Tuesday, December 05, 2023

12/05 Links Pt2: Seth Mandel: The Dream of Peace After the Nightmare; The ridiculous US plan for ‘the day after’; To Be a Jew in America after 10/7

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Dream of Peace After the Nightmare
Avi Dabush, of Rabbis for Human Rights, said he still believes in his work but that it’s unrealistic to expect it to bear fruit in Gaza as long as Hamas rules the enclave: “Right now I can’t see any way that we, the communities there and myself and my family, can live with Hamas on the border.”

There’s a hard-earned realism in those comments that doesn’t surface in the younger, Tel Aviv-based activists profiled by CNN and calling themselves Gen Zayin (Get it? Gen Z?): “The group’s anti-war position won’t be welcomed by most of the Jewish population at this current moment, they say, which is why Gen Zayin members stick up posters in the dead of night and surreptitiously share pamphlets that espouse their anti-war, anti-government manifesto in high schools.” The CNN article also interviews family members of victims and other activists, not just the know-it-all high school manifesto crowd. They, too, speak with anguish of reconciling their desire for peace with their will to continue as before.

There is a very good chance, however, that they will never come any closer to their goal than they were before Oct. 7, when it became tragically clear just how far they had been from it.

The picture we see in our minds of the border communities only contains what’s visible: the nearness, the friendly interaction, the breaking bread, the stillness between rocket alarms, a tense and hopeful status quo maintained by a fence. But that picture is painted by the unseen: surveillance cameras, remote-controlled machine guns, and underground barriers. Hamas used drones to disable the cellular-reliant surveillance and remote-controlled guns. The underground barrier was rendered useless because the terrorists simply bulldozed barricades and drove over the fence.

In other words, what you saw was only a façade. When Hamas made it so that what was visible was all there was, Israel fell victim to an unprecedented massacre followed by widespread Palestinian looting and rioting while Israeli survivors hid in safe rooms. Israeli border security—of which there will be more, not less, going forward—made it possible to believe that one day Israeli border security wouldn’t be needed. I don’t know how many Israelis will be prepared to believe that ever again, no matter what they see when they look out their windows.
Victor Davis Hanson: Weimar America
For the last 40 years, while Western leftists have naively supported Palestinian terrorists, their governments have appeased terrorist-supporting Middle Eastern governments for very practical reasons. The old subtext to such mollification was that 500-million irate Arab Muslims, and a Middle East with 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves, in realist terms, simply argued against the interests of 10 million Israelis.

But now there are two new, venomous elements in the matrix.

One is that the racist DEI industry assumes that all intersectional nonwhite communities are victims of white privilege and supremacy. Therefore, as permanently oppressed, they are declared incapable of being racist themselves. And so they can harass with impunity the supposed victimizers—in this case American Jews, who are declared culpable whites.

So the oppressed, according to the DEI bible, cannot be anti-Semitic, though many certainly are. And they apparently cannot be held accountable for their hatred or frequent violence.

Secondly, in the last two decades there has been an epidemic of immigration into Western nations from the Middle East. In often-divided democracies like ours, politicians seek to appease as many pressure groups as possible, whether citizen voters or merely resident demonstrators, to acquire and maintain power.

Such pro-Hamas demonstrators, rah-rahing from a free, prosperous, and secure West, expect no rebuke for their obvious hypocrisy in cheering on an autocratic, dictatorial Hamas that has wrecked the economy of Gaza, shoots dissidents, and allows no free expression. And Middle Eastern guests and immigrants are never reminded that their very demonstrations are predicated on not being physically present in their homelands, where they might be shot for what they say and do freely in the West.

We are on a trajectory similar to that of 1930s Germany.

Every time a student is cornered, harassed, or threatened; a high school mob tries to swarm and harm a teacher; a government spokesperson dismisses such hatred; or American soldiers are targeted by Iranian-fed terrorist organizations; the madness, racism, and anti-Semitism will increase—until it reaches a saturation point of abject violence in our streets.

Once a society mainstreams the values of thuggish brownshirts, and ignores their “from the river to the sea” eliminationist chants and screams of “beat the f—king Jew,” then the next emboldened step is foreordained.

True, most Americans were appalled by October 7 and accept that every nation has the right to defend itself from terrorist killers. Most Americans deplore vicious demonstrators and their calls for violence on behalf of the Hamas death cult. And most Americans want their President to demand the release of American hostages and to deter Iranian-backed terrorists who attack U.S. military personnel in the region.

But unless the public demands that their universities enforce on campus the Bill of Rights and the right to move freely in safety, that police enforce laws against mob violence on America’s streets and in our schools, and that the United States stops greenlighting mass immigration from anti-Western nations and extending student visas to residents of anti-American, terrorist-supporting, and autocratic Middle East regimes, then in suicidal fashion we are headed for a 1930s nightmare.
A Plea to the International Law Community: On De-Humanizing and the October 7th Atrocities
The paper that I was going to present today addresses cases where there is an apparent contrast between the formal articulation of international law and shared basic moral intuitions. When I initially used the term “common sense” it was in the assumption that we have shared basic moral intuitions. I assumed that we could be consistent with our positions and apply the same academic standards to all cases in good faith regardless of who the parties are. And in fields that deal with a broken world such as jus ad bellum and jus in bello, I assumed an ability to accommodate complexity and contrasting interests that literally involve life and death.

I am currently having significant doubts about whether this is really the case. The reaction to the events of October 7th by so many of our international legal community have left me broken.

Let me give a few examples. In a post published on Opinio Juris on October 10, the author almost celebrated the Hamas atrocities that had occurred 3 days prior.* Not only was there an apparent lack of empathy expressed for the victims of those atrocities or even an acknowledgment of those crimes, the author instead referred to October 7 as a “counter-offensive” and cited Frantz Fanon and Sukarno to justify the events stating that “‘decolonization is always a violent phenomenon’ for the coloniser ‘does not give up their loot easily.’ ״ For the reader to understand their use of the term, “counter-offensive,” the author hyperlinked to an essay that speaks at length in unvarnished celebration of the October 7 attack (e.g., lauding the “spectacular feat … an amazing and highly daring offensive;” an attack that “dealt a heavy blow to the unbearable haughtiness” of the Israeli government and stating, “[t]he Israeli flag was projected on Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on the evening of 7 October in a contemptible display of fawning over the state of Israel”).

Sadly, this is not a unique example, but instead is representative of a trend within the academic community in general and within the community of international lawyers in particular. Various academics celebrated the atrocities in various public forums, while others justified the horrible crimes on social media. In a recent post, Opinio Juris published a piece calling for States to act to prevent a potential genocide in Gaza without any reference to the events of October 7 or their perpetrator, Hamas,—not to mention the analysis of those acts under the Genocide Convention. It is no wonder that this author failed to mention the October 7 atrocities, as he had in fact justified it on that day, posting that morning on X: “UNGA Res. A/RES/33/24 on 29 November 1978: ‘Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle’.” There were and are, of course, many such posts on X and elsewhere celebrating the atrocities of October 7. But what is notable here is that mainstream international law blogs are willing to publish posts that justify such atrocities without much resistance of the international law community.

How can we truly think of shared moral intuitions if one of the leading international law blogs is willing to publish a post that effectively celebrates the brutal and intentional murder of children, men, and women including holocaust survivors, the raping of women, the destruction of entire communities, and the abduction of more than 200 hostages including children as young as 9-months-old? How can we reconcile the acceptance of such posts and public positions by some members of our community? Are we willing to accept a situation where some human beings do not deserve protection, like my young son Gev, due to the power relations between parties to a conflict?


Daniel Greenfield: Muslim Lives Matter. Jewish Lives Don’t.
On the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Museum of Tolerance screened footage of the Hamas atrocities, and was descended upon by a pro-terrorist mob that justified the violence. Members of the Jewish community were assaulted by the pro-Hamas mob. Neither the media nor local officials condemned one of the most brazen antisemitic campaigns in American history.

Mayor Karen Bass reposted a media report misleadingly describing a scene in which “two groups outside LA’s Museum of Tolerance” clashed and condemned “unacceptable violence” rather than the equivalent of the KKK showing up in a black neighborhood. No public officials to my knowledge issued a statement condemning an attack on a Holocaust museum on the anniversary of Kristalnacht. Some of those officials, including DA George Gascon, list endorsements from the hate groups behind the attack. Some of the leftists responsible have since targeted another Holocaust museum in the Los Angeles area with pro-terrorist rallies.

In another part of Los Angeles, Daniel Garcia, a leftist activist, broke into the home of a Jewish family and threatened to kill them, “because you are Jewish… Israel kill people.” As he was being arrested, he went on shouting, “Free Palestine” and “Brown Lives Matter”.

Despite his long history of leftist activism, which included working as a field organizer on the Bernie Sanders campaign and serving on the boards of multiple leftist groups, the official word was that he was suffering from mental illness. And that it was not a political act.

In reality, Garcia had a long history of posting anti-Israel material on social media. After being released, he went on posting it including videos from terrorists attacking Israel. His social media, with its BDS videos, Islamic propaganda, Norman Finkelstein clips and all the rest of it is easily publicly accessible. No one in the media has bothered to report on it. And it will stay that way.

The Left has not even broken ties with Garcia in the aftermath of his attack on a Jewish family.

Attacks on Jews and Muslims are treated very differently for political reasons. Unless the attacks on Jews are carried out by far-right perpetrators, they are ignored and buried. When they are carried out by Muslims or anti-Israel leftists, they’re covered up, not reported on.

A Muslim can kill a Jewish man in broad daylight and the media will try to minimize it. Leftists and Muslims can attack a Holocaust museum on the anniversary of one of the most infamous dates in the Holocaust, and politicians and the media will call it a “both sides” problem. And a Leftist calling for the murder of Jews and ‘free Palestine” can invade a Jewish family’s home and it will strictly be a local crime story. But when there is any incident involving Muslims, it automatically becomes front page news regardless of how little evidence there is to it.

Anything that bolsters the ‘Islamophobia’ narrative and the claim that Muslims are the victims is always in demand.

On Oct 23, Hesham A. Ayyad claimed that a driver hit him with a car while shouting, “kill all Palestinians,”and “long live Israel.” CAIR demanded that the police and the FBI “collect all the information they need to charge this individual with a hate crime.” Vox quickly picked it up. So did other media outlets. Police however found he had actually been beaten up by his brother.

Vox has yet to correct its story which still lists it among other “Islamophobic” crimes caused by Israel’s war against Hamas.

Why did Paul Kessler’s killer think he could get away with it? And why have there been so many open attacks on Jews, especially on college campuses, in the past month? Because politicians and the media have shown that some lives matter more than others. Jewish lives don’t matter.
Worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust still not enough for some
Two weeks after October 7, Al Jazeera ran an opinion piece by academic imam Omar Suleiman, calling him an “American Muslim scholar and theologically driven activist for human rights”. Under the headline “Erasing Palestine”, Suleiman accuses Israel of “genocide”.

The word “genocide” is a leitmotif running through anti-Israel rhetoric. Suleiman has taken it to new defining heights: “What is happening in Palestine can no longer be described as genocide or even ethnic cleansing,” he writes. “It is beyond mass extermination. It is total erasure.”

Yet Hamas’ charter is “explicitly genocidal” towards Jews, as Harris and others have noted. That’s based on a prophecy in the Koran of a time when “the earth itself will cry out for Jewish blood”, when “the trees and the stones will say: ‘O Muslim, there’s a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’”

Comparisons between Israelis and Nazis have proliferated since October 7. They are “standard anti-Semitic tropes”, as Pretoria university anthropology professor Rebecca Hodes says in a PoliticsWeb article on the ANC’s pro-Palestine march in Pretoria on October 15. Hodes has called the march a “Jew-baiting jamboree”.

Jew-baiting jamborees globally are replete with these tropes. They “aim to draw parity between Nazi atrocities committed against Jews during the Holocaust and current day crimes Jewish Israelis are said to be committing against Palestinians”, Hodes says.

Dehumanisation of Israelis and conflation of Jewish civilians and soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “are key tenets of this discourse”. The discourse has spawned the virulent anti-Semitic claim that Jews are somehow “weaponising the Holocaust”. At the heart of the claim — as Karen Pollock, CEO of the UK Holocaust Educational Trust, writes in The Guardian — is that people “love dead Jews”. That can sound sensationalist to sensitive ears. It’s the title of a book by US novelist and literature professor Dana Horn: People Love Dead Jews, Reports From a Haunted Past.

Horn wrote it, she says on her website, to confront reasons for “so much fascination with Jewish deaths, as emblematic of the worst of evils the world has to offer, and so little respect for Jewish lives, as they continue to unfold in the present”.

Of course, there is an inevitability about Jews connecting the trauma that Hamas visited on civilians in Israel on October 7 with the trauma of massacres that the Nazis perpetrated during the Holocaust. It should surprise no-one.

“The world turned its back when Hitler came to power, allowing the Nazis to pursue their murderous goals with little ... help from the non-Jewish world,” Pollock writes.

October 7 shows that it’s happening again. Scottish-American academic Niall Ferguson is one of the world’s foremost economic historians. He describes as “extraordinary” the suggestion of any moral equivalence between “terrorists murdering innocent women, children, babies — putting babies in ovens, for heaven’s sake — and the IDF retaliating in ways to target perpetrators, going out of their way to minimise civilian casualties”. Harris and Ferguson see no moral equivalence whatsoever.

All of which raises these questions. If the compelling body of evidence of Hamas’ sadistic savagery on October 7 is not enough to deter support from even good people, will anything ever be enough? If the evidence of the violent gang rape, eye-gouging and mutilation of women’s bodies is not be enough to stop feminist groups from supporting terror groups, will anything ever be enough?

Probably, nothing will ever be enough until — or unless — more people realise that “we are all living in Israel”.

The war continues, the remaining hostages are held in hellish limbo and the number of civilian deaths in Gaza rises daily — 13,000 at last count, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health.

But this is not just a numbers game.

Counting the number of dead bodies is “no way to judge the moral balance here”, Harris writes. “Intentions matter,” he says. So does “what kind of world people are attempting to build”.

Human rights activists and more ordinary mortals who support Hamas need to think very carefully about the kind of world they are helping to build.


To Be a Jew in America after 10/7
Which brings us to the inevitable outcome of all this. A final story from this weekend, one that should chill you, took place in Williamsburg, Va., home to the College of William & Mary and a great place to see someone dressed in full colonial garb filling up the tank at the local Shell. The local Second Sundays Art Festival (staged by a private company, not the city) canceled its traditional menorah-lighting to celebrate Hanukkah. The reason given by the organizers? To commemorate a Jewish holiday would be to send the message that the festival “support[s] the killing/bombing of thousands of men, women, and children.” Local Jews were offered a gracious compromise: The ceremony could go on if and only if it was done under a banner calling for “CEASEFIRE NOW.”

LoveLight Placemaking, the company that puts on the festival, is a private actor and can more or less do what it wants in terms of event staging, however revoltingly bigoted. But the menorah-lighting has been part of the event for years, and the most important point of all is that Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is a Jewish holiday, not an “Israeli” national holiday. (Do the LoveLight people actually object to the Maccabean Wars?) To single it out for unique exclusion is, quite brazenly, to stigmatize all Jews everywhere, regardless of their views on Israel or Hamas. They are convicted, instead, by their blood and their faith.

Maybe the people who did this are moral monsters, actively seeking to hold Jewish religious participation in a town festival as surety against the behavior of the Netanyahu government. Or maybe they’re just moral cowards, reacting in fear to anticipated activist complaints. But either way, their decision is acutely responsive to what was once, but now is no longer, a niche activist concern. To use a cliché from the post-9/11 days that was overused to the point of parody (but this time correctly), canceling a Jewish public holiday celebration out of fear of political backlash in a war begun by Hamas is literally letting the terrorists win. The further demand for a “CEASEFIRE NOW” banner suggests something far more sinister about their preferences.

Make no mistake about this: There is no other explanation for the fact that the organizers dangled the possibility of participation in front of the Jewish community if they would adopt their political position on the present war. My innate anger at seeing religious festivals chased from the public square takes on a far graver sense of blood-boiling outrage, even despair, when I see it tied up with such specific political demands on the Jewish community. It’s a “mask drop” moment that reveals the racist assumptions underlying the entire position — akin to shining a blacklight on the bedsheets in a hotel room.

We are not likely ever again to be presented with such a thumping real-world refutation of the “it’s anti-Zionism, not antisemitism” trope. No, when an American town’s Hanukkah celebration is suddenly up for grabs based on the policy of the Israeli government, it is demonstrably, irrefutably — by the terms it sets out for itself — antisemitism. What’s more, it all seems directed toward raising the temperature of fear for American Jews, making it a tick more socially unacceptable, or risky, or isolating, to be a Jew or supporter of Israel in public. That’s why such shocking rhetorical cruelty runs throughout the pro-Palestinian movement. It is not incidental to the cause. The cruelty is the point.
Menorah lightings canceled around the world as towns remove Jewish symbols over Hamas war

UK’s woke Left in toxic alliance with Hamas, says British-born Israeli politician
“Woke” Left-wing activists have formed a “toxic alliance” with Islamic fundamentalists to stoke anti-Semitism in the UK, Israel’s most senior British-born politician has told The Telegraph.

In an interview, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum also branded the United Nations as “the worst” after its women’s group was accused of taking 57 days to condemn the “brutal attacks by Hamas” on Israel on Oct 7 including the rape of Israeli women.

Mrs Hassan-Nahoum, 50, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, warned that the war in Gaza would continue for up to six more months but said she found it “difficult to believe” Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could continue in office following the intelligence and security failures in the run-up to the Hamas attack.

Mrs Hassan-Nahoum, who was born in London and grew up in Gibraltar, flew into the UK to join a protest on Sunday against UN Women held outside Downing Street. “The UN is awful,” she said, “They are the worst. They have all these countries that are not democracies and give them equal standing and they whitewash them. They all feel they are in a democratic system but they are all dictatorships.

“UN Women took seven weeks to call out the mass rapes and mutilation and violence against women. It is too little too late.”

On Dec 1, UN Women, a United Nations entity that campaigns for gender equality, issued a statement in which it said it “unequivocally” condemned the Oct 7 attack on Israel and said it was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” committed on that day.
NGO Monitor: Sweden’s NGO Whitewash: NGO Monitor’s Analysis of Sida’s Palestinian Funding Review
On December 1, 2023, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) published the results of an internal review, commissioned by the Swedish government, of all ongoing funding to Palestinians (excluding funding to UNRWA, which does not fall under Sida’s purview). This funding was frozen (except for humanitarian aid) in response to the 7 October Hamas massacre in Israel. The review guidelines specified examining whether “Swedish funds go to actors that do not unconditionally condemn Hamas, that commit violence, threaten or encourage violence against the State of Israel or its population, or pursue an antisemitic agenda, nor to people associated with such actors” (emphasis added).

Regarding NGO funding, Sida’s review proclaimed that no Swedish funds went to terrorist activities through NGO projects, and that no NGO grantees were involved in incitement to hatred and violence after the 7 October 2023 events. In contrast, the reviews conducted by the EU, Switzerland, and Germany concluded that some of the same NGOs had been involved in these activities, and those governments ended funding.

Most of the criteria in the government’s request to SIDA were not addressed in the review. Revealingly, Sida admits that the government’s expectation that NGO grantees would “‘unilaterally condemn Hamas,’…would exclude cooperation with virtually all of Sida’s partners.” Indeed, NGO Monitor has documented in detail how NGOs supported by Sweden not only failed to condemn Hamas, but have actively participated in incitement and justified violence since October 7.

As detailed below, NGO Monitor’s analysis of Sida’s review points to several systematic and methodological failures to address the issues. Sida primarily relies on self-reporting of NGO grantees; only a very small number of projects were independently evaluated; and the review does not address the core question of NGO incitement to violence. Furthermore, the report fails to realistically address the probability of Swedish aid having been physically diverted to Hamas and other designated terror organizations, and, as noted, it dismisses governmental concerns over the failure of grantees to condemn the Hamas massacre.

In addition, the Sida review includes a number of misrepresentations, including regarding the restrictive measures and sanctions enacted by the EU and Switzerland following their respective reviews. Similarly, Sida does not mention several Palestinian NGOs partners, which have been accused of incitement to violence and other disqualifying activities in the past, from one of its flagship projects.
UN employees exposed at UN meeting on hate speech and incitement to violence
Teachers at UNRWA – the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency get denounced for Facebook posts celebrating Hitler, calling to kill Israelis, and celebrating the Hamas attack during UN Human Rights Council meeting to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention.


AGs fed up with NYT, CNN Hamas coverage issue stern warning: ‘Follow the law’
FIRST ON FOX: More than a dozen state attorneys general signed a letter to media outlets such as the New York Times and Reuters, putting them "on notice" that providing material support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas is illegal, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.

"We will continue to follow your reporting to ensure that your organizations do not violate any federal or State laws by giving material support to terrorists abroad. Now your organizations are on notice. Follow the law," 14 state attorneys general stated in a letter to the chiefs of CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and The Associated Press on Monday afternoon.

Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird spearheaded the letter, which detailed concerns that journalists embedded with Hamas may actually have deep connections with the terrorist organization "and may have participated in the October 7 attack."

"Reporting credibly alleges that some of the individuals that your outlets hire have deep and troubling ties to Hamas—and may have participated in the October 7 attack. In the wake of those alarming reports, some of you have cut ties with these so-called journalists whose connections to terror groups have become too obvious to hide. Good. But one factor in determining whether an organization has provided material support for terrorism is that it be ‘knowing,’" the letter states.

The attorneys general said the four outlets have a responsibility to fully vet potential hires and ensure they have no connections to terrorist organizations before putting them on the payroll and embedding them during armed conflicts.

"If your outlet’s current hiring practices led you to give material support to terrorists, you must change these policies going forward. Otherwise, we must assume any future support of terrorist organizations by your stringers, correspondents, contractors, and similar employees is knowing behavior," they wrote.

The state AGs pointed to a recent letter sent by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to Reuters asking "how its journalist knew to be available for the October 7 attack," and called on the outlet to address whether it had prior knowledge of the attack or if one of the organization’s journalists had been in contact with Hamas before the attack.
Top U.S. Jewish groups target misinformation on Israel-Hamas war

An Analysis of the Six-Day War from One of Israel’s Great Minds—and Its Relevance, 56 Years On
On Friday, the eminent Israeli political philosopher, diplomat, and public intellectual Shlomo Avineri died at the age ninety. An expert on the thought of G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, Avineri wrote several books on the history of both Zionism and socialism, as well as numerous articles on contemporary Israeli affairs. The essay quoted below was published in March 1968, and examines the lessons and aftermath of the Six-Day War. It begins with an assessment of Israeli (and Western) misreadings of Arab intentions that today sounds eerily familiar.

In 1956, the IDF scored a military victory over Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt in the Sinai, after which the U.S. forced it to give up its gains. For the next ten years, there was relative peace, until Nasser, and his Syrian allies, surprised everyone by making aggressive and threatening moves, leading to Israel’s spectacular preemptive strike in 1967:

Prior to the rapid political deterioration, and the equally rapid military escalation, of late May and early June 1967, most Israeli observers were convinced that although the basic tensions of the Israeli-Arab conflict were far from having been resolved, a more or less dependable, long-term stalemate had emerged in the Middle East. Ever since the Sinai campaign of 1956, according to these observers, an undeclared, pragmatic normalization had set in, as a result not of negotiations and treaties but of mutual recognition based on a balance of terror similar to the one prevailing between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[Although] Radio Cairo exhorted the Arabs to unite and reform in order to push the Jews into the sea, relaxed Nasserologists in Jerusalem were patiently pointing out that such rhetoric should not be interpreted as a call to a Holy War against Israel; rather, it represented a shrewdly calculated act of statesmanship on the part of Nasser, who, it was argued, was shifting his position toward a greater concentration on internal issues and was not about to plunge into precipitate foreign adventures. Most Israelis, then, felt that even though the day was still distant on which swords could be beaten into ploughshares, the Arab world nevertheless was slowly, painfully beginning to recognize Israel as a fact of life.

All this sounds awfully like the Israeli government’s pre-October 7 determination that Hamas had been deterred. To this, Avineri added another observation, about the “independent force of rhetoric in the Arab world.” This force does much to explain the behavior then and now of Jordan, a country at peace with the Jewish state—indeed dependent on the IDF for its security—and strategically opposed to Hamas, that has done nothing but condemn Israel since the Hamas invasion:

Nasser, it is true, played a very cautious political game in his relations with Israel in the period from 1956 to 1967, but his caution was unaccompanied by any diminution in the violence of his anti-Israel rhetoric; and it seems that when the chips were down, the Arab world was found lacking in the internal societal mechanisms necessary to prevent the takeover of politics by rhetorical outbursts.

As tempers began to rise, one feat of rhetoric followed another; pro-Western Jordan [also] became as belligerent in egging Nasser on as “leftist” Syria.
How Israel Missed Its Chance to Eliminate the Leadership of Hamas

US Taxpayers Funding Pro-Hamas Nazi Groups

MEMRI: CAIR LA Director Hussam Aylush In Oklahoma City: The Palestinians Have The Right To Defend Themselves, But Israel Does Not – People Would Laugh At You If You Said Nazi Germany Had The Right To Defend Itself Against The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

PreOccupiedTerritory: Right To Accomplish Aims ‘By Any Means Necessary’ Oddly Unsupported By Law, Morality (satire)

Victor Rosenthal: What We Must Tell Blinken

The ridiculous US plan for ‘the day after’ - opinion

How the Biden team is planning for a postwar Gaza Strip

Bassam Tawil: Can the Palestinian Authority Be 'Revitalized'? Can the Cat Guard the Cream?
Many of the officials managing the Palestinian Authority (PA) are the same ones who helped establish it in 1994 and were responsible for its rampant corruption. This corruption is one of the main reasons why Hamas won the PA parliamentary election in 2006, when the Islamist movement ran under the banner of "Change and Reform."

Mahmoud Abbas and senior PA officials have been stirring up bloodlust for Israel both before and after Hamas's October 7 massacre. Palestinians hear these messages and vote for Hamas when given the opportunity, as we saw in the recent student council elections at a number of Palestinian universities in the West Bank. This is exactly what Abbas feared when he cancelled the PA's presidential and parliamentary elections that were slated to take place in 2021.

The assumption that, three decades later, the Palestinian Authority is going to embark on any serious reforms is a mirage. Abbas and the PA leadership will not change unless they are pressured to do so... One thing is clear: the Palestinian Authority is in no way, shape or form up to this job.
Saudi Arabia Would Quietly Welcome the Demise of Hamas
A historic peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been put on hold since the outbreak of war in Gaza. And Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has called for an "immediate halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza."

In 1948, the Saudis contributed two companies of infantry, which fought under Egyptian command. In the Six-Day War of 1967, a Saudi brigade moved slowly towards Jordan, arriving only when a ceasefire was about to be declared. And during the 1973 Arab-Israel War, Saudi Arabia sent one brigade to join the Arab Foreign Legion with strict instructions not to become involved in the fighting. By the time it reached Damascus, the hostilities were over.

In recent years, the benefits for Saudi Arabia of making peace with Israel have significantly increased, while the costs have appeared to decline. Today, Saudis are far more concerned with threats from Iran and its proxies in Yemen and Iraq than they are with Israel. Peace with Israel would be a massive boost to Saudi Arabia's national security and would strengthen its hand against Iran, which since the 1979 Iranian Revolution has challenged Saudi leadership in the Muslim world. Despite the recent Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, Saudi and Israeli leaders still share many reasons to resist Iran's pursuit of regional hegemony and nuclear weapons.

The Saudis have another goal in common: suppressing radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Many radical Sunni Islamist groups seek to destroy both Israel and the Arab monarchies. The Saudis understand the threat of jihadist militants. They have arrested or deported Hamas supporters in Saudi Arabia and would quietly welcome the organization's demise.


MEMRI: Editor Of Kuwaiti Daily: Hamas Should Be Prosecuted For The Death And Destruction It Has Brought Upon The Gazans With Its October 7 Attack

Dems To Force Vote on Biden Nominee Who Hindered Return of American Hostage

JPost Editorial: No more Mr. Nice Guy following Turkey's actions

Erdoğan's German Mosques Praise October 7 Massacre

Jordan's King Abdullah says world should condemn any attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians

UN and Hamas: Partners in Crime
To understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with Hamas in the Gaza Strip...

"The UN has 13,000 employees in tiny Gaza. They know exactly what's going on... They all knew Hamas' terror infrastructure was in the hospital compound, where Israel wouldn't attack. They lied to the world for 16 years. To paint Israel as evil." — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, November 16, 2023.

[T]he UN has sustained an incessant campaign, especially on social media, that accuses Israel of deliberately targeting schools, children, civilians, hospitals and healthcare workers. While those are protected from attack during war by international law, that protection does not apply to schools, hospitals and other civilian sites that are used for military purposes.

When Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was being used by Hamas terrorists, [UN Secretary-General António] Guterres expressed that he was "horrified" with Israel's action, while ignoring Hamas's war crimes. In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in crime.

Above all, the UN's transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US, finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars, and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.


Waltz: UNRWA Must Be Defunded, They Haven’t Cared About Charges Their Teacher Helped Keep Hostage

UNRWA Official on Charges Their Teacher Held Hostage: We Keep Good Track of Flour

Israel thanks Argentina's Milei for pledge to move embassy to Jerusalem

The Qatargate Files: Hundreds of leaked documents reveal scale of EU corruption scandal

Qatar charges Israel with deliberate killing of women, children

Relatives of Nelson Mandela welcome Hamas officials to 10th anniversary memorial

Film of Hamas atrocities screened for Arab Israeli community leaders in Nazareth

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange says no unusual trading ahead of Oct 7 Hamas attack

British IDF soldier killed in Gaza had a ‘pure soul’ says family

Springtime For Hitler Youth

Anti-Israel Coalition Justifies Targeting of Philadelphia Restaurant Owned by Israeli Chef, Cites ‘Genocide’ in Gaza

Just 4 Percent of American Universities Condemned Hamas Terror Attack on Israel as Anti-Semitic

Harvard first university to screen IDF film showing Hamas brutalities of Oct. 7

WATCH: Harvard President Claudine Gay Defends Calls For 'Intifada Revolution' as Free Speech



Amazon urged to withdraw ‘antisemitic propaganda’ children’s book

Report accuses Liberal government's Gaza donor program of including charities with alleged terror links

University campuses an unsurprising maelstrom in response to Israel-Hamas war

Maryland teachers' union rep is suspended for vile anti-Semitic posts - including calling wealthy Jewish people 'gluttons and thieves'

Owen Jones isn’t a journalist — he’s a propagandist

They Spew Hatred & Glorify Terrorism. But a CNN Article Depicts Them As “The Voice of All These Victims.”

SKY NEWS CONTINUES TO IMPLODE

‘Anti-Muslim’ journalist placed under police protection in France

14-year-old “Martyr” always said: “I want to join the Martyrs”
14-year-old “Martyr” always said: “I want to join the Martyrs,” father says his peers “will follow the path of the Martyrs”

Official PA TV, interview with the father and grandmother of 14-year-old dead terrorist Yazan Akkoub, who attempted to stab Israeli soldiers

Father of terrorist Yazan Akkoub: “Praise Allah, [my son Yazan] died as a Martyr. Allah will receive him as a Martyr, a Martyr of all Palestine... We are all potential Martyrs. Not just [my son] Yazan, everyone who is standing here, we are all potential Martyrs. Allah willing, we will continue this path… All those you see here. All of them will follow the path of the Martyrs, Allah wiling.” …

Grandmother of terrorist Yazan Akkoub: “Today the dream of [every] child is to be a Martyr. [Yazan] always said: ‘I want to join Jasser (23-year-old Martyr) and Ghaith (16-year-old Martyr), I want to join the Martyrs.’ Every time we spoke with him he said this.”
[Official PA TV, Dec. 3, 2023]

Yazan Akkoub – 14-year-old Palestinian terrorist who attempted to stab Israeli soldiers at a security checkpoint near Nablus on Dec. 2, 2023. The soldiers shot and killed Akkoub in self-defense, thereby ending his attack.

Jasser Qan’ir – 23-year-old terrorist who shot at Israeli soldiers together with terrorist Muhammad Abu Bakr - 23-year-old terrorist and member of the independent terror cell “the Lion’s Den,” who resisted arrest and initiated a gun battle with Israeli forces in Nablus on Feb. 22, 2023. In the exchange of fire he and 11 other Palestinians were killed, most of them members of the terror cell.

Ghaith Rafiq Yamin – 16-year-old Palestinian terrorist who threw a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers while participating in a violent Arab riot in Nablus on May 25, 2022. The soldiers shot and killed Yamin in self-defense. The rioters were attempting to attack Jews visiting Joseph’s Tomb. Yamin actively sought to die as a Martyr and left a will on his social media accounts with instructions to relatives and friends about what to do with his body after his death.


Abbas’ advisor on Israel-Hamas deal: The Quran teaches Jews can’t be trusted
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “Over many years we have grown accustomed that every time they [the Jews] make a promise, a group of them violates it, as is said in the Quran… We must not trust in their promises and commitments, and must be alert as we always have been.”

Posted text: “[PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud] Al-Habbash to [Egyptian] Sada El-Balad TV: We do not believe in the commitments that Israel is announcing, and we must be careful of the occupation’s (i.e., Israel’s) treachery”
[PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Nov. 22, 2023]  

“As it is said in the Quran” - Al-Habbash refers to Quranic claims about Jewish tribes breaching treaties with Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, and therefore teaches that Jews can’t be trusted, nor in the prisoner exchange deal Israel made with Hamas to free Israeli hostages taken during Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7:




PreOccupiedTerritory: IDF Destroys Gaza Health Ministry Random Death Toll Generator (satire)

Child Survivor of Oct. 7 Hamas Attack Joins Maccabi Tel Aviv in Calling for Release of All Hostages

Released hostage Mia Schem returns home to cheers as neighbors celebrate her release

Some 20,000 brave sub-freezing temps for pro-Israel Ottawa rally

Wife of Yankees team president visits United Hatzalah in Jerusalem

Jewish Acappella Group The Maccabeats Releases Original Hanukkah Song About Jewish Resilience



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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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