Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

12/11 Links Pt1: Israel Chose, and the World Changed; How Israel Went From Disaster to Victory; Hamas hands hostage list to Egypt; What the Melbourne synagogue attack shows us about antisemitism in the diaspora

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Israel Chose, and the World Changed

The great delusion of post-Marx history is that change results from vast impersonal forces rather than the workings of individual human actions and unforeseen circumstances. What history records is the way free will and sheer contingency gum up the works of the Great Machine of Progress.

Would there have been an Arab Spring without a fruit vendor in Tunisia setting himself on fire in 2010? What if Derek Chauvin had taken the day off on June 20, 2020? What if there had been a blizzard on January 6, 2021?

And…what if Yahya Sinwar had hit his head on a pipe in a tunnel on October 6, been concussed, and hadn’t given the order to move on the kibbutzim and the Nova festival on October 7? Had he hit his head, would we be living in a world today in which Hamas has been all but destroyed, in which Hezbollah has been literally and perhaps fatally crippled, in which Iranian strikes against Israel have led to the mullahs losing their air defenses while steeling themselves for the loss of their nuclear program—and with the Assads gone from power in Syria after 53 years of ghoulish evil the likes of which the world has rarely ever witnessed?

All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

You could argue that a war conducted by Israel to destroy Hamas was always in the cards, just as the Israelis demonstrated they had thought the same with Hezbollah, since, beginning in 2015, they planned to destroy the Iranian catamite army by creating a shell import-export company that specialized in communications devices—and then laid in wait to activate the plan.

The war happened, though, because Sinwar made it happen. It was different north of Israel. The Jewish state chose the time, manner, and place of the pager detonation. They chose. It didn’t just happen. Impersonal forces didn’t move the levers in Gaza or in Lebanon. Leaders did.

Now, why Israel waited as the country’s north was depopulated and the financial, logistical, and psychological costs of that depopulation mounted will be matters of controversy there for the coming generation. Clearly its leaders believed they had to deal with Sinwar’s unprecedented blow first. And clearly they were managing world opinion, which is to say American opinion.

Israel knew it needed to win the war with Hamas, and that there was no way to conclude the war with Hamas without turning north and taking out Hezbollah. And I think Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet (as much as they all hated and hate each other) knew that the United States under Joe Biden simply did not want Israel to win. Biden and Co. may have wanted Israel to prevail in some fashion—but not if it was going to be too much of a pain in the Democratic Party’s ass.

Jake Wallis Simons: With Assad gone, now is the time to bomb Iran’s nukes

The other day, an Israeli intelligence officer who shares information with British agencies in London told me about her work. “Iran is the big focus for us. But for the British, it is maybe third on their priority list,” she said.

Fair enough. Tehran may be a grave threat to Britain but due to its apocalyptic obsession with Jerusalem, it poses a far greater danger to Israel. Despite the differences in priorities, however, the Britain-Israel intelligence collaboration has long been very fruitful.

In 2015, for instance, a tip-off from Mossad led British police to uncover a Hezbollah bomb factory in northwest London with three tons of ammonium nitrate hidden in disposable ice packs. And as we saw this week, when it comes to the threat of nuclear weapons, the London-Jerusalem relationship has proven priceless.

When I visited him at his home a few years ago, Ram Ben-Barak, the former deputy director of Mossad, told me that in the early-2000s, British spies had alerted Mossad to rumours about a nuclear programme in Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

MI6 didn’t take the reports particularly seriously, he said. Mossad, however, viewed even a slim chance as a great danger and investigated the matter urgently. Thank God they did. On September 6, 2007 the Ehud Olmert government ordered the bombing of Bashar al-Assad’s nuclear programme.

At the time, many voices, both domestic and international, opposed the attack due to fears of escalation and instability. Even George W Bush – hardly a shrinking violet when it came to military action – refused to give it his blessing. Undeterred, Olmert and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, elected to go it alone.

Now that the contemptible Assad regime has collapsed, that decision looks especially shrewd. If Assad’s nukes hadn’t been destroyed by Israeli jets 17 years ago, Abu Mohammad al Jolani, the obscure 42-year-old terror chief who seized power in Syria last weekend, might well have found himself in control of them today.

It doesn’t bear thinking about. This is a man who took up the cause of jihad after being radicalised by the Second Intifada. This is a man who is literally named after the Golan Heights. Would he have been able to resist placing Tel Aviv in the nuclear crosshairs and pulling the trigger?

‘Opportunity’ to weaken Iran amid Syrian regime collapse, national security experts say

Bashar Assad’s rapid fall as president of Syria offers Israel and the United States a chance to bolster their regional security interests, experts said on Monday during a Jewish Institute for National Security of America online event.

“The Israelis don’t know what’s coming next—whether the next Syrian government will be hostile, and they want it to be as weak as possible, so they are actively targeting the Syrian military,” said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor.

“What’s critical from the American national security point of view is that Syria not become a terrorist state along the lines of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, and that Syria no longer continues to be a highway of support for Hezbollah,” Abrams.

Israel has been using its air force to target chemical weapons stockpiles in recent days—“something they never could have done when there was an existing Syrian state because it would have been taken to be an act of war,” Abrams said.

“There are significant American interests in the region and now with this opportunity to destroy weaponry, Russia is losing out on its bases in the Mediterranean and this will weaken President Vladimir Putin,” he said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at JINSA’s Center for Defense and Strategy, also addressed the online event. The incoming Trump administration won’t want to spend political capital intervening in Syria, he said.

“The president is making declarations about U.S. policy and meeting with foreign leaders, so we’re in this odd situation where it’s not exactly clear what U.S. policy is at a time of enormous opportunity to further weaken our worst adversaries in the region and establish a less threatening Syria,” Hannah said.

“I hope somehow we can get our act together with the Israelis to figure out what to do, because we may not have another opportunity to achieve the most important national security imperative for the United States, preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state,” he added.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Trust me on this, the Baby Jesus was not wrapped in a keffiyeh at birth, and not at any other time either. Even Arabs wore turbans—not keffiyehs—until at least the early 18^th century. And Jesus was not an Arab but a Jew.

Why, then, is there a nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square featuring a wooden Baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh?

I thought someone had done this as a joke.
It’s not a joke.

Pope Francis inaugurates nativity scene in Vatican showing ‘baby Jesus’ on a keffiyeh. pic.twitter.com/e1858jdOCB
— Luana Fabri (@LuanaGoriss) December 10, 2024

One might put the anachronistic keffiyeh “swaddling” of the Baby Jesus down to artistic license. But “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024” by Bethlehem artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, has nothing to do with art. The crèche is merely antisemitic propaganda dressed up fancy in olive wood, mother-of-pearl, stone, ceramic, glass, felt, and fabric.

At the unveiling of this “artwork,” the pope said its presence is meant to remind us of those who “suffer the tragedy of war in the Holy Land." But we know who he means. The pope means that ARABS are suffering, because, oh look! Here is Baby Jesus in a keffiyeh.

This is, after all, the same pope who suggested a global effort be made to determine whether Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza—the same pope who called Israel’s actions in Lebanon as going “beyond morality.” The same Pope Francis who never once mentioned Hamas by name.

This all calls to mind a boring dinner I attended last week during which a fellow diner expounded at length in an annoying way as if only he were knowledgeable enough to weigh in on that particular topic. I made my excuse, and as I walked away, a word came to mind, pontificate. That’s what the annoying fellow diner had been doing. Pontificating.

An interesting word, I thought, no doubt derived from the word pontiff. The dictionary confirmed this for me, adding that the word comes from the Latin pontifex, or high priest. I gasped a little when I read that, though I’d long understood the significance of the ornate papal garments. It still felt like a terrible affront—a “borrowing” of a core concept in Judaism in service of an ideology proscribed by the Torah.

The artwork titled “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024” represents, in a similar vein, a form of appropriation—an appropriation of Jesus to support a false narrative that casts him not as a Jew, but as an Arab. The viewer is presented with a distorted perspective, hearing nothing about the actual crucifixions of Jews on October 7 or the ongoing plight of hostages. There’s no mention of how many lives in Gaza could have been spared had the hostages been released, nor is there a single word about Hamas. All of this is deliberately kept from public scrutiny, seemingly with the blessing of the pope.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The more anti-Israel protests, the more antisemitism

We've all seen how the number of antisemitic incidents in the US has exploded since October 7 2023. Not too many people are pointing out the biggest correlation.

ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data has detailed databases of violent incidents worldwide - but it also includes non-violent protests.

Here are the number of anti-Israel protests I was able to see in its dataset.

It is not complete since I was only searching on "actor" groups that are exclusively anti-Israel. So, for example, any protests organized by the communist ANSWER were not counted, and I know I missed some anti-Israel groups in its large database.

When you break them down by quarter, you can see that the number of protests have been generally going down since the huge spike in October 2023.

The number of antisemitic incidents has likewise gone down this year compared to last, according to the ADL:

That's a pretty high correlation between "anti-Zionism" and antisemitism.

Everyone knows this. Few want to say it out loud.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Book review of my new cartoon book "He's an Anti-Zionist, Too!" (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos, to be published in The Jewish Press

When I wrote a review in 2022 of Elder of Ziyon's first book Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism, I noted that beyond his clarity and conciseness in debunking anti-Israel claims, there was an element of innovation in his blog.

Anyone familiar with Elder of Ziyon's earlier articles is familiar with his "Apartheid" posters, debunking claims of Israeli apartheid by revealing the wide acceptance of Arabs in the Israeli army, judiciary, and news programs as well as across the spectrum of Israeli society. Before that, Elder of Ziyon often quoted old articles from the original Palestine Post (which later became the Jerusalem Post) to refute anti-Israel claims. He also searched through online Arabic websites and uncovered stories no one else was reporting, such as when he revealed that on their website, Hanan Ashrawi's group Independent Commission for Human Rights (Miftah) claimed that the Passover blood libels were actually true.

To defend Israel, we need to approach the lies and the hate from new and different angles.

Now, Elder of Ziyon has been adding his own political cartoons to his blog to make his point. This month, he is coming out with a collection of those cartoons. He explains in the introduction to his new book, He's An Anti-Zionist Too!:

Let’s face it, in today’s world people want bite-sized information. Anything longer than a couple of paragraphs is only read by us old fogies.

He points out that in addition to being more concise than articles, another advantage of cartoons is their ability to ridicule their targets.

Many of the cartoons are re-drawings of the original copyrighted cartoons, others are taken from public domain comic books, and for the last couple of years, Elder of Ziyon has been using AI tools.

Elder of Ziyon's cartoons lampoon a variety of targets:

o Antizionism/antisemitism o BDS
o  College Protests
o  Democratic Party
o  European Union
o  Human Rights Groups
o  Iran Deal
o  J Street
o  Jewish Progressives
o  Jewish Voice for Peace
o  Media Bias
o  United Nations

There are 2 basic styles of political cartoons. One relies on visual metaphors and caricatures. Think of Thomas Nast, the famous political cartoonist who originated the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party and the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party.

Nast's cartoons were instrumental in the arrest and conviction of Boss Tweed.

The other cartoon style gets its point across with the addition of text. Think of Yaakov Kirschen's Dry Bones.

Elder of Ziyon's cartoons use text, not metaphor, to make his point. They are reminiscent of Ami Horowitz's films, showing up and mocking the worldview and claims of Israel's adversaries themselves.

An article on the history of editorial cartoons notes that political cartoons "have the power to deflate hubris, uncover deceit, incite revolution, dethrone a bully."

And Elder of Ziyon is just getting started.

(Link to the book on Amazon)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Nazis blocking Jews from entering the University of Vienna, 1938

Analogies are always tricky. Comparing today's university environment with the situation in German universities in the 1930s and 1940s usually sound more like an application of Godwin's Law rather than serious analysis.

The obvious differences are that today's political orthodoxy in academia is not driven by a ruthless dictatorship and there is relatively little fear (today) of physical harm to those who disagree with that orthodoxy.

But when students and professors are bullied into holding opinions that are not supportable by scholarship, when entire academic fields and research have been subverted, and when hiring practices discriminate against people who hold different opinions or are Jewish - this part of the analogy between Nazi Germany and academia today is way too accurate.

I came across a three part article written in the October 22 through November 5, 1944 Department of State Bulletin titled "Education in Germany Under the National Socialist Regime" by Leon W. Fuller, a State Department specialist.

While not everything applies today, way too much of it sounds sickeningly familiar.

That National Socialism is an attack upon the Western heritage is now a generally accepted truism, nowhere more applicable than in the field of education. Before considering this basic antagonism the underlying premises of Nazi educational theory may be noted. To the Nazis the individual is a myth, having no separate existence apart from the "total collective- personality" of which he is a member. This larger, all-comprehending corporate personality is the Volk, a spiritual-historical being, the ideal form, mold, or type for all its members. It is immutable and eternal, the reality which endures and transcends ephemeral circumstance, always embodying the ideality and objectives of personal, group, and national life. Thus educational objectives cannot be devised or formulated for preconceived ends-they are predestined by the nature of the Volk and must be discovered. Personality is a derivative of race and cannot be fashioned arbitrarily, nor can it evolve autonomously in accordance with its own laws. ...There is no place for free, that is arbitrary and unmotivated, cultivation of the mind; "abstract life-strange theories" are to be avoided. ... An ethno-cultural determinism must rule all educational procedures.

Today's DEI race theories that white people are inherently racist and evil is the mirror image of Nazi ideas that non-Aryans are inherently immoral and biologically inferior. There is no recourse for the people who are born with the wrong colored skin. Free will does not exist.

[To Nazis,] Race is the natural form which differentiates life, a primal unity of living substance expressing itself in body, spirit, and soul, the basic reality which gives meaning to all knowledge. Humanity is a myth-there are only racial types. Education, then, cannot develop man but can only elicit responses characteristic of a racial group. Blood has symbolic significance it is the source of the spirit of a race and transmits the ancestral heritage.

The German word Volk is untranslatable as "folk" or "people. " It implies the organic union of a racially determined community in a collective personality embracing generations past, present, and to come. Hence it is eternal, immutable-as fixed as a Platonic type or form.

The Volk is a communion as well as a community, a fellowship of faith and feeling. The lone thinker easily becomes divorced from his community and no longer shares its intuitive grasp upon vital truths.

Is there really much of a difference between the Nazi embrace of "volk" and the current fetishization of "indigeneity" and "BIPOC"? People viewed as people of color or indigenous are pure and everyone else is a colonialist cancer that cannot contribute to society - and whose previous and current contributions are suspect and to be minimized or ignored.

The Relativity of Truth. Nazi theory denies the existence of a positivist system resting on truths of universal validity.

National Socialist reforms in the field of higher learning can be understood only in the light of the Nazi attitude toward science and research-an attitude which springs inevitably from the ethnocentric nature of the premises underlying all National Socialist thinking. It attacks first the detachment of the scientist. "Scientific objectivity", asserts a German educational journal, "is only one of the many errors of liberalism. The liberal man is only an artificial construction. He does not exist in reality ; there are only men who belong to a nation and to a specific race. "

Which sounds a lot like factual relativism.

And then we get to how Jews were treated in German universities, which sure sounds like how Zionists are treated in Western universities today. Not by law - but by consensus, which is in many ways worse.

Under the Civil Service Law of April 7, 1933 , members of the teaching staffs of the universities and other collegiate institutions might be summarily removed for "non-Aryan" origin, unsatisfactory political records or views, membership in "subversive" organizations, or on grounds of administrative necessity. By May 4, according to reports in the German press, about 200 teachers had been dismissed, mostly because of their Jewish origin or liberal views. This number included former ministers of state, world- famous scientists, historians, jurists, and two Nobel prize-winners. ...

The position of the college or university teacher in Germany has become one of complete subordination to the regime. Incessant pressure is put upon him to participate in party functions ( which, incidentally, monopolize much of the time and energy of his students) , to subscribe for the official journals, to lecture at Land-Year camps and SA gatherings, to favor students who miss work because of party activity, and to refrain from making complaints except through official channels. He may be disciplined in innumerable and vexatious ways. His lectures may be canceled if they conflict with party functions. He may not travel abroad without official permission. His favorite seminar may be abolished. He may be transferred as a disciplinary measure.

Again, the analogy is not complete. Discrimination against Jews today is more in not hiring them to begin with than in firing or demoting them. But at a graduate school level, Zionists and Jews are feeling this discrimination and pressure to adhere to the politics of the progressives - or else.

Just like then, students are encouraged to skip classes for "party activity" - anti-Israel protests.

The curriculum in German colleges and universities has been modified mainly in two directions-greater stress on Rassenkunde (race science)...New chairs have been established in such fields as peasant lore, race science, defense physics, and folk problems. ....Extreme political orientation tends to undermine speculative science. ....The social studies and the humanities are completely dominated by race science, in which subject the University of Berlin alone offers 30 seminars. Nazi mathematicians have founded a new journal, Deutsche Mathematik, to deal with their subject along racial lines. The party has financed at Frankfurt an Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question , designed as the first division of a Nazi high academy as a center of scientific study from the point of view of race.

Race math sounds a lot like "woke math."

The Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question sounds a lot like the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

The entire enterprise sounds like what the current situation is in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies,

Postcolonial Studies, much of anthropology and sociology. Today, many academic fields suffer from a form of intellectual authoritarianism where questioning becomes tantamount to heresy, undermining the fundamental purpose of academic research: critical, evidence-based inquiry.

Boycotting Israeli universities and protesting Jewish institutions on campus mimics what the Nazis did at their own institutions. Jews and Zionists face cancellation of invitations to joint conferences, rejection of articles for publication, the rejection of grants, the inability to hold joint projects with Israeli colleagues.

Today's antisemitic "woke" are also working overtime to spread their anti-scientific, antisemitic theories in more and more areas. I recently wrote about an upcoming edition of "The Journal of Architectural Education" that literally celebrates the murder and rape of Jews under an academic veneer.

This is no different, and no less immoral, than what the Nazis did to turn every academic field into a cesspool of racism and Jew-hatred.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Iranian officials after Axis of Resistance collapse: "We remain strong. Really! We are! We promise! Even stronger! Why don't you believe us?"

Current and former Iranian officials are trying so hard to say that they remain strong that they are undercutting their own message with their eagerness.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said, "We have not been weakened and Iran's power has not diminished." The Supreme Leader's representative to the IRGC said, "Don't worry about the situation and know that we have had many ups and downs; but despite this, our situation on the resistance front has not changed at all." The former commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, stated: "The Resistance Front will continue its work with strength; although it is possible that problems may arise from time to time, this path will continue with strength and there will be no wavering in the axis of resistance."

The Ayatollah Khamenei himself echoed the "we are strong" theme in his speech this morning, where he said:

I tell you that by the grace and power of God, the scope of resistance will encompass the entire region more than in the past.
This is the resistance, this is the resistance front: the more pressure you apply, the stronger it becomes, the more crimes you commit, the more motivated it becomes. The more you fight them, the wider it becomes, and I tell you, with the power of God, the scope of resistance will encompass the entire region more than ever before.
Ignorant analysts, unaware of the meaning of resistance, imagine that when resistance weakens, Islamic Iran will also weaken. I say that by the will of God, by the will of God Almighty, Iran is strong and powerful and will become even more powerful.

Those who are truly strong don't have to tell people they are strong every five minutes.

Behind the pretense of strength is chaos at the IRGC, as The Telegraph reports:

A furious blame game is unfolding among Iran’s armed forces over the fall of Bashar al-Assad, The Telegraph has learned.

Officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said commanders of the elite military force were blaming each other “in angry terms” for the collapse of Assad’s regime and the loss of Iranian influence in the region.

“The atmosphere is like something between almost punching each other, punching the walls, yelling at each other and kicking rubbish bins. They are blaming each other, and no one is taking responsibility,” one official from Tehran told The Telegraph.

Iran spent billions of dollars propping up Assad’s regime after intervening in the Syrian civil war in the mid-2010s.....

But the loss of Syria could be fatal because it was the main route for supplying Hezbollah, whose arsenal in southern Lebanon had projected Iranian military power directly to the border of Israel.

“You need someone there to send arms to [but] they are either getting killed or escaping. Now the focus is on how to move forward from this impasse,” a second IRGC official told The Telegraph.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/10 Links Pt2: Why do the Left march against Israel but not Russia, Iran’s mullahs, or the Taliban?; Why young British Jews are leaving for Israel; Death to Jews': SJP Leaders Home had Guns, Ammo, and Terrorist Flags

From Ian:

UN Watchdog Calls for Resignation of Top UN Human Rights Official After Investigation Produces Damning Report of Turning Blind Eye to Human Rights Abuses

A UN watchdog group has called for the United Nations’ top human rights official to resign by January 1st, after an investigation yielded damning examples of the “High Commissioner” placing political considerations before blatant abuses of human rights across the globe.

According to a new UN Watch report, , “Blind Eye to Dictatorships,” High Commissioner Volker Türk stayed “silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights” in countries known to commit heinous human rights abuses. The report reviewed and tallied statements initiated by Mr. Türk during his tenure of from October 2022 through October 2024.

Key findings of the report include:

• UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the United States more than the combined total of his condemnations of China, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

• Türk for the past two years was completely silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights committed by the regimes of Cuba, North Korea, Algeria, Eritrea, Mauritania, Lebanon, and Qatar. At the same time, he had no trouble criticizing democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and France.

• Even when Türk did criticize some of the most oppressive regimes, he ignored many of their worst offenses. For example, he made only three criticisms of China, yet even in these he never mentioned Beijing’s imprisonment of more than one million Uyghurs in concentration camps.

• Türk was obsessed with condemning Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, making 58 condemnations during the past two years, most on the Hamas-Israel war. To put this in perspective, over the same two years, he criticized the Maduro regime only 4 times. Turk has made more statements on Gaza than the combined total of his statements on Ukraine, Sudan, and Myanmar. To put this in perspective, although the war in Sudan also began in 2023, it has already killed tens of thousands of civilians and has created over 2 million external refugees, which is nearly as many refugees as the entire population of Gaza. Another 7.7 million Sudanese have been left internally displaced.

• Despite his position as the highest independent voice in the UN human rights system, Türk was silent when the UN elected serial abusers like China, Cuba, Qatar, and Eritrea to the Human Rights Council, which now has a membership that is 60 percent non-democracies, and he was silent when the Islamic Republic of Iran was made Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum.

Why do the Left march against Israel but not Russia, Iran’s mullahs, or the Taliban?

Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 invasion put to rest any final worries about the confidence and passion of Gen Z, especially the swathes of it associated with the Left (or the disturbing mishmash of disinformation, false history and identity politics that passes for the left these days). Marches in London “for Palestine” and against Israel regularly number 125,000.

And yet this apparent dedication to the cause of justice in the world is astonishingly narrow. Yes, there’s the preoccupation with the hazily menacing notion of “climate justice”. But on issues where Leftist passion would be truly welcome, and reassuring, it is missing in action. If risking arrest, harassing and creating an intimidating environment for Jews and glorifying terrorism is de rigueur, there seems to be no appetite for doing so on behalf of – to give an example – women in Afghanistan who are ever-more brutalised by the Taliban.

The extending misogynistic sadism of this movement was revived by Joe Biden’s craven decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. When, in August, the Taliban stopped women speaking, singing or showing any skin at all, even on their faces or hands, in public, there was barely a peep from the Left. And last week, there was news of a fresh tightening of an already unbearable screw in Afghanistan – with a ban on women training in midwifery, dentistry and nursing, their sole remaining avenue for education and career. It’s hard to imagine what else there is to destroy in women’s lives, but no doubt the Taliban will think of something.

Add to the list the Muslim Uyghurs in China, of whom one million have been arbitrarily detained in concentration camps, subjected to torture including forced sterilisation, or Sudan’s civil war between two vicious forces, the RSF (Rapid Support Forces, the new name for the militia that carried out the slaughter in Darfur 20 years ago) and the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces), which has left more than 60,000 dead, displaced more than 10 million and is threatening the destruction of 13 million more through famine in what aid organisations call “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.

Then there are the victims of the brutal Russia-backed Assad regime in Syria; victims, especially girls, of Islamist groups in Nigeria; Venezuelans fleeing authoritarian rule, violence and poverty. And what about the innocent civilians in Ukraine bombarded every night by Russian bombs?

The sinister, lethal approach to women, artists and intellectuals in Iran, surely, also ought to garner at least some reaction; some use of megaphones, and some placards paraded through city streets imploring our government to take this threat seriously?

But sadly it seems the streets are all but silent by such activists. Some on the Right speak out, but on the Left, on real questions of right and wrong, passion runs cold and dry. The fate of women the world over trapped in inhumane Islamist regimes, including those of Hamas and Hezbollah, and all the rest of the world’s poor and abused who deserve to be stood up for, or at least remembered, are of no interest.

There are many explanations for this phenomenon – some say it’s to do with disaster fatigue, and the overweening dominance in the media of events in the Middle East and in Ukraine under Russian aggression. Some say it’s to do with confusion over who the bad guy is when the conflict does not involve a friend of America (the friend of America is always the bad guy).

But I think the answer is simpler and darker than those rationalisations suggest. It’s that the cheerleaders for those who mean Israel the darkest harm under the banner of attempting to “free Palestine” – but who remain silent in the face of an emboldened Taliban, genocidal militias, and mass abuse of Uyghurs – actually want the West to be destroyed. Their pattern of passion and frigid silence is not some accident of well-meaning care for the weak. It is intentional, a direct result of a set of ideologies that has soaked through academic and institutional settings.

In their warped world, even the shuttering of a final avenue of life beyond total darkness for women in a country that the West threw to the wolves, but could have saved, simply doesn’t register.

It’s hard not to conclude, then, that those who shout the loudest on behalf of the dispossessed of Palestine are actually engaged in a project of cheerleading for those who want the West, beginning with Israel, to fall.

Congress Probes Pro-Hamas Group Behind Union Station Riot for 'Strong' Ties to CCP

House Republicans are probing the People's Forum—the pro-Hamas social justice organization behind the violent riot at Union Station over the summer—over its "strong" ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Ten Republican members of the House Natural Resources Committee, led by the panel's chairman Bruce Westerman (R., Ark.), outlined how the People's Forum's funding can be traced back to Neville Roy Singham, a well-known socialist businessman with direct ties to China's global propaganda operations, in a letter sent to the New York-based group on Monday.

The letter marks an escalation in the committee's ongoing investigation into the events leading up to and following the July 24 riot at Union Station, where agitators launched human feces at U.S. Park Police officers, burned an American flag, raised a Palestinian flag, and defaced several monuments with graffitied slogans such as "abolish the U.S.A." and "Hamas is coming."

The investigation was launched in the immediate aftermath of the riot and has focused on the individuals and groups responsible for the riot. Lawmakers are now broadening the scope of the investigation, digging into the foreign influences driving those behind the riot.

A 2023 report published by the New York Times revealed how Singham has constructed a shady network of nonprofits headquartered at UPS stores, which send millions of dollars producing and distributing media content parroting Chinese propaganda talking points. At least one of the groups, the Justice and Education Fund, funds, provides services like accounting, and shares personnel with the People's Forum, according to federal tax filings.

Singham's network also funds the media outlets Dongsheng News and BreakThrough Media, both of which provide friendly coverage of Chinese issues—the People's Forum regularly touts content produced by both outlets. In September 2021, the People's Forum posted a video of BreakThrough Media journalist Kei Pritsker stating that "China is not our enemy, China isn't belligerent towards us, China wants peace."

Considering the People's Forum's involvement in the Union Station riot, the revelations raise serious concerns about China's efforts to influence public opinion and sow division in the United States. American intelligence agencies have warned that China engages in information warfare in the United States by, for example, providing financial incentives for academic institutions and nonprofit organizations to bolster positive views of the nation.

"The Committee is concerned with the CCP’s growing attempts to influence U.S. policies and that the relationship between the CCP and the People’s Forum may impact the People’s Forum’s political and advocacy activities, including those relating to the abuse of free speech," Westerman and the other lawmakers wrote to the People's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos.

12/10 Links Pt1: Assad’s Fall Has Humiliated Washington; World Central Kitchen Fires 60 Gaza Workers for Failing Israeli Security Checks

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Assad’s Fall Has Humiliated Washington

The end of Bashar al-Assad's tyranny in Syria was made possible not because President Biden had the foresight to unleash the Jewish state against America's enemies in the Middle East. It's because Israel defied Biden's efforts to restrain it. When Israel took the very steps that have weakened Iran and its proxies, it was greeted by threats and disapproval from Washington.

Biden's approach has been to prevent regional escalation. That may sound sensible on the surface, but it has meant trying to limit Israel's war to a purely defensive one against Iran's proxies - one at a time - while preventing Israel from taking the fight to Iran, the patron of those proxies. It goes back to President Obama's policy of respecting Iran's regional ambitions.

It turns out that another regional power - Israel - was able to extinguish much of Iran's vaunted "ring of fire," despite the warnings, arm-twisting, and weapon-shipment delays from the Biden administration. The Israelis did not have to "share" the region with a regime intent on dominating it.

While the Washington foreign policy establishment had persuaded itself of the futility of fighting a regime dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel could not afford that illusion. It demonstrated the fragility of Iran's imperium and the delusions about that imperium.

Seth Mandel: The Wages of Peace with Israel

If you had the opportunity to start a new Middle East state from scratch, would you rather it be at peace with Israel or at war with Israel?

I genuinely wish regional leaders would ask themselves this question once in a while. And the fall of the house of Assad is a great time to do so.

Israel’s offer of peace has been on the table to all comers from the start. If you want peace with the Jewish state, you can have it. Should you take the offer?

If the citizens of your state are of any concern to you, it’s pretty obvious you should take the deal.

Israel borders Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. In recent weeks and months, we have watched Lebanon continue its long history of abridged sovereignty and political decay. The Iranian/Hezbollah statelet in South Lebanon persists, though in a weakened state. That occupation exists to regularly plunge the country into war with Israel. Before the area was Hezbollah’s playground, it was the mini-state of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which instigated two types of armed conflict: war with Israel and civil war within Lebanon. After Israel ousted the PLO from southern Lebanon in 1982, Syria intervened to ensure there would be no peace with Israel by killing Lebanese politicians who wanted an end to the bloodshed.

Syria, meanwhile, has been in the news because a decade-long revolt finally succeeded in ousting Bashar al-Assad, who has only been able to stay in power with the help of Hezbollah terrorists, Iranian generals, and chemical weapons that Assad’s forces used on civilians. Three-quarters of a century into Israel’s existence, such is the reality of life in the neighboring countries that insist on permanent hostility to Israel’s existence.

It is no coincidence that this is not the state of affairs in Jordan or Egypt. Peace with Israel isn’t the only reason for their relative stability. But not being at war with a first-rate military and ally of the Western democracies is a pretty big factor.

What might a Sliding Doors-style alternate history look like? We have a useful model in the Sinai Peninsula.

Seth Mandel: Israel Deserves More Credit for Eliminating Syria’s Loose Weapons

The situation regarding the chemical weapons is more complicated, thanks to one of the Obama administration’s bizarre mistakes in the region. A decade ago, after Assad was found to have used chemical weapons against his own civilians, which President Obama had designated as America’s “red line,” a scheme cooked up by the administration and the Russians enabled Obama to forgo punitive strikes and pretend the crisis was being handled. Assad declared 1,300 chemical weapons to international inspection regimes, but that was far from its total reserves. Ever since then, inspectors had been stymied by Assad and unable to tally Syria’s full stock of illegal weapons.

“To date, this work has continued, and the Syrian declaration of its chemical weapons program still cannot be considered as accurate and complete,” the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a statement yesterday.

“It costs millions and millions of dollars without making any progress,” one source told Reuters. “So it really is a great opportunity now to get rid of (chemical weapons) for good. This is the moment.”

Unlike the Israeli Air Force, OPCW inspectors require comprehensive security planning to search Syria. That means the new regime, which technically doesn’t exist yet (Syria only has a transitional government at the moment), would have to arrange it. That seems a long way off.

Meantime, therefore, the presence of those weapons poses a “proliferation risk,” according to the U.S. That risk is believed to include undeclared full-scale production sites.

The regime’s 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta killed over a thousand. Assad’s forces were found to have used sarin gas, which is heavier than air and thus sinks. Families hiding with children in their basements might have survived a conventional bombing, but were sitting ducks for the sarin gas.

Israel’s current actions are reminiscent of its successful secret mission in 2007 to destroy Syria’s nascent nuclear reactor, likely constructed with North Korean help. The threat that Syria poses to the region was and remains acute. The threat it poses to the rest of the world is, once again thanks to Israel, far more limited.

Jake Wallis Simons writes in TheJC:

If there has been one message to have emerged in intelligence circles in recent weeks it is that Iran’s feared “axis of resistance” was not all it was cracked up to be. Did Russia and China come to Iran’s defence when Israeli planes attacked? They did not. When Tehran rained missiles on the Jewish state last April, however, a coalition of friendly democracies pitched in. It is clear where the true alliance lies.

For years, the Biden administration has been trying to appease the despots of Tehran. Why? It has never been any match for Western might. The time is approaching to point out that the emperor has no nukes.

For now. History may never repeat itself but certain lessons may be drawn. If Iran is allowed to go nuclear, there are two possible futures. Either the regime gets to wield its new atomic muscle across the region or it collapses under the weight of its own brutality and the weapons fall into chaotic hands. For Israel, neither would be tolerable.

The recent constellation of events has led Iran to its weakest position in decades. The regime is desperate. This week, Rafael Grossi, head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Tehran had drastically escalated its uranium enrichment programme. A wounded animal is most dangerous when cornered.

Whether the White House will get onboard or not, Jerusalem must rip apart the paper tiger of Tehran before it crosses the atomic threshold. Remember when the late John McCain sang “bomb bomb Iran” on the campaign trail? That was 16 years ago. Why the delay? The Begin doctrine worked in Iraq and Syria. It is time to dust it off once again.

There are a couple of other reasons for Israel to consider action now.

One is that Biden is the lamest in the history of lame duck presidents. Right now the US is rudderless. Any worries about the US turning against Israel at this point, with Trump entering the White House, are almost nonexistent.

But beyond that:

I recently looked at Iranian media to see what they were saying about the promised reprisal against Israel for last October's attack by Israel on Iran. Iranian officials and media are still promising that the attack is coming, and the emphasize that when Khamenei makes a promise, they will make sure it happens.

One analyst asked what is taking so long -in mid-November.

The first possibility is that Iran is trying to repair the gaps and strengthen its defense systems before attacking Israel, and this solid work may take a little time. For example, the Bavar 373 defense and defense system has proven to be very effective, but its number of missiles is limited. The Russian S-300 system is probably not up to expectations; Perhaps there is a greater need for electronic defense systems. For example, in order to repel the next Israeli attacks, a new generation of Russian or Chinese fighters may be needed, or for any other reason that Iranian defense officials want to patiently and intelligently organize and work hard.

Iran saw its weaknesses from Israel's October attack and is probably busily looking for all the help it can get to patch them. It knows that if it gives Israel an excuse, Israel's next attack will be much larger and more devastating. It doesn't want to attack when Israel's next response will hurt it much more than it can hurt Israel.

Why should Israel play Iran's game? They have publicly promised to attack Israel. (The UN seems strangely uninterested in that promise.) Israel has every right under the theory of self-defense to take the initiative this time. Why wait until Iran is closer to a nuke, until Iran shores up its defenses?

Israel has the ability not only to damage Iran's nuclear program (which is still mostly underground) but to cripple Iran's economy much faster than Trump's sanctions will. Iran can't count on too many friends to help it out.

While Israel may want to wait for a clearer reason to attack, the daily threats from Iran must be taken seriously. They didn't lie the last two times and they are not lying now. Waiting is what Iran is assuming Israel will do. There is no reason to play by their rules.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Adam Schiff was sworn into office yesterday. He chose to place his hand on a 15th century printing of a volume of Maimonides' legal opus Mishneh Torah that is owned by the Library of Congress.

This sparked an interesting discussion on X.

It is traditional for officials to swear on Bibles. Lahav Harkov half-jokingly asked whether Schiff thought that the Mishneh Torah is a Torah, which it isn't.

Forgetting Schiff's political positions, which certainly color people's responses, there are a couple of interesting points made.

One is that under US law, people can choose to swear in using pretty much anything they want. People have used a Dr. Seuss book, a rare Superman comic book, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X, or even nothing. So from that perspective, there is nothing wrong with swearing on a book of law, which seems appropriate given that the wording he is swearing is to support and defend the Constitution.

The other issue is whether Jewish law allows such an oath to begin with. Traditionally, religious Jews avoid swearing given the seriousness of such a move under Jewish law; instead we will say we "affirm" when going to court or the like.

In this case he did swear, so the question is whether a Jew can swear on a Mishneh Torah?

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin notes that "Ramah in Choshen Mishpat 87:15 cites opinion that allows for oaths to be administered on any Jewish Sefer that includes the name of God."

But that brings up the next question: does that mean the Tetragrammaton, the four letter Name that should not be pronounced, or one of the other Names that are more commonly used that do not have the same degree of sanctity?

As far as I can tell, looking at old editions of Mishneh Torah online, the Rambam (Maimonides) does not use the Tetragrammaton, instead abbreviating it with the letter "heh" or the "double yud." (He alludes to the Name in the acrostic introducing the work.)

So I am not sure that Mishneh Torah, while certainly holy, qualifies as a a book that contains the name of God for the purposes of taking an oath.

Finally, I expect it will take about five minutes before antisemites use this ceremony to "prove" that Schiff only swore to uphold Talmudic Jewish law, not the Constitution.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A new poll of Canadian Jews by a group of left-wing Jewish organizations finds something curious and seemingly contradictory.

It showed that a huge majority of Canadian Jews - 94% - believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

That's pretty much the definition of Zionism.

But only 51% of them considered themselves Zionists. 27% said they did not consider themselves Zionist and the rest were not sure.

So 94% of Canadian Jews are Zionist - but nearly half of them don't admit it even to themselves.

I don't have the raw results of the poll, but the article indicates that older and more religious Jews are more likely to say they have an emotional connection to Israel so it is likely that most of the people who are Zionist but claim not to be are younger and more liberal.

The most likely reason is that anti-Zionist propaganda among the Left has been so effective that the word "Zionist" is now associated with evil, completely outside of its actual meaning. Repetition - the most effective form of brainwashing - mean that even people who support Israel as the Jewish state don't want to be associated with that term.

We need to take back the word "Zionist" from the haters. We need Jews to be proud to be Zionist. We need to show the world that, invariably, anti-Zionists are just antisemites in new clothing.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Let's compare how much Syrian territory Israel controls with how much Turkey illegally occupies

Lots of antisemites are looking at Israel going into the former buffer zone in Syria to help defend Israel from any threats. They are saying that this is evidence of the "greater Israel" plan, of Israel's ast expansionist desires to eventually control the entire region from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Let's look at how much land Israel is now occupying. (Most maps from Critical Threats.)

It is the little patch of blue next to the much larger Golan Heights.

Now let's zoom out and look at who is controlling all of Syria today.

You can hardly see the blue area.

But look at the light yellow areas in northern Syria.

Those are controlled by the "Syrian National Army." The SNA is a Turkish proxy - essentially, Turkey's "Hezbollah." It is funded by Turkey, armed by Turkey and all of its military decisions are made by Turkey.

Turkey controls 22 times the area Israel controls - 8,835 square kilometers.

And the Turkish presence is not only in the yellow sections. As of 2021, one think-tank counted 113 Turkish military bases and outposts in Syria: within 5 governorates: 55 in Aleppo, 43 in Idlib, 9 in Raqqa, 4 in Al-Hasaka and 2 in Lattakia.

Unlike the Russian and Iranian bases in Syria, the Turkish bases are in no danger of being taken over by the rebels.

This has been going on for many years, and there are probably fewer articles about Turkish occupation of vast parts of Syria in the past decade than on Israel taking over tiny parts of Syria in the past couple of days.

But that is not the only thing that Western media has been downplaying about these areas.

Turkey considers a 20-30 km wide swatch of Syrian territory along its borders to be a "safe zone" - which is a buffer zone that it controls or intends to control. And within that zone are illegal settlements.

You see, Turkey has been expelling hundreds of thousands of Kurds from these territories - building settlements, and forcibly populating them with Sunni Muslim Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey. They are changing the demography of the area with settlements that almost no one talks about.

Turkey's policy of occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement enterprise in parts of Syria violates international law. Almost no one discusses this and European governments, fearful of Turkish reactions and threats to send millions of refugees their way, are reluctant to emphasize this - but no one outside Turkey disputes this.

How many Syrians has Israel displaced? From all accounts - zero.

Here is a great example where the main story is true - Israel did indeed take over 400 square kilometers of Syrian territory, as a temporary measure until there is a dependable government or other arrangements that can guarantee Israel's security. But when you compare that to the entire size of Syria and the amount of land controlled by other foreign nations, the real story turns out to be the one that everyone is ignoring.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)