Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Prominent Kuwaiti Islamic preacher says Gazans must be allowed to migrate elsewhere (and he gets attacked for it)

Sheikh Salem Al-Taweel is a Kuwaiti Salafi scholar and preacher who has been considered one of the more important Kuwaiti Salafi thinkers.

He was recently attacked for an older fatwa where people accused him of saying "leave Palestine to the Jews." Last night he responded to the accusations, saying that he is saying that Gazans - and all Muslims - should have the right to migrate wherever they want to go as an individual decision.

Here are excerpts:

As for the issue of migration from Palestine or any other place, migration is something even the Prophet (peace be upon him) did. People have different circumstances. The Prophet endured hardship in Mecca, then he migrated, then he fought battles, then he made peace treaties, and then he fought again—all based on circumstances, the strength of Muslims, and their ability to act.

Today, countless people migrate—not for religious reasons, but for worldly gains. How many Arabs, Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Iraqis have left their homelands? Many have migrated to Australia, America, Europe, and Canada, never to return. If someone is forced to leave Palestine due to hardship—just as Syrians fled Syria, Iraqis fled Iraq, and many others left their countries due to oppression, poverty, or seeking better opportunities—this is a personal decision.

I never said to Palestinians, "Migrate!" That is up to the individual. He must assess his own circumstances: Can he practice his religion? Can he live safely? Many Palestinians have remained in Palestine and obtained Israeli citizenship. Those in the 1948 occupied territories all carry Israeli passports, IDs, and official documents. I have even met some of them in America, holding both Israeli and Palestinian passports—just like those here with American passports. What is the difference? One is issued by a Jewish state, and the other by a Christian-majority country.

Some Palestinians even work in the Israeli military and government offices. This is known to the people of Palestine, even before my time.

Everyone has their own circumstances, even financial reasons may force someone to migrate.

Who can seriously claim that they won when Gaza has been reduced to ruins? Gaza was once full of mosques, universities, streets, beaches, buildings, and schools. Now, everything has been destroyed, yet they claim victory.

If the borders with Egypt had been open during the bombings, three-quarters of Gaza’s residents would have likely left, but they were trapped. Some assume that all Gazans are fiercely attached to staying, but the truth is, under extreme hardship, many would leave if they could—just as the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his companions left Mecca when persecuted.

Migration from Palestine is not new—it has happened for decades. Many Palestinians have settled and lived in Kuwait, among other places. This is not something I initiated, nor is it a conspiracy with Trump, as some foolishly claim.

In conclusion, if someone can practice Islam and has some influence in his land, he should stay. If he is persecuted but can fight back, he should fight. If he is weak and cannot resist oppression, he has the right to migrate.

Al-Taweel is no philosemite, but he has criticized Hamas since October 7 (and he has been harshly attacked for it.)

His common sense view, that Palestinians should have the same rights as any other Muslims to migrate if they want to, is stifled from public discourse. And I'm not only talking about the Arab and Muslim worlds - I mean in the pages of the New York Times, the capitals of Europe and the pronouncements of Amnesty International, where the simple right of Palestinians to leave a war zone cannot be discussed.

The reasons are a combination antisemitism and fear of being attacked by antisemites.

It is a little insane that a fundamentalist Islamic Kuwaiti preacher cares more about Palestinian human rights than most Western leaders.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Right now (at least as of this writing Tuesday night) we have President Trump warning Hamas to release all hostages by Saturday noon, or "all hell will break out." Hamas refuses, falsely claiming that Israel hasn't held up its part of the deal and setting the stage to blame Israel if things get hot.

Trump is also engaging in diplomacy of threats with Egypt and Jordan, demanding that they allow Palestinians to take refuge there. In those cases, the US has leverage in the form of withholding aid which is crucial for both those countries' economies. Egypt's response is its own threat - to tear up the peace agreement with Israel, claiming that US aid was part of that agreement. (Permanent US aid to Egypt was certainly not part of Camp David.)

Trump uses these sorts of threats as opening moves in his game of negotiations. To him. everything is a deal, everything is negotiable, everyone has a price whether it is in terms of carrots or sticks. Keeping his negotiating partners off balance is part of his tactics.

To a large extent, it works. In only the past three weeks since the inauguration we are seeing that Trump's outlandish sounding statements move the needle towards his desires, and the compromises made are therefore more favorable to Trump's side.

But what happens when Trump's negotiating tactics come up against the pure honor-shame driven mentality of Islamists like Hamas?

Dead fighters don't deter Hamas. Hamas sees dead civilians as assets. What can deter Hamas when it is so wedded to the idea that capitulation itself is shameful, and therefore to be avoided at all costs?

The honor/shame dynamic seems to indicate that Hamas does not fit into Trump's transactional worldview. The Islamist desire to avoid shame is more important than life itself.

However, Donald Trump has identified one asset Hamas would do anything to avoid losing: land.

The world and the media has not linked Trump's threat to take over Gaza with his open-ended threat to Hamas of all hell breaking out if they don't release the hostages (except in the sense that they believe Trump is crazy in both threats.) But they are one and the same.

Palestinians are very sensitive to the idea that they could permanently lose the land they control. They have felt secure for decades that international law and the majority of world leaders are on their side when they claim the entire Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Really, the only reason Israel hasn't annexed parts of Area C is fear of world reaction, including and especially from the US.

Clearly Trump doesn't care. He has put something on the table that has never seriously been placed there: the idea that Palestinians can lose some of the land awarded to them at Oslo as a consequence of their actions.

The idea that land conquest is a violation of international law is quite recent. The world accepted conquest as a legitimate means of acquiring land for the 4,000 years before the 1945 UN Charter and 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. Trump instinctively understands that it is illogical that wars can be waged without permanent consequences to the aggressor. To him, and indeed to most of the world, an attacker must not be rewarded by always having the game clock reset to zero after every war they start and lose. Of course Hamas must lose control of parts or all of Gaza, otherwise they have every incentive to keep attacking forever. Taking away their land is true justice.

I'm not sure whether he is consciously thinking this way, but Trump's announcement that the US will take over Gaza - and his doubling down on that - is in effect the US part of the hostage negotiations with Hamas. He's saying that if the hostages aren't released, the US will soon take the land, however that happens (with the probable help of the Israelis.) And unlike Israeli leaders, he really doesn't care if Europe or the UN screams at him that this violates international law; he knows that there is nothing morally wrong with forcing Hamas to accept that its crimes have consequences not only to them but to their people.

It is also a message to the Palestinian Authority: don't think that the land you have is safe from being taken if you continue to support terror.

An analyst I admire looks at Trump this way: "he has an 'on the spectrum' savant quality, a lightning-fast perception mechanism and speech that’s ill-regulated from the standpoint of social usage, but if you just look past that, and listen to the meaning of what he’s saying, his speech is very intentional and is meant to have kinetic effects, to provoke movement and activity for the ends he envisions." I think this is right on.

Which means the next four years will be just as interesting as the past few weeks have been

The new normal is anything but normal.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/11 Links Pt2: Progressives’ Sickening Embrace of the PFLP; The UN’s loathing of Israel is out of control; Simon Sebag Montefiore: The “Golden Age” for Jews Has Ended

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Progressives’ Sickening Embrace of the PFLP

At a student roundtable with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, a Georgetown law student told the premier about an upcoming event at her school featuring a convicted terrorist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Netanyahu was aghast. The conversation elevated concerns about the event, which Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) had already been criticizing.

By last night, the event was “postponed so that the University could conduct a thorough investigation into serious safety and security concerns that had arisen in connection with the event,” the school told Torres, according to Jewish Insider.

The PFLP is a designated terrorist organization, so that was reason enough for the raised eyebrows. PFLP officials have been all over the tentifada movement, which has thus far had the perverse effect of normalizing its presence in civilized society.

The PFLP has particular appeal to the progressive left for two reasons: One, its history of hijackings and other forms of terrorism that left-wing activists have always romanticized, and two, because it is a Marxist-Leninist—and therefore secular and recognizably leftist—version of Palestinian nationalism. An organization that aims to kill Jews while espousing revolutionary socialism is the perfect entity to a not-inconsequential portion of today’s campus activists.

Which is why students at Columbia received PFLP “resistance” training, and George Washington University protest groups used a PFLP manual for a teach-in. Even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke at a PFLP-connected conference in Detroit, the program of which was saturated with PFLP speakers.

Then there’s Samidoun, a group masquerading as a pro-Palestinian organization but which has now been banned in the U.S. and parts of Europe for being “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” as the U.S. government puts it. Prior to its October designation, Samidoun popped up at the campus demonstrations as well.

Jonathan Tobin: Super Bowl antisemitism ad is no way to tackle Jew-hatred

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is an exemplary member of the American Jewish community. Over the years, he has donated a great deal of money to Jewish causes, locally in his hometown of Boston and in the State of Israel, even building a football stadium in Jerusalem. The National Football League magnate’s philanthropy testifies to his own strong sense of Jewish peoplehood, in addition to a decent concern for others less fortunate than himself, as shown by his family’s support of a variety of educational and health-care causes.

Among the efforts he has supported is the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), which he founded with money he pledged as a result of his winning the Genesis Prize in 2019. The idea behind the foundation was to fight the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, as well as other efforts to battle Jew-hatred. The campaign itself was marked by a bright blue square with a moniker called “The Blue Box Campaign” that urges standing up to hate.

But for all of his various efforts on behalf of that important cause, probably none gained as much attention as the FCAS advertisement that appeared during the Super Bowl this past Sunday. It featured two mega-celebrities—rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, and NFL great Tom Brady, who won seven Super Bowls, including six for Kraft’s Patriots. In it, they spout various reasons why people hate each other before concluding that “things are so bad that we have to do a commercial about it,” before the two walk off together in a gesture of amity.

A missed opportunity
That’s a colossal mistake, as well as a missed opportunity that Kraft and anyone else who cares about the issue should deeply regret.

While no one should doubt the good intentions of Kraft, the 30-second blurb sums up everything that is wrong with the mindset and the efforts of liberal American Jewish efforts to deal with the problem.

Indeed, if that’s the best that the FCAS can manage, then Kraft would be well advised to close it up and transfer the money he’s currently wasting on it to those interested in fighting antisemitism in a way that will make a difference.

The UN’s loathing of Israel is out of control

The United Nations – unlike the US, the EU, the UK and other Western states – does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organisation. This was true before the Hamas invasion and massacre on 7 October 2023. And it has remained true in the months that have followed.

In February 2024, Martin Griffiths, a British diplomat then serving as UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, explained the UN’s position in the starkest of terms: ‘Hamas is not a terrorist group for us’, he told Sky News, ‘it is a political movement’. He gave that interview just four months after Hamas had slaughtered, raped, kidnapped and literally terrorised Jewish men and women in southern Israel.

The recent sacking of a senior UN official provides further evidence of the organisation’s warped perspective. Alice Nderitu is a longtime human-rights advocate involved in conflict resolution in many different parts of the world. In November 2020, she arrived at the UN headquarters in New York, from her native Kenya, to take up her new role as the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide.

Her four-year career at the UN can be divided into two distinct periods – before and after Hamas’s invasion of Israel.

Before, Nderitu travelled widely, assessing evidence of genocide and genocide denial in places like Darfur, Sudan. She held press conferences, wrote op-eds and issued dozens of public statements and even wrote a helpful briefing document called ‘When to Refer to a Situation as “Genocide”’. There she explained that a determination of genocide must be carried out by ‘a competent international or national court of law with the jurisdiction to try such cases after an investigation meeting appropriate due process standards’. None of this was particularly noteworthy or controversial. She was simply outlining the strict conditions and legal processes involved in establishing whether something is or isn’t a genocide in the eyes of the UN.

But then Hamas invaded Israel and everything changed. Her world began to unravel. By early 2024, she was under intense pressure from both within and without the UN. In an exclusive interview this month with Air Mail’s Johanna Berkman, Nderitu said that she was ‘hounded, day in, day out… with protection from nobody’. ‘It’s instructive that this never happened for any other war’, she said. ‘Not for Ukraine, not for Sudan, not for DRC, not for Myanmar… The focus was always Israel.’

02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight; Why Yitzhak Rabin urged moving Gaza’s Arabs to Jordan; Hostage Shlomo Mansour, 86, was murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight

Now that Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages threatens to derail the cease-fire, the subject will get more attention. The hostages, especially those who were freed recently, have been concentrating on recovery. In the future, we expect to learn in much greater detail what happened to the captives in those tunnels and dungeons, but what we know already is troubling enough.

This week the attention is on Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi because their abuse was evident before they even said a word. But more information has come trickling out: they were, reportedly, burned with hot objects, hung upside down, kept in chains, at times gagged to the point of suffocation, starved and dehydrated.

It is not the first shocking testimony from ex-captives.

Amit Soussana was chained up in a child’s bedroom. After her captor let her bathe, he stripped her of her towel and sexually assaulted her, Soussana told the New York Times in March. Later, she was suspended in the space between two couches and beaten. According to recently released hostages, Soussana’s captors beat her at gunpoint viciously until another captive convinced the Hamasniks that they had mistaken her for an IDF officer.

According to other testimony, sexual assault of the captives was widespread. Hamas also apparently tortured a child with an item similar to a hot branding iron.

Physical abuse is common, according to the captives. Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were beaten and kept in cages. Bibas was also subject to the psychological abuse Hamas takes special pleasure in doling out. His wife and two young children were also taken hostage. At one point, Bibas’s captors told him his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, and took a video of his anguish. Hamas has not confirmed the fate of Bibas’s wife and children, even after his release. They reportedly tormented Bibas about his family throughout his nearly 500-day captivity.

The hostages would often be told they were being freed when they weren’t. Gadi Mozes, an 80-year-old farmer released last month, was at one point kept in a hot pickup truck for 12 hours underneath a Red Cross building in Gaza. He hoped he was being processed for release, but it turned out he was just being moved to a new location.

During the initial Oct. 7 attacks, before taking Emily Damari captive, Hamas terrorists shot her dog. While she was comforting the dog as it lay dying, Hamas shot her in the hand, taking off two of her fingers, then dragged her to Gaza.

Another form of torture practiced by Hamas was to let serious injuries go untreated and force the captives to watch them deteriorate.

Elliott Abrams: A Paradigm Shift for the Middle East

A year and a half ago, Iran's nuclear weapons program was steadily producing enriched uranium; by 2024, it had enough for several bombs. Washington was largely not enforcing its sanctions on Iran, greatly improving the regime's finances. And the "ring of fire" of Iranian proxies - Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen - seemed to be a problem Israel could not solve.

But since then, Israel has turned the tables. Hamas has survived the invasion of Gaza and remains dominant there. But it will never again pose a serious military threat to Israel. The Israelis have wiped out Hizbullah's leadership and given Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Assad's regime is gone, and the weapons highway that has long run from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank appears to be closing.

Trump can take advantage of the situation, but only if his administration is willing to abandon Washington's habitual goal in the Middle East - "stability" - and presses instead for dramatic changes that will bolster its interests and allies and actively weaken its adversaries.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: Hamas Is "Pure Evil," "Needs to Be Eradicated"

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted to the video of the latest Israeli hostages released by Hamas on SiriusXM Patriot 125 radio on Monday: "You look at these images of what they - first of all, the humiliation that they have to go through. Just put aside for a moment the horrifying conditions they were kept in and the horrifying things that happened to some of those hostages, on top of the fact that these were innocent civilians. I mean, none of these were soldiers. These are not combatants. These are just people that were abducted for purposes of being used as leverage. And they're getting, what, 200 certified killers in exchange for one innocent hostage. But it reveals who Hamas is."

"Look at the humiliation they put them through before they're released, where they do these big public displays of force. Do any of those Hamas fighters look like they've been skipping meals?...And then the conditions they're held in. So, it's incredibly revealing about what we're dealing with. This is an evil organization. Hamas is evil. It's pure evil. These are monsters. These are savages. That's a group that needs to be eradicated."

"If they still are the dominant power in Gaza when all this is done, there is not going to be peace in the Middle East, as long as a group like Hamas physically controls territory and is the most dominant power in Gaza or anywhere in the Middle East. And I hope people can see who these people actually are, in the condition of these hostages."

"The big challenge for this whole two-state solution has not been Israel. It's been: Who's going to govern that second state? Who's going to be in charge of it? If the people in charge of it are Hamas or Hizbullah or anybody like that, these are groups whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state." "I don't know how you're going to have peace if you're turning over territory to a group whose stated purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why would any country in the world agree to create a second state on their border that is governed by armed elements who kidnap babies and murder babies and rape teenage girls and abduct innocents and whose stated goal and purpose for existing is your destruction? Who would agree to that?"

By Forest Rain

Psychological Warfare 101: Humiliating the Enemy

Hamas can release hostages any day of the week. They’ve proven this before—hostages have been returned on Thursdays, for example. So why do they choose to release hostages on Shabbat?

Because it’s not just about returning captives. It’s about humiliating the Jewish nation.

This is psychological warfare at its core: using our love for family to break our connection to God and the land He gave us.

This is a religious war. Pay attention.

Some will say: “The hostages’ lives are in immediate danger. God will understand.” Or, “Who cares about religious rituals right now? The main thing is getting them back.” These arguments sound reasonable—at first. But let’s look at the facts.

Hostages have been released on other days—in other words, it is entirely possible to arrange releases without desecrating Shabbat.
Why do we have no demands? Since when does Hamas dictate all the terms? When we insist, we can apply pressure—as we did in the case of Arbel Yehud.
Even if some of us aren’t religious, our enemies are. In their worldview, everything is about honor and shame. When the Jewish state fails to demonstrate that Judaism matters to us, our enemies see weakness. They believe that our claim to this land is illegitimate and, in their eyes, our behavior proves them right.

Not demanding respect for our own religion is a victory for those who seek to sever our connection to this land.

Any way you look at it, allowing this to happen is wrong.

This is a religious war. Pay attention.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Is Trump Willing To Apply Pressure On Jordan--And If So, Over Which Pressing Issue? (Daled Amos) (updated)

By Daled Amos (updated with new information)

Jordan's King Abdullah II will be the first Arab leader to meet with Trump since he assumed office.

In past years, when the King of Jordan visited the US, a major topic of discussion has been its refusal to honor its treaty with the US and extradite Ahlam Tamimi for her role in masterminding the Sbarro Massacre in 2001. Instead of being imprisoned or at least shunned, Ahlam Tamimi went on to become a television host and public speaker with celebrity status in Jordan.

Last week, there were reports Jordan was finally considering expelling the terrorist and was ready to extradite Tamimi to the US if no Arab state was willing to take her in. Later, Jordanian Parliament Speaker Ahmad al-Safadi denied these reports. Normally, this would have led to speculation online about Tamimi's extradition. But this time, Jordan is a topic of discussion for other reasons.

The media is abuzz with stories about Trump's plan for Gazans to clear out and relocate to Jordan and Egypt. With Trump's invitation to King Abdullah II to visit the US, connecting his visit with Trump's plans for Gaza is only natural.

Another consideration is Trump's 90-day funding freeze on all foreign aid. Israel and Egypt are the only two exceptions. That leaves Jordan under the freeze. This is a topic the king is likely to bring up, giving Trump leverage. But will he use it as a bargaining chip for his Gaza plan or for extraditing Tamimi? We know that kind of leverage works, because of indications that Abbas is ending the infamous "pay for slay" program. The leverage in this case may be the threat of US courts imposing heavy fines on the PA in connection with lawsuits filed by families of terror victims. Financial pressure works. [Update: newer information indicates that Abbas's claim to end "pay for slay" merely moves the program to the Palestinian Economic Empowerment Foundation. Times of Israel reports that the change just "moves the families of prisoners and slain attackers into the same welfare system as the rest of Palestinian society, which receives stipends strictly based on economic need"]

Could we be entering a new era in the way the US is willing to deal with terrorist attacks on US citizens?

In 2016, then-Congressman Ron DeSantis chaired a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The topic was Seeking Justice for Victims of Palestinian Terrorism in Israel. At issue was whether the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism was fulfilling its purpose and obtaining justice for the families of the victims of Palestinian terrorism.

DeSantis questioned the Assistant Attorney General on the 64 Americans killed and 91 wounded between 1993 and 2016

Mr. DeSantis: Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since '93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.

How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?

Mr. Wiegmann: I think the answer is--is none.

Mr. DeSantis: Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?

Mr. Wiegmann: I don't have an exact figure for you.

Mr. DeSantis: But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?

Mr. Wiegmann: It would be a significant number, yes.

A few moments later, DeSantis addresses an alleged reason for the failure of the US to prosecute any of those Palestinian terrorists over 23 years:

Mr. DeSantis: Now, it's- been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.

So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?

Mr. Wiegmann: I can assure that is absolutely not the case.

Mr. DeSantis: And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?

Mr. Wiegmann: Absolutely not.

Even if concerns for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process are what derailed the prosecution of Palestinian terrorists, there are indications that over the next four years, there will be a different approach to that peace process. And if concerns over the fragility of Abdullah II's kingdom are preventing the US from insisting on the proper enforcement of Jordan's treaty with the US and Tamimi's extradition, Trump's willingness to apply pressure may be a good omen.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Trump is right and the @NYTimes is wrong on clearing explosives from Gaza

The New York Times has a "gotcha" article aimed at Donald Trump: How can Gaza be cleared of explosives when the US has stopped funding NGOs that do exactly that?

The article does not mention the thousands of houses booby-trapped by Hamas; only the unexploded ordnance from Israeli actions. This bias is a major reason the article is highly deceptive. It talks about the difficult work of deminers who have to find and neutralize explosives, but when you include explosives that are deliberately hidden in the walls of residential buildings, you realize that this job goes way beyond the painstaking job of traditional deminers employed by NGOs.

Hamas booby traps are at least as much of a danger as unexploded Israeli ordnance. Many IDF soldiers who were trained to be careful for booby traps were killed by them during the war. The IDF reported in early January that Hamas had booby trapped nearly every building left standing in northern Gaza. Some estimates say that 40% of the buildings in Gaza - some 95,000 buildings - are booby trapped.

In an urban area filled with bombs, it is far safer to raze the entire area than to try to clear each explosive individually.

In 2010, the New York Times knew this. It reported that American forces were razing neighborhoods in Kandahar, Afghanistan, because the homes were so heavily booby-trapped. In that case, the newspaper praised the operation as saving lives. (Interestingly, the NYT has removed the "To Save Lives" part of the original headline.)

In the newly won districts around this southern city, American forces are encountering empty homes and farm buildings left so heavily booby-trapped by Taliban insurgents that the Americans have been systematically destroying hundreds of them, according to local Afghan authorities.

The campaign, a major departure from NATO practice in past military operations, is intended to reduce civilian and military casualties by removing the threat of booby traps and denying Taliban insurgents hiding places and fighting positions, American military officials said.

...In recent weeks, using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and even airstrikes, American troops have taken to destroying hundreds of them, by a conservative estimate, with some estimates running into the thousands.

As bad as Kandahar was, the cities of Gaza are worse.

In a case like this you don't employ NGOs to clear the area. The work that deminers do would take centuries to clear Gaza. The State Department description of how much time it takes to detect and destroy mines on relatively easy terrain shows how absurd it would be to try to duplicate that in tens of thousands of buildings:

Manual humanitarian demining generally proceeds as follows: wearing personal protective equipment, the deminer approaches the edge of the hazardous area with vegetation cutting tools, probe, excavation tools, a tripwire feeler, a metal detector, mine tape, and mine markers, and begins to clear a lane. The deminer visually scans an area approximately one meter wide by half a meter deep, looking for evidence of landmines. Satisfied that no mines are present on the surface or in the vegetation, the deminer sweeps the area with a tripwire feeler. The deminer carefully removes all vegetation to ground level, using a variety of cutters to ensure no piece of brush falls onto the ground and gently places any brush fragments behind him or herself. The deminer uses a metal detector and, if a signal is heard, sweeps the area with the detector to identify the center and edge of the target. A marker is placed at the target location. The deminer then backs off from the marker approximately 20 centimeters and begins probing for the suspected mine at a 30 degree angle. If a mine is found, the deminer excavates sufficient space to place a demolition charge. It is often safer for deminers to destroy the mine in place, using an explosive charge at the end of daily operations. Neutralizing or defusing mines is avoided when possible, as these procedures carry a greater risk of physical harm. This process is repeated meter by meter until the ground is determined to be free from known hazards.

To perform this level of care when there are thousands of bombs hidden in buildings is impossible. Even for deminers, it is safer to explode the bombs than to remove them, meaning the buildings would be heavily damaged or destroyed anyway.

The bombs embedded in the buildings that are still standing are more of a potential risk than the unexploded bombs dropped by the IDF, although both are of course deadly. The Guardian mentioned on January 15

To properly clear Gaza of explosives, you need to practically flatten Gaza. You need an army. You need armored bulldozers and bombs.

It is not only the New York Times. The mainstream media has all but ignored Hamas booby-traps in Gaza houses and buildings, only reporting on them when they kill IDF troops. The Guardian mentioned that a UN official estimated it would take a decade to remove all the explosives in Gaza - and he said that nine months ago before the extent of Hamas booby-traps were known.

Donald Trump called Gaza is a demolition site, and he is correct. If the NYT would look back on its previous articles and deign to report on Hamas booby traps, it would know that this is true.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A selection of antisemitism in Turkish media this week

Yeni Akit:

Did you say Jews? They are the cursed ones who do not hesitate to set the world on fire to fry eggs.

Also Yeni Akit:

It is not possible to come across any other nation other than the Jews that has been consistently exiled throughout the recorded history of humanity, whether known or claimed to be known.

Regardless of the nation, humanity has performed various surgical operations throughout history to rid its body of this malignant tumor, and whenever it has said it is free and left these diseased types behind, the cancer has spread and found no other solution than exiling it once more.

Corum Haber:

If I am not mistaken, almost all of the 124 Nobel Prize winners are Jews. The most loyal nation in the world to their religion is also the Jews. Because according to the Jewish belief, according to the distorted (altered) Torah, the God of the Jews created all people to serve the Jews. If we may say so, the Jews are the masters and the others are their servants, which is the Jewish terminology. In other words, the dominance of the world belongs to the Jews. The Jews are after achieving this in the world. This is the reason why they work day and night without rest. Today, there are 15 million Jews in the world. The State of Israel was 3-3.5 million, but they rule 8 billion people with the power of money. There is a fact that is beyond reason and logic in Judaism. That is, why are the 15 million Jews not increasing? Because in order for a person to be Jewish, one of the parents or, if I am not mistaken, one of the parents must be of Jewish origin. This situation prevents the increase of the Jews. When examined, it will be seen that the Jews are the rulers of the world economy. Jews fill the population gap with subsidiary organizations, civil society organizations, the general name of which is Masoxuzan. Dozens of associations serve Judahism under the guise of various humanitarian purposes.

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02/10 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: What Israel is really up against; The strange reluctance to see Jews as victims; Beinart goes down a rabbit hole; USAID’s demise is nothing to mourn

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: What Israel is really up against

In short, Palestinian society is entirely constructed around a poisonous and murderous hatred of Jews and the desire to remove them from the face of the earth.

The emaciated figures who staggered out of their Gaza hellhole have illuminated the obscenity of the way in which so much of the west has behaved — trying to minimise, sanitise or excuse what the Palestinian Arabs have done to the Israelis; representing them as victims of the Israelis they have so viciously attacked; and demonising the Israelis with murderous falsehoods for the apparent crime of defending themselves against this genocidal onslaught.

Now we can see the monstrosity of the way the Biden administration bullied and blackmailed Israel into allowing Hamas to survive.

Now we can see the moral depravity of all those in the west — including Biden, Sir Keir Starmer and other western politicians, NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, and the wretched prelates of the Church of England — who have accused Israel of causing starvation in Gaza. The Gazan mobs who menaced the terrified Israeli hostages as they were released were well fed, plump, even obese; it’s the Israeli hostages who have been deliberately and murderously starved — by the people who have been promoted as victims by the west’s Israel-bashers.

This moral bankruptcy towards Israel is nothing new. It has characterised the so-called civilised world for almost a century. The Arabs of pre-Israel Palestine should have been dispersed after 1948 when their side lost the war of extermination that was mounted to destroy at its rebirth the fledgling State of Israel.

Instead, those Arabs were fashioned into a weapon against Israel’s existence by being turned preposterously into permanent refugees. The entirely spurious claim of a Palestinian national identity was cooked up in the 1960s between the terrorist leader Yassir Arafat and the Soviet Union as a strategy to destroy the Jews’ homeland, steal from them their own history in the land and re-label it “Palestinian” history, and fry the brains of the west in order to undermine it and soften it up for its destruction. That strategy has been carried out to the letter.

And the west, led by Britain from the 1930s onwards, has consistently rewarded and incentivised mass murder against the Jews while upending international law by promising those waging this genocidal war a part of the Jews’ own historic and legally pledged homeland as the route to “peace” in the Middle East.

The only moral course of action, the only way this century-old war to exterminate the Jewish homeland will be brought to an end in a just way, is to say to the Palestinian Arabs that it’s all over. They will never get a state; they don’t deserve a state; they never wanted a state, other than as a springboard to destroy Israel; and if they persist in their aim to destroy Israel and kill Jews, they will be treated henceforth as pariahs.

And so should all who support them be treated. The obscene Palestinian cause is worn as the badge of conscience by the west’s progressive classes. That illustrates instead their repudiation of conscience. The Palestinian cause has destroyed the moral compass of the west.

If Trump’s musings about a “Gaza Riviera” signal an equivalent strategy towards the Palestinian cause as a whole, he won’t just reshape the Middle East in a way that will bring it peace and justice. He will start to haul the west out of the moral abyss into which it has fallen.

Western Media turns October 7 grief into anti-Israel propaganda

This dehumanizing phenomenon needs to be viewed within the context of a larger narrative that seeks to paint Israelis as uniquely malicious and violent actors on the global stage. Whereas other countries conduct military operations, Israel does “bloodletting,” notes Brendan O’Neill in his book, After the Pogrom.

This language is common. Other nations respond to threats; Israel carries out “state-sponsored terrorism.” Other countries inevitably cause civilian casualties; Israel wages “war on children.” Other countries eliminate terrorists; Israel carries out “wanton assassinations of [...] activists.” Other countries go to war; Israel commits “genocide.”And while other nations mourn their collective tragedies, Israelis use their own tragedies as a weapon.

After the 9/11 attacks, America was gripped by national trauma, grief, and unity. The names and faces of many victims became ingrained in the national consciousness. Survivors’ testimonies were recorded, documentaries were made, and public commemorations were held.

While the US government certainly used 9/11 to justify policy decisions – some controversial – it would be obscene to claim that America’s collective grief was an insincere, orchestrated effort to push a war agenda. The sorrow of families who lost loved ones was not a weapon or a “ticking time bomb” set to incite violence – it was a human response to an atrocity.

But in the case of Israelis – and Jews more broadly – the radical anti-Zionist set, and even some mainstream commentators, who engage in a toxic form of victim-blaming, where Jewish suffering is never just suffering – it’s a maneuver, a ploy, a trick. This is part of a much older pattern, a millennia-old cycle of delegitimization, in which Jews are seen as schemers and manipulators.

The same people who tell Israelis they’re weaponizing the Bibas family’s tragedy are the ones who claim Jews weaponize antisemitism, and a subset of them are people who believe a deceitful cabal of Jews control the world. Some things never change.

At the end of his post on X, Fischberger wrote, “Next up: How Jews weaponize their existence.” His quip cut to the heart of it. Denying a group the right to grieve is a violation of a fundamental human right, akin to denying one the right to self-defense, and thus the very right to exist.

Brendan O'Neill: The strange reluctance to see Jews as victims

There was actually something worse than moral indifference following the release of these cadaverous men – there was moral deflection. Anti-Israel activists clogged up social media with images of released Palestinian prisoners. None looked anywhere near as sickly as the three Israelis, yet the message was as clear as it was sinister: ‘Never mind those Jews, look at these Palestinians.’ Like 21st-century Lord Haw-Haws, they endeavour to distract the world’s attention from the crimes of a fascistic army.

The BBC couldn’t resist implying a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. Following the release of the three Israelis, it said there are ‘concerns about the condition of hostages on both sides’. Hostages? It is a scandal that our public broadcaster is referring to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, some of whom are guilty of acts of extreme violence, as ‘hostages’. It later walked back its comments, issuing an on-air correction. CNN, too, seemed incapable of focussing on the shocking condition of the three Israelis. Released Palestinians have also looked ‘emaciated’ and ‘weak’, it rushed to say. You can almost hear the thought process: ‘People are sympathising too much with Israel – quick, dig out an image of Palestinian pain.’

It’s like our opinion-forming classes have an instinctual aversion to empathy for Israelis. It makes them nervous. It threatens to unravel their morally infantile narrative about Israel being the most beastly of states and the Palestinians being the most oppressed of peoples. So they fiercely police public compassion, ensuring that even the dystopic image of Jews starved by sworn Jew-haters is countered by a reminder that Palestinians have a hard time, too. There is a ‘strange reluctance to see Jews as victims’, in the words of Hadley Freeman. Jews, alone among minority groups, are ruthlessly deprived of victim status, in this case to sustain the cultural elites’ self-flattering narrative about problematic Israel and benighted Palestine.

The sick reality is that there are people out there who will have seen those three stricken Jews not as brutalised human beings deserving of our solidarity, but as an unwelcome intrusion into the childish morality tale about Israel-Palestine. As a vexing reminder that things are more complicated than we are told. As stark, gaunt proof of the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas, which were the source of this war that our cultural elites shamelessly blame on Israel. This is how intense Israelophobia has become in influential circles – they are now willing to sacrifice Jews to ideology, to discourage solidarity with wronged, ravaged Israelis in order that their moral narrative might be protected against the impertinence of nuance. In the past, people looked the other way when Jews were dehumanised because they wanted to save their skins – now they do it to save their fake virtue.

We live in an era of the most rank moral inversion. No one doubts that Palestinians in Gaza have suffered enormously as a result of the war started by Hamas. This will include malnutrition, a scourge that has attended every war in history. But time and again, Israel is accused of the very crimes committed against it by Hamas. It is called fascistic, when in truth it was attacked by a neo-fascist army. It is called genocidal, yet it’s Hamas that was founded with the genocidal intention of destroying the world’s only Jewish nation. It is accused of intentionally starving Palestinians by a terror group that intentionally starved Jews. Tell us what you accuse the Jewish State of, and we’ll tell you what you are guilty of.

02/10 Links Pt1: The Chilling Implications of Hamas’s Suspension of Hostage Releases; The strange reluctance to see Jews as victims; PA to drop pay-for-slay … if US repeals Taylor Force Act

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Chilling Implications of Hamas’s Suspension of Hostage Releases

Throughout the period of the current cease-fire, Hamas has been systematically dismantling its own side’s propaganda. The claim of Israeli “genocide” was always false, but Gaza officials acknowledging that the enclave’s population increased during the war, and that Israeli bombs were mostly dropped on uninhabited neighborhoods, and that Hamas had been using hospitals and humanitarian zones as active war bases made it clear that Israel’s defenders were telling the truth and Hamas’s fans were lying all along.

Then on Saturday Hamas released a propaganda video showing its men keeping Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami in a claustrophobic, airless underground cell. We’ve seen Hamasniks driving a fleet of well-maintained vehicles through Gaza and past its gleaming buildings.

At the release ceremony itself, the viewing public was treated to watching well-fed Gazans taking selfies while the gaunt hostages could barely stand. We had already known that Israel had allowed into Gaza enough food for each Palestinian to have 3,000 calories per day. But now we were seeing proof that full-bellied Gazans had been spending the war guarding starving Israeli hostages.

Every claim made against Israel was projection. Hamas had been doing all the things it accused Israel of, accusations that the media gleefully echoed like pet-shop parrots.

And so there was a collective gasp from the world, and a backlash. A gentle backlash, but a backlash nonetheless. Hamas’s co-conspirators in governments and NGOs and news organizations around the world were exposed to their own reflections, and they recoiled.

So how can Hamas release the next round of captives in five days without building on the backlash? Well, it can release non-tortured, non-starving hostages—if it has anyone who meets that description in its dungeons.

There is also the fact that the cease-fire deal had one key strategic advantage for Hamas baked in: Israeli troops were agreeing to withdraw from the Netzarim Corridor, a military road that bisected the enclave and enabled the IDF to protect some parts of Gaza from Hamas’s return to full strength. On Monday, Israel reportedly withdrew from the corridor.

Israel still has plenty of incentive to hold up its end of the deal—especially now that we know the hostages are clinging to life in Hamas’s torture cells. But what is Hamas’s incentive? If the IDF is out of the Netzarim Corridor, Hamas has been handed back the Gaza Strip. Hamas may decide it has more to lose than to gain from continuing to release hostages.

Perhaps this is the end of the cease-fire, perhaps not. But there’s no going back to a time when one could pretend Israel was the villain here.

Heidi Bachram: Colours of rage

The three men had lost half their body weight. They were starved. Hung up by their legs. Chained. One only walked for the first time on the day he was released. He had to learn how to use his feet again. They were strangled, beaten, burned. The hostages were supposed to be the terrorist’s grand plan, their prize assets. Yet they treated them with malice and brutishness. Part of the strategy with the men could have been to weaken and humiliate them deliberately as psychological warfare. To show well-fed gun-wielding Palestinian terrorists in contrast to frail and thin Israelis. All it did was expose the lie of famine and reveal who was actually starving in Gaza.

Hamas is always speaking to many different audiences, often with opposite messaging. To Arab countries a show of strength and intimidation. To the West an exploitation of sympathy. To Gazans a signal of dominance. The releases have been challenging to satisfy all those needs and Hamas finally succeeded in displaying for the West the true psychopathic nature of their organisation. In a way they could not ignore. Though some still are determined to look away and continue the narrative of victimhood. It is becoming more difficult with every abused innocent.

The shock of seeing Jews so skeletal immediately evoked those haunted images of survivors in concentration camps. We just saw the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. A camp that my husband Adam’s great grandparents were murdered in. To pause for one second on the thought of his cousin Tsachi being subjected to the tortures that the released hostages endured is to walk on emotional shards of glass. My jaw clamps and my body starts to shake. I have cried enough tears of sorrow and fury. There is only white, red and black rage now.

For those monsters in green.

When Hamas hands back coffins, will there still be crowds and celebrations?

The group has prided itself on turning hostage releases into a media spectacle, complete with orchestrated crowds and celebratory fanfare. But will those same crowds gather when the bodies of hostages, starved or tortured to death, are returned? Will there be certificates of release for the lifeless remains of a Holocaust survivor who survived the Nazis only to perish in Gaza?

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued an urgent call for action following Hamas’s announcement, demanding "swift assistance in finding an immediate and effective solution to restore the implementation of the deal."

The forum warned: “The hostages are out of time, and they all must be rescued from this nightmare urgently.”

Hamas's latest move should serve as a wake-up call. If this is how it behaves when the world is watching—stalling, posturing, and feigning moral outrage at supposed Israeli violations—then what horrors remain unseen? The terrorists claim that Israel is not fulfilling its end of the agreement, but it’s Hamas that has already shattered every basic standard of decency by taking civilians hostage in the first place.

One Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post that, in his view, Hamas did not attempt to sabotage the deal in its latest statement. Another dismissed the terror group’s claims as “fake,” suggesting that Hamas is attempting to reignite the conversation over a second phase of negotiations.

The images of the hostages this past weekend should have put an end to any illusions about their treatment in captivity. Now, the real question is this: When Hamas is done toying with its prisoners, when its propaganda machine can no longer extract value from them, will the world still watch in silence when the final "exchanges" are not hostages but corpses?

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports that the PLO will stop what is popularly known as "pay for slay," where terrorists and their families get paid by the PLO. Prisoners get salaries, they get do-nothing jobs when they are released, and those killed trying to murder Jews have their families paid.

The announcement says:

President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, issued a decree law revoking the articles contained in the laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded, in the Prisoners' Law and the regulations issued by the Council of Ministers and the Palestine Liberation Organizations.

Under the decree law, the computerized cash assistance program, its database, and its financial, local, and international allocations will be transferred from the Ministry of Social Development to the Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment.

Under these amendments:
1) All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation, and regulations are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs, in accordance with the standards of comprehensiveness and justice, the conditions of which apply to all families in need of assistance in Palestinian society.

2) Under this amendment, the powers of all protection and social welfare programs in Palestine have been transferred to the Palestinian Economic Empowerment Foundation, which will assume the responsibilities of providing protection and social care programs to all Palestinian families in need of assistance and beneficiaries without discrimination.

The Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Foundation has an independent legal personality managed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the President. It operates in accordance with its law, tasks and transparent working mechanisms and is subject to administrative and financial oversight standards, including oversight by international institutions, to ensure transparency of procedures and fair distribution.

Accordingly, the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Foundation will seek to mobilize all possible funds, grants and allocations for the various categories of our people, especially in light of the significant increase in the number of families in need of social welfare, support and empowerment after the war on Gaza and the West Bank, in a way that contributes to improving the living conditions of our people, similar to the various social welfare systems adopted by different countries of the world that have strong and institutionalized social care systems.

The PLO always called pay for slay a social welfare program. Now they are saying that they will support all needy families.

Will families of terrorists who are well-to-do no longer receive stipends? I find that hard to believe.

It is hard to know whether this is a major deception, as the PLO has done in the past - by transferring the payments from the PA to the PLO, for example - or whether it is legitimate. The Jerusalem Post says "This comes amid news that, on February, US courts will impose heavy fines - of about $200-300 million - on the Palestinian Authority – following lawsuits filed by families of terror victims. The PA is reportedly worried that this will lead to a financial crisis."

Right now Israel is withholding funds meant for the PA equivalent to the amount they pay terrorists and their families. It will be interesting to see if Israel loosens this up - and if so, whether it will pay the amount it already withheld that has already been paid to terrorists.

One piece of evidence that this is legit comes from the criticism from the terror groups. Islamic Jihad says, "The decision to stop the prisoners’ allowances, especially at a time when the resistance forces are recording a victory over the enemy by imposing an honorable prisoner exchange, is an attempt to weaken the morale of our people and a betrayal of the prisoners who are giving years of their lives steadfastly behind bars, and a punishment of the Palestinian people for their adherence to their legitimate right to resist and to cling to their land and rights."

The PA reportedly asked the US to cancel the Taylor Force Act as a result of this change, which blocks aid from the US to the Palestinian Authority as long as pay for slay exists.

In the past, Abbas indicated that he would never, ever abandon pay for slay. He said in 2018, “Even if we have only a penny left, we will give it to the martyrs, the prisoners and their families,” and he reiterated that position a number of times since.

Would this have happened under the Biden administration? It seems unlikely although the US court decision holding the PA financially responsible for the 2001 Sbarro bombing happened after the election, so who knows.

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One of the fascinating things about Donald Trump is that he can, and does, change the conversation with his way-out-there ideas and musings. Things that have been excluded from public discourse become ideas to be talked about, even if it is only to treat them dismissively.

Trump's moves to close USAID might have a ripple effect on similar development agencies in Europe.

Hundreds of millions that have flowed readily to anti-Israel NGOs might start to be questioned by citizens of Western Europe who are concerned about what their own taxes are paying for, and if the recipients align with their own national interest.

The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spends about $2 billion annually on NGOs. A roughly similar amount is spent by Germany's Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). France, Sweden and Canada also give a lot of money to international NGOs.

USAID was the 900 pound gorilla for international development aid, giving over $25 billion a year to NGOs, about 60% of its total outlay. NGO Monitor identifies some of the grantees and sub-grantees, such as:

Palestinian NGO Juzoor for Health and Social Development received millions of dollars as a sub-grantee on USAID-funded projects during the period reviewed in the GAO audit. Both prior to and during the grant period, Juzoor ran a program that arranged meetings between teenagers and convicted Palestinian terrorists; in addition, its staff members glorified violence against Israelis.

Cutting so many programs at once carries some risks, but there is really no way to streamline and fix their existing problems otherwise. The question is how many other countries will now consider doing something similar?

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Last Thursday, Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian promised to enter into a dialogue with the West on Iran's nuclear facilities. On Saturday, Donald Trump said he would prefer to make a deal with Iran rather than “bombing the hell out of it.”

But on Sunday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamanei quashed that idea, saying negotiations with America “are not intelligent, wise or honorable” after President Trump floated the idea.

By itself this story wouldn't be important. Khamanei has blown hot and cold on the topic for years.

But the concerning part is what The Telegraph reported Saturday:

Iran’s supreme leader must revoke a fatwa banning the development of nuclear weapons if the regime is to survive, his top military commanders have said.

In an extraordinary intervention by leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was told that Iran must have nuclear weapons to face down “existential threats” from the West.

The Telegraph can reveal that several senior commanders have U-turned in recent months, since the election of Donald Trump, and are now pressing for the development of an atomic bomb.

An Iranian official told The Telegraph from Tehran, the capital: “The leader has forbidden negotiations with the Americans and the development of nuclear weapons, which seem to be the only ways for survival [of the regime], and he’s driving the regime toward collapse.”

“We have been just a few button presses away from building a nuclear weapon for some time now, but the pressures and justifications for having one are greater than ever.

“The existential threat we now face has led several senior commanders – who previously insisted on following the supreme leader’s guidance – to push for making an atomic weapon.”

Notice that the idea that Iran should abandon its nuclear weapons and uranium refinement program to stop Trump's sanctions is not even considered.

There is brinksmanship going on here, and it is a high stakes game. But the real difference is whether Iran's development of nuclear weapons is public or clandestine, as it has been. Israel's bombing of the secret nuclear research site in Parchin in October proves that.

Incidentally, I had missed this story but Mohammad Javad Zarif, former Iranian foreign minister, admitted that Israel had placed explosives in nuclear refinement materials that Iran had purchased. In the aftermath of the supply-side pager attack:

“This is part of the damage of sanctions, that you are forced to receive (purchases) through multiple dealers instead of buying from a factory directly,” Zarif said. “If the Zionist regime can infiltrate one of the dealers, then it can do anything and install anything.”

He added: “For instance, our friends at the Atomic Energy Organization (of Iran) had purchased a platform for centrifuges in which (the Israelis) had installed explosive material.”

Cool!

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