01/31 Links Pt2: Bibi: UNRWA gave ICJ false information against Israel; BMG dumps anti-Israel musician Roger Waters; Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk Discuss DEI, Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Netanyahu: UNRWA gave ICJ false information against Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of providing false information against Israel to the International Court of Justice at The Hague during a conversation he held with a delegation of visiting ambassadors on Wednesday night.

“Many of the charges, false and unfounded, that were leveled against us in The Hague were brought by UNRWA officials,” Netanyahu charged.

He spoke close to one week after the ICJ issued a provisional order against Israel in which it asked it to refrain from acts that could lead to genocide against the Palestinians but fell short of asking it to stop its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

It listed UNRWA as one of the organizations that provided it with information, on which it based its ruling.

Israel has rejected all genocide accusations and has argued that it is Hamas that seeks to annihilate the Jewish people. It has been said that the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 253 were seized as hostage, is proof of those genocidal intentions.

“The only time that we've seen anything like that directed against the Jewish people was in the Holocaust,” Netanyahu told the delegation of ambassadors from different countries stationed at the UN headquarters in New York.

Netanyahu: "UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas"
On the same day as the ICJ issued its order, Israel provided UNRWA with information that 12 of its staff members had participated in the October 7 attack. UNRWA summarily fired nine of those staff members.

In the wake of the accusations 18 countries, including the US, have suspended funding to UNRWA. The agency has warned that unless the suspensions are rescinded it would not be able to provide vital humanitarian aid to the 5.9 million Palestinians it services in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Netanyahu has persistently called for the agency to be replaced.

He told the ambassadors that “UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas. It has been in the service of Hamas and its schools, and in many other things.

“I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid. We need such a body today in Gaza. But UNRWA is not that body. It has to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that job.”

‘UNRWA Is a Front for Hamas,’ Israel Says. Read the Full Intelligence Dossier.

Israel this week shared with the Washington Free Beacon and other news outlets a declassified intelligence dossier detailing how the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency has allegedly been compromised by Hamas. About 10 percent of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's some 12,000 workers in Gaza are Hamas or Islamic Jihad "operatives," according to the document, and at least 13 participated in Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack in southern Israel.

"UNRWA is a front for Hamas," Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said during a briefing on Tuesday that marked the 116th day of the war in Gaza.

The dossier—based on signals intelligence, interrogations of Hamas terrorists, and documents recovered in Gaza—was part of an Israeli briefing of U.S. officials that convinced Washington and others to suspend funding to UNRWA. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken on Monday called the findings "highly, highly credible." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday welcomed the world body's announced investigation of UNRWA. She said the United States would need to see "fundamental changes" to the agency before any resumption of funding.

Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk Discuss DEI, Anti-Semitism and X

Even Iranian proxies like Hezbollah have proxies

It is truly a remarkable coincidence that every party fighting Israel and the West in the MIddle East nowadays - Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian armed groups, Iraqi armed groups, Houthis - are all allied with, funded by, and armed by Iran.

Iran avoids being attacked by using these groups as proxies, knowing that most nations are reluctant to widen the conflict by attacking Iran itself, even though in most or all of the cases, Iran is calling the shots. 

Proxies are obviously effective. No one is attacking the head of the snake. And the proxy groups are happy to sacrifice themselves and their people for Iran's Supreme Leader.

Hezbollah, however, is starting to feel some pain. Nearly 200 of its members have been killed in southern Lebanon. Israe lis seriously considering a full scale war if they keep up their aggression.

So, Hezbollah is following the Iranian playbook and creating ...proxies!

Two weeks ago, an armed group of men went o the Shebaa Farms area and shot at IDF troops, who promptly fired back and killed them. The attack was claimed by th "Al-Ezz Brigades."

There is no such thing.

This Is Beirut reports:

According to political circles close to the obstructionist axis (called al-Moumanaa), Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya (Al-Ezz Brigades) is the name given to a fictitious group that is not known to the factions that gravitate in the orbit of this axis.

According to the above-mentioned sources, this group is credited with any operation that has not been validated by these factions, namely Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Al-Quds Brigades, and others.

In practice, any military operation carried out from the Lebanese front requires the approval of the various parties in the operations chamber, in particular Hezbollah, the same sources explained. Consequently, any operation not approved by the latter is claimed by Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya, with the aim of covering its tracks.

This was the case with Sunday’s operation in the Shebaa Farms, where three armed men had infiltrated. They were killed by the Israeli Army. According to the above-mentioned sources, their bodies were left there to avoid giving Israel any clues about the Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya group, which claimed responsibility for the operation.

Lebanese MP Ashraf Rifi agrees, saying the Al-Ezz Brigades are fictional, and accusing Hezbollah of "inventing organizations with fictitious names to evade responsibility.”

The proxy has a proxy!

According to other Lebanese reports, Hezbollah is recruiting Palestinians to join these proxy groups, going into the camps and mostly getting Palestinians who had fled Syria. But Hezbollah is calling the shots, giving them transportation and weapons, escorting them through Hezbollah's many checkpoints in southern Lebanon. No one goes anywhere without Hezbollah knowing.

So this is how Hezbollah is trying to keep shooting at Israelis and Jews but hoping to keep the heat off itself by using its own proxies. 

It's called "plausible deniability" - and it is just as plausible as the "plausible genocide" that the ICJ accused Israel of. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Elder (and CAMERA-UK) gets results! Independent Arabia removes antisemitism from article

Last week,

Gulf CSR screenshot

I reported that Independent Arabia, the Arabic version of the British Independent, published an article with the headline "Jewish pressure groups and their influence on global decision-making." It included a large excerpt of a study by the Arab Gulf Center for Studies and Research, "The hidden Jewish empire and the plan to control the world," which is filled with antisemitism and lies. 

The author of the Indy Arabia article is a Lebanese writer named Sawsan Mhanna. The antisemitic part of the article was its main point - she quoted it extensively in her tweet  promoting the article, including its bogus statistic that Jews have double or triple the wealth of all Arab countries combined. 

The article also claimed that Judaism isn't even a religion, but a secretive organization like the Masons or Templars that illicitly plan to take over the world. 

After reading my post, Adam Levick of CAMERA-UK complained about this article to the managing editor of the British Independent.  

Commendably, he removed the bulk of the article that quoted the Gulf CSR study and changed the antisemitic headline.

Hopefully this will prompt Independent Arabia to be more discerning in what it publishes.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

01/31 Links Pt1: Never mind UNRWA — end US funding for the pro-terror UN itself; With the US public still standing behind Israel, protestors focus on Democrats

From Ian:

Bret Stephens NYTs: Abolish the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency

UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 and Israeli intelligence estimates that 1,200 of UNRWA's 12,000 employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

But the fundamental problem isn't that UNRWA is infested with terrorists and their sympathizers. It's that UNRWA may be the only agency in the UN system whose central purpose is to perpetuate grievance and conflict. It should be abolished.

The UN has two agencies dedicated to the plight of refugees. One, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is responsible for nearly all the world's 30 million refugees, with a mandate to help them resettle in third countries if they can't go home. The other is UNRWA. No other group except for Palestinians gets its own permanent agency.

Why? In part, because neighboring Arab countries refused to fully absorb Palestinian refugees. The changing borders and independence movements of the postwar era produced millions of refugees, including 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of Arab countries that had been their homes for centuries. Nearly all of the world's refugees found new lives in new countries - except for Palestinians.

The Palestinians have been kept as perpetual refugees as a means of both delegitimizing Israel and preserving the irredentist fantasy that someday their descendants will "return" through the elimination of the Jewish state. UNRWA's very existence keeps this hope alive.

Palestinians should be citizens of the countries in which they live - just as some two million Arabs are in Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can't be solved so long as millions of Palestinians have been turned into the world's only permanent refugees. By doing that, UNRWA makes itself an obstacle to peace.

National Review Editorial: End UNRWA

UNRWA tried to cover its tracks. In December, it demanded that an Israeli reporter delete a social-media post in which he reported that one of the Hamas hostages had been held by a UNRWA teacher. In October, UNRWA made a post alleging that Hamas had stolen supplies, then deleted it and gave an explanation so incomprehensible that there can be no doubt that it was covering for the terrorist group.

All the while, U.N. leaders have dismissed the critical work of watchdogs such as UN Watch, which has brought evidence of UNRWA’s links to terrorism to light countless times.

In the short term, Congress needs to pass a blanket prohibition on the use of U.S. funds for any of UNRWA’s operations. It must do this to preempt any future decision to lift the temporary suspension of funding and to set the stage for UNRWA’s eventual elimination.

UNRWA’s supporters say that cutting the agency out of the picture would leave a gap in humanitarian aid for Gaza. They ignore that much of the assistance entering Gaza is likely snatched by Hamas anyway. Most important, to continue funding UNRWA would maintain America’s de facto culpability in financing terrorism. Other U.N. agencies with a better track record, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.-dominated World Food Program, should step in, and America should help them build the capability to do so.

But that’s just a start. America needs to fight hard to repeal UNRWA’s U.N. General Assembly–granted mandate. Given the rank antisemitism that goes unquestioned at the international body, that’s no small task, but Washington also has not tried particularly hard to get this done.

Other U.N. agencies need to be on the chopping block as well. UNRWA might be the worst, but that doesn’t say much.

John Bolton once said that if the highest ten floors of the U.N. headquarters were to disappear it “wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But depending on where UNRWA’s offices are, it might lessen international support for Hamas terrorism.

NYPost Editorial: Never mind UNRWA — end US funding for the pro-terror United Nations itself

It’s time — beyond time — to rethink US funding for the United Nations.

After all, America has laws against financing terrorist groups, and the United Nations does just that:
It employs actual Hamas terrorists and promoters of terror.
Its secretary-general supports Hamas, demanding an end to attacks on the terror group, whose Oct. 7 massacre he tried to justify.
Its “court of justice” claims Israel is a possible perpetrator of genocide.
It’s aided and abetted mass murderers, demonized an innocent democracy (Israel) and perpetuated Mideast venom.

And, no, it’s not just the 13 UN Relief and Works “staffers” who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including at least nine actual Hamas terrorists.

As UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer notes, UNRWA’s ostensible mission — to provide social services for “refugees” of the Arabs’ 1948 war against Israel — is a “front.”

After all, most actual refugees are handled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

UNRWA’s main purpose is to perpetuate the notion that the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel 75 years ago are themselves refugees today, and that through violence and “martyrdom,” they’ll one day return and make the land Jew-free.

Its staff teach children to strive for this and never give up.

They spread lies about Israel, redirect international aid and resources to Hamas and welcome terrorists to use their schools and homes as bases, including storing weapons and holding hostages.

The United Nations can plead ignorance; Secretary-General António Guterres claims he was “horrified” — “horrified” — to learn about the 13 UNRWA workers.

In fact, over a thousand of these UN employees have documented terror ties.

Groups like UN Watch (and The Post) have long sounded the alarm about UNRWA.

How to dismantle UNRWA: A step by step guide

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard testimony about how UNRWA is part of the problem in the Middle East, not the solution. Experts testified about UNRWA teachers' support for terror and how UNRWA's entire mission is to prolong misery of millions of Palestinians, not alleviate it.

The entire session can be seen here.

As the world learns about UNRWA staff's complicity with and support of Hamas crimes, supporters of UNRWA are saying that UNRWA provides essential services and therefore must continue to be funded.

They have a point. The cash spigot cannot just be turned off without causing suffering to many people who have relied on UNRWA for their medical needs, education and other services, even if these services  go way beyond what any other UN agency does for any other group of people. 

In 2017, I wrote a plan on how UNRWA can be dismantled over a multi-year period. If the world would have taken the problem seriously, we would not be in this situation today. 

Here is an updated version. 

It isn't easy to get rid of an entrenched 75 year old bureaucracy - but with some willpower, it is possible. And getting rid of UNRWA will be good for the entire Middle East.

The first and most important thing that needs to be done is to get rid of the noxious UNRWA definition of "refugee" that helps no one and only serves to perpetuate a permanent state of victimhood. There is only one definition of refugee, that of the Refugee Convention, and that definition should be the only one used worldwide. The myth of the "Palestinian refugee" must be ended. 

Gulf states, especially Abraham Accords partners UAE and Bahrain, need to be recruited in this plan to dismantle UNRWA. They are not fans of Hamas and they have never heavily supported UNRWA financially. 

These oil-rich states need brainpower and the next generation of workers, and among Arabs, Palestinians are the best educated and hardest working of all Arabs. Dubai and Saudi Arabia want to diversify their economic base beyond oil, and they want to do it if possible with Arab talent. The fit is obvious.

Palestinians have already been instrumental in building much of the Gulf, but they didn't have citizenship rights. It is time for the US to pressure friendly Sunni Gulf states to allow Palestinians from Lebanon, Jordan and Syria - and Gaza! - to immigrate and become citizens. The program would be voluntary for Palestinians but it would be very popular, as past experience with limited granting of citizenship to Palestinians in Egypt and Lebanon show. Every time Palestinians were offered citizenship they eagerly took it. It is an investment that would pay off for everyone.

The Gulf states can in turn pressure the Arab League to rescind its racist decision from the 1950s to not allow Palestinians to become citizens.

In Jordan, the vast majority of Palestinians are already Jordanian citizens. Redirecting the UNRWA budget towards Jordan over a five year period for the purpose of demolishing the camps, building new communities, mainstreaming the UNRWA schools into Jordan's educational system, and naturalizing the Palestinians who aren't citizens, is an idea that is way overdue. Jordan needs the cash, and to get rid of UNRWA it would be worth it to increase the amount given beyond UNRWA's budget for, say, 5-8 years to allow the full integration of Palestinian camp-dwellers into Jordanian society.

There isn't as much leverage in Syria. But the many Syrian refugees of Palestinian origin who are outside the country  should be immediately placed under the aegis of UNHCR like other refugees and those who qualify for moving to the Gulf should do so. Of course, the portion of UNRWA's budget dedicated to Syrian refugees should go to UNHCR as well for now. Syria claims to support Palestinians - let them take care of the ones that they have there.

Lebanon is more anti-Palestinian than any other country in the world. (They would protest that characterization but no country treats Palestinians worse.) As it is, UNRWA already exaggerates the number of "refugees" in Lebanon by over 100%. Lebanon should be pressured by the world community and Arab nations themselves to stop putting Palestinians in open-air prisons, allow them the rights to work in any profession and to live wherever they want, to  give them real human rights and give them a path to citizenship in the entire Arab world - let them choose where they want to live. Those who have lived in Lebanon for generations must become citizens. Money that now goes to UNRWA can help cash-strapped Lebanon do the right thing. 

The Palestinian "refugees" in the West Bank should not exist 25 years after self-rule. The entire UNRWA budget for the West Bank should simply be eliminated. The PLO needs to treat all its citizens equally, and that means taking responsibility for them. Let them beg UNRWA's donor nations to help them demolish  the camps, build real houses and to incorporate their schools and medical clinics under a single umbrella. It is true that Palestinian schools don't teach co-existence with Israel any more than UNRWA schools, but it isn't as if UNRWA moderated anyone's opinions of Jews and Israel.

In Gaza, the essential services provided by UNRWA must be transitioned to other UN agencies, like UNHCR, the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme. Obviously some of the UNRWA employees would transition to the proper agencies, but those agencies would do a better job vetting them for terrorist ties than UNRWA ever did. 

Moreover, give the option for the people in the camps in Gaza to move to the West Bank, to Arab countries or even to Europe.

As a recipient of billions of dollars in US aid, Egypt can and should be pressured to admit any Gazans who wish to immigrate there. Many Palestinians trace their families to Egypt and in the past when Egypt allowed a limited number to become citizens, Gazans jumped at the plan. 

The best way to force the Arab countries to treat their Palestinian "guests" as more than cannon fodder is using the honor/shame system against them. Shame them into treating Palestinians at least as well as any other Arab non-citizen, and give them a path to naturalization. 

Now happens to be the perfect time to talk about dismantling UNRWA. And it is over 70 years past the time to finally do something about it.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Everyone in Gaza knew that Hamas built weapons tunnels under UNRWA schools - since 2008!

Rafah smuggling tunnel, 2010

The Palestine Press Agency, a pro-Fatah news site that no longer exists, reported in March 2008:

 A reliable source revealed to the Palestine Press News Agency, “The outlaw Hamas movement is digging tunnels under the densely populated western camp, specifically in the Qatatuta camp area in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.”

The source said, "Hamas militias are digging these tunnels that lead to the UNRWA  school in the camp as part of their plan to store heavy weapons (Dushka machine guns and missiles) in tunnels under the students' schools."

The source added, "While Hamas militias were digging a tunnel in the area, they broke one of the main water pipes in the camp, which led to water leaking onto the neighboring residents, which sparked the residents' anger at these foolish actions."

A couple of months later, the same news site reported on a network of tunnels in Khan Younis that went under a number of elementary and secondary schools as well as a Gaza City tunnel underneath the Islamic University of Gaza,

This is 2008. Residents knew about it then. And there is no way they didn't know about the thousands of tunnel shafts that Hamas dug in homes, in cemeteries and in schools since then. 

In fact, in the comments, one person named Samer from Khan Younis added information about other tunnels he knew about, under mosques and houses.

Firstly, Yunus Al-Astal has at least three tunnels around his house on the eastern line. Secondly, Fawad Abu Marouf has two tunnels, one of which is Mariout in the Halima Mosque near his house, and there is another tunnel that leads to Ibn Ummah’s house east of Khan Yunis’ license. Amjad Abu Al-Tajja has a tunnel that leads in only three directions. Al-Muttaqeen Mosque in Al-Bahr Street has a large weapons storehouse supervised by Mounir Abu Hatab, an explosives storehouse in Omar Al-Najjar’s house in the Rantissi area, a lathe, a weapons storehouse, and four tunnels near Al-Salam Hospital on the eastern line road.

At the time, in 2008 and over the next several years, Western media reported on tunnels - but only on smuggling tunnels underneath the Egyptian border. As far as I recall, no one reported about tunnels wholly inside Gaza that were planned specifically as military assets and specifically to make Gza civilians into human shields above them - tunnels that were storage for weapons systems and escape routes (and bomb shelters!) for terrorists and Hamas leaders in 2008.

Yet Gaza residents knew. Everyone knew. That includes every reporter living in Gaza.  (Have you noticed any media outlet apologizing for ignoring and covering for Hamas crimes for the past decade and a half? )

And UNRWA knew this as well. The agency officially tasked with protecting "refugees" did not do a thing or say a word about weapons caches directly under their schools. Indeed, some of the commenters complained that the publication of the article - not the tunnels themselves - put students at risk because Israel would attack the tunnels. 

Let's put to bed the lie that Hamas tunnels were secretly built and that Gazans didn't know, that the UN didn't know, that reporters didn't know. Everyone in Gaza knew about them since at least 2008, and with very few exceptions, they didn't say a negative word and chose to protect Hamas, either out of solidarity or out of fear.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Al Azhar University denies it is antisemitic. Let's see!

Israel's Channel 12 reported about antisemitism a Egypt's Al Azhar University, the most important educational institution in the Sunni Muslim world.  The report said “the educational curricula in its schools incite hatred.” 

According to the report, 1.8 million students are being taught to hate Jews in the Al-Azhar educational system.

Al-Azhar University denied the accusation, saying that the report, and indeed all Zionists, are nothing but a bunch of liars. 

Dr. Ahmed Zaree, spokesman for Al-Azhar University, told  the Cairo 24 website: “The Zionists have mastered lies, and what was written and said about Al-Azhar is nothing but slander and a violation of the Islamic religion, and this is not new to the Zionist entity. They have mastered lies as well as extreme hostility.”

Zaree added that  Zionists are nothing but an outcast body rejected by Europe and the West to be an instrument of destruction and usurpation of the Arab homeland. 

Yeah, "Zionists" are who were discriminated against in Europe through the centuries.

So let's look at what Al Azhar faculty and leaders have said about Jews over the years.

In 2011, head of the school Dr. Ahmed Tayeb told a rally that promised genocide for all Jews that Jews everywhere in the world are seeking to prevent Islamic and Egyptian unity.

In 2013, Tayeb said, "See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism…Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs."

In 2018, Tayeb said, "As long as this entity is alive and active, the Arabs will remain neither living nor dead, and the Muslims will remain under attack. Note that if we continue this way, it will not end with the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They will march on the Kaaba and on the Prophet’s Mosque [in Medina]. This is on their minds and in their hearts.." This goes beyond the "Al Aqsa Mosque is in Danger" myth to say the Jews want so Judaize Meccan and Medina. 

After October 7, Muhammad Omar Al-Qady, dean of the Faculty for Islamic and Arabic Studies at Al-Azhar, wrote, "[When I say] resistance I mean the jihad fighters in Palestine, who defend their honor and land, those who fight against their enemy and ours, namely the Jews…  I ask Allah to strengthen His soldiers and his camp and grant our brothers in Gaza, in Palestine and in the rest of the Muslim countries victory over their enemy and ours, the enemy of Allah and humanity, the cursed descendants of apes and pigs [i.e., the Jews]."

And people still buy the "we hate Zionists not Jews" lie.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

01/30 Links Pt2: Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent; Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy

From Ian:

The Briton who joined the IDF: ‘My family died in the Holocaust – I had to defend Jewish people’

It was hearing one of my comrades praying as we crossed the border into Gaza in October 2023 that brought home what we were about to do. Just a few hours earlier, I had been in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend, when I was sent a codeword on my phone which meant we were going to be moving in and I needed to be back with my unit which had been sitting on the southern border for three weeks.

In some ways, the waiting was harder than anything else. It was frustrating, because apart from getting acquainted with the newest technology, there wasn’t much we could do. On the one hand, we weren’t in danger, which was great, but on the other, we were still reeling from the events of Oct 7 and we were poisoned with anger about the massacre of our civilians.

We wanted to go and get the hostages back and we knew we needed to fight for Israel. But we also knew that some of us may not come back.

Even on that first night, as we rolled through the border at 3am with the words of our commanding officer telling us that this was the war of our generation ringing in our ears, we saw coming in the opposite direction a wounded soldier leaving Gaza and it was chilling.

It is a shock, surreal, to actually get there. Everything seemed like a mess. I’d been told to head to a particular building but the stairs had caved in so I then had to get to another building not knowing what would be in it.

The whole time you are moving there are these crazy explosions going off, noises of gunfire, bombs. You hear more than you see in Gaza – it takes a while to get used to the intense noise.

My job is reconnaissance – I am the eyes and the ears of my unit, watching out for danger. It is a huge responsibility and I felt it keenly as my girlfriend’s cousin was among those I was tasked with keeping safe. The sun was going down at 4.45pm and then you can’t see anything apart through night vision goggles.

I hated seeing the scale of the destruction in Gaza. People have been killed and displaced on both sides and I know that Gazans are suffering too. I am not a war-mongering person and I found it quite tough knowing the human impact of what we were doing even if I knew why I was there; our war is not with the Palestinian people but with Hamas.

Going into Gaza we also saw the scale of what we were fighting. I would say that 75 per cent if not more of the homes we went into had some sort of affiliation with Hamas. Lots of weapons; we’d find RPGs and grenades on the floor. You’d go into a pink bedroom and think about the young girl who lived there and hope she was safe, feeling terrible, and then go next door and see guns or detailed maps of Israel showing the kind of thing that was happening in that house. Knowing that that stuff was there because they wanted to kill us.

Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy

No amount of “public relations” could “explain” anything to a judicial body that is supposed to be impartial but consists of justices who lack the moral clarity to separate good from evil. Israel may have to honor the decisions of the ICJ, but that does not mean those decisions should be respected.

It is ironic that a country that was recently obsessed with issues related to the need for an independent judiciary has become the subject of a supposedly “independent” panel that issued an interim order described as a “blood libel” by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. In a ridiculous move, the ICJ accused Herzog, a consensus figure in Israel known for his moderation and mild-mannered personality, of engaging in “incitement” by using language that any rational person would consider appropriate after the type of attack perpetrated by Hamas.

We are dealing here with a distorted value system, not a lack of information. It is senseless to believe that, after experiencing the atrocities of Hamas, Israel would have to “explain” anything. It is futile to continue trying to convince people with debased moral standards that beheading, rape, kidnapping and random murder are wrong. Of course, the ICJ judges would say that those actions are terrible, but they fail to act on that belief, creating a reality in which the victim and not the oppressor is in the dock.

The ICJ farce may not mark the death of hasbara, but it proved that it is on life support. Morality is not something that can be sold like a hamburger at McDonalds. It is something that comes from one’s culture, social experiences and ability to show fortitude in the face of corrupt pressure.

Rather than investing energy and resources into convincing others, we would be better served by continuing our fight to be a “light unto the nations” and doing what is right. As for those who see Hamas as an entity deserving of protection, let their moral failings serve as a model for evil.

To anyone with a good heart and a logical mind, this is something that does not need to be explained.

Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent

Watching American Justice Joan Donoghue read the decision of the International Court of Justice, live at 2 p.m. Israel time on Friday afternoon, was surreal.

Everything about this legal proceeding is grotesque and represents a perversion of ethics and law that is beyond difficult to process. South Africa, a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — as is Israel — brought this application to the court with the support of some rather nefarious international actors. There has been a significant uptick in activity and contact between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran of late, either a coincidence or reflecting an enhanced alignment of values between the two countries. Iran, of course, is the head of the proverbial Islamist snake, openly fomenting antisemitism globally and responsible for significant acts of violence targeting Jewish civilians.

The moral inversion of all pertinent circumstances giving rise to the Israeli military action in Gaza was of secondary importance in the ICJ hearing, presided over by Justice Donoghue, the court’s chair, and with an unprecedented panel of 17 judges.

Hamas invaded Israel on Saturday Oct. 7, shortly after 6 a.m. on a quiet holiday. The stated intent of Hamas, before, during and after the well-documented savagery unleashed on that day and into the following night, was, is and remains to obliterate the state of Israel and annihilate every Jewish person living in its borders. Hamas’ hatred of Israel and Jews is so primal that any person it encountered on this particular mission was marked for murder. If the odd non-Jew got in their way they were not spared, either. It seems that the crime of merely consorting with Jews is enough to justify murder, to Hamas.

Hamas leaders and supporters worldwide have gloated over the suffering inflicted and stated their unequivocal aspiration to repeat the genocide of Oct. 7, repeatedly. All Jews, ultimately, must be murdered, according to Hamas doctrine. This will facilitate the liberation of Jerusalem and establishment of a global caliphate.

Hamas is also closely allied with and supported by Iran, which boldly proclaims its genocidal intentions with respect to Israel, constantly. Its regional proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, bolster its position and claims.

That the victim of true genocidal conduct and policy — Israel — should be put in the dock at the ICJ and charged with perpetrating the crime perpetrated against it by Hamas, is more macabre, almost, than the events of Oct. 7 themselves.

Israel to Pursue Genocide Case Against Iran’s Regime with ICJ

On Monday, an Israeli cabinet minister announced plans to begin efforts to bring charges of genocide against the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Gideon Moshe Sa’ar, an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Justice between 2021 and 2022, highlighted that the leadership of the regime in Tehran has openly called for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, providing immense support to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist proxies in the Middle East region that were responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

“Iranian leaders have been making genocidal statements for years, with impunity,” said Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law at George Mason University and Director of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Middle East and International Law to The Foreign Desk.

“There are public statements by senior Iranian officials in favor of destroying Israel,” Sa’ar told the Kan public broadcaster. “Iran finances, arms, and trains all the jihadi terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which carried out Oct. 7, so in my opinion, there is an abundance of evidence which can be submitted to the court in the Hague,” he added.

Knesset member Sa’ar noted that the Jewish state is a small and persecuted nation that is fighting for its life while “fighting on the international stage for its right to self-defense.”

“It is a nation that is truly at risk of genocide given that there are enemies around it that declaredly want to destroy it,” Sa’ar told Kan.

“The State of Israel, a liberal democracy fighting against the most heinous act of mass terror perpetrated against the Jewish state, should never have been in the dock of the accused at The Hague in the first place,” said Arsen Ostrovsky, human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based NGO International Legal Forum, a global network of pro-Israel lawyers combating antisemitism and terror, who was also present in The Hague, for the hearings against Israel.

“If anyone ought to have been on trial at the ICJ, it was Hamas and their genocidal sponsors, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which remain open about their intentions of annihilating the Jewish state and supporting Hamas,” he said to The Foreign Desk.

South Africa's Case at the ICJ Is Built on Reports from Groups with Links to Terrorist Organizations

For years, a network of Western-funded NGOs involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been engaged in a concerted and coordinated effort to attach the "apartheid" charge to Israel.

South Africa's submission to the International Court of Justice contains 45 references to NGO publications, including several from outfits linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.

Staff and board members of these PFLP-linked groups helped prepare South Africa's case.

The ICJ should be ashamed that it is accepting evidence from blatant propaganda groups that have proven track records of supporting hate and violence against Israel and Jews.

In one sense, time is on the IDF's side

Haaretz writes about the current fighting in Khan Younis. 

The article makes several important points:

The Israel Defense Forces has recently changed its orders to soldiers in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and its special units have begun fighting inside the city's tunnels and engaging Hamas fighters in close combat.

The reason for the change stems from the army's perception that creating contact with Hamas in the tunnels will lead to significant information about the location of the hostages and senior Hamas figures residing inside them. Intelligence officials believe that the hostages and the Hamas leaders are still in the tunnels in the area, and are moving from place to place based on the army's progress.

When the fighting started in Gaza, soldiers were ordered not to enter the tunnels because army brass believed that Hamas was trying to draw the forces in to attack them. In practice, it seems that Hamas didn't really believe that the army would try to look for its leaders. In most tunnels, only the shafts were booby-trapped, and so far the tunnels themselves have not been booby-trapped in a way that threatens the soldiers. Commanders have said that they were surprised by the scope of the tunnels and the shafts dug throughout Gaza. They added that they think that Hamas was surprised that the army was also fighting underground.

The IDF is the first army to deal with underground fighting of such proportions and are learning on the fly. Battles underground are difficult and complicated, with fighting conducted in complete darkness and knowledge that hostages could be there as well. The army recognizes that aerial attacks are insufficient to reach Hamas leaders because most of the tunnels they are in are too deep.

As previously mentioned, fighting in tunnels in urban areas is the most difficult kind of warfare there is. But if the IDF has been good at anything in its history, it is flexibility, learning on the job, and applying lessons learned very quickly in battle.

This is a huge advantage of the IDF's organizational structure and culture. While it has strict policies and must adhere to the laws of war and its own standards, it also has the ability to adjust during wartime and to learn from mistakes instantly. 

While the IDF is not sharing details, it clearly has also innovated in tunnel warfare itself, almost certainly using methods like robots and trained dogs. Moreover, they must have come up with solutions to electronic communications from the surface to the depths of the tunnels: radio will not penetrate that deeply, so I imagine they are deploying ad-hoc wireless hubs to allow everyone to have situational awareness even in the deep, dark underground.

These are impressive achievements. And at least some of them were only tested and deployed during the battle itself, which is astonishingly fast for a large army.

Similarly, in a press release, the IDF announced that it was indeed flooding some Hamas tunnels, which is a complex job:

In cooperation between units in the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, various tools were developed to channel large volumes of water into Hamas’ terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. This is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels.

These capabilities consist of installing pumps and pipes, the materialization of engineering developments, and the ability to locate tunnel shafts suitable for the deployment of these tools. The capability was developed in a professional capacity, including analysis of the soil characteristics and the water systems in the area to ensure that damage is not done to the area's groundwater. The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case.

This project was developed following combat procedures, accelerated force-building efforts, and while training forces with technological expertise. 

While I'm sure these plans existed for a while, actual testing, fixing unforeseen engineering problems  and implementation couldn't be done except while under fire in an actual war zone. Again, this is impressive.

As long as Israel is fighting, it will continue to get better and better, both at attacking Hamas and at minimizing civilian deaths that Hamas tries to maximize. Hamas does not have any new tricks up its sleeve: the tunnels were its guarantee, and they bet their organization on the IDF not being able to fight in the tunnels themselves and not being able to neutralize more than a small percentage of them. But the IDF is gaining more knowledge, more experience and more intelligence every day, and it applying this information extraordinarily quickly. 

Which means that time is on Israel's side. It needs to make clear to the world that it will not stop fighting until the war's goals are met, but also that it is not only progressing but accelerating in achieving them.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Well, fellow Jews, we had a good run in the US

Before the Holocaust, there was plenty of overt antisemitism in America. 

Newspaper ads would seek to rent spaces for "gentiles only." Hotels attempted to restrict their clientele to non-Jews. Henry Ford could freely publish antisemitic libels in The Dearborn Independent, and fully a quarter of all Americans listened to Dr. Charles Coughlin broadcast his antisemitic opinions on the radio. Ivy League universities imposed quotas on the number of Jews they would allow to attend.

The Holocaust and the State of Israel seemed to end that. Americans recognized the hate in their midst and no longer tolerated it.  Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Jews could live where they want, travel where they want, apply for jobs where they want, go to college where they want.  The second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate appeared to herald a new era in Jewish-Christian relations and to end official Christian antisemitism.

History will look at 1970-2015 as a golden age, where Jewish men in most Western cities could walk openly with a kippah without much concern.  where synagogues did not need to have guards or combination locks to enter. Antisemitism still existed, of course, but it went underground - it was unacceptable.

During this Golden Age,  Jews could go on family outings with only a vague worry that there is a tiny chance that some crazy person might harass them. No one had a second thought about walking to and from synagogue with the kids.

Some seven decades of limited antisemitism in the West has come to an end. People can now publicly harass and attack Jews at will, and Jews are reverting to living in fear.

As with previous flavors of antisemitism, the new antisemites pretend to be righteous and protecting the victims of Jewish evil. This is what the Communists said about workers, what the Germans said about pure-blooded Aryans, what the Christians said about their children. The supposed Jewish oppressors could be bankers, or Hollywood, or communists.

Today "Zionists" are the oppressors who must be fought by the modern antisemites. They don't hate Jews, they claim, they are just protecting Palestinians that the Jews are oppressing. And the current hate for Jews from the Left and from the Muslim community has empowered the far Right to crawl out from under their rocks and join in with the orgy of publicly hating Jews and publicly attacking Jews - all for a noble purpose, they say.

The days of Jewish Americans being free to do what they want, where they want, are rapidly ending. And we can see the future, because what is happening in America is exactly what has been happening in France, the UK and Sweden in recent years. 

Certainly there are some neighborhoods where Jews are still safe, but the map of where Jews can walk without fear has been shrinking. It shrank dramatically since October 7, after decades of expansion. 

New York City - the most tolerant, diverse city in world history, the city with more Jews than any other city ever - is now the scene for daily attacks on and harassment of Jews. 

Like it or not, the normal state of the world over the past 2000 years is where Jews are outcasts and demeaned.  These last decades were not a trend as we had hoped, but an anomaly. 

Not to say that things are all bad. There are many, many non-Jews who are aghast at antisemitism. Israel has supporters. Jews have allies. But the trend is decidedly negative. 

The West should be nervous. Jews are the canary in the coal mine, and this is just the beginning. History shows that the future for countries that decide that it is too much trouble to protect their Jews is bleak indeed.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

01/30 Links Pt1: UNRWA is worse than you think; UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel; Are conspiracy theories about Oct. 7 a new form of Holocaust denial?

From Ian:

Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7 Attack

Israel says it has documented deepening ties between Unrwa and Hamas since the militant group cemented its hold on Gaza in 2007. Unrwa has admitted to finding Hamas weapons stored in schools and Israel has repeatedly said Hamas tunnels run under and through Unrwa buildings as well as other civilian facilities. The former head of Unrwa’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.

The dossier is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the Unrwa employees and militants. It offers telling details regarding the events of Oct. 7. A math teacher belonging to Hamas was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a picture of her. Another teacher was carrying an antitank missile the night before the invasion.

One Unrwa employee set up an operations room for Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 8, the day after the attack. Three other employees, including another Arabic teacher at an Unrwa school, received a text from Hamas to arm themselves at a staging area close to the border the night before the attack. It was unclear whether they went.

A different elementary school teacher did cross into Israel and went to Reim, a district where a kibbutz, an army base and a music festival were attacked.

One of the intelligence reports seen by the Journal said a 13th Unrwa employee, who didn’t have a discernible affiliation with a terror group, also entered Israel. Hundreds of Gazan civilians flooded across the border as part of the Hamas-led attack, Israel says.

Teachers make up nearly three-quarters of Unrwa’s Gaza-based local staff. Unrwa schools, which use textbooks approved by the Palestinian Authority, have come under fire for using materials that allegedly glorify terrorists and promote hatred of Israel. Unrwa says it has taken steps to address problematic content, but a 2019 U.S. Government Accountability Office report said that measures haven’t always been implemented.

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel

Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives.

Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it.

And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA.

It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world.

The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps.

By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees.

Of all the tens of millions of refugees of the 1940s, the only ones whose descendants have not been resettled are the Palestinians. A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective—the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews—will be achieved.

Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think they are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war.

So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems.

Brendan O'Neill: UNRWA is worse than you think

Most striking is the left’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the charges against UNRWA. These people pose as ‘anti-fascists’ yet they seem alarmingly blasé about the possibility that a UN agency employed people of such an intense fascistic persuasion that they were happy to take part in an orgy of anti-Jewish murder. It’s ‘10 or 12 individuals’ from a ‘workforce of 13,000’, said LBC’s James O’Brien. This is a man who said the right-wing media’s defence of Boris Johnson during Partygate was proof that Britain is moving in a ‘fascistic direction’. It seems a handful of pro-Boris thinkpieces is fascism, but ‘10 or 12’ UN employees allegedly kidnapping and murdering Jews is not something we should overreact to.

The Guardian’s Owen Jones dismissively says these are ‘allegations against 0.04 per cent of [UNRWA’s] staff’. Is there an acceptable number of alleged Jew-killers for a UN agency to employ? If 12 isn’t a particularly big deal, how about 50? Or 100? A hundred alleged pogromists would still only be 0.77 per cent of UNRWA’s workforce – is that cool?

Mehdi Hasan speaks of ‘the alleged acts of a handful of UNRWA employees’ and slams the ‘demonisation campaign’ against UNRWA. This is the same Mehdi Hasan who once said Donald Trump’s description of lefties as ‘vermin’ was ‘right out of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda playbook’ and that Trump should ‘terrify’ us all. If a privileged member of America’s media elites can feel ‘terrified’ of Trump’s bluster, surely Jews can feel terrified of Jew-killers, even if it is ‘just’ 12. To a Jew, a ‘handful’ of murderous anti-Semites is still a terrible thing.

The speed with which the woke left went from handwringing over racists to saying, ‘Well, it’s only 12 racists’, has been mind-blowing. These are the kind of people who denounce gender-critical feminists as ‘fascist-adjacent’ if some alt-right arsehole attends one of their demos. Who will damn the entire Tory party as irretrievably Islamophobic if one of its lowly local councillors makes a joke about Muslims. Who insisted that Wayne Couzens – the London police officer who murdered Sarah Everard – was not a ‘bad apple’ but rather was symptomatic of the entire sexist, murderous rot of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t one bad apple – the whole police force is rotten’, cried Novara Media in 2021 – a mag whose fanboys are no doubt all over social media saying the 12 alleged Jew-killers in UNRWA were just bad apples. Funny that.

When a British cop was unveiled as a misogynistic murderer, the left cried ‘Defund the police!’. Yet when 12 employees of UNRWA were accused of taking part in a carnival of racist rape and murder they said the opposite: fund UNRWA; give it more money. In response to Britain and other nations’ suspension of donations to UNRWA, the activist class took to X to drum up support for UNRWA. They seem blissfully unaware of how horrendous, how sick, these optics are. It boils down to this: within hours of Israel saying, ‘We believe UNRWA staff participated in the mass murder of Jews’, leftists were on social media saying, ‘Give money to UNRWA’. In all my years observing the left’s abandonment of reason and Enlightenment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as appalling as that.

Most importantly, they’re just wrong to push the ‘bad apples’ argument about UNRWA. To haughtily tweet about the tiny percentage of UNRWA staff who are alleged to have bloodied their hands on 7 October. To go around saying ‘10 or 12’ possible pogromists does not a wicked organisation make. For the truth is that UNRWA has long been morally and politically compromised. The Wall Street Journal reports on intelligence dossiers that suggest up to 10 per cent of UNRWA’s employees have links with ‘Islamist militant groups’. A study of a Telegram channel made up of 3,000 UNRWA-employed schoolteachers found thousands of messages praising Hamas’s pogrom and expressing hatred for Jews. Analysts have found that some UNRWA-run schools ‘glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonise Israelis and incite anti-Semitism’. The truth about UNRWA, as a writer for Haaretz put it, is that it is ‘riddled with Hamas’.

And yet on Saturday, Holocaust Memorial Day, we had the chilling spectacle of the West’s supposed anti-fascists rattling the tin for UNRWA. We witnessed the self-righteous woke classes helping to fundraise for an organisation that is ‘riddled’ with links to a terror outfit that was founded with the express purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. The very people who claim to hate racism spent a day when we remember the victims of the worst act of state racism in history drumming up support for a UN agency that is ‘riddled’ with supporters of an avowedly racist terror group. We must be nearing the nadir of woke, surely?

Leading military expert: " Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties in urban warfare than any other military in history."

John Spencer is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on urban warfare. One of his books, "Understanding Urban Warfare," is considered a leading source on the topic.  He is the chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Modern War Institute, United States Military Academy. He served twenty-five years in the U.S. Army as an infantry soldier and is a highly decorated combat veteran. Spencer is the host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast, in which he interviews fellow industry experts.

This thread he wrote yesterday is essential reading.

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In my opinion,  Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties in urban warfare than any other military in the history of war. This includes many measure the U.S. has (or has not) taken in wars and battles but also many measures no military in the world has ever taken.  

Precautions during the initial air campaign to target enemy military capabilities to include using precision guided munitions and strict targeting protocols in both pre-planned and dynamic strikes against only military targets. 

Use of precision guided munitions (PCMs):  Despite the ignorance of reporting on ratios of PCMs to non-PCMs, Israel has used many types of PCMs to include lower collateral damage munitions/small diameter bombs and technologies and tactics that increase the accuracy of non-PCMs (dive bombing) limit civilian causalities (sat imagery, AI, cell phone presence) 

The idea that a military must use more PCMs vs non-PCMs in a war is a myth. In the First Gulf War the U.S. fired 250,000 individual bombs and missiles in just 43 days. A small fraction of those would fit the definition of PCMs. 

Also myths about choice of munitions and proportionality assessment/value of target/collateral damage estimate such as saying a 500 lbs bomb would achieve the same military task of a 2,000 lb. bomb with no mention of tunnels that would require greater penetration or availability of types/quantity of munitions. 

Call/Text ahead of a strike with (at times) roof-knocking (no military has ever implemented in war). In some cases, IDF will call, text, drop small munitions on the roof of a building. While limited in the context of the strike it has been used in this war. 

Provide warning and evacuate urban areas/cities before the full combined air and ground attack begins. While the tactic does alert the enemy defender and provide them the military advantage to prepare further, it is one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties. 

The U.S. did not do this in the invasion of Iraq or attack of Baghdad in 2003. Did not do this in the 2004 1st Battle of Fallujah but did do this in the Second Battle of Fallujah 6 months later because of the different context. 

In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, the Iraq government told the civilian to not evacuate and shelter in place during the battle for both Eastern and Western Mosul, but later changed instructions further into the battle.

Israel provided days and then weeks of warnings and time for civilians to evacuate multiple cities in northern Gaza before starting the main air-ground attack of urban areas. 

Use of air dropped flyers to give instruction on evacuations and establishing evacuation corridors (U.S. implemented in 2nd Fallujah & assisted 2016-2017 Mosul). Israel dropped over 520,000 pamphlets, broadcasted over radio and through social media messages to provide instruction for civilians to leave combat areas using corridors.

Use of real phone calls (19,734) to civilians in the combat areas, SMS texts (64,399) and pre-recorded calls (almost 6 million) to civilians to provide instructions on evacuations. No military has never done this in urban warfare history. 

Daily pauses for civilian evacuations. Israel conducted daily 4-hour pauses over multiple consecutive days. While pauses for civilian evacuations after a war or battle have started is not completely new but the frequency and predictability used in Gaza may have been historic. 

The distribution of Israel military maps and urban warfare graphic (GRG - gridded reference graphic) to the civilians to assist with day to day evacuations, alerting civilians and enemy to where the IDF will be operating. No military in history has ever done this.

There is no modern comparison to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel is not fighting a battle: it is fighting a war. 

No military in modern history has faced 30k defenders embedded in more than more than 7 cities, using human shields and hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites while holding hundreds of hostages and launching over +12k rockets at the attacking military's civilians areas. 

Again, Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war. While some have argued Israel could have waited longer, used different munitions, or not conducted the war at all - but these all fail to acknowledge the context of Israel’s war from the hostages, rockets, tunnels, existential threat of Hamas, and more, but also fail to recognize what Israel has done to prevent civilians casualties. 

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I trust soldiers with real combat experience a lot more than I trust CNN or the New York Times to explain how wars can and should be waged. Soldiers also know the international laws of armed conflict far better than the "experts" at Human Rights Watch or Amnesty. 

Critics of Israel's actions never offer any alternative that doesn't involve keeping Hamas functioning as a threat to Israel's population. That is the easiest way to know that they are not showing concern for civilians, but carrying water for Hamas jihadists.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Antisemitic dog-whistles in @NYTimes coverage of University of Pennsylvania faculty protest

In December, Marc Rowan, a major donor to the University of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Board of Advisors of Penn's Wharton School, sent a letter to the trustees of the university, framed as a series of questions. The questions are all reasonable. Here are major excerpts:

What is the University’s mission? What is the process for evaluating whether the University’s actions are consistent with its mission? Is the intention to have one mission for the entire University, or does each school/college have its own mission? In what way should the mission be incorporated into academics, admissions, and faculty selection?

Does the University have proper governance and are the responsibilities of Trustees clearly

understood?

What is the role of merit/academic excellence in admissions, faculty hiring, and other areas of recruitment? Is merit/academic excellence paramount, or one of many factors?

What are the Board’s criteria for qualification and admission for membership in the Faculty?

What are the Board’s criteria for the instruction of students and recommendations for degrees in course and in Faculty?

Should any of the existing academic departments be closed and/or combined as per Provision 10.6 of the Charter?

The Supreme Court recently ruled on affirmative action in college admissions. How does the University intend to comply with the ruling?

What is the University policy on free speech, civil discourse, hate speech, outside actors, respect, and tolerance?

How important is viewpoint diversity in the hiring of our faculty, our administrators and the

remainder of the University community? If it is important, is it compatible with our current DEI framework?

While recognizing the complete academic freedom of the faculty and the freedom afforded

administrators as individuals, what is the University’s policy on faculty and administrators

promoting a particular viewpoint in their official capacity? Should a student even be able to tell the political and other leanings of their professors? b. Is academic discipline appropriate in the event if a professor or faculty member abuses their official position?

Is the University a neutral body that is a hosting entity for its community members or does it have an institutional opinion?

Is the University a U.S. institution with foreign diversity, or a global institution based in the United States?

What is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations from countries/individuals and, specifically, what is the policy on publicly identifying any such contributions? Similarly, what is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations to student organizations?

Typically, if a major donor asks fundamental questions like these, a university would scramble to address them. While the questions have a viewpoint, Rowan is not advocating any changes and even he said through a spokesperson that "ultimately, it is what the trustees and faculty want." The letter is simply asking for clarification on the University's stance on important issues. 

Yet instead of embracing transparency in answering the questions, the university's faculty is claiming that the letter itself is an assault on academic freedom.  

And the New York Times is happy to highlight that absurd viewpoint.

The early paragraphs of the article say:

Mr. Rowan sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus.

Amy C. Offner, a history professor who led the protest, called the document a proposed “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the university.”

Only in paragraph 17 did the Times mention that the letter made no demands or even suggestions but only asked questions. 

There is an unmistakable subliminal message in the NYT article, and it is that rich Jews are trying to subvert academic freedom.

The article ties Rowan's letter to the larger question of antisemitism on campus. Undoubtedly the letter is related to that issue, as Rowan was a major critic both of the infamous "Palestine Writes" conference at Penn last year and of former president Elizabeth Magill’s failure to address campus antisemitism. There is nothing wrong with looking at the issue of antisemitism on campus and seeking root causes.

Yet the NYT does not look at this through that prism.

Instead, the link between the letter and the uproar over campus antisemitism is framed more as a bunch of shady Jewish billionaires trying to impose their conservative ideas on faculty from the outside.

Penn is now being assailed from many sides. It is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Jewish students and partly financed by unnamed donors, and the subject of a congressional investigation with subpoena power. ...

Two alumni, Mr. Rowan and Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, were notable among the sponsors of a fund-raiser for the re-election of Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, whose House committee is investigating Penn and other universities over claims of antisemitism.

Mr. Rowan and Mr. Lauder did not attend the fund-raiser, but the event’s organizer — Andrew Sabin, a New Yorker who made a fortune in metal recycling — said that the sponsors shared an opposition to antisemitism and are hoping to pressure Congress to remove federal funding and the tax-exempt status of some universities.

A separate investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee has questioned whether campus antisemitism jeopardizes the nonprofit status of Penn as well as Cornell, Harvard, and M.I.T.

“We’ve got a very, very aggressive path forward,” said Mr. Sabin, who did not attend Penn.

“This is an anti-democratic attack unfolding, not just at Penn, but all across the country, including at public universities in Florida, in Texas, Ohio and beyond,” said Dr. Offner, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization.

Penn, she said, had become “ground zero of a coordinated national assault on higher education, an assault organized by billionaires, lobbying organizations, and politicians who would like to control what can be studied and taught in the United States.”

All of these paragraphs are written before a token lone dissenting voice at the university, who the article takes pains to show is Jewish and Zionist:

The faculty, however, is not of one mind. Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology, responded directly in an email to the faculty senate.

“Your letter specifically calls out Marc Rowan’s questions, which I have studied and found to be reasonable and helpful,” wrote Dr. Kahana, who shared his email with The New York Times. Dr. Kahana recently organized a trip to Israeli universities by Penn professors, as a show of solidarity with academic colleagues in Israel.

The overall framing of the article is that people who care about campus antisemitism are rich, meddling Jews who want to take over campuses just as they already have taken over Wall Street and Congress. 

Unmentioned is the fact that American universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, accept hundreds of millions of dollars from countries like China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These repressive autocracies  have an undeniable influence on what universities teach. University faculty associations are silent about that. 

Apparently, their concern over "academic freedom" is one-sided.

On a  personal note, sometimes I wonder if I see antisemitism in innocuous articles, since antisemitism is a major focus of my website. But I read the Philadelphia Inquirer article about the same faculty protest. While that article is clearly sympathetic to the faculty, I did not detect even a whiff of  antisemitic dog-whistles in that coverage. 

It isn't my bias - it is the New York Times.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!