Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 18, 2025

04/18 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The Jewish community's fifth column; Vermont, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Mountains of Useful Idiots; Harry Truman’s Seder Message

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish community's fifth column

To issue such a public denunciation during a war for Israel’s existence is an act of treachery and betrayal. And in their supreme arrogance, the 36 are inflicting this damage from the relative safety of their homes thousands of miles away.

Even though they amount to merely one tenth of the Board’s 300 representatives, the message has gone out out through the mainstream media that those speaking for the Jewish community have denounced the war and blamed Israel’s government.

In a desperate attempt to mitigate the damage, the Board’s president, Phil Rosenberg, has written an article emphatically distancing the Board from the letter. He writes in the Jewish News:
Whether intentionally or otherwise, the impression that has now been put forward by certain national and international news outlets is that yesterday’s letter published in the Financial Times, signed by approximately ten percent of Deputies, is the position of the Board of Deputies as an organisation and therefore the position of the UK Jewish community as a whole. This is emphatically not the case, and as president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, I speak for the organisation as a whole…

We yearn for the return of the remaining hostages, whose absence is more acute than ever now, during the Festival of Freedom. Yet given that Hamas just this week rejected yet another mediation put forward via Egypt, which would have required the terrorist group to disarm, I am simply unable to agree with the viewpoint aired in the FT letter which lays blame squarely on the Israeli Government. I am confident that the vast majority of Deputies and the Jewish community as a whole agree with me…

It is remarkably easy to get the media to listen to you in this country if you highlight your Jewish identity while vocally criticising Israel or its government…for a letter signed by three dozen people to make headlines in an assortment of national newspapers, while TV and radio producers fight among themselves to get signatories to appear on their shows, makes very little sense.

Oh, but alas it does. For of course the letter has been seized upon with unrestrained glee by the mainstream media and others who want to bring Israel down. Just like the way in which the Iranian regime uses the handful of fanatics of the Jewish Naturei Karta sect, or as Jeremy Corbyn used other Jews who sought the destruction of Israel, the 36 letter-writers have provided the mortal enemies of Israel in the west with the opportunity that’s been seized upon by Jew-haters throughout the centuries — to use the Jews to do the haters’ own dirty work as enemies of the Jewish people, work that can then be plausibly denied as being anti-Jew.

The usefulness of this disgusting tactic was promptly demonstrated by John McDonnell, Corbyn’s former shadow chancellor, who tweeted about the 36 letter-writers:
Every signatory should be welcomed into that courageous band of Jewish people who have stood up for peace & an end to the killing.

Got that? The letter is being used to demonise all those Jews who support Israel in its desperate struggle to survive. These 36 signatories have now provided further rocket fuel for attacks on British Jews.

In their ineffable absence of self-awareness, they appear totally unaware that they are classic examples of the “As a Jew” Jews who were mercilessly satirised by Howard Jacobson in his novel The Finkler Question.

Now it turns out that the Board members include 36 Finkler “As a Jew” Jews. They don’t represent Britain's Jewish community. They don’t even represent the Board. They are the Jewish community’s fifth column, they are a menace to both the security and good name of that beleaguered community, and it is a disgrace that they are on the Board at all.

Decent people watching this unsavoury spectacle might well wonder how on earth Jews of all people can behave like this. The tragic reality is that Jews like this who turn against their own people with pathological viciousness have existed in every generation. The most acute threat to the Jewish people comes not from the world’s multitudinous antisemites, nor even from those waging war or genocide against Israel. The gravest threat to the Jewish people comes from Jews like these.

Azerbaijan: Augmenting the Abraham Accords

Two recent media reports underscored the emerging international stature of the Caucasian republic of Azerbaijan and its ties to Israel.

The first relates to the growing involvement of Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR) in Israel’s energy sector, entailing SOCAR’s first drilling operations outside of Azerbaijan.

The second related to a visit by President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Azerbaijan. This took place after endorsement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of prominent rabbis. The rabbis, including the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, urged including Azerbaijan in the Abraham Accords framework and for the bolstering of a trilateral alliance between Washington, Jerusalem and Baku.

Some months ago, the value of such an axis was raised in a previous column of mine, and recognition of its merits, then enumerated, appears to be growing.

Arguably, one of the most fundamental traits of international relations is its inherent uncertainty. Indeed, it is a field where today’s truth is often stranger than yesterday’s fiction.

To illustrate the point, consider anyone in the early 1980s suggesting that:
Within less than a decade and a half, the mighty USSR would disintegrate;
The Warsaw Pact, once a formidable alliance confronting NATO, would crumble, with some of its members even joining the ranks erstwhile foes as part of NATO;
Then-impoverished nations, such as China and India, would become industrial and commercial powerhouses, with the former beginning to challenge America’s global economic hegemony;
There would be a massive shift of industry and commerce to Asia from the West.

Undoubtedly, any such far-sighted prophet would have been dismissed as totally out of touch with reality, if not as borderline deranged.

But that is precisely what transpired, with the world today far closer to the predictions of some outcast eccentric than that of the adherents of the then-prevailing conventional wisdom.

Daughter is born to Chabad rabbi Zvi Kogan, 5 months after his murder in UAE

A daughter has been born in recent days to Rabbi Zvi Kogan, an Israeli-Moldovan Chabad emissary who was murdered in November in the United Arab Emirates.

Rivky Kogan gave birth to a baby girl five months after Kogan, who was working to expand Jewish life in Abu Dhabi, was murdered by three Uzbek terrorists, according to the COLlive website, which reports on the Chabad community.

Kogan’s body was found in late November in the Emirati city of Al Ain after he had been reported missing several days earlier.

Friends and colleagues of the 28-year-old rabbi spoke fondly of him as a selfless leader who lived to help others.

Last month, the three murder suspects were sentenced to death in an Abu Dhabi court.

04/18 Links Pt1: Now It Can Be Told: Hamas Is Mortal; Mike Pompeo: We Don’t Need a Fake Deal With Iran; What the Shapiro attack tells us about America in 2025

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Now It Can Be Told: Hamas Is Mortal

This follows a familiar pattern: Israeli and American officials say something that is grounded in experience and rationality and thus is likely correct. The world bellows a collective How dare you? and rolls on. Eventually what the Israeli and American officials said is proved true. No one says “sorry.”

It has long been apparent that if there is hunger in Gaza it is because of Hamas, and if there is poverty in Gaza it is because—primarily at least—of Hamas. The terror group hijacked food aid and then impoverished civilians by raising prices of the very food they were supposed to be given.

Unlike humanitarian aid, which is physical, some aid groups have been able to get money to Gazan civilians through digital cash apps. But to buy their own “free” food back, Gazans then have to use a money-changer to turn that digital currency into cash, and the money-changer probably works for Hamas and charges, according to the Journal, a commission of 20 percent. If the Gazans are able to make it that far into the process, they must then use the “free” money to buy the “free” food at exorbitant prices. Which means in the end, they have paid dearly for less food than they probably should’ve gotten for free.

This is the miracle of “humanitarian aid.”

Now that the aid has been suspended, the Journal reports, “Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said.”

Plus, “the Israeli military has said it killed a money changer who was key to what it called terrorist financing for Hamas.”

This is how you defeat a terrorist army. Hamas isn’t an idea; it’s a human organization surviving on physical goods and paper money. Deprive it of those things and watch it disintegrate.

Trump Admin Eyes Fresh Hamas Sanctions Under 'Human Shield' Law That Biden Admin Ignored

The Trump administration is eyeing fresh sanctions on Hamas over the terror group's use of Gazan civilians as human shields—and using a longstanding law that the Biden administration ignored to do so, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

During President Donald Trump's first stint in the White House, in 2018, Congress passed a law requiring the president to sanction terrorist entities, including Hamas and Hezbollah, that use "innocent civilians as human shields." In the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack, lawmakers amended the legislation to include mention of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and to compel the Department of Defense to submit a report on its work "hold[ing] accountable terrorist organizations for the use of human shields."

Biden, who repeatedly condemned Hamas for using human shields, signed the law as part of an April 2024 package that provided emergency aid to both Israel and Ukraine. But his administration never unveiled sanctions that cited the law and never submitted the human shields report to Congress, according to a senior Senate aide, prompting bipartisan criticism. Now, Treasury and State Department officials are pledging to reverse course as part of a broader "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign on Tehran and its terror proxies.

The push comes as Hamas struggles to pay its rank-and-file fighters amid a halt in humanitarian aid that Hamas seizes and sells to generate funds. Additional sanctions, then, could further bankrupt Hamas.

The powers granted under the human shield law allow the Trump administration to target any terror leader who has authorized the use of human shields, giving the administration broad flexibility to sanction virtually anyone tied to the practice—past and present. Penalties could include the seizure of all property and assets belonging to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members. Though some of those penalties are in effect through existing sanctions, the Treasury Department said it is keen to use "every tool available" to ensure Hamas gets no reprieve from punitive measures.

"It comes as no surprise that the Biden Administration enabled these terrorists through inaction, but we are pleased to be reversing course in order to keep Americans and our allies safe," a Treasury spokesman told the Free Beacon in a statement.

"The Treasury Department is proud to use every tool available to us, working in close coordination with the entire Trump Administration to hold Hamas and other terrorists accountable for horrific actions which clearly violate U.S. and international law."

Seth Mandel: A Mall in Ramallah

Most hilariously, Haaretz quotes Ramy Abdu, the head of an NGO whose sickening fealty to Hamas repulses Palestinians too. Abdu, one of the most widely reviled anti-democracy activists in the conflict, whines that the director of the mall is Qassam Barghouti, son of Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician in Israeli jail for his alleged role in numerous terrorist attacks. Barghouti is also considered a serious challenger to PA President Mahmoud Abbas should he be released by Israel. Were Barghouti to eventually become Palestinian president, his constituents would surely benefit more from the construction of shopping centers and the opening of employment opportunities than from an endless commitment to bloodshed apparently preferred by Abdu.

And that’s the crux of it, really. Statehood and self-determination is not as attractive to these Palestinian activists as is mutual, perpetual misery. Who wants food and jobs when you could have war?

In fact, the real objection of so many Palestinian pundits to signs of normality and commerce is the contrast they set with Gaza. Palestinians have made choices over the years. Those choices have resulted in two different national projects: one looks like the West Bank and one looks like Gaza. Which is the more desirable path forward?

The Icon Mall isn’t going to bring peace. But it has a Palestinian branch of an Israeli luxury textiles chain, and that puts Ramallah closer to coexistence with Israel than pretty much every U.S. college campus.

Considering Gaza’s real estate and the unholy gobs of money the world throws at it, Gaza could out-gleam Ramallah any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Gaza’s condition today is what happens when you take all that human and physical capital and put it in Hamas’s hands.

The Palestinian-governed parts of the West Bank aren’t exactly a land of endless prosperity. And the Abbas-run PA is an incompetent and corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur. Yet there is still such a difference between that and Gaza.

The Palestinian pundits and activists quoted by Haaretz don’t want that difference to be emphasized. But Palestinians ought to know how much better their lives would be without Hamas or another death cult in charge. In that sense, the son of an imprisoned terrorist opening an enormous mall in Ramallah is what we call generational progress, even if we’re grading on a Palestinian curve.

Chag Sameach, again

I will be off for the next two days for the end of Passover.

Here's a report of something I wrote a few months ago that is appropriate:

This is an excerpt from "Moon Of Israel," a 1924 Austrian film that depicted a love story between a Jewish slave and an Egyptian prince. It is perhaps best known for its depiction of the splitting of the sea, which was considered by critics at the time to be technically superior to that of Cecil B. DeMille in his 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, the film quality of Moon of Israel is not close to restored versions of the original Ten Commandments. (You can see that version here, start around 30:00.)

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Can ethics exist without a religious framework?

This has been a fundamental question ever since the Enlightenment first separated moral reasoning from religious doctrine. Thinkers from Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill, and from Marx to Ayn Rand, have proposed frameworks to ground human morality in logic, reason, emotion, or social need. Yet time and again, these secular ethical systems have failed—either in application, coherence, or resilience.

Utilitarianism is a good example. At its most basic level, it says that people should choose the action that gives the greatest good to the greatest number of people. But the naive version of utilitarianism would therefore say you can kidnap a healthy man and steal his heart, liver, kidneys and lungs to save the lives of up to five people. Seems like a simple calculation - 1 person's life for 5. Of course, this is monstrous.

Since that cannot be moral, utilitarians added layers of complexity on top of the theory. One version says that rules are layered on top of the direct results, because a rule that you can't murder someone is better for society in the long run. Others add the negative psychological effects of people knowing that they can be snatched at any time which is also bad for society. Another school created "preference utilitarianism" saying that people's preferences are a major factor in the "greatest good" calculation, and most people prefer not to donate their organs before death. Others added a layer of "bodily autonomy" as another factor in calculating people's welfare. John Stuart Mill adds another factor, of people's rights, as an additional layer of the calculus - while utilitarianism does not recognize rights, the concept of rights indirectly helps everyone's welfare. Another prominent utilitarian added that it can operate on multiple levels - sometimes an individual can make his utilitarian calculations and sometimes he has to fall back on the "rules utilitarianism" mentioned above.

In the end, we have a mess to explain why the straightforward philosophical test case of why 1 healthy life for 5 is in fact immoral. It is as if the philosophers know that there is a major flaw in the elegant rule, but instead of throwing away the rule they are making the simple rule absurdly complex and unusable for average people making their decisions. Every one of these exceptions and qualifications and reframings undermine the very simplicity that makes the philosophy attractive to begin with.

The utilitarians know intuitively that the idea of a calculation to determine morality is wrong, since this trivial case proves it. The only reason they know that is because they have an internal moral compass that screams "this is wrong." But they are so emotionally tied to the elegance of the idea in its pristine form that they cannot let it go so they create new fences around the rules to protect the idea, the single moral value of maximizing good. And yet, despite the increasing complexity, the original flaw remains: the system cannot tell you why sacrificing one for five is wrong - it can only try to obscure the horror through layers of abstraction.

All secular philosophies have their own problems. Some, like Kantianism, offer rigid rules but no real mechanism to decide the overriding values when they conflict. Still others, like existentialism, place moral weight entirely on the individual conscience, which opens the door to moral relativism or nihilism. These systems may be elegant but they are either too simple, too brittle, or too context-insensitive to govern the real moral complexity of life.

The appeal for a secular system of ethics is clear. Such a system, if it works, can be used as a baseline for the world, across cultures and belief systems, giving everyone a common ethics language. Yet the question remains: how can an ethical system be built that is rigorous, adaptable, and inspiring without recourse to religion?

I am arguing that Jewish ethics and the Jewish ethical framework, as we've been describing it in previous chapters, may be the best candidate to serve as the foundation of a universal, secular moral framework.

Jewish ethics does not require faith in God for one to understand, adopt, or apply it. Its strength lies not in divine command theory, but in its accumulated wisdom, its case-based reasoning, its openness to critique, and its built-in tools for self-correction. It is the closest thing humanity has to a moral large language model, trained on centuries of dilemmas, arguments, precedents, and diverse perspectives.

I would argue that the values we've listed, like life, truth, dignity, compassion, justice, community, humility and responsibility, are fairly universal. There may be disagreement on their relative values but they are truly universal.

The system really shines in the framework itself, which is independent of the underlying values.

It is the adjudication layer, to balance competing values, and the integrity layer, to ensure the process includes course corrections and is resistant to political pressure, which makes the Jewish ethical model both unique and suitable for everyone. Unlike many secular systems, Jewish ethics doesn’t pretend that there is always one right answer: it shows you how to think about the question through multiple viewpoints, not just one rule. Like Supreme Court opinions, the process not only records the winning argument but enshrines the losing argument too, because next year or next millennium circumstances may change and the minority opinion may become relevant in another context.

The system's transparency allows criticism and refinement. Its decentralization makes it difficult to be hijacked. Its longevity and long-term views ensure that it will not decide based on passing fads.

There is nothing in the system that is inherently faith based. Because it uses a halachic/legal framework, it is structured like a legal tradition. It can be studied and applied without belief. Just as the U.S. Constitution was inspired by ideas from Jewish covenantal thinking but functions as secular law, so too can Jewish ethics. While Jewish law can and does answer questions with "because God said so," Jewish ethics does not.

Jewish ethics has helped a minority people survive millennia, navigate moral complexity, adapt to wildly different political regimes, and maintain integrity. It is not a thought experiment. It’s a lived system.

Earlier chapters have shown that Jewish ethics goes beyond halacha. Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin (going beyond the letter of the law), naval b’reshut haTorah (a scoundrel within the bounds of the law), and ethical writings like Pirkei Avot make clear that the Jewish moral tradition goes way beyond legality. Indeed, it asks people to do the right thing, not just what is legal.

This is what secular systems are missing: an ethic that combines rigor with compassion, structure with adaptability, and values with humility.

The Talmudic phrase lo bashamayim hi - "it is not in heaven" - means that once the Torah was given, moral reasoning (and even legal interpretation) became a human responsibility. Even divine authority does not override the consensus of human interpreters when applying law and values. This idea, astonishing for its time and still powerful today, affirms the legitimacy of human reason to interpret and apply moral frameworks. And it is the key to allow secularists to adapt it as a usable, functioning ethical system.

In other words, the Jewish system itself says: You don’t need prophecy. You need commitment, curiosity, logic, and moral courage.

To be sure, a system based on Divine revelation is more compelling for people of faith than for secularists. The faithful may cite scriptural texts to support their ethical decisions, but not to decide them. Yet the system does not rely on any such revelation, and therefore should not be objectionable to secularists. In fact, rejecting it purely because of its religious origin, rather than pointing to actual flaws in the system, would be evidence that secularists are just as prone to blind judgment and bias as any religious person.

If secular moral thought is genuinely objective, then it should be willing to evaluate frameworks not by their origin, but by their structure, adaptability, and results. Jewish ethics does not demand belief - it demands engagement. The study of these topics is itself considered a virtue. To reject it outright purely due to its religious roots is to commit the very fallacy secularists often critique in others: irrational bias.

All people are biased. It is better to examine oneself, admit and examine one's biases up front and (if necessary) compensate for them than to deny that they are there and pretend that one is uniquely objective. The bias might be cultural, or religious, or just to be committed to an idea to the point that you can no longer think rationally about whether it is true or not.

The underlying base values of the Jewish ethical system may be considered God-given within Judaism, but one does not need God to say that human life is valuable, kindness is a virtue and honesty is the best policy. Nearly every part of the system beyond the base values have been created, maintained and refined by people, not angels.

The concept that Jews should be a light unto all nations means that Jewish ethics should be inspirational, not imposed. They should be able to stand up to any and every other moral system. Jewish ethics may have begun in particularity but it aspires to universality. It already has informed legal systems, civic virtues, and constitutional design far beyond the Jewish world. Its structure is flexible enough to dialogue with other cultures, and strong enough to offer a coherent moral vocabulary.

One may ask why this moral system is superior to ancient Eastern systems, for example, that have also stood the test of time. I cannot claim to be an expert on Eastern religions or morals. I am arguing for the Western world to adopt the Jewish ethical framework, since that is where I am from and almost certainly where you are from, too. My guess is that the other systems can gain by adopting a Jewish-style framework, feel free to argue.

I’ll happily admit my bias: I believe that Western civilization is worth preserving and improving. It has achieved amazing things. I am alarmed with the direction the West has been moving with influence - often subconscious -from Communism, social justice and progressivism. Antisemitism has been my moral test for these other worldviews - if they accept or encourage hate of Jews or Judaism or Israel as the Jewish state, then they are not moral systems and this is a good indication that they must be fought against, not merely accepted as other valid viewpoints.

This is what this project is about - to define an alternative that is moral, universal and tested.

As a bonus, Jewish ethics is already interwoven with the moral DNA of the West—through law, culture, and conscience. No one has to adopt a new culture, a new ethical vocabulary or make major changes in their way of thinking. While I recognize that Jewish ethics is not the only moral system with value, it is already congruent with what most people in the West accept. If a moral system both honors tradition and fosters reform, respects the individual and the collective, and has already shaped the world we live in, why reinvent the wheel?

This is not about cultural superiority. It’s about moral maturity.

The Jewish ethical framework has been battle-tested through oppression, exile, renewal, and complexity. It is a moral language that integrates past and present, law and values, community and conscience.

It can be learned. It can be adapted. And it can form the backbone of a secular ethical system that is not fragile, not ideological, and not simplistic.

For secular thinkers searching for a better way, Jewish ethics is not an outdated, rigid, fanatic worldview. It’s a model that fits what they want most of all - an ethical system that actually works. It cannot give all the answers but it is the best way to frame the questions, and that is the best that we can ever hope for in a world that is anything but simple.

Let’s learn from the longest-running moral system still in use - and make it our own.

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Last week, antisemitic far-Right sites breathlessly posted a video by a Jewish influencer that described the yellow-capped Kosher for Passover Coke, claiming that this is proof that Jews run the world since Coke is making it "just for Jews."

These posts received millions of views.

The comments add more information that we Jews apparently try to keep secret from the goyim:

And of course this encourages the antisemites even more:

I cannot quite figure out the conspiracy angle. Jews want non-Jews to consume corn syrup? Then why don't we make Jew Coke all year instead of for only one week?

I was upset that I couldn't find regular yellow-capped cane sugar Kosher for Passover Coke this year - the stores were sold out. The goyim bought them all so we Jews couldn't get it!

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

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Ibrahim Ibrash is a professor of political science at Al Azhar University in Cairo and a former culture minister in Egypt.

In the Palestinian Sama News, he asks, "Why does Israel refuse to stop the war?"

The answer cannot be something simple like "because Hamas hasn't released the hostages." No, that is too simplistic for the esteemed professor. He starts off expanding on the question:

Despite all the flexibility offered by Hamas in the Cairo negotiations over the past two days, Israel continues to refuse to stop the war. This is because Israel's problem in the Gaza Strip and in waging a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing was not Hamas, its weapons, or the kidnapped Israelis.

Israel's goal is broader than that, and it found in Hamas's Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa an opportunity to achieve or accelerate it. Its goal is not to end Hamas's military presence and recover its kidnapped soldiers, as Netanyahu declared, but rather to have much greater objectives.

Oh? What exactly is it?

To find out, we go on a Biblical detour:

One of the Jewish religious books, (1 Kings 4:24), which dates back to the reign of Solomon, as the Jews claim, states: “The borders of the Kingdom of the Jews end at the borders of the city of Gaza, which was never included in the Kingdom of the Jews. After that, it remained the property of the Palestinians. Since that date, Gaza has been cursed by the Jews.”

We will not delve into the above text at length, but assuming it is authentic, it confirms, on the tongue of the Jews themselves, two facts: the first is that when the Hebrews came to Palestine, they found the Palestinian people there, and this refutes all their claims that there is no people called the Palestinian people; and the second is that Gaza has a history of struggle that extends back to ancient times and has not stopped.

The verse citation is wrong and the quote is wrong as well - Kings 5:4 mentions Gaza as one of the edges of Solomon's kingdom, and nothing beyond that.

And of course this professor cannot tell the difference between Philistines and Palestinians.

Finally, he says the real reasons Israel is at war:

Because Gaza is all this past and present, and because Gaza is also the only seafront for the Palestinian state in the event of its establishment, and because there is oil and gas in its waters, and because Gaza refuses to be separated from all of Palestine and has responded to the call of duty when our people in Jerusalem and the West Bank called for help, and because this entity wants Gaza and its problems to divert attention from the main battlefield in the West Bank and Jerusalem... For all of this, it has hatred towards it and plans to destroy it and accomplish what the early Hebrews were unable to do, as their religious myths say, in addition to thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

It is hard to explain why Israel withdrew from Gaza to begin with when it had all these plans!

Ibrash, perhaps mimicking Egyptian thinking, goes on to say that Hamas is idiotic for not putting down its weapons and fleeing!

Finally, if Hamas had not started its "flood" and abandoned its stubbornness and obstinacy at the beginning of the negotiations, it would have been possible to disrupt this strategic Zionist plan and all these losses and destruction would not have occurred. But now I fear that matters have reached a point where even Hamas handing over all the kidnapped Israelis and giving up what remains of its weapons will not deter the enemy from implementing its goals and things will not return to the way they were. Herein lies the dilemma of Hamas and the dilemma of the Palestinian cause. The only solution is a serious Arab and international official and popular movement to force Israel to stop the war, even if temporarily, in exchange for Hamas giving up its weapons and leaving the Palestinian scene militarily and politically.

Because he believes that Israel's goal is to eradicate all Palestinians and flatten Gaza, the idea of Hamas laying down its arms and leaving Gaza are presented as a compromise!

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

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Project To Send Uneaten Matza To Gaza, Induce Immediate Surrender (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Rehovot, April 17 - A neighborhood drive launched today to collect all the leftover unleavened bread from the recent Passover holiday and deliver it to the Hamas-governed territory currently holding dozens of Israelis hostage, and thereby to cause the captors to release the hostages, lay down arms, and relinquish control of the territory in favor of a peace-seeking alternative, organizers announced yesterday.

Residents of this Coastal Plain city banded together starting Sunday, the day after the seven-day festival in Israel, to contribute their boxes of uneaten matza. By 10 in the morning today, more than six tons of the bland, cracker-like bread had accumulated in a makeshift warehouse, forcing the organizers into a scramble to find more storage space; a local school volunteered its gym, and deliveries have continued throughout the day. The families behind the initiative believe that if a sufficient quantity of the, uh, foodstuff can be sent to the Gaza Strip, it will horrify Hamas and its minions into surrender.

"Primarily, this isn't really about the hostages, though they remain on everyone's mind," explained Refael Mark, whose 15-year-old daughter Avishag first advanced the idea. "We just spent a week celebrating liberation from captivity, from enslavement. We really must do whatever we can to bring the hostages' ordeal to an end. What Avishag realized was that our need to be rid of this repulsive stuff can be leveraged to pressure Hamas into giving up."

"We don't even need to deliver the whole quantity," suggested Shai, a volunteer. "The initial dump of a ton or two will have a chilling effect not because it will affect so many in Gaza, but because the mere knowledge that several more tons of this gustatory atrocity is scheduled for delivery will generate a more pliant, cowed Palestinian leadership."

Others noted that the matza-disposal scheme can be brought to bear beyond local security concerns. "Iran has been threatening to go nuclear for a long time," observed another organizer, named Tal. "Delivery to Iran is obviously more complex than delivery to Gaza, but that's a question of logistics. With the Trump administration on board, I don't see why parachuting crates of matza into Tehran and various pro-regime strongholds won't scare them into a more accommodating, docile stance, if not outright abdication."

If plain matza proves insufficient to spark surrender, Avishag has also suggested her father's matza balls, which all but one member of the family agree are dense enough to be weaponized.

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

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04/17 Links Pt2: What to Do with a Bad Guest; The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro; The spoiled brats of Youth Demand; How do the lawyers defending Hamas sleep at night?

From Ian:

Meir Soloveichik: What to Do with a Bad Guest

First: To deport a radical pro-Hamas activist is to do so in the knowledge that those representing such positions on college quads not only dislike Israel. They also hate America. Indeed, the very organization Khalil represented, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has openly stated that it seeks “the total eradication of Western civilization.” The sympathy with Hamas is the symptom; hatred of the West is the disease.

As the pro-Israel activist Ben Badejo has noted, Khalil—like all others fighting deportation relating to these statutes—has issued many public declamations through his lawyers, but he has never, as part and parcel of their public defense, put forward two simple statements: that he hates Hamas and that he loves America. The refusal to state the former, of course, is linked to his inability to express the latter. This is not, first and foremost, a matter of one’s views regarding the Middle East. For the secretary of state to cite statutes allowing deportation of those who espouse support for terror, and who pose a threat to America’s foreign policy, is to emphasize the fact that individuals like Khalil seek the end of America itself.

The second mistake—that deportation is a criminalization of speech—follows from the first. Khalil is being detained only because he has been told to leave these shores and he has refused. As the Supreme Court has clarified, ordering a noncitizen to leave your country is not a criminal punishment. This was made clear by Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, a case about an individual deported on the grounds of being “a member of an organization which advocates overthrow of the government by force.” Jackson insisted that it had been “considered closed for many years” that “deportation, however severe its consequences, has been consistently classified as a civil, rather a criminal procedure.” He then went on to cite an earlier Supreme Court decision that explained the matter quite simply:
It is thoroughly established that Congress has power to order the deportation of aliens whose presence in the country it deems hurtful. The determination by facts that might constitute a crime under local law is not a conviction of crime, nor is the deportation a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.

And when we ponder the point, it is actually obvious: How is it a punishment to order a guest in your country—or a green-card holder like Khalil, who is here because of the graciousness of the United States—to leave a land he hates? Indeed, how is such an order anything other than a country reflecting basic self-respect and self-preservation for its own future?

Cases like Khalil’s will wend their way through the courts, and this litigation will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to ponder a clarifying question: Why would a country that rightly welcomed a fervently patriotic immigrant like the Jewish woman in Blair’s story—and Secretary Rubio descends from such immigrants—willingly ladle out visas to those who hate it? This is, in other words, another opportunity, as we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, to ponder the meaning of America and of what binds us as Americans. In an address delivered on July 4, 1858, Abraham Lincoln contemplated the fact that many living in America did not descend from those who fought in the Revolution. Yet, he said, their love of America, and of the ideas embraced at the Founding—is what bound the newcomers to Americans like himself.

Melanie Phillips: The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro

In all these hypothetical instances, the attack would have been seen as politically motivated. But when an attack is mounted in the name of the Palestinians, liberals are suddenly struck dumb.

This is because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that such a terrible act has been committed in support of a cause upon which they hang their claim to be moral, compassionate and decent people. To condemn it would be to condemn themselves.

It awakens their deepest fear—that to denounce the motivation for such an act would destroy their moral and political personality. They are terrified that it would turn them into the thing they dread more than anything else—to become “right-wing.” In their minds, this is synonymous with evil.

But the Palestinian cause that they so devoutly support is not moral or decent. It’s motivated by genocidal aspirations and Jew-hatred, and violence is its calling card.

Its supporters in the West—having swallowed the egregious lies on which this cause is based—peddle a grotesque inversion of reality in which Israel is blamed for defending itself against a barbaric and genocidal onslaught in a seven-front war of annihilation. It is these Palestinian supporters who are spreading evil.

Balmer told the police that he believed Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza was leading to the deaths of Palestinians. It’s not just mentally ill individuals who believe such a thing about Israel and Diaspora Jews.

Since Oct. 7, liberal media and politicians have been promoting the lie that Israel is purposefully killing Gazan civilians, of whom the majority are women and children. The fact that this is totally untrue hasn’t stopped it from becoming so deeply believed and causing such anger among the public that Jews in the Diaspora are being regularly ostracized and abused for supporting the “killing of Palestinian babies.”

Jews find themselves targeted for collective punishment over the malicious fantasy of the crimes of Israel. Individual Jews in the West are singled out grotesquely as accomplices to these alleged crimes simply by dint of their supporting Israel’s attempt to defend itself against annihilation. They also find themselves accused of bad faith if they call out the rampant Jew-hatred that’s exploded across America and Western nations.

Diaspora Jews are being gaslighted, abused, ostracized, intimidated, threatened and attacked just for standing up as Jews for their people and for truth and justice—and now an attempt has been made to burn one of them alive.

What Balmer’s attack tells the West is that, in supporting the Palestinian cause, it is endorsing an innately murderous, hate-mongering and malevolently mendacious creed.

The Israel-haters can hardly try to excuse Balmer’s attack on Shapiro as the action of a madman, given that the blood libels they themselves perpetrate have now caused countless thousands of people in the West to lose their own minds over Israel and the Jews.

The spoiled brats of Youth Demand

‘YOUNG PEOPLE ARE RESISTING’, the website of Youth Demand informs us, breathlessly, announcing the arrival of yet another environmentalist road-blocking protest group – except this one protests about Palestine, too. What follows is the usual combination of Israelophobic nonsense and economic illiteracy:

‘The [UK] government is engaging in absolute evil. They are enabling genocide in Palestine by sending money and arms to Israel. They are contributing to the murder of billions to keep the fossil-fuel profits flowing.’

Youth Demand, an apparent spin-off of Just Stop Oil, is currently having an April jamboree, involving a month of direct action to ‘shut down’ London. Here are its demands:

‘Young people are stepping up to resist this nightmare. We are demanding that the government must:

1) Stop all trade with Israel: impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
2) Make the rich pay: raise [£1 trillion] by 2030 from the super rich and fossil-fuel elite to pay damages to communities and countries harmed by fossil-fuel burning.’

It’s all so agonisingly pathetic. For one thing, we have the supreme naffness of the name. ‘We’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say’ was excruciating when the Monkees sang it nearly 60 years ago. People who claim to be the voice of an entire age demographic are always a cause of full-body cringe. This kind of eternal live-action roleplaying of the 1960s is gut-clenching.

What makes Youth Demand particularly nauseating – and hilarious – is its activists’ dizzying levels of entitlement whenever they get their collars felt. These little darlings are clearly shocked to the core that the authorities have the temerity to notice them. They view with open-mouthed amazement even the pathetically light touch of British law enforcement in the 2020s. These are Veruca Salt brats who have clearly never been told ‘No’ by their mummies and daddies. ‘I want a trillion pounds and I want it NOW, daddy!’

04/17 Links Pt1: Trump Blocks Israeli Strike on Iranian Nuclear Sites; Did Biden Fund Anti-Netanyahu Politicking?; The Anti-Semites in the Conservative Manosphere; Catering to Qatar

From Ian:

Israel's Most Conclusive Victory since 1949

Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940, when Paris and Western Europe had fallen and Germany appeared unstoppable.

As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government. Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a ceasefire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.

It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu's pure resolve must be understood. His tenacity was the only thing that mattered. Having withstood this unrelenting pressure over the course of a year, Netanyahu had maneuvered into a position where, in the second half of 2024, Israel was able to turn the tables and reshape the entire geopolitical picture

The Mossad and the IDF brilliantly wrecked Hizbullah with exploding pagers, booby-trapped field radios, and the elimination of senior Hizbullah commanders in a precision strike that left the group totally paralyzed, nullifying its vast rocket arsenal. Because he had monopolized Hizbullah's command and control, Nasrallah's death shut down the organization.

As a consequence of Hizbullah's demolition, Iran's Syrian vassal, Bashar al-Assad, found himself defenseless, having long become dependent on Hizbullah and Iranian militias for manpower. With the fall of Assad, and with the IDF in control of the Gaza-Egypt border, the Iranians lost the ability to rebuild Hizbullah and Hamas, giving Israel its most conclusive victory since 1949.

Israel's astounding technical prowess and the fighting spirit of its military are, of course, integral to this victory. But it couldn't have happened had Netanyahu not held out against an unfriendly American administration and an accompanying assortment of authoritative figures and institutions, as well as howling mobs in Israel and around the world that demanded a ceasefire and the Israeli prime minister in handcuffs.

NYTs: Trump Blocks Israeli Strike on Iranian Nuclear Sites

Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites in May but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials. Israel had sought to set back Iran's ability to build a bomb at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically. Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help.

Earlier in April, Trump informed Israel of his decision that the U.S. would not support an attack and discussed it with Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to Washington. Trump made clear to Netanyahu that he would not provide American support for an Israeli attack while the negotiations were playing out.

Israel has long planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rehearsing bombing runs and calculating how much damage it could do with or without American help. But support within the Israeli government for a strike grew after Iran suffered a string of setbacks last year. In attacks on Israel in April, most of Iran's ballistic missiles were unable to penetrate American and Israeli defenses. Air defense systems in Iran were destroyed, along with facilities to make missile fuel. Hizbullah, Iran's key ally, was decimated, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria cut off a prime route of weapons smuggling from Iran.

Inside the Trump administration, some officials voiced concerns about the Israeli plan, including Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; and Vice President JD Vance.

There is still significant debate within Trump's team about what kind of agreement with Iran would be acceptable. If the talks failed, Trump could then support an Israeli attack, Vance said.

Seth Mandel: The Leak Was the Whole Point

That latter point is one reason Israel reportedly ordered attack plans to be redrawn such that the mission could be launched before Kurilla’s exit. Gabbard’s isolationist leanings and Vance’s incoherent FDR-style cynicism toward allies are now the dominant ideological strands in Trump’s Cabinet, and the president nixed the strike plans.

Kurilla wasn’t the only reason time is of the essence. Last year, Israeli retaliatory attacks on Iran reduced Tehran’s air-defense systems to rubble. The nonproliferationists are open to the idea of taking advantage of this situation, which makes any U.S. involvement in strikes significantly less dangerous while (likely) permanently ending the nuclear threat from Iran, a Mideast client state of China and Russia.

The divestors don’t want this outcome. They don’t see Iranian nuclear proliferation as much of a threat, and they are comfortable with Iranian hegemony over our allies and over the region’s shipping lanes. This was President Obama’s approach as well—to empower Iran and weaken the Saudis and Israel so that a magical balance-of-power would emerge and keep the Middle East on its equilibrium, likely with a cascade of nuclear proliferation throughout the region. Although encouraging this nuclear cascade in the Middle East is an act of apocalyptic stupidity, presidents (and Congress) do like being given excuses to kick the can down the road.

And kicking the can is exactly what this is all about. Trump has been convinced to try his hand at negotiating with Ayatollah Khamenei, who will walk away from the table as soon as Iran’s defenses are in better shape.

Along those lines, part of Israel’s rushed plans to strike Iran—the ones intended to be launched while Kurilla was still around—included further demolishing Iranian defenses. If that isn’t paired with bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, it will at least buy the West some more time to do so by widening the window of opportunity.

That’s where the New York Times article comes in. The detailed leaks are most likely the Gabbard faction’s attempt to delay even that kind of attack by telling the Iranians what to expect. It’s hard to see this as anything other than the director of national intelligence enabling U.S. and Israeli intelligence to be put in front of an enemy state.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play to more or less help Iran torpedo American action. That’s the intent, anyway. Whether it succeeds might depend on whether Walz and Hegseth find their voices and their spines.

From Israel Hayom:

Approximately 400 Hezbollah field commanders are slated to leave Lebanon for various South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, according to a report on Wednesday by a Latin American diplomatic source to the Saudi news outlet Al Hadath.

The report comes amid growing discourse in Lebanon surrounding the possible disarmament of the Shiite terrorist organization, following its defeat in the war with Israel. According to the source, 200 commanders have already reached South America, with the rest expected to depart Lebanon in due course.

The diplomatic source said Hezbollah ordered its commanders to leave Lebanon fearing that they could be targeted if and when the organization's military infrastructure is dismantled. It is worth noting that Hezbollah already has an established terrorist network in South America.

Janoubia adds:

Over the years, Hezbollah has established a strong and multifaceted presence in Latin America, including illicit financing and operational networks spanning several countries, according to local media in these countries.
Information indicates that the area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet is a major hub for Hezbollah activities. Here, the party engages in smuggling, money laundering, and fundraising through various illicit projects.
In Venezuela, Hezbollah leverages support networks, exploiting the country's political climate and existing diaspora communities to facilitate its operations.
Hezbollah researchers and information in American media outlets indicate that the party cooperates with South American drug cartels, such as the Medellín Cartel, to finance its activities. Key figures, such as Shukri Mahmoud Harb, have been identified as pivotal players in these operations.

Hmmm. What other group of people fled to South America to save their skins over the past century?

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Are Jewish ethics just a component of Jewish law, or are they overlapping but distinguishable concepts?

At first blush, it appears that from the perspective of Judaism, Jewish ethics is identical to halacha (Jewish law.) Halacha includes lots of ethical imperatives like charity, kindness to strangers, visiting the sick and honoring one's parents. Legal questions come up with each of these - for example, does one have to listen to their parents' advice when it would be detrimental to the child? The same rabbis that decide whether something is kosher also decide how much charity one must give.

But a little thought shows that while Judaism treats ethics and law similar ways, using similar methodologies and anchoring both in sacred texts, ethics is treated as something beyond the law.

In Pirke Avot, one opinions says that someone who says "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" is acting like a resident of the wicked city of Sodom. Why should that be? Clearly, from a legal perspective, he is saying something accurate. Why would such a person be considered to be like the famously evil Sodomites?

One commentator, the Bartenura, says the reason is that the Sodomites did not want any visitors, even though their land had lots of resources and could accommodate guests. This character trait is what made them evil. People risk becoming callous towards others when they insist that what is theirs is theirs, and this starts the slide towards being akin to a Sodomite.

This illustrates the tension in Judaism between halacha and ethics: one is expected, urged and - at times - obligated to act in ways beyond the letter of the law.

This is what the Talmudic phrase lifnim mishurat hadin means (Bava Metzia 30b). It says that people not only can but should act beyond the strict interpretation of halacha. It demands a higher ethical standard.

This is a remarkable concept. Lifnim mishurat hadin appears to exist at the intersection of formal law and ethical aspiration. It seemingly accepts the idea that halacha itself can never be an all encompassing system and it requires ethical concepts beyond halacha to cover all potential questions. The halachic system itself acknowledges its own limitations and encourages people to go beyond them. There are cases where lifnim mishurat hadin were mandated by batei din, Jewish courts, others where it is just encouraged, and stories of people who were praised or going above and beyond what was legally required of them.

There are other similar concepts in halacha where strict adherence to halacha itself is strongly disparaged. A "naval b’reshut haTorah" is a disgusting person who does everything within halachic bounds and not one millimeter beyond. The Talmud states an opinion that Jerusalem was destroyed because people followed only strict law and did not go beyond it.

Some examples make it sound like going above and beyond is praiseworthy, some that it is expected, some that it is mandated. What seems clear is that lifnim mishurat hadin goes beyond the halachic system, yet it can justify itself within the halachic framework by using Deuteronomy 6:18, "Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord," as an overarching Biblical source for extra-judicial ethics.

A recent responsum by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon illustrates this idea of Jewish ethics asserting itself independently of halachic detail.

Soldiers are allowed to seek shelter in the homes of their enemies during wartime. One Israeli soldier asked whether he would be allowed to charge his mobile phone while resting in one such home in Gaza, another asked whether he could take items from another home that was about to be demolished and the items destroyed anyway (presumably because it was hiding a tunnel shaft or was booby trapped.) After looking at this through a strictly halachic viewpoint, Rav Rimon adds that when one is engaged in an obligatory war of self defense, one must not gain any personal pleasure from it as that endangers the moral underpinnings of the war itself. He brings as proof the idea from his own teacher, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, that when King Saul ignored the commandment to destroy all of Amalek and he justified keeping some animals, "he turned his entire war into something unethical. The war against Amalek is a decree from God. When a person benefits from the results of the war, there is personal enjoyment, and he is not acting solely according to God’s direction. Consequently, the justified killing becomes

murder."

This part of the response is purely ethical, not halachic, but the language is extraordinarily strong in its insistence that one cannot personally gain from spoils of war, even when those gains will not cause any additional loss from the owners.

Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin and naval b’reshut haTorah show that Jewish ethics are supra-halachic. This means that they can be examined and studied as an independent system, outside the halachic framework. And moreover, it indicates that, unlike halacha, Judaism's ethical standards can be seen as a model for the world, not only Jews.

The Jewish ethical framework may be based on the halachic framework - but it can be decoupled from halacha itself when applied to the world at large. Its rich and deep sources and its unparalleled maturity makes Jewish ethics particularist and universal, ever timely and timeless.

It is an ideal ethical system for everyone.

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Israel cuts Gaza aid. Hamas running out of money. The world doesn't see any relationship between the two.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said. Rank-and-file Hamas fighters’ pay had been averaging around $200 to $300 a month, they said.

The shortfalls are creating hardship across Hamas’s ranks in Gaza’s cash economy and signal a deepening organizational dysfunction in the militant group as it also contends with a more aggressive Israeli military strategy.

Once the war started, Israel tightly limited the transfer of physical cash into Gaza, forcing U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to find ways around the restrictions. Early on, the group was involved in taking $180 million from branches of the Bank of Palestine and other institutions, current and former Palestinian officials said.

Hamas used the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods to build new income streams, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. This has included charging taxes on merchants, collecting customs on trucks at checkpoints, and commandeering goods for resale. Hamas also has used overseas cash to buy humanitarian goods that are then sold in Gaza and turned back into cash, the officials said.

For well over a year, Hamas managed to fund its activities. But when aid dries up, it loses that ability.

Gee, you think the two may be related?

This is not the first time we have seen a relationship between aid and Hamas funding its activities. When Israel cut off all aid in the first weeks of the war, Hamas felt the pressure of losing that income stream and this may have been one factor in Hamas accepting the first ceasefire.

Under the laws of armed conflict, even food and medical supplies can be blocked if they are being used the way Hamas is using them. The Geneva Conventions Article 23 says:

Article 23 - Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing
Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.

The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,
(b) that the control may not be effective, or
(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

Everyone knew Hamas used aid to fund its operations way before the war.

Israel has proposed methods of bringing in aid to bypass Hamas completely. Hamas strongly protested the idea. But the international aid agencies have not shown support for any plan that bypasses Hamas, either. And the media has not reported on Israel's plan, which paints Israel as the ones who are blocking aid and Hamas as the ones who want to help Gazans.

If Hamas is using the aid to fund its terrorism, Israel has every moral and legal right to stop that aid and propose alternatives. The lack of reporting on real international law, Israel's attempts to help innocent Gazans and Hamas' diversion of aid for its own purposes cannot be explained by anything but deep, systemic bias against Israel.

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