’s ‘humanitarian’ advocacy," Stefanik said.

Stefanik also called into question the "extremist actions and rhetoric" of MSF staff, which have led to criticism of the organization. In one case, after MSF lamented the death of a staffer who was killed in Gaza in June 2024; the Israel Defense Forces confirmed he was a rocket expert for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In another, a staffer publicly called for Palestinians to "fight and die as martyrs" according to the French publication Le Journal du Dimanche in March 2024.

The West Is Playing a Dangerous Double Game with Qatar

The recent Israeli strike on Hamas political leaders in Qatar demonstrates Israel's determination to pursue Islamist terrorists to the bitter end, wherever they may be - similar to the hunt for the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. No country in the world can lecture Israel or stop our fight against Islamist terrorism. We are following exactly the American and European policies following the attack of Sep. 11, 2001, in New York.

Doha has become a sanctuary for Islamist terrorism. Why does the Free World, led by America, let this happen? The U.S. must demand that Qatar expel all Hamas members from its territory. Normalization within the framework of the Abraham Accords and the resolution of Gaza cannot be advanced as long as Hamas has a strong presence in Doha and sabotages any attempt at rapprochement between the Arab world and Israel.

In 1996, the Emir of Qatar launched Al Jazeera, a television channel with a clear political agenda influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been a key player in shaping public opinion against Arab regimes and, above all, in inciting hatred of Israel. It was responsible for the fall of Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Gaddafi in Libya, and for the rise of fanatical Islamist movements, in collusion with Shiite Iran.

Qatar 'conquered the West,' aims to restore Islamic empire, ex-Mossad division head claims

Qatar has “conquered the West” and is building infrastructure to restore the Islamic empire, Dr. Udi Levy, former head of the Economic Warfare Division in the Mossad, claimed at the International Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) Annual Conference at Reichman University on Wednesday.

His remarks were delivered as part of a speech at the annual international counterterrorism conference, led by the ICT at Reichman University. Levy spoke about Qatar’s involvement in influence networks and funding organizations, calling for a renewed Western strategy.

“The very fact that at such a distinguished conference, Qatar is not a central focus is actually the greatest badge of success for the Qataris. It is proof that their policy over the past decades has achieved a complete victory,” he said.

“Qatar has succeeded – and forgive me for using such a pompous term – in conquering the West, including the State of Israel," he added. "Conquest does not necessarily mean taking over territory; conquest is also the ability to paralyze your enemy’s decision-making processes. And this is exactly what Qatar is succeeding in doing.'

At the same time, Qatar has built, is building, and will continue to build every possible infrastructure to change the West culturally, socially, and economically, in order to fulfill the Muslim Brotherhood’s doctrine of restoring the Islamic empire.”

With “great ingenuity,” Levy said, and with “significant assistance from various Jewish and Israeli actors from different spheres, including campaigners, lobbyists, hi-tech, security, financial advisors, and those whispering into the ears of decision-makers,” Qatar has “managed to take over strategic assets in the West, in Israel, in Africa, and in South America.”

NGOs Go Full Palestinian, Offer Lifetime Pensions To Anyone Who Attacks US Conservatives (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

New York, September 18 - Progressive groups took a final step today to make themselves just like their darlings in the Middle East, emulating President Mahmoud Abbas with a promise to pay hundreds of dollars each month to the relatives of those who perpetrate terrorism against American figures and institutions that stand in the way of the progressive agenda, just as Abbas rewards terrorism against Israelis.

Various leftist organizations, including If Not Now, Students for Justice in Palestine, Code Pink, and Committee for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a joint statement this afternoon, in which they all but formalized their coalition's transformation into a replica of, and a vehicle primarily for the advancement of, Palestinian ideals and policies in the US.

Open Society Foundations - the funding arm of progressive financier George Soros - spokesman Lev Medammem made the announcement on behalf eleven local and national organizations working to strengthen the Palestinian cause in American public discourse. OSF grants keep all of the organizations afloat and functioning, and the groups agreed to have Medammem issue the collective statement for them.

"So much remains to be done in the progressive sphere," Medammem explained. "That indicates we must redouble our efforts to transform the world, and movement on that front has proved frustratingly slow. Therefore, to speed things along In Our Lifetime, to give one of our grantees a shoutout, we must mount even more radical direct actions, much in the way Palestinian armed struggle has kept that cause at the top of the international agenda for decades. Emulating Palestinians will surely bring us closer to the ideal."

The statement contained few specifics, but if the new funding program follows the same model as the Palestinian pay-for-slay policy, it will provide the perpetrators themselves if they survive their operations, and the perpetrator's immediate family if the perpetrator does not survive. The monthly payment will increase in proportion to the number of victims killed, with lesser amounts paid if the victims incur only injury. It remains unclear whether, like the Palestinian policy, the payments will only take place if the victims are Jews.

Simone Zimmerman of If Not Now suggested running A/B split testing. "Some of the organizations can pay only when Jews are killed," she explained, "while others, such as Code Pink, can maintain their broader focus on bringing down the West, and pay lifetime pensions whenever a Westerner is killed or maimed. Then, after some time, we all get together and do some analysis of which one is more effective.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A Flood of Lies (Yehuda Teitelbaum)

One of the most enduring weapons in modern conflict is not the rocket or the rifle but the accusation. For Hamas, the most effective charge has always been the word “genocide.” It is repeated with such frequency, across so many platforms, that it begins to feel less like an allegation than an axiom.

It is a meticulously organized tactic, accomplished with the support and encouragement of the UN and various NGOs. It goes like this. Make a sweeping claim, ensure it races through the headlines, and move on before anyone has time to dismantle it. By the time the details are checked, the falsehood has already shaped public opinion. The lie itself becomes the fact.

It is not only the word itself that matters, but the way it is deployed. Hamas and its advocates understand the power of a flood. One falsehood is never enough. They release dozens at a time. A hospital bombing, a famine, a mass grave, a strike on aid workers, a claim of genocide. Each accusation is crafted to dominate headlines for a few hours or days. By the time the details are debunked, the news cycle has already moved on and the next charge is already circulating.

A lie that travels faster than the correction can never really be corrected. The falsehood lingers in memory long after the retraction, shaping opinion in ways that facts no longer reach. In time, the accumulation of accusations builds a kind of moral sediment. Each story, however false, leaves behind a residue that hardens into conventional wisdom.

That is why the genocide accusation feels so immovable. It is not that anyone has proved it. It is that the sheer repetition has made it seem axiomatic. Each new claim adds another layer, another echo. Even when dismantled, the next one has already arrived to take its place. The flood itself becomes the strategy. The goal is not persuasion in the courtroom of law, but saturation in the court of public opinion.

That cycle is playing out again today. Israel has ordered civilians to evacuate Gaza City, Hamas’s last remaining stronghold. Simultaneously, the UN has once again declared that Israel is commiting genocide. Predictably, Western outlets splashed the front page with cries of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” Yet these two headlines directly contradict one another. After nearly two years of war, Gaza City was still full of civilians. If Israel had truly been pursuing a campaign of extermination, there would not be hundreds of thousands left to evacuate. The presence of so many people at the very center of Hamas’s operations is evidence not of indiscriminate slaughter, but of a military campaign that has left vast populations untouched.

This is not the first time the genocide narrative has been deployed. In 1979 Edward Said accused Israel of “naked genocidal wars.” In the 1980s Noam Chomsky spoke of “Israeli concentration camps” and dismissed the Hebrew Bible as a “genocidal” text. The 2001 Durban NGO Forum labeled Israel guilty of “acts of genocide” while calling for its isolation. Mahmoud Abbas repeated the charge at the UN in 2014. Most recently, UN rapporteurs and professional activist networks have institutionalized the accusation in resolutions and reports. The word has become a political instrument, passed down through decades, polished and redeployed in every conflict.

But politics and law are not the same thing. The International Court of Justice, the only body with authority to rule on genocide, has never convicted Israel of it. In fact, even its much-cited provisional ruling has been widely misrepresented. In April, Joan Donoghue, the president of the court at the time, explained in a BBC interview that the court did not find Israel guilty of genocide, nor even that genocide was occurring. The court’s purpose, she said, was simply to affirm that South Africa had standing to bring its case and that Palestinians had “plausible rights to protection from genocide.” That careful legal distinction was collapsed by activists and the media into a false headline: “ICJ rules Israel plausibly guilty of genocide.”

That is why the current evacuation order matters so much. It is not a footnote in the war. It is the collapse of the central accusation. The existence of large civilian populations inside Gaza City proves that Israel has not waged a campaign of indiscriminate killing. The evidence completely contradicts the indictment.

And yet the indictment will never be withdrawn. It was never meant to withstand scrutiny. Its purpose is not to protect civilians but to delegitimize the state that fights the terrorists who endanger them. The word “genocide” has become less a claim than a strategy. A way to fix Israel permanently in the moral imagination as heir to the crimes of the twentieth century.

The tragedy is not only that this slander persists, but that it is echoed and amplified by institutions that are still considered reputable in the eyes of the world. When UN bodies, NGOs, and media outlets repeat the charge without rigor, they do not illuminate the truth. They just make it harder for Israel to finish this war once and for all.

And that is the anatomy of the lie. It begins with Hamas, but it finds its power only when others choose to repeat it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The New York Times Invents a Jewish Pig Problem

The New York Times this week ran a headline: “Pig Organ Transplants May Pose a Dilemma for Some Jews and Muslims.”

A dilemma? For Jews?

In Judaism, the pig prohibition applies only to eating its meat. Full stop. There has never been a serious halachic debate about using pig-derived medical materials when life is at stake. So what is the dilemma?

The article sharpens the supposed question:

Now biotech companies are raising genetically altered pigs to transplant their organs into patients whose own kidneys have failed. Experts in the field are only beginning to grapple with the question: Will Jews and Muslims accept a transplanted organ from a pig if it saves their lives?

It has not always been entirely clear whether the religious prohibitions on pigs apply strictly to consumption, and neither of these religions has a supreme authority, like the pope, who would issue a decree applicable to all.

Really? It has not always been entirely clear in halacha?

The article itself goes on to show that this "dilemma" is not at all a dilemma for Jews.

For Jews, the short answer is a clear and unequivocal yes. It is one of the exceedingly rare instances in which the maxim “two Jews, three opinions” does not apply.

“It’s 100 percent permitted,” even for the most observant and Orthodox Jews, said Rabbi Pamela Barmash, a professor of Hebrew Bible and biblical Hebrew at Washington University in St. Louis.

Judaism teaches that in cases of life and death, the obligation to preserve life trumps all other religious commandments and obligations. And in the modern era, the prohibition against the pig applies only to eating it, according to Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

“A Jew can do everything from having a heart valve that comes from a pig to playing professional football with a football made of pigskin,” Rabbi Hauer said in an interview.

One doesn't need a Jewish pope to issue such a legal decision.

Note the use of "in the modern era." This is not true - Judaism always recognized saving lives as a higher priority than kosher laws. Even consuming pig-based products would be allowed when there is no alternative.

The entire article is clickbait - manufacturing a controversy when none exists. This is how the Times works: create a "dilemma", flatten distinct religions into a single stereotype of primitive belief systems struggling to deal with modern topics, then walk it back in the body of the article.

But the clickbait headline - and the insinuation - sticks.

Now, when the New York Times shows such disregard for headline accuracy in a trivial article about Judaism, how can you trust the headlines when the topic is much more important - like how the IDF is fighting in Gaza?

If the Times cannot get something as basic as this right - a question with an unequivocal, one-word halachic answer - why would anyone trust their reporting when the subject is Israel’s war in Gaza?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is the World Food Programme Serving Gaza’s Hungry — or Hamas’s War Aims?

This is what the World Food Programme writes on its Gaza webpage:

As I have shown, not one ounce of food from WFP had it to its intended recipients in August as well as much of (or all) July.

For September so far, its record of non-delivery remains perfect. The UNOPS dashboard records that the WFP collected 9155.6 tons of aid so far in September, and 9155.6 tons of aid were "intercepted" en route.

Does it sound like "WFP has the logistics capacity, expertise and operational coverage to deliver assistance across Gaza," like they claim? Capacity and expertise are meaningless when they result in 0% efficiency.

Why should anyone donate to an organization with a proven record of zero efficiency?

Their plan for Gaza appears to be to give as much food as humanly possible to Hamas.

None of the money anyone gives to the WFP goes to ensuring that the food aid gets to the intended recipients. In Gaza, it all goes to Hamas and other armed gangs.

The WFP has both internal and external auditors, but I cannot find any reports that describe the problem of the organization having a zero precent effectiveness rate. Auditors check that the money is spent as budgeted, not that the food reaches hungry people. In Gaza, that means WFP can report compliance while delivering nothing. An accountability system that ignores outcomes is not accountability at all.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the WFP knowingly chooses to enrich Hamas in a hope that some of the food will eventually reach Gazans who need it after they pay for it. That means that WFP is making a political decision - that indirect food supplies are more important than stopping a terrorist group. WFP’s decision to hand over food to Hamas is not neutral. It privileges Hamas’s war aims over Israel’s security and over the lives of ordinary Gazans. By treating diversion as acceptable ‘indirect distribution,’ WFP effectively launders theft into policy.

At the same time, when they criticize the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which has a much better record of successfully delivering food to those who need it, they are using Hamas statistics of casualties at the sites - meaning that they are again promoting Hamas politically and opposing Israel's own attempts to bring in food. And the WFP opposed the GHF before the first alleged casualty.

Put it together, and the World Food Programme appears to prioritize Hamas' war aims over Israel's, and it is using food as a means to help Hamas, not to help Gazans who legitimately need food.

When WFP asks the public to ‘help life-saving support reach those families who need it most,’ it should first explain why not a single ounce has reached them in months.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

09/17 Links Pt2: The Killing and the Smear; Red Hands, Keffiyehs, and No Facts, Hollywood’s New Script; Leo Terrel: “No University Is Prepared For The Crackdown That’s Coming"

From Ian:

The Killing and the Smear By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
It is, therefore, necessary for me to say that what I’ve seen in some corners of the right is even more dispiriting: A full-throttle, multipronged campaign to distill Kirk’s assassination into yet another indictment of the Jews. The most paranoid of the woke right assert that Kirk was killed by Israel for wavering in his support of the war. The deeply delusional Candace Owens and others claim there was a blackmail conspiracy involving American Jews to stop Kirk from criticizing Israel. The blackmail, so this fantasy goes, was unsuccessful but left Kirk “frightened.” Megyn Kelly is treating this filthy, instantly debunked, story as potentially legitimate and complaining about being called an anti-Semite for even slightly criticizing Israel. Tucker Carlson is amplifying all of it. So too is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has warned Israel not to take over TPUSA now that Kirk is out of the way. Dave Smith and others are releasing private messages from Kirk in hopes of proving that he hated Israel. What they all desperately want is to strip Kirk’s legacy of his pro-Israel record. (For an insightful take on this read Seth Mandel’s post from earlier today.)

In truth, Kirk often made passionate pro-Israel statements and was also sometimes deeply critical of Israel. He didn’t disown the anti-Semites in his orbit because, as I genuinely see it, he believed most passionately in the free and open exchange of opposing ideas. And this is the thanks he gets for it: A week after his murder, his confidantes make his private communications public in hopes that he will be remembered as a hateful bigot.

All these woke-right types thrive in the cesspool of the internet. In that respect, they resemble Kirk’s alleged killer. Kirk, on the other hand, worked to lure people out of the realm of the digital swill and into the real world, where they were invited to show up and make their best case for or against him. He was, in that sense, a threat both to the man who shot him and his woke-right associates. When you live in the virtual world, the encroachment of reality is an existential danger. So Kirk was assassinated by an enemy on the left. And his right-wing “friends” are now trying to assassinate his character and drag his followers back into the land of conspiracy and hate.

Karol Markowicz: Democrats must denounce the lefties cheering Charlie Kirk’s killer and Luigi Mangione

In these soul-crushing days following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we should be uniting as a country to emphatically reject political violence.

Instead, the left continued its celebration of murder and mayhem Tuesday outside Manhattan Supreme Court, where Luigi Mangione appeared before a judge in his case.

In December, Mangione allegedly murdered a man he didn’t know, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in cold blood on a New York City street.

The accused killer instantly became a hero for those with poorly formed ideas about healthcare policy — as well as lonely women who think the 27-year-old is hot.

The reaction to Mangione’s act has exposed a real sickness in our country.

Some of the crazies camped out all night just to catch a glimpse of their hero, a guy they worship for murdering a father of two as a political statement.

Some wore Luigi costumes from the Super Mario Bros. video game. Others sported T-shirts featuring Mangione’s face in a heart, or portraying him as a saint in robes and a halo.

They waved homemade banners and signs: “Healthcare is a Human Right.” “Luigi Before Fascists.”

They justify the killing of Thompson — just as others justify the murder of Kirk — as a moral reaction to their jobs or their words.

Anything goes when the left gets upset. They can burn cities, kill fathers and make videos celebrating it all — and the rest of us are supposed to just take it.

The reality is, the murder of Charlie Kirk was the inevitable result of increasing leftist bombast and hysteria.

Red Hands, Keffiyehs, and No Facts, Hollywood’s New Script

There was a time when actors and entertainers understood their lane. They performed, provoked, and sometimes challenged society through their craft. Today, that boundary has collapsed. Fame itself has become a political credential, and Hollywood’s brightest lights have decided that red carpets double as foreign-policy summits.

The problem? They don’t know what they’re talking about.

“As a Jew”, A Hollow Credential
Actress Hannah Einbinder has taken to introducing her politics with the phrase “as a Jew.” The implication is that her bloodline gives her moral authority to denounce Israel. But Judaism is not a birth certificate. It is a faith, a people, a nation, and a history of survival against the odds.

When celebrities invoke “as a Jew” while having no affiliation with Jewish life, no connection to Jewish community, and no lived experience of Jewish struggle, or worse, had those things but is kowtowing to pop-culture, it rings hollow. It’s a rhetorical shield, a way to say, I can’t be wrong, because look at my DNA.

But Jewishness is not a hashtag. And weaponizing it to lend credibility to Hamas’ propaganda lines is disingenuous at best, manipulative at worst.

Hannah Einbinder reduces her Jewish identity to a jar of pickles on IG Stories.

Because Hannah’s connection to Judaism is as insubstantial as a bunch of cucumbers in brine found on the shelf of her local grocery store.

And just as easily chewed up, used, and discarded.

A plate with sliced pickles and tomatoes. A jar of Claussen pickles held in a hand. Instagram watermarks visible.

The Slogans They Parrot
Listen to the script Hollywood recites:
“Genocide.” A slander straight out of Hamas’ talking points, weaponized to strip Israel of legitimacy.
“Famine.” While Israel delivers convoys of food and medicine daily, only for Hamas to hijack them and sell them back at gunpoint.
“Free Palestine.” A slogan repeated endlessly, yet without any demand that Hamas surrender, release hostages, or stop its obsession with annihilating Israel.

Notice what’s missing: any call for the return of the 48 hostages, living and dead, still held in Gaza. What culture clings to corpses to inflict more pain? And what kind of “activism” ignores this cruelty altogether?

Red Hands on the Red Carpet
Einbinder’s pin is supposedly a symbol of “compassion.” But to Israelis, the red-hand image recalls one of the most haunting moments of the Second Intifada: the Ramallah lynching of October 2000, when two IDF reservists were dragged from a police station, beaten, disemboweled, and paraded before a cheering crowd.

One of the murderers leaned out the window, his hands drenched in blood, showing them to the mob as though they were trophies.

That image has scarred Israeli memory for decades. And now, Hollywood celebrities parade its likeness on the red carpet, either oblivious or indifferent to what it means.

Symbols matter. And this one is soaked in blood.

09/17 Links Pt1: UN Watch Exposes Hamas Takeover of UNRWA; U.N. Genocide Report Against Israel Is an Assault on Critical Thinking; PA is still paying bounties to murder Jews

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The Battle of Gaza City: it’s time to take sides

What the Israelophobes of the West falsely call ‘genocide’ is war. The thinness of their ‘genocide’ accusation, the sheer defamatory cynicism of it, was summed up in that report published this week by a UN commission of inquiry. Israel is committing genocide, it said. Its proof? That ‘Israeli security forces were aware that their military operations since 7 October 2023 would cause the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza’. They ‘knew of the high numbers of casualties’, but they did not ‘intervene to change the means and methods of warfare employed’. Am I going mad or is that just war? By this infantile definition – basically, your military action caused casualties – every war in history has been a genocide. Remember this historical illiteracy and moral treachery with which the genocide lie is weaponised against the Jewish State when you hear that the Battle of Gaza City is ‘genocidal’ too, which you will.

To be clear, the Battle of Gaza City does represent a new and dangerous turn in the Israel-Hamas War. As Haaretz says, so far in 2025 the IDF has ‘operated in areas with few civilians’, focussing on ‘destroying Hamas’s tunnels and other terror infrastructure’. Its targets had mostly been ‘mapped before the troops entered’. Gaza City is a more daunting prospect. Hamas militants have decamped there in their thousands. They’ve rebuilt their tunnels. Not all civilians have evacuated. And of course there are the Israeli hostages. Chillingly, it is reported that Hamas is starting to move some hostages above ground, in an effort to ‘hinder [the] IDF offensive’. Using Jews as human shields against the Jewish army – a new low in savagery for this army of anti-Semites.

And yet the battle is happening. It’s underway. And sides must be taken. Here’s the thing: some people have taken a side without realising it. For if you tell only one side in an existential war to cease fire, then you’re objectively aligning with the other side. Imagine two men are having a duel and you tell just one of them to put away his gun. That isn’t peacenik behaviour – it’s an implicit statement that one man’s life is worth less than the other’s. That’s what I hear when the opinion-forming classes squawk ‘Stop Israel’ – that they’ve decided, however witlessly, that the security of the Jewish nation is of less moral worth than the deranged ambitions of those Hamas cells in Gaza City. That’s what was so unforgivable about Yvette Cooper’s slamming of Israel’s ‘reckless and appalling’ incursion into Gaza City – she will have inadvertently boosted Hamas and confirmed it in its sick belief that the IDF is a marauding gang deserving of punishment.

The Battle of Gaza City will be bloody and awful. Palestinians will suffer and young Israeli soldiers will die. Yet that should not detract from the moral truth that this is a battle between the army of a democratic nation and a terrorist militia that loathes the infidel West as much as it does the Jews. Sitting this clash out might be a luxury the lost souls of our cushioned, faux-virtuous elites can afford. But it’s too risky for the rest of us. So what do you want: the victory of the Jewish nation or the victory of radical Islamists who slit the throats of Jews? A win for our ally in Enlightenment or a win for the regressive forces of violent medieval intolerance? Quit your performative angst and pick a side.

John Spencer: The U.N. Genocide Report Against Israel Is an Assault on Critical Thinking

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s latest report on Gaza, which concludes Israel is committing a genocide, is a case study in how international bodies can dress propaganda in the language of law.

Presented as a "legal analysis" from a trio led by Navi Pillay, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, anyone who reads the text with even a modest degree of critical thinking will see that it is not an impartial investigation. It is an advocacy document that begins with a verdict and works backward, collecting fragments of information that support its claim while excluding anything that would complicate or contradict it.

The most surprising aspect of the report is not what it claims, but what it omits.

First, the report never treats Hamas as a combatant force or acknowledges that Gaza contains legitimate military targets. It begins its summary of its findings with, "On 7 October 2023, Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, which included airstrikes and ground operations" but never mentions Hamas as the opposing force in the war. Instead, it vaguely references the "attacks in southern Israel on 7 October," which it says "did not pose an existential threat to the state of Israel." There is no recognition that Israel is engaged in a war against a heavily armed adversary, nor any attempt to identify Hamas’s rocket launchers, command posts, or tunnel entrances. Hamas is described almost exclusively as a political entity or as part of Gaza’s "civilian population," never as a fighting force. By implication, every Israeli strike is portrayed as criminal, even though Gaza is filled with clear military targets.

Second, there is no discussion of Hamas’s military disposition, composition, or strength. The report makes no mention of Hamas’s tens of thousands of fighters, its organized brigades and battalions, or its command and control systems. Readers are left with the impression that there is no military presence in Gaza at all, which of course makes any Israeli strike appear inherently illegitimate.

Third, the commission erases Hamas’s four-hundred-mile tunnel network from the battlefield. In fact, the word "tunnel" appears only once in the report—to cast doubt on whether Mohammed Sinwar was killed inside one beneath the European Hospital complex (Israeli aerial footage "purportedly showed a tunnel underneath," but "the Commission’s geolocation analysis of the aerial surveillance footage" suggests the Israelis were wrong, the report states). It’s impossible to write about the war without writing about the tunnels that are central to Hamas’s military strategy, enabling it to move fighters, store weapons, hide hostages, and launch attacks from beneath hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods.

Fourth, there is no acknowledgment of the harm and destruction caused by Hamas itself inside Gaza. Thousands of Hamas rockets have misfired or fallen short inside Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians. Hamas has turned homes and apartment buildings into booby traps, collapsed tunnels under neighborhoods, and carried out direct killings and torture of its own people. None of this appears in the report.

Fifth, the report ignores Hamas’s well-documented practice of human shielding. The terrorist organization has embedded its command centers, weapons caches, and fighters in schools, mosques, hospitals, and private homes, a practice that human rights groups, NATO, and even the U.S. Department of War have acknowledged. The commission makes no reference to it, because to do so would force an acknowledgment that many Israeli strikes on civilian sites are legally justified under the law of armed conflict.

Sixth, the report treats the issue of hostages as almost irrelevant. Hamas’s kidnapping of more than 250 civilians on October 7, many of whom remain captive, is one of the clearest and most egregious war crimes of the conflict. Yet "hostages" are mentioned only four times in the 72-page document, and not as a central issue. Worse, the report goes so far as to question whether securing their release is a legitimate strategic objective for Israel. In doing so, the commission not only diminishes the gravity of hostage-taking but undermines one of the most basic rights of any state: the duty to protect its citizens and to recover them when they are held illegally by a terrorist organization. To cast doubt on Israel’s right to pursue this objective is to excuse a war crime and to suggest that the victims of October 7 are somehow outside the scope of international concern.

Finally, the report excludes any recognition of the unprecedented humanitarian measures Israel has taken while fighting Hamas. Israel has facilitated the delivery of over two million tons of aid into Gaza since October, provided more than two million vaccinations, supplied 14 million liters of water a day, kept electricity flowing to desalination plants, supported hospitals, and transferred patients for medical treatment. No other military in history has waged war while simultaneously providing this level of aid to the enemy’s civilian population. The commission erases these facts because they undermine the claim of genocidal intent.

PMW: The PA is still paying salaries to terrorists and “Martyrs”

The PNEEI announcement above, stating that payments were made "through authorized payment centers," was possibly its attempt to hide that the payments were made through the post offices, which are exclusively used for paying terrorists. PMW has confirmed that families of prisoners and "Martyrs"" have received payments through post offices as in the past.

Yesterday an online news site reported that it had received information from the Palestinian Authority indicating that the PA had stopped rewarding imprisoned terrorists and terrorist Martyrs' families as in the past, but had moved them to a new welfare-based system [Times of Israel]. The article also claimed that the "Welfare payments, which are now distributed by the extra-governmental PNEEI, have not yet been issued." These payments, according to the article, would have been the payments to imprisoned terrorists and "Martyrs'" families.

However, that claim that PNEEI payments were not made this month openly contradicts PNEEI's own announcement on its website that payments were made on Thursday. As stated, PMW has confirmed terror payments were made on Thursday at the post offices.

There were additional inaccuracies as well in the article, including a prominent mistake, defining PNEEI as "extra-governmental." Below are pictures and bios of all the PNEEI board members as they appear on its website. As can be seen, 10 of the 11 board members are employed in senior PA government positions, including one minister and 6 undersecretaries. Only one is an academic. Moreover, PNEEI answers to Mahmoud Abbas.

PNEEI board members photosPNEEI board members descriptions

With senior government officers as board members, the article's defining PNEEI as "extra-governmental" is another clear example of publishing PA claims without doing the minimal investigation to verify them.

Especially on a politically sensitive topic, such as the PA's terror rewards, one would expect more careful journalism before publishing the PA's claim to have reformed.