Yaakov Katz writes in the Jerusalem Post that his car died as he was driving with his wife from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Tuesday night. His insurance company said it would take five hours to send a tow truck.
His wife suggested they call Yedidim, a haredi volunteer organization for situations like this, and 20 minutes later they had a young religious man arrive to help them.
I have plenty to say – and I often do – about the ultra-Orthodox and their refusal to serve in the IDF. But Yedidim – one of the largest volunteer organizations in Israel founded by haredim – shows another aspect of life in Israel. Nothing is black and white. Worth keeping that in mind.
The Yedidim ("Friends") organization is on the scene within minutes for non-emergency assistance, when children or dogs get locked in cars and the key is left inside, when people get stuck in elevators, and when people cannot remove rings from their fingers. During COVID they also assisted with food and medical equipment delivery. It has over 65,000 volunteers from all walks of life helping anyone who needs assistance 24 hours a day, six days a week. People just have to call 1230.
As they say on their (Hebrew-only) website:
Our vision is to reach a situation where there will be at least one volunteer in every building, so we can reach a situation where no person will be stuck for more than a few minutes anywhere in the country.
This is how we will make the State of Israel a better place.
This is the kind of story that people outside Israel simply don't know about, and it shows a side of Israel - and the much vilified haredi community - that is unreported in the media.
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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The University of Sydney administration has once again clashed with pro-Palestine activist students and staff, this time over new rules explicitly banning the kind of “occupation” protesters employed at the Camperdown campus for weeks on end.
In an email to students on Thursday, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott set out a list of changes to the university’s “campus access policy”, including that any activity “using megaphones or amplifiers, erecting structures, projecting words or images onto buildings or other structures, using cooking equipment or heaters not provided by the University, (and) attaching materials, banners or structures to University buildings” would require approval and at least 72 hours’ notice.
Demonstrations can still be held without approval, but organisers must still give three days’ notice, and they “must be held in open spaces and are not permitted inside any building”.
Camping has been banned outright, along with “intimidating behaviour”, “using a megaphone … in close proximity to a person”, “dumping rubbish or other materials” and “storing personal property on University lands without permission”.
“At its core, this policy upholds our commitment to free speech — while recognising we need to be able to manage our environment for the safety and security of all,” Professor Scott wrote. “We continue to support the right to peaceful, orderly protest.”
All of this makes sense, and it protects all students while upholding free speech. So naturally the Israel haters are going crazy:
SRC president Harrison Brennan argued the measures would have a chilling effect not only on pro-Palestine activism, but other campaigns and causes, and would “stifle” other aspects of campus life.
“This is a repulsive full-scale offensive on the right to protest at the University of Sydney,” he said.
"What we are seeing here is a despicable attempt by neoliberal, corporate university management to stifle student activism and shut down political expression," she said.
Free speech does not mean the unlimited right for students to take over property, destroy property, threaten others, endanger others, bring outside agitators to campus, block access to areas for people they disagree with, and call for violence. If students don't understand that basic concept, they are clearly taking the wrong classes.
(h/t Jill)
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Jewish Voice for Peace rails against proposed laws against people engaged in criminal activity wearing masks - because, they claim, "These laws threaten immunocompromised individuals, particularly immunocompromised people of color."
Yeah, sure.
There have been a number of initiatives in the US to ban wearing masks to hide one's identity during protests. This is in response to videos of criminal activity done by masked people proliferate, notably the man in the New York subway threatening any "Zionists" on the train and the violence outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles by masked antisemites.
Masking is a fundamental part of the modern antisemites' strategy to avoid being prosecuted. The pro-Hamas Within Our Lifetime group says this explicitly in their Rally Toolkit, putting masking along other rules to avoid being identified:
Journalists and photographers should check in with organizers prior to posting any pictures online
Do Not Talk to the Police!
Avoid talking about, recording, or posting anything that could get anyone in legal trouble. If you’re unsure, air on the side of caution and don’t post it.
Wear a mask at all times
Their Rally Toolkit adds, "Cover your face if you do not want to be identified."
But JVP pretends to be specifically concerned with its many immunocompromised Palestinians attending rallies:
Immunocompromised people have the right to protest. Our movement includes immunocompromised Palestinians who are fighting back against the murder of their loved ones and immunocompromised Jews who are fighting back against a genocide being committed in their name. Our masks allow us to gather as safely as possible. This mask ban will make legal acts into illegal ones for immunocompromised people. This is discriminatory and ableist.
Of course, every proposed law would carve out exceptions for those who indeed have health issues.
But if health was the reason JVP insists on masks, then why didn't they wear masks in the protests last November?
They showed such disregard for the health of their immunocompromised members!
And why do they allow protesters to wear keffiyehs over their faces, which do literally nothing to stop the spread of disease?
You know who else is against bans on face masks?
White supremacists.
They wear masks for exactly the same reasons as JVP, WOL, SJP and the other antisemites. At least the neo-Nazis they don't pretend it is done for altruistic reasons.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The 6 million Palestine refugees under UNRWA’s mandate are in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In addition, there are 41,100
Palestinian refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in other countries. This represents a decrease of 63,300 from end-2022 as the estimated
number of Palestinian refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in Egypt was revised downwards. UNRWA defines Palestine refugees as “persons
whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood
as a result of the 1948 conflict.”
This would seem to mean that UNHCR counted 104,400 Palestinian refugees under its remit in 2022, and this was reduced to only 41,100 in 2023.
Apparently, something happened in Egypt. It is unclear if it happened because of a change in Egyptian policy or UNHCR policy.
At first one might guess that Egypt changed their status from official refugees to something else. I reported last week that Egypt does not recognize Palestinians as refugees at all. Yet that was the case before 2023 as well; the Palestinians fleeing Syria to Egypt were never regarded as refugees like the other Syrians were.
Yet this footnote seems to indicate that at least some Palestinians in Egypt were once or are considered refugees by UNHCR.
The last sentence in the footnote seems to be out of place. What does UNRWA's definition have to do with the status of Palestinians outside UNRWA's fields of operations?
Could it be that UNHCR used to consider all Palestinians in Egypt to be "refugees" and since then only consider the ones who are actual refugees, say from Syria, and not the ones who had been there since 1948? The reduction of 63,300 in the number of Palestinian refugees in Egypt roughly corresponds with the number of Palestinians whose ancestors lived in Egypt in 1948.
In its 2010 report, UNHCR said that there were 93,299 Palestinian refugees under its mandate, of whom 12,596 were being assisted by UNHCR.
Whatever the reason, it shows that UNHCR tries to take people out of refugee status, while UNRWA wants the number of refugees it is responsible for to keep growing forever.
(h/t Irene)
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Why would atheist Communists support Islamists who shout “Allahu Akbar!” as they murder and rape?
Part of the answer, I think, is that Israel is seen, with justification, as America’s loyal ally and, beyond that, an outpost of Western values in the Middle East—despite efforts over the years by Israeli leaders to maintain amicable relations with Beijing, including by hiring Chinese firms to (can you guess?) bore Israeli highway tunnels.
In other words, anti-Zionism coincides with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s broader goal: to diminish America as a serious superpower in a world that will be dominated by Xi’s CCP.
As America goes, so goes the West—and both Islamists and leftists want the West gone or at least made to submit. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was candid, calling the 1979 Islamic Revolution that he led in Iran a fight “against the Western world.”
Now recall that, in 1987, Jesse Jackson led 500 protestors at Stanford University chanting: “Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go.”
Their complaint, or so they claimed, was that courses on Western civilization implied Western superiority that didn’t comport with “multiculturalism.”
University administrators—compliant then as now—replaced Western civ with courses on “Cultures, Ideas and Values,” and “Western imperialism and colonialism.”
These courses have stressed the ostensible sins of Europe and America, questioning the West’s foundational values of open inquiry, free markets, constitutional democracy and human equality.
Scant attention has been given to the empires of the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa and their abhorrent practices (e.g., the Ottoman and Arab slave trades and Aztec child sacrifice).
Middle East studies departments were transformed into centers of “anti-Orientalist” activism, especially against Israel.
Meanwhile, ignored on most campuses, are the contemporary empire builders in Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.
Are there contradictions between jihadism on the one hand and the ideologies of the CCP and the woke left on the other? Carlos and his acolytes apparently think not.
In Revolutionary Islam, Carlos called on “all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists” to accept the leadership of Islamists because they represent the only “transnational force capable of standing up against the enslavement of nations” given the collapse of the Soviet Union. (China’s relations with Washington were amicable 20 years ago.)
He predicted: “From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies.”
The blind hatred of some Democrats, particularly Arab Americans and Muslims in Michigan, has led them to campaign against Biden because he supports Israel and its right to self-defense. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Their actions could lead to the election of Donald Trump, who is pro-Israel but holds views that are anathema to their communities.
The amount of money spent in the Bowman race was unusual, but all “Squad” members knew they would become targets. Most, including the two regarded as antisemitic—Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilan Omar (D-Minn.)—are in safe seats, aligned demographically with their communities. Cori Bush in Missouri, however, is considered vulnerable and the next incumbent AIPAC hopes to defeat. Bush is facing St. Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell, who, like Latimer, is a moderate. The problem with Bush is not that she is pro-Palestinian; it’s that she is rabidly anti-Israel and pro-terrorist. She and Tlaib, for example, were the only two House members to vote against legislation that prevents members of Hamas and other related terrorist-affiliated groups from coming to the United States. A poll last week showed Bush trailing by one point after having an early double-digit lead.
After months of looking weak and fearful, it is past time for Jews and other supporters of Israel to exercise their muscles. The upcoming elections present opportunities to reinforce bipartisan support for Israel and send a clear message that antisemitism will not be tolerated in our political discourse or policies.
Most of the world would like Israelis to fight their enemies with their hands tied behind their backs. Antisemites here would like to bind our hands. We can’t let them.
Longtime California legislator and power broker Jesse Unruh once quipped, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” The pro-Israel lobby (millions of non-Jews support Israel, so “Jewish lobby” is a misnomer used by antisemites) should provide as much milk as needed to incentivize politicians to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship. The pro-Arab lobby will attempt to do the same, but it has a significant disadvantage, not a shortage of resources but a lack of public support.
No other group apologizes for using whatever power they possess to advance their interests. In this case, the interests of the pro-Israel community coincide with those of most Americans and the U.S. government. As Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz wrote in his book Chutzpah, “When the ‘Jewish Lobby’ defeats an enemy of Israel or of the Jews, we should proudly proclaim the victory of justice over injustice.”
Our message should be “Antisemites: We’re coming for you!”
On the first day in American history, on the evening of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson – if one might paraphrase his words – declared: Let there be inalienable rights to all mankind.
There was also a first day in modern Israeli history, on the afternoon of May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion – in Israel’s Declaration of Independence modeled on the United States’s – declared that among these inalienable rights is the right of the Jewish people to be in their sovereign homeland.
Both Declarations drew on the same, common heritage of political rights that scholars have traced to the English Bill of Rights and the Book of Deuteronomy. Thus, a philosophical rejection of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and its right to exist is, at the same time, a philosophical rejection of America’s Declaration of Independence and its right to exist. Fundamentally, an attack on Israel is an attack on America.
Some scholars have found that America and Israel’s Declarations of Independence were racist, colonialist documents with a people’s “ancient” claims to their national lands based on fictional history and lies. Yet these Declarations were not meant for their academic analysis. They were written in the passion of the moment by countries and peoples fighting for their survival.
Of course, antisemites do not really care about any of this because they believe that Jews control both America and Israel anyway. Therefore, if I might update Jefferson’s words on America’s Independence Day, I hold this truth to be self-evident, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is anti-Americanism.
College students use their self-governance in an anti-American way
I AM A Jewish graduate of the higher educational institution that Jefferson founded – the University of Virginia in Charlottesville – where neo-Nazis with tiki torches marched and shouted “Jews will not replace us!” on August 2017.
But not a single individual was ever found guilty of antisemitism. In the civil case Sines v. Kessler that followed, the Jewish plaintiff’s allegations of antisemitism were dismissed. The judge even acknowledged that the KKK Act of 1871, which was charged, protected racial grievances more than antisemitic grievances for white plaintiffs.
On June 28, Jewish students at Columbia University resorted to filing a complaint against pro-Palestinian protesters under the same KKK Act. They are unlikely to succeed because of the result in Sines v. Kessler from Charlottesville. Antisemitism is flourishing everywhere, it seems, and there is no one left to protect us on campus.
No one, that is, but Jefferson. I turn to him in this hour for what I am about to say with utmost seriousness.
Invoking Article III, Section 3, of the United States Constitution, I hereby allege that some college campuses across the United States have committed treason against the United States, by giving “aid and comfort” to its enemies and allowing antisemitism to thrive. To prove this, by law, I will need the testimony of two witnesses.
I call on Jefferson and his devoted friend, James Madison, author of the US Constitution and a fellow, founding board member of the University of Virginia.
Monster Under Gaza Child's Bed Cramped By Hamas Tunnel Shaft
Sheja'iyya, July 4 - A nightmarish creature tasked with scaring preschoolers and other small children from beneath the furniture at night complained again today that it cannot perform its nocturnal fright duties because the entrance to an underground passage for Islamist fighters takes up all the space he needs to do proper lurking.
Cujo Al-Wahsh, a six-legged, eight-eyed, segmented, hairy, horned, drooling, eight-foot-tall, carnivorous spawn of Hell, lamented the cramped conditions under which he must operate night after night in the Al-Masri household, where Hamas installed a shaft to its tunnel network right underneath the bed of four-year-old Wafa Masri.
"Even without the shaft there, it's a squeeze at best," the creature explained. "But now it's a workplace safety violation, if Gaza had such a thing. Hamas used child labor to begin with in digging and reinforcing the tunnels, resulting in at least dozens, if not hundreds, of dead kids, which should indicate just how important worker safety is to the powers that be in Gaza."
"If some Hamas guy opens the shaft to come out of the tunnel while I'm lurking there, I'm in big trouble," he noted. "Venomous fangs or no venomous fangs, my employment future in Gaza is toast if i so much as look the wrong way at a Hamas man. To say nothing of making way for men entering the shaft from the outside. I can't do my job under these conditions."
Al-Wahsh has successfully scared little Wafa only four times in the last month, resulting in a negative performance review and the continuation of a sharp decline in his once-powerhouse statistics. "I was tops at my game back in the first decade of the century," he recalled. "Even the 2010's started out on the right foot. But once reconstruction began after the 2014 conflict, and Hamas started placing a tunnel network with access points in every new or rebuilt structure, my work got harder and harder."
Anecdotal reports indicate a general decline in under-the-bed monster-scares across Gaza long before hundreds of thousands of the territory's residents fled their homes ahead of the current fighting. A counterintuitive statistic even points to a slight bump in successful scares in the tent camps that Israel facilitated outside its predefined combat areas, given the lack of tunnel shafts and the relative stability of life in those zones.
Monster officials have reported only one monster casualty amid the current fighting, from a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch that fell short and hit a home in Khan Yunis four months ago.
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Against this dire backdrop, Netanyahu is going to America in three weeks’ time to address Congress. Among the many who loathe and distrust him, there is nervousness and criticism that he may make a bad situation even worse by criticizing Biden so close to the presidential election.
There are fears that he may repeat what such people believe was the harmful result he achieved when he addressed Congress in 2015 in an attempt to head off President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Obama outfoxed him by some fancy Beltway footwork and the deal was duly done. Netanyahu’s critics say that he therefore achieved nothing but bad blood with Obama. The same fears are being expressed over the likely effect on Biden of this month’s visit.
But this is to get things back to front. In both cases, Netanyahu decided to address Congress because an already virulently hostile administration posed such a danger to Israel that he could not remain silent.
In 2015, he had a moral duty to lay out for Congress and the American people the dire consequences of Obama’s Iran deal. That warning has been amply borne out. In 2024, Netanyahu has a moral duty to explain to Congress and the American people the dire consequences of the Biden administration’s appeasement of Iran, why Israel is fighting a war for its survival unlike any other since its foundation and that the seven-front war against it is merely the opening shot in Iran’s war against America and the West.
What Netanyahu’s critics fail to acknowledge is that he is a supremely cautious politician. He rarely airs his grievances with the U.S. in public. When he does so, it signifies desperation. It’s because he feels he has no other option.
That’s why he addressed Congress in 2015. It’s why he outed the Biden administration for holding up the delivery of weapons essential to the war effort. And it’s why he’s beating a lonely path back to Congress once again.
His intended audience isn’t just U.S. lawmakers. It isn’t just the American people. It’s also the Arab and Muslim world, which is watching carefully and where the stakes for Israel are very high.
For what inspires aggression and war in the Middle East is above all the perception of weakness. If Israel is seen to be bullied into surrender by the Biden administration, the Arab and Muslim world will smell that weakness. The Arabs may accordingly retreat from their recent historic overtures of friendship or Iran will move in for the kill. It is therefore essential that Israel is seen to be standing up to America.
As the former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger has observed, the State Department has systematically pressured Israel to act against its own security requirements ever since 1948.
And it never learns from experience. The Obama-Biden strategy of appeasement empowered Iran, created the conditions for the Oct. 7 pogrom and is leading the free world to catastrophe.
As Ettinger has said, the question is not how Israel can afford to stand up to America. It’s how can Israel afford not to.
Seeing the forces dedicated to tearing down the belief system that underpinned ideas about American exceptionalism that served as the foundation for Jewish acceptance, they now worry about their future on these shores. Liberal writer Franklin Foer spoke for many when he pondered whether “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending” in a gloomy piece in The Atlantic that mixed realism with partisan point-scoring (which undermined its credibility).
Antisemitism is not merely on the rise; it has become a daily occurrence. These days, left-wing versions of the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., back in August 2017 focus on support for Hamas, and demonizing Israel and the Jews. And so, despair about America is understandable. That’s especially true when considering that appeasing the forces behind these despicable provocations and acts of violence, if not open support for them, has a powerful constituency in mainstream politics and the media.
The context of this struggle is one in which contempt for traditional American civic culture is implicit in the left’s new secular religion.
The Times continues its ideological assault on the 1776 paradigm with pre-July 4 articles questioning not just exceptionalism but the whole idea of America being a “city on a hill” that is the last, best hope of mankind. And if that isn’t enough, it also trashed the celebratory aspects of the holiday since the fireworks that John Adams envisioned as an annual event in a letter to his wife Abigail, annoys pets and are too closely associated with gun rights. The liberal elites who run the paper may think that no celebration of newer holidays like Pride month or Juneteenth is too lavish, yet on the Fourth of July, it wants everyone to stop driving trucks, eating meat and supposedly harming nature by firing off a few bottle rockets. That is merely the lighter side of a problem more serious than most of us could have believed a few years ago.
The long march of the progressives through U.S. institutions has led to a situation where tolerance and even permission for antisemitism is a feature and not a bug of this belief system. But as much as Jews have rightly focused on this new seemingly respectable version of antisemitism, it is merely one aspect of a worldview that is just as hostile to traditional notions about American liberty and the core beliefs of Western civilization from which the spirit of 1776 sprang.
American history is replete with failures and open breaches of the principles of the founders—of which the most prominent was the decision to tolerate slavery until a civil war that cost the lives of 750,000 Americans ended the practice. The ideals of the declaration were often honored in their breach, but they remained the aspirational touchstone of the long arc of progress through which liberty eventually expanded to the point where its words have been given full expression.
Nevertheless, if we are to remain locked in the ideological dead-end of woke ideology, not only will that progress unravel amid the racial and ethnic quotas mandated by “equity” that ends the hope of equality and a color-blind society. We will find ourselves living in a nation where Jews are forced to see this as not an exceptional nation but just one more failed attempt at building a home in the Diaspora.
For months, Israel has refuted libelous claims of famine in Gaza, as international organizations -- especially the UN and the EU, the International Court of Justice and mainstream media alongside NGOs such as Human Rights Watch -- pushed the false, malicious narrative that Israel was causing famine in Gaza and even using it as a "weapon of war." Israel might have saved itself the effort. No one was listening.
In May, the World Food Programme (WFP) of the UN claimed, without a shred of evidence, that there was a "full blown famine" in Gaza.
Now, it turns out, it was all a big lie. There was no famine, there is no famine and Israel has not been using hunger as a "weapon of war." In its report published on June 4, the UN's IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] concluded that famine was no longer even "plausible" and had no "supporting evidence."
By comparison, more than three million children in Sudan are acutely malnourished, and a quarter of a million more are likely to die in the coming months. By the UN's own admission, the war in Sudan is "the war the world has either forgotten or ignored." The irony of that statement has clearly been lost on the UN, which is probably the main reason that Sudan – and other conflict spots – is ignored: the UN focuses almost all its resources on Israel and Gaza.
The "made-up" famine is just the latest in a long row of fabrications demonizing Israel's military operations in Gaza, which over the last months have been exposed as lies yet have received zero coverage in the media.
In early May, the UN effectively admitted that Hamas's casualty figures were untrustworthy...
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres led the incitement against Israel, as the UN almost always does.
Overall, 18 million people in Sudan face starvation.
Back in 2010, I gave a talk on Hasbara at Yeshiva University. For the talk, I came up with a taxonomy of effective communication:
My theory is that the more involved the audience is in the medium, the more effective the message.
Hasbara is above all meant to explain reality. Some forms are more emotionally involving than others. But the point is never to lie, nor to brainwash. When a pro-Israel rally is held, the centerpiece is the speeches, meant to get points across to the audience. Seeing the horrors of October 7 on video is more gripping than reading about it.
This is where the anti-Israel people have a huge messaging advantage over Zionists.
When they encourage/pressure people to chant their message, that is higher up the hierarchy of communication than I even imagined. The audience becomes part of giving the message, rather than just consuming it.
This goes beyond communication - it is brainwashing. Every study of brainwashing mentions the importance of repetition in making people believe something, even if it is obviously false. Making the targets themselves perform the repetition makes them even more emotionally tied to the message - they will never, ever want to believe that something so important to them that they themselves said it over and over again could be false.
The repetition also is the key factor in the illusory truth effect - the more people hear lies, the more they believe them.
The advantage of anti-Israel propaganda is that they lie. And they have a methodology to not only lie but to brainwash people to believe the lies.
That's something the pro-Israel side cannot do.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
For nearly two months, the UN has complained that they cannot safely pick up aid from Kerem Shalom to deliver them to the parts of Gaza that need it.
UNRWA writes this week, "The deteriorating law and order situation is severely hindering humanitarian actors from collecting aid at the Kerem Shalom Crossing for distribution within Gaza."
Yet hundreds of truckfuls of supplies are being safely picked up in Kerem Shalom, and distributed seemingly without major incidents.
COGAT reports 67 trucks were collected from Kerem Shalom on July 3, 199 on July 2, 127 on July 1, 51 on June 30.
Apparently, they were all picked up by the private sector. The shortfall in UN aid has been more than made up by commercial ventures where Gazans import the food and other supplies themselves and do all the organization and logistics of distribution, without the help of the UN or other international NGOs.
Capitalism is succeeding where the humanitarian community is failing.
So why do we need UNRWA and the other agencies to build out and maintain their own capacity for the enormous logistics involved in distributing aid to 1.5 million people? Why not just have them coordinate with, and pay, the Gazans who are willing to take the risks of delivering the aid for those who cannot afford to buy it?
Organizations hire contractors all the time. UNRWA even has a manual on policies on hiring contractors, where one of the conditions is that "the need for the required expert knowledge or specialized skills cannot be reasonably met from within the staff resources of the Agency, "
It sure appears that the ability to pick up and deliver aid from Kerem Shalom is a skill that UNRWA employees do not currently have.
Maybe some of the money that now goes towards teaching Gaza kids that their highest calling is to martyr themselves while trying to murder Jews should be directed into paying actual Gazans who are willing to take on the additional risk of aid delivery.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Sky News not only ignores the fact that the UN admits there is no famine in Gaza, but it doubles down, with a headline saying, "Newborn babies now have little chance of survival in Gaza, hospital director warns."
The first words of of the video report has the narrator saying, "The chances of a newborn baby surviving in Gaza now are not good."
We are then treated to scenes of babies and children with their ribcages visible.
The report is libelous in two ways: One is that it pretends that children who have other medical issues are dying from starvation.
The "star" of this video is a dead baby: "The body of a baby that didn't pull through lies in a hospital incubator, awaiting burial. She was born two months premature because her mother was so exhausted. Too soon for her parents to even name her. Her tiny body is now wrapped in a green shroud."
If she didn't live long enough to be named, then chances are she died soon after birth from complications of childbirth, not malnutrition. What parent wouldn't name a child who is alive for days?
We've seen this before. The BBC reported that an otherwise healthy boy starved to death but didn't mention (until forced to correct) that he happened to have cerebral palsy.
This Sky report shows a child, Amjad, that it says is starving - but then mentions that he was one of the children who Israel evacuated to send to hospitals abroad. CNN showed Amjad and his older brother Ahmed, who was also evacuated, and didn't mention anything about starvation; his brother Ahmed looks well-fed.
This is what Sky News isn't telling you about the "starving children." Why tell the truth when you have video showing sick, crying kids?
Now, let's look at the central claim: that the chances for a child born in Gaza today to survive are low because of malnutrition.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, there were 28 deaths from malnutrition as of March 31 and 34 today. (They didn't publish any statistics before March.) That means that even according to the highly unreliable ministry, there have been six deaths from starvation in three months. (We don't know how many of them were newborns.)
About 16,000 babies have been born in Gaza in those three months. This means that the chances of a baby starving to death in Gaza, today, is four in ten thousand at the very most.
Before October 7, the infant mortality rate in Gaza from all causes was between 1.5% (CIA) and 2.3% (UNRWA). That means that before the war, we would expect over 240 babies born in Gaza over the same three months not to survive one year.
One death is one too many, but starvation is a tiny percentage of Gaza infant deaths, even according to Hamas.
Which means that Sky News is outdoing Hamas in its zeal to demonize Israel.
In fact, the report doesn't mention Hamas once. It doesn't mention who started this war. It doesn't mention how Hamas steals aid meant for these children. It doesn't mention how Hamas fires on humanitarian convoys.
No, according to Sky News, most children in Gaza will starve to death because of an implied Israeli policy of murdering Palestinian babies.
Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics issued its annual report of baby names for 2023.
The most popular names for Jewish boys were Dovid, Lavie and Yosef. For Jewish girls they were Avigail, Ayala and Tamar.
But the most popular name in all of Israel was Mohammed (or Mahmoud.)
This happens every year. Even though Muslims are about 18% of the population, Mohammed is always the most popular name among all Israeli babies. (This year it was followed by Ahmad and Adam.)
The reason is because such a high percentage of Muslims name their kids Mohammed. This year about 12^ of Muslim boys were named Mohammed, as opposed to only 2.7% of Jewish boys named Dovid. When you do the math you come out with 2,309 Mohammeds and 1,760 Dovids. In other words, there is a lot more variation among Jewish baby names than Muslim baby names.
Some names, like Yosef/Yusuf, are popular for both Arabs and Jews.
The report also checked whether there were any significant changes in naming babies before and after October 7. While the top twenty names were roughly the same, some names surged in popularity after October 7 compared to before. The percentage of babies named Amichai ("My Nation Lives") went up by 4.31 times what would have been expected at pre-October 7 levels. Other themes are "strength," "hope" and several variants of "light."
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The Anti-Defamation League is urging the attorney generals of New York and Arizona to investigate WESPAC (Westchester Peace Action Committee) and the Alliance for Global Justice, accusing the anti-Israel nonprofit groups of potentially running afoul of federal law. WESPAC has been accused of funding anti-Israel encampments on campuses.
In letters to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Steven Sheinberg, the ADL’s chief legal officer, highlighted that the AFGJ sponsors the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which Israel considers a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group and which has supported Hamas.
“Samidoun’s status as a terrorist organization abroad, or at the very least its connection to known terrorist organizations, calls into question whether AFGJ and its board are exercising the appropriate level of oversight and control over its projects to ensure AFGJ’s charitable assets are being used consistent with its tax exemption,” Sheinberg wrote in his letter to James.
According to U.S. law, AFGJ is responsible for the activities Samidoun engages in, and can be held responsible for their activities, according to the letter.
“AFGJ’s administrative support and use of its own tax-exempt status permits Samidoun to operate in the United States and further potentially non-charitable aims under the guise of a public charity,” Sheinberg added.
The ADL further highlighted ambiguities around Samidoun’s activities, as well as AFGJ’s structure and legal status, as well as its financial activities.
In the letter to James, the ADL accused WESPAC of far surpassing its stated mandate of “current affairs education” by funding college campus protest groups that have distributed Hamas propaganda and supporting groups that have engaged in antisemitic harassment and expressed support for terrorism and the Nazis.
Sheinberg argued that these activities may exceed WESPAC’s authorized functions and bring into question whether it “truly has control and discretion over its funds.” He urged James to examine whether the state should block the group from engaging in such activities.
The National Education Association will vote on several new business items in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday that are the subject of protests and accusations of antisemitism.
Educators for Palestine organized a rally in support of pro-Palestinian initiatives set to occur during the NEA’s annual Representative Assembly, and StandWithUs responded with a “counter-rally” coinciding with the pro-Palestinian demonstration to voice their concerns with the NBIs.
The two groups are scheduled to begin their rallies at 4:30 p.m. Delegates will be voting on items during the assembly, which will run from 10 a.m. on Thursday to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Eleven items spark protests and counterprotests
There are at least 11 NBIs causing controversy. Of the 13 obtained by the National Review, StandWithUs mentioned five, including three set to be voted on that call for the NEA to align itself with boycott, divestment, and sanctions initiatives, one asking the NEA to deny the connection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and one calling for the NEA to promote Palestinian narratives about the founding of Israel.
SWU, an international education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism, issued a June 24 statement condemning the NBIs as “antisemitic and anti-Israel” ahead of the assembly. The statement said the NBIs would “not only harm Jewish members, but also undermine the integrity of public education.”
“This rally is a way for us to voice our concerns and stand in solidarity with Jewish educators and students who deserve a safe and inclusive environment,” David Smokler, SWU director of K-12 education outreach, told the Washington Examiner. “By gathering publicly, we can highlight the urgent need for the NEA delegates to reject these biased proposals and reaffirm its commitment to an unbiased, fact-based education for all.”
“We believe that organizing a rally in front of the convention center during the NEA Representative Assembly is essential to bring attention to the deeply troubling nature of these antisemitic and anti-Israel New Business Items,” Smokler added.
A group of Jewish teachers in British Columbia has filed a complaint with Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal, describing antisemitic instances by colleagues and the union representing them.
“They’re concerned about people retaliating against them. They’re concerned about what they’ve experienced already and the potential for that to get ratcheted up,” said Paul Pulver, the Vancouver-based labor lawyer representing the teachers, who announced the filing on Tuesday.
He added that “these teachers are extremely upset. They’re fearful.”
The complaint states that the BC Teachers Federation “engaged in and enabled antisemitism.”
The group B.C. Teachers Against Antisemitism said union leaders caused “trauma and fear,” that members had been “intimidated and shamed.”
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. Please note that this post contains extremely graphic descriptions.
Roger Waters is an evil antisemite. The word “evil” here is
no hyperbole. Some people hate Jews out of habit or ignorance, but Roger Waters
is a rabid, virulent Jew-hater, who denies that Jewish babies were burned and Jewish
women were raped on October 7. Even though there is ample evidence to the
contrary, as Piers Morgan rightly stated during a recent interview with the
Pink Floyd co-founder and Jew-hater par excellence.
Roger Waters: Wouldn't it be great to have that conversation
at some . . . and wouldn't it be great if we could have an actual real
investigation beyond the very good Al Jazeera documentary that we all saw that
came out and all the great work that the Gray Zone and Electric Intifada people
did in debunking all the filthy disgusting lies that the Israelis told after
October the 7th about burning babies and women being raped which were all
completely . . .
Piers Morgan (interrupts): Actually women were raped.
Roger Waters: No they weren’t.
Piers Morgan: Yes, they were.
Roger Waters: Well, there's no evidence.
Piers Morgan: It's been must been established by the United Nations.
Roger Waters: You can say anything that you want but there's
no evidence.
Piers Morgan: Actually there is extensive evidence. . .
Roger Waters (interrupts): There is no sex assault and rape.
Piers Morgan: Well, there is, okay?
Waters is only annoying. No one takes him seriously anymore,
except for his fellow haters. Still, there is much frustration among those of
us who are all too well aware that in fact, babies were burned and women were
raped. There is more, much more, and we can prove it—Hamas recorded it all with
their GoPro cameras.
That being the case, say the naysayers, why haven’t we seen
this evidence?
I would answer that there are very good reasons you haven’t
seen the evidence of mass gang-rapes and beheadings; the baby shoved into a
microwave oven; others decapitated or burned alive. For one thing, there are
families to shield from seeing how their loved ones were brutalized. We also
have the dignity of the victims to consider. But then there is the issue of the
footage being difficult to watch.
A 43-minute video, a compilation of raw footage of the
October 7th carnage, was produced by the IDF and shown to foreign journalists.
At the request of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the film was subsequently shown
to Knesset members at a November 1st, closed-door screening.
From the Jerusalem Post:
The Knesset screened the IDF's uncensored October 7 documentary for MKs on Wednesday.
The movie, which is made up of footage taken from killed and captured terrorists, was previously screened for Israeli and foreign journalists to show them the horrors of Hamas's attack.
The MKs who watched the footage on Wednesday were heavily affected by it, with Likud MK Keti Shitrit leaving the auditorium sobbing a few minutes after the documentary began. Fellow Likud MK Tsega Melaku reportedly fainted after the screening and was taken to the Knesset's infirmary.
Likud MK Gilat Distel-Atbaryan said the Knesset's doctor was at the entrance to the auditorium offering MKs relaxation medications before they went in to watch the documentary. Three psychologists were also available afterward to help those who watched the documentary to cope.
"I held it out in the hall for five minutes and then I ran out sobbing and shaking," said Distel-Atbaryan.
Even with the relaxation pill, which she had accepted, she said the footage gave her a panic attack like she had never experienced before.
Fox News’ Harris Faulkner reported on a screening for
Members of the House:
Harris Faulkner: And on Capitol Hill, Members of the House visibly
shaken after they watched Hamas’ footage of the October 7th atrocities. Many of
those terrorists wore body cameras—as you know they were “GoPro-ing it,” as
they were slaughtering men, women, and children, entire families, one in front
of each one of them and then killing the last one.
It's torture.
Senators are planning a wider viewing tomorrow in their chamber.
(cut to reactions)
US Representative Elise Stefanik: These horrific images of atrocities
are etched into my memory forever.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: You could have heard a
pin drop except for the sighs and cries in the room, because the video would
make anyone with a soul, cry.
Congressman Mike McCaul: Horrific scene, that I can't get
into detail because they are so disgusting. They are a messianic cult, they’re
a terror organization, a cult.
Harris Faulkner: The devil is what they are. Incarnate.
Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens posted, “I'm gutted. This is barbarism. An attack on all humanity."
This morning I viewed the horrific footage of Hamas killing, torturing, and kidnapping Israeli civilians. I’m gutted.
This is barbarism and an attack on all humanity.
We cannot let this ever happen again and we must never forget.
California Republican Darrell Issa said, “Watching the footage made me sick to my stomach.
(cut to Harris Faulkner): Heartbreaking and dramatic newly-released video from October 7th shows the bravery of a young off-duty soldier. He was defending civilians inside a rocket shelter as the terrorists tossed in grenades. The soldier, lobbing them right back before they would explode. One after another after another.
Seven times he did that, before he himself was killed by the eighth grenade.
Martha MacCallum, also at Fox, described the experience of watching those 43 minutes:
"Everyone has seen some of these images online, but the
unfiltered video is absolutely – it’s so horrific it’s hard to put into
words," MacCallum told Dana Perino Monday on "America’s
Newsroom."
"There is obviously so much blood, so many charred
bodies, it’s very difficult, obviously, to watch this. But the two things that
stuck with me, Dana, more than anything is a moment when two young boys,
they’re probably [ages] 8 and 10, a grenade is thrown into the room that they
are in with their father, and their father is killed and then the terrorist,
the Hamas terrorist, pulls the boys out and basically pushes them into their
kitchen, and they’re crying, one of them can’t see from the grenade," she
continued.
"And the terrorist starts drinking water, or milk or
juice out of their refrigerator… these boys are screaming, and one of them
says, ‘I want my mother,’ and then he says, ‘Why am I alive?’" MacCallum
became emotional when recalling the chilling video of some of the Oct. 7 terror
that gripped Israel.
"I will never forget these two boys, I just can’t
imagine," she said.
"Beyond the blood and the horror is the emotion of, I
don’t know if they survived, but of the survivors, and the other thing that
will haunt anyone that hears it or sees it, are the phone calls,"
MacCallum continued.
"There is a Hamas terrorist who calls his parents… he
says, ‘Mom and dad, you would be so proud of me. I’m a hero. I killed 10 Jews
with my own hands.’"
MacCallum said the terrorist’s parents were
"cheering" on the call.
"It’s horrifying and I think that the reason,
obviously, that they’re showing it to people is that they don’t want this part
of the story to be forgotten, and it is important to remember what the spark
was," she said.
MacCallum is absolutely correct. But no one who is swept up
in the antisemitic protests cares about the nature of the “spark” that lit the
fire in Gaza. It’s too late for that—they’ve been indoctrinated with the
falsehood that Israel, in 1948, by its very creation, was the spark that led to
the destruction in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre.
On the other side of the aisle, Matt Gutman, writing for ABC
News, talked about his turn to view the 43-minute film, and how it was
for him:
"You won't see rape, there's no rape in this
video... We won't show you beheaded babies," a senior Israeli officer said
to a small group of journalists, saying such images existed but would not be
shown.0000
The journalists were the first to watch a screening of an
hour-long reel cobbled together from Hamas helmet cam, mobile phone video,
surveillance video, dashboard camera video and victims' livestreams. . .
. . . Journalists
were not allowed to record or use the video presented, and our phones were
deposited outside the room.
The video started slowly. Hamas fighters are seen on the
back of a pickup, with RPGs spiking out in every direction. You can sense their
excitement. The video shows several groups cut through the fence and wave a
pickup truck through.
Then it shows three separate angles of motorists in Israel
being flagged down, then gunned down -- the AK-47s puffing smoke -- on the road
outside the Kfar Aza and Be'eri kibbutzim. Bodies are yanked out of cars.
Then a pair of attackers in Be'eri is shown. For several
minutes, we watch as they amble around the kibbutz. They poke into one house
and you can hear someone's alarm going off. It's 8 a.m. You can hear them
breathing heavily. The one wearing the body camera has a high, soft-spoken
voice that seems to belie his mission.
At a playground, he wonders in Arabic, "Where are the
kids?" The duo set fire to one house, shoot an encroaching dog, and shoot
another old man through a darkened screen. They are parsimonious with their
ammunition, and chillingly unhurried as they pick through the tidy vegetable
gardens and open the latches of wooden fences.
Then the video gets grisly. Other militants are busy mashing
a dying man's face with their boots. Another pair screams "Allahu
akbar" as they use a garden hoe to try to decapitate another man.
In another house, a gunman sticks the muzzle of his rifle
into a room inhabited by a family. It's a mash of colors. In one, a terrorist
is standing on an Israeli man's chest and shoots him point-blank in the face.
Then, the scenes of bloodied bedrooms start to blur. The
rooms and the gore are the same -- it's how the bodies are arrayed in death
that's different. There are so many children. Some are jam-packed together in a
slippery mass of human flesh. Huge blood stains streak the tiles.
So many of the bodies are burnt. It was unclear if this was
because they were set fire to or if it was from the grenade blasts. Other
videos show Israeli first responders trying to put out the still-smoldering
skeletal remains of victims -- with water bottles, as if watering a parched
plant.
In another video, a grenade was apparently tossed into one
of the bomb shelters that line the roads in southern Israel. It was filled with
partygoers who'd left the Supernova music festival. The camera shows a flash of
limbs, some dismembered, some still attached to writhing, screaming bodies. A
selfie camera shows a young man weeping, while someone croaks hoarsely in the
background, "help, help." Hamas then drags survivors out, some by
their hair, to trucks, and then batters them some more in the backs of the
pickups on the way to Gaza.
Forensic images show bodies burned in cars, on beds, on the
streets and in the fields in various states of incineration.
There’s a reason that not everyone should or is capable of watching this footage, or even reading these descriptions. It’s gruesome, gory. Inhuman. Bestial.
“Screams Before Silence,” available to everyone, and not
just the press or the Knesset, was difficult to watch, but the worst images
were blurred. Many Israelis and Jews felt the film as painful vindication of
what they knew to be all too true. Here, finally, was the proof an angry,
hateful world had demanded. At last, here was a way to make them understand. To
see the real “spark,” as Martha MacCallum put it.
If only that were true, and perhaps it is true of most
people, that on viewing factual evidence, they believe what they see. Not so,
however, the evil. People like Roger Waters.
Given proof,
the evil will deny and discredit what they see and hear. For the Roger Waters
of the world, any proof you show them will be likened to Karine Jean-Pierre’s “cheap
fakes.” You could show Waters photos of charred infants, and he will say, “The
Israelis did it. False flag operation.”
You could show him the interrogation of an October 7th
terrorist describing rape and murder by a father and his sons, and Waters will
say, “He’s being coerced by his Israeli interrogators,” or “That’s an actor.
His accent is suspicious.”
Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18, were captured by the Israeli army in Gaza.
In their interrogation they confessed to rape and slaughtering Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
Martha MacCaullum is, of course, correct that none of this story should be
forgotten, the story of the October 7th massacre. But when it comes
to evil people like Roger Waters, it’s not a question of remembering, and it’s
not even a question really, of hate. Once a person says that what happened on
October 7, didn’t happen, he has gone over to the other side. It’s not just a
dislike of Jews, but an embrace of evil.
This, in the end, may be the most serious consideration in
deciding who should and should not see real, raw October 7 footage. The last
thing Israel should do is expose the bodies of my dead sisters to the scorn and
ridicule of black-hearted people like Roger Waters. All it does is give him
more rope to heap abuse on murdered Jewish women.
He has perfected the art of feigning belief. And he’s got an
answer all at the ready, to everything. “Even if there was rape, it was
limited . . .” say the Roger Waters of the world.
The evil are immune to proof, because they take glee in the
murder and rape of Jewish women and children, and the burning of families alive
in their homes. Should we then share our sorrow in order to give evil joy? It’s
a point that is hard to absorb, because like Anne Frank—that is, before she was
found out and sent to die in a concentration camp under horrible, unbearable conditions—in
spite of everything we “still believe that people are really good at heart.”
We want to believe that proof will make a difference. Maybe so. For some people.
But don’t bother to show that brutal footage to people like Roger Waters. They’ve
gone to the Dark Side, lost for good.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
