Sunday, March 02, 2025

From Ian:

Infantilising Palestinians, demonising Israelis
Humanity is certainly in short supply in Perfect Victims. In the chapter, ‘Tropes and Drones’, el-Kurd tells us again and again that his problem is not just with Israel, it is also with Jews. ‘The people seeking to expel us from our neighbourhood were Jewish’, he writes, ‘the bureaucrat issuing and revoking our blue ID cards was a Jew’, and ‘as for the soldiers who were frisking us to check those IDs… most of them [were] Jewish’.

El-Kurd fumes against the Palestinian notables who wrote a joint letter taking issue with Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s anti-Semitic comments in August 2023 – when he claimed that Hitler ‘fought’ the Jews because they dealt with ‘usury, money and so on’. El-Kurd claims that ‘defending ourselves, often preemptively, against the baseless charge of anti-Semitism’ is a mistake, a tactic that ‘elevates the history of Jewish suffering… above our present-day suffering’.

El-Kurd is convinced that Israel is illegitimate and that Israeli Jews are ‘colonisers’. Quoting Frantz Fanon, he says ‘the work of the colonised is to imagine every possible method for annihilating the colonist’.

But Israelis are not colonisers. They are refugees from persecution in Europe up to 1945, and in the Arab world since 1948. Most were born in Israel. By characterising Jews as the ‘colonisers’, el-Kurd is lending a veneer of legitimacy to his vilification of an entire people.

El-Kurd refuses to be drawn on the future of the Jews because, he says, this can only ever mean the de-railing of the Palestinian cause. He protests that the ‘possibility of a second holocaust is given primacy over a holocaust happening in the present’ – that is, in Gaza.

It is certainly true that Israel has been fighting a deadly war with Hamas since October 2023. But it is not in any sense a ‘holocaust’. The victims of holocausts do not generally have their own armies, nor fire missiles at their persecutors. El-Kurd points to the ‘countless examples of annihilatory rhetoric’ by Israeli officials, but he could just as easily list the genocidal remarks made by Hamas spokesmen, like Osama Hamdan or Ghazi Hamad.

Moreover, Hamas ran riot in southern Israel for just 18 hours on 7 October 2023, and managed to kill 1,200 people, most of them Jews. Its organisational commitment to killing Jews goes back to its founding. After Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades attacked Sderot, Be’eri and other towns bordering on Gaza that awful day in 2023, Mohammed el-Kurd was excited. ‘Much of what is happening in occupied Palestine’, he tweeted on 8 October, ‘will be in future history books as an example of revolutionary struggle’. Like so many among the pro-Palestine crowd, el-Kurd has since downplayed the significance of the massacre, complaining that attention is always on 7 October, not on what came before.

El-Kurd claims that Palestinians are denied the ‘common humanity’ applied to others, and are therefore dehumanised. Yet he ignores the clear dehumanisation of Jews that made it possible for Hamas to slaughter families in their homes on 7 October. That is bad enough, but worse is the evasion of responsibility. It is galling to read him protest against ‘the ceaseless infantilisation of the dehumanised subject’, in reference to Palestinians, when he and his fellow anti-Israel campaigners have done the most to infantilise them. For el-Kurd, Hamas should not be held responsible for its actions – any discussion of its atrocities or brutality, he suggests, is a ‘distraction’. What he ignores is that until a leadership emerges that accepts it has a responsibility to make peace, and live alongside its Jewish neighbours, there is no future for Palestine.

El-Kurd concludes his work like a poet, more than an activist, writing ‘the world is changing because it must’. The world is changing, but not in the direction that Mohammed el-Kurd hopes. Hamas has brought disaster upon Gaza. And the prospect of a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians looks further away than ever.
How the UN turned Palestinians into permanent refugees
To illustrate the absurdity of what has been happening, take the case of Mohamed Anwar Hadid. His father fled Nazareth in 1948 because he ‘did not want the family to live under the Israeli occupation’. He ended up in California where he became a property developer building luxury mansions and hotels in Beverly Hills.

You might not have heard of Hadid. But you are likely to have heard of his daughters, supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid, both of whom are American-born citizens. Bella, who reputedly earns up to $20million a year, regularly posts anti-Israel sentiments on social media, and has been attending pro-Palestine rallies, chanting ‘From the river to the sea’. Amazingly, the two sisters, their father and other members of the Hadid family are all still registered as Palestinian refugees with UNRWA.

That’s not all. Under the auspices of the UN, people of Palestinian heritage the world over don’t just have a permanent refugee status, they also have a so-called right of return.

Over several decades, the ‘right of return’ has allowed successive Palestinian political leaders to continue a war against Israel by other means – by insisting on their right to return to land ‘occupied’ by Israel. No other group of refugees has been granted a similarly inalienable right of return.

For the Palestine Liberation Organisation, this right was the ‘foremost of Palestinian rights’. Hamas is equally attached to it. In 2018, it organised a massive protest along the border fences with Israel. The objective of this ‘great march of return’ was, according to Hamas’s then leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to ‘break the walls of the blockade, remove the occupation entity and return to all of Palestine’. No wonder novelist Amos Oz, the founder of Israel’s Peace Now movement, has argued that ‘the right of return is a euphemism for the liquidation of Israel’.

The twin issues of refugee status and the right of return have taken on enormous symbolic significance for Palestinians. They have also made, and will continue to make, any peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis inordinately difficult.

Now would be a good time to start reassessing Palestinians’ permanent refugee status and the right of return. That way we might finally start taking some of the heat out of this interminable conflict.
Yisrael Medad: Will Palestinians in Gaza get up and go?
Ze’ev Jabotinsky began his 1923 “On the Iron Wall” essay by denying that he is “an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth.”

He insisted that “it is not true.” He did admit that, emotionally, his “attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations: polite indifference.”

A veteran of the campaign for equal rights for Jews in the Russian Empire, including autonomous national rights for all nationalities, he wished to see a parallel reality develop in the Mandate for Palestine. He believed that “there will always be two peoples in Palestine.”

Based on that belief, he added: “I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine,” and insisted that he would be prepared to take an oath, binding on future generations, “that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.” All that, however, was before the 1929 riots, those of 1936 to 1939, and all the wars since.

He set certain basic principles. There must be peace, and it needs to be obtained by peaceful means. There must be a Jewish majority in the future Jewish state. The Arabs need to agree that the Jews belong to their homeland. Responding to whether all this is possible, he wrote: “The answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs, but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism.”

A century later, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in mid-February, said: “Why not give Gazans a choice? … Over the last couple of years … 150,000 Gazans left. … If people want to leave, if they want to emigrate, it’s their choice. And I think President [Donald] Trump’s plan is right on the dot.”

In other words, they should have freedom of movement and the right to emigrate.

Netanyahu could have added that some 70% of Palestinians in Gaza consider themselves “refugees.” As such, they are planning to move away from Gaza in any case. Of course, their desired destination is Israel—with the aim of eradicating the Jewish state, a purpose they adopted as a life’s mission since 1947 when they rejected that year’s U.N. Partition Plan in a not very peaceful manner.

Many of them continued to pursue their aim during the 1950s in the ranks of the fedayeen when they engaged in cross-border raids of theft, destruction and murder. A new phase of their “armed struggle” resumed after the Sinai Campaign with the founding of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In 1987, Hamas was established, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and other countries.
  • Sunday, March 02, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon

I saw this comment in Substack from Binyamin Zev Wolf:
I am a Palestinian refugee.

UNRWA defines a Palestine refugee as someone "whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." Moreover, descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration.

In 1948, my family was living in the old city of Jerusalem and were ethnically cleansed from their home by the Jordanians. My great great grandfather was a big rabbi and lost all his writings and his position as rabbi in the old city. I should be getting money from UNWRA.
To become a registered Palestine refugee according to UNRWA eligibility criteria, it is not enough to be descended (through the paternal line) from someone who fits the criteria, but one must also register at an UNRWA office in person.

Israel just shut down the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem, but there are still plenty in the West Bank. And lots of people who are descended from Jewish refugees in 1948 now live across the Green line in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. 

There may also be Arab Israeli citizens who fit the criteria. Many live across the Green Line, mostly in Jerusalem but also in "settlements." 

It would be a great idea for a an Israeli Jew and and Israeli Arab who live across the Green line to both go to an UNRWA office and attempt to register as refugees, with appropriate documentation as described in UNRWA's Consolidated Eligibility and Registration Instructions

If UNRWA says they cannot register because they are citizens of a country, then ask why Palestinian citizens in Jordan (and some in Lebanon) are considered refugees.

If UNRWA says that they cannot register because they live in Israel, ask them if that means that they consider Judea and Samaria to be part of Israel.

If UNRWA says the Arab is eligible and the Jew is not, ask why they discriminate against Jews. 

With the Sheikh Jarrah office closed, unfortunately the applicants might need a military escort to make these applications safely. The stunt would be worth it to expose UNRWA's hypocrisy.




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  • Sunday, March 02, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon
Israel today decided to cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza. This occurred on the heels of Israel saying it was willing to extend the ceasefire for six weeks.

What's going on?

Israel is playing hardball, taking a page from Donald Trump's book of how to negotiate.

Over the weekend, Israel offered to extend the ceasefire with Gaza according to parameters crafted by Donald Trump's negotiator, Steve Witkoff, which would have Hamas immediately release half the hostages and the bodies in exchange for a continued halt to fighting during Ramadan and Passover, about six weeks.

At the end of the period, if a permanent ceasefire is agreed upon, Hamas would release the remaining hostages.

Hamas rejected the terms, insisting that Phase 2 be implemented immediately and unconditionally.

Hamas' official position is that Phase 2 is mandated by the ceasefire agreement after Phase 1 completed. But it wasn't. Phase 2 was always contingent on both parties agreeing to its specific terms during Phase 1, which did not happen. Without that agreement, Phase 2 cannot start. Witkoff's plan is to extend Phase 1 and keep the ceasefire going. 

But without an agreement, as of midnight Saturday night, the ceasefire is over. 

Hamas is gambling, thinking that there is too much world pressure for Israel to continue not resuming the war and as well as to allow 600 trucks a day into Gaza as Phase 1 mandated. From Hamas' perspective, they have nothing to lose by insisting that Phase 2 begin and more Israeli concessions - mostly withdrawals that would ensure Hamas can fill the vacuum left by the IDF.

Israel, perhaps in coordination with the US, is saying that Hamas has a great deal to lose. If the ceasefire is over then Israel can decide to stop the aid and resume fighting. 

Under the rules of war as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention, siege warfare is legal. It needs to allow critical humanitarian aid with the explicit exception of when the aid would be diverted by, or improve the military efforts and economic posture of, the enemy - which is exactly how Hamas has used it for the past 16 months.


Since October 2023, after only ten days of war, Israel has been forced by the US to allow in humanitarian aid even though Hamas benefitted from it. As I noted in January 2024, that decision more than any other is what kept Hamas fighting and kept the war going. It could have ended within a couple of months without that pressure from the Biden administration.  

Now Israel has support from a US that is willing to let it win.  

This is the manifestation of Trump's message to Hamas two weeks ago that if they don't release all the hostages, all hell will break out. 

Israel also extended and increased the IDF's option to call up reserves, from 320,000 to 400,000, at the same time.  In addition, the US expedited the transfer of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel, a move that was not unnoticed by Hamas.

The message from Israel is clear: It is no longer hostages for prisoners and hostages for Israeli withdrawal - it is hostages if Hamas wants to avoid war and to continue to get aid. Hamas has a great deal to lose by not releasing more hostages. 

As far as world pressure on Israel is concerned, the answer is simple: if the world cares so much about aid into Gaza, then pressure Hamas to release more hostages to get that aid. Israel played by the rules that it must provide aid and all it accomplished was extending a devastating war by over a year. 

By changing the calculus of aid, Israel is also showing how hypocritical  the international community  is. They insist that Israel provide unconditional aid. Israel's response, now backed by the US, is that it would be happy to provide aid, but no longer unconditionally. The legal siege can be lifted in exchange for hostages. 

Israel is now saying that  it is Hamas' decision to keep human beings as hostages, therefore it is Hamas' decision to stop the aid.  This puts the international community in a position of saying that they support Hamas keeping hostages more than they support Gazans receiving humanitarian aid. 

This has been their position from the start. Israel is now making it explicit.

Without the Biden administration pressuring Israel, the war would have been over a long time ago. 

Trump is allowing Israel to change the rules to what they should have been in October 2023. 




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  • Sunday, March 02, 2025
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the Egyptian news site Dostor:
Journalist Adel Hamouda confirmed that the Jewish lobby in the United States plays an important role in influencing American politics, as it has a great ability to control a number of members of the US Congress and funds a large portion of the budgets of political parties. 

He added, during today's episode of the "Face the Truth" program broadcast on Cairo News Channel , that Israel has received $300 billion in American aid until 2023, making it the largest recipient of American aid.

He explained that Jewish influence in the United States is not limited to politics, but extends to all aspects of American life, stressing that 50% of the top 200 American intellectuals and 20% of professors at major universities are Jews, and 40% of partners in major law firms in New York and Washington are Jews. 
Sounds just like the Goyim Defense League:


But the Goyim Defense League spreads its hate by placing flyers in plastic bags and leaving them outside homes. Jordanians and Egyptians do it openly in their TV talk shows.

Which again brings up the question: if the progressive Left hates the Right so much, why don't they ever call out when Arabs act exactly like the far-Right?





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Saturday, March 01, 2025

From Ian:

Begin’s unpublished writings to be released on 33rd anniversary of his death
A collection of previously unseen documents, letters and articles written by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin will be made public next week, coinciding with the 33rd anniversary of his death.

Among the handwritten papers is a document outlining Begin’s views on human rights, the need for a constitution and the tension between the judiciary and the legislature.

In 1952, Begin wrote a 65-page paper titled A Personal View, A National View and Basic Principles. Due to austerity measures in the young state of Israel, he drafted it on discarded rolls of paper from a printing press.

“There is no justice without courts,” Begin wrote. “Justices are but flesh and blood and may make mistakes, be bribed or afraid, but the determinative role of the court in our society is not the human weaknesses of any particular judge but the ‘psychological position’ given to that institution and those who sit in judgment.” He argued that both the judiciary and authorities must uphold the courts’ complete independence.

Herzl Makov, CEO of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, described the documents as a reflection of Begin’s political philosophy and humility. “It is a sharp political analysis that distills Begin’s liberal-national worldview,” he said.

In the writings, Begin also addressed Israel’s territorial aspirations and the necessity of national might. He warned that Israel’s security depended on its power. “Anyone with eyes in his head knows that when we are strong, we will not be attacked by the Arabs, even without signed agreements. And if we are weak, our Arab enemies will rise to destroy us, even if such agreements are forged in diplomacy.”

Begin criticized Israel’s early leaders for conceding historical lands, lamenting that they agreed to establish the state without key biblical sites within its borders. “National leaders were found willing to sign, in the name of the people of Israel, that Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Nablus and all the good land east of the Jordan would not be ours. Is there a national-historic crime equal to this?”
Growing threat of US isolationism is a danger to the US-Israel alliance
Throughout history, political movements, even those not initially antisemitic, have often seen their most radical factions steer them toward antisemitism.

In recent years, segments of the American left have embraced militant Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Marxist ideologies, and policies that exacerbate societal divisions.

This shift has, at times, fostered antisemitic sentiments as observed in rhetoric from certain college campuses, organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jewish Voice for Peace, national unions, civil rights groups, and members of the “Squad.”

For instance, a recent report from StopAntisemitism revealed that 72% of Jewish college students in the United States feel unwelcome, with over half having faced antisemitism.

The Republican Party has successfully positioned itself against many of these divisive issues, recognizing their danger to the American way of life and the direct opposition to liberal US values. The new administration has already made strides in addressing these social challenges and affirmed itself as a strong ally of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

However, the GOP has a blind spot for a Trojan horse gaining momentum within its ranks: a faction of “America First” isolationists who promote policies that, if unchecked, could threaten both America’s global standing and its allies, particularly Israel.

Defining themselves sometimes as “restrainers,” these figures advocate a philosophy of strengthening domestic affairs by rallying against most types of foreign aid and limiting military engagement abroad. While a measure of restraint in foreign policy is healthy, taken to an extreme, it risks weakening America’s global leadership and its commitment to strategic allies. The Jewish community must recognize this emerging threat and its potential to undermine the US-Israel alliance.

The United States cannot afford to completely retreat from the world stage without severe consequences for its own and global security.

History has shown that when America stands back, adversaries quickly fill the vacuum – whether in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, or Latin America. A disengaged America emboldens hostile regimes, undermines global stability, and endangers our interests and allies.

Turning away from Israel, as advocated by the America First isolationists, would send a dangerous message to other US allies: America is no longer a reliable partner.

The isolationist sentiment echoes past missteps, such as the US’s reluctance to confront the growing threats of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. If the US pulls back now, nations that rely on American support may be forced to seek alliances elsewhere, including with adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.
John Aziz: Why Zionism Is Not Colonialism
The claim that Zionism is a form of colonialism is at the heart of a lot of anti-Zionist narratives. The story goes that white, Western Jews decided to colonise Palestine, and displace the native Palestinian Arab population.

John Aziz's Blog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

One piece of historical evidence that often gets thrown around in these conversations and seems to have gone mega viral a few times recently is this headline from the New York Times, proclaiming that Zionists intended to colonise Palestine:

The implications of this accusation of colonisation is that colonisation is a horrible thing that must end as the arc of history bends further and further towards justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. In other words, the colonisers must give the land back to the previous owners, and return from whence they came.

But ownership of land, especially in a national sense, is a complex and fraught topic. Yes, it’s true that Palestinian Arabs were living in the land as a majority during the British Mandate between 1917-1947, and the Ottoman Empire during 1517-1917. But there were multiple earlier Jewish polities in the Holy Land across history, with the most recent independent Jewish entity ending with the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD following the first Jewish-Roman war.

The result of the Roman colonisation of the land was the enslavement and expulsion of many of the pre-existing indigenous Jewish population, who became scattered across the former Roman empire in Europe and the middle east. Similarly, the ancestors of the Palestinians are not only from later Arab conquerors, and the Romans and Byzantines themselves, but they are also descended in large part from parts of the Jewish population that stayed on the land in spite of Roman rule, and later converted to Christianity or Islam.

This is why Jewish and Palestinian populations are genetically quite closely linked:

The reality of Zionism is that it was the descendants of Jewish people who had previously been displaced from Palestine (or the Land of Israel, or whatever you want to call it) trying to return to the home land of their ancestors.

This is why unlike with classical colonialism, for example the French colonisation of Algeria—which is often cited as an inspiration by Palestinian anti-Zionists—there is no mother country or colonial metropole in the case of Zionism. Colonialism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the act of one country acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

Now some may contest this definition. But by that definition, the New York Times description of Zionism as an act of colonisation was simply not accurate.

The question to ask anyone who claims Zionism is colonialism is what is the mother country?
Reform rabbi: ‘Hamas is the Palestinians,’ two-state solution a delusion
The murder of Shiri Bibas and her two children at the hands of Palestinian terrorists has ended the possibility of a two-state solution, a prominent Reform rabbi declared on Friday.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi at New York City’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, told congregants in an explosive Shabbat sermon that he had “snapped” over the killings.

“This was the week that finally ended the hope–at least in my lifetime–for a Palestinian state and a Jewish state existing side-by-side,” Hirsch said. “The Palestinians themselves strangled this fragile hope in its crib.”

“Until such time as the Palestinians themselves say they want peaceful coexistence–two states living side-by-side–we must cease deluding ourselves that a two-state solution is available now,” he added.

Gazan terrorists abducted Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9-months-old, from Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Based on forensic evidence, their captors murdered the two children “with their bare hands” within weeks of the attacks, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The funeral for the three victims was held on Wednesday after their bodies were returned to Israel as part of Phase 1 of the ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Hamas and Israel.

According to Hirsch, the murders and Hamas’s staging of parade-like ceremonies to crowds of cheering Gazans during the release of emaciated Israeli hostages is an indictment of Palestinian society, which suffers from a “moral miasma and social collapse” and whose national movement fuels “an endless cycle of violent depravity.”

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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