Thursday, November 09, 2023

11/09 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The truth is Israel’s narrative; Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes; How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas

From Ian:

The Dogs of War
This is what spoiled Westerners, comfortable in their liberal redoubts, don’t understand. At the violent fringes of the liberal order, showy social justice crusades and appeals to universalist notions of democracy aren’t a priority: Survival and the maintenance of civilization are. A society in which statements like “words are violence” are taken seriously is no longer capable of comprehending a blood-soaked child’s bed, much less the mentality of the man who shouldered a rifle, pointed it at the face of a terrorized child, and smiled as he pulled the trigger.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, recently announced it was organizing a team to assassinate every Hamas terrorist involved with the Black Saturday attacks. Given Hamas’ penchant for livestreaming their atrocities, they’ll have lots of information to go on. “As your sword has bereaved women, So shall your mother be bereaved among women,” said Samuel to the king of the Amalekites before slaying him. And there will be many bereaved mothers of Hamas terrorists soon.

This is a repeat of the legendary Operation Wrath of God, when the Mossad systematically assassinated nearly all the terrorists involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, a process which took years. The Hollywood version of the Wrath of God story, the very watchable Munich from Steven Spielberg, ends with an interesting Socratic dialogue between the leader of the assassination team, Avner (played by a moody Eric Bana), and his Mossad handler (played by a phlegmatic Geoffrey Rush). With a computer-generated 1970s-era World Trade Center as symbolic backdrop (the movie is from 2005), the two men debate whether the violent saga of their operation was worth it.

The disillusioned Avner: “Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed will be replaced by worse.”

To which the Mossad man drily replies: “Why cut my finger nails? They’ll grow back.”

That world-weary acceptance of the endless nail-cutting required to keep the Zionist project going was the tone I heard from most Israelis when I asked how this would all end. Nobody had any idea, but right now the only goal was the elimination of Hamas. “The Lord will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” says Exodus, and every Israeli generation has had to make war against some existential threat or another.

A Gaza whose biggest export is violence now faces off against an Israel which made the desert bloom into an economy as prosperous as Germany’s. A military that uses civilians to shield its soldiers will now fight against one that deploys its military to protect its civilians. All the men ululating “Allahu akbar!” in those videos, who thought themselves so brave and heroic for their butchery of unarmed Jewish women and children (Father be proud of me!) will now confront in violent combat the well-armed fathers, husbands, and sons of those same victims.

In a rousing speech to the Israeli army amassed on Gaza’s northern fringe, General Yaron Finkelman addressed the troops about to battle Hamas:

“My brothers in arms, the residents of Be’eri, Sderot, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, and the West Negev Communities, and alongside them all the people of Israel, are all looking at us now … we have one goal: Victory.”

Let the Americans and Europeans project their neuroses and have their Twitter fights over posters. For them, this conflict is little different than a football match: something two sides witness on the sidelines with signs and slogans, shouting pointless abuse at each other. In Israel, the war is very real, and its goal is best expressed by another Jewish military commander, this time Moses in Deuteronomy:

“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
Richard Goldberg: Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes
UNRWA today is a welfare agency that brands its Palestinian population as "refugees" for political purposes. First of all, it keeps the donations flowing in from Western governments. The more pernicious effect of this delusion is it nourishes Palestinian hopes that one day the state of Israel will be destroyed, and millions of people will take over Jewish homes.

In Gaza, UNRWA subsidizes Hamas by delivering basic services instead of the government – enabling Hamas to spend more money on terrorism instead. Meanwhile, UNRWA schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with virulent antisemitism – the kind of hatred that fueled the Oct. 7 massacre.

UNRWA staff, contractors and beneficiaries are, by design, not subject to U.S. counterterrorism vetting – because to conduct such vetting would reveal the extent to which U.N. money flows into Hamas coffers.

That Hamas would establish a base of terror operations inside one of UNRWA's so-called refugee camps is nothing new.

In Gaza, Hamas has used UNRWA schools to launch rockets and build tunnels. In the West Bank, UNRWA's Jenin "refugee camp" has been a hotbed of terrorism. In Lebanon, UNRWA's Ain al Hilweh "refugee camp" is the center of a months-long battle between competing terrorist groups.

Put simply, UNRWA is an institutionalized international welfare system for terrorism. In 2021, UNRWA’s Gaza chief dared to confirm that the Israeli military acted ethically and responsibly. He was removed from his post shortly after due to Hamas protests.

Where does that leave U.S. policy as the Hamas-UNRWA propaganda machine provides cover for military assets and educates children to commit genocide while accusing Israel of war crimes?

President Biden unconditionally resumed funding UNRWA after President Trump cut it in 2018. Congress can defend the integrity of taxpayer dollars and avoid subsidizing Hamas war crimes by halting aid to UNRWA until it complies with three basic requirements.

First, UNRWA employees, contractors and beneficiaries must be subject to terror checks. Members of Hamas – a U.S. designated terror organization – should be precluded from employment by a U.S. funded agency.

Second, UNRWA must complete an immediate overhaul of its educational material to remove antisemitism and incitement against Israel and instead include a U.S.-supervised curriculum that promotes tolerance.

Finally, and most importantly, UNRWA must cease its policy of attributing the word "refugee" to Palestinians born after 1949. While those individuals may still be entitled to receive goods and services from a welfare agency, it must not continue to raise children with a quest to destroy Israel.

If UNRWA fails to make these critical reforms it will continue to fuel the bloody conflict though cultivating new generations of Hamas terrorists and sympathizers, sponsored by U.S. tax dollars.
Int'l law expert: Why is the UN anti-Israel? Antisemitism, it's always been antisemitism
When asked where this anti-Israel bias at the UN comes from, Bayefsky declared that "it's simply antisemitism. It's always been antisemitism."

"Since 1947-48, it's been a single-handed effort to eradicate the Jewish State. And the question is, really for Israelis and for Americans and for others, to what extent are we going to continue to allow the UN to be the leverage, the political hammer to destroy the State of Israel and the Jewish State? I worry, honestly, that the United States is making a very dangerous calculation. The UN General Assembly adopted an incredible resolution, an emergency special session. Everybody is there. And what do they do? They don't condemn Hamas and they don't say Israel has the right of self-defense. And what happened to that resolution? The Germans abstained, the French voted for it with Iran."

"The UN has become a terror enabler," she declared, saying that the US "is trying to figure out, just how much are we going to allow Israel to try to win this war? At what point are we going to say, 'well the UN Security Council made me do it,' as President Obama did at the end of his term in office? I worry that without a very considerable unified, or if not unified, a vast majority of Americans need to stand up and to reject the obscene moral equivalence and the use of the United Nations to somehow carry on with its 75-year war to destroy the State of Israel."

Bayefsky dismissed the attitude expressed by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who famously declared "Um-Shmum" in dismissal of the UN's constant condemnations of Israel as meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

"It's been a terrible mistake for decades. I still get "Um-Shmum," I still get, 'well, ok, but you know how much of it is really antisemitism. There's a larger war, there's a context.' That's the UN game. 'There's a context.' The context is the effort, not even the effort, the actual killing of Jews in the here and now, the refusal to recognize what antisemitism looks like. And antisemitism is the global effort by people like Navi Pillay and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to put atrocities against Jews, the effort to have a one-state solution - which i genocide against the Jewish people - and to put it into some kind of fake 'context,' to deny the reality of what we see on the ground, to lie about what international law entails.

"For us to somehow diminish the extraordinary ramifications and ability of the UN to pervert our moral compass, is a terrible mistake. And all you have to do is look at the Germans abstaining on a UN resolution which didn't say Israel has a right of self-defense or condemn Hamas and the French voting for Iran, and the United States now playing around at the Security Council to see how far they can push it to try to impose a so-called 'humanitarian pause.'

"Where's the humanity in pausing for one second the effort to release every single hostage," she asked.

Despite the antisemitism at the UN, Prof. Bayefsky said that she is not ready to "give up" on Western nations who have abstained or voted in favor of recent anti-Israel resolutions that failed to condemn Hamas, including the UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

"The center of the ability of Israel to fight back is happening in Washington and New York. The Americans have to make it very crystal clear to this government that the UN has no moral compass, that it doesn't speak for the majority of Americans, that it is an obscenity for it to be paid for largely by Americans, and that we have to hold out against this global progrom, which is what it is. It's on the ground, and it's at the United Nations," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.




Caroline Glick: The truth is Israel’s narrative
The ‘new’ David and Goliath
None of this made any sense. None of it had anything to do with history, facts or scholarship. Indeed, to believe these lies, it was necessary to reject objective truth as a measuring rod for academic or professional advancement.

Faced with a state of affairs where public discourse was dominated by a narrative that vilified Jews, Jewish liberals in Israel and the United States invented their own narrative they hoped would satisfy their indoctrinated and incentivized colleagues in the West. They based their narrative on the same oppressor-oppressed narrative their Western counterparts embraced. But their narrative distinguished between “good Jews” and “bad Jews.”

They were the good Jews. And as good Jews, they accepted that Israel was Goliath. But they insisted that they didn’t want to be Goliath. They wanted to give the oppressed Palestinian David a state. They embraced the “two-state solution” that requires Israel to give up Israel’s biblical heartland—Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem along with the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. The “bad Jews,” the oppressor Jews, refused to do so based on their atavistic, messianic belief that the land of Israel belongs to the Jews.

The key to peace, the “good Jews” proclaimed, is for the liberal Jews to be supported by all right-thinking people. Right-thinking, narrative-driven people need to oppose the leaders of the “bad Jews”—first and foremost, Netanyahu—and to deny tenure, promotions and even legitimacy to Jews in Israel and abroad who think like Netanyahu about certain things, particularly the “two-state solution.”

Like their Western counterparts, these Jewish liberals were immune to rational debate. True, the Palestinians rejected the “two-state solution,” and all factions of Palestinian society call for the elimination of Israel. And true, the “two-state solution” foresees Israel shrinking to indefensible boundaries that invite invasion. But since the “two-state solution” would end Israel’s status as an oppressor, the Palestinians and their allies would bury the hatchet, and Israel could live securely in indefensible boundaries because no one would think of attacking it. Many liberal Jews accepted the slaughter of wrong-thinking Jews with something bordering on equanimity. They were asking for it, of course, by refusing to end the so-called “occupation.”

The problem with liberal Israelis’ and Diaspora Jewry’s acceptance of narrative over facts is that facts have proven their narrative—and the broader oppressed/oppressor narrative—false. As they wake up to the realization that Israel’s enemies see no difference between “good” Jews who support the “two-state solution” and the “bad” Jews who oppose it, they are coming to realize that their colleagues on the left really don’t care. They prefer their narrative to reality—and won’t reject it even if keeping the faith with the oppressed means embracing the eliminationist slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

Which brings us back to public diplomacy.

It is the liberal Jewish embrace of the oppressor-oppressed narrative about themselves that has rendered Israel’s hasbara efforts dead in the water. If Israel is in the wrong and the Palestinians are in the right, then Hamas is right to slaughter and rape and abduct Israeli Jews. After all, we had it coming. And Israel has no right to annihilate Hamas because Hamas is oppressed. Rape isn’t a form of oppression if it is carried out by the oppressed against the oppressor. What does it matter how many women were brutalized? The same is the case with burning babies.

What’s missing from Israel’s hasbara isn’t facts and figures—of dead, of atrocities, of dates and of genocidal covenants, or even decent English.

What is missing is our story. Our history is the most compelling tale of human will and hope that the world has ever known. Our Jewish state is an apotheosis of justice. Jewish freedom is the triumph of the oppressed Jews against an oppressive humanity. Jewish settlement of the land of Israel from north to south, east to west is the victory of a native people against centuries of colonialist, imperialist invaders and occupiers. The Palestinians have organized themselves as a cult that sanctifies death, sadism, mass murder and destruction. They have no identity independent of their hatred of Israel. Were Israel to vanish, the Palestinians would be forgotten immediately.

It’s time to tell the truth about them, too.

Perhaps more than we need to tell our story to the world, we need to tell it to ourselves. We need to let the truth remind us of who we are after a generation of unwarranted and deeply destructive self-flagellation. The more we tell our story, the less we will care whether people are persuaded because we will understand that our greatest triumphs across time happened when we were true to ourselves, our people, our traditions and our God. And when we stop caring whether we are alone or not, we will see that people of goodwill around the world will be standing with us.


Israeli Police Collect Eyewitness Testimony of Gang Rape During Hamas Attack
Warning: This article contains an eyewitness account of a rape by Hamas terrorists. Numerous graphic details she described have been excised from this article and are part of the testimony she gave to the police.

Police investigators have been collecting testimony from witnesses to acts of sexual assault and abuse committed by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attack on Israel’s south. The mission is part of the effort to prosecute the surviving terrorists who are in Israeli custody.

Captured Hamas terrorists have revealed that they had planned to seize control of a town or city in central Israel for a substantial amount of time and take its residents hostage. They also intended to plant mines in the area. According to their accounts in interrogations, the plan went wrong because of confrontations with security forces, the communities’ guards, and civilians.

An eyewitness told police in the past few days that she had seen the gang rape and murder of a young woman hiding from Hamas terrorists who were wearing military uniforms. “They bent someone over,” the witness said. “I realized he was raping her and passing her on to someone else also in uniform.”

The witness said that subsequently one of the rapists shot the young woman in the head, and several of the terrorists mutilated her body.

Another witness who has recounted the incident to police was a man who was hiding behind the eyewitness and didn’t see the rape. He said she told him at the time what she saw.

Until now, clear evidence of sex crimes has come from accounts by members of Zaka, the ultra-Orthodox volunteer organization that helps to retrieve and identify bodies. Their accounts described many bodies of women who were naked and bore signs of brutality and abuse.

Hundreds of suspects in the massacres are in Shin Bet security service and police custody. Emergency regulations let them appear in court only once every 45 days. Police also seized explosives they carried. A senior police source said most of the suspects had admitted their part in the atrocities, while a few have denied it. A few said they had entered Israel to look for work.

The State Prosecutor’s Office intends to indict the Hamas attackers for all the crimes committed during the massacres, even in the absence of solid evidence tying them to a specific act. The state plans to charge them with being party to the crimes through their participation in the infiltration into Israel and attacks on civilians and soldiers. Anyone caught in a particular community will be charged with cases of murder, rape, and abuse in other communities as well.
'She was gang raped; then they executed her': Testimonies from Oct. 7 atrocities unsealed
Unit Lahav 433 is constantly collaborating with the Shin Bet security agency and other security agencies in the interrogation of the captured terrorists. Through their investigations, the police aim to assign collective responsibility for the massacre. In one of the investigations, a Hamas operative described how he killed a man and a woman with a hammer.

As part of building the case against the Gaza Islamic terrorist group, the investigators have to collect testimonies from survivors classified as "victims of an offense" and "witnesses." "It is challenging to establish contact with people who have undergone such trauma," the members of Lahav 433 told Israel Hayom. "It requires emotional and mental intelligence." The unit is confident that this is the biggest case Israel has ever seen, even more significant than Adolf Eichmann's prosecution for his role in orchestrating the Holocaust as a senior Nazi official. In the case of prisoner exchanges, the testimonies and evidence could also be used in international lawsuits.

One of the horrifying calls that reached the police during the massacre was from a 15-year-old girl. "I'm a 15-year-old girl, I have school tomorrow," the girl said on the phone just before the terrorist holding her took her device. The dispatcher tried to beg for the girl's life, but it was in vain, and she was killed. "A significant portion of the murders were committed by civilians," emphasized the detectives of Lahav 433.

The investigators say that they want to prove that the Hamas atrocities were systematic and premeditated. Furthermore, the investigators succeeded in monitoring the Hamas groups on Telegram, where the terrorists sent some of the documentation of their crimes to encourage each other. It was revealed in the investigation that for every team of terrorists, there were also documenters who recorded the atrocities on GoPro cameras and used smartphones to livestream the massacre to their commanders in Gaza.

At the top levels of Lahav 433, they say that some social networks like Facebook and Instagram cooperate with them, while others have been less cooperative. "Not everyone has shifted to a war mode," said the police, adding that they estimate it will take many more weeks to collect all the materials.

At this stage, the police refuse to disclose whether individuals from within Israel assisted the Hamas attack, but they mention that there is evidence that even non-residents of Gaza participated in the massacre. It is emphasized that a few days after the massacre, survivors reported that they had heard Hamas terrorists speaking among themselves in Persian.

One of the Hamas operatives who was captured described in his interrogation that each cell had a mission, and the terrorists were divided into squads for training. He described how they trained for years and went through small-scale drills to avoid failure. Each cell received a battle plan, and only the cell leaders knew about the first three missions to prevent leaks.

The terrorists had ambitious plans, one of which was to take over a settlement and hold its residents hostage.
Matt Gurney: What I watched Hamas do
On Nov. 6, one-month-less-a-day after the Hamas assault on southern Israel, I was one of a small number of journalists to receive a briefing by a senior Israeli government official at the Israeli consulate in Toronto. Part of the briefing was the showing of a film, approximately 42 minutes long, that contained video and audio records of the attack. The sights and sounds came from many sources, including home security footage, survivor footage, surveillance cameras at private residences, military facilities and in public places, as well as cameras and Go-Pro-style body worn cameras carried by Hamas. Later in the film, we also see footage taken by Israeli first responders — some of it informally, via body worn cameras and smartphones, but some of it also deliberately and meticulously, as part of the documenting of the attack's aftermath. The video also included audio portions of what the Israeli government claims is intercepted Hamas communications sent during the attack.

I have to preface this near the top: I can't vouch for the authenticity of the videos, or of the translations. I believe that the videos are authentic and the translations accurate — the latter is easier, since it has by now been shown to enough people that any false translations would have been noted by members of the audience, but I don't speak Hebrew or Arabic, and had to rely on the captions. As for the videos, while some of what I saw on Monday was new to me, other clips have already been shared widely on social media. There's a decent chance you've seen some of them, too. For further disclosure, many of the clips are very short — a few seconds each. The Israelis said that in many cases, they are only choosing to release what the families of victims have agreed to allow to be shown. That's an editorial decision, and I haven't seen the unedited videos. I can’t tell you what I wasn’t shown.

So if you're absolutely determined to find a way to discredit or dismiss everything I'm about to say, I'll keep it easy for you. I saw what was presented to me, by Israel, and have little ability to independently confirm any of it.

If you're interested in hearing what I saw, though, here it is.

I should start by telling you I don’t plan to dwell on all the atrocities or try to summarize the whole 42 minutes of carnage I watched in any kind of coherent sequence. It's not that the atrocities aren't important — they're obviously the central point of the briefing for reporters, and what I was asked to bear witness to. My thinking is simply this: much of what I could tell you has been summarized elsewhere. The global media first saw this film, in Israel, two weeks ago; some of my Ottawa-based colleagues saw it last week. If you're looking for a summary of the contents, those exist already. I don't think you'd benefit from just another version of that, and I know I wouldn't enjoy writing one. So in the main, I'll avoid long, descriptive passages where I tell you what I saw. I'll try to offer something different.

But first, let's get this out of the way. I confess that I was afraid when the video started. Simple fear. Fear I'd crack, fear I'd have to look away, fear I'd somehow fail to meet the moment. I don’t know if that was a rational fear — what the hell does meeting the moment even mean? — but I was afraid. I was afraid from the moment I was asked to attend and said yes. As the film began, though, I found many of the videos less graphic than I'd feared, and actually less graphic than some of what I'd already seen and written about. No one should mistake me — the videos are graphic, some of them extremely so. But in many cases, the videos are taken from too far away or from an unsteady camera (particularly the body worn ones) and many of the worst gruesome details are thus obscured or missed.

Not all of them. Lord no, not all. But some. That helped.
This is Terror
The film ends. We sit silent. After several minutes, Tsach Saar, deputy counsel general from the Israel Consulate in New York, says the dehumanization of the film takes us back to WWII, back to the Shoah.

“When we hear chants ‘From the river to the sea,’ this is what it means. This is from the river to the sea,” he says. “It feels like we are fighting for our lives now, because we are.”

An audience member recalls as a child seeing film of corpses being bulldozed in the concentration camps; that the images stayed with him and scarred him. Why not release “Bearing Witness To the October 7th Massacre” to a wider audience, to prove to them the atrocities are real?

“For those who do not believe it, this will not convince them,” says Shefler of the IDF, who emphasizes that the massacre was very organized; that they had GoPros and everything mapped out and were very methodical. “And they put it on social media to create terror.”

Another audience member asks how we parse culpability, Hamas from Lebanon from Iran? Shefler says, this is the wrong question.

“It’s terror that did this,” he says. “This is terror.”
How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas

How Hamas prepared for October 7 – new report details secretive planning
One month after the start of Israel's war against Hamas, The Guardian released a report explaining who was in charge of the October 7 attack, how the massacres were organized, and what the terrorists viewed as their endgame. It appears that those executing the atrocities only learned about their commanders' plan within hours before crossing the Gaza-Israel border.

The investigation is based on multiple sources including conversations with Israeli intelligence officials, experts, "sources with direct knowledge of interrogation reports of Hamas fighters captured during the attacks," and material issued by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas.

The terrorists are said to have been split into units and given separate targets: "a military base, a kibbutz, a road or a town." Some orders reportedly had maps detailing the key locations based" on information derived from sympathizers working in Israel, the sources claim," said the investigation.

The Nova music festival massacre that resulted in the killing of at least 260 people and many kidnappings is not considered to be a part of Hamas's initial plan.

Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Mohammed Deif, a commander of al-Qassam brigades and the elite Nukhba squads, are believed to be the key figures behind the October 7 attack. The Hamas political leadership overseas as well as its sponsors in Iran were reportedly not informed about the details of the operation but could have had some awareness of the plan.

"He's 1,000% committed and 1,000% violent," the report cited a former Israeli interrogator who worked at the institution where Sinwar was held. Sinwar's prison experience could lie at the heart of the mass kidnapping plan as the only way to free the Palestinian prisoners from Israel.

Hamas has reportedly blamed a lot of the violence against civilians including rape and torture on the alleged "criminals" who followed the terrorists. However, The Guardian cited the IDF's interview with a captured Hamas attacker who acknowledged that the "mission was to kill … anyone we saw" and admitted having shot children.

According to the report, there were also defensive units that focused on retaliating IDF's efforts, "often with ambushes on key roads." Another set of units is said to have been ordered to capture as many hostages as possible and to bring them to the designated fighters waiting at the fence. The latter would take the abductees to the Gazan tunnels system.

The IDF stated that it took Hamas between 12 and 18 months to plan the attack. Hamas claims that the preparation started two years ago with another escalation around Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque.

The report cited analysts believing that the goal of the October 7 attack could include "halting efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, further undermining the Palestinian Authority, distracting from Hamas's failure to deliver services or break the blockade of Gaza, and provoking a violent reaction from Israel that would mobilize its supporters in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere."

Hamas is said to have been surprised by the success of its attack. An Israeli official told The Guardian that "the slow response of Israeli forces" allowed terrorists to make several trips into Israel to seize more hostages.

"There is no evidence that Hamas hoped to hold territory or spark a wider insurrection, though some were told to fight to the end." However, according to the report, some terrorists gave themselves up and have been a useful source of intelligence for Israel.
Israel and International law - Hamas fighting from hospitals and schools

Blood-curdling bodycam reveals how sick Hamas terrorists used IDF uniform disguise to slaughter and snatch civilians

Israel demands clarification from global media over photographers during Hamas assault
Israel on Thursday demanded that international media outlets explain the circumstances under which photographers in their pay were present at the scene of the surprise October 7 assault by the Hamas terror group on southern Israel, and warned they could be held complicit in the crimes.

The move came after the pro-Israel watchdog group Honest Reporting published a report Wednesday showing that photographers used by The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, and CNN provided images taken as the attack was ongoing from the border area and including from inside Israel — intimating they may have had advance knowledge of the assault.

The report also raised questions about the relationship between some of the photographers and the Hamas terror group that rules Gaza.

AP and Reuters both denied having any prior knowledge of the attack and reiterated that their role is to cover breaking news events. CNN said it had cut ties with one of the photographers named in the report even though it had no reason to doubt the “journalistic accuracy” of his work.

The National Information System, a department of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in a statement Thursday that it “takes very seriously the phenomenon of journalists working with international media joining [with attackers] to cover the brutal massacres by Hamas terrorists on Saturday 10/7/2023 in the communities surrounding Gaza.”

It said the Government Press Office “issued an urgent letter to the heads of the media systems where these photographers are employed, and asked for clarification on the matter.”

Still, without receiving answers, it concluded that: “These media people are complicit in crimes against humanity.”

“This is a violation of the rules of professional ethics,” the statement said. “The National Information System demands that immediate action be taken.”

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi also sent a letter to The New York Times asserting that photographers and others at the paper had prior knowledge of the attack and urging the paper to investigate.

“I write to you with deep concern regarding recent reports about your employees’ alleged involvement in the tragic events in southern Israel,” Karhi wrote. “It has come to our attention that certain individuals within your organization, including photographers and others, had prior knowledge of these horrific actions and may have maintained a troubling connection with the perpetrators.”

“I urgently request a thorough investigation into this matter,” Karhi wrote. “The gravity of the situation demands a swift and thorough response.”


The Commentary Magazine Podcast: The News Organizations Working With Hamas
Today’s podcast begins with a discussion of the Republican debate before we turn to the astonishing revelations that trusted stringers for a series of Western news organizations, among them the AP, Reuters, and CNN, were actually with the Hamas monsters who slaughtered and wounded 5,000 Israelis on October 7—and were, at least until last night, still collecting checks from these organizations. How could this happen? The answer: Decades of reliance on local “stringers” who are actually operatives for the bad guys.


FDD: Israel Widens Anti-Tunnel War in Gaza

Piers Morgan vs Douglas Murray Under Fire At Israel-Gaza Border
Watch Piers Morgan's explosive interview with author and journalist Douglas Murray on the Israel-Gaza border.

Douglas Murray says evidence of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel can be seen "everywhere", while telling Piers that sounds in the background are artillery shells which are Israel's "answer" to Hamas.

When debating whether pro-Palestine marches can take place on Armistice Day in London, Mr Murray says the rules on not allowing the glorification of terrorism are "very clear", telling Piers Morgan: "If you stand on the streets of London calling for jihad, you are calling for terror, that is a place where free speech is at its limit."


Douglas Murray: Why must Jews watch their backs as London mobs cheer?

Douglas Murray: 'Main Driver Of Antisemitism In West From Importation Of Muslims'
Douglas Murray tells Julia Hartley-Brewer what he thinks is the main driver of antisemitism in the West in recent years, "it's been from the importing of millions of people from the Muslim world."

The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza City has prompted discussions about the Israeli military's response and the international reaction to it. The Israeli military has warned that Hamas leaders are "dead men walking," while the UN chief has criticized Israel's military operations, stating that the number of civilian casualties shows something is clearly wrong.

In this interview, author Douglas Murray is currently in Israel and has visited the Israeli-Gaza border. Murray discusses the horrific Hamas attack, the international response, the role of PR, and the criticism faced by Israel.

Murray reflects on his recent visit to the Gaza border, where he witnessed the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack. He highlights that this attack was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, emphasizing the gravity of the situation. Murray also points out that Hamas has openly stated its intention to carry out more similar attacks until the Jewish state is wiped out.


Douglas Murray: 'Big Bearded Fellas Shouting Jihad' In London Should Be Locked Up On Armistice Day
Douglas Murray blasts pro-Palestinian protesters planning to march on Armistice Day.

"We have sacred places too! You think you can trample on them? Prod us and insult us by marching on those days with hate, antisemitism, anti-British sentiment? No!"

The decision of the Metropolitan Police in the UK to allow a pro-Palestinian demonstration to take place on a sacred day has sparked outrage and criticism. The Met police has been accused of bias and favouritism.

Douglas Murray tells Julia Hartley-Brewer that protests such as those by Extinction Rebellion are allowed to proceed without much interference, and pro-Palestinian and extremist groups seem to face fewer consequences for their actions. The recent attack on an important masterpiece in the National Gallery by two individuals with hammers further highlights the issue of leniency towards offenders.




Blinken: Postwar Gaza should have no Israeli occupation or blockade
In a press conference following the meeting of the G7 in Tokyo, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken lays out what the US envisions for a post-war future in Gaza, urging Israel not to reoccupy Gaza but admitting there may be a “transition period.”

“The only way to ensure this never happens again is to set the conditions for durable peace and security,” he says.

Blinken lists the elements the US says is needed to make that a reality: “No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, not now, not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempts to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza. We must also ensure no terrorist threats emerge from the West Bank,” he says.

It appears to be the first time that a US official had publicly made these points after long avoiding any criticism of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which Jerusalem says is necessary to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Strip. Human rights groups say the policy has stymied the enclave’s economy significantly.

The call for Israel not to take over Gaza territory after the war also flies in the face of comments by Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who have insisted that the IDF will have to establish some sort of buffer zone within the Strip to better secure the border.


‘Hamas would benefit’ from a humanitarian pause to the conflict
ANU North America Liaison Office Director Professor John Blaxland says world leaders calling for a humanitarian pause to the Israel-Hamas conflict don’t understand that “Hamas would benefit” from a pause.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed the need for a humanitarian pause on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Japan, saying a pause is vital to allow aid into the enclave and for civilians to flee the conflict.

“But a pause – who’s going to benefit from the pause? Well, I would say that I suspect Hamas would benefit from the pause,” Professor Blaxland told Sky News Australia.

“I think there is another angle to this as well that is not really appreciated, or at least it’s something Hamas plays down – they have miles and miles of underground passageways, they’ve got facilities, they’ve been storing up fuel, water, supplies, hospital material.

“There’s plenty of space down there, it appears, for a lot of people to be sheltered.

“This is what they invested their time and money in rather than with all the aid that they have received from around the world.”




The Ruins of Kibbutz Kfar Aza
Hamas terrorists burst into Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7. From a community of 750, between 52 and 60 people were murdered and 17 are believed to have been taken hostage.

In the area of the kibbutz earmarked for young couples and families, 40 houses of modest appearance and size had sustained varying degrees of destruction. Some were entirely blackened out, their walls pockmarked with holes from grenade fragments. Others were left with gaping holes in their exterior walls from RPG impacts. All of them bore remnants of the lives that were once lived within their walls. A soldier at the site said Hamas terrorists were hiding in homes for days following the attack.

Kibbutz resident Hanan Dann recounted the harrowing story of the Almog-Goldstein family, which took a full week to determine using DNA samples. The father, Nadav, was killed alongside his eldest daughter, Yam, and his wife, Chen, had been abducted to Gaza along with the couple's three younger children. Dann asked, "What would you rather hear? That your family has been all slaughtered and burnt to death? Or that they are being held captive by Hamas in Gaza? Which is the better news?"

ZAKA is an organization that specializes in search and rescue for bodies. ZAKA volunteer Simcha Greineman was asked by one reporter to verify IDF claims of Hamas beheadings. He said, "I collected heads without bodies, I collected bodies without heads, I collected children that were stabbed. One child had his whole body burned but there was a knife stuck in his head from side to side."

Greineman recounted a scene in which a family of five, including parents, two children and a grandmother, were found in the bedroom "standing in a circle, hugging each other, locked arms." ZAKA was tasked with detangling the family. "We"re taking these last moments of life that they had, this circle, and we're taking apart every body that was attached to each other, and putting them in the bags," he said.
Hamas Tried to Kill My Children on October 7
One month ago, Oct. 7, as the sun was rising over my home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, I had to tell my two daughters - 3-years-old and 20-months-old - that they must remain completely silent. Five men soon began firing bullets into our home through the living room window. They tried to break through our locked door with their guns. They sprayed our two cars with bullets. One of them held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Another threw a grenade toward our neighbors' home. These men were Hamas terrorists, armed from head to toe, on a mission to get in and kill us.

They deliberately chose to enter civilian communities and the homes of families, to murder innocent people. In my community, they shot to death a teenage girl who worked in our kindergarten. They kidnapped two sisters, ages 14 and 8, after murdering their father. Had they managed to break into the room where we silently barricaded ourselves, we all would be dead now. We survived, but many didn't. We lost 14 people on Oct. 7, while five others were taken to Gaza. Had the military arrived 20 minutes later, the death toll would have doubled.

Hamas chose to start a war after many years in which successive Israeli governments looked for new ways to improve the economic reality in Gaza. In my own community, we were proud to employ workers from there, paying them 10 times the average wage inside the Strip. The Gazans who came to work in our community were able to build homes for their families and finance an education for their children. In a shocking act of betrayal, some of them provided intelligence to Hamas that helped it plan its deadly attack on our kibbutz. No Israeli will ever want to employ workers from Gaza in the near future.

No country in the world would have accepted what happened to my family on that awful morning - and you must multiply that by many hundreds of families. A country that doesn't kill the people who tried to murder my daughters, and those who sent them, has lost its right to exist.

Israel must first of all defeat Hamas. This organization can't remain an active force in Gaza. This isn't genocide or ethnic cleansing. It's a terrible war. It's a war for our very ability to keep living in this land and raising our children here.


‘Hamas took a page from the Nazi playbook,’ says a survivor of the Nova Music Festival massacre
Natalie Sanandaji, a survivor of the Nova Music Festival massacre, recounts the choices that saved her life, the aftermath, and the wave of antisemitism she encountered as she went back to New York.




Ron DeSantis throws full weight behind Israel and calls for Hamas to be 'finished'

Lawmaker seeks probe into alleged cash flow from pro-Palestinian charities to Hamas

Ben Shapiro: The Cry-Terrorist Strategy of Hamas Supporters
Rashida Tlaib claims victimhood after supporting Hamas to the hilt; voters in Ohio enshrine abortion into law, and Democrats hold onto the governorship in Kentucky and the Virginia State Senate; and Democrats’ Biden heartburn continues.


Megyn Kelly: Nuance on Anti-Semitism But Not Racism, and Amy Cooper's Life Now, with Stu Burguiere & Dave Marcus
Megyn Kelly is joined by Stu Burguiere, host of BlazeTV's Stu Does America, and Dave Marcus, Daily Mail columnist and author, to discuss the left's hypocrisy on claims of anti-Semitism vs. claims of racism, how Amy Cooper’s life has been ruined after the viral video showing her interaction in Central Park, why the term "Karen" needs to be retired, and more.




Arab-Israeli: Hamas is Deceiving the World | Our Middle East
How did Hamas deceive the whole world about their plans to attack Israel? What is the Arab street and press saying about the October 7th attacks?

Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh rejoins Dan Diker on Our MIddle East to discuss
- the way that Hamas duped the West, Israel, and part of the Arab world
- What the Arab press believes happened on Oct. 7th
- The Palestinian leadership's efforts to make the conflict religious and how they are aiming to ultimately attack Western countries.

Our Middle East is your inside look into what is really happening in the region!


‘Not possible’ for Israel and Hamas to coexist: Former UN official
Former UN official Ramesh Thakur says it is “not possible” for Israel and Hamas to coexist in the current political climate in the Middle East.

“While Israel tries to minimise civilian casualties … Hamas explicitly aims to maximise civilian casualties, both amongst Israelis but also among its own people,” Mr Thakur told Sky News host Sharri Markson.

“We need to … support Israel in the effort to finish off Hamas as a threat, both to Palestinians and to Israel.”

The Former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations wrote a piece in which he professes that Western societies are struggling to confront tough decisions that must be made to protect human freedoms.

As protestors and politicians across Australia and the world continue to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, or at least a humanitarian pause, many are instead insisting that Hamas' evil must be met with its complete and utter destruction.




Australian charity sending money to Gaza organisation affiliated with terrorist group
Sky News can reveal Australians have been donating tens of thousands of dollars to an aid organisation in Gaza which has been accused of funnelling the money to a hardline Islamic terrorist group.

The charity ‘Olive Kids’, founded by Australia Palestine Advocacy Network President Nasser Mashni, is sending money to a Gaza-based health organisation that is claimed to be affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, known as the PFLP.

Olive Kids’ Chairman told Sky News that Olive Kids was raising funds in Australia “to support orphaned children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

“Every cent raised in Australia goes directly to support these children in their health and education,” he said.


Jewish community terrified of ‘repeat’ of the Holocaust
Former Liberal MP Nicolle Flint says members of the Jewish community are terrified the world will see a “repeat” of the Holocaust based on the way things are going.

“It began with this sort of behaviour, with these sorts of statements and it needs to be stopped,” Ms Flint told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

This comes as key Palestinian spokesman Nasser Mashni advocated for the destruction of the Israeli state and Zionism.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong drew criticism for meeting with Mr Mashni following Hamas’ attacks on October 7.

“Minister Penny Wong … needs to explain why she had this meeting and she needs to vehemently, absolutely and utterly distance herself from and reject these statements this gentleman has made,” Ms Flint said.


'They have a Jewish problem': Greens' 'gross hypocrisy' slammed

Nationals Deputy leader blasts Greens ‘cheap stunt’ in Senate protest over Israel-Hamas conflict



The Israel Guys: MONTANA COWBOYS Go Viral After Being Spotted in The Airport On their Way to Israel
The IDF opened an evacuation route in the Gaza Strip for civilians to move out of the zone where the Heroes of the IDF are hunting down ISIS terrorists, now modernly referred to as Hamas. We also have a special surprise on the show today relating to the Cowboys who came to Israel and became an overnight viral sensation on the internet here in Israel. . .You don’t want to miss today’s show.


Israel 'needs our 100% support': former Queensland premier Campbell Newman
Avi Yemini is joined by former Queensland, Australia, premier Campbell Newman at the ARC conference for a discussion about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, which he compared to the Second World War while adding that Israel 'needs our 100% support' in the war.


King of Stuff Podcast: Karol Markowicz
The King welcomes Karol Markowicz to talk about the impact on Jews in America and around the world, not only to the Oct. 7 terror attacks but also the pro-Hamas protests and anti-semitic violence. Karol is a columnist at the New York Post and Fox News and co-author of the best-selling book, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation. She also hosts a new podcast called The Karol Markowicz Show.


Daniel Greenfield: Islamists and Leftists Assault Jews Outside Holocaust Museum in Support of Hamas

Why neo-Nazi groups are popping up at pro-Palestinian rallies

Shocking moment Gal Gadot's screening of Hamas terror attack film ends in CHAOS as brawl breaks out among pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protestors

Organiser of planned pro-Palestine march on Armistice Day worked for Keir Starmer until this week

Abusing the word ‘genocide’ about Israel is dangerous and spectacularly ignorant

Woman, 21, is set to appear in court accused of holding an anti-Semitic sign at a pro-Palestine rally

Jake Wallis Simons: An attack on a poppy seller is an attack on us all

Doctor at Northwick Park Hospital removed for posting antisemitic comments online

Left-Wing School Board President Goes Full Farrakhan, Says Jews Ran the Slave Trade

Deadly ignorance: Jewish rapper Kosha Dillz interviews shockingly misinformed teens at pro-Palestine protest in DC



College campuses see wave of antisemitism as woke mantras take hold
Ezra Levant and True North founder Candice Malcolm speak about the rise in antisemitism on college campuses and at protests.


Anti-Semitic attack on a synagogue in Montreal
In reaction to this hateful act, several politicians, including prominent figures like Pierre Poilievre, Anthony Housefather, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have come forward to publicly denounce it. They stand in solidarity with the affected community, expressing their condemnation.




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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 over 19 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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