New study: Hiring managers discriminate against Jewish and Israeli sounding names

The ADL commissioned a study comparing how hiring managers for an administrative assistant position  respond to essentially identical cover letters and resumes whose only differences were indications that the applicants were Israeli or Jewish.

They chose administrative assistant jobs since those positions generally meet the public, so hiring managers would want to ensure that the people like the person in front.

While the qualifications were the same, "Kristen Miller" received more responses than "Rebecca Cohen" and "Lia Avraham." Here were the only differences in their resumes:

The report says: 

Across specifications, we see that both the Jewish and the Israeli Treatments experienced a decrease in positive response rates relative to the control. These differences are statistically significant across all three models. ....This means that, to receive the same number of positive responses as the Western European Treatment, the Jewish Treatment must send 24.2% more inquiries, and the Israeli Treatment must send 39.0% more inquiries.

Their city by city analysis had samples sizes too small to be statistically significant - except for one city, Seattle:

The only market in which the difference in response rates is statistically significant at the city level is in Seattle, where the Israeli Treatment is 16.3 percentage points less likely to receive a positive response relative to the control (23.1% vs 6.8%),  

  This mirrors a survey by Resumebuilders in 2022 that I did  further analysis on. 

Antisemitism is real and measurable in the United States, and it is getting worse. 

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

 

Turks supporting aliyah - so it will be easier to exterminate the Jews in one place

Turkey's Yeni Safak news site .(and others)  has a story about how Jews in Europe are complaining about antisemitism, which is of course a lie:

In Europe, protests continue against the massacres carried out by the Israeli genocidal army in Gaza. Jews accuse those protesting Israel's massacres of anti-Semitism, as is classic, and claim that the countries they are in are unsafe.

While Zionist Israel is massacring defenseless civilians in Gaza with its brutal attacks, the conscientious people of the world are filling the squares to protest Israel. The actions in support of Palestine that took place in many cities in Europe have caused panic among the Jews living in the region. Jews who are not ashamed of being citizens of a genocidal regime have accused the countries they are in of anti-Semitism. 

Notice the antisemitic trope that all Jews are citizens of Israel.

The story goes on to say say that Jews bring trouble wherever they go and they were the aggressors in Amsterdam but cry as if they are victims.

Not only that but many Jews in Europe are considering moving to Israel, 

The lengths Jews go to to appear to be victims!

There is a consistent pattern in the comments of Jew-hatred that didn't even pretend to be merely anti-Zionist:

May it be worse for them. May they never see peace..

May God make them miserable, amen

May God make everything beautiful, and we will see the days when the whole world will be your enemy, God willing. Don't find a hole to hide in

Let them go to the ground

Beyond that, we see comments welcoming the idea of European Jews fleeing to Israel - because that makes genocide easier:

Let them go, that's where they will die en masse.

God is gathering them all in one place. Our job will be easy.

This echoes a speech by Hassan Nasrallah in 2002 where he also said that Allah is putting sll the Jews in one place to make it easier to destroy them.

Their aim has always been extermination of Jews. In Turkey, at least they are being honest.  

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

 

BDS scrambling to find reasons to keep boycotting Sabra Hummus after it is bought completely by PepsiCo

The BDS group CJPME, "Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East," has a fact sheet on why they boycott Sabra Hummus - because it is half owned by an Israeli company Strauss which supports the IDF. 

At the end, they write:

The boycott of Sabra will end once it is no longer owned by the Strauss Group, and thus is no longer complicit in the oppression, violence and war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians.

Recently, PepsiCo announced that they were buying out Strauss' half of Sabra. The Strauss Group decided to sell Sabra to its partner after losing market share as fallout from the discovery of salmonella in its hummus manufactured in Virginia in 2021, as retailers decided to diversify their hummus suppliers. 

BDS, predictably, is claiming that their campaign worked and they are the reason Strauss is selling Sabra, although that doesn't quite explain why PepsiCo would want to buy it for $244 million. 

Nevertheless, this means that Sabra no longer has anything to do with Israel. It is not manufactured there and no Israeli will profit from it when the sale is complete. So the boycott is over, right?

Ha! BDS is not based on little things like facts. They loved boycotting Sabra brand dips, whichhelped them recruit antisemites, and they aren't going to stop now. They just need to dig up new reasons for the boycott.

The BDS Reddit group started off vague about the reasons: "PepsiCo now owns 100% of Sabra. That means every tub of hummus on shelves still funds oppression."

How, exactly? 

it took ten days, but yesterday, BDS tweeted their new excuses for continuing the boycott. Sabra is still guilty of "blatant cultural appropriation of Arab foods" and Pepsi owns Sodastream, which BDS falsely claims is stealing Bedouin land. 

Of course, if those reasons were valid, then BDS would be calling for the boycott of every hummus brand sold in the world that is not manufactured by Arabs. It would be calling for a general boycott of all Pepsi brands, including Aquafina water, Quaker Oats, Lay's Potato Chips and Cap'n Crunch cereal.

But there is no call by BDS to boycott other brands of hummus nor other Pepsi products (besides Sodastream.)

Right now, BDS cannot find any way that boycotting Sabra will hurt Israel in the least. They cannot find a way that boycotting Sabra will help a single person in Gaza. 

Which is as good a proof as any that BDS has nothing to do with human rights or helping Palestinians or "justice."  It has always been about inciting people to hate proud Jews and Israel. 

Because Sabra is a Hebrew word.

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

 

Survey: The Jews who are the most likely to sympathize with Hamas and swallow the "genocide" lie are the ones who are the most ignorant

In November, Mosaic United (together with Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs) published a poll of Jewish teens in English-speaking countries worldwide about their attitudes towards Israel, Hamas, the Gaza war and Jewishness. 

Two results were extraordinarily concerning. 

A huge 36% of the teens felt that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and an astonishing 32% felt sympathy for Hamas.

At first blush, it looks like Jewish teens are continuing the trend of younger people being less sympathetic to Israel.  But when you look at the details, the actual takeaway is a bit different.

The majority of those who sympathize with Hamas are 14 or 15 - 60% . By the time they reach 18, the support for Hamas plummets to 9.2%.

In other words, the teens who support Hamas are the ones who know the least. As they go through high school and learn a little more about the world, they completely turn around. You wouldn't trust a 14 or 15 year old's opinion on politics - why would anyone think they know what Hamas is?

A similar but not as dramatic transformation takes place for the "genocide" question: from 49.5% to 25.2% the older they are. To a 14-year old, "genocide" means "acting mean." 18-year olds are more likely to know what the word means and the difference between a war and extermination. 

When you look at the strength of their Jewish background  (exposure to Jewish education and camps,) you see a similarly dramatic straight line between how little Jewish education they have and how much they agree with Israel haters. Those with little Jewish background were five times more likely to say there was a genocide than those with a strong Jewish background, and ten times more likely to sympathize with Hamas.

Among Jewish teens, it is the ignorant - both Jewishly and generally - who are more likely to sound like BDSers.

The answer, as it has always been, is more and better education. The teens who had visited Israel, the teens with friends and relatives in Israel, the teens who have learned about Israel are  the ones who are more pro-Israel. 

But it is not only exposure to and education in Zionism. It is also more general exposure to Jewish education and to Jewish rituals. 

It is not hard to understand why. Those who believe that they are part of a larger people - who look at their fellow Jews as family - are going to sympathize more with their people. 

Ignorant Jewish teens who are thrown into college are generally on their own for the first time, and they gravitate to groups they can identify with. The "Jewish Voice for Peace" type groups give them the pretense of hanging with Jews while they can pretend to be revolutionary and break away from their parents, which is, after all, fun. 

Jewish parents who do not immerse their children in Judaism from birth are doing their kids a huge disservice, and they are doing their people a huge disservice. Kids need to feel that they are part of something much bigger than them, part of a people who have contributed more to the world than any other, part of a history that goes back thousands of years, part of a tradition of morality that does not easily change with the times. They cannot get that from being raised as "liberal" or as "conservative"  alone - words that have changed their meanings in living memory. 

This survey is frightening, to be sure. But it gives us the clearest path forward of any such survey I've ever seen. The Jewish community - and, especially, the American Jewish community - has got to wake up and go back to fundamentals.

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

 

12/03 Links Pt2: Amnesty’s Genocide Inversion: A Preliminary Analysis; Mother of US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel dies; The Backstory Behind the Fall of Aleppo

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Amnesty’s Genocide Inversion: A Preliminary Analysis

Israel’s Protection of Civilians
Amnesty’s premise, that Israel seeks “to bring about their [Palestinians] physical destruction,” is obviously absurd when judged against its actions in Gaza during the past 14 months. .

According to COGAT – the IDF body that facilitates aid into Gaza – by November 26, 2024, over 1.1 million tons of aid had entered the territory since the beginning of the war. In addition, Israel has constructed humanitarian corridors, imposed tactical pauses, and vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children. COGAT also established a joint task force with the UN and aid organizations to coordinate the transport and distribution of aid.

Moreover, as Amnesty acknowledges, Israel has designated “safe-zones” for the civilian population, designed to protect them and limit their exposure to the fighting.

The contention that a country ostensibly engaging in genocide would provide aid, vaccinate children and establish safe havens for the millions of people it supposedly seeks to destroy is inherently nonsensical.

Systematic Methodological Failures
Sham methodology is a hallmark of Amnesty publications on the conflict. When describing specific Israeli operations, Amnesty informs readers that it had “found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”

It is unclear – absent communication with Hamas members or access to Israeli intelligence – on what basis the NGO has made such a sweeping claim, particularly given the Hamas modus operandi of locating all of its members and materiel in civilian settings.

According to international law, assessment of the legality of a military strike requires knowledge of the specific target, the anticipated collateral damage, if any, and of the military advantage that the attacker believed it would gain – knowledge that Amnesty clearly does not have. Additionally, Amnesty does not have access to the requisite information to determine if a particular individual was a civilian or a member of Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Moreover, contrary to what is implied in Amnesty’s statement, the fact that civilians were harmed in an attack – in cases in which the casualties were in fact civilians – does not ipso facto make it illegal under international law. Every loss of civilian life is tragic, but not every tragedy is a war crime.

In another blatant methodological failure evident in the press release, Amnesty apparently parrots the Gaza Ministry of Health in citing 42,000 as the number of Palestinian fatalities as of October 7th, 2024. As has been repeatedly documented, these claims are not credible, and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. In contrast, when discussing Israeli casualty data, Amnesty makes a point of distinguishing civilians from soldiers.

The press release also includes some examples – none of which can be independently verified – that ostensibly support the accusation of genocide. For example, Amnesty claims to have “documented the genocidal acts” in 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024. “Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.” As noted, Amnesty had no independently verifiable evidence of anything taking place in Gaza and could not possibly document any of the claims – this and similar accusations are entirely without substantive merit and designed to reinforce the propaganda claim.

Propaganda to Promote ICC Lawfare and Arms Embargoes
Amnesty’s report, rather than serious research, must be viewed in the context of the ICC and the NGO arms embargo cases in which Amnesty is playing a central role, used as a PR tool to bolster these campaigns. According to Amnesty, states must “arrest[ing] and hand[ing] over those wanted by the ICC,” referring to Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister. Additionally, the NGO asserts that “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.”

It is clear that in promoting genocide inversion, Amnesty – which has devoted many years to the delegitimization of Israel regardless of policies – is simply continuing its decades long lawfare campaign.

As the six former US prosecutors of Nazi war crimes wrote, “The core truth is that the genocidal frenzy of killing, rape, torture, kidnapping, and mutilation that Hamas launched in Israel on Oct. 7 were crimes of monstrous evil …. People of goodwill here and abroad should reject propaganda that conflates genocide with the heartbreak of casualties in defensive war and that dishonestly portrays Israel — which is combatting genocide no less heroically and necessarily than did our fighting forces in Europe in the 1940s — as a perpetrator of that infamous crime.”

It's a Fallacy that Ideas Can't Be Defeated

It is a fallacy that ideas can't be defeated. Received wisdom has it that unless root causes are addressed, no conflict can be resolved. The same sophistry asserts that Israel can't conquer Hamas even if it annihilates the internationally designated terrorist entity militarily. Of course it can.

Hizbullah has just come crawling to a ceasefire agreement with Israel. Its ballyhooed status as the most powerful non-state actor in the world has been stripped away in the aftermath of Israel's targeted campaign against its leadership, followed by a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon.

In its 13-month war with Israel, in solidarity with Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocity, Hizbullah has been defeated. The regional alliance of militias, funded and buttressed by Iran, has been proven a chimera. Iran can't come to the rescue of any of its proxy states because Iran itself has been having a very bad year. Its barrage of 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Oct. 1 was ineffective and humbling, undermining the credibility of Iran's axis of resistance, and upending regional dynamics.

Some are lauding the ceasefire as a rare win for diplomacy in the Middle East. But it would never have happened if Hizbullah hadn't been shaken to its combat boots, just as every overwhelmed and fractured warmongering side has only come to the negotiating table when its very existence came face-to-face with extinction.

All of this leaves Hamas isolated and clinging by its fingernails, with 18,000 of its fighters dead, and much of its vast tunnel network destroyed, Gaza reduced to a lawless, chaotic mess, with tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and Yahya Sinwar burning in hell. That war grinds on, Hamas's violent ideology still intact, but its sphere of potency is shrunken and its raison d'etre delegitimized.

Brendan O’Neill: There's Nothing Radical about Flying the Palestinian Flag

To the fashionably Israelophobic of the Euro activist classes, waving the Palestinian flag might just be a convenient way to prove your moral worth to your fellow intimates in right-thinking society. But to Israelis, the flag can prick awful memories of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

There are just too many of these flags now, right? They're everywhere. Take a walk round London and you'll see more Palestinian flags than Union flags. You might even see more Palestinian flags than Pride flags. The middle classes drape them over their shoulders when they bravely take a break from Saturday brunching to march against the Jewish State. They flutter from lampposts. There isn't a campus in the land that is not adorned with them.

There are TikTok videos advising the young on how to match a red beret with a green blouse and black trousers so that everyone you encounter will know what an amazingly moral person you are. Don't get me started on the keffiyeh, the uniform of the self-righteous, the sartorial signifier of political rectitude.

Some scoff at the idea that Jews might feel put out by the flag under which a thousand of their co-religionists were butchered last year. I think these ubiquitous flags have far more to do with us than with Palestinians. Not content with commandeering the keffiyeh and making it the hot must-have of polite society, now the Palestinian flag is a thing the city elites might hang from their windows so their neighbors will know they're Good. It's about a kind of cultural supremacism.

The Palestinian flag's omnipresence feels oppressive to those of us who've long since tired of our towns and cities being turned into soapboxes by an activist class that loves nothing more than impressing its moral dominion over us little folk. There's an ironically conformist bent to these ostentatious displays of the Palestinian colors.

There's nothing radical about flying the Palestinian flag. If you want to be radical, wave the Israeli flag. People will splutter and rage and manhandle you. They will grab your flag and run off with it. They will destroy it like some Dark Ages hysteric burying a blasphemous icon.

12/03 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: A 60 Day Ceasefire; The ICC Throws Itself a Giant Pity Party; Gulf countries talk like Iran, act like Israel; Biden’s Radical Reading

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: A 60 Day Ceasefire

Let’s be clear about why Israel signed onto this ceasefire. There are three reasons:
1. Joe Biden has been slow-walking aid to Israel. That slow-walking has gotten Israeli troops killed. The ceasefire is designed to allow Biden to leave and Israel to be re-armed by the incoming Trump administration.

2. Joe Biden has been threatening Israel with U.N. abstentions on his way out the door if Israel does not end action in Lebanon; furthermore, Israel is attempting to broker a deal with France to end France’s support for the antisemitic International Criminal Court targeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

3. Even under these conditions, Israel has an interest in taking Hezbollah off the board as a chess piece with regard to Hamas. Hamas has attempted throughout the Oct. 7 war to rope in other powers to save it. Hezbollah openly pledged that it would not stop its war until Hamas was preserved. Hezbollah failed. Its leadership is dead, its weapons caches largely destroyed, all at an insanely low military cost to Israel. Now Hezbollah is no longer there to split Israel’s attention and prolong Hamas’s resistance. What does this mean? It means that Israel sees this ceasefire as just that: a ceasefire until Joe Biden is gone. It is a 60 day ceasefire. Joe Biden leaves office in 54 days. That is not a coincidence.

If Hezbollah abides by the terms, so much the better: Israelis go home and live in security in the north. But Israel is working under the likely correct assumption that Hezbollah will not abide by the terms, and that the agreement as interpreted by the Trump administration will actually allow Israel freedom of action (a freedom of action denied by Biden under his spurious and ugly interpretation of the same agreement).

How can you tell all this is true? Netanyahu in his statement openly said that if the agreement is violated, they will go back in, and that the goal in the north is the return of the residents—and he hasn’t called for them to go home yet. The durability of the ceasefire is completely dependent on Hezbollah and Lebanon abiding by it. If they don’t, and Jan. 20 comes, Israel will do what it must.

Seth Mandel: The ICC Throws Itself a Giant Pity Party

The degree to which the ICC has shredded its own credibility cannot be exaggerated. The current head prosecutor is Karim Khan. In 2013, Khan wrote a blistering report about the ICC’s lawless, corrupt assault on the “fundamental rights” of the accused as laid out in the treaty that established the ICC. The clear point was: The ICC is in noncompliance with its own founding document. That Khan now spearheads the corrupt process he once decried and is leading the court into its biggest crisis of legitimacy is poetic, and arguably reinforces the point.

Meanwhile, the solution to this problem is hidden in one of the supposed pieces of evidence that the court is in crisis. Per the AP: “The court, which has long faced accusations of ineffectiveness, will have no trials pending after two conclude in December. While it has issued a number of arrest warrants in recent months, many high-profile suspects remain at large.”

Is it a bad thing that the ICC will have no trials pending after December? This is a good example of the upside-down incentives of a permanent international court: If it isn’t putting anyone on trial at the moment, it must be failing in its responsibilities. And so it has doled out a few extra arrest warrants in the hope that someone—the court doesn’t really care who—gets hauled in to the Hague so salaries can be justified. If the ICC cannot adjudicate any of the current war-crimes accusations, then it’ll just have to invent some.

What did the world do before the advent of the permanent court in 2002? It assembled courts to adjudicate specific cases of crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials predated the ICC by a half-century. In 1994, a comprehensive international court was established to adjudicate the Rwandan genocide. The same is true regarding the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

The ICC’s need to justify its budget should not be Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant’s problem.

Cleveland State international-law professor Milena Sterio criticized the attacks on the ICC and the broad opposition to its recent arrest warrants as impediments to the court’s work.

“It becomes very difficult to justify the court’s existence,” Sterio told the AP. Indeed it does, professor.

FDD: Gulf countries talk like Iran, act like Israel

Israel might read the GCC statement and take offense, seeing that Saudi Arabia remains adamant on an impossible two-state solution as its only pathway to normalization with Israel.

Iran might also read the statement as Saudi Arabia staying away from Israel, and therefore remaining defensively more vulnerable to Tehran and its regional proxies.

But a closer look suggests that while the GCC rhetoric sounds pro-Iran, Gulf policies are against the Islamic Republic. And while the GCC bashes Israel, Gulf policies align perfectly with everything that Israel has been pushing for – both militarily and diplomatically.

Perhaps it is time for Gulf countries to reconcile what they say with what they want to see happen.

Israel has been trying to change the region to serve its interests, and these happen to overlap with Gulf interests. It’s only fair that the Gulf give Israel a hand, not only implicitly and behind closed doors, but also openly. Should the GCC do that, the momentum resulting from its shift in rhetoric would go much further than tying money rewards to what they want to see happen.

IDF troops kill seven Hamas terrorists who took part in Oct. 7 massacre

Seven Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel’s northwestern Negev were killed in Israel Defense Forces operations in central Gaza in recent weeks, the military announced on Tuesday.

Troops from the 99th Division’s 990th Reserve Artillery Regiment eliminated many terrorists, including the Oct. 7 perpetrators, whom the army named as Abd al-Razzeq, Marzouk al-Hur, Maaz al-Hur, Abd Abu-Awad Yusri, Omar Abu-Abdallah, Ahmed Zahid and Maad Abu-Garboua.

On that day, thousands of Hamas terrorists, followed by Gazan civilians stormed across the border, murdering 1,200 people, wounding thousands more and kidnapping 251 to Gaza, where 101 are still being held, including 97 from Oct. 7. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer reportedly told U.S. President-elect Donald Trump last month that 60 are believed to be alive.

Additionally, the IDF said that troops from the 179th and 551st brigades conducted several targeted raids in the Central Gaza Strip Corridor, dismantling Hamas military sites, including observation posts and sniper positions.

Latest EoZ cartoons (plus, my cartoon book is coming!)

I am almost ready to announce my cartoon book: "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, here are some cartoons I hadn't yet posted on the blog.

(Amsterdam)

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

 

What can Trump realistically do to pressure Hamas to release hostages?

President-elect Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform:

Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!

This is very nice, and it has helped the families of the hostages feel better. 

But what, in reality, can Trump do to help gain the release of the hostages?

The open-ended threat is itself a useful tool - if it gets taken seriously by Hamas. Together with other factors like Israel successfully decoupling Hezbollah from Gaza, it could help prompt Hamas to be more flexible in hostage negotiations. 

This is all assuming that Hamas can still operate as a top-down organization that actually controls the whereabouts and treatment of the hostages, which is not at all obvious.

But if Trump enters office without a hostage release, and doesn't do anything major, it makes America look weak. It would be no different from Obama's "red line" on chemical weapons in Syria or Biden's "Don't!" to Iran on attacking Israel. 

If Hamas ignores the threat, what can the US do that Israel has not done? 

Trump isn't going  to bomb Gaza. There are already sanctions against Hamas leaders. 

The US can stop pressuring Israel on humanitarian aid which is going to strengthen Hamas. That's something, but not much.

The most effective thing that could be done is also unlikely. Trump could pressure Qatar to stop propping up and supporting Hamas. But, as Jewish Insider notes, "[W]hen it comes to Qatar, the president-elect has been friendly, including hosting the Qatari emir in Florida in September and appointing former Qatar lobbyist Pam Bondi as attorney general and Steve Witkoff, who has financial ties to Doha, as Middle East envoy."

Trump can certainly strengthen sanctions on Iran to what they were before the Biden administration, but he would have done that anyway. 

There may be some ways to pressure Turkey to pressure Hamas. But these are all diplomatic efforts, not "all hell to pay." 

Trump may be hoping that his threat will prompt Hamas to release at least the American hostages the way Iran released the US Embassy hostages as soon as Ronald Reagan took office out of a vague fear that something bad could happen to the hostage takers. But this is a risky game. 

While Trump's actions are always a wildcard, calling his bluff doesn't seem to leave many viable options. This could weaken his effectiveness throughout his term.

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

 

The pro-ICC "complementarity" argument can be used to get the ICC to accuse Israel of vaporizing Gazans as well

On November 24, the Washington Post published an editorial against the ICC decision to issue arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. It briefly discussed the "complementarity" issue:

Israel needs to be held accountable for its military conduct in Gaza. After the conflict’s end — which is long overdue — there will no doubt be Israeli judicial, parliamentary and military commissions of inquiry. Israel’s vibrant, independent media will do its own investigations. Some Israeli reserve soldiers have already been arrested over accusations of abuse against Palestinian detainees. More investigations will follow. The ICC is supposed to become involved when countries have no means or mechanisms to investigate themselves. That is not the case in Israel.

A "legal scholar" from Egypt named Abdelghany Sayed, currently a graduate student in England, responds in Al Jazeera.

Complementarity in no way means that the elected officials and independent judiciary of a democratic state shall enjoy immunity from ICC prosecution. Instead, it means that Israel needs to show it has active investigations. The fact of Israel’s inactivity in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in and of itself already means that the complementarity assessment has been exhausted and the court may proceed.

And even if it were active, Israel would need to demonstrate the willingness and ability to genuinely prosecute the perpetrator and conduct. The law of the ICC allows it to intervene if the “investigative activities undertaken by the domestic authorities are not tangible, concrete and progressive”, as laid out in a decision in the case of Ivory Coast first lady Simone Gbagbo, accused of crimes against humanity.

First of all, the war is still going on. To say that Israel must mount an investigation on its top leaders during a war - and its failure to do so is evidence that it has no ability to independently investigate any crimes - is insane.

But the absurdity of the argument doesn't end there. 

Before Israel can investigate itself for genocide, there needs to be a shred of evidence for genocide. There isn't any. Genocide requires intent, and every sane Israeli from the right to the left knows that there is no intent to wipe out the people of Gaza. Every piece of evidence proffered by Israel's enemies for genocide has been handily refuted by actual facts that show that the supposedly genocidal statements are twisted and Israel's military actions are consistent with what every army would do under the same circumstances

According to people like Sayed, the "genocide" charge requires no solid evidence. Just the repetition of the charge by antisemites is enough to make it respectable enough to be investigated. And, they say, if Israel doesn't mount an investigation around every bogus accusation, that is proof that it is unwilling to investigate itself and therefore the ICC must step in.

Calls for investigation of bogus charges against Israel is a standard playbook by antisemites. In 2010, the "Palestine Telegraph" made up a story that Israeli teams helping earthquake victims in Haiti were stealing their organs, and former British MPO Jenny Tonge called for an independent investigation - for Israel's own good, of course. “To prevent allegations such as these — which have already been posted on YouTube — going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti,” she said.

Last week, Hamas called for an independent investigation into the absurd lie that Israel is using illegal weapons to "vaporize" Gazans.

Israel haters are putting together their "evidence" of the fictional vaporization weapon. Their proofs are just as bogus as the "genocide" charge, but by stringing together previously reported lies and half-truths, they are trying to make a plausible case. An obscure Indian site called "Defense Mirror" does it this way:

* The head of Gaza's Health Ministry accuses Israel of using weapons that vaporize bodies.

* The EuroMed Monitor NGO made the same accusation in May, suggesting Israel might be using thermobaric weapons.

* Antony Loewenstein wrote a book that claims that Israel uses experimental weapons in Gaza in order to be able to market them worldwide.

Put them together, and antisemites have all the proof they need!

The bogus evidence for this mythical weapon was bolstered by Electronic Intifada in September:

Did Israel kill my friend Bashar Abed al-Wahad along with his family by using banned thermal weapons?

I learned that when a civil defense crew came to find the bodies left under the rubble of the house they shared in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood which was bombed in August, they didn’t find any human remains.

This suggests Israel might have used special munitions – like thermobaric bombs – that can vaporize human bodies.

Only one problem. The bodies of the family were recovered and transferred to the Baptist Hospital. They weren't "vaporized."  The Gaza writer lied to create this story, which was reproduced numerous times on social media. Now it is part of the canon that Israel uses vaporizing weapons.

(By the way, there are still body remains even with the most powerful thermobaric weapons. Outside of nuclear bombs, I cannot find any weapons that "vaporize" bodies.)

In other words, anyone can make up a lie, whether it is "genocide" or "vaporizing weapons," and given enough time to dig up or manufacture evidence, make a case that it is worthy of "investigation." And if Israel refuses to mount such an investigation - because it knows it is not engaged in genocide nor in manufacturing vaporizing ray guns - that is considered evidence that it is covering up its crimes.

Calls for "independent investigations" is a means to make a lie sound plausible. In genocide case, the ICC willingly went along.  

The playbook of the "vaporizing" case is the exact same thing. Falsely accuse Israel, support it with lies, and then use the Big Lie technique: let the Israel haters repeat it until people believe it.  Israel's denials are just more evidence of its "truth." 

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

 

The State Department says it wants Hamas terrorists who attacked Americans extradited to the US. Except for Ahlam Tamimi, Sbarro massacre murderer.

On November 18, at the daily State Department briefing,  spokesperson Matthew Miller said:

What I would say on behalf of the United States is that we don’t believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organization should be living comfortably anywhere, and that certainly includes in a major city of one of our key allies and partners.  Remember that Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that has murdered a number of Americans, continues to hold to this day seven American citizens hostage, and of course that’s not even to speak of the citizens of other countries that it has murdered and that it has held hostage.

So to the extent that members of Hamas are in Türkiye or in any country, look, a number of these individuals are under U.S. indictment, have been under U.S. indictment for some time, and we believe that they should be turned over to the United States.

As soon as I read that, I tweeted:

 Has the @StateDept told this to Jordan regarding Ahlam Tamimi?

After all, it is the exact same situation. A Hamas terrorist, who is under US indictment, is living comfortably under a US ally, Jordan, which is actively protecting her.

In 2017, the US Justice Department announced:

A criminal complaint was unsealed today charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, also known as “Khalti” and “Halati,” a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the U.S., resulting in death. The charge is related to the defendant’s participation in an Aug. 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed today was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. The criminal charge had been under seal since July 15, 2013.

Maybe Matt Lee of the AP read my tweet, because the very next day, he asked Miller:

MATT LEE: If it is, in fact, true that you press countries to return or to extradite people indicted in U.S. courts, what about the woman in the Sbarro bombing in Israel years ago who’s been living free in Jordan now? There was long talk of her – of efforts to get her extradited, and nothing has ever come of them. So why should these Hamas guys worry if you’re just going to —

MR MILLER: Matt, I’m going to admit you’re speaking to a case that predates my tenure, that I have a limited, at best, factual understanding of it, so I shouldn’t speak to it. But when it comes to these terrorists who are members and leadership of a group who continue to hold Americans hostage, we do think it’s appropriate that they face justice.  

Funny. Because this is not the first time Lee asked Miller about Tamimi. And not the first time Miller deflected the question.

February 13, 2024:

Today Secretary Blinken hosted King Abdullah. What is the State Department doing to get Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a terrorist wanted by the U.S. for a bombing that killed two Americans in 2001?

MR MILLER: So as it pertains to your first question, I’m going to defer comment to the Department of Justice, as we always do when it pertains to matters of extradition.

February 14, 2024:

Following up on a question I asked yesterday regarding Ahlam Tamimi, who’s a terrorist wanted by the United States, did Secretary Blinken bring up that case in his meeting yesterday with King Abdullah?

MR MILLER: I don’t have any further readouts, other than the note we issued publicly.

How can Miller say he is not familiar with the case now when he has been asked about it twice before this year? 

The annual State Department country report on terrorism Jordan said in 2022 under the Jordanian entry:

 The United States has continually emphasized to Jordanian authorities the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16 people, including Americans Malki Roth, Shoshana Greenbaum, and Chana Nachenberg.  While the United States considers the extradition treaty with Jordan to be in force as a matter of international law, the Government of Jordan’s position, citing the ruling of its highest court, is that its Constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.  The United States continued to impress upon the GoJ the importance of this case and continued to seek all viable options to bring Tamimi to justice.

(Even though the State Department is required by law to issue these reports every year by April 30, no reports were published in 2023 or 2024.)

It seems disingenuous, at the very least, for the State Department spokesperson to claim ignorance on a case that has been around for decades, especially when the State Department itself writes about the importance of extradition.

It sure sounds like the stated desire to bring a terrorist who murdered Americans to justice is not real, but only words meant to shut up the bereaved parents of the victims and the many people who want justice for Malki Roth and the other victims of Ahlam Tamimi.

Wouldn't the State Department spokesperson be familiar with a "foremost priority for the United States" as said by the Secretary of State?

We won't be quiet about this horrible miscarriage of justice.

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

 

12/02 Links Pt2: How the Incoming Administration Can Restore Jewish Civil Rights; The Oxford Union has disgraced itself; What I Learned at Stanford

From Ian:

How the Incoming Administration Can Restore Jewish Civil Rights

As the fall semester comes to an end, there has been only modest relief for Jewish college students in America. A series of congressional hearings throughout 2023 and 2024 led some university administrators to prevent demonstrators from taking over public spaces and the like, but institutions of higher learning remain rife with obsessive hatred of Israel. Jewish students feel threatened or targeted; many fear wearing outwardly Jewish symbols or mentioning trips to Israel lest they be ostracized as “Zionists.” Israeli students and faculty are especially likely to be harassed. The state of the campus has led many to despair.

But despair is not warranted. There is in fact a lot that can be done with little more than a change in approach and by making more effective arguments. While the underlying problems that led universities to become hubs for anti-Semitism are complex and longstanding—and may take generations to fix—the federal government already has the requisite legal means to crack down on the ongoing abuses of Jewish students. It can make clear to university administrations that they will be held responsible for allowing the sort of eliminationist anti-Israel climate that has persisted on too many campuses. It can punish institutions that incentivize or ignore anti-Jewish discrimination, including with the radical step of suspending federal funds. Even admissions policies that allow significant numbers of Hamas-sympathizers into universities can come under scrutiny. A range of new policies, if enacted, would strengthen these existing legal tools further. All it will take is political will—and for Jews to make explicit what it is they want, and why that political will is due.

Of course, there are several fronts on which American Jews need to fight: we ought to engage in the battle of ideas in the academy, in the media, and in the public square; we must expose and stop foreign funding of campus protest movements (often by Iran or U.S.-designated terrorist groups), not to mention the vast social and political battle to support Israel beyond the campus. But most of this essay will focus on how to use America’s robust system of civil-rights law to make colleges and universities safe for all Jews once again.

I. Avoiding the Anti-Zionism-vs.-Anti-Semitism Trap
Before delving into civil-rights law, however, it is important to make one clarification. The anti-Israel campus agitators and their many apologists—no small number of Jews among them—insist that the campus demonstrations aren’t aimed at Jews per se, but only at the state of Israel or its policies. Universities seem to have largely accepted this argument. So long as administrators don’t condone the most obvious anti-Jewish actions by demonstrators—such as establishing no-go zones for Jews at UCLA, or stalking and assaulting Jews at Harvard—they can maintain the fiction that “anti-Zionism” is garden-variety political speech. As such, it is different in kind from anti-Jewish discrimination and cannot be punished.

After all, say the administrators, professors, and students, Zionism is a political ideology, one that stands for Jewish supremacy in a land once called Palestine. And how anti-Jewish can it be to chant “from the River to the Sea,” when so often it is chanted by Jewish activists as well?

Pro-Israel Jews, according to this logic, seek to ban legitimate political protest and restrict legitimate speech by conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. And campus activists have been willing to take this argument quite far. When students at Columbia and Harvard staged demonstrations in front of campus Hillels—seemingly clear instances of targeting Jewish institutions—the apologists were ready. Their argument, paraphrased, went like this: we have no issue with Jews having a place to congregate and pray, but Hillel has an Israeli flag flying in front of it, sponsors trips to Israel, and hosts Israeli speakers. It has made itself complicit in the Israel’s crimes, and we have a right to protest its explicit political stance. With this justification, the anti-Semites have even gone a step further, calling on their schools to sever all official relations with Hillel houses or the umbrella group that maintains them. It is often said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism because nearly all Jews support Israel. But this makes clear is that that sword is double-edged. Anti-Israel extremists feel comfortable intimidating Jews because, it is true, nearly all Jews and the institutions that serve them support Israel.

Hatred of Israel may be distinguishable from hatred of Jews in theory, but in reality they are inextricable. Campus and street activists celebrated October 7, proclaiming “glory to the martyrs” and calling for Israel’s destruction “by any means necessary.” Less than three weeks after October 7, “Glory to Our Martyrs” was projected in bright lights onto the Gelman Library building at George Washington University—an undeniable celebration of the murderers of Jews that has been echoed in many campus pamphlets, signs, and chants since then. On the first anniversary of the attacks, several campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapters wished their members a “happy October 7.” Occasionally a demonstrator will forget to substitute “Zionist” for “Jew,” or will lead an Arabic chant about Mohammad’s armies coming to destroy the Yahud.

Jewish students and advocacy groups point out such brazen examples of Jew hatred, correctly noting that the mask has slipped. They denounce their schools for permitting this bigotry, and for their double standards, as many colleges go to extreme lengths to ensure “safe spaces” for other minority groups. Some students also note the stark difference in conduct between pro-Israel and pro-Hamas campus groups; only the latter, they argue, would rejoice in the deaths of innocent civilians.

No matter. Anti-Israel groups know that the pro-Israel community is reluctant to push for sweeping expulsions or, where appropriate, prosecutions, of offending students. We hesitate to condemn our adversaries wholesale, and continue to seek out nuanced discussion with, and tailored consequences for, those who call for Israel to be wiped off the map. The anti-Zionists, meanwhile, have no such compunction. When caught explicitly championing Hamas or slandering or harassing Jews, they often blame “Zionist saboteurs,” suggesting that interlopers seek to undermine the anti-Zionist cause by using especially inflammatory language or tactics. They then continue doing much the same thing as they were doing all along: seek to anathematize the idea that Jews should be sovereign in their ancestral homeland, and to create the illusion that supporting Israel is a fringe position. Those are the goals; the strategy involves intimidating Jews in the hope that they will stay away from the public square.

Jonathan Tobin: America’s future depends on Trump’s promise to punish woke universities

Draining the swamp

That is why Trump’s scorched-earth approach is so necessary, even as it is being denounced by the same people who are responsible for creating or perpetuating the current mess as too extreme or even needed at all.

Trump’s stated intention of “draining the swamp” throughout the federal government is being depicted as evidence of his supposed authoritarian impulses and racism. But this is exactly the sort of argument based on a high-handed dismissal of genuine concerns and problems that have caused so many Americans to lose faith both in our educational system and in Washington.

His threats can seem crude to those accustomed to politicians being guarded in their remarks. Yet the events of the last few years—starting with the moral panic about race behind the Black Lives Matter riots and then on to the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism—demonstrated that a restrained “business as usual” approach won’t cut it when the collapse of our most cherished institutions is at stake. Their transformation into purveyors of neo-Marxist indoctrination and toxic ideas that enable hatred for both the West and Jews is a crisis of enormous proportions. It is happening at both the college and graduate levels, as well as in K-12 schools where leftist teachers’ unions have also imposed the indoctrination of critical race theory.

The only reasonable response to this disaster is exactly the kind of tough-minded purge that Trump has envisioned. And far from this being an uninformed or extreme approach, Trump and his transition team are consulting with experts like Christopher Rufo, author of an authoritative and essential book on the woke plague—America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything—and incorporating the ideas of “Project Esther,” a serious plan for dealing with campus antisemitism produced by The Heritage Foundation.

All of this has produced panic on the left and even among mainstream liberals who have been conditioned by partisan political rhetoric to believe that Trump is a second Hitler. They worry that he is already going too far in seeking accountability for institutions that engage in racial discrimination and tolerate antisemitism under the guise of DEI “anti-racist” policies, believing that somehow this will destroy academic freedom. What his critics fail to recognize is that American education is already enduring a catastrophic transformation that has silenced dissent against woke doctrines that seek to trash the Western canon.

A necessary sledgehammer
The only way to fix it is with the same sort of Trumpian sledgehammer that tossed aside failed ideas about the Middle East in his first term that enabled him, among other important policy changes, to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and forge the Abraham Accords. If that means executive orders reversing President Joe Biden’s DEI orders that created woke commissars in every federal agency and department, that should be welcomed. If it means closing the largely useless and counter-productive Department of Education and enacting far-reaching reforms that will defund institutions clinging to discriminatory ideas and actions, then that should be cheered by those who cherish the values of equal opportunity, merit and zero tolerance for hatred and discrimination.

More to the point, it will mean that policing antisemitism on campus will be shifted away from the ineffectual Title VI complaints to federal education bureaucrats to a campaign of lawsuits conducted not just by groups like the Deborah Project, valuable though they may be, but by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with all of the vast resources at its command. In this manner, a message can be sent that will likely motivate the vast majority of college administrations to discard DEI and the tolerance of hate for Jews that accompanies it.

It is impossible to know whether the new administration will succeed. But rather than worrying that he is the wrong instrument to carry out this effort or wasting time decrying his rhetoric, it’s likely that only an outlier like Trump could contemplate such a bold project or have the will to see it to its logical end. Indeed, so grave is the threat that DEI and other leftist ideas pose to the country’s future that anything short of what he has discussed would be inadequate. Instead of expressing horror at his determination to enact real change, fair-minded Americans of all faiths and in both major political parties should be rooting for him to keep his word and to do everything he promised to punish colleges and universities, in addition to any other entity that promotes the sort of woke hate that has made life for Jewish students and anyone else who dissents against the new secular orthodoxy so difficult.

Jonathan Sacerdoti: The Oxford Union has disgraced itself

The chamber of the Oxford Union, that once-proud institution, has been breached by the forces of bigotry, hatred, and mob rule.

Invited to speak against an anti-Israel motion, I attended with three colleagues, each bringing unique expertise and experience to the room. But what unfolded on Thursday night was not a debate at all. It was an assault on the very principles the Union once claimed to uphold, presided over by organisers who behaved more like a mafia than custodians of an august society dedicated to free speech.

The motion for debate was itself a grotesque provocation: “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” Apartheid and genocide are not just loaded terms; they are distortions when applied to Israel, as I planned to explain in my speech. That the Union had decided to frame this debate around them was bad enough. It had caused some to decline their invitation to speak at all. But the problems were much deeper rooted even than students seeking attention through sensationalist wording.

This wasn’t an evening for intellectual rigour or balanced argument. From the very beginning, it was clear the organisation of this event was deeply and worryingly dishonest, aggressive and one-sided. Speakers infamous for their unhinged views were invited to confront us; we were left in the dark about who had been invited on our side. Deception and dishonesty characterised the entire run-up to the debate.

When the day finally arrived, the atmosphere in the chamber was hideous, sinister, and suffused with tension. Jews who might have attended were clearly too afraid to show up: many had written to me privately to tell me of their fears. In a packed chamber, I identified four Jewish students who sat huddled together across from me, but soon realised there were unlikely to be many more present. When I acknowledged them with a thumbs-up, they returned the gesture with a heart symbol: a fleeting moment of solidarity in what was otherwise an unrelentingly hostile environment.

The tone was set long before the debate began. The president of the Union, Ebrahim Osman Mowafy, an Egyptian Arab, seemed to me to be openly biased from the outset. His behaviour throughout the evening was not that of a neutral chair but of an orchestrator, stacking the odds against the opposition and fostering an environment of unchecked hostility. In the end, perhaps his most disgraceful speaker against Israel withdrew, seemingly intimidated by the strength of the team we had managed to assemble despite the Union’s best attempts to stop us. Having been told a student would take his place, we found out only on the night that Osman Mowafy himself would forgo the traditional impartiality of the chair’s role and speak against us himself.

12/02 Links Pt1: Israel: The Mideast’s Anchor of Stability; Trump: 'ALL HELL TO PAY' if Hostages not returned; American-Israeli Thought To Be Hostage in Gaza Was Killed on Oct 7

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel: The Mideast’s Anchor of Stability

Israel’s critics often give the impression that the Jewish state is the only state in the Middle East that doesn’t have a right to exist. But if events keep going along their current path, Israel might be the only state in the Middle East that exists at all.

Hyperbole? Sure. But a look around the Levant shows just who had true sovereignty and legitimacy all along.

The Assad dynasty in Syria spent decades carving up Lebanon and negating its territorial integrity. Now Syria itself is tumbling toward the same fate: a country with borders that exist only on paper and in a state of perpetual political chaos thanks to the machinations of its foreign patrons in Tehran.

Over the weekend, Islamist rebels retook effective control of the city of Aleppo, a central node of conflict in the ongoing Syrian civil war, which began more than a decade ago. The attack, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), began last Wednesday and in less than a week has thrown the regime of Bashar al-Assad into disarray.

For the duration of the Syrian civil war, Iran and Russia have kept Assad propped up while subjecting swaths of the country to ruthless bloodletting. But both Iran and Russia are stretched at the moment, the former in its multifront war on Israel and the latter in Ukraine. Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, has been so depleted by the IDF that it is unable to come to Assad’s aid in any significant way. Iran itself has been weakened substantially by Israeli counteroffensive strikes, which took out Iranian ballistic missile sites as well as Iran-aligned terror infrastructure in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Because Iran was also providing missiles to Russia, Moscow has been hamstrung by Israel’s strikes on Iranian facilities.

This is almost certainly the reason the rebels chose to strike when they did, and it is surely why the surprise attack was as successful as it was. The rebels seemingly have drawn Russia’s air force back into the conflict, further stretching Moscow’s capabilities.

The rebels are led by an offshoot of al Qaeda and supported by Turkish-backed Islamists. They have, therefore, also done battle with the Kurds, a group traditionally backed (at least nominally) by the Western alliance, although the only NATO state involved at the moment is Turkey, which has long tried to obliterate the Kurds.

There are no “good guys” as traditionally understood in this round, and that includes our NATO “ally” Turkey, which has reembraced its role as sponsor and host of Hamas. Which is to say, the renewed rebellion can be Assad and Iran’s just deserts without being cause for bandwagoning. We don’t always have a dog in every fight.

But it does demonstrate the Jenga tower created by Iran’s regional adventurism. The more power Tehran took from Gaza, parts of the West Bank, South Lebanon and Syria, the more precarious the whole construct became. It is now teetering.

Prepare for Disintegration of Syria and Rise of Imperial Turkey

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.

Seth Frantzman: Why hasn't Hamas faced repercussions for killing American citizens?

HAMAS LEARNED, through the October 7 attack, that murdering and killing citizens of numerous countries hasn’t had any real negative effect on Hamas. It isn’t more isolated today than on October 6, 2023. In fact, it has the same support abroad, probably more support, than on that day.

Hamas knows it has more support on campuses in the US today than two years ago, along with support from the Global South. Its willingness to kill so many people has appeared to make it get more respect from Russia and China. This means Hamas does not assess today that it has lost out due to the attack.

It hasn’t been replaced as a governing authority in Gaza. It still controls parts of Gaza City and the central camps area in Gaza. This includes Deir al-Balah, Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat. Hamas assumes that the IDF is exhausted from more than a year of war and that Israel wants to let reservists go home after the battles in Lebanon.

There remain key questions related to the new information about the death of Neutra. He was a member of a tank crew on the border of Gaza on October 7. Why didn’t the US ask Doha if he was alive after the attack? Why wasn’t more done to confirm the details and status regarding the Americans held in Gaza? The fact that Hamas seems to have faced no queries from Doha about the status of Americans held in Gaza is concerning.

This is a reminder of several incidents over the past year that also raise questions. On October 20, 2023, Hamas released two American women who it had held hostage for two weeks. Nothing more was heard about this story or why it happened how and when it did. Clearly, Hamas had decided to release two Americans. Why not the others? Why not more discussions about their status at the time? Days later Hamas released two elderly women as well. Nothing more was ever revealed about these two hostage releases in October.

This begs the question of why the Bibas children were not released at that time. They were the most vulnerable of the hostages because one was a baby and one a toddler. There are a lot of questions now about why more wasn’t done to pressure Hamas for basic details on the hostages.

In January, reports circulated that Qatar and France had brokered a deal to deliver medical aid to 45 hostages in Gaza. Nothing was done to confirm whether the aid reached the hostages.

Why? Why is it that systematically since October 7 there has been a kind of collective shrug about basic details about the hostages, details that would have helped families who have been waiting for information?

No pressure from the US, no pressure from Doha, and it’s not clear if there is pressure from Israel. Since the decision to shift focus from Gaza to fighting Hezbollah, Hamas has felt free rein to run central Gaza and continue its rule.