Thursday, October 26, 2023

10/26 Links Pt2: The Nazi case for Hamas; BHL: The Protests of Fools; My Old Friend Is Ripping Down Posters of Kidnapped Children

From Ian:

Martin Kramer: The Nazi case for Hamas
Nuremberg enforced a fundamental distinction. All civilian lives are equal, but not so all ways of taking them. The deliberate and purposeful killing of civilians is a crime; not so the taking of civilian lives that is undesired, unintended, but unavoidable. The errors made by a bomber squadron cannot be deducted from the murders committed by a death squad. It’s a difference compounded many times over when those civilian men, women, and children are subjected to torture, rape, and mutilation before their murder. To borrow Khalidi’s phrase, “in the last analysis,” this distinction is what separates modern civilization from its predecessors.

More disturbing is the thought that it separates the contemporary West from its peers. Otto Ohlendorf and the regime he served did all they could to conceal their deeds from Western eyes. Nazi Germany still operated in a West founded on Enlightenment values. So massive a violation of a shared patrimony needed to be hidden from view.

In contrast, Hamas initially sought to publicize its deeds, assuming they would win applause, admiration, or at least tacit acceptance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Here they succeeded beyond their expectations. The many millions who don’t share the West’s patrimony, and who know next to nothing about the Holocaust or Nuremberg, do see things as Khalidi says they see them. (So, too, does a sliver of alienated opinion in the West, where such views are cultivated and celebrated.)

Finally, and still more disturbing, is the fact that Ohlendorf’s defense has been revived to frame the massacre of Jews. Let’s be clear: this isn’t a world war. October 7 isn’t the Holocaust continued: in three months of 1942 alone, on average, the Nazis killed more than ten times the amount of Jews killed on October 7, every single day (Operation Reinhard). And Gaza is not Dresden, Hamburg, Pforzheim, Kassel, or any of the other German cities bombed so intensively that they literally burst into flames. The Israel-Hamas war is a skirmish by comparison.

But the Ohlendorf and Hamas defenses are the same, and so is the identity of their victims. That’s why it’s important that Israel take some of the Hamas masterminds alive, and place them on trial, Nuremberg-style. Israel owes it to the dead and wounded, their families, all Israelis, and all Jews. But it’s the Arabs and Muslims who most need to see the evidence, hear the testimonies, and weigh the arguments. No part of the world is further from drawing the line drawn at Nuremberg. October 7 is the place to start.
Israel, Hamas & International Law: A Guide
The Principle of Proportionality: Is Israel’s Response Disproportionate?

With over 1,400 Israelis killed during the Hamas atrocities and subsequent rocket attacks, and over 6,000 Palestinians allegedly killed in Israeli retaliatory strikes according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, some commentators and activists have claimed that Israel’s response is disproportionate.

However, this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what proportionality means within international law.

In brief, the principle of proportionality dictates that civilian casualties (both killed and injured) cannot be excessive in relation to the military advantage that would be gained directly from an attack.

For every strike that Israel undertakes against Hamas, it calculates the potential harm to civilians against the weight of the military advantage to be gained from the attack and determines whether the attack is proportionate.

Even when Hamas is cynically using Palestinian civilians as unwitting human shields, those civilians are included in the IDF’s assessment of the attack’s proportionality.

According to Pnina Sharvit Baruch, the former head of the international law division of the IDF’s Military Advocate General (MAG), the concept of “military advantage” is also dependent on the circumstances of each war and the nature of the enemy.

Thus, in this war, due to the exceptional brutality of the Hamas attack, which proved the Palestinian terror group to be much more dangerous and impervious to the fate of civilians than previously thought, the military advantage may be given more weight than in other military operations that Israel has undertaken against Hamas.

As well, David French notes that proportionality also does not require the military to respond with the “same degree of force” that was used by the enemy. Thus, the Israeli response to Hamas rifle fire with fire from a tank or to Hamas rocket fire with a targeted airstrike is allowed under international law and is not considered to be a disproportionate response.

It should also be noted that according to Dr. Aurel Sari, an assistant professor of international law at the University of Exeter, the assessment of whether an attack was proportional can only be determined based on the intelligence that the military had on hand at the time of the attack and cannot be based on hindsight.
A fake law of war will hurt Israel now and America in the future
This argument stretches the law to its breaking point. Forcible transfers are generally prohibited, but integral to all “forcible” transfers is — well, force. Unlike Hamas, the Israeli military has not gone door-to-door and removed civilians from their homes using or threatening to use force. Moreover, Israel’s “orders” are literally unenforceable in Gaza. Instead, they are tantamount to a warning of an impending attack, a practice which the International Committee of the Red Cross says reflects “a long-standing rule of customary international law” and which is enshrined in both the Hague Regulations and Article 57(2)(c) of Additional Protocol I.

Quite the opposite of a “forcible transfer,” Israel’s warnings are an effort to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives — something U.S. policy not only permits, but actually describes as “appropriate” and “advisable” in some cases. Similar warnings were given by the U.S. and its allies to civilians in the Korean War, in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and in Iraq — much to the international community’s acclaim.

But where are residents of northern Gaza to go? Where will they stay? How will their basic human needs be met? These questions are important, but they are ultimately an exercise in goalpost-shifting. Israel is not legally bound to provide for the human needs of those fleeing the battlefield. This is particularly true if, as mounting evidence shows, such humanitarian assistance is at risk of ending up in the hands of Hamas militants.

Other examples abound. The Israeli military has been lambasted, for example, for using white phosphorus — an incendiary weapon that, according to Human Rights Watch, “violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk.” But white phosphorus is not prohibited under the law of armed conflict. U.S. policy explicitly states white phosphorus “may be used as an antipersonnel weapon” as long as such use complies with “the general rules for the conduct of hostilities, including the principles of discrimination and proportionality,” and “feasible precautions” are taken “to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.” In fact, white phosphorus was credited as “an effective and versatile munition” in the Second Battle of Fallujah, and has been used by the U.S. in Iraq as recently as 2017.

Indeed, Israel’s critics have put forth an extreme position — one as much at odds with common sense as the law. Israel suffered an armed attack by the de facto governing body of the Gaza Strip. It is entitled to exercise its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter and use every lawful means at its disposal to effectuate that right. Most importantly, however, it is allowed to succeed in exercising that right.

For its own interests, the United States must preserve today the legal means necessary to secure victory on whatever battlefield it may be forced to fight tomorrow. At this hour in history, that means protecting Israel’s power to do the same.

Thomas Wheatley is an assistant professor in the Department of Law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The views expressed herein belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Military Academy, the United States Army or the Department of Defense.


Eugene Kontorovich: Egypt’s border closure flouts international law
Because Gazan civilians have refugee status under the OAU convention, Egypt is required to use absolute best efforts to “receive” them and “secure” their safe settlement in Egypt or elsewhere. The OAU convention is crystal clear that Egypt cannot subject Gazans to “rejection at the frontier, return or expulsion” if it would have the effect of forcing civilians back to a war-torn Gaza. Indeed, the African Union, the OAU’s successor organization, stated in 2022 that “all people have the right to cross international borders during conflict.” That there might be hundreds of thousands of Gazan refugees seeking asylum provides no excuse to Egypt.

The OAU convention forbids Egypt from pushing back refugees. Instead, Egypt should request other OAU countries — many of which are Muslim-majority — to share the burden, as European countries have done with refugees from the Middle East.

Egypt also has a duty to keep its border open under the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and its subsequent 1967 Protocol. Those instruments provide a somewhat narrower definition of a refugee than the OAU convention. Unlike the OAU convention, the UN convention and protocol do not link refugee status with conflict or war. But according to UN guidelines, countries must allow asylum in cases of “large-scale arrivals of people fleeing objective circumstances of origin, such as conflict.” To trigger this duty, all that’s needed is “readily apparent, objective circumstances” in the home state that might justify such status for the escaping group. Gazans, by virtue of their nationality, are fleeing objectively violent circumstances.

Egypt is free to vet asylum seekers at the border for ties to radical or violent groups — but, if President Biden is right that most Gazans do not support Hamas, there is no justification for sealing the border.

Indeed, in the case of Gaza, the determination of refugee status has already been made. In 2023, UNRWA — the UN body that operates in Gaza — estimated that 1.7 million Gazans (over 80 percent of the population) are “refugees.” To be sure, UNRWA considers those people refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. But how can the UN maintain with a straight face that those Gazans are refugees of a war that occurred 75 years ago yet aren’t refugees of a conflict happening right now?

Human rights groups that condemn “illegal pushbacks at the border,” either in the U.S. or Europe, are strangely silent on this topic. Certainly Egypt should not be forced to shoulder the burden itself — more than 13 European countries took at least 10,000 Syrian refugees, while Arab states like Iraq and Lebanon have taken in many hundreds of thousands. Why should Egypt be allowed to seal itself off at the expense of civilian suffering? Egypt’s refusal will likely serve as a precedent for other countries and other conflicts, fundamentally undermining refugee law.

The United States provides Egypt with $3 billion a year in aid and is thus in a position to pressure it to live up to its international obligations. Those who believe in welcoming refugees should be at the forefront of such pressure. Once the international community accepts the notion that there can be no escape from the Gaza War, it will be easier to accept calls to open other international borders to asylum seekers.
PreOccupiedTerritory: NGOs Frantically Looking For International Laws Allowing Hamas, Egypt To Block Fleeing Gazans (satire)

Bernard-Henri Lévy: The Protests of Fools
To the tens of thousands of “indignant” who, this last Sunday, Oct. 20, assembled in a number of French and European cities to show their support for “the Palestinian cause,” there is one question that we should not tire of asking:

Where were they when it was Hamas, not Israel, that arrested, tortured, massacred the Palestinians guilty of wanting peace and dreaming of freedom?

Why did they not march with the same passion during the long ordeal of the 380,000 civilians killed in the war in Yemen?

And the Syrians pounded, buried alive in their villages, gassed by Damascus’ army, why were they not afforded the same mobilization of the “social and political” left? Why did Jean-Luc Mélenchon, spearheading the compassion for today’s 4,000 dead Palestinians, not have a single word for the 400,000 dead of yesterday’s war in Syria? Actually, he did have a word, even two: He swept away these 400,000 corpses by repeating, in every manner and through every broadcast, that they were all victims of an obscure quarrel over “gas and oil pipelines.”

And the victims of Omar el-Bechir in Sudan? And the adversaries of el-Bechir, engaged for six months now in a “war of generals”—this did not, to the best of my knowledge, cause a flood of protesters to rush into the streets.

And the Afghan women, locked in their burqas after the Taliban took back control of Kabul two years ago? Why is it that the fate of these women, no less than that of the Iranian women assassinated for a veil worn askew, did not seem to inflame these protesters who now call out to the republic for justice?

And the Uighurs, genocided by China?

And, for the older of these self-proclaimed defenders of the rights of man, the victims of Gadhafi in Libya? Or of the dictatorship in Egypt? Or of Putin’s wars in Chechnya? And before that, well before, at the time of the siege of Sarajevo, the 100,000 Bosnian Muslims butchered by Serbian soldiers? Why were there so few of you, then, at the breach and on the streets, to defend those Muslims?
My Old Friend Is Ripping Down Posters of Kidnapped Children
I haven’t talked to Sarah in twelve years. I don’t know how she went from the girl I performed with at Kresge Hall, ranting about feminism and consent—typical college-aged defiance and edge—to standing on a street corner, tearing apart pictures of kidnapped Israelis and flinging them to the ground like a dirty tissue. In her online bio it says that she has a master’s in social work from University of Chicago and that she is working to better her community through “internal, interpersonal, and systems change.” It also says that she is “dedicated to supporting queer and trans youth as they learn to love themselves, radically and unapologetically, and gain a healthier understanding of their resilience and power.” (Sarah perhaps doesn’t know that queerness can get you arrested, and far worse, in Gaza.) On a “30 Under 30” award she won a few years ago, she describes herself as a prison abolitionist, a therapist, a social worker, a sexual assault crisis counselor, a teaching artist, a resource advocate, and a performer in participatory educational theater.

It is painfully ironic that the one thing you don’t need an advanced degree or elitist jargon for—you know, standing against the kidnapping of innocent children—is the one thing this “queer, gender-fluid femme of color,” as she labels herself, is utterly unable to grasp. It may well be that those advanced degrees are precisely what has emboldened her to commit such acts in the name of progress or power or resilience or resistance.

I’ve watched the video over a dozen times. It is unbearable to think that I was friends with this person.

But I was. I know this person. I knew her. She was not an antisemite. She was not a sadist. And so, with the splinter of hope I have left, I wrote a long text message to the number I have saved in my phone from so long ago. I asked why she thought, as she wrote on a now-private (or deleted) Instagram post, that these posters are “propaganda.” I told her, calmly, that these are real people and real children. And on the other side of those posters are real mothers and real fathers and real brothers and real sisters who are living in agony waiting for any sign that their loved ones are alive.

I ended with this: “The only purpose of this message is to explain my people’s very real suffering and pain, and hope that it touches or resonates with you in some way. I hope it makes you reconsider ripping down any more posters in the city.” And finally: “None of what I’ve written takes away from Palestinian suffering. I cry for everyone.”

If she got the message, she hasn’t answered me yet.


David Collier: Rotten and extreme from the top down
A big lie we are being sold is to suggest the anti-Israel demonstrations on our streets are all about human rights concerns. They say that any support for violence is just an outlier. In reality the opposite is true.

1. Let’s start with Scotland. Mick Napier is the head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He is the face of Palestinian activism in Scotland. He posted this video on 7 October. In it he says the news (coming from Israel on Cot 7) is ‘absolutely amazing’. He talks abut ‘resistance fighters of paragliders’. He calls it astonishing and inspiring.

2. Another large Palestine group in the UK – is the Manchester PSC. This was posted by them on 7 October. It says Manchester PSC support the resistance. They called the terror attack a ‘heroic move’ carried out by ‘brave fighters’:

3. Palestine Action are a leading group in the UK. They are the group that keep vandalising factories. Palestine Action have 116,000 followers on X. On October 8th the co-founder Richard Barnard spoke at a demo. He says people need to take the attack as inspiration. Adding that the Hamas operation in Israel on Oct 7 needs to be repeated ‘over the whole world’.

4. Asa Winstanley has been the voice of Electronic Intifada in the UK for years. EI is a key outlet here for anti-Israel news and Winstanley is a known face with a large online presence. At 2pm – long after we all knew about the massacres he posted this – ‘liberation’.

5. ‘The Eye of Palestine’ is a key resource for anti-Israel activists. On Facebook it has 241k followers. They posted this celebratory image of Hamas fighters. They even paraphrase the (peaceful!!) ‘from the river to the sea chant’ – to include the terrorists on handgliders. This was liked by 100s., including UK activists known like Zoe Zeero. We can see from the 365 likes, there was no dissent, no ‘angry faces’. None.

6. Sarah Wilkinson is one of the best known faces of anti-Israel activism in the UK. She has been at the forefront of most anti-Israel activity (online and offline) in the West Midlands for years. She has 146,000 followers on ‘X’. Wilkinson called the terrorists ‘heroes’. She even ran with the hastag #godspeed to wish them well.
The Brendan O'Neill Show: Frank Furedi: Why they hate Israel
spiked contributor Frank Furedi returns to The Brendan O’Neill Show. Frank and Brendan discuss Hamas's pogrom in Israel, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, and what ‘decolonisation’ really means.


Eve Barlow: Champagne Jihadists
I would really love to hear from the “words are violence” crowd about why it’s permissible for Jewish students to put up with micro-aggressions like this, and actual threats of violence, all over America. Those people are very quiet right now. Except for when it comes to Palestinian students, who refuse to decalre that they don’t identify with the actions of Hamas. The things people refuse to do for an easier life…

But fear not: you don’t have to be on a university campus to get a beating for being a Jew. This morning a story broke from Studio City in LA, where police were called to a family home to arrest a man who had broken in at 5am to run around the house screaming FREE PALESTINE while two parents and four kids hid inside. I’m sure this incident too just had something to do with, uh, criticism of Israel…

It’s probably fair to say that statements like that of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres haven’t helped to assuage people’s anger towards Jews at large. Yesterday good old Antonio claimed that the Hamas attacks “did not happen in a vacuum” because “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of… [blah blah blah]”

Wait, 56 years? 75 years? 18 years? 2,000 years? How many years is it? Can they stick to one lie for longer than five minutes?

The United Nation (full name: the United Nations Against Israel) have been kinder to Korea than they have Israel, the one Jewish state, over the years. Given the UN exists to prevent a genocide, rather than excuse a genocide, it’s utter failure to do its job means that now human rights advocates everywhere think there may actually be context for hunting Jews, wherever we are. According to the Guardian, we can’t hide behind the Holocaust any more, guys. Time’s up!

How easy it has been for everyone to become a puppet for Iranian/Qatari propaganda. All it tooks was some old-fashioned antisemitism. As Yossi Klein Halevi argues today in the Times Of Israel:
Blaming Jews for their own suffering is an indispensable part of the history of antisemitism. Whether as the Christ-killers of pre-Holocaust Christianity or as the race-defilers of Nazi Germany, Jews were perceived as deserving their fate. Invariably, those who target Jews believe they are responding to Jewish provocation.

In other words, Zionism is racist and Israel should not be allowed to defend itself. Leave Hamas alone! Their rockets are made of Play-Doh and sand! Or as one Jordanian man in the gym said to me tonight: “Stop with your bullshit.” To which I did and will always quote the late great Joan Rivers: “They started it.”

I don’t know where all of you are at, but I have personally experienced more offline antisemitism in the last few days than I have in 37 years. So I can say with total authority here that the fascists are Hamas. Their brown shirts are western champagne jihadists. And all the Jewish people who know what is going on are terrified. The fear only increases when non-Jews laugh in our faces and tell us we’re paranoid. Those same people always obsess over what they would do if it were them in 1930s Germany. Would they be against the Nazis? Would they take a stand for their Jewish neighbors? All of them glorifying themselves: Oh yeah, Oscar Schindler, that would have been me. Well, tick-tock all you wannabe Schindlers! We are ringing the alarm. And I just want to remind you all that we Jews don’t just think of SS Officers as Nazis. We think of the bystanders as Nazis too.
Hamas Killed My Wokeness
Outside of lacking vital historical context, I’ve been aghast to learn that this branch of the progressive left does not seem to understand why such horrors were committed upon Israeli citizens. Unfortunately, there is an explanation beyond “colonial resistance”—radical jihadism. Granted, not all forms of jihadism are based on terrorism, and all Muslims are, of course, not jihadists. But make no mistake: The ones who are responsible for these brutal acts of murder, rape, and mutilation are radical jihadists. Groups like Hamas are, quite literally, death cults that are not consequentially distinct from Nazism—the death cult that systematically annihilated my grandparents’ entire extended family. The cult that the Allied West had no confusion about needing to destroy. Hamas’ stated intention is the eradication, first, of Israeli Jews—then all Jews everywhere. That is a genocidal agenda. The IDF, with all its flaws, which are numerous and sometimes deadly, avoids civilian Palestinian deaths whenever and however possible. That is the opposite of a genocidal agenda.

I truly wish it were as simple as reducing this conflict to an oppressor/oppressed dynamic. I am waiting, with horror, as Israel prepares for a ground invasion that will claim thousands of thoroughly innocent lives. I do not want any Gazan children to be collateral damage. My Jewish values, along with what I’ve learned advocating for Palestinian statehood, continue to affirm my belief in the importance of upholding the rights of Palestinian civilians.

Any ideology that “justifies” or minimizes the tragedy of civilian casualties is broken and perverse. That is not to say that all such casualties are avoidable. Reform Jews of my generation are unified in a desire for a two-state solution that provides Palestinians with safety, dignity, and rights. Over the past two weeks, I have heard no American Jew wish violence upon Gazans; I’ve witnessed many American so-called progressives who wish violence upon Jews. In response to raped teenagers and headless babies, a common leftist online refrain has been: “What did you think decolonization looked like?”

That’s not progressivism. That’s bloodthirst.
Antisemitism Seen As Second Degree Bigotry - Noam Blum
Bridget sits down with Noam Blum, Chief Technology Officer at Tablet magazine, for a conversation about the Israel/Palestine conflict. They discuss the atmosphere of rhetoric inflation that allows more people to speak with blatant antisemitism, ever more extreme language getting a continuous pass in progressivism, how the language of academia seems divorced from the language of the people, and seeing a lot of disillusionment and feelings of isolation among people as they react to the conflict. They cover how the people who have spent the last several years telling others to stay in their lane are now willing to lecture you about Israel and antisemitism, Noam's prediction of the cultural backlash we'll see in the next few years, how word definitions are widened due to rhetoric inflation because you’re not going to turn a lot of heads by using milder words, the actual definition of the term "settler," why antisemitism is being seen as second degree bigotry and always has to be paired with Islamophobia, resenting the necessity of having to immerse yourselves in gore and horror because the alternative is for people to say it didn’t happen, why you shouldn’t be able to make money off of war porn, and why you should never take a newly released hostage’s statement at face value. Check out Noam's podcast Ambitious Crossover Attempt for more discussion of this topic.


John McWhorter: The Ultimate Condescension Toward Palestinians
The picture is no better on American college campuses. At George Washington University, student activists projected such pro-Hamas messages as “Glory to the martyrs” on the side of a building, and the police had to rescue Jewish students from a mob at the Cooper Union in New York City. For some insight into this insanity, I urge you to read this essay by John McWhorter, a linguistics professor and incisive critic of the perversions of the academy:

Some leftists are framing Hamas’s killing of 1,400 Israelis and abduction of 222 more as “decolonization,” believing they’re championing the cause of oppressed Palestinians. In reality, these leftists are condescending to them.

Mass murder, these leftists suggest, is the understandable consequence of Jewish “colonization.” Such a perspective is deeply insulting to Palestinian humanity. It implies that Palestinians are so controlled by circumstance that they lack agency. It implies that Palestinians cannot be expected to behave according to the same ethical standards of those who refrain from mass murder.

The Hamas cheerleaders are effectively saying: men butchered legions of people in your name. Hooray for them and hooray for you! Classifying Palestinians as “brown” people, purportedly enlightened souls applaud this savagery from their representatives—but from a position of unintended, but ugly, condescension.

McWhorter’s analysis put me in mind an essay Mosaic published in 2018 called “The Zombie Doctrine,” which is worth revisiting. Perceptive as McWhorter is, I wonder how much the sympathy for jihadists stems not from condescension toward Palestinians but from animus toward Jews.


Brazen support for Hamas spreading across Britain since terror attack

Alan Johnson: ‘Progressives’ and the Hamas Pogrom: An A-Z Guide

Pro-Hamas sentiment shocks European Jews, rekindling fears about their future

Yair Lapid: Three questions for the global far left

Free speech is our best weapon against Jew hatred

America’s Democratic Socialists Loved Israel



Stephen Pollard: The Labour row over Israel poses a test for Keir Starmer that will show us just what kind of Prime Minister he would be



Switzerland Suspends Funding of 11 Palestinian and Israeli NGOs



Colombia’s Leftist President, Fresh from Rant Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, Visits Beijing

Two South African Women Revealed Among Hamas Hostages, Israel Advocates Slam Pretoria Government’s Inaction



Watchdog: Tlaib has ‘extensive fundraising ties’ to Hamas

Extraordinary footage resurfaces of Anthony Albanese at a pro-Palestine rally - as he comes under fire for not visiting Israel



2022: Sky News Australia: Albanese's position on Israel is there in 'black and white' for 'all to see'
Sky News host Sharri Markson says Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese's position on Israel is there in "black and white, for all to see" - and "it's not pretty".

Ms Markson observed Mr Albanese, in a clip from 2002, painted Israel as the "oppressor", and made other concerning comments.

"He even blamed the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for starting the intifada and accused Israel of using excessive force," she said.




Israel Sees Gaza Ground Invasion as Inevitable
Israel seems to be waiting for a green light from Washington to launch its ground assault on Gaza. The ground operation is being delayed, apparently in order to give the Americans time to deploy additional forces in the region.

"The U.S. is aware that the IDF's entry into Gaza is liable to set off additional arenas....They want to complete their preparations. This involves a major shift of forces...and there is no reason why we should not wait until this move is completed," a senior Israeli security source said. Biden has also urged Israel to take advantage of a small window of opportunity to free at least some of the 220 Israeli and foreign hostages.

Israelis are learning what it's like to prepare for war together with America. "To all those who support a defense pact," a senior Israeli defense official said, "I suggest examining how we now coordinate everything with the Americans, how we don't do anything contrary to their opinion, at least for now, and how we do all this without having a defense alliance."

"It's not that you can't attack without a green light from the Americans," an Israeli War Cabinet source said. "The Americans don't forbid us or veto anything, they only advise us closely and we cooperate fully. They immediately put at our disposal, without us even asking, all the power and backing of a superpower. That said, we know how to appreciate what we received. Two aircraft carriers and $14 billion is a major event, and we have to pay for that too, at least on the level of cooperation."

The senior War Cabinet source said, "The Middle East has been looking up to us for the past decade. We were the only ones who took on Iran on an almost daily basis, we contributed greatly to the defeat of ISIS, the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] have operated in almost every corner of the Middle East and beyond with phenomenal success, and then suddenly comes a small terrorist organization. Everyone, from Cairo to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Beirut and Tehran, is raising their eyebrows. We must show them we are still a regional superpower."

"This is the most important point - our deterrence," the senior War Cabinet source said. "The region must quickly understand that whoever harms Israel the way Hamas did, pays a disproportionate price. There is no other way to survive in our neighborhood than to exact this price now, because many eyes are fixed on us and most of them do not have our best interests at heart."
IDF kills 5 Hamas commanders; Gallant: Israel will win, next 75 years depend on it

ISRAEL'S WAR AGAINST HAMAS - DAY 20

How does Israeli society move forward following the atrocities committed by Hamas?
How does Israeli society move forward following the atrocities committed by Hamas? i24NEWS Senior Correspondent Owen Alterman, Former commander, Special forces, IDF Doron Avital break this down.


Kibbutz Be'eri, once a peaceful paradise, now a small community in ruins
i24NEWS Ariel Oseran takes us on a tour of the now destroyed Kibbutz Be'eri, where over 100 people were murdered and over 50 are still missing.


"They're not real Muslims": Honoring Arab-Israelis murdered in Hamas attack
Awad Darawashe, a 20-year-old Arab-Israeli paramedic working at the Nova festival, was murdered by Hamas while trying to help other victims.

Kazim Khlilih pays tribute to his heroic cousin, and says of Hamas "They're not Muslims" as the terrorists targeted anyone and everyone they saw.


Israeli mother pleads for the return of the children taken hostage by Hamas
Mother of 12-year old Erez, and 16-year-old Sarah pleads for them to come home.


15,000 Israeli Civilian Volunteers Help Victims of Hamas
Israeli civil society has quickly mobilized to support fellow citizens in distress. Volunteers organize medical supplies, psychological support, and clothing and equipment for evacuees from the Gaza border area - many of whom left just with the clothes on their backs. More than 100,000 Israelis have been evacuated and displaced. At a massive underground parking lot, hundreds of volunteers were unloading donated equipment, unpacking and sorting it, and repacking it into boxes for transport all over the land.

As of Oct. 19, volunteers based at the Tel Aviv International Convention Center had distributed nearly 2/3 of 12,526 items of civilian equipment donated, found accommodation for 8,000 displaced families, distributed 120,000 food portions and 200 packs of medical supplies, transported 8,000 civilians and soldiers, provided 1,000 activities for evacuated children, and sent out 150 sets of shiva (seven-day mourning period) equipment.

2,000 volunteers from the high-tech sector used their skills to identify missing and kidnapped Israelis. The unit, headed by internet expert Prof. Karine Nahon, used artificial intelligence to try to identify the missing, with volunteers going through hours of video material, frame by frame, looking for clues.

"We did facial recognition, matching social media with visual material from different scenes and used AI to identify clothes. We even identified distinguishing marks like tattoos because some of the bodies had been decapitated," said Chava Rotman. "The high-tech people came here and invented new algorithms to find out where the missing people were" and were able to whittle the names of thousands of missing people down to a couple of hundred.

"We might be sending a washing machine to people who have lost their house, or 400 mattresses to a place where evacuees are staying, or 5,000 (donated) portions of food from a restaurant in Tel Aviv," Daniel Sweig explained, adding, "We're people who haven't been mobilized [to the army] yet, but want to help, rather than sit at home."
Israeli girl starts initiative to give toys to children made homeless by Hamas Residents of southern Israel struggle with internal displacement
Eran Doron, the head of the Ramat HaNegev Regional Council, breaks down how those communities in the south were affected by the Hamas massacre




US, Gulf states target $1 billion secret Hamas investment portfolio

Gaza is plagued by poverty, but Hamas has no shortage of cash. Where does it come from?

PMW: PA: This is holy war, we’re carrying out “Jihad,” PA Chairman is “commander of the Jihad fighters” Palestinian father celebrates the death of his family as “Martyrs,” hands out candy

PMW: “We’re playing Martyr,” says young girl, “the Martyr is the beloved of Allah"



100+ COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ACROSS THE NATION FORM COALITION STANDING WITH ISRAEL AGAINST HAMAS

Meet the Student Leader of the Group Behind the Viral Anti-Semitic Incident at George Washington University

I'm more worried about my daughter wearing Star of David in London than my son in IDF, says peer

Morningstar added to Florida's Israel-boycott list



Hedge fund billionaire and Columbia graduate Leon Cooperman says students protesting against Israel have 'sh*t for brains' - and vows to stop giving cash to Ivy League college



Defund the P...rofessors



Meet the California students and profs who say Hamas are 'freedom fighters,' not 'terrorists'



DeSantis Orders Colleges To Disband Students for Justice in Palestine Over Support for Terrorists



Harvard Scrubs Online Bio of Student Captured on Video Harassing Israeli Classmate



The Hamas pogrom and the nadir of journalism

Global News Gives Uncritical Platform To Hamas Terrorist Who Denies Its Aim To Kill Israeli Civilians



BBC director-general apologises to MPs over incorrect Gaza hospital broadcast

BBC reporter who incorrectly reported Gaza hospital blast had got facts wrong before



Minister Robert Jenrick tells BBC boss Tim Davie the corporation has lost the confidence of the Jewish community over its Israel-Hamas war coverage in charged meeting in Parliament



A Forgotten Episode of Holocaust-Era Heroism
With so much hostility on offer, it’s good to remember those who stood up for the Jews, even at risk to themselves, in much darker times. I was thus happy to come across Georgia Gilholy’s review of Roger Moorhouse’s The Forgers, which tells the story of a massive operation to rescue Jews from the Shoah:

The Polish ambassador Aleksander Ładoś, working from his picturesque Swiss embassy, spearheaded a network of “pious dishonesty” that forged identity papers for Latin American countries and then smuggled them into Nazi-occupied Europe. We do not know how many souls escaped the Third Reich’s death machine by using the more than 10,000 passports forged by Ładoś’s Polish network—Moorhouse concedes that many who obtained one did not survive—but some estimates put the number between two and three thousand.

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, unlikely heroes emerged. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a right-wing Catholic novelist who had long complained that Jews were a socioeconomic scourge Poles must encourage to emigrate, became one of their fiercest defenders, co-founding two underground organizations that helped Jews flee the Nazi genocide. For this she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1943. “The world looks upon this murder, more horrible than anything else history has ever seen, and stays silent,” she lamented. “Whoever is silent witnessing murder becomes a partner to it.” There is no doubt, writes Moorhouse, that this otherwise unpleasant woman had risked her life in the name of “Christian civilization and culture, love of fellow man and humanity.”

Indeed, Kossak was one of pre-World War II Poland’s most prominent anti-Semites. She herself admitted that the Final Solution, in her view, served Poland’s national goals—but that ultimately her religious and moral commitments had to trump national loyalty. Perhaps some other people will likewise surprise us in the days and weeks to come.


Americans delivering white roses to US Jewish communities
Americans in 100 U.S. cities are delivering white roses to their local Jewish communities on Thursday, to show solidarity following the Hamas massacre in Israel and the rise in antisemitic incidents around the globe over the last two and half weeks.

“At this moment, it is imperative that Christians physically show up to support Israel and the Jewish community,” said Luke Moon, deputy director of the Philos Project, the organization behind the initiative. “The Jewish community needs to know who their friends are now more than ever.”

The choice of the flowers is a nod to the Nazi-era German resistance group the White Rose.

The Philos Project, which seeks to foster solid bonds between Christian and Jewish communities, was a co-founder of Passages, a faith-based program dubbed “the Christian Birthright” that has brought more than 10,000 Christian students to tour Israel over the last six years.

“As Christians, we must stand with the Jewish people and Israel,” Moon said. “Christians in the past remained silent, and we refuse to do that again.”


A Muslim woman, daughter of an illiterate Bedouin, now a Stanford grad, tells the truth about Gaza





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

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