Saturday, February 15, 2025

From Ian:

Gil Hoffman: Hoodwinked: How Hamas influenced int'l media to not cover emaciated hostages
THE PRO-ISRAEL media watchdog HonestReporting singled out three major media outlets for condemnation: the BBC, CNN, and The Guardian.

The BBC reported that there were “concerns over the appearance of hostages on both sides,” equating the innocent civilians kidnapped and starved by Hamas with Palestinian terrorists who can earn university degrees in Israeli prisons and are visited by the Red Cross, who ignored the hostages until they taxied them to Israel.

For hours, the BBC’s live news homepage featured a celebratory image of Palestinian prisoners embracing their families instead of showing the emaciated hostages, in what was, at the very least, a problematic editorial choice.

CNN balanced its headline, “Israel condemns frail appearance of captives,” with a sub-headline about the Palestinian prisoners, saying that “many of them appeared emaciated and in poor health.”

Never to be outdone, The Guardian announced its agenda with its headline, “Gaunt captives emerge from Gaza and Israel.”

These headlines could be dismissed or even mocked if they were not so immoral and dangerous. Media framing matters. When such comparisons mislead the public and distort reality, people around the world believe Israel is no better than the terrorist organization that attacked our civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

The Wall Street Journal deserves credit for following up by interviewing neighbors of Sharabi but wrote that he “lost family members during the initial Hamas attack,” as if they merely went missing. The same article said that Levy’s wife “had died,” instead of telling the world that she was murdered in the bomb shelter of death where the late heroes Aner Shapira and Hersh Goldberg-Polin had saved lives.

Hamas has threatened to stop releasing hostages, but it should not surprise anyone if the next ones released are in even worse condition and are ignored even more by mainstream media and the so-called influencers who have become so dangerously powerful.

Influencers who support Hamas boasted on Instagram and TikTok about how healthy the released female hostages looked.

According to the latest Pew Research study, 20-24% of Americans, including 37% under 30, regularly get their news from influencers on social media, enhancing the impact of biased coverage. In the US presidential race, 24% of all Americans got their election news primarily from social media in 2024.

Major outlets like CNN and NBC are cutting a significant portion of their workforce while shifting their focus to digital media. These shifting news consumption patterns amplify the impact of biased coverage, as readers encounter skewed information on official news outlets’ social media pages.

It is no wonder that young people, who have been statistically proven to be more impressionable than their parents, could think that Israel perpetrated a genocide in Gaza and not believe that more Israelis were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023, than any one day since the Holocaust.

Media misinformation leads to indifference at best and hate at worst, and that is why the lessons of the coverage of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami must be learned immediately.

My grandmother’s picture on the wall at Yad Vashem proves what happens when the world does not take the suffering of the Jewish people seriously enough. 
BBC risks becoming ‘Hamas propaganda mouthpiece’
The former director of BBC Television has warned that the broadcaster risks becoming a propaganda mouthpiece for Hamas.

Danny Cohen said BBC coverage of the Gaza conflict had repeatedly drawn an “appalling false equivalence” between the release of Israeli hostages held in terrible conditions by Hamas and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners by Israel.

Mr Cohen said the BBC had also underplayed the suffering endured by the hostages freed as part of the ceasefire deal, while at the same time emphasising the privations it says were endured by the Palestinians prisoners.

He also accused the corporation of failing to mention that many of the Palestinian prisoners were guilty of terror crimes, including bombings and knife attacks.

The report coincided with the latest round of hostage releases on Saturday which came after fears the ceasefire deal could collapse.

In his report analysing the BBC’s coverage of the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 2023, Mr Cohen stated: “In their rush to gloss over the undeniable torture, starvation and beatings that hostages have endured and their determination to highlight claims of poor conditions in Israel’s jails, the BBC is repeatedly drawing offensive false equivalence between victims of war crimes and hundreds of convicted violent offenders.

“The BBC is at risk of becoming a Hamas propaganda mouthpiece. They have repeatedly given a free pass to terrorists who have committed violent racist murder. It will be very hard for many in the Jewish community to ever forget it.”

In his analysis of the BBC’s coverage of the ceasefire deal’s arrangement for Israeli hostages to be released in exchange of prisoners, Mr Cohen claimed that the broadcaster’s reporters had failed to point out the crimes committed by jailed Palestinian fighters.

He said that instead, the BBC had gone out of its way to highlight the scenes of joy at the men being reunited with their families and their apparently emaciated appearance after years spent in Israeli jails.

During its coverage of the release of nearly 200 Palestinian prisoners on Feb 8 the BBC failed to describe any of them as terrorists, according to the report, even though half had been serving life sentences for murder.

Mr Cohen said a BBC News website story a few days earlier did not mention that a freed Hamas member it quoted expressing joy at his release had been held for his part in a 2018 gun attack which killed two civilians.

The report also accused the BBC of focusing on Palestinians freed from administrative detention without trial, while making only “passing reference” to the 733 convicted for violent offences who had been freed.

Friday, February 14, 2025

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: A Jewish Moment Without Parallel
In contrast, perhaps the most striking feature of Netanyahu’s trip to Washington is that it featured a meeting with major evangelical leaders, but not with Jewish ones, reflecting the fact that it is millions of non-Jewish Americans who make up the heart of the America-Israel alliance. And this, in turn, reveals a fact about our moment that has no parallel in the biblical past: For the first time since the emergence of Abraham’s covenant nation, there are, numerically, more Gentiles who care about the well-being of the Jewish people than there are Jewish people on this earth. We live, one might say, in unprecedented times.

Here, then, is where our moment becomes mysterious. Various aspects of Jewish existence at present seem less like the biblical description of what once was, and more like the biblical prediction of what will be. The Bible speaks of a city of Jerusalem that expands far beyond its walls, that will attract the admiration of nations. None of this is an excuse for Israel to rest on its laurels or ignore its daunting challenges. Scripture also stresses that other redemptive moments in the prophetic past have been squandered by mistakes made by Israel’s leaders, or its people, just as it predicts that Israel’s miraculous story will attract the ire of nations that will ally themselves against it. But it does mean that there may not be other examples of statesmanship in the past that speak precisely to our moment, and that much of our age is paralleled not in history, but in prophecy.

In his address to his son’s high school, Scalia described why the American Founders sought to learn from history, and he utilized the Bible in his explanation.

They knew they were facing great challenges in seeking to establish at one and the same time a federation and a democracy. But they did not think for a moment it was an unprecedented challenge. If you read the Federalist Papers, you will find they are full of examples to support particular dispositions in the Constitution—from Greece, from Rome, from medieval Italy, France, and Spain. So if you want to think yourselves educated, do not believe that you face unprecedented challenges. Much closer to the truth is a different platitude: There is nothing new under the sun.

The Bible does indeed say this, but it also predicts that radically new moments in the Jewish future are yet to come. We seem to be, in some respect, in such a time. Thus Jewish statesmen and leaders, in Israel and the Diaspora, will need, increasingly, to turn not to the tales of Greece and Rome, but to the Bible in order to search for instruction—to not only its description of past events, but also its vision for the Jewish future. This vision was presented thousands of years ago, but it seems increasingly relevant today. And this surely means that, especially in this trying period, we may hope for more surprises and wonders yet to come.
A Free Nation, in Our Own Land
On Oct. 7, 2023, the past became my present. Although San Francisco has been my home for 50 years, having grown up in a Jewish family in Tel Aviv before the creation of the State of Israel, that day was 1943 again and I was a 5-year-old child in a third-floor apartment on Montefiore Street.

Two British soldiers rang the bell and my mother, Lisa, opened the door. “This is a search.” My grandmother Baboo and I hovered behind my mother, knowing that the appearance of British soldiers at the door could spell trouble. Just the sight of British uniforms was scary enough. My mom spoke some English but we did not, adding to our bewilderment. My father, Boris, who was in the Haganah, the largest Jewish defense group at that time, was not at home.

Our apartment in Tel Aviv consisted of two rooms, a balcony, a kitchen, and a shared bath. The soldiers looked under the beds, pulled open the drawers of the big armoire in the bedroom, rifled through the contents, and shifted the hanging clothes from side to side while whispering to each other. Baboo and I watched the soldiers’ faces. Even as a 5-year-old, I sensed that the soldiers were nervous, too.

We didn’t know what they were looking for or what might happen to us if they found something incriminating. Meanwhile Lisa, as if a hostess at an elegant party, escorted the soldiers around the apartment, gesturing proudly and smiling an appeasing, coquettish smile.

Not finding anything suspicious under the beds, in the geranium planters on the balcony, or behind the small curtain under the sink in the kitchen, the men turned their attention to the large rectangular wooden boxes hanging above the windows. Accordion-like wooden shutters rolled up into these boxes during the day and rolled down at night.

Were any guns hidden there? Any Haganah documents? While they whispered, I heard my mother’s voice,

“Would you like a refreshing drink?”

“Yes, please.”

Lisa emerged from the kitchen with two glasses containing a green liquid and two small cloth napkins on a tray. You might have thought this was a garden party in a fancy house and the men were in military costumes just for fun. In those days, you couldn’t choose from 30-plus varieties of bottled beverages. A cool drink consisted of a spoonful of sweet purple, pink, or green syrup mixed with water.

“You first!” said one soldier, handing my mom the glass with the green drink.

Lisa sipped from the glass daintily. No, not poison. And the soldiers drank. Then they opened all the shutter boxes and finding nothing, left the apartment bearing no contraband. We were safe for now.

At that time, we were under the British Mandate, which was created to bring order to the territory. The resident Arabs resented the mandate and became violent; the Jews responded in kind. To control the violence, the Brits imposed random lockdowns in the cities. Loud sirens pierced our ears day or night and loudspeakers boomed: “Everyone inside!”

Occasional half-hour respites would be blared out, allowing the residents to go out for food. When a break came, my mom grabbed a basket and we ran to line up at the nearby bakery for bread. She wore the new housedress she had bought for these occasions (a simple flowery, button-down cotton dress with pockets). She would look good while queuing up for bread and later, in the bomb shelter, during the War of Independence. Our Arab neighbors to the north, east, and south did not agree that this land of Israel is the home of the Jews.
Welcome to Hamassachusetts
Inside the Massachusetts statehouse on Monday, State Representative Simon Cataldo displayed the image of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David in front of a packed audience of teachers, activists, and staffers. They were there to attend a hearing on the state of antisemitism in Massachusetts public schools.

“You’d agree that this is antisemitic imagery, correct?” Cataldo, who co-chairs the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, asked Max Page, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA)—the largest union in New England, representing 117,000 members.

“I’m not gonna evaluate that,” Page responds calmly.

Cataldo pressed him. “Is it antisemitic?”

Page continued to sit stoically, before breaking into a smile. “You’re trying to get away from the central point,” Page said, “which is that we provide imagery, we provide resources for our members to consider, in their own intelligent, professional way.”

In fact, this image is referenced in materials recently made available to Massachusetts educators for teaching about the Middle East. Entitled “Resources on Israel and Occupied Palestine,” the union’s Training and Professional Learning Division developed the framework “for learning about the history and current events in Israel and Occupied Palestine, for MTA members to use with each other and their students.” Last December, the union published the resource document on a webpage accessible only to MTA members.

The person who created the document is Ricardo Rosa, an MTA director with a history of pushing anti-Israel rhetoric, including showing support for Leila Khaled, a terrorist who hijacked a plane headed to Israel in the 1960s. Two days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Rosa posted “Free Palestine” on his Instagram account, The Daily Wire reported.

Page was asked by the Massachusetts commission about a series of posters contained in the MTA materials, which appear to display an anti-Israel bias. These materials include a poster of a militant wearing a keffiyeh and holding an assault rifle, that reads, “What was taken by force can only be returned by force.”

Another poster portrays George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist group designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. It, too, depicts a militant with an assault rifle.

A third poster calls for a “day of rage” to “decolonize this place,” and a fourth tells “Zionists” to “fuck off.”

Another shows a picture of Joe Biden, labeled a “serial killer” for his support of Israel during his presidency. Yet another displays “Unity in Confronting Zionism” beneath a snake—another antisemitic trope once used in Nazi-era posters.
From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: ‘Gaza Shall Be Forsaken’
Trump’s plan tacitly understands another reason Gaza has never developed into the Singapore that Shimon Peres dreamed of, and that is the condition of the society that has developed in Gaza in the past two decades of Hamas control. Economic and political development require both sound government and a culture in which the polity can advance. One look at Haiti is a reminder of that obvious point. Trump’s plan accepts that development will not happen in the current Gaza situation, where society is permeated by corruption, brutality, hatred, and terror.

This is a simple fact about life and is not a reflection of prejudice against Palestinians. Gouverneur Morris, one of George Washington’s envoys to France, watched the revolutionaries there play at becoming the next United States of America. He wrote in July 1789, just days before the storming of the Bastille, that “they want an American Constitution, with the exception of a King instead of a President, without reflecting that they have not American citizens to support that constitution.” It is a profound point. Governments and constitutions are what Marx would have called the superstructure, but they must be built on an actual, existing society. The Constitution was not a piece of paper but the product of the free society that had been built by colonists in British America, and by their children and grandchildren.

Gaza does not have Morris’s “American citizens” either, and Trump recognizes that pouring more money into it from Qatar or UNRWA (or the United States) will only reproduce what is there now: more terrorism, more death and destruction, and more misery. So he, in effect, suggests that we rely on Zephaniah’s vision for a while—“there shall be no inhabitant”—perhaps for 10 years, while the physical Gaza is transformed. As Trump put it, “Do a real job, do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for years.”

Perhaps 10 years of living without Hamas in a variety of countries would transform Gazans, too. Some would stay in the places to which they moved, while others would want to go “back” to the new Gaza—but this time not as UN-certified permanent “refugees” from the naqba of 1948. This time, as people with options for a decent life who chose to live in Gaza because it offered economic opportunity and peace.

It’s fanciful, and very, very unlikely. But it’s a better, truer, understanding of what led to Gaza’s current situation and what could possibly lead out of it than decades of “peace processing” and UN resolutions, which in the end have produced terrorism, war, and misery.

Trump is treating Gaza as a physical place and its people as suffering humans, which is more than has ever been done by any Arab League resolution condemning Israel and calling it a war crime to allow Gazans to move away. “We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” declared Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has not permitted an election in 19 years. Trump’s scheme would “undermine the core of the Palestinian national project,” said Algeria, which is true if the core of that project is endless violence aimed at destroying Israel. An Arab League statement said Trump’s proposal would “threaten the region’s stability” which is also true if, by stability, is meant the 77 years of refusal to accept Israel in peace as a Jewish state.

Gaza is, as Trump called it, a “hellhole,” and history suggests it will remain so. Not because of anything the Israelis did. They left it in 2005 with an open possibility for a better future. Not because of Donald Trump, who in his first weeks in office offered a different future and asked Arab governments to think for once about Gazans as people rather than cannon fodder in the struggle against Israel. But it is apparently still easier to dream on about the “two-state solution” and the “right of return,” and far easier to scream about Israeli crimes and Palestinian victims, than to let the Jews live in peace. Until that changes, “Gaza shall be forsaken.”
Seth Mandel: What If Nothing Changes At All in Gaza?
On Feb. 6, the newspaper Maariv reported that three weeks into the cease-fire the campaign was still ongoing: “The terrorist organization began executions and a widespread wave of arrests. Not only those suspected of any collaboration with Israel, but also anyone who rebels against the situation in Gaza, in any form whatsoever, including on social media, is arrested by Hamas members.” Yesterday, Hamas reportedly opened fire on a family near Khan Younis.

Hamas does this after every war. It’s tradition.

Not that Gazans were free of that tradition during the war. But it’s a more focused campaign now that Hamas brigades aren’t afraid to operate out in the open.

Hamas, of course, really does rule with an iron fist. The terrorists of Gaza also kill with reckless folly: Today, an errant rocket aimed at Israel fell inside Gaza and killed a Palestinian teen.

None of this is terribly unusual. But it’s worth pointing out that Hamas remains able to commit horrific crimes against Israeli hostages and Palestinian locals at the same time. Which means that, while Hamas may be far from its pre-war strength, the status quo in Gaza remains.

Which is another way of saying that there will be no rebuilding of Gaza in the near future. Hamas remains in control of the enclave, and its behavior is identical to the way it acted during and before the war. There is less for Hamas to break in Gaza, but it intends to break what it can find.

Considering all this, there is something almost silly about the way the discourse on the conflict has become monopolized by the subject of postwar recovery. Even if Palestinian civilians wanted to leave the enclave temporarily to allow their neighborhoods to be rebuilt, Hamas wouldn’t let them go anywhere—and Hamas certainly wouldn’t leave of its own free will.

During active conflict, Hamas is the biggest threat to Gazans: Israel creates safe zones and gives advance notice of attacks in the hot zones, and Hamas’s use of those humanitarian sectors puts civilians in the line of fire. And when there’s not active conflict, Hamas is still the biggest threat to Gazans: It just goes around executing them at will.

Any plan, therefore, that aims to improve life for Palestinians requires a realistic way to rid Gaza of Hamas. Without that, there is no “Riviera on the Med,” no two-state solution, no peace—no change at all.
Seth Mandel: How Netanyahu Fought To Save the Hostage Deal
If Netanyahu wanted to keep the hostage releases going, he now had a problem: The public protests against him reduced some of his leverage against Hamas, because Hamas realized it could hold onto the hostages and if anything happened to them it would be blamed on Netanyahu.

Enter Donald Trump. The president was asked about Hamas’s threat to suspend the cease-fire, and Trump made clear he had run out of patience with Hamas. In fact, his comments strongly suggested he believed the deal was already weighted in Hamas’s favor, since the hostages were being released in “drips and drabs” and Israel was pulling out of all of Gaza except a buffer zone on the border. Trump, whose envoy had negotiated the deal at the president’s direction, was telling Hamas that it had better not try to make a fool of him on the world stage.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Trump said, “if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock—I think it’s an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out.” Hamas wasn’t the only one who could change the terms of the deal.

In doing so, Trump was taking some of the responsibility off of Netanyahu’s shoulders—if the war was going to restart, it would do so on Trump’s terms. If Netanyahu preferred that option, he could simply do nothing and wait.

But if he wanted to keep the cease-fire deal going, he had a new problem: Trump demanded the release of all the hostages at once. That was unlikely to happen this week.

In order to simply get the existing deal back on track, Netanyahu would have to reduce Trump’s demands without undermining the president’s negotiating authority. So the Israeli government put out a series of statements with vague language to buy it time to strategize with the White House. Then Netanyahu essentially put himself as the mediator between Trump and Hamas so that any reduction in America’s demands was seen as coming from the White House, preserving Trump’s place as the senior partner in the alliance.

In the end, the sides agreed that Hamas would release three hostages as originally planned and Trump gave his blessing without removing the implicit threat of his own impatience with Hamas: “If it was up to me, I’d take a very hard stance. I can’t tell you what Israel is going to do,” Trump told reporters this afternoon. Thus Trump can play off his initial threat as simply what he would do if he were in Israel’s shoes, not what he was planning on doing as U.S. president. Netanyahu looks reasonable but not weak. Hamas is back in compliance with the deal.

Had Netanyahu truly wanted the deal to collapse this week, it would have—because Hamas was the one who suspended the deal and Netanyahu had Trump’s backing to go back to war. The only reason that didn’t happen was because Netanyahu preferred the deal to restarting the war. Hopefully that will earn him some credit with the hostage families who have been suspicious of his motives until now.
  • Friday, February 14, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon
Reuters reports:
On Thursday, [EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin also announced the cancellation of a $50 million grant to a group called the Climate Justice Alliance, citing its pro-Palestinian messaging on its website.

The CJA said on Wednesday it would sunset its $50 million UNITE_EJ grantmaking program because it had not been able to access the funding that the Biden EPA had obligated to the group but not yet disbursed.
We looked at the $50 million meant to be given to the Climate Justice Alliance last June. They have a webpage saying "Free Palestine is a climate justice issue." 


As we showed then, the CJA funds other groups, some of which are explicitly antisemitic and anti-American.

Not to mention, celebrating October 7.


A lot of the news stories about the programs that DOGE is eliminating are highlighting how these programs are stupid, wasteful, or aligned with a far Left ideology. 

That's bad enough, but it is remarkable how much federal money went to go to causes that are in direct opposition to US policy. 

Perhaps not quote as remarkable is how the same people who say that the $3 billion the US invests in Israel on an average year could have been used to feed poor people, but are now silent on the wasteful programs that the Republicans are finding and eliminating that dwarf the amount given to Israel. I don't know if it is accurate, but the US Debt Clock site says DOGE has already saved the US government some $94 billon annually. 




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

In the search for justice, the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan apparently makes house calls.

Last month, Mr. Khan visited Syria and shook hands with Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's new leader. Why? According to France  24, Khan's office announced that the purpose of the visit was to see how the office of the prosecutor
can offer its partnership in support of the efforts of Syrian authorities towards accountability for alleged crimes committed in the country.


This would be a major change in the UN Security Council's policy. For years, the UN Security Council has been deadlocked on whether to refer the devastation of Syria to the ICC. In 2014, China and Russia blocked a Security Council resolution to refer Syria to the ICC.

Khan's new friend, Ahmed al-Sharaa, used to be known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani when he founded and led Jabhat al-Nusra in 2012 when it was the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. 

Al-Nusra rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) in 2016 and claimed to have cut its ties to al-Qaeda. Then, in 2017, JFS merged with other Islamist groups to form Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Abu Mohammad al-Julan remained the leader of HTS. 

 When he met with Khan, he was using the name Ahmed al-Sharaa, in part to distance himself from his terrorist past.

Al Nusra / HTS was designated as a terrorist group for a reason:
o  June 2015: Fighters from Syria's al Qaeda branch, the Nusra Front, killed at least 20 Druze villagers, raising fear among Syria's minorities.

o  July 2016: Amnesty International reported that “In Aleppo and Idleb today, armed groups have free rein to commit war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law with impunity. Shockingly, we have also documented armed groups using the same methods of torture that are routinely used by the Syrian government." One of the groups cited was al Nusra.

o  March 2017: Al Nusra claimed responsibility for a twin bombing in Damascus that killed at least 40 people, the majority of them Iraqi Shia pilgrims.
Back in those days, Ahmed al-Sharaa did not wear a suit:



Because of this history, the US, the EU, and the United Nations designated HTS as a terrorist organization:
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an armed group designated as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council, has emerged as the dominant force in Syria, following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
This article on UN News is noteworthy because it contains an interview with Kiho Cha, a senior political affairs officer at the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Cha describes a workaround that allows for cooperation with terrorist groups:
Until recently there were some questions as to whether humanitarian actors would even be able to operate in Syria. However, there is now a carve out to the assets freeze measures against HTS, specifically for humanitarian organizations.
This carve-out allows humanitarian organizations to operate without being cited for sanctions violations.

The question is: how far can these exemptions go?
UN News: Are there similar carve outs to allow international negotiations to take place?

Kiho Cha: Yes, there are generally procedures by which a petitioner, usually an individual, would seek an exemption for a variety of reasons. For example, members of the Taliban who say that they need to travel outside of Afghanistan for political facilitation. But it could be for other reasons, such as medical needs. Petitioners can also apply for exemptions to the asset freeze.
Did Khan have something like this in mind to justify shaking hands with the terrorist?

Israel might want to know. 



Recall that Khan took the odd step to first announce the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant during an interview with Christiane Amanpour.

According to Barak Ravid, Khan backed out of an agreed-upon trip to discuss the investigation with Israeli officials:


We recently posted that in November, Ynet News reported that Khan had been using a pro-Palestinian law firm in connection with the case, raising questions about his impartiality:
ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan's engagement of Bindmans, a law firm linked to Palestinian advocacy, raises conflict of interest concerns, potentially undermining his impartiality in pursuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant

Bindmans represents several Palestinian organizations that have urged Khan to issue arrest warrants against senior Israeli figures. Notably, Tayab Ali, a partner at the firm, is the director of the "International Center of Justice for Palestinians," a London-based organization actively involved in international legal actions against Israel. Another partner, Alice Hardy, represents the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, headquartered in Ramallah.
These two Palestinian organizations, closely associated with Bindmans, have submitted multiple notices to the ICC regarding Palestinian issues. 
Over and over, the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has shown a decided lack of professionalism and respect for proper procedure. All things considered, a representative of the International Criminal Court shaking hands with the leader of a recognized terrorist group might just be business as usual.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

  • Friday, February 14, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon


Since 2008, with the Doha Agreement, Hezbollah has had the ability to veto any Lebanese government actions, making it essentially the most powerful force in Lebanese politics.

Israel's military victory over Hezbollah has now officially changed all that. Hezbollah has lost much of its political legitimacy and power. within the new Lebanese government, formed last Saturday, Hezbollah and its ally Amal are unable to control government actions, and they cannot form a blocking third coalition.

Lebanon's government is weak and fractious. But even in that dysfunctional environment, Hezbollah cannot find a toehold, and it is fighting for its political life. Remember also that the 2008 agreement that gave Hezbollah vast powers was a direct result Hezbollah military actions and threats of a civil war within Lebanon.

In short, Hezbollah's political power is directly connected to its military might. Israel defeated Hezbollah's army; the Lebanese people defeated Hezbollah politically (at least for now.) 

But contrast this with the Palestinian political scene. 

Like Hezbollah, Hamas has been severely militarily weakened. But there is little to suggest that it has lost political power. It still controls Gaza, and unlike in Lebanon, the Palestinians in the West Bank still largely support the jihadist group.  The Palestinian Authority may not like Hamas but it refuses to publicly oppose it or assert dominance. 

After receiving billions in aid from the the West and Arab countries to strengthen it, the Palestinian Authority has proven to be worthless. It utterly failed the one test it has been given: to show that it can control the territories. 

It cannot even control the West Bank. Its attempt to confront lawless areas of Jenin in December did not succeed, and the Palestinian public did not show support for the operations. 

It isn't that Israel didn't defeat Hamas militarily. It is that the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinians altogether, do not have enough of a desire to translate its military defeat into a political defeat. On the contrary, in the West Bank its prestige is still higher than it was before October 7.

They still allow Hamas to have its own veto power over everything they do. In fact, they encourage it. 

Even the announcement that the PA will stop paying terrorist families is not framed as a forceful  rejection of terror but of Mahmoud Abbas' inability to meet his budget. The response from the Palestinians isn't "good, we need to leave terror behind" but "look how weak Abbas is."

After 30 years, the PA has still not given its people a vision of what a future state would look like. Its rhetoric still supports and lionizes terrorism and its most glorious historic events are of murdering Israelis. 

The Lebanese response to Hezbollah's defeat showed that the Lebanese people are willing to fight to take back their country. The Palestinian response to Gaza is the opposite:  frame Hamas as victorious, pretend the homeless Gazans who are barred from leaving as exhibiting steadfastness, and allow Hamas to retake Gaza with no opposition whatsoever. 

The PA enjoys unprecedented worldwide political and financial support but it has next to no domestic support, while jihadist terrorists are Palestinian role models. 

The contrast with the Lebanese response to the opportunity given to them by Hezbollah's defeat could not be clearer.

This is the best proof of what a thorough failure the "State of Palestine" experiment has been. 






Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

  • Friday, February 14, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Free Press reports:

Inside the Massachusetts statehouse on Monday, State Representative Simon Cataldo displayed the image of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David in front of a packed audience of teachers, activists, and staffers. They were there to attend a hearing on the state of antisemitism in Massachusetts public schools.
“You’d agree that this is antisemitic imagery, correct?” Cataldo, who co-chairs the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, asked Max Page, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA)—the largest union in New England, representing 117,000 members.

“I’m not gonna evaluate that,” Page responds calmly.

Cataldo pressed him. “Is it antisemitic?”

Page continued to sit stoically, before breaking into a smile. “You’re trying to get away from the central point,” Page said, “which is that we provide imagery, we provide resources for our members to consider, in their own intelligent, professional way.”

In fact, this image is referenced in materials recently made available to Massachusetts educators for teaching about the Middle East. Entitled “Resources on Israel and Occupied Palestine,” the union’s Training and Professional Learning Division developed the framework “for learning about the history and current events in Israel and Occupied Palestine, for MTA members to use with each other and their students.” Last December, the union published the resource document on a webpage accessible only to MTA members.
Let's take Max Page's statement at face value. Let's  set aside that the image of a dollar folded into a Star of David is obviously antisemitic. Let's pretend that the Massachusetts Teachers Association really provides materials like this just as resources for teachers' information about the conflict for them "to consider, in their own intelligent, professional way."

If all that is true, then you would expect the editor of the collection of graphics to do at least a modicum of fact checking, wouldn't you? After all, what honest educator would purposefully provide lies for teachers? And you would expect that by now one of these intelligent, professional teachers would have checked the numbers and verified them, right?

So let's do some fact checking using that most esoteric of skills - arithmetic.

The poster was created in 2007. If we assume that the amount of total aid to Israel plus interest from 1948-2007 really is $133 billion, that would mean that in the average year, about $2.2 billion was given to Israel. (In fact, US aid was quite small before the 1970s, but since then it has averaged over $3 billion a year.) 

But for the purposes of anti-Israel propaganda, we want to inflate the amount of aid the US gives Israel as much as possible while being truthful. To make this more interesting, let's use the numbers from 2024. 

In 2024 the US gave far, far more aid to Israel than ever before. In the 12 months between October 2023 and October 2024, the US gave Israel nearly $18 billion, about 500% more than usual. So if we want to make Israelis look like the biggest beneficiaries of US aid per capita in the world, we should definitely use 2024 numbers. 

Given Israel's population of 9.7 million, that comes out to about $1,855 per person in that year from the US. 

Now, how much does the average American citizen get from the US government?

If we only include social programs that directly benefit citizens, like social security, Medicare, Medicaid,  education, housing, SNAP (nutrition assistance) and so forth, that adds up to $4.7 trillion.  That's about $14,000 per citizen.

If we add more indirect expenditures, like paying interest on the national debt and the defense budget, that comes out to closer to the total US budget of $6.5 trillion, which comes out to about $19,000 per citizen. (Keep in mind that nearly all US aid to Israel is military aid, so it would not be fair to exclude the US defense budget if we want things to be equivalent.)

To compare apples to apples: the total amount the US spent on US citizens is about $6.5 trillion, which is $19,000 per citizen, over ten times more than Israelis received.

So even in a year where Israel received much, much more aid than ever before, the amount the US spent on Israel per capita is far less than what it spends on US citizens per capita. In fact, the US per capita defense budget expenditures alone (about $2,500) is higher than what Israelis received for military aid per capita in 2024 ($1,855) in an extraordinary year where Israel was fighting on seven fronts at the same time. 

There is no way to massage this data to make the statement that the US gave more federal aid to Israeli citizens per person than to Americans. 

If we would choose the year 2007, the year the poster was made, and compare US budget expenditures with the amount it gave Israel and their respective populations at the time, the difference is even starker: $8,300 per US citizen vs. $340 per Israeli citizen. That is a multiple of 24 times.  

Conclusion: the poster is knowingly false.

This would be a good math exercise for the Massachusetts teachers to give their students. After all, basic arithmetic can be used to disprove sophisticated propaganda. Learning to think critically about information people receive from the Internet and from the news media is a crucial skill that all students  should be familiar with. 

But that is not a lesson that the Massachusetts Teachers Association wants its students to ever learn. No, the very people who should be qualified to fact check this antisemitic poster instead spread its lies. 

This post, which can be taught to the average high school student in an hour, is more educational and more important to students' futures than any given lesson ever taught in any Massachusetts classroom on any given day. 

Go ahead, MTA members - prove me wrong.




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Thursday, February 13, 2025

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Julio Frenk’s Family Fled the Nazis. He Doesn’t Fear Student Hamasniks.
Sures was targeted because he is Jewish and has been outspoken in defense of Jewish rights on campus and supported a UCLA resolution to institute political neutrality on university websites, a rule opposed by Hamas’s supporters on campus.

One of the strange aspects of the response to pro-Hamas mob harassment has been the tendency to excuse the actions of large groups when those same actions, if performed by a single person, would result in immediate legal intervention to protect the target. If a random person trapped Sures’s wife in her car, vandalized his house, and made unmistakable death threats against him in the process, this would be understood as the psychotic behavior of a dangerous and violent person. The fact that psychotic, violent behavior is practiced by large groups of people in support of a terrorist organization currently holding Americans hostage should be understood as an exponentially larger threat.

And it should also be understood as a monumental failing of any institution with which those lunatics are associated. Perhaps because of his family’s personal experience with SJP’s tactics as practiced nearly a century ago by the Nazis, Frenk took action immediately.

“I know that no one can promise a society free of violence,” Frenk said. “But as your chancellor, I can commit to you that whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye. This is a responsibility I take most seriously.”

Unlike other university leaders, Frenk wasn’t fooled by protestations that physical violence is free speech. “At UCLA, there is always room for discourse and for passionate debate of different points of view,” he said.

In fact, there is no evidence that groups like SJP, which exist to shut down participation in public discourse, have any interest in speech and debate at all. Tentifada camps organized with the help of PFLP-affiliated officials and which instruct their participants not to respond to questions are manifestations of authoritarian tendencies that are employed in place of speech. This is not surprising: There is no serious or sane argument in favor of Hamas and Hezbollah, which these groups exist to support. Shutting down debate is the only plausible method of maintaining the illusion that they are involved in something useful or noble.

Violence and the threat of violence are the only recruiting tools these organizations have. Let’s not flatter them by pretending there is any coherent intellectual aspect to their activism whatsoever.
Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The New York Times is still at it
I have been documenting the anti-Israel biases in the New York Times for a long, long time. I am so glad that others have taken up this truly tedious task. But I cannot keep totally quiet.

For example, today, here is their lead headline on page A1, occupying the rightmost column.

"Israel Threatens to Renew Combat In Hostage Crisis: Vowing to End the Truce Unless the Release of Captives Resume."

Have the editors been living on a far distant planet? Do they not remember that it was Hamas who violated the cease-fire agreement many, many times and that it was Hamas that has just refused to send the next promised batch of hostages?

Are the remaining hostages even alive? Are they even worse off than the three men whom Hamas returned in exchange for more than eighty Arabs with blood on their hands? And is that the reason for the halt in freeing the next group. The three Israeli male hostages looked like concentration camp survivors. The Arab prisoners being returned to Gaza looked fleshy, healthy—as did the crowds who greeted their buses.

Where is the alleged genocide of Gazans? Where is the alleged starvation of Gazans?

Are the journalists at the NYT blind, dead, and dumb? What anti-reality playbook are they following? Have they utterly forgotten about all the Iran-backed Arab terrorist attacks against Israelis and about what really happened on 10/7?
How Australia became such a haven for antisemitism
Why It matters This isn’t just about the Jewish community. Jew hate is a symptom of a deeper problem—a threat to Australia’s democratic values, diversity, and social cohesion. A country that prides itself on tolerance cannot afford to let hatred fester unchecked. If Jew hate is allowed to grow, it risks eroding the very fabric of the nation. Australia is still a far safer place for Jews than many other locations, and yet – this relative safety cannot be taken for granted.

For Israel, this is also a critical moment. Jewish communities worldwide are under pressure, and allies like Australia must step up to show that they stand unequivocally against antisemitism. Failure to act decisively could send a dangerous message: that hatred can flourish unchallenged. Nathan JoelNathan JoelPhoto: Courtesy of Center for Jewish Impact Australia must rise to this challenge, addressing not only the immediate crisis but also the long-term cultural shifts needed to ensure that all minority groups feel safe and valued. Now is the time for action, not rhetoric. Australia must make it clear: Jew hate has no place in the lucky country.
From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Bibi the Good Cop?
Let’s cut to the chase: How many hostages can Hamas release this Saturday without inviting pitiless retribution?

There are 76 remaining in Gaza. Trump’s comments didn’t seem to leave much wiggle room, so Saturday’s noon deadline would mean Hamas must release 76 hostages.

Israel’s security cabinet at first simply said it supported Trump’s position but did not specify what that position was exactly. Then, as the Times of Israel explained, an Israeli official said that “all” the hostages meant all nine hostages on the list for the first stage of the ceasefire who are still alive (that would be nine out of 17).

After that, an official said that the prime minister’s position was the same as Trump’s: “all of them.” But, in classic talmudic fashion, saying “all of them” instead of “all of our hostages” was viewed as leaving room for interpretation.

Finally, Wednesday evening saw reports that Israel has privately communicated to Hamas that if it releases the three hostages as per the original agreement on Saturday, the ceasefire will hold. This seems to be Israel’s way of embracing its new role as the good cop.

But that doesn’t fully end the drama. What if Hamas releases three hostages on Saturday? Israel might accept that. But will Trump?

On the one hand, Trump is unlikely to do anything that would blow up the ceasefire deal if both sides are still committed to adhering to its terms. He’s proud of the deal and doesn’t want the war to resume if he can help it.

On the other hand, in this scenario, Hamas’s threat to suspend the deal would go unpunished. Further, while we can assume Trump and Netanyahu are privately communicating over their messaging, that messaging remains vague—and that could just as easily confuse Bibi and Trump as it could Hamas.

The closer it gets to the weekend without any breaking news, the more likely it becomes that the hostage releases will continue as originally scheduled. If Trump’s threats are seen as the reason the ceasefire gets back on track, it should be enough of a victory for the president to claim. And he’ll have made Netanyahu look like the more reasonable one in the process.
Prof. Efraim Inbar and Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: Trump's Gaza Proposal Shifts the Diplomatic Landscape
President Trump's proposal to relocate Gaza's Palestinian population points to the price that the Palestinians will have to pay for their decision to carry out the terrible terror attack of Oct. 7. Israel paid for its unreadiness with many lives and the freeing of a large number of terrorists as part of the hostage release agreement. It is evident that under the current leadership, the reconstruction of the area will not be possible.

To enable the realization of the U.S. president's proposal, first, Hamas will have to be removed from power in Gaza. At least in the first stage, this would mean Israeli military control of the territory.

Second, assuming that there is no intention of forcibly evacuating the Palestinian population, based on surveys, it appears that a significant number of Gazans would be willing to emigrate.

Third, Arab nations and other countries would need to cooperate in absorbing Gazans and funding the project. At present, such a move runs counter to their interests. Moreover, it is doubtful that the people of the region can be convinced to abandon their fundamental concepts.

Nevertheless, the Trump proposal for the first time challenges conventional wisdom. The proposal makes it clear that after Oct. 7, the approach to the Palestinian issue must change fundamentally. Moreover, it acknowledges for the first time that the "two-state solution" is not the only possible solution.

Even if Trump ultimately fails to secure the conditions for implementation of the plan, the very fact that it has been put on the table will force the Palestinians and Arab countries to propose practical alternatives to deal with the difficult reality in Gaza, and to do so in a way that is acceptable to both Israel and the U.S.
Amb. David Friedman: The Trump Plan for Gaza Offers a Realistic Chance to Bring Peace
The President's plan for Gaza signals a long overdue rejection of the "two-state solution." Back in 2005, when Israel removed its entire civilian population and military presence from Gaza, the Bush administration told the Palestinian Authority that this was its chance to prove to the world that it could create a working model of peaceful coexistence that could be extrapolated to Palestinian statehood. The experiment failed almost immediately, but its death knell occurred on Oct. 7.

President Trump's plan would allow the civilian population of Gaza to leave the demolished enclave, something refugees have done from every war zone in history. Some had argued that removing the civilian population from Gaza is a war crime. This is false: Gaza is unlivable, and moving the civilian population out of Gaza represents the best of humanitarian intentions.

Most civilians in Gaza were desperate to leave long before the latest war began, for the simple reason that living under Hamas rule was a nightmare even before Gaza was turned to rubble. It is nothing but a smear to suggest that allowing desperate civilians to voluntarily leave a war zone is a crime; it is Gazans' leaders who have committed war crimes.

Many of the people of Gaza elected Hamas, and many supported and cheered Hamas when it kidnapped, murdered, raped, burned, and tortured Israeli civilians. From a moral perspective, they have forfeited the right to the land which they have destroyed.

As an additional important benefit, when the Islamic world sees that Hamas has lost its hold on Gaza and that the nightmare of Hamas has been replaced with a new reality of peace and prosperity, the suicidal psychosis of radical Islam will suffer a crushing blow.
Reckoning with the Red Cross
The ICRC failed to ensure the safety and well-being of the hostages. They failed to advocate for them. Not once did the ICRC work to ensure that hostages were receiving medical care or that they were being properly treated and fed. Indeed, the ICRC didn’t see a single hostage during their time in captivity. For many fortunate enough to have been freed, the first time they saw the International Red Cross was at their release. In short, the ICRC played the role of a glorified Uber driver, taking released hostages from Gaza to Israel. And even here, they failed.

On Jan. 25, four Israeli female hostages were released. Before they were loaded into Red Cross vans, Hamas forced the women to walk onto a podium and thank their captors before a baying crowd. The hostages were given gift bags, a framed “certificate of completion” and a key chain with a Palestinian flag. As the Red Cross looked on, these women were forced to smile and have their picture taken while holding their “certificates of completion.” The whole spectacle is as gruesome as it is outrageous. Many female hostages endured sexual abuse and rape from their captors, and some were allegedly drugged before their release.

The square arranged for the spectacle, filmed by an Al Jazeera journalist working with Hamas, was festooned with Arabic and English slogans proclaiming “Palestine: The victory of the oppressed people vs the Nazi Zionism.” Palestinians attempted to attack the Israeli women while they were being loaded into vans. As a further insult, the windows of the Red Cross vans were uncovered, ensuring that the women could see their tormentors as they drove away from Gaza.

The ICRC has claimed it couldn’t advocate for the hostages without shedding its role as a “neutral intermediary.” Yet the organization’s timidity is tellingly one-sided; the ICRC hasn’t shown a reluctance to criticize Israel during this conflict.

The United States is the largest contributor to the ICRC, contributing roughly a quarter of its budget. The press should note the ICRC’s failings. And Americans should ask themselves whether they want to fund glorified Uber drivers for Hamas.
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Community Puzzled Over Lack Of Tunnels, Arms Storage Space In Plans For Rebuilt Gaza Mosque

Jabalia, February 13 - Residents of this rubble-strewn area returning to it after months of fighting between Israel and Hamas voiced surprise and confusion today upon discovering that a blueprint to reconstruct their house of worship contains none of the familiar features of such a facility, such as underground passages for fighters, or places to keep weapons - not even anywhere to hold hostages.

Some of the last bouts of military confrontation between IDF soldiers and - primarily - guerrillas from Hamas in this northern Gaza Strip city before a ceasefire took effect last month resulted in widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure, almost all of which contained or concealed some target of military value. Many of the buildings that did not have Hamas positions or stockpiles nevertheless were festooned with booby traps laid against Israeli troops attempting to take positions there. Residents finally allowed back into the erstwhile combat zone began to salvage their possessions, assess the damage, and make plans to rebuild - but found themselves in shock at the first drawings to show such rebuilding: the Sheikh Marwan Mosque, leveled in December when Hamas fighters blew it up in an attempt to kill IDF soldiers they thought were inside, will contain only prayer, classroom, office, toilet, and rudimentary kitchen facilities, without the tunnels, weapons-caching, and hostage-storing units that everyone had assumed were an integral element of a mosque.

"I don't get it," remarked Faisal Masri, 49. "Who drew up these plans? They must be incomplete."

"Where's the tunnel system access?" wondered Shuruq Fadi, 48. "Every mosque has that. Every building, in fact. This will never get past any official approvals."

The puzzlement spread beyond those returning to the immediate vicinity of the mosque-to-be. "That can't be," stated Imam Aifuq Kamel, whose Anas Baqar Mosque, or what remains of it, lies about half a kilometer away. "I know the Imam of that mosque - well, he was killed in a bombing, with about seven fighters, so technically I 'knew' him - and he would never serve in a building without at least a hiding place to keep captive Jews. It's basic. I find it hard to believe this is an actual building plan. It's not credible."

Officials from Hamas, which still governs the territory of the Gaza Strip, were unavailable for comment. A relative of one mid-level operative disclosed that final decisions and approvals on reconstruction might not be issued for months, if ever, in light of the prospect of renewed fighting, and the possibility that Trump might prompt large-scale departure of the area's residents to greener, or at least less rubble-strewn, pastures.





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  • Thursday, February 13, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon
Until today, I did not know this fact from The Free Press:
The biggest environmentalist craze of my generation started in 2011 with Vermont 9-year-old Milo Cress cooking up an arbitrary number for how many plastic straws Americans used daily. This 9-year-old figured it was so many. He says he called up straw manufacturers and calculated 500 million a day. Boom, big number, good number. The mainstream media was off to the races. That 500 million a day number was cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Suddenly the most important thing we could do for the environment—for our children!—was ban plastic straws.
For many years, the media repeated this "500 million straws a day" number without doing a basic fact check of the calculations of a nine-year old boy. That source only received wide coverage starting in 2018.

A couple of marketing firms did try. It turns out it is harder to count straws than one might think. Many are imported, for example. But there aren't that many plastic straw manufacturers in the US. It shouldn't be that difficult to find a better number (which, according to those firms, stands at somewhere between 180 million and 350 million daily.) 

Why didn't the media bother to check this big, fat, round number? 

Because they wanted to believe it. It fit in with their politics and their instincts.

It was, as journalists sometimes say, too good to check.

And that is how we get to Hamas' bogus casualty numbers.

People like me have shown that their numbers - for total people killed, for women and children killed, for injuries, for missing people under the rubble, and others - did not add up. Multiple sources of data were incompatible with each other. They were lying, and they continue to lie.

And yet the very people whose jobs are supposed to be to dig out the truth - reporters, medical researchers, NGOs - treat the Hamas numbers as legitimate. 

The same way they trusted the plastic straw estimate of a nine year old boy.

There were two separate but related problems here: believing and reporting the original statistics as absolute truth, and continuing to do so over time without even checking. 

Just as nearly no editors asked for a verification of the original numbers, so did almost none of them show any desire to review the statistics as more information becomes available over time. The reason is that they don't want to admit that their original assertions were wrong. Government agencies continue to use the 500 million number. 

And we will continue to see Hamas' made up numbers for years to come. from sources that people trust. 

The media isn't going to change. Hopefully media consumers can learn to be more discerning about what they believe.









Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

  • Thursday, February 13, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon


From the UK Government website:

Senior Muslim and Jewish denominational leaders in the UK have signed [11 February] a landmark agreement, The Drumlanrig Accord.

The accord establishes a structured framework for sustained Muslim-Jewish collaboration, fostering deeper understanding and shared responsibility.

Signed at Spencer House, the faith leaders subsequently presented a copy of the accord to His Majesty The King at Buckingham Palace.

The initiative represents a deep and enduring commitment from the UK’s Jewish and Muslim communities to strengthen relationships, promote understanding, and work together for the common good. It is the outcome of a yearlong series of high-level meetings convened by Imam Dr Sayed Razawi, culminating in a retreat in January at Drumlanrig Castle, hosted by the Duke of Buccleuch. The Scottish Secretary joined the delegates at the event remotely.
I found a copy of the agreement - and couldn't get past the first page.

It says:

The basis for reconciliation and mutual respect exists within both Jewish and Islamic sacred texts, which stress shared values of monotheism, compassion, and justice. The Torah emphasises that every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 5:1). 

The Qur’ān instructs Muslims to invite People of the Scripture to come together on a ‘common word’ (Qur’ān 3:64), emphasising the importance of dialogue and reconciliation. 
When one looks at the Quran 3:64 and its context, one sees that it is not as accepting of other viewpoints - or even of what the "common word" might be.


64. Say, “O People of the Book, come to terms common between us and you: that we worship none but God, and that we associate nothing with Him, and that none of us takes others as lords besides God.” And if they turn away, say, “Bear witness that we have submitted.”

65. O People of the Book! Why do you argue about Abraham, when the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until after him? Will you not reason?

66. Here you are—you argue about things you know, but why do you argue about things you do not know? God knows, and you do not know.

67. Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a Monotheist, a Muslim. And he was not of the Polytheists.

68. The people most deserving of Abraham are those who followed him, and this prophet, and those who believe. God is the Guardian of the believers.

69. A party of the People of the Book would love to lead you astray, but they only lead themselves astray, and they do not realize it.

70. O People of the Book! Why do you reject the revelations of God, even as you witness?

71. O People of the Book! Why do you confound the truth with falsehood, and knowingly conceal the truth?

...
75. Among the People of the Book is he, who, if you entrust him with a heap of gold, he will give it back to you. And among them is he, who, if you entrust him with a single coin, he will not give it back to you, unless you keep after him. That is because they say, “We are under no obligation towards the gentiles.” They tell lies about God, and they know it.
...

78. And among them are those who twist the Scripture with their tongues, that you may think it from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say, “It is from God,” when it is not from God. They tell lies and attribute them to God, knowingly.

...
81. God received the covenant of the prophets, “Inasmuch as I have given you of scripture and wisdom; should a messenger come to you verifying what you have, you shall believe in him, and support him.” He said, “Do you affirm My covenant and take it upon yourselves?” They said, “We affirm it.” He said, “Then bear witness, and I am with you among the witnesses.”

82. Whoever turns away after that—these are the deceitful.

...

 85. Whoever seeks other than Islam as a religion, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers.

The Quranic idea of "dialogue" is a monologue. Jews who do not accept Mohammed as a prophet - according to the very same chapter cited - are deceitful and consigned to hell. 

And this is the part of the Quran they use to claim they want dialogue with Jews!

The agreements themselves do not seem to be offensive. Their mention of "interfaith dialogue" gives me pause because of the verses above and previous examples of what Muslim leaders meant when they say they want "dialogue" - it is only in the direction of teaching others about Islam, not to teack Muslims about other viewpoints. 







Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

   
 

 

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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