Algeria trying to regain the title of Most Antisemitic Media

Here's an illustration of an article in Algeria's El Ayem News:

It shows a vicious dog attacking an elderly Palestinian lady with a vampire-like Netanyahu watching on. 

(The graphic is based on a false story that is all over Arab media, from Al Jazeera, of supposed footage from an Israeli army dog attacking a woman in bed. In fact, Hamas kidnapped the dog before killing him and booby-trapping his body to kill any soldiers attempting to retrieve him.)

The Algerian article accompanying the includes a short essay that says:

These are the roots of Jewish arrogance.

Written by: Abdullah Al-Mashoukhi - Palestinian Academic

The arrogance of the Jews is deeply rooted in their souls throughout their history. They see themselves as superior to humans, as the sons and beloved of God, and that Paradise is exclusively theirs, without the rest of the people. God has chosen them and favored them over all the worlds. Therefore, they look at others with contempt and disdain.

Because of this superior view, they have no problem in making permissible the shedding of the blood of others, including women and children, and dealing with usury with non-Jews. Rather, they permit stealing from them, as Israel Shahak mentioned when he said: “Jewish law has permitted the Jew to steal the property of non-Jews.”

This perverted superiority was not linked to a generation, but rather it is deeply rooted and inherited across all generations, and the secret behind that is its connection to corrupt doctrinal texts from their distorted holy books; therefore, it is not surprising that the Jews view the Palestinians as animals who do not deserve life ....

Algeria, which has a long history of antisemitism in its newspapers, is in the lead this week for most antisemitic media.

But there are plenty of days to go.

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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!

 

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06/30 Links: A Committed Zionist and a Lapsed Progressive; The Jewish Trump Vote; Israel Struggles Against Global Amnesia; U.S. to Support Israel in Defense but Not Offense

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: ‘I Will Not Fail Thee Nor Forsake Thee’

This central lesson of our civilization seems to have been forgotten—particularly by Reagan’s successor in the White House today. Joe Biden argued in late May that a death cult that burned families alive, raped women, beheaded babies, and continues to announce its intentions to seek Israel’s annihilation is capable of embracing peace:
Indefinite war in pursuit of an unidentified notion of “total victory” will not bring Israel in—will not bring down—bog down—will only bog down Israel in Gaza, draining the economic, military, and human—and human resources, and furthering Israel’s isolation in the world. Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.

Whether they really mean it? It was seemingly in response to such thinking that Reagan at Arlington spoke:
Peace also fails when we forget to bring to the bargaining table God’s first gift to man: common sense. Common sense gives us a realistic knowledge of human beings and how they think, how they live in the world, what motivates them. Common sense tells us that man has magic in him, but also clay. Common sense can tell the difference between right and wrong. Common sense forgives error, but it always recognizes it to be error first.

“We endanger the peace,” Reagan reflected, “and confuse all issues when we obscure the truth; when we refuse to name an act for what it is.” Only after making this clear did Reagan refer to the American obligation to those who had died; only then did he invoke the Ridgeway story:
Peace fails when we forget to pray to the source of all peace and life and happiness. I think sometimes of General Matthew Ridgeway, who, the night before D-day, tossed sleepless on his cot and talked to the Lord and listened for the promise that God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”… Let us make a compact today with the dead, a promise in the words for which General Ridgeway listened, “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

The point, then, is that neither to fail nor to forsake those who died is not merely to bear their memory, but to ensure that the earlier mistakes that necessitated their sacrifice not be repeated. It is this attitude, Reagan reflected, that must be made manifest in American leadership: “Peace fails when we forget what we stand for. It fails when we forget that our Republic is based on firm principles, principles that have real meaning, that with them, we are the last, best hope of man on Earth; without them, we’re little more than the crust of a continent.”

Eighty years after D-Day, we may well wonder how many leaders are still willing to give war a chance.

John Podhoretz: The Jewish Trump Vote

If this were to hold, Trump would receive the highest level of Jewish support of any Republican presidential candidate in modern history. Jonathan Sarna, the dean of American Jewish historians, notes that the Jewish vote in presidential elections became a Democratic possession as early as 1928, when Jews cast ballots overwhelmingly for their governor, Al Smith, against Herbert Hoover. Over the nine decades following, only Dwight Eisenhower (in 1956) and Ronald Reagan (in 1980) got as much as 40 percent of the Jewish vote.

This potential sea-change will likely not hand Trump a victory in New York in November, but here’s the deal: The state that may decide the election is Pennsylvania. It just so happens Pennsylvania has nearly 300,000 Jewish adults. Jews are said to vote in huge numbers, somewhere around 80 percent.

That would mean 240,000 Jews voted in Pennsylvania in 2020. If 70 percent of them chose Biden, he received about 170,000 Jewish votes. If that were to drop to 50 percent in 2024, Biden would receive 120,000 Jewish votes—a decline of 50,000 from the previous election. Pennsylvania went for Biden by 80,000 votes in 2020 after going to Trump by 45,000 in 2016.

This could be the game right here. The decline in support for Biden among Jews is real, and if that decline is dramatic, it could make the difference in the key(stone) state. I leave it to you to figure out why Jews are deserting Biden. OK, I won’t leave it to you. Had he continued with the steadfast and unambigous support of Israel he showed in the first two months of the war in Gaza, Jews would likely be garlanding him today. Instead, he sent wild and confused signals about the morality of the conflict and stood mostly mute as campuses were lit aflame and anti-Semitism became a daily factor in Jewish lives across the country.

His people feared the wrath of Arabs in Michigan. They forgot Jews can get mad too. They forgot it because they took the Jewish vote for granted at a time of existential peril. And also because, if I’m right about all this and the Siena poll is accurate, they are just as boneheadedly stupid as they appear to have been when they decided it would be a good idea for Biden to debate. Or when Biden himself decided he needed to debate.

Haaretz: A Committed Zionist and a Lapsed Progressive

In many progressive circles, the only acceptable stance is to bash Israel and its citizens, regardless of whether those citizens are concerned for Palestinians.

There is little recognition that Hamas and its allies play any role in the conflict and are able to end the war now.

While progressive values are still my North Star, I no longer have a progressive community that shares my principles. I have become a "lapsed progressive."

The current state of the progressive community has left me no choice but to withdraw from it. These days one cannot be a committed Jew and Zionist and be welcomed in the progressive community.

I am no longer considered an ally, but rather an imperialist to be eradicated.

This evaporated for me on Oct. 7 and the resulting actions of the progressive community.

As has been well-documented, Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization committed in its charter to genocide of all Jews and the annihilation of Israel, rampaged through southern Israel, killing, raping and torturing Israeli and other nationals.

Yes, I support Israel's right to respond and defend itself. I also understand that Israelis are traumatized by Hamas's savagery on Oct. 7 and the world's fleeting memory of it.

I am appalled by progressive organizations, especially Jewish ones, who pressure Israel and the U.S. for a ceasefire, but make no demands of Hamas.

The progressive community should be pushing Hamas to release the hostages and better the lives of Palestinians by ending the war.

The progressive world is seemingly unwilling to hold Hamas accountable or put any onus on it to stop the death and destruction.

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A first-hand account of anti-Israel media bias (Real Jerusalem Streets)

Guest essay by Real Jerusalem Streets:

After October 7, the mainstream media picked up anti-Israel stories and flew with them, the truth left languishing in the dirt. 

The story of the twelve spies sent by Moses to view the Promised Land shows that ten men's opinion against two is nothing new. Ten professional photographers work on an event, ten different albums will be produced. Each observer has a subjective way of viewing the same scene. Two journalists may attend the same event and publish very different stories. 

I began walking the Jerusalem March/Flag Parade. Every time what I saw did not match what media outlets were publishing. 

How many saw that this year Reuters Fact Check put out a correction two weeks after they published stories of Jews chanting death to Arabs? Two little too late; the damage was done. I saw no corrections in other media.

Though proven to be not true, the false claims coming from Gaza are consistently revived by anti-Israel pundits. The exaggerated death count in the Gaza hospital story is one glaring example. Readers of Elder of Ziyon are well aware of bias in reporting from sources coming from the UN agencies relying on Hamas.

One recent piece from the BBC, "Why 800 people fled a sun-kissed Mediterranean Village," related the woeful tale of Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon just over a kilometer from the Israeli border. "Since October last year, it has been caught in cross-border fighting between Israeli forces and "Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim organization which is politically influential and in control of the most powerful armed force in Lebanon." 

BBC didn’t bother to state that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization which, since October 7 has bombarded northern Israel with rockets, missiles, and deadly drones, forcing close to 100,000 Israelis to find refuge for safety. Those thousands, homeless for nine months, are not worth a mention by the BBC.

At least BBC's Ali Abbas Ahmadi admits,  "Hezbollah and its allies fired waves of rockets from Lebanon into a disputed area along the border in an apparent show of support for the armed group." Northern Israel is not a “disputed area." The BBC ignores UN Resolution 1701,  which requires “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon,” which Ahmadi and Hezbollah both ignore.

BBC news anchor Helena Humphrey asked former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus why the army didn't warn Palestinians before the rescue of the four hostages in Gaza. After years of dealing with hostile media, Conricus kept his composure before responding. His even temper and his eyes opening wider did not get the same attention as Eylon Levy's eyebrows when asked a similarly outrageous question.

Over the years I have witnessed bias against Israel from journalists, not only online but also on organized international media tours. 

November 2016, with Arafat staring down from a larger-than-life photo on the wall, we sat in the Silwad community center to hear the emotional retelling of an old Arab woman's story. 

She remembered her young days on her father's land. Not one of the international journalists asked to see a deed or any proof of her tale. It was accepted. It fits the narrative. The group leader had tried to convince me not to get on the bus leaving from Jerusalem. He warned me to keep a low profile after I insisted on coming using my US passport and identification.

After safely leaving, I researched the deed. It appeared to be a flimsy piece of paper the size of an index card from a manual typewriter issued in Jordan in 1964 by some office for tax purposes. Israeli families were forced to move in part because of her testimony. Their homes and community were destroyed. 

Contrast this with the October 17, 2023, media presentation in Jerusalem where journalists insisted on seeing photographs of the death and destruction described by the ZAKA volunteers fresh from the horrors of southern Israel. 

In October, the world did not want to believe the horror stories of burnt bodies. No matter the evidence, there is still denial from Israel haters.

On another occasion, from a scenic lookout on an international media tour, there was a carefully detailed presentation of illegal Arab construction with diagrams, charts, and Google map images by the NGO Regavim.  Moving away to the next destination, three men were walking. 

I overheard the one in the middle say to his friends, "That was a good presentation. 

"But we are journalists. We know it's all lies."

There lies the problem. 

On October 12, 2023, the tone of the British journalists' repeated questions caused President Herzog to lose his temper in responding. The number of nationalities involved in the 250 people kidnapped in southern Israel and held hostage was not of interest. His call for their immediate release was ignored. 

Image - October 11, 2023, shown to the international journalists at Bei Hanasi

On Day 257, Rachel Goldberg Polin and Jon Polin were interviewed on CNN. She said in the US people still do not know after all these months that 8 US dual citizens are still held captive and 24 nationalities were involved.

 

Journalists have a right and obligation to question. However, they also must present factual information, not their opinions as facts.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) wants a dynamic journalist for its Jerusalem bureau to cover news in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The deadline for applications was June 23. Journalists with a perfect command of Hebrew and French, a strong grasp of social networks, and a deep understanding of Middle Eastern news, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were invited to apply. 

It will be interesting to see who fills the position. 

Actress Sharon Stone was quoted: "We see terrible things about Israel on TV, but when you come here you realize that what they broadcast is not true, this is a wonderful country!"

After making aliyah and living in Jerusalem, Israel, the scenes I saw daily were not what I saw in the media, prompting the creation of  The Real Jerusalem Streets. After posting close to 14,000 photos, it is still hard to believe how different the real streets are from the fake narratives and how easily the fake news is shared. 

Thank you, Elder of Ziyon, for posting multiple Real J Street blogs over the years, to share what's really happening and what the mainstream media ignores.

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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!

 

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Is it legal to openly incite against Jews in New York City?

A week ago, the Samidoun Network posted on their Twitter/X account this photo and caption:

From Yemen to Palestine to Lebanon to NYC, the symbols of the Resistance are those of honour and dignity, of the defense of humanity against genocide, imperialism, Zionism and their horrific crimes. Towards the international popular cradle of the Resistance - towards victory!

Visible in the photo are the flags of The Hamas Al Qassam Brigades, Hezbollah, the Lion's Den West Bank terror group, as well as a picture of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the motto of the Houthis in Yemen: "Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam" 

Is this legal, especially publicly displaying the Houthi call of death to Israel, America and a curse on Jews?

I have found that Claude AI seems to be pretty good at interpreting law. Here's it's response on whether there are any New York City laws that this may violate:

The legality of displaying the Houthi flag in New York City is a complex issue:

First Amendment protection: Generally, the First Amendment provides broad protection for expressive conduct, even if offensive.

New York City laws: NYC has strong anti-discrimination laws, including protections against antisemitism. However, these typically apply to actions rather than speech or symbols alone.

Hate crime laws: New York State has hate crime laws, but these usually require an underlying criminal act beyond just displaying a symbol.

Specific context matters: How and where the flag is displayed could affect its legality. For example, displaying it as a direct threat to Jewish individuals or institutions might be treated differently than displaying it as part of a political protest.

Potential for civil action: Even if not criminally prosecuted, displaying such a flag could potentially lead to civil lawsuits, especially if it creates a hostile environment in certain settings.

Enforcement discretion: Law enforcement might investigate displays of this flag, even if no charges are ultimately filed.

Recent tensions: Given increased focus on antisemitism and Middle East conflicts, authorities might scrutinize such displays more closely.

While there's no blanket ban on displaying this flag in NYC, it could potentially run afoul of various laws depending on the specific circumstances. The city's diverse population and strong stance against discrimination could also mean significant social and community consequences for displaying such a symbol.

As far as I can tell, the photo appears to have been taken on Sixth Avenue, possibly outside Fox News, but not targeting an synagogue which would make this much easier to call a crime. As it is, it appears that free speech even allows this display, although the police can usually find other excuses for stopping a demonstration like this. 

As the response said, context matters, and perhaps the important context that we learn from these sorts of photos is that the "anti-Zionism" and anti-American sentiments are intertwined and impossible to separate from antisemitism, despite the protesters' insistence that they are not anti-Jewish. The lack of pushback from the "progressive" crowd against openly cursing Jews in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. 

The idea of filing a civil suit against Samidoun or any organization that sponsored the rally is more interesting. It is difficult to argue  that this sign and the others do not create a hostile environment against the Jews who walk through Manhattan every day. Perhaps some organizations can mount  a series of lawsuits to bankrupt Samidoun, Within Our Lifetime and the other extremist organizations that call for the destruction of Israel and America and to intimidate Jews. 

Samidoun is closely linked to the PFLP terror group and is itself considered a terror group by Israel and has been banned in Germany. There have been calls to ban it in the EU altogether. Yet it still maintains non-profit status in Canada.  Its director in Canada, Charlotte Lynne Kates, has praised October 7 and is married to a senior PFLP activist. 

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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!

 

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Incitement: Turkish newspaper claims 4000 Jews with Turkish citizenship are participating in "genocide" in Gaza

In October, a member of Turkey's parliament wrote on social media that she had submitted a question asking "How many of our citizens have gone to Israel from our country since the beginning of the conflict and the declaration of mobilization? How many of those who went have dual citizenship? Will they be stripped of their Turkish citizenship according to Article 29, Clause C of the Turkish Citizenship Law? Or have they received permission from the authorities? 5- Do you plan to impose legal sanctions on citizens who served in the army of another country during the war?'"

A couple of weeks ago another parliamentarian asked similar questions, to much more publicity. 

Last week, in a front page story, the newspaper "Turkiye" screamed that they had the answers.

The headline says, "They went to kill innocents in Gaza, 4 thousand murderers are Turkish!"

It has been determined that 4 thousand of the Zionist soldiers who have killed nearly 38 thousand innocent people in Gaza since October 7 carry Turkish passports. It was learned that 400 of them went from Turkey. 250 thousand people with Turkish passports live in Israel. In Turkey, there are around 20 thousand Jews, both Turkish and Israeli citizens. They are doing military service for Israel.

It was revealed that 4 thousand zionists from 'Turkey' not only did their military service, but also went to Gaza and supported Israel's massacre. According to the information obtained, these people crossed into Israel not from Turkey, but through third countries and using different identities to avoid being exposed. Friends Association, CHABAD and the Union of Turkish People in Israel took an active role in this process. At least 65 Turkish citizens have been killed in Gaza since October 7; 110 were injured.

The numbers are ridiculous. There was never a massive aliyah from Turkey to Israel, certainly not recently enough to have 4,000 Turkish citizens of fighting age in Israel. Nowhere near 250,000 Israelis have Turkish passports; the number is probably closer to one percent of that figure. In Turkey itself there are only about 14,000 Jews in total.

And Chabad is recruiting Jews to fight in the IDF? 

It isn't the first antisemitic article about Chabad in the "Turkiye" newspaper; in December they accused Chabad of buying up land in Northern Cyprus for an "illegal synagogue" that they imply would be really meant to spy on a UAV base several kilometers away and intended to turn Northern Cyprus into another Jewish state.

This is pure antisemitism, and incitement against the remaining Jews in Turkey. 

These articles also violate virtually all of Turkiye's editorial principles. 

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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!

 

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06/29 Links: John Spencer: ‘Israel is measured by double and triple standards,’ does more than anyone to prevent civilian harm; Noa Argamani: 'Because of Arnon, we are here'

From Ian:

‘Israel is measured by double and triple standards,’ does more than anyone to prevent civilian harm, US warfare expert says

“Israel is being measured by double and triple standards” in its fighting in Gaza, a standard “that does not exist anywhere in the world,” said John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, at a recent “War Room” briefing in collaboration with the Jerusalem Institute for Public and State Affairs (JCPA).

Spencer, the world-renowned urban warfare who served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and did two tours in Iraq, has publicly and repeatedly defended and praised the Israel Defense Forces' performance during the Gaza War in recent months.

“The IDF uses tactics that no army has ever seen to prevent harm to civilians and still fulfill its mission,” Spencer told the JCPA after visiting the soldiers of the IDF’s 98th Division in the field.

He also stridently rejected international accusations that Israel was using starvation as a weapon, bombing indiscriminately or committing genocide.

“It’s all a lie,” Spencer declared, noting that if the standards currently applied to Israel were applied to Western countries in the future, it would make anti-terror warfare almost impossible.

Such standards include requiring the massive evacuation of a population before entering an area, not using heavy “bunker-buster” bombs to reach enemies hidden away underground, and the demand to prevent any and all civilian casualties.

“It’s impossible and unimaginable,” Spencer stressed.

“When ISIS ruled Iraq, it held the territory for about two years and built up its defenses. In the battles against the terrorist organization, the number of dead ranged from 10,000 to 40,000 people, and the numbers were reported only after a year,” Spencer said, criticizing the use of unreliable Hamas casualty numbers to determine the proportionality of Israel’s actions.

“No one posed a question to the United States then, how many civilians were killed? And no one asked ISIS that question. It’s simply impossible.”

“This imaginary standard of zero civilian casualties in a war where Israel is required to meet a new standard is very problematic,” Spencer emphasized.

He has made this point repeatedly over the past months. In an article in Newsweek in March, Spencer brought up the IDF’s operation at Al-Shifa Hospital as an example of the lengths the army goes to prevent civilian harm in Gaza.

“Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside,” Spencer wrote.

“None of this meant anything to Israel's critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn't call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity.”

From the Battle of Badr to Military Defeat: Changes in Hamas Perceptions of the Gaza War

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 was quickly characterized by Hamas as fulfillment of a prophecy about the destruction of Israel. Hamas cast the invasion as a Palestinian version of the Battle of Badr, a battle in which a small force of Muslim believers under the command of the Prophet Muhammad succeeded in defeating a large force of Quraysh and Makkah who had opposed his prophecy. The battles of October 7 were labeled a divine victory by believers over the enemies of Allah, and many verses in this spirit were broadcast. However, more recent articles published on the Hamas website suggest that its view has undergone a transformation. Hamas has apparently shifted from extolling its “divine victory” on October 7 to admitting that it has been defeated in battle again and again. The great suffering Hamas has inflicted on the Gaza Strip has put it in the position where it must now explain to the Palestinian public why it started the war in the first place, why it did not expect a massive military response from Israel to its atrocities and attempt at genocide, and why the suffering of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip is not in vain.

To faithful Muslims, the Battle of Badr marks the victory of a small group of believers of the Prophet Muhammad over a far superior force. The battle was held in Ramadan in 624 AD between Muhammad’s group of warriors, numbering about 300 men, and an expeditionary force of Meccan men numbering about a thousand. The battle was held near the Badr Springs; hence the name.

In a preliminary battle, Hamza, Ali, and Ubaydah Ibn Harth fought three of Quraysh’s warriors. They lost, and Ubaydah suffered mortal wounds and died a martyr. At the Battle of Badr, the Muslim force was organized, determined, and acting under unified leadership. The Meccan force was larger, but fought in a decentralized manner and without a central command. Surat al-Anfal (The Spoils) in the Qur’an describes the battle. After the victory, Muhammad revealed that angels had participated alongside the Muslim army. In a famous hadith by al-Bukhari, it is claimed that the angel Gabriel himself fought on his horse against the people of Quraysh and killed many of them.

On October 7 and throughout the waiting period until the beginning of the ground operation in which the IDF forces entered Gaza, many comparisons were made between the success of Hamas on October 7 and the famous Battle of Badr. A small military force of about 3,500 men was able to overcome deployed IDF formations along the border and breach a formidable barrier consisting of an elaborate fence, multiple firearms and tanks. The photos of the bulldozer destroying the fence and of destroyed IDF tanks became images of the victory Hamas had purportedly achieved by divine inspiration.

The website of the Al-Palestinian Center for Information gives us a glimpse into changes that seem to have taken place in the view of Hamas operatives. Where they once gushed words of praise for the rare victory over Israel, they are now admitting their military failure in the confrontation with Israel.

Consider, for example, the following article published by Dr. Muhsen Saleh, a senior researcher at the Zitouna Center in Lebanon. The article, entitled Tofan Al-Aqsa – Coping with the day after the operation, was an early response to the Hamas invasion:

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades on October 7, 2023 was a qualitative historical blow to the Zionist entity. It had not had such a [defeat] since [Israel’s] establishment 75 years ago. The operation combined the elements of military surprise, an incredible security and strategic move. [The resistance] invaded a significant area of ​​Palestine that was occupied in 1948, causing the largest number of dead, wounded and prisoners (that is, kidnapped) compared to all the battles the Palestinians have fought since the [1948] war, in which the entity [Israel] was established. This is the highest even in relation to most of the Arab-Israeli wars.

The Israeli occupation [at the time] looked confused and shocked and felt humiliated when it saw with its own eyes the shattering of [its] security theory and the collapse of the walls of physical and psychological deterrence. [The occupation] also saw with its own eyes how the men of al-Qassam broke into 20 settlement sites (towns and kibbutzim) and 11 military sites in a matter of hours. The occupation realized that it had failed to subdue the Palestinian people and crush their resistance.

To Saleh and other writers on the site, the operation began and ended on October 7 with a decisive Palestinian victory for the Hamas organization. It was a divine victory, as described by Dr. Khaled Qaddoumi (Hamas’s representative in Iran) in an article entitled: “Hamas is making history” that he published the day after the war broke out:

… we must prepare ourselves for this campaign (against Israel) with all the means at our disposal, including sanctification and strengthening the truth and justice for the Palestinian people. We must support comprehensively and in all areas the battle for liberation until the true promise is fulfilled.

The Obama and Biden Administrations: Paving the Way for a Nuclear-Armed Iran

America's "diplomatic efforts," instead of putting a stop to Iran's nuclear program, have only resulted in a series of concessions that have empowered the Iranian regime. The lack of stringent enforcement and verification measures, and especially lifting secondary sanctions -- by which any country that does business with Iran is prohibited from doing business with America -- have allowed Iran to accelerate its nuclear activities "under the radar."

Iran's continued development of ballistic missile technology and its persistent test firings of missiles, both in clear violation of UN resolutions, were largely overlooked. In addition, the growing bellicosity of Iran's huge militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as the nuclear program itself, were apparently never addressed with the seriousness they warranted -- thereby allowing Iran to expand its military capabilities and regional aggression unchecked.

The Iranian regime strategically allocated these funds to support and expand its own proxy presence throughout the region, including, among other spots, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Gaza Strip.

The Trump administration implemented a "maximum pressure" policy aimed at curtailing Iran's economic capabilities by particularly focusing on reducing the country's oil exports, and, most importantly, establishing "secondary sanctions" that banned any country doing business with Iran from doing business with the US.

The Biden administration's passive approach of trying to use what might look like "protection money" to try to bribe Iran into compliance has simply backfired. Iran took the billions and, unsurprisingly, appears to have fungibly used them to finance several wars in the region -- Hamas and Hezbollah's war against Israel, the Houthis' war against Israel and the US, and Iran's own April 13 missile- and drone-attack against Israel -- as well as Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The Biden administration, sadly, seems to have been the enabling factor in Iran's continued regional assertiveness and nuclear advancement. The administration's series of policies favorable to Iran significantly strengthened the regime to the point where Iran and its proxies are now actively engaged in a comprehensive war against Israel, the Sunni Arab Gulf States and, since October, more than 150 attacks on US troops in the region.

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06/28 Links Pt2: The global lust for Jewish blood; Don’t trust me, I’m a Gazan doctor; The Quincy Institute’s Middle East Fantasies; David Draiman: 'I needed see my people again'

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: The global lust for Jewish blood

Such a silence has deep roots in the politically correct academic world.

You are either a victim or a victimizer; you are oppressed or you are an oppressor; you are colonized or you are a colonizer. Israel has been designated as the world’s chief oppressor and colonizer.

Some victims are more sacred than others. Men of color are more important than white men; Muslim men of color are even more important, unless they’ve been killed by other Muslims. Then, their deaths do not matter. The murders of women of all colors matters even less.

In addition, there is the belief in multicultural relativism—that all cultures are equal; that there is no objective truth. Everything is relative, subjective; everyone is entitled to their own narrative.

Here’s one reason my views are so different:

Most Western pro-Palestinian feminists, leftists and academics have never lived in a Muslim country or moved in Muslim circles or worked with Muslim dissidents as I do.

I wrote about this in An American Bride in Kabul.

They have absolutely no knowledge of Islamic gender and religious apartheid; Islamic imperialism, Islamic colonialism, or Islamic conversion via the sword; no understanding that Muslims practiced anti-black slavery and sex slavery—and many still do.

Demonizing Israelis as “worse than the Nazis” allows Europeans to continue the Holocaust against the Jews and feel that they are rendering themselves safe from radical Islamic hostility by appeasing the Islamist Muslims who live in their midst. It is also a way of scapegoating Jews and Israel for the crimes of European and Muslim racism and colonialism.

Like so many, I had assumed that the world’s hatred and persecution of Jews had ended; that Jewish history would never again repeat itself.

I was wrong.

It was foolish to have thought that Jew-hatred would suddenly become extinct or that Israel would not remain under siege.

We must shed our illusions—permanently. We cannot expect that conditions will always improve, or that one country or another will always be a safe haven for Jews.

One cannot win a war of ideas if one refuses to fight it.

I will take a step back, take a breath or two and return to my frontline post.

Don’t trust me, I’m a Gazan doctor

Deference to doctors is perhaps the more charitable explanation for the false report by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, in November 2023. He claimed that Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital had been ‘flattened’ by a deadly Israeli airstrike. But, as soon became clear, the hospital was very much still standing, no one had been killed and the explosion in its parking area was the result of a misfired Hamas missile. When the same hospital was later captured by the Israel Defence Forces, soldiers found scores of Kalashnikov assault rifles and RPG rocket launchers inside. Bowen then bizarrely suggested that such weapons are a normal sight in Middle Eastern hospitals.

The unwillingness to scrutinise claims from healthcare workers in Gaza is deeply troubling. Under Hamas, Gaza is very much a one-party state, with a record of punishing perceived dissidence with severity. Its hospital directors are often military officers and many hospital staff are also members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. That Gazan medics were involved in the mass kidnapping operation that accompanied the atrocities of 7 October has been confirmed by the recent revelation that some of the hostages recently rescued by the IDF were held at the house of prominent Gazan GP Ahmad Al-Jamal.

That doesn’t mean that every statement issued by Gaza’s health ministry, hospital administrators or doctors should be assumed to be propaganda. It just means that their statements should be treated like those given out or approved by the Assad regime in Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Kim government in Pyongyang – that is, with scepticism.

The ongoing inability of Western and especially British journalists to imagine that a doctor – a middle-class person like themselves, but with even more years in higher education – might also be a fanatic, a supporter of killers, or even a killer himself requires almost wilful ignorance. And not just of Second World War monsters like Nazi Germany’s Dr Mengele or serial killers like Harold Shipman. Recent history features doctor-dictators, such as Haiti’s ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad – a UK-educated ophthalmologist. Then there are the doctor-terrorists, like Ikuo Hayashi, who carried out the deadly Sarin Attack on Tokyo Subway; and, of course, Hamas co-founder and suicide-bombing innovator Abdel al-Rantisi.

Doctors have been almost as prominent in the jihadist world as engineers. Osama bin Laden’s successor as head of al-Qaeda was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a surgeon. The head of the viciously anti-Semitic Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, is the NHS’s own Dr Wahid Asif Shaida. Scores of physicians based in the UK, Pakistan and the US joined ISIS when the so-called caliphate was enslaving Yazidi girls and burning alive Jordanian pilots.

None of this should be shocking. Many who train to be doctors do so because they desire status and wealth, not because they are intrinsically benign, or devoted to the diminution of human suffering. They are as likely as any other profession to be drawn to political extremism, and perhaps more likely to have a stomach for the results of violence. The British media’s propensity to treat doctors as if they are priestly figures, presumptively above the fray of ordinary politics and prejudice is not just naïve and ignorant, it’s also dangerous to the truth.

The Quincy Institute’s Middle East Fantasies

The positions adopted by the think tank’s scholars during the war in Gaza are illustrative of its overall Middle East agenda: appease Iran and demonise Israel. From this, it follows that Palestinians are oppressed by Israel, which is systematically denying them their legitimate national rights. Quincy scholars argue that the US must therefore press Israel to withdraw from Gaza and end its occupation of the West Bank.

This is at variance with the Quincy Institute’s stated position on Russia and Ukraine, which it dresses up as hardcore realpolitik. Quincy scholars hesitate to criticise Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine, and they treat the whole notion of Ukrainian nationalism with deep scepticism. So, while the onus is on Ukraine to reach a deal with the more powerful Russia in the interests of regional stability, powerful Israel is expected to make whatever concessions are required for peace, and the US is expected to coerce it into doing so.

Quincy scholars claim to be bullet-biting realists who believe that the US should stay out of the Middle East because its interests there are limited. But they are transformed into mawkish idealists—not to mention interventionists—when it comes to Israel, insisting that Washington take a clear stand against its wayward ally. Some of them have even begun to wonder whether the world’s only Jewish state should be allowed to exist at all, so they promote a post-Zionist one-state outcome instead. As similar experiments in bi-nationalist arrangements in Yugoslavia and elsewhere have demonstrated, this is a recipe for even greater instability and bloodshed.

Quincy’s scholars have repeatedly opposed Western intervention in Syria’s civil war or Western condemnation of the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of China’s Muslim minorities, but they urge diplomatic détente with Iran, which is one of the world’s leading human-rights violators. And now they blame Israel for the outbreak and escalation of violence across the Middle East that an Iranian proxy started. And they demand that America condition its support for Israel on the latter’s willingness, as one Quincy scholar put it, “to actually engage in diplomacy with their neighbors to a degree they haven’t.”

It’s remarkable that any realist—or really any serious analyst of Middle Eastern affairs—would make such a statement at this late date. Decades of diplomatic efforts by the US and Israel produced durable peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and more recently, the Abraham Accords. They also produced the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, but subsequent negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs have been exercises in futility that have been met with rejectionism and violence. And yet the Quincy realists demand that the US punish Israelis by cutting off military aid and joining the condemnation of Israel in international fora.

This makes no sense. The Quincy coterie insists that the United States do nothing to encourage the ouster of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, that it must not punish Iran for exporting terrorism across the Middle East, and that it should not lead an international campaign against China’s mistreatment of its Uyghur minority. These and other countries may be doing terrible things, they say, but it is not America’s business to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states or take action over matters that don’t threaten its core interests.

Except, that is, when it comes to Israel. Only the antipathy felt by the Institute’s scholars toward that tiny American ally explains their moralistic attempts to draw the United States into an intractable conflict, despite the high costs involved.

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06/28 Links Pt1: Glick: Debate takeaways for Israel; Phillips: Reality check; Biden’s ‘reformed PA’ marketing strategy; China Is Waging a Proxy War on Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Debate takeaways for Israel

This brings us to the second question. What difference will this make for Israel?

And how would a different Democratic president treat Israel?

In the case of Newsom or Shapiro, in all likelihood, their Israel policy would be a continuation of Biden’s. To the extent that Biden has become more hostile over time, they would continue on that trajectory. This is the case because Biden’s policies aren’t his personal preferences. His pro-Iran, pro-Palestinian policies are those of the Democratic Party’s foreign-policy establishment.

That establishment takes its cues from former President Barack Obama and current U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Every one of Biden’s Middle East advisors served in the Obama administration. Blinken, who owes his position to his longstanding service to Biden—first when Biden was in the Senate and then as vice president—shares Obama’s sympathies for Iran and the Palestinians, in addition to his hostility towards Israel.

If Newsom or Shapiro—or any other Democrat—is selected to serve as party nominee by the party bosses who control the convention, then he will owe his position to the party bosses that put him there, not to voters. They have no independent source of power to draw from if they oppose the policies that Obama’s party establishment expects them to adopt. And so, they can be expected to continue down the road of progressively more anti-Israel policies that Biden is on now.

Since she served as first lady, Michelle Obama showed herself to be even more hostile towards Israel than her husband. After Oct. 7, she ignored pleas from the Israeli government, from Israeli victims, from hostages’ families and from Jewish Democrats to condemn the mass rape of Israeli women by Hamas and the atrocities that the terror group and ordinary Palestinians committed. Former President Obama, for his part, issued a statement after Oct. 7 that focused more on warning Israel not to retaliate in a manner that would harm Palestinians than on supporting Israel in its war for national survival.

The Obamas’ deep-seated hostility towards the Jewish state is exposed not only by their statements but by the company they keep. A week after Hamas’s invasion, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Misha Euceph, a producer of the Obama family’s various podcast series, denied on her social-media accounts that Hamas raped Israeli women and girls. Among other things, she wrote, “The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’m realizing—and I think a lot of other people are, too—that these reports and statements about rape and murder of babies are completely unverified, and they actually feed into Islamophobic tropes that we’re not talking about at all.”

The upshot for Israel is that if Biden is replaced, his replacement will become the favorite to win in November. And if that happens, Israel can assume that it will either see a continuation of Biden’s policies or face a Michelle Obama administration whose policies and rhetoric will likely be more unapologetically and openly hostile than anything Israel has experienced to date.

Melanie Phillips: Reality check

The war against Israel, which is being waged simultaneously on seven fronts, is being orchestrated by Iran. A constant source of astonishment has been the concern shown by the Biden administration — while professing support for Israel against Hamas — to protect Iran. When Israel wanted to nip Hezbollah’s attacks in the bud soon after October 7, the US told it not to do so. Even now, the US is telling Israel the same thing. It has done everything possible to hamper and prevent Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas, Iran’s proxy in Gaza. Even after Iran itself unleashed a hail of missiles against Israel in April, the US forbade the Israelis to attack Iran in response.

This is all part of what many call the Obama Doctrine, being implemented by an administration whose key Middle East officials are Israel-hating Obama retreads — and whose scenario for a new Middle East order, astoundingly, features genocidal and Islamist Iran as an essential counter-force to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

As explained here by Michael Doran and Tony Badran, this was the strategy behind President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal which would have legitimised a nuclear-armed Iran with only a few years’ delay. Even when American interests have been attacked by Iranian proxies, as has happened dozens of times since October 7, the US has responded with only a limp flick of the wrist. Indeed, America’s supine and even grovelling posture towards the fanatics of Tehran, who have understood that the Biden administration seeks to appease rather than defeat the various forces ranged against the west, undoubtedly helped pave the way for the October 7 pogrom.

Now new intelligence has suggested that Iran has ramped up still further its nuclear weapon development in order to take advantage of American pre-election paralysis. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has reportedly ordered the reactivation of Israeli teams focusing on Iran's nuclear programme. There are reports that this was prompted by concerns from former security officials about Israel’s recent neglect of the issue. That itself is pretty alarming — if true — in what it suggests about the Israeli government. But here’s the eye catching bit as reported by the Israeli news site Walla:
A source familiar with the matter said: “Recently, the penny finally dropped.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared: “All options are on the table — Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Can it really be that, at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, the Biden administration has finally connected with reality? If so, things must be even more terrifying than anyone had thought.

Last night’s debate will impact the Middle East as well as the US

In the Middle East, the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal) told Iran that the West was there to be had, with the easing of sanctions allowing the Tehran regime to boost both its terror funding and its nuclear programme.

Which brings us to last night, and the impact not just on the presidential race but on the here and now. The debate will have been watched in Moscow, in Tehran, in Pyongyang and elsewhere and one message will have been heard loud and clear: the US is led by a bumbling fool. Imagine how Hamas and Hezbollah will have reacted. With Iran in control, it was always pretty fanciful to think that US pressure could have much impact on the terror organisations directly. But after last night, the idea that Nasrallah is quaking lest the US be angered by Hezbollah’s increasing attacks on Israel is not so much a sick joke and plain idiotic.

As it is, tensions between Israel and the US have been worryingly open in recent weeks – at the very time when it is most vital that the US is seen as staunch in its support for its key regional ally. Add to that the (now surely impossible to refute) view that the US is as weak and – literally – pathetic as its leader, and the omens for the next few weeks and months are as bad as they have ever been.

Viewed in this context, the immediate issue that arises from last night’s debate is not whether Biden should be president for another term. And it’s not – appalling though the prospect may be – whether it should be Trump. It’s whether Biden should even be president for the remainder of this term.

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Israel haters don't want to debate, but to censor. Even academics.

The journal American Psychologist recently published an article titled "The American Psychological Association and antisemitism: Toward equity, diversity, and inclusion." Here is the abstract:

This article calls for the American Psychological Association (APA) to proactively include the elimination of antisemitism or prejudice against Jewish people in its current mission to disassemble all forms of racism from its organization as well as society. In this article, Jews (estimated as 2.4% of the population) are defined as a people with a common identity, ethnicity, and religion as they experience prejudice; their intersection in Jewish identity; the history and characteristics of antisemitism and its current manifestation in public life, academic institutions, and psychology. Despite Jews having made major contributions to the development of psychology as a profession, historically through the first half of the 20th century, Jews were systematically discriminated against within the discipline of psychology through quotas for acceptance into graduate training, discriminatory employment practices in university psychology departments, and most egregiously through the espousing of “scientific racism” including eugenics by prominent leaders in the APA. We describe how historically leaders in the APA engaged in overt and covert antisemitism while the APA continues to do little or nothing to combat it. We then offer suggestions for the mitigation and elimination of this form of bias, discrimination, and hate as it once again escalates in society. We recommend that the APA engages in research about antisemitism, its predictors, consequences, and power; evaluates the efficacy of intervention programs; encourages contact with various multicultural minoritized groups; and disseminates knowledge to educate about the psychological effects of antisemitism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

How can anyone object to that?

Roy J. Eidelson,  a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, wrote a lengthy response to the article. He is concerned that the authors are Zionists and position Zionism to be the mainstream opinion of most Jews, and accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism, among other criticisms of the article. 

If he wants to write a response to the same journal, perhaps as a letter, that would be fine. But this is the title of his piece: "A Call for Retraction: The Recent American Psychologist Article on Antisemitism."

His response makes it clear that he is at least as biased as the authors. 

There is also a deeper issue that I cannot ignore. Throughout the article, the authors avoid providing readers with crucial context for understanding much of the criticism of Israel and the ideology of Zionism: namely, the country’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people. And while they warn of “the increased threat of annihilation of the state of Israel” (p. 4), the words “Nakba,” “occupation,” and “apartheid” never appear. 

Must every article on antisemitism defend Israel from scurrilous charges that have nothing to do with the topic? Apparently, when Israel is even mentioned peripherally, Zionists must defend themselves. Not only that, but they must accept the false, anti-Zionist framework as their starting point. 

This is not a call for debating the contents of the article. It is a call to silence Zionist academics and psychology professionals and to force them to deny their own reality. 

Retracting an article in an academic journal is a nuclear option. It is used when the paper is fraudulent, relying on falsified data or plagiarized. I do not have access to the original article so I cannot judge the quality of Eidelson's critique, but nothing that he writes justifies the demand for retraction. 

Which means it isn't a debate but instead a call to silence those who disagree with him. 

The response is written as if it is a reasonable response, but what it demands is not reasonable at all. 

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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!

 

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