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Friday, December 27, 2024

12/27 Links Pt1: How the international community funds the Hamas war machine; The Truth About That Famine Report; Holocaust survivor murdered in terror stabbing attack

From Ian:

How the international community funds the Hamas war machine
Eyal Ofer has been following the funding methods of Hamas and other terrorist organizations for years, collecting data and writing about his findings. He told JNS that Hamas’s financial conduct has not changed in a significant way over the years. If before the war it extorted 25% from luxury car dealers, today in the midst of war it extorts money from wheat merchants.

“Hamas is present everywhere in the Gaza Strip: the police, humanitarian associations, actors in the private and public sectors, the contractors’ union—Hamas is networked within and across Gaza. You can’t just vacuum Hamas out, it is everywhere,” he said.

In a tweet that went viral on Sunday, he wrote that “Hamas operates like a mafia and a clan-based enterprise: one brother is in the military wing, another in the police force, they ensure the sister works for UNRWA, a noncombat-profile cousin becomes a driver for an aid organization, an uncle gets a government position, another cousin is a ‘journalist’ for Al Jazeera, and the grandmother is added to the list of welfare recipients.”

The claim that Iran provides 70% of Hamas’s funding is “nonsense,” he wrote. “In extreme cases, Iran provides 5-10% of Hamas’s funding. The vast majority of Hamas’s funding comes from its ability to funnel money that the world sends to the Palestinian Authority (and other Gaza charitable causes) and Gaza for its own purposes.”

As an example, he attached a document from the P.A.’s Municipal Development and Lending Fund (MDLF), a semi-governmental urban development fund, highlighting the receipt of some $3 million from the government of Belgium in 2023 for a project named, “Promotion of Green Services and Climate Action in Local Governance—Green Gaza.”

“What are the chances that Hamas’s regime in Gaza will manage to place its members or their relatives among the beneficiaries of this Belgian grant? In my opinion: 100%. … Multiply this story by 200, and you’ll see how Hamas is funded,” Ofer said.

The money-laundering scheme
Ofer further explained that Hamas’s chief financial problem is not raising money inside Gaza, but transferring its accumulated cash out of the region.

The primary currency in the Gaza Strip is the Israeli shekel. During the war, Hamas acquired a monopoly on cash in Gaza, with local banks largely unserviceable. Ofer told JNS that it is impossible to assess how much cash Hamas currently holds.

“Hundreds of millions, maybe even one to two billion shekels. It extracts money from the population by force, which is how it continues to pay salaries to its operatives [and recruit new fighters], but also how it established itself as the monopoly on the supply of money,” he said.

“Many Gazans today receive direct donations from abroad, transferred via Western Union, the banks, cryptocurrencies like USD Coin, Vodafone Cash Wallet [a mobile app], GoFundMe, monthly stipends from the P.A., U.N. humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF. All these transfers are deposited in bank accounts, and their holders need to convert them into cash—whether the deposit is in dollars or shekels. Who do they go to for cash? Hamas.”

The Islamist organization developed an entire industry of non-banking ATMs, Ofer explained. The Gazans transfer to Hamas their dollars or shekels and Hamas provides them with cash, though with “unbelievably” high fees, he said. “The fees started at 15% and have reached more than 30% in areas with greater scarcity,” he added. “This is how Hamas manages to launder money to unknown accounts.”

Ofer could not say with certainty that all money changers in Gaza are Hamas operatives, but noted that it is hard to imagine a regular person moving about in the Gaza Strip with hundreds of thousands of shekels in cash without fear.

The broken Gaza fallacy
In 1850, French economist Frédéric Bastiat published an essay titled “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.”

In it, he described what became known in the field of economics as the “broken window fallacy.” The conceptual framework notes that while it is seen that a child breaking a shopkeeper’s window, for example, will provide the glazier with work to repair the window, what is not seen is the aggregate growth of the economy through alternative work had the window not been broken (such as the shopkeeper purchasing a new pair of shoes).

The Palestinian case may demonstrate a similar fallacy. That which is seen is the reconstruction of Gaza after every war, believing that this helps the Palestinians. That which is unseen is letting the Palestinians deal with the consequences of war alone, having to choose whether to abandon their ideological battle against Israel or continue on their path to destruction.

“The Palestinians know that after every round of fighting, the round of reconstruction begins,” Ofer said, adding that this causes perverse economic incentives.

“If the Qataris come in and propose rebuilding a city that was destroyed in the previous war and was now destroyed again, a private contractor has two jobs, not one. The Hamas government cuts its share from the contractor, the residents who received contributions and everyone else in the chain of rehabilitation,” he noted.

According to Ofer, many of the regular economic metrics that economists use, such as GDP, are irrelevant in the case of Gaza, because a huge section of its economy is nonproductive.

“There is no question that Gaza, in great percentages, is a charity-based economy. A private sector emerges out of these donations, but the nucleus of the economy, maybe 40% to 50%, is based on external donations that fund Gaza’s welfare [programs] and the public sector,” he told JNS.

Ofer added that Israel lacks “political wisdom. Instead of disengaging from Gaza, we keep opening more and more crossings into the Strip in the hope that the world will see us as enlightened rulers. At the start of the war, all aid came through the Rafah Crossing border with Egypt. Israel should have stated: That’s it Gaza, from now on, you work with Egypt. You are not our problem anymore.”
Seth Mandel: It’s Against the Rules to Win
This is an important window into how much the foreign-policy debate in America has deteriorated. Ukraine and Israel were the invaded parties. There is no argument over this—it’s not unclear who started either war, even if we debate about the chosen casus belli in each case. Even those who offer insipid justifications for Putin’s and Hamas’s actions implicitly accept that those actions marked the beginning of the current wars.

It is, then, genuinely insane to compare Ukraine and Gaza this way. What Ukraine and Gaza actually have in common at the moment is solely that they are, to different degrees, “losing” these wars. A “win” for Ukraine is generally defined by Kyiv as retaining all its territory. That was possible at one time, had the Biden administration and Western Europe provided the support Ukraine needed and deserved at the outset of the war, though now it appears unlikely.

Gaza, meanwhile, was doomed from the start because even a Hamas victory—which would mean its outlasting of Israel’s determination and its accumulation of enough international support to hold its legitimacy as rulers of Gaza—would be a disaster for Gazan civilians. Hamas essentially rigged the Gaza Strip to blow up, then lit the fuse, because it had already built a second Gaza for itself underground. But Hamas is on the ropes as well, bringing some measure of justice for what the terror group has done to Gaza and to Israel.

And that is Israel’s crime: winning a war it didn’t start.

The Times does its best to play along. “The Israeli military, supplied with American weapons, has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza, according to officials in the strip and satellite images,” reads the report.

Of course, even if you accept Hamas’s overall numbers, it is still untrue that the IDF has killed 45,000 Palestinians. The Times is taking a Hamas lie and pushing it to its absolute limits, but there is no method of counting that gets you to this number unless you blame Israel for every single natural death in Gaza and for those killed by Hamas and other terror groups.

Nor is there any context to those long-debunked “stats.” Hamas has not surrendered, so the war goes on. Israel is continuing to win the war that Hamas started and is perpetuating. Should Israel simply stop fighting a war that the enemy carries on?

Never mind, we know the answer.
Brendan O'Neill: This year, Israel showed us what anti-fascism really means
In the future, when humanity comes to its senses, 2024 will be seen as a watershed year in the battle against fascism. More fascist-adjacent killers and loons were bumped off over the past 12 months than in any other year in my lifetime. From the leader of an army of anti-Semites that tells its followers to buy cheap knives and ‘cut off the heads of Jews’ (Yahya Sinwar) to the spiritual head of a self-styled ‘Party of God’ that longs to excise those ‘cancerous’ Jews from the Middle East (Hassan Nasrallah), it’s been a rough year for neo-fascist nuts. And about time, too.

2024 is the year anti-fascism grew up. For years, ‘anti-fascism’ was the weekend hobby of bored rich kids. To say the masked wimps of ‘antifa’ gave anti-fascism a bad name is an understatement. They dragged its name into the gutter. Under their black-clad purview, anti-fascism entailed little more than shouting ‘BITCH’ at women who don’t want to see dicks in their changing rooms, weeping on the campus lawn whenever Ben Shapiro showed up, and having fisticuffs with working-class people who voted for Trump. The men of the Normandy landings and the International Brigades will have turned in their graves at the sight of these toytown radicals throwing milkshakes at ‘rednecks’ and calling it anti-fascism.

Now, thankfully, anti-fascism means something again. Largely courtesy of Israel’s war on the Jew-hating belligerents at its borders, a real fight with fascism has replaced the neurotic street theatrics of the affluent activist class that falsely called itself anti-fascism. Sure, these people might have slapped Richard Spencer once, but the IDF has throttled entire movements that were founded with the expressly fascistic intention to kill Jews and erase their homeland.

This year we bid adieu to Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza; the man widely suspected of being the architect of 7 October, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It seems likely that Mohammed Deif was also hurried off this mortal coil by the IDF. He was the leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which did so much of the raping and butchering on 7 October.

Many other Hamas gunmen were despatched – up to 17,000. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this gutting of an army whose founding covenant committed it to a ‘very great and very serious… struggle against the Jews’ is better anti-fascism than emptying a can of soup on gender-critical activist Posie Parker. Hamas has made good on its genocidal loathing countless times in recent years, murdering hundreds and hundreds of Jews on buses, in nightclubs, at music festivals, in their own homes. Israel’s war on Hamas, in defiance of the faint-hearted bourgeoisie of the Western world who’ve spent the past year cravenly calling on the Jewish State to cease fire, is a blow to modern fascism and a boon for humanity.


'Beyond human comprehension': Israeli politicians react to terrorist murder of Holocaust survivor
Israeli politicians reacted on Friday to a terror stabbing in Herzliya that claimed the life of 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Ludmila Lipovsky.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said the attack was "beyond human comprehension" in a statement on X/Twitter.

"This is what we are dealing with. These are the terrorists we are fighting. And we will win. Evil won't prevail," Sa'ar added.

Opposition leader and Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid called the attacks "serious" and "despicable." He said he "supports the security personnel who neutralized the terrorist." "We must take a tough stance against terrorism. I share in the grief and send a hug to Ludmila's family," Lapid concluded.

"Only monsters are capable of murdering an 80-year-old woman in cold blood," National Unity leader Benny Gantz said.

He expressed his condolences to Lipovsky's family and praised the security personnel at the scene who "neutralized the terrorist and prevented others from being harmed."

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, "Once again, it has been proven that carrying a weapon saves lives," according to Ynet.

Ben-Gvir added that the security officers who neutralized the terrorist would be rewarded.
Elderly Holocaust survivor murdered in terror stabbing attack by former Shin Bet aide
Eighty-three-year-old Holocaust survivor Ludmila Lipovsky was murdered in a terror stabbing attack outside her nursing home in Herzliya on Friday morning. Security guards neutralized the attacker before arresting him.

Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv confirmed that Lipovsky was pronounced dead on arrival.

The Israel Police designated the incident as a terror attack after officers, along with MDA paramedics, arrived at the scene.

An initial investigation revealed that the terrorist was a Palestinian resident of the West Bank city of Tulkarm who had previously served a prison sentence in Israel. The Shin Bet added that the suspect was a former Shin Bet aide who had helped thwart terrorism in the West Bank.

The suspect's collaboration with the Shin Bet was later exposed and he was transferred for rehabilitation in Israel. He has now been transferred to the Shin Bet for questioning.

The commander of Tel Aviv district police, Superintendent Haim Sargaroff, said that the security guards at the scene lept into action after they heard the terrorist shout "Allahu Akbar."

The Jerusalem Post found on Yad Vashem's database that Ludmila Lipofsky was born in Buy, Russia on 11 November 1941, and was in Samarkand, Uzbekistan during the war. After the war, she was registered as being in Israel. She was registered as being born during evacuation.

Michael Dickson, the director of Stand With Us tweeted that the Holocaust survivor was waiting for her daughter to take her to the doctor when she was killed.

Yisrael Beyteinu chair Avigdor Liberman said "there are no words to describe the pain and sorrow in this shocking case."

MDA Paramedic Idan Shina and MDA EMT Elon Boaron, who were the first to arrive at the scene, said teams arrived to find the elderly woman lying unconscious with stab wounds. The paramedics stopped the bleeding, resuscitated her, treated her with medication, and evacuated her.

The incident occurred on Herzliya's Kdoshei Hashoah Street [Holocaust Martyrs Street].

"Aside from the woman, there were no other casualties," said MDA spokesperson Zaki Heller after paramedics arrived at the scene.


Seth Mandel: The Truth About That Famine Report
So what happened here is that a bunch of FEWS researchers deliberately misled the public, and the result was so skewed that a U.S. agency led by Samantha Power—a longtime vocal critic of Israel inside and outside the U.S. government—couldn’t abide its publication.

Part of the problem with the report was that it put the population of the area in question at 65,000-75,000. Lew provided the actual population data: 7,000-15,000. That’s a pretty big difference! “At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” Lew said in a statement.

Indeed. So there are two potential explanations for what happened: Either FEWS accidentally used outdated information because it couldn’t keep up with the movement of the population in a war zone and then refused to correct it because they preferred their original conclusions, or FEWS deliberately used numbers from before the population shift so it could falsely accuse Israel of something that wasn’t happening.

Had it been an honest mistake, one would think FEWS would have fixed the numbers when the mistake was brought to their attention—which was prior to publication. In light of what they actually did—publish it anyway—the mistake doesn’t look very honest.

The truth is that USAID and Jack Lew may have saved FEWS from the total self-destruction of its credibility by showing the world that there are indeed people in positions of oversight who value the truth and who are willing to keep FEWS on track, even if it means publicly clashing with activists.

FEWS would not be the first, nor will it be the last, such humanitarian agency to detonate science and truth in the name of anti-Israel activist politics. That is, in fact, becoming the norm. But unlike, say, UNRWA or the Red Cross in Gaza, FEWS has not been coopted by Hamas. Sadly, it didn’t have to be—it volunteered itself as a sacrifice to Hamas’s cause. And that’s even worse.
NYPost Editorial: Post-election, Team Biden finally slams a bogus claim about famine in Gaza
Team Biden is slamming a report that warns of famine in northern Gaza.

What a difference an election makes.

The report Monday by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (an independent outfit created with Uncle Sam’s support) claimed 65,000-75,000 people lack access to sufficient supplies of food.

“Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” has triggered mass starvation in northern Gaza, FEWS Net preached — fresh fodder for Israel-haters to sling unhinged accusations about the Jewish state perpetrating “genocide.”

Sorry, there’s no “near-total blockade,” and never has been.

Nor, per Israeli and UN estimates, are there 65,000 people in northern Gaza (let alone starving ones) but less than 15,000.

The FEWS NET alert “relies on outdated population estimates, and has methodological limitations based on the availability of data,” a US Agency for International Development spokesman said.

“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew fumed.

That’s been true before, too: Another FEWS Net report this year similarly raised famine alarms, based on numbers that also turned out to be garbage.

Yet the Biden-Harris folks — with an eye on pro-Hamas voters — nonetheless ranted about Israel’s “over-the-top” response to Hamas’ war.

Indeed, in a last-minute bid for the anti-Israel vote just before the election, Team Biden threatened to halt yet more weapons shipments to Israel if the IDF didn’t let in more aid.

Such threats only further embolden Hamas, Iran and Israel’s other enemies.
All of us in the media were complicit in October 7
In early 2023, I was invited to a briefing with the IDF chief of staff. It was like dozens of other briefings I had attended over the years. We, the journalists, were ushered into a conference room where the top IDF officer took center stage.

He delivered an hour-long presentation and then fielded questions. Out of the two hours of discussions, Hamas and Gaza occupied perhaps 15 minutes. That was it.

On the one hand, this lack of focus wasn’t surprising. It reminded me of a story I heard recently about a Military Intelligence briefing given to members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee just six months before October that went on for hours and concentrated primarily on Iran and Hezbollah.

As the intelligence officers were packing up their things, a Knesset member asked about Hamas.

“Nothing new,” one of the officers replied, according to members of the committee I spoke with. “They are deterred.”

This belief – that Hamas was deterred in the months leading up to October 7 – was the prevailing mindset within both the IDF and the government. The problem was that the media simply accepted this assessment at face value.

It was taken as absolute truth, without scrutiny or challenge, and it is time to admit: this unquestioning approach was negligence on the part of the press.

Consider what happened after the IDF’s operation against Hamas in 2021, called Guardian of the Walls. At the time, Israel claimed to have dealt a serious blow to Hamas by targeting what it called the Metro – a strategic tunnel complex built in Gaza over a period of years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with top IDF officers like then-chief of staff Aviv Kohavi and operations chief Aharon Haliva, proudly declared that Hamas had been severely weakened. Haliva, who would later become the head of Military Intelligence, even predicted that the 2021 operation would deliver five years of quiet.

This never happened, and the quiet lasted barely two years. Yet, where were the media during this period? Sadly, nowhere to be found. Most journalists were merely repeating what they were told.

Articles and TV reports hailed the military’s achievements, praising the IDF for supposedly crippling Hamas. There was no critical analysis or questioning of these claims.

I know this because I was one of those journalists. Like almost all my colleagues, we didn’t ask tough questions or demand evidence. We believed the narrative that Israel was too strong to face any significant threat and that its enemies had been neutralized.

After the Metro bombing, I wrote a series of features on the remarkable precision-strike capability the IDF had seemingly developed. I look back at some of those reports now and realize how while some of the stories were accurate, they completely missed the real story of what was happening right in front of our faces.

We now know how that complacency ended. While there have been countless calls for commissions of inquiry within the IDF and the government, very little attention has been given to the media’s own failures.

Fifteen months after the war began, many journalists have reverted to old habits. While some were initially critical, they are now back to parroting official statements, asking few questions, and providing little real scrutiny.


Media Claims 5 Gaza Journalists Were Killed By Israel. They Were Terrorists
Media outlets around the world reported Thursday that five Palestinian journalists were killed in Gaza by Israel, even though those “journalists” were members of a terrorist group.

The BBC’s headline declared, “Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli strike targeting armed group,” and began its coverage by citing Quds TV, a Palestinian TV channel that is affiliated with the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The PIJ is described by the BBC merely as “an armed group that took part in 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.” The BBC also, early in its report, mentioned that the wife of one of the “journalists” was about to give birth. The outlet waited until the fourth paragraph to mention that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had targeted “Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists” and that steps were taken to avoid harming civilians.”

But immediately after, the BBC included a comment from the Committee to Protect Journalists saying it was “devastated by the reports” and that “Journalists are civilians and must always be protected.” The outlet spends most of the article claiming that Israel has been killing “journalists” in Gaza.

The five men killed were Ibrahim Jamal Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali, Faisal Abdallah Muhammad Abu Qamsan, Mohammed Ayad Khamis al-Ladaa, Ayman Nihad Abd Alrahman Jadi, and Fadi Ihab Muhammad Ramadan Hassouna, all of whom the IDF labels as PIJ operatives.

Other outlets also followed the framing that the men were merely journalists. The Associated Press, for example, cited the notoriously unreliable Gaza Health Ministry as its source that the men were journalists. Only after claiming they were journalists did the AP acknowledge that the Israeli military says the men were posing as journalists and were actually Islamic militants.

CNN also used this framing, citing Gaza authorities.

Eitan Fischberger, a former staff sergeant for the IDF, posted a thread on X identifying each of the men as terrorists, including their public postings, which include pro-terrorism statements.
Inside the UN: Corruption and Hate Exposed | Hillel Neuer Reveals the Shocking Truth
🎙️In this episode, I sit down with Hillel Neuer—an international lawyer, diplomat, writer, and activist, best known as the Executive Director of UN Watch, a prominent human rights NGO based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Hillel sheds light on the absurdities and contradictions within the workings of the United Nations and its agencies, particularly when it comes to social justice and international events. The troubling picture he paints raises critical questions: Can we still trust the UN as a neutral force for good? Did UN employees participate in the Oct. 7th attack? What’s really going on with the ICC and ICJ trials targeting Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? Who was shockingly elected to lead the UN Women’s Rights Committee? And most importantly, what can YOU do about all of this?

Hillel’s insights and tireless work are a beacon of truth in today’s turbulent world. His unique perspective on the UN and international justice provides clarity and actionable knowledge on some of the most pressing global issues of our time. v This is an eye-opening conversation you don’t want to miss. Tune in to gain a fresh and truthful perspective on the state of international justice and the role of the UN today!

00:00 – UNRWA is No Longer the Solution, But the Problem!
05:35 – Stop Funding to UNRWA - Really?
18:04 – “They Kidnapped My Son!”
22:23 – Why the Obsession with Israel?
35:20 – ICC and ICJ Double Standards
41:50 – Is There Hope for the UN?
48:50 – Why Was UN Watch Founded?
51:30 – The Ridiculousness of the UN




Ireland’s anti-Israel actions will not go unanswered - opinion
Relations between Israel and Ireland have been marked over the years by ongoing tension, harsh criticism from Dublin, and a growing sense of alienation. This has culminated in the recent decision of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to shutter Israel’s embassy in Ireland – a rare move that underscores a deep crisis in the diplomatic relations between the two countries.

This decision does not stand in a vacuum. It stems from Ireland’s longstanding antisemitic and anti-Israel policies, which include legislation supporting the Palestinian struggle and harsh statements against Israel by Irish politicians.

The roots of Ireland’s anti-Jewish policies can be traced back to World War II. After Hitler’s suicide, when Europe breathed a sigh of relief, Irish prime minister Éamon de Valera snuck away under cover of night to console the Nazi ambassador over Hitler’s death. De Valera also strongly objected to the death sentences imposed on Nazis during the Nuremberg Trials.

Furthermore, Palestinian terrorist organizations trained members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in refugee camps in Lebanon. Ireland’s ideology aligns closely with the national and ideological narrative of the Palestinians. Dublin views the Palestinian struggle for “liberation” as similar to Ireland’s historical fight for independence from British rule.

This solidarity with the Palestinians has become a central driver of Ireland’s policies toward Israel, leading to the adoption of one-sided stances against the Jewish state.

Ireland sees itself as a “justice warrior” and a leader in the field of human rights. It uses this position to support the Palestinians while harshly criticizing Israel. This is evident in parliamentary resolutions, speeches on the international stage, and specific legislation targeting Israel.

In 2018, the Irish parliament advanced legislation banning the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank). This law was seen as a precedent in Europe, aimed at pressuring Israel over what was described as the “illegal occupation.” Though the law was not implemented, due to opposition from the European Union, its advancement infuriated Jerusalem and was perceived as biased.

Ireland has also stood out as a leading supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks to economically and diplomatically isolate Israel. BDS has received public support from Irish politicians, parliamentarians, and government ministers who openly endorse its objectives.

During military operations such as Operation Protective Edge and Guardian of the Walls, Ireland was one of the first European countries to accuse Israel of war crimes. Irish parliamentarians’ accusation against Israel of operating an “apartheid regime” and calls for imposing sanctions on Israel gained wide support from within the Irish government and with the public.


UN adviser scolds follower for saying all Jews, not just Israelis, are cannibals
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, has been condemned for antisemitic rhetoric by the U.S., French and German governments, among others. She went after the Jewish state again on Christmas Eve, calling the Israeli army “rotten to the core.”

A follower of Albanese responded that Jewish “cruelty is without regard,” and “we have all heard the declarations of Pope Francis, ‘What Israel is doing in Gaza is not a war. It is cruelty.’”

“Jews are capable of eating human flesh,” the follower added, echoing a longstanding antisemitic blood libel.

Albanese responded by chiding the follower, but only in part.

“Do not attribute what Israel does to all Jewish people, please,” she wrote. “Many, including Holocaust survivors, continue to rise against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.”

Albanese was appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council and serves under the auspices of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. President-elect Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Human Rights Council during his first term in office, due in large part to the council’s anti-Israel bias.

U.S. President Joe Biden brought the country back into the council’s fold as an observer member in 2021, despite little difference in the council’s posture towards Israel.


US THAAD air defense system intercepted Friday morning Houthi missile
The US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air defense system intercepted the Friday morning Houthi missile from Yemen along with the Israeli Arrow system.

The THAAD system was deployed to Israel in October along with its 100-member crew as part of preparations for another Iranian attack. This interception against the Houthi missile was the first time the THAAD defense system was used in Israel.

In a video published to social media, one of the American soldiers can be heard saying, "I've waited 18 years for this."

Lockheed Martin developed THAAD, and its primary purpose is to intercept and destroy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in the final stages of their flight. It is comparable to Israel's Arrow 3 defense system.

It operates using a "hit-to-kill" method without a warhead, relying on the kinetic energy generated by the collision with the threatening missile. The system's radar can detect and track missiles and aircraft at distances of over 2,000 kilometers, enabling the interception of missiles within a range of up to 200 kilometers and at altitudes of up to 150 kilometers.

The Houthi missile that was fired in the early hours of Friday morning was intercepted before it crossed Israeli territory.

Israel struck multiple Houthi-linked targets in Yemen on Thursday, including Sanaa International Airport.


UN calls Israeli attacks on Houthi pirates ‘alarming’
The Israeli Air Force conducted strikes on Yemen’s western coast and deep inside the country on Thursday evening, including Sanaa International Airport in the Houthi-controlled capital, the IDF said.

Despite the grave threat that the Houthis pose to international shipping and the fact that the jihadi group began its unprovoked missile campaign against Israel shortly after October 7, the UN condemned the strikes.

The spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the attacks on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport, the Red Sea ports and power stations were “alarming.”

The UN's concerns were reiterated by Guterres’ spokesperson, who claimed that the attacks in Yemen could lead to an even greater regional conflict.

The situation prompted the United Nations Security Council to call for an emergency session on Monday to discuss the rising tensions.

Israel’s targets included the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, in addition to terror infrastructure in the Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports.

“These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. This is a further example of the Houthis’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes,” the IDF said.

“The Houthi terrorist regime is a central part of the Iranian axis of terror, and their attacks on international shipping vessels and routes continue to destabilise the region and the wider world. … The IDF will not hesitate to operate at any distance against any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens,” added the statement.

The strikes came during a televised address by Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

“Israel’s deterrence has failed against our country,” al-Houthi reportedly said. “The Israeli enemy knows that our operations continue, they are effective and influential. Our missiles, which the [Israeli] defence systems did not succeed in intercepting, have caused great frustration in Israel and the US,” he added.

Speaking from the Israeli Air Force headquarters after the strike on the second night of Chanukah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is engaged in a modern-day Maccabean struggle.

“We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil,” Netanyahu said. “We will persist in this until we complete the task.”


IDF begins operation against Hamas in area of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya, Gaza
IDF soldiers from the 401st Brigade, under the command of the 162nd Division, began operations in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya, Gaza, the military confirmed on Friday morning.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital has served as a Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza, the IDF claimed, noting Hamas’s presence in the institution since the onset of the war.

As part of the IDF’s operations, the military announced troops were conducting targeted operations in the area. The IDF stressed these operations were being carried out with significant efforts being made to mitigate potential harm to patients, medical staff and civilians.

These efforts included coordinating the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), local health officials and international bodies to evacuate civilians from the hospital. Patients were evacuated by ambulance to other hospitals through a secured and defined route, the military said.

In addition, Munir Al-Bursh, director of the Hamas-run health ministry, confirmed that the IDF gave notice to the hospital on Monday night to evacuate hours before troops entered the facility on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said they resisted a new order by the army to evacuate hundreds of patients, their companions and staff, adding that the hospital has been under constant Israeli fire that damaged generators, oxygen pumps and parts of the building.

Separately, the IDF acknowledged in a later statement that “a small fire [broke out] in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control.” In response to “claims that the fire was caused by IDF gunfire,” the military said it was “currently unaware of any such incident.”

At a news conference Friday, the Hamas-run Gaza’s Health Ministry said fires inside the hospital are still raging, according to the Washington Post.


IDF finds RPGs, explosives in pharmacy in Lebanon
During operational activity in southern Lebanon, the IDF discovered weapons inside a pharmacy and a truck containing 40 rocket launchers, the Israeli military announced on Friday.

Soldiers discovered military equipment and weapons depots in civilian buildings, including the pharmacy, which housed numerous explosive devices, RPGs, and AK47 rifles.

Additionally, soldiers located "Burkan" missiles, mortars, and other ready-to-use weapons.

The troops located Hezbollah infrastructure in the Naqoura area, the westernmost village in southern Lebanon, which was used to carry out terror attacks. IDF soldiers search a civilian building used as a weapons storage facility in western Lebanon, December 27 , 2024 (credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit).

The 226th Brigade, under the command of the 146th Division, is currently operating in the area, in accordance with the terms of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.


Call me Back Podcast - with Dan Senor: The Hostage Negotiations - with Nadav Eyal
Over the past week, we have seen headline after headline, indicating that Israel and Hamas appear to be closer than ever to a ceasefire and hostage deal.

According to reports, the agreement would take place in phases, and would include a halt in fighting, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and a surge in aid to Gaza. The final phase would include the release of any remaining hostages, an end to the war and talks on reconstruction.

How legitimate are these reports - is this for real? What political conditions, both in Israel and among key players in these negotiations, could allow for such a deal to be finalized?

To help us understand, and to briefly discuss the recent Houthi attacks, Nadav Eyal returns to the podcast.

Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediiot. He is one of Israel’s leading journalists. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
04:54 Who are the key players in these negotiations?
07:54 Negotiating without Sinwar
20:11 Will Hamas be in charge of Gaza after the war?
23:24 What has changed since the last negotiations?
33:50 Impact of Trump's reelection
42:40 Recent Houthi attacks


spiked: Israel, Syria and a world unravelling
Francis Foster, Inaya Folarin Iman, Tom Slater and Fraser Myers discuss Israel’s stunning success against Hamas and Hezbollah, the fall of Assad’s tinpot tyranny, and the tragedy of Ukraine.


The Israel Guys: 🚨Israel Strikes Back HARD on the Houthis: 100 Jets, Mossad Secrets & More! 🇮🇱💥
In a stunning move, Israel delivered a crushing blow to the Houthi rebel group after they launched yet another ballistic missile at Israel on Christmas Day. The Houthi leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, bragged on live TV about Israel's "failed deterrence," but little did he know, Israel's response was coming fast and furious.

💣 Over 100 Israeli jets swooped down on Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen, including military infrastructure, power stations, and ports—crippling their ability to wage war against Israel. Watch exclusive footage and learn about the strategic strikes that sent shockwaves through the Houthi regime.




Protesters disrupt Chabad menorah-lighting with Huckabee in Arkansas
Mike Huckabee, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, lit a large menorah during a Chabad ceremony in Little Rock, Ark., on the first night of Chanukah, as protesters disrupted the religious ceremony.

“The traditional tune of ‘Maoz Tzur’ drowning out antisemitic protesters,” Chabad stated.

“This blatant antisemitism is unacceptable,” StopAntisemitism stated. “Those responsible should be charged with intimidation and harassment.”




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

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