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Monday, April 08, 2024

04/08 Links Pt2: Biden would rather Israel surrender than defend itself; Hamas rejects ceasefire offer in Cairo; A paradigm for peace: Jordan as Palestine

From Ian:

Biden would rather Israel surrender than defend itself
President Joe Biden has tried to pretend that he supports Israel since the terrorist attack against it on Oct. 7, but he has made it clear he would rather Israel surrender than win its war against Hamas.

Biden is now telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we won’t be able to support you” if Israel continues its war against Hamas, a terrorist group that slaughtered 1,200 civilians in Israel, is dedicated to destroying Israel completely, and is holding Israelis and Americans hostage. This comes after National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tried to claim that America’s support of Israel is “rock-solid and unwavering” even as Biden threatens to change U.S. policy toward Israel.

Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected yet another ceasefire deal. That makes at least three occasions since February that Hamas has rejected a ceasefire. In the meantime, Biden is calling on Israel to cease its plans to go into Rafah, where Hamas terrorists are again using Palestinian civilians as human shields to avoid being wiped out completely.

So Biden wants Israel to stop fighting and let Hamas survive, all while Hamas continues to refuse to stop fighting by rejecting ceasefire deals. What Biden is asking of Israel is to surrender, to let Hamas survive and regroup and continue to slaughter civilians and try to destroy the country. Biden is putting more pressure on Israel for trying to kill genocidal terrorists than he is on the terrorists who continue to hold Americans hostage.
Recognition of a Palestinian State Will Be a Victory for Iran and a Reward for Islamist Terrorism
The recognition of virtual Palestine is a victory for Iran’s ayatollahs and a reward for Islamist terrorism. A scourge controlled by the Iranian regime, which will soon have a nuclear arsenal, translates into a terrible calamity that will befall all the nations of Europe tomorrow.

In this tragic context, an official French confirmation to unilaterally recognize the State of Palestine will also confirm that France is no longer Israel’s ally and undoubtedly not a friendly country.

Biden’s America has the capability of preventing the creation of an Islamist terrorist state. The United States should stop publicly berating Israeli strategy and intervening in Israel’s political affairs. The American president should support Israel in its legitimate and existential fight against Hamas and Hizbullah and avoid, by all means, the creation of a Palestinian satellite of the ayatollahs in the heart of the Middle East.

Otherwise, the support of the United States for the European Palestine initiative will go down in the annals of modern political history as a great debacle of the West and a disgraceful cowardice about the Jewish State. It proves once again that Israel must rely only on itself and act according to its own national security interests.
A paradigm for peace: Jordan as Palestine
Recognizing Jordan as a Palestinian state, while maintaining its status as a monarchy, reflects the national identity of a majority of its population. Highly popular Queen Rania is considered to be a Palestinian (via her parents). Palestinians are a growing segment of Jordan’s political life and its parliament. The country east of Israel is viable with a relatively stable economic and political structure. And it has vast areas of unused land, but lacks sufficient people and water.

Jordan/Palestine can become an oasis. It needs water, which would allow it to extend its population centers eastward. Utilizing abundant water sources in Turkey and/or the Caspian Sea – the largest body of fresh water in the world – would enable it to provide agricultural products, develop business and industrial centers, and create regional stability.

Another population source to help develop its huge and basically empty eastern portion – besides its current citizens – would be those Palestinians who would either come from the West Bank voluntarily, or be sent there because, as mentioned above, they choose not to live under Israeli sovereignty or abide by its laws and ethos as a Jewish state.

This would also include any Palestinians wherever they may live, including those in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, as well as Arab residents of Israel proper. All of them would rightfully be citizens of this newly realized Jordanian/Palestinian state: the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.

The possibility that Jordan could become an economic trade center was recently given a boost when Israel proposed a rail link between it and Haifa, which would connect it to European markets, Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The recently rebuilt rail line between Haifa and Beit She’an is the beginning of this plan.

Jordan is a strategic partner of Israel and, hopefully, will continue to be. The Jordanians, however, have a responsibility to Arab Palestinians, and Israel should not be expected to bear the burden of providing them with a national homeland.

Recognizing Jordan as the Palestinian state is in the national interests of both countries. It will bring them peace and prosperity, and ensure their security and stability and the entire region. A Jordanian-Israeli confederation will replace failure and despair with opportunity and hope, and it will inspire creativity, cooperation and freedom – the raison d’être of nation-states.


Netanyahu sets date for Rafah operation, pushes back at US
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set a date for an IDF operation in Rafah to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions, as the United States reiterated its opposition to such a step, which it fears will create a humanitarian disaster.

“This victory requires entering Rafah and eliminating the terrorist battalions there. This will happen; there is a date,” Netanyahu said in a brief video message he issued to the public on Monday night.

He spoke after the IDF removed Brigade 98 from Gaza, a move believed to be necessary so the troops could rest and regroup in advance of any further military activity in the enclave.

It sparked speculation, however, that Israel had decided not to send the IDF into Rafah. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to leave the government if the IDF did not enter Rafah or if it prematurely ended the war.

Israel has insisted that it can not oust Hamas from Gaza without such an operation.

US National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters that “we have consistently made clear that we don’t support a major ground operation in Rafah.

“I would also add that we don’t see any signs that such a major ground operation is imminent, or that these troops are being repositioned” for such an operation, Kirby said.

“The Israelis have assured us that there will be no operations in and around Rafah until we have had a chance to talk to them at greater length about the viable options and alternatives to a major ground operation,” Kirby said.


Hamas rejects ceasefire offer in Cairo
Hamas rejected the latest ceasefire proposal on Monday, according to senior officials in the terror organization as reported by multiple news outlets.

“We reject the latest Israeli proposals that the Egyptian side informed us of. The politburo met today and decided this,” Ali Baraka, who is responsible for the Hamas’s foreign relations, told Reuters.

Another Hamas official, Mahmoud Mardawi, told the same to the Quds News Network on Monday.

Earlier on Monday, another Hamas official, whom Reuters didn’t name, told the news agency that “there is no change in the position of the occupation [Israel] and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” and that “there is no progress yet.”

Bill Burns, the CIA director, was in Cairo last weekend to present the offer, which reportedly included the release of additional Palestinian prisoners, whom Israel holds, in exchange for Hamas releasing 40 hostages and a three-stage ceasefire.

Hamas has repeatedly rejected previous ceasefire proposals, demanding a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and unrestricted movement of Palestinians from south Gaza to the northern part of the Strip.

The news of Hamas’s rejection of the deal broke as Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, conducted a press briefing. Citing his policy of not commenting on news that comes to light during a briefing, Miller declined to comment on the latest Hamas rejection. But he said such a decision would be in line with its previous behavior.

“We have seen them reject a number of proposals before, that we have thought would deliver incredible benefits to the Palestinian people that they claim to represent,” he said. “Most notably cessation of hostilities, but also conditions on the ground that would allow the delivery of much, much more humanitarian assistance.”




Caroline Glick: 6 Months of War: Did Israel Just Lose to Hamas?!
Six months in and Biden tells Netanyahu "Ceasefire or Else", Nancy Pelosi turns on Israel, and the IDF exits Southern Gaza. Has Israel lost the war to Hamas?


Security Council to discuss Palestinian statehood bid at UN
By long standing practice, applications for U.N. membership are steered to the Security Council’s standing Committee on the Admission of New Members, on which each council member has a representative. The standing committee could meet as early as Monday afternoon.

It has also been general practice that a membership application is only advanced out of the committee to a full council vote by consensus.

This is exactly where the Palestinians’ application was short-circuited in 2011. Though no record of a committee vote was ever taken, a report forwarded to the U.N. General Assembly indicated that at least two members of the council could not support the application.

A publication by Colombia’s Foreign Ministry, which was a council member in 2011, showed not only a U.S. veto, but the application failing to garner the nine required votes on the 15-member council. Concerns included whether the Palestinians could meet the U.N.’s requirements that it have the capacity to enter into relations with other states, as well as whether it was a peace-loving state. Questions were also raised regarding Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip.

After the application failed to get out of committee, it was referred to the General Assembly, which in 2012 voted to grant the Palestinians U.N. non-state observer status. That approval allowed the Palestinians to join the United Nations and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

Even if the application again fails to advance out of committee, any individual member of the Security Council can still request a full council vote, which would require nine approvals and no vetoes.

If the application is approved by the full Security Council, it would be put to a final vote in the 193-member General Assembly, where the Palestinians would have more than the two-thirds majority approval necessary and where vetoes do not apply.

No admission of a new member has been vetoed in the Security Council since 1976, when the United States thwarted Vietnam’s application before supporting it the following year.

The Security Council is expected to hold its quarterly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file on April 18, which will be a ministerial level meeting. The Palestinians have targeted this date as one in which they hope the council will put their application forward for a vote.

The council is also negotiating a French-drafted resolution which calls for an immediate Israel-Hamas ceasefire and release of all hostages, while demanding unimpeded humanitarian aid and condemning Hamas for its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. The text of the resolution contains language noting that 139 member states have recognized a Palestinian state and expresses the intent of the council to welcome the Palestinians as a full U.N. member.
US org proposes UNRWA education alternative
Many experts and analysts have pointed to the teaching of hatred to Palestinian children as a driver of Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and the widespread Palestinian support for the massacre.

“Looking at images from Oct. 7 of these hostages and dead bodies being brought back into Gaza, and seeing not just the terrorists themselves but children celebrating it, it shows you that there is something deeply wrong within that society,” E.J. Kimball, director of policy and strategic operations at the U.S. Israel Education Association (USIEA), told JNS. “That goes to the root of the education system.”

USIEA, which fosters initiatives to inform government leaders about the U.S.-Israel relationship, has worked for years to fight incitement in Palestinian schools, and has partnered with other entities in that mission.

In the wake of a suspension of American funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the Palestinian-only U.N. refugee agency which schools over 291,000 students in 183 facilities in the Gaza Strip, questions have arisen over which entity should assume responsibility for Gazan education, especially when Hamas’s rule is over.


Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Unmasked
Now, while mouthing the words of support for Israel’s right to defend herself, confirming the necessity of ridding the world of Hamas and others sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state and for Israel to do what is necessary to free the hostages held in Gaza, he vilifies Israel for taking steps to do those very things.

Since Oct. 7, we have seen an increasingly strident and confrontational tone in Van Hollen’s words as he has tried to convince the Biden administration to withhold new support or to condition already promised aid for Israel, accused Israel of “textbook war crimes” in Gaza by “deliberately withholding food for children,” labeled Israel’s leaders as “war criminals,” demeaned criticism of UNRWA and its documented relationship with Hamas, and sought to tie Israel’s hands in making judgments about how to prosecute its war effort in Gaza. In the process, Van Hollen has become one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of Israel, its leadership and its war effort.

Van Hollen’s relentless attacks against Israel have been so offensive that they recently prompted an unprecedented public letter of reprimand from nearly 80 Maryland rabbis from across the state and denominational affiliations expressing deep concern about Van Hollen and his pronouncements. In the rabbis’ words, they are “aghast” at Van Hollen’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

There is much speculation about what it is that has driven Van Hollen to his self-righteous spewing of anti-Israel accusations and positions. We won’t join in that prognostication. But we know the ugly result and are deeply disappointed.

There was a time when we counted Van Hollen as a challenging but reliable friend of the Jewish community and the state of Israel. Those days are gone. We face the uncomfortable reality that Chris Van Hollen is not our friend.


Ivy League Antisemitism | Harvard, Cornell & MIT Student Leaders on Being a Jew on Campus
At the Hillel International Israel Summit held this year in Atlanta, Georgia, 800 Jewish student leaders from across the United States and Canada gathered alongside prominent Israel community leaders and subject matter experts. Eylon was invited to give the keynote address, and while there, he took the opportunity to engage in a discussion with three distinguished student leaders—Charlie Covit from Harvard University, Talia Dror from Cornell, and Maya Makarovsky from MIT. Their conversation delved into the current state of Jewish life on campuses enthralled with identity politics, and the concerning associated trend: the demonization of Israel and Jews.




Vandy Student Arrested After Pro-Hamas Sit-In Has Ties to the White House, Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Org
When the (manufactured) hubbub over Gov. Ron DeSantis' alleged "Don't Say Gay" bill erupted in Florida, Petocz jumped right into the fray, organizing a statewide walkout in Florida high schools (around 30 schools participated, according to an interview Petocz gave NBC News). On March 5, 2022, the day of the walkout, Petocz was escorted from his school, Flagler Palm Coast High School, by security and was suspended. According to the NBC News story, "Petocz said he was punished for distributing 200 pride flags for the rally after having been advised not to do so by the principal," then claims his suspension was due to homophobia and bigotry. "I believe this attempt to threaten me and remove me from campus is riddled with homophobia and bigotry," said Petocz, who is gay. "You’re silencing a queer student standing up for what he believes in, in his rights, and you’re disciplining him for challenging you on the allowance of pride flags in a gay rally? It’s ridiculous. It truly is.

"And I think that they were just they were upset that I was organizing this to begin with, and they just used this as a crutch to go ahead and remove me from campus," he added.

Meanwhile, Petocz told the local ABC affiliate that school administrators gave him permission to stage the rally.

Eventually a level three infraction, "which is one of the highest levels of discipline in the Flagler County School District,” was placed on Petocz's permanent record, rendering him unable to run for Senior class President.

The notoriety led him to the national stage, though.

Petocz received awards for his activism, one being the 2022 PEN/Benenson Courage Award from PEN America, a free speech advocacy group.

He also received the 2022 Now Award for Youth Activism from "Them" magazine in June 2022 and was profiled in Teen Vogue.

A few days after the Teen Vogue profile, Petocz was up in Washington, DC to meet with Joe Biden about issues facing LGBTQ students and attend the signing ceremony for Biden's "Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals," snapping pictures with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Pete Buttigieg, and more.

Around that time Petocz took a position with Gen Z for Change, a radical progressive organization, as a mobilization coordinator. Through Gen Z for Change, he worked to attempt to defeat DeSantis in the 2022 election, then finished up his high school career before heading to Vanderbilt in the fall of 2023.

Petocz, of course, has kept up his activism in Nashville. According to his Twitter/X screed, Petocz has some involvement with Vanderbilt's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) chapters:
For months, administration has suppressed student voices fighting for Palestine.

This includes hyper-surveillance, discrimination towards our SJP and JVP chapters, and cancelling a student-led referendum to divest Vanderbilt Student Government funds from mass slaughter.

It's interesting that this openly gay man is "fighting for Palestine." Jack is either unaware of Hamas' stance on homosexuality, or perhaps he thinks that Hamas will treat him differently than they treat Palestinian gay men, which is quite a white-privileged thought to have.

SJP has been identified as a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood and is being investigated in both Florida and Virginia for ties to terrorism. It was founded at Berkeley in 2001 by Professor Hatem Bazian, who "quickly grasped that open identification with the Brotherhood prevented large-scale recruitment" so he "establish[ed] SJP as an ostensibly progressive organization, whose agenda, uncoincidentally, was nearly identical to that of the Brotherhood." Bazian is now the chair of American Muslims for Palestine, another Muslim Brotherhood organization, "which provides financial backing for SJP chapters and shares personnel and donors with several Hamas fronts."

Are students like Petocz just useful idiots, or are they complicit in the attacks perpetrated by Hamas? It's time to rid our college campuses of all of these terrorist fronts, and the students who support them.


5 Major Media Misquotes That Hurt Israel’s Image During the War
There is a meme (a humorous image generally posted on social media) that has been widely shared online for years.

It depicts a black-and-white image of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln with a quotation: “The problem with quotes found on the internet is that they are often not true.”

While it is clear to everyone that it is a fake Lincoln quote, the same cannot be said of every false quotation.

Whether deliberate or by mistake — either a mistranslation or a misquotation — here are some of the most outrageous examples of false quotes published by the media since the start of the war.

1. BBC News Claims Israel “Targeting” Medics
In November 2023, the BBC was forced to issue an apology after one of its anchors misquoted a Reuters report during a live broadcast, and claimed that the IDF was targeting medical professionals during its raid on Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which had been used as a Hamas command center.

Reuters correctly quoted an IDF spokesman: “Our medical teams and Arabic-speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.”

However, the BBC instead announced on-air that the Israeli military was “targeting people including medical teams as well as Arab speakers.”

An apology was later read out by a second presenter, who announced: “What we should have said is that IDF forces included medical staff and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”

2. Israel’s “Genocidal” Intent
In January, a staff writer at The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg, penned a piece headlined, ‘What Constitutes a Smoking Gun?‘ in part to reference the case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Rosenberg discussed comments made by the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the early days of the war, in which he allegedly declared that Israel was “fighting human animals,” and that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before … We will eliminate everything.”

The remark was suggested by the likes of NPR and the BBC as evidence of Israel’s intention to violate international humanitarian law.

The major problem with this, Rosenberg pointed out, was that the quote attributed to Gallant was inaccurate.

What Gallant actually said when he addressed a group of soldiers just three days after the Hamas massacre was: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.”

Rosenberg explained:
This isn’t a matter of interpretation or translation. Gallant’s vow to ‘eliminate it all’ was directed explicitly at Hamas, not Gaza. One doesn’t even need to speak Hebrew, as I do, to confirm this: The word Hamas is clearly audible in the video […]

And yet, the misleadingly truncated version of Gallant’s quote has not just been circulated on NPR and the BBC. The New York Times has made the same elision twice, and it appeared in The Guardian, in a piece by Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch. It was also quoted in The Washington Post, where a writer ironically claimed that Gallant had said “the quiet part out loud,” while quietly omitting whom Gallant was actually talking about.

As Rosenberg observed, the Gallant misquoting error had profound consequences — it “misled readers, judges, and politicians.”
Literary magazine editor quits after Israeli writer's essay removed from website
The editor-in-chief of a US literary magazine that last month retracted an essay about the war in Gaza by a British-Israeli author has resigned, saying she did not agree with the decision to withdraw the piece.

Jina Moore said in a blog post she had stood down from her role at Guernica, an online publication centring on the arts and politics, because “the magazine stands by its retraction of the work; I do not”.

The piece, a personal essay on coexistence entitled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” by writer and translator Joanna Chen and reflects on how, for the author, in the aftermath of October 7, “it [was] not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides”.

Chen, whose “heart was in turmoil” described how “as the days went by, the shock turned into a dull pain in my heart and a heaviness in my legs”. The British-born writer went on: “I wondered if the Israeli hostages underground, the children and women, had any way of knowing the weather had turned cold, and I thought of the people of Gaza, the children and women, huddled inside tents supplied by the UN or looking for shelter.”

The essay was published on Guernica on 4 March, but days later it was pulled down, with visitors to the webpage informed: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” No further explanation has been forthcoming, and in the meantime Chen’s essay was re-published by The Washington Monthly, a bimonthly magazine covering politics and government. It can also be viewed on an archived version of the Guernica webpage stored by digital archive Wayback Machine

The essay was removed from Guernica after multiple volunteer members of staff resigned, citing the piece. Among their number was Madhuri Sastry, who quit as co-publisher after branding the piece “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” She also publicly called for Moore to resign as editor-in-chief due to her role as “the senior most person responsible for overseeing the processes” that led to the essay’s publication.

Another colleague, Ishita Marwah, formerly a fiction editor at Guernica, declared that running the piece made the magazine “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness”.
Amazon pulls book by Hamas leader Sinwar
Amazon has stopped selling The Thorn and the Carnation, a book written by Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar, following a complaint filed with the e-commerce giant by Israeli NGO B’Tzalmo.

“I welcome the removal of Yahya Sinwar’s book,” said Shai Glick, CEO of B’Tzalmo. “The reality in which an arch-terrorist sells a book through an American commerce company, while being responsible for the murder of thousands, is unimaginable,” he said.

“Sinwar’s place is in the grave together with his books; not on the Amazon website,” he added.

Amazon promptly removed the book from its platform.

Sinwar is one of the masterminds of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, in which 1,200 Israelis, mostly citizens, were slaughtered, with many raped and tortured. More than 250 Israelis were taken hostage, of whom 133 remain in Gaza.

Amazon has at times struggled to remove offensive comments from its platform. Two years ago, Americans Against Anti-Semitism asked Amazon to take down more than 30 Nazi propaganda films that were available for purchase and streaming.

The watchdog group at the time said that Amazon was “presently the world’s largest purveyor of original Nazi propaganda films—something Hitler and Goebbels would surely have been grateful for.”

In December 2023, despite announcing in 2020 that it was banning a selection of Nazi-authored books, including most editions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the online retailer continued to allow the sale of antisemitic paraphernalia.
Guardian incites the antisemitic mob
The most recent example of a Western outlet promoting a form of the blood libel is a Nov. 2023 article at EuroNews, which published an article “Israel ‘stealing organs’ from bodies in Gaza, alleges human rights group”. The accusation was naturally devoid of any evidence, relying on a statement by an outfit called Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Despite their name, however, the group’s mission is the polar opposite of human rights. EMHRM has been promoting antisemitic narratives and terror propaganda in the media since October 7th, which isn’t surprising given the substantive evidence of their ties to Hamas.

It’s therefore not surprising that an article on April 2 by the Guardian’s Chris McGreal – who effectively covers the ‘American Jewish power’ beat for the outlet – which we’ll show, relied partly on that same Hamas-aligned group to support a more sanitised version of that toxic calumny.

McGreal, who published an article in 2005 (which was cross posted at an antisemitic conspiracy site) similarly alleging that IDF snipers intentionally targeted Palestinian kids, begins by uncritically citing figures provided by the proscribed Gaza terror organisation – that evidently ‘apolitical’ group of health professionals whose work he explicitly defended in a previous column.

He cites Hamas’s numbers to assert that “children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza”, a figure that has been undermined by two recent analyses by experienced statisticians.

This is a major deception, as it’s used to support his thesis of an alleged ‘Israeli war on children’.

McGreal then writes of a few doctors who gave the Guardian accounts of working in Gaza hospitals this year who believe that some of the child victims they’ve treated, many of whom with bullet wounds, were “directly targeted by Israeli troops“. The journalist doesn’t elaborate on how they made this determination.

Readers are then told that, “a mid-February, a group of UN experts accused the Israeli military of targeting Palestinian civilians who are evidently not combatants, including children, as they sought shelter.”

However, the UN ‘report’ in question, which, without evidence, accused Israeli soldiers of raping Palestinian women, was an unserious piece of propaganda, and is not a report in any sense of that word. It’s a one-page 448 word statement with literally no sources. Further, among the ‘experts’ cited in their ‘report’, as our colleague noted, is one Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur notorious for her statement effectively justifying the Oct. 7 massacre, as well other manifestations of unhinged hatred of Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.

Another one of the ‘experts’ is Reem Alsalem, a Jordanian Palestinian who not only failed to condemn Hamas’s (proven) use of sexual violence, but actively assisted Albanese in trying to cast doubt on the story by claiming governments have not “appl[ied] the usual standards of discernment and credibility evaluation.”
Reuters Clarifies Israel Wasn’t Alone in Blaming Iran For Bombing of Argentine Jewish Center
CAMERA’s Israel office yesterday prompted Reuters corrections in both English and Arabic after the news agency had misleadingly reported that Israel alone blames Iran for the deadly 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center in which 85 people were murdered. The April 7 article, “Israel prepared to handle any developments with Iran, defence chief says,” had selectively reported: “Israel has blamed Iran for being behind the 1994 deadly bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina’s capital, which killed 85 people and for which Tehran denied any involvement.”

Argentina also blamed Iran for the deadly 1994 attack on the AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) center. As Reuters reported last June, Argentine federal judge Daniel Refecas “last October requested the arrest of a senior Iranian official accused of playing a central role in the attack.” The report added: “Argentine courts have blamed the attack on Iran.”

The United States likewise blamed Iran for the bombing of the Jewish center. The U.S. State Department said in an unequivocable 2022 press statement about both the AMIA attack the 2012 attack on a tour bus in Bulgaria carrying Israeli tourists:
The two Hizballah attacks, carried out with Iranian support, devastated hundreds of families.

The single deadliest antisemitic attack in more than half a century, the AMIA bombing underscored Hizballah’s global ambitions and is a clear example of Iran’s support of international terrorism. High-level Iranian government officials were directly implicated in the attack, and Hizballah carried it out at the direction of the Iranian regime.

In response to communication from CAMERA, Reuters yesterday amended the article (both in English and in Arabic) to more fully and accurately report:
Israel, Argentina and the U.S. have blamed Iran for being behind the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.
AFP Corrects Abraham Accords Didn’t Permit Israel Annexation of West Bank Land
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Agence France Presse yesterday commendably corrected an English-language article, “Trump increasingly ambiguous on Israel amid Gaza war,” which had confused President Trump’s shelved “Peace to Prosperity” plan with the implemented Abraham Accords, falsely stating that the latter enabled Israel to annex West Bank land.

In this substantive error, the April 7 article (1:27 a.m. GMT) had falsely reported:
By the end of his term, the United States had brokered the so-called Abraham Accords, which would allow Israel to annex a large area of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians with a tiny portion of their previous territory and a capital in the outskirts of Jerusalem.

The “Peace to Prosperity” plan proposed Israeli annexation of some 30 percent of the disputed West Bank, leaving Palestinian with control over 70 percent of the West Bank, compared to the 40 percent that they now control. While this is less territory than the Palestinians had hoped for, it was nearly double what they have ever controlled previously in history. (How is 70 percent “tiny,” while 30 percent is “large”?)

In any event, the subsequent Abraham Accords, which cemented Israeli normalization with several Arab countries, did not enable Israeli annexation of West Bank land. (Nor did it address Palestinian control of additional West Bank land.) To the contrary, the Abraham Accords took Israeli annexation of West Bank land off the table.

As AFP correctly reported Dec. 20, 2022:
The United Arab Emirates jumpstarted the Abraham accords in return for a promise by Netanyahu’s then government not to move ahead with annexation of the West Bank, a step that had the blessing of the Trump administration.

The French version of the same April 7 article more accurately reported how President Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which would have allowed Israeli annexation, was ultimately pushed off the agenda due to the administration’s prioritizing Israel’s normalization of ties with several Arab countries:


Toronto Star Article Acts As Publicist For Anti-Israel Film Festival
Richie Assaly’s April 4 article in The Toronto Star entitled: “‘A feeling of catharsis and hope’: Sarah Polley on why she’s paying tribute to Palestinian artists and writers killed in Gaza,” reported that Oscar-winning filmmaker Sarah Polley will be participating in an event being hosted by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

But rather than reporting the story itself, Assaly’s coverage instead represented a lengthy hatchet job against Israel, exclusively interviewing anti-Israel voices and providing little to no context for readers.

Some of Assaly’s statements in the article are commonly-found tropes, such as making reference to “Israeli occupation” of the Gaza Strip, with no acknowledgement that prior to the current war, not a single Israeli, civilian or soldier, had been inside the territory permanently since the summer of 2005, when thousands of Israelis were forcibly removed by their government in an attempt to pave the way for peace with Palestinians.

Assaly also told readers that “the Israeli military has killed more than 32,900 Palestinians in Gaza,” failing to provide attribution for the source, namely Hamas’ “Gaza Ministry of Health,” a source which – in addition to providing unverified and statistically unlikely figures – also fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and those killed by Israel or killed by Palestinian rockets.

The author also ignored how Israel states that any death toll figure includes more than 13,000 combatants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), who are certainly not civilians.

In his article, Assaly quoted Dania Majid, co-founder of the Palestine Film Festival, who is also the founder of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, as claiming that Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza.

Untold by Assaly, Majid is a vocal anti-Israel activist who, following Hamas’ October 7 massacre, signed an open letter which could reasonably be seen as justifying Hamas terrorism against Israel, and who has attempted to censor criticism of pro-Palestinian propaganda, falsely labeling the refusal to accept such disinformation as racism.

Rather than providing a balance and offering a voice pushing back against Majid’s irresponsible claims of accusation, Assaly lets the allegation stand by itself, unchallenged.


No BBC follow up on inaccurate Lebanon ‘shelling’ story On April 3rd – the day after that report had been taken down from the Middle East page – the Israeli media reported a statement put out by the IDF.
“A group of United Nations peacekeepers wounded in a blast in southern Lebanon’s Rmeish on Saturday that Lebanese officials blamed on Israel were hit by a Hezbollah roadside bomb, the Israeli military said Wednesday.

Shortly after the March 30 incident, the Israel Defense Forces denied carrying out any strikes in the Rmeish area. Hezbollah-linked media and security sources speaking to Reuters had claimed that the IDF carried out a drone strike on a vehicle with four UN employees.

The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, said Wednesday in a post on X that according to the latest information available to the military, the UN peacekeepers were wounded by “an explosive device that had been planted by Hezbollah in the area.””

The Times of Israel also cited an AFP report about a statement from a Lebanese official:
“An ongoing Lebanese army investigation determined that a landmine was the cause of the blast, a judicial official said Wednesday,

“Preliminary results of a Lebanese army investigation have found that the observers were wounded by a landmine,” the Lebanese official told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The ongoing investigation by the Lebanese army and peacekeepers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had yet to determine who planted the mine, the official added, noting three mines were in the area, “one of which exploded.””

France 24’s report on the story states:
“UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told AFP that preliminary reports showed “the explosion was not caused by direct or indirect fire”.”

The BBC, however, has not produced any follow-up reporting on the story, meaning that its unhelpful and inaccurate ‘he said-she said’ account of what happened near Rmeish on March 30th, together with the disinformation concerning allegations of “a drone strike” and “shelling”

PMW: Palestinian analyst: PA Security Forces will join upcoming terror campaigns as they have in the past
The PA's security services, which are funded and trained by the US, have played an active role in terror in the past. Moreover, their current role in terror is “an important indication about the possibility that this group will participate [in the fighting] if a confrontation will develop in the West Bank.”

This assessment, reinforcing Palestinian Media Watch’s repeated recent warnings, comes from Palestinian analyst Akram Al-Natsheh. He recognizes that just as the PA Security Forces were very active in terror during the 5-year-long terror-intifada [2000-2005], and recently during the Nablus terror wave [2022-2023], they will continue to perpetrate terror in West Bank fighting in the future:
“The participation of former or present Security [Forces] members [in operations] is no longer unusual…Recently, we have seen the participation of security members in operations…They provide an important indication about the possibility that this group will participate [in the fighting] if a confrontation will develop in the West Bank, like in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., PA terror campaign 2000-2005, more than 1,100 Israelis murdered) or like what we saw with armed groups such as the Lion’s Den in Nablus (i.e., independent terror cell, see note below), which relied on the Palestinian Security Forces members who resigned from their positions.”

[Al-Jazeera website, Palestinian publicist and political commentator Akram Al-Natsheh, March 22, 2024]

Fatah, which rules the PA, loves to boast about how many of its members are involved in terror. In January, an official Fatah spokesman said:
“Today we are speaking about nearly 8,000 prisoners inside the occupation’s (i.e., Israel’s) prisons. More than half of the prisoners’ movement is from Fatah, and the remaining less than half are from the rest of the factions together. This shows that Fatah still adheres to the benefit of the struggle, regardless of what will be. It has carried the flag of armed struggle, it carried the flag of popular resistance in the popular [first] Stone Intifada (i.e., Palestinian terror wave, approximately 200 Israelis murdered, 1987-1993), it returned to armed resistance in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., PA terror campaign 2000-2005, more than 1,100 Israelis murdered), and today it is in favor of popular resistance (i.e., Palestinian term, includes use of violence and terror), and these strategies change and replace each other at every stage, but Fatah has not abandoned any one of its (i.e., terror) options.”

[Official Fatah Spokesman Abd Al-Fattah Doleh, Falestinona, Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, YouTube channel, Jan. 1, 2024]




The Silky Hand of Qatar Targets Jordan
The Jordanian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, of seeking to destabilize security inside the kingdom.

Behind both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is the terrorist-sponsoring emirate, Qatar, and its propagandizing television bullhorn, Al-Jazeera.

Jordan's leaders are doing exactly what many other Arab regimes and heads of state have long been doing: radicalizing their people and inciting them to violence against Israel as a means of distracting them from problems at home.

The Arab leaders want their people to be busy hating Israel. Otherwise, the people might demand democracy, transparency and accountability from the corrupt Arab rulers.

Their Jordanian majesties apparently seem to have forgotten that if Israel were not protecting them, their own Palestinian population would have overthrown them or assassinated them long ago, as they did to the king's grandfather, King Abdullah I.

[Queen Rania] has also apparently forgotten is that it is Hamas that is using its own citizens as human shields and stealing and hoarding the humanitarian aid in the hope that the blame will be assigned to Israel – as it all too often unfortunately is.

"It is no longer a secret that there are two parties that have interests in creating tension in the region and moving to a new front: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. They share the same agenda: destabilizing the Arab states. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, we have seen that the Hamas leadership is trying to mobilize the Jordanian street and is trying to drag the Jordanians into the war by any means." — Munif Al-Harbi, Saudi political analyst, aawsat.com, April 1, 2024.

If Jordan's King Abdullah and his wife want to avoid chaos in their kingdom, and a rather unpleasant outcome for themselves, they would do well to stop playing into the hands of the radical Islamists by inciting the Jordanian people to violence against Israel.

However, behind the incitement to violence that is empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas -- and destabilizing the area -- lies the silky hand of Qatar.


Seth Frantzman: Iran is watching Israel’s next Gaza move carefully
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian flew to Damascus on Monday, in a move that could foreshadow an escalation in Syria. This is pertinent considering Iran has vowed revenge on Israel for the airstrike on its consulate compound in Damascus which killed Brig.-Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior Quds Force commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. A simultaneous news report from Tasnim on Monday said that Iran would attack Israel, in a speech in southwestern Iran by an IRGC official who threatened Israel.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has made some moves as well, alongside Iran’s saber-rattling. On Monday, he spoke of Iran’s “support for the resistance” and “announced that the presence of the IRGC in Syria and Lebanon dates back to 1982 and after, following Israel’s aggression to Lebanon.”

What this does is link how Hezbollah grew out of Israeli aggression with how Hamas is “resisting” Israel in Gaza. Nasrallah – and Iran – may believe Hamas will emerge more powerful. Nasrallah noted as well how after “the invasion of the Zionist enemy in Lebanon, the IRGC forces were deployed to help fight against The invaders who came to Lebanon and Syria. At that time, Iranian forces came to the Al-Zabadani region in Syria, but after evaluating the situation, it was decided that a group of IRGC officers and staff would remain to activate the national resistance, transfer experiences, provide advice, training, and logistical support.”

This illustrates how Iran helped construct Hezbollah’s power from the very beginning. It may be a way for Iranian media to emphasize its support for Hamas without directly noting it.

Iran often uses Hezbollah to say things it may rather not say. For example, Nasrallah “clarified that with the escalation of events in Syria, Iranian military advisers were also present with the resistance factions. This is even though the presence of military advisers in the Iranian consulate in Damascus is a natural thing, and targeting them is the highest Israeli aggression of its kind in Syria in recent years,” Tasnim News stated. This messaging is clear: Iran has the legitimacy to use Hezbollah to threaten Israel now in the wake of the Damascus airstrike.

Many cards are now in play and the chessboard is being rearranged. Iran is watching Israel’s moves closely after the withdrawal of the IDF’s 98th Division and the 7th Armored Brigade from Khan Yunis, while pushing Hezbollah to be its mouthpiece in discussions about Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza.
Canadian politician urges ‘bring your Israel flags to Iranian rallies’
The first woman of Iranian descent to become a member of a Canadian provincial parliament wants Jews to know that they are not as isolated as they may think.

“The Jewish community has more allies than they realize,” Goldie Ghamari, 39, who was born in Iran and has a Muslim family background, told JNS. “Iranians do not hate you. The Islamic regime does. We’re united. We’re allies. We’re on the same side.”

Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel has “shown the Jewish community who their allies are and who stands with them,” added Ghamari.

Ghamari, who represents the riding of Carleton in Ontario delivered an emotional speech before the Ontario legislature in support of Israel on Oct. 17. “These terrorists shot dogs. They executed Holocaust survivors,” she said. “They laughed.”

“What Hamas did is absolutely an act of monstrous barbarity,” she said. “Now is the time for moral clarity. Not moral relativism.”

She added that her heart breaks for every innocent life lost, “but let me be very clear—be they Palestinian, Israeli, Canadian or foreign nationals—Hamas is responsible, absolutely responsible, for every single innocent life lost in this war. Full stop.”

Nevertheless, acknowledged Ghamari, “as reports of the gruesome and horrific massacre came out, the response here in Canada was just as vile. Canadians looked on in shock and disgust as people took to the streets dancing, celebrating and passing out sweets in response to Hamas’s terrorist attack.”


California Plan to Counter Antisemitism Misses the Mark
American Jews today face threats mainly from two camps — the Islamists and the woke youth. One wouldn’t know it from reading California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism.

The document correctly notes that antisemitic violence escalated immediately after the October 7th terrorist mega terror attack on Israel, but it failed to articulate the significance of it. Without a clear idea of what’s going on in the country as a whole and California in particular, the issue of antisemitism can’t be properly addressed.

It is a burning issue. On November 5, 2023 in Thousand Oaks a Jordanian American anti-Israel protester and a computer science professor Loay Alnaji allegedly struck a pro-Israel activist Paul Kessler with a bullhorn, causing him to fall. Kessler died the following day.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, on November 16 cease-fire mob blocked the Bay Bridge. Seventy eight activists were arrested and, thanks to San Francisco District Attorney Brook Jenkins willingness to press charges, passions were tempered. Only twenty showed up to block the Golden Gate Bridge in February — and they were swiftly removed. Jenkins taught California a lesson here about the value of law enforcement in imposing peace.

Campus cops can stand to learn from her. At UC Berkeley, for instance, ceasefire mobs have been rocking the campus. In one February incident, a crowd of two hundred masked individuals broke into Zellerbach Playhouse where a pro-Israel event was scheduled to start, assaulting and spitting at a people and screaming racial slurs. The event was first moved to a different location, but eventually cancelled because the university didn’t have sufficient police force to hold back the mob. The investigation is stalled because the masked activists couldnt be identified.

UC Berkeley is far from the only campus with a raging antisemitism problem. The LA Times reports that “the U.S. Department of Education launched civil rights investigations into several California campuses, including UCLA, UC San Diego, Stanford, San Diego and Santa Monica College.” Although only a handful of schools became the subject of investigation, antizionist violence and intimidation are a persistent problem on California campuses.

Students start their college courses already indoctrinated — primary educational institutions in California are also plagued by Jew-hate. The Ethnic Studies Curriculum already taught across California high schools and set to become graduation requirement in 2025 permits anti-Israel bias. High schools can opt to teach the so-called Liberated Ethnic Studies which include antisemitic lessons. Sometimes educators add their own hate manuals. An Ethnic Studies teacher Chloe Gentile-Montgomery showed the students at a toney Menlo-Atherton High the widely circulated notoriously misleading map of Israel allegedly stealing Arab land along with several other historically inaccurate slides.

California public schools have been teeming with incitement. Middle and high school students across the state were pressed to attend anti-Israel rallies and teachers are free to brainwash students that Israel was to blame for the 10/7 massacre. In one Oakland elementary students were instructed to stick “stop bombing babies” notes on the door of the sole Jewish teacher. Also in Oakland, Jewish families started pulling kids out of public schools.
Australian Soccer Fan Blames Media Distortion After Being Accused of Doing Nazi Salute at Match
The Sydney United team was originally called Sydney Croatia because it was largely comprised of migrants from Croatia who settled in Australia. It was renamed in 1993.

Magistrate Joy Boulas at Parramatta Local Court in New South Wales (NSW) was played footage of an interview that Sieben did with NSW police in Feb. 2023 at his home in Sydney. During his questioning, Sieben denied doing the Nazi salute at the Australian Cup final. He said he had a beer in one hand and was just trying to cheer on his team with his other arm.

“It was disgusting, the whole thing, everything that was accused of me,” he told police. “Everyone was chanting … the media grabbed my photo and twisted the entire thing and made it look like someone I’m not. It had nothing to do with the Hitler crap … any of that crap … it was blown out of proportion so much.”

Sieben claimed he was caught on camera from a “low angle,” which gave a deceiving portrayal of reality. “I think that honestly … [the media] twisted the entire thing,” he added. He further told police he had “eight to nine” friends who are Jewish.

“Two or three of them I see on a regular basis,” he said. “When they saw it they literally laughed.”

The court was told Gasparovic, 46, and Lisica, 45, chanted a song at the Australia Cup final that is linked to a Croatian far-right movement, according to local reports. Lisica also wore army camouflage to the game and Gasparovic carried a “World War II-era Nazi” flag,” a police prosecutor told the court. Gasparovic “acknowledges doing an action but denies any association with Nazism,” the police prosecutor added. The case is ongoing.

Anyone found guilty of publicly displaying a Nazi symbol without reasonable cause in NSW can face a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison and/or an $11,000 fine, according to the Daily Mail.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Elders Forget Gentile Blood; Jews Forced To Use Water In Matza For 3,336th Year In A Row (satire)
The shadowy group coordinating the behavior of a tiny religious and ethnic minority in key positions of power neglected once again to kidnap and murder a Christian child to use his blood in the preparation of unleavened bread for the upcoming holiday of Passover, extending once more a streak of negligence that began in 1313 BCE.

Operatives at the Elders of Zion matza-production facility deep underground this ancient city complained that the Elders’ failure condemned them for the 3,336th time to using mere water to make the flatbread.

“Everyone knows you’re supposed to use blood,” observed Shlomo Warmonger, a shift supervisor. “Preferably the blood of a Christian child, but that’s more custom than anything else. There weren’t any Christians yet at the Exodus. You can use the blood of any non-Jewish child. It doesn’t have to be a child, I’m pretty sure. Just ask all the nations around us. Their media talk about it all the time, and they’re obviously well-versed in the sources.”

The Elders of Zion declined to offer comment on the oversight. Analysts cited numerous possible factors that could have contributed to a preoccupied state of mind among the cabal: they have their hands full in a US presidential election year; Israel’s war in Gaza demands logistical resources for harvesting Palestinian organs, leaving the matza-blood-procurement channel without the necessary manpower and support; faking a resurgence of global antisemitism to generate unwarranted sympathy for Jews distracts from the annual kidnap-murder-bleed operation, among at least a dozen others factors.

Passover occurs on the fifteenth of the month of Nisan, which this year coincides with the evening of April 22.
Israeli Lead Actor in Netflix Series About Biblical Figure Moses Calls Support From Arab Countries ‘Heartwarming
Israeli actor Avi Azulay, who stars as the biblical figure Moses in a new three-episode show streaming on Netflix, talked about the “amazing and very moving” feedback the miniseries has received from viewers around the world and especially in Arab countries.

Testament: The Story of Moses, which was produced in Turkey and released on March 27, is about the life of Moses and his rise to become the prophet and savior of the Jewish people.

“From the banks of the Nile to Mount Sinai to the Red Sea, Testament seamlessly interweaves gripping docudrama and expert interviews, revealing Moses’ intensely personal quest for redemption—setting in motion some of the most inspiring and iconic events in the Bible, Qur’an and Torah,” Netflix said in its synopsis of the show.

While some on social media have criticized various historical inaccuracies in Testament, the miniseries is currently the most watched series on Netflix in the US and the second most watched English-language series globally, with 13.5 million views around the world. It is also among the top 10 shows on Netflix in 91 countries and held the number one spot in countries like Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“What excites me the most is receiving feedback from Arab countries that support and love the series,” Azulay told Ynet about the success of Testament, which features other Israeli cast members as well. “We are currently in first place in many countries worldwide, and it’s simply heartwarming and immensely enjoyable. I am grateful for it.”

“It surprised me very, very positively to see all the Arab countries supporting us, loving the series, respecting the players,” he added. “Only really good things, from every direction. I receive around a thousand messages a day, not only from Arab countries of course – from all over the world, and as I said it really gives me hope.”
Hundreds gather to remember Dee family, a year after their murders
Some 700 people gathered in Efrat in Gush Etzion on Sunday to commemorate the lives of Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina, who were murdered by terrorists one year ago.

On April 7, 2023, Lucy Dee and her daughters were ambushed as they traveled on Route 57 to Tiberias to celebrate the second half of the Passover holiday with family from overseas. Maia and Rina were killed, and Lucy was critically wounded, dying two days later.

The events hall dedicated to Lucy’s memory was filled to capacity on the first anniversary of their deaths, coinciding with the six-month anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre. The new synagogue social hall dedicated to her is nearing completion, with the aroma of fresh cement lingering in the air. A private dedication ceremony was held two hours prior to the memorial event.

Named “Shirat Lucy” (Lucy’s Song), the events hall was constructed above the Mishkan Tziporah synagogue through contributions from donors in Efrat and around the world. Given Lucy’s love for music and dancing, the social hall was deemed a fitting tribute to her memory.

In his eulogy, Lucy’s husband, Rabbi Leo Dee, remarked, “This hall, Shirat Lucy, is dedicated to your memory. You loved to dance at simchahs. Although you won’t be dancing at your children’s weddings, your presence will be felt, with a large picture of you adorning the entrance.”

Reflecting on Lucy’s name, which means “light” in Latin, Rabbi Dee highlighted the multitude of projects initiated in her honor over the past year, bringing light and kindness into the world. He spoke of a 35 per cent increase in Israeli organ donations, which was attributed to their decision to donate Lucy’s organs. Among the attendees was a woman whose life was saved by Lucy’s heart.




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