Saturday, April 26, 2025

04/26 Links: The moral and legal case for Israel's war against Hamas; BBC Arabic contributor: ‘We’ll burn Jews like Hitler did’; Columbia Janitors Sue Protesters

From Ian:

John Spencer and Arsen Ostrovsky: The moral and legal case for Israel's war against Hamas
Every Israeli military operation in Gaza is bound by this standard. It is not enough to identify a Hamas presence in a building or a neighbourhood. To strike lawfully, the target must provide a concrete and direct military advantage, and every feasible precaution must be taken to mitigate civilian harm. Article content

Israel’s military attorneys and commanders operate within this framework. Target selection, weapon choice, the timing of attacks and warning mechanisms are scrutinized in real time. The Israel Defence Forces not only operates under legal necessity, it documents and reviews its actions at a level few modern militaries do, particularly when fighting a terrorist group embedded in a civilian population.

A useful example from the laws of war helps clarify this distinction. Destroying a bridge used to transport enemy weapons is a lawful act of military necessity. It offers a clear operational advantage and directly degrades enemy capabilities. By contrast, destroying a bakery in a residential neighbourhood simply because enemy fighters may stop there for food is not lawful. The bakery is not a military objective, and its destruction would serve no legitimate military purpose.

This distinction matters in urban warfare. In Gaza, where Hamas routinely embeds its military assets within civilian areas — using schools, homes and mosques as shields — Israel faces extraordinary challenges. But the legal standards do not change. Every action must meet the test of military necessity. Every strike must be tied to a legitimate objective. The presence of civilians demands restraint, even when facing an adversary that deliberately exploits them.

So, was Israel’s war against Hamas necessary? That depends on which kind of necessity you mean. But in truth, it meets both tests. Was the war morally necessary? Following the deliberate massacre of civilians, the kidnapping of hostages and Hamas’s declared intention to repeat those atrocities, the answer is unequivocally “yes.”

Are Israel’s military operations legally necessary? While each strike must meet specific legal thresholds, the IDF operates under one of the most stringent legal and ethical frameworks in modern warfare. It is bound by the law of armed conflict and has demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to minimizing harm, even while engaging an enemy that hides among civilians and violates every rule of war.

A war can be both morally justified and legally constrained. Israel’s campaign against Hamas is exactly that. It was not launched lightly or recklessly — it is waged in defence of life, sovereignty and the rule of law. Anyone asking whether Israel’s war was necessary should first understand what they are really asking — and then recognize that the answer, by every standard that matters, is “yes.”
Hamas claim that 70pc of Gaza dead are women and children ‘demonstrably false’
Claims by Hamas that 70 per cent of casualties in the Gaza conflict are women and children have been dismissed as “demonstrably false” in a new report.

The report by the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank, undermines claims that Israel’s armed forces have been responsible for the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians during the conflict.

Its findings are in contrast to assertions by Gaza’s Hamas-run government that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has deliberately targeted women and children.

The Henry Jackson Society claims that the IDF has generally managed to avoid disproportionately harming civilians, even though many thousands have been killed.

In the report, Prof Lewi Stone and Prof Gregory Rose said that claims made by the Gaza ministry of health of a 70 per cent casualty rate for women and children among the 51,000 Palestinians it says have been killed since Oct 7 2023 are inconsistent with its own underlying hospital casualty figures.

They found that Gaza hospital records and lists of the deceased showed that, since the start of the conflict, women and children have accounted for 51 per cent of deaths overall, and that in the past year the rate of civilian casualties has fallen to below that figure.

Citing the example of the bitter fighting over Khan Younis during the first quarter of last year, the report found that although women and children comprised 75 per cent of the city’s population, they accounted for 34 per cent of deaths.

Numerous warnings were issued by the IDF for civilians to leave Khan Younis before its troops began their search for Hamas combatants.

Profs Stone and Rose also found that of 11,224 people killed since October last year, 76.3 per cent (8,565) were male and 23.7 per cent (2,659) were female. Of these, 58 per cent were men of fighting age.
‘Reminiscent of the KKK’: Columbia Janitors Sue Protesters Who Took Over Hamilton Hall
The Columbia University janitors who were held hostage during the violent takeover of a campus building last spring are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, according to a copy of the suit reviewed exclusively by The Free Press.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Friday evening by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Columbia janitors Mario Torres and Lester Wilson. It alleges that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators,” some but not all of whom were arrested by police following the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April 29, “terrorized” both Torres and Wilson “into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’ ”

The occupation of Hamilton Hall occurred almost exactly a year ago, and both Torres and Lester say they have been struggling to cope ever since. The lawsuit states both men suffered physical injuries the night of the occupation, and that they have also been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that has required ongoing medical care. Neither has been able to return to work, and are instead “subsisting on interim Workers Compensation payments” which are “inadequate” to pay for their basic needs and medical bills, according to the suit.

“Mario and Lester are decent, honest, hardworking men who have been through hell. None of this ever should have happened,” said Tara Helfman, one of the Torridon lawyers on the case.

The lawsuit describes the protesters, the majority of whom “donned masks and hoods to conceal their identities,” as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.” It claims they “are part of a broad pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”

The Brandeis Center also filed a federal lawsuit late Friday on behalf of two students, a professor, and a rabbi at the University of California, Los Angeles, alleging that several groups, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network, American Muslims for Palestine, and Westchester People’s Action Coalition, engaged in “a coordinated campaign of egregious acts of racial exclusion, intimidation, and assault” to “intimidate Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”


What’s Legally Allowed in War
This past July, Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech and a former judge advocate general in the U.S. Army, joined the Israel Defense Forces on a tour of the Rafah border. Within hours of Hamas’s attack, on October 7th, 2023, Israel began bombing Gaza. But until May, 2024, just a couple of months before Corn’s latest visit, the city of Rafah remained relatively intact. The site of the only border crossing with Egypt, Rafah was already one of the most densely populated cities in Gaza, packed further by the flight of Palestinians from the north. In February, when it became clear that the I.D.F. was planning to invade Rafah, it was estimated that 1.5 million people were living in the city.

World leaders and various organizations lobbied Israel not to go through with the incursion, including President Biden, who, on the eve of the I.D.F.’s attack, called Rafah a “red line.” The I.D.F. moved forward anyway, even as the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive.” By July, when Corn surveyed the area, Rafah was largely rubble. “It looked like Berlin after World War Two,” he told me. “And, if all you do is look at that, you say, This can’t be right.”

Corn, at the height of his military career, was the U.S. Army’s senior adviser on the laws of war, also known as international humanitarian law (I.H.L.), or the law of armed conflict (LOAC). Corn brought up Berlin as a metric for the level of urban destruction he saw, but he was also, perhaps inadvertently, recalling a watershed moment in international law. The Second World War was the first armed conflict in which air power made the bombing of civilians possible at a massive scale. Military leaders pushed those possibilities to hellish extremes, following the logic that killing civilians might induce surrender. It wasn’t until the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions were adopted, in 1977, that an international agreement explicitly prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians. (The United States has not ratified these protocols, but it has incorporated the basic rules of civilian protection into the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual and treats them as customary international law.) And it wasn’t until the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which began in 1993 and in which Corn served as a defense witness, that an international court had ever tried someone for violating this prohibition.

The war in Gaza has played out under this relatively young international legal regime. At the Rafah border, I.D.F. intelligence officers showed Corn surveillance videos that he says demonstrated Hamas activity in the area before the I.D.F. offensive commenced. The suggestion was that the destruction he saw was not the product of an indiscriminate assault and that the laws of war had been upheld. Hamas’s use of civilian buildings transformed those sites into “military objectives,” Corn said. The civilians killed were not targets but “incidental deaths.”


Trump Says He'll 'Very Willingly' Attack Iran Should Nuclear Talks Fail: 'If We Don't Make a Deal, I'll Be Leading the Pack'
The United States will "willingly" join Israel in launching a military operation against Iran if negotiations to dismantle Tehran's nuclear program collapse, President Donald Trump said in an interview this week.

"Are you worried Netanyahu will drag you into a war?" Time's Eric Cortellessa and Sam Jacobs asked Trump during a wide-ranging interview on his first 100 days back in office.

"No," Trump said. "By the way, he may go into a war. But we're not getting dragged in."

"The U.S. will stay out of it if Israel goes into it?" Cortellessa and Jacobs asked.

"No, I didn't say that," Trump responded. "You asked if he'd drag me in, like I'd go in unwillingly. No, I may go in very willingly if we can't get a deal. If we don't make a deal, I'll be leading the pack."

"I think we can make a deal without the attack," Trump added. "I hope we can."

The comments come as Trump ramps up his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran to freeze its nuclear program. In late March, Trump also threatened the Islamic Republic with military action after Tehran rejected direct negotiations with Washington. "If they don't make a deal, there will be bombing," Trump said at the time. "It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before."
Trump says he told Netanyahu ‘we’ve got to be good to Gaza’ and get more aid in
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we’ve got to be good to Gaza” as he pushed the Israeli premier to get more food and medicine into the Strip.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travelled for Pope Francis’s funeral, Trump was asked whether concerns about humanitarian aid for Gaza came up in his phone call with Netanyahu earlier this week.

“Gaza came up and I said, ‘We’ve got to be good to Gaza,’” Trump said.

“Those people are suffering. We’ve got to be good to Gaza. We’re going to take care of them,” he added.

“There’s a very big need for… food and medicine. We’re taking care of it,” Trump said.

Pressed on whether he’s pushing Israel to allow aid into Gaza, Trump responded. “We are,” adding that he wants “to get food and medicine into Gaza.”

Asked how Netanyahu responded to the request, Trump said, “Well. He felt well about it.”

It was the first time Trump had publicly weighed in on the issue of humanitarian aid for Gaza, which was a repeated point of conflict between Netanyahu and the Biden administration.

The revelation of the discussion between Netanyahu and Trump came shortly after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food stocks in Gaza due to the sustained closure of crossings into the enclave.
Hamas offers freeing remaining hostages in exchange for five-year ceasefire
Hamas has expressed its willingness to reach an agreement to end the war in Gaza, which includes a one-time release of all the remaining hostages in exchange for a five-year ceasefire, an official in the terrorist organization told AFP on Saturday.

The source noted that “Hamas is ready for a one-time prisoner exchange for a five-year cessation of hostilities” as a delegation from the organization departed for Cairo for meetings with Egyptian officials.

A Hamas delegation, led by Khalil al-Hayya, is expected to present the organization's vision for ending the fighting to Egypt on Saturday. Taher al-Nono, another senior Hamas official, made it clear earlier that the organization’s weapons are “not open to negotiation” in the talks.

Three Hamas officials, according to the N12 news site, confirmed that the group would be willing to hand over its weapons to the next group ruling the enclave. While this stance is not shared by the entirety of the terror group, it reportedly suggests that some of Hamas’s senior leadership is open to disarming. However, an official of the terrorist organization said Saturday that Hamas is open to a years-long truce with Israel in Gaza but is not willing to lay down its arms.

“Hamas commanders in the Gaza Strip are feeling heavy pressure from the local population to take such a step,” the terrorist group sources told N12. “This is in the knowledge that no serious aid will be received for the reconstruction of the region and that Arab countries will not send battalions for policing missions in the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas remains an armed underground.”

The three officials added that the final deal could also see Muhammad Sinwar and Gaza Brigade commander Izz ad-Din Haddad expelled from Gaza.

"The idea of a truce or its duration is not rejected by us, and we are ready to discuss it within the framework of negotiations. We are open to any serious proposals to end the war," said Taher Al-Nono, the media adviser for the Hamas leadership, in the first clear signal that the group was open to a longer-term truce.
IDF soldier, Border Police officer killed in combat in the Gaza Strip
Captain Ido Voloch, an officer in the Armored Corps, was killed in battle while fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF announced on Saturday.

Additionally, Sergeant Neta Yitzhak Kahane, an officer in the Border Police, was killed in battle while fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Police announced.

Cpt. Ido Voloch, 21, from Jerusalem, served as an armored corps officer and platoon commander in the 46th Battalion of the 401st Brigade.

Sgt. Kahane, 19, from Eitan, served in the Border Police South undercover unit (Mista'aravim).

According to the IDF's tally, their deaths raise the total of soldiers killed on or since October 7 of last year to 849.

Some 409 of this number were killed since the start of the military's ground operations in the Strip on October 27.

Kahane joined the IDF's Givati Brigade in December 2023 and was later transferred to the Border Police. Following his transfer, he completed his undercover training course by December 2024 and was assigned to the undercover unit of the Border Police South.

D., a friend of the late Neta's unit, told Maariv, "Kahana and I met during the training of YAMAS (Covert Operations) troops at the Border Police Military School, after which we were assigned to a unit in the south together. He is a very present person, insanely dominant. Very smart and always planned in his head. He was really like a brother. There are no friends like him in the world. He does everything with you hand in hand, never leaves you alone, always thinks of others, and wants to help. Kahane loved to be adventurous and had a zest for life."


IDF still holding 350 bags of unidentified human remains from Oct. 7 massacre – report
The IDF is still holding two containers filled with some 350 bags of unidentified human remains salvaged from southern Israel after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, Hebrew media reported Friday.

The remains are stored at the military rabbinate’s Shura headquarters in the country’s center.

The Shura base was overwhelmed by the volume and degradation of remains it received from the massacre, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

Some of the remains were severely charred and damaged beyond recognition. However, according to Ynet, at least 200 of the bags at Shura contain some remains that the rabbinate believes it could identify if it had greater resources. Each bag holds remains initially identified as belonging to a single person, though mistakes were made amid the chaos of the shock assault.

IDF Chief Rabbi Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim wants to carry out further forensic examination of the unidentified remains. However, the director general of the Religious Services Ministry, Yehuda Avidan, who would need to sign off on any examination, has called for the remains to be buried in a collective, anonymous grave, the news site reported. Avidan’s position is backed by Abu Kabir forensic institute chief Chen Kugel, while Krim is backed by Chief Rabbi David Yosef, Ynet said.

A final decision will be made in the coming days by a joint committee of the religious services ministry, the health ministry, the police and the Abu Kabir forensic institute, according to Ynet. Sources on the committee who are opposed to another forensic scan told Ynet it was unfeasible to continue examining the remains indefinitely and that collective burial was common practice in such cases.

The matter is complicated by the possibility that the remains include those of invading Hamas terrorists, some of whose remains were accidentally brought to Shura instead of to a dedicated container in Sde Teiman, near Beersheba.
Sinwar's writings disclose how Hamas leveraged 2021 Gaza truce to plan October 7
Hamas’s leadership saw Operation Guardian of the Walls as a victory, newly uncovered internal correspondences have revealed by an N12 report on Saturday.

The correspondences revealed that Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas’s military chief, used the 2021 truce to lure Israel into complacency while planning the October 7 attacks.

The report describes the documents as revealing a “calculated strategy designed to exploit the internal weaknesses of Israeli society and bring about its collapse from within.”

Sinwar reportedly saw the temporary ceasefire as a strategic victory that was a win-win scenario for Hamas and a lose-lose scenario for Israel.

“It is likely that this move, which would be acceptable to most countries in the world, would not be acceptable to the occupation [Israel] and would therefore increase their isolation and disconnection from [the world]. If the occupation decides to go in this direction, it will tear it apart from within and lead to an internal rift and civil war,” Sinwar wrote to then Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.

Israel believed operation to be great tactical success
At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-defense minister Benny Gantz, and then-chief of staff Lt.-Gen (res.) Avi Kochavi all presented the operation as a strategic success and a crushing victory. It was exactly this sense of confidence and victory that gave Hamas the conviction to launch the October 7 attacks.

The documents also revealed that despite the IDF’s claims that its operations against the Gaza Tunnel System (metro) were hugely successful, Hamas claimed that the metro was largely undamaged by the operation.

“The ‘metro’ was not damaged at all, and only the network of attack tunnels was slightly damaged and will be repaired soon,” senior Hamas officials told former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC Commander Esmail Qaani.

The report highlights that these “vast conceptual gaps” between the Israeli assessment and the reality on the ground allowed Hamas to continue expanding its operations while Israel maintained a false sense of security.


IDF used AI to eliminate Hamas official, locate hostages
The IDF's Unit 8200 used artificial intelligence to eliminate a Hamas official and locate hostages in the Gaza Strip, three Israeli and US officials told The New York Times on Friday.

The New York Times reported that the military used AI tech to kill Ibrahim Biari, who was a Hamas commander based in northern Gaza. He assisted in planning the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Four Israeli officials said AI technology was immediately cleared for deployment after the attacks, the report added.

The report said that finding Biari was difficult for the IDF in the first few weeks of the war. The technology used to eliminate him was developed a decade ago, but was only utilized when he was struck by the IDF, shortly after Unit 8200 engineers implemented AI into the tech used to locate and strike him, officials said.

The AI technology was able to locate Biari by listening to his calls. The audio tool was also used by Israeli intelligence to locate hostages taken by the terrorist organization. Two Israeli officers quoted in the report said that the AI tool was refined over time to find hostages.

The attack that killed Biari also killed 50 other terrorists, the IDF said in November 2023. This came after the Pentagon asked the military for "detail the thinking and process behind the strike," to avoid more Gazan civilian casualties, an official told Politico.

Regarding the AI technology, three people told The New York Times that many of these initiatives started as collaborations between Unit 8200 soldiers and IDF reservists who worked at tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. However, Google noted that "the work those employees do as reservists is not connected," to the company.

Israel also used AI technology to monitor the reactions from the Arab world to then-Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah's death.


Brendan O'Neill: Kneecap make me ashamed to be Irish
Post-Coachella, people are discovering that Kneecap don’t just hate Israel – they also admire its fascistic enemies. The day after the 7 October pogrom, they posted an image of themselves grinning from ear to ear with the words: ‘Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.’ It was as gross as if someone had said ‘Solidarity with the German struggle’ after Kristallnacht. One of them, the twat in the tricolor balaclava, has posed with a copy of the collected speeches of Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of Hezbollah who was a notorious anti-Semite. And they’ve previously got their audiences chanting ‘Ooh-ahh-Hezbollah!’.

Now it has come to light that at a London gig in November last year, they displayed the Hezbollah flag and yelled: ‘Up Hamas, up Hezbollah!’ The crowd roared its approval. This will have been an audience of mostly middle-class ‘progressives’ who fancy themselves as anti-fascist. Yet here they were cheering a militia founded to murder Jews (Hamas) and a movement that calls the Jewish presence in the Middle East a ‘cancerous growth’ that ‘must be destroyed’ (Hezbollah). Any Jew who survives our glorious destruction ‘can go back to Germany, or wherever they come from’, Hezbollah says.

This is what Kneecap is saying ‘Up’ to: terrorists who harbour the genocidal dream of expelling Jews from their homeland. Behold the newest subculture: anti-fascists for fascism. Music acts once ‘rocked against racism’ – now they rock for racist armies that rape and kill Jews. Kneecap’s flirting with the paraphernalia of Hamas and Hezbollah exposes the rotten heart of Israelophobia. It confirms that what poses as an anti-war movement is, in truth, an anti-civilisational movement – an alignment with Islamist hysterics born of a blasé feeling of detachment and contempt for one’s own society. ‘Fuck Israel’, they say, but what they mean is fuck the West, fuck everything, fuck you.

Kneecap have now been referred to counter-terror police regarding their chant of ‘Up Hamas, up Hezbollah’. This is wrong, profoundly so. The only people who will benefit from this authoritarian development are Kneecap themselves. I cannot explain to you how thrilled these Fisher-Price hoods will be at the news that ‘the Brits’ are investigating them. Finally, an element of danger has been injected into their bland project of phoney rebellion that is gushed over by every bore in the cultural establishment. The very serious problem of Western youths sympathising with barbarism cannot be solved with censure. Instead of making martyrs of Kneecap, we should let them carry on exposing the hatred that lies at the heart of anti-Israel animus.

Kneecap make me feel mortified to be Irish. They embody the tinny self-pity and voguish victimhood of Ireland’s cultural elites. ‘We sympathise with Palestine because we know what it’s like to suffer colonial oppression’, these people cry. They milk Ireland’s historic suffering to carve out a personality for themselves in the 21st century. They climb atop Ireland’s dead to advertise their virtue to the world. They marshall the ghosts of the Famine to the narcissistic end of boosting their own cultural power in contemporary debate. That might get rich girls in Coachella and Dalston squealing with delight, but it induces pure shame in all self-respecting Irish folk.
How did South Africa fall so far?
It is now sadly all too obvious how far South Africa has fallen from the heady days, more than three decades ago, when there was so much hope and so much inspiration, led, of course, by the remarkable qualities of Nelson Mandela.

At that time, he led South Africans in showing the world how one emerges from conflict, determined to include others for the benefit of all. South Africa’s population rose to his example and followed his lead and started the long slow business of making the country fairer for all, without rejecting anyone, after decades of apartheid.

But regrettably his successors were made of poorer stuff, reaching perhaps its most disastrous nadir with the kleptocratic Zuma.

So, it’s no surprise that hopes were bound to rise when the current president took office a few years back. Cyril Ramaphosa, surely the last of the ‘freedom fighter’ presidents, entered the post on a wave of goodwill despite everyone knowing that the legacy he had been bequeathed was deeply poisoned. Clearly, he would have to steer carefully to work his way away from the traps that had been set for him by his predecessors’ misdemeanours.

But instead, he appears to have only made matters worse. Surrounded by poor quality rabble-rousers in his government, he and they have set the worst example and an even more destructive course for his country. It is no surprise that things are deteriorating still further to the point where his long-time ruling ANC party has finally thrown all the goodwill it had earned away – the public denied the ANC a majority for the first time in the last general election.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ICJ
But it seems Ramaphosa’s government has learnt nothing. Obscenely, it continues to destroy any understanding of the true nature of Apartheid under which their compatriots suffered for so long. Instead, they have joined in with misusing the word as a stick to beat Israel with. What a betrayal!
Gazan journalist who appears on BBC Arabic called to ‘burn’ Jews in resurfaced posts
A slew of antisemitic social media posts attributed to a Gazan journalist who regularly contributes to BBC Arabic were uncovered on Saturday, including one in which he called to “burn the Jews as Hitler did.”

Samer Elzaenen, 33, was uploading antisemitic and anti-Israel content to social media as far back as 2011, The Telegraph revealed, and continued even after he began providing correspondence for BBC Arabic in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel and the start of the Gaza war.

In a Facebook post in 2011, Elzaenen wrote: “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake, the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”

Then, more than a decade later in 2022, he wrote: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”

According to the British newspaper, Elzaenen has praised over 30 separate terror attacks against Israeli civilians, including a February 2023 car-ramming attack that killed two boys and a 20-year-old man in Jerusalem.

The victims, he said at the time, “will soon go to hell.”

In the aftermath of the October 7 assault, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 251 were seized as hostages, Elzaenen praised the Hamas “resistance fighters” who led the onslaught.

According to the Telegraph, Elzaenen has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the start of the war in Gaza, which erupted when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst through the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized 251 hostages.

Elzaenen subsequently praised the “resistance fighters” who led the massacres.

In the same report, the Telegraph also uncovered remarks posted on social media by a second freelance reporter and correspondent for BBC Arabic, Ahmed Qannan, who praised the “hero” terrorist who opened fire in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak in March 2022, killing five people.


A Communist-Islamist Axis Puts India and America in Its Crosshairs
As India mourns the dozens of tourists murdered in Kashmir this week by jihadists and Prime Minister Narendra Modi vows to pursue them and their backers "to the ends of the earth," India and Pakistan are at daggers drawn. New Delhi has already closed the land border and suspended a key water-sharing agreement, and the two nuclear-armed militaries are preparing for war.

Any nuclear showdown is concerning, and in this case, the strategic stakes for the United States are high. India is the only Asian country that could conceivably counterbalance China, and the more it focuses on Pakistan, the less it can thwart Beijing. Pakistan is now at the forefront of a partnership that will bedevil Americans in the years to come—the unhappy marriage between radical Islam and communism.

In many respects, these two movements are strange bedfellows. China’s Communist Party is hostile to any religious entity that it does not control and it is bulldozing—in some cases, literally—its country’s Islamic heritage. Radical Islamists are equally determined to extinguish non-Islamic beliefs, and in many cases, the people who hold them. Nonetheless, across much of Asia, an increasing number of countries are welcoming both.

Pakistan is the classic example of this nexus. Its intelligence services allegedly supported the Taliban and many of the terrorist groups that attacked India in Kashmir for decades. This Easter marked the 10th anniversary of Pakistan signing up for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is one of the foundations of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. As Islamabad sees it, jihadists are just as useful for fighting India as the communists are for economic development.

China is picking up other Islamist partners too. Yemen’s Houthis have made the Red Sea crossing between Europe and Asia perilous, but Chinese ships sail through serenely. Chinese companies have been caught sending the Houthis dual-use equipment, and last week the State Department accused a Chinese satellite company of helping the Houthis find targets.

In other parts of South Asia, hatred of Israel goes hand-in-hand with love of China. The Maldives were one of ISIS’s most fertile recruiting grounds, and its government just banned people with Israeli passports. Its current president’s first trip abroad was to Beijing, and it now welcomes China’s "military assistance."


Erin Molan: President of Board of Directors of British Jews RESPONDS to Global Outrage over Controversial Letter
Australian journalist Erin Molan sits down with Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Directors of British Jews, to discuss the controversial Financial Times letter that sparked global outrage. The letter, signed by 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was criticized for barely mentioning Hamas’ responsibility in the Israel-Hamas conflict while blaming Israel for innocent lives lost. Rosenberg forcefully denounces the letter, clarifying that it does NOT represent the views of British Jews or the organization as a whole. He also announces a disciplinary investigation into the signatories for possible violations of the organization’s code of conduct.

Join us as Rosenberg exposes the truth behind the letter’s anti-Israel bias and addresses the rise of Jew-hating narratives in the media. This is a must-watch for anyone seeking clarity on the Israel-Hamas war and the fight against antisemitism.


Arsen Ostrovsky: Canada's Choice: Poilievre vs. Carney, A Pivotal Vote for the Jewish Community
Last November, I spoke at an event in Toronto, during which a dear friend @RickEkstein asked me “why is it that you go so hard on Canada?” I explained is because Canada was not Belgium or Ireland or Norway. I actually love Canada, I have deep respect for the people, the country and strong historical ties. That’s why I feel the need to call Canada out - when I feel the government does not live up to its own values, when it allows Jew-hated to fester, and even worse, enflame it, and when it abandons both the Jewish people and the Jewish state, all for political expediency.

One cannot say they are sincere about combating the scourge of antisemitism, when it has exploded more than 670% in the past year, or painfully repeat, like a worn-out cliché, that the world’s oldest hatred does not represent Canadian values.

How many more pro-forma condemnations or empty promises of action can be tolerated, in the absence of actual, urgent and tangible action?

At the same time, Canada cannot continue to say they are an ally of Israel or seek peace, when they continue to single out Israel for condemnation, repeatedly vote against the Jewish state at the UN and apply an arms embargo against Israel, which is in the fight of her life to secure the release of the remaining 59 hostages, including Canadian national Judith Weinstein.

Nor can Canada claim to be a legitimate ally, when your Ministers go to Ramallah to warmly embrace Mahmoud Abbas, who continues to write to out Pay-for-Slay checks to Palestinian murderers of Israelis, support outrageous efforts at the ICC to indict the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant, or continue to write out blank checks with Canadian tax-payer dollars to the Hamas-infested UNRWA.


In policy shift, Eurovision to allow Palestinian flags in audience this year
The European Broadcasting Authority changed its policy this week to allow all “legally permitted” flags to be flown in the audience at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, opening the door for spectators to display the Palestinian flag after it was previously banned from the event.

The revised rules specify that fans can bring and display any flag that does not fit one of the following descriptions, according to a document obtained by the Danish national broadcaster: Flags with racist and/or discriminatory content, including symbols that incite hatred or violence; flags that may be considered offensive or defamatory; and flags with symbols of banned terrorist organizations.

As such, fans will now be allowed to fly the Palestinian flag or any other banner that fits within the revised rules.

However, the new rules also include stricter statutes for what artists and participants can display on stage, which will now be limited solely to the national flag of whoever is on stage at the time.

This new rule prohibits artists from displaying all Pride flags, the Palestinian flag or any other flag not belonging to their country of origin.

According to multiple reports, the new rules also come with updated consequences for violators, which include confiscation of banned items and removal from the crowd.

The Swiss city of Basel will host this year’s contest — one of the world’s biggest live television events, which involves countries from across Europe to Australia — at the St. Jakobshalle indoor arena, with the semi-finals on May 13 and 15, and the final on May 17.

Representing Israel will be Yuval Raphael, who survived Hamas’s massacre of the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. She will perform a song titled “New Day Will Rise.”


NYC precinct council prez resigns after fury over removing Israeli hostage posters
The head of a Manhattan council that partners with the NYPD resigned after being exposed by The Post for tearing down Israeli hostage posters

Robert Josman, president and longtime member of the volunteer 24th Precinct Community Council on the Upper West Side, resigned last week amid demands for action over his repeated removal of hostage posters plastered near synagogues.

On one occasion, he told residents who confronted him that it is illegal to post anything on NYC property and said he had consulted with the police, The Post reported last last month.

But critics said he didn’t remove any other flyers and argued that he “directly undermined his own role by demonstrating overt hatred” toward Jews, according to letters sent to city officials.

“Update: antisemite Robert Josman has resigned as President of the NYPD 24th Precinct [Council],” the watchdog group StopAntisemitism posted on X a day after the board’s April meeting.

The Upper West Side has one of the largest Jewish communities in the Big Apple and saw some of the most hate crimes citywide over the last two years.
Pro-Palestinian group protests outside Ecuador’s Israeli embassy on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside Israel’s embassy in Ecuador on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the consulate shared on X/Twitter.

The embassy stressed that while the Israeli flag was in half-mast, a symbol of mourning for the six million victims ofthe Nazi genoccide, protesters gathered “with a clear message: hatred towards Israel and rejection of its existence.”

“Today—as we commemorate the six million Jews murdered by Nazi antisemitism—a hate-filled event was chosen to organize is a painful and shameful demonstration that intolerance and antisemitism still persist, even disguised as activism,” the embassy said in a statement.

The memory of the Holocaust
The protest “not only dishonors the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, but also represents an attempt to normalize speeches that incite hatred, deny the right of the Jewish people to exist in peace and attack the basic principles of coexistence.”

Despite the protest, the embassy said it would continue to “reaffirm our commitment to remembrance, to education, and to defending democratic values ​​against those who today attempt to tarnish this date with hateful slogans.

“Never again is today. Never again is raising our voices. Never again is remembering and acting.”


Abbas names Hussein al-Sheikh as deputy, likely succesor to PLO
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas named close confidant Hussein al-Sheikh as his deputy and likely successor on Saturday, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said, a step widely seen as needed to assuage international doubts over Palestinian leadership.

Abbas, 89, has headed the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the death of veteran leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, but he had for years resisted internal reforms, including the naming of a successor.

Sheik, born in 1960, is a veteran of Fatah, the main PLO faction which was founded by Arafat and is now headed by Abbas. He is widely viewed as a pragmatist with very close ties to Israel.

He was named PLO vice president after the organization's executive committee approved his nomination by Abbas, the PLO said in a statement.

Reform of the PA, which exercises limited autonomy in the West Bank, has been a priority for the United States and Gulf monarchies, hoping the body can play a central role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The positions that Al-Sheikh served
Al-Sheikh served as the Palestinian presidential adviser and was the Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee. In February, he co-signed a letter alongside five Arab foreign ministers that was sent to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in opposition to plans to displace Palestinians from Gaza, as suggested by President Donald Trump in late January.

In May of last year, Al-Sheikh attended a meeting with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a group of senior Arab officials, which devolved into an unusual shouting match between him and the United Arab Emirates's foreign minister.


Blast rocks Iran's Bandar Abbas port near IRGC base, eight killed, over 700 wounded
A large explosion rocked Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday.

At least five were killed and more than 700 people were wounded and rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment, and it is unclear whether there are fatalities, Reuters reported.

The explosion reportedly occurred near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base, Army Radio reported.

The explosion, which hit the Shahid Rajaee section of the port, occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman, but there was no indication of a link between the two events.

The IDF has denied any involvement in the explosion, Maariv reported, citing sources within the military.

Footage online shows large mushroom clouds emerging from the site of the explosion.

"The source of this incident was the explosion of several containers stored in the Shahid Rajaee Port wharf area. We are currently evacuating and transferring the injured to medical centers," a local crisis management official told state TV.

However, a source tied to the IRGC told the New York Times that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles.
Israel denies any role in huge Iran port blast
Israeli officials denied on Saturday any connection to the massive explosion that rocked the Port of Shahid Rajaee, Iran’s largest, on Saturday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 700 others.

A large plume of smoke was seen above the port, one of two located in the city of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. The Port of Shahid Rajaee is located on the north shore of the Strait of Hormuz, about nine miles west-southwest of the Port of Bandar Abbas.

Initial reports suggested that the blast was linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make fuel for ballistic missiles.

Iranian authorities did not disclose any information about the cause of the blast, though they denied that it was linked to the country’s oil industry, AP reported.

A spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s crisis management organization, Hossein Zafari, told Iran’s ILNA news agency that “the cause of the explosion was the chemicals inside the [shipping] containers.”

In March, private security firm Ambrey said, the Port of Shahid Rajaee had unloaded a shipment of “sodium perchlorate rocket fuel,” according to AP.

“The fire was reportedly the result of improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles,” the security firm added.

The Financial Times in January reported that the fuel was sent from China to Iran in two vessels, as the Islamic Republic was looking to replenish its depleted missile stocks after firing about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in October 2024.

AP also reported that one of the vessels has likely carried the chemical ingredient to the port in March, after analyzing ship-tracking data.

Iran never confirmed accepting the shipment.

Western explosives and munitions experts say that the orange smoke observed from the blast is consistent with the burning of nitrogen compounds, which are a key component in rocket fuel.


Kyoto hotel forces Israeli tourist to declare non-involvement in war
An Israeli tourist checking into a hotel in the Japanese city of Kyoto was forced to sign a form declaring his non-involvement in alleged war crimes committed by Israeli forces, Ynet reported on Saturday.

The tourist attempted to check in for a stay at the Wind Villa Hotel in Kyoto, but upon presenting his Israeli passport at the desk, he was told to declare his non-involvement in war crimes or face refusal of service.

The tourist reportedly served in the Israeli Navy as a combat medic.

The tourist told Ynet that "Among the sections in this document was that I did not rape, murder people who raised a white flag, or commit a war crime. This is absurd and ridiculous. I told him that we do not kill women and children, why would we do that?"

He initially refused to sign the form, explaining to the clerk that he was not interested in "getting into politics." The hotel employee replied that every Israeli or Russian guest was required to sign it.

"In the end, I decided to sign because I have nothing to hide. This statement is true because I did not commit war crimes, and no IDF soldier commits war crimes. I signed because I did not want to get into trouble and also because this form is worthless," he told Ynet. "This specific person [the clerk] has nothing against Israel. He is very supportive of peace. I also do not think he is antisemitic, he simply does not feed on the correct information."

A violation of Japan's hotel law
The tourist referred the incident to the Israeli Ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen, and sent a letter to Kyoto Prefecture Governor Takatoshi Nishiwaki raising concerns over discriminatory practices in Kyoto's hospitality sector.

"This discriminatory act, based solely on nationality, caused the guest significant emotional distress and discomfort," the ambassador wrote. "We view this incident as extremely serious and unacceptable. This incident constitutes a blatant violation of Japan's Hotel Business Law and the values ​​of equality and non-discrimination that we believe are shared by our two nations. What is particularly concerning is that this is not an isolated incident."

Nishiwaki informed Cohen that the matter had been referred to the Kyoto municipality and that it had opened an investigation into the incident on suspicion of a violation of the Hotel Law.


Swiss fencers turn backs on gold-winning Israeli team during medal ceremony
The Swiss under-23 fencing team turned its back on its Israeli competitors during the medal ceremony of the European Fencing Championship (U23) in Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday night.

Israel's male under-23 team won the gold medal, with the Swiss team winning silver and the Italian team taking bronze. After the three teams took to the podium to take their awards, the Swiss fencers turned their backs on Israel during the playing of Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah.

A representative of Israel Fencing Association "Sport should bring people together, not divide them."

Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Sa'ar, congratulated his team but criticized the Swiss team for its "disrespectful behavior."

"Shame on the Swiss team for their disrespectful behavior," he wrote on X. "You don’t know how to lose and behaved in a manner which is an embarrassment to you and the country you’re supposed to represent."

The Israeli team - Alon Sarid, Fyodor Khaperski, Yonatan Masika, and Itamar Tavor, alongside coach Alexander Ivanov - defeated Switzerland 45–34.

Iraqi team protest
This is not the first time a competing team has protested Israel during a fencing competition: in May 2023, Iraq's national fencing team withdrew from the World Fencing Championship in Istanbul after being pitted against the Israeli national team.


Israeli windsurfer Tamar Steinberg wins gold at world championship
Israeli windsurfer Tamar Steinberg on Friday won the gold medal at the World Cup in Hyeres, France.

It marked the second gold medal in a row for Steinberg, who won first place at a competition in Cadiz, Spain, last month.

Sharon Kantor, also an Israeli competitor, won bronze at the competition.

The final day of the competition was marred by heavy winds, leading organizers to cancel the quarter and semi-final rounds, opting for one single final round, which included Steinberg, Kantor and fellow Israeli Shahar Tibi.

In a close race, Steinberg and Kantor both finished on the podium, with Chinese surfer Zheng Yan finishing in second place, taking home the silver medal.

“There were really varied conditions throughout the competition with the medal race in such light winds after a few days of crazy winds,” Steinberg told the media, as reported by the Ynet news site. “I feel confident today in my ability to withstand the different conditions and it gives me a lot of confidence.”

“After this week in Israel, it’s really meaningful for me to sing the anthem on the podium tomorrow,” she added, likely referencing Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was held on Thursday. “It’s always exciting and I hope it gives a little pride and lifts the national mood.”

Steinberg and Kantor’s podium finishes in Friday’s race continues Israel’s dominance in global windsurfing competitions, coming less than a year after Israeli sailors won two medals at the 2024 Paris games. Israeli windsurfers Sharon Kantor (left), a silver medalist, and Tom Reuveny (right), a gold medalist, show their medals after their successes at the 2024 Olympics, August 3, 2024. (Olympic Committee of Israel.)

Kantor took home a silver medal in the Women’s IQ-foil event, and fellow Israeli Tom Reuveny won gold in the men’s event, taking home Israel’s sole gold medal from the Paris Olympics.
Five Days In Israel: "Victory For Us Is Civilians Coming Back"
For two decades, Bicom has worked to put Israel’s case in the British media, including by taking small groups of journalists to the country. Tom Scotson went on one of their first trips since the October 7 attacks and subsequent war in Gaza. He found a people in trauma, united in a belief they face an existential threat and yet deeply divided over Benjamin Netanyahu. These are his impressions over five days last month

Wednesday 19 March
Struggling to keep my eyes open, I travel towards Israel’s border with Lebanon and receive a security briefing with commander Dotan Razili, who sits us down to face the border known as the Blue Line.

He compares the failures of October 7 with the fall of Singapore in the Second World War for British history obsessives and contrasts it with the military successes the IDF has had against Hezbollah.

I ask him what victory looks like in the north and Gaza, as Netanyahu has been criticised for not having a “day after” plan.

“Good question,” he says. “Victory for us is civilians coming back to the communities, feeling safe.”

But what about the war with Hamas? “Israel has to decide what is more important: hostages or bringing down Hamas? A big, big challenge,” he replies.

I chase this point with my hosts, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom), but it is largely ignored. It is probably too bleak of a question to consider for any Israeli, as the conflict continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s fabric.

We later travel to the Golan Heights and into the Druze town of Majdal Shams, where I meet the families of some of the 12 children and young adults who were killed by a Hezbollah rocket attack in July. The sirens went off but no one had any time to react.

Children are still playing football on the astroturf as a memorial of black ribbons, candles and photos of the dead seems to watch them from the sidelines.

At the nearby town of Mas’ade we meet Adham Safadi, an ambulance driver, who looks utterly broken. On the day of the missile attack he told his daughter, Venes Safadi, to be careful as there was “a war going on”.

He was called out to an emergency on the football pitch only to see his daughter’s dead body on the floor. Despite his suffering, he is hopeful that the future “will be white and not black”.

I feel guilty for sharing a platter of steak and fries with red wine on the Sea of Galilee while hostages are being held and children killed in Gaza.

The locals are grateful to anyone visiting Israel at a time of war. “Thank you for coming to Israel!” shouts the restaurant host in bright pink glasses as I leave.

Thursday 20 March
Overnight I slept through a missile siren. Two more projectiles were fired at Ben Gurion airport today.

As someone in my hotel tells me the news, I learn the IDF has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza. Around 700 people have been killed including several senior Hamas members, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The war between Israel and Hamas feels never-ending. And the hatred between some Israelis and Arabs became more vivid on the flight home.

An Orthodox Jew, sitting in the next-but-one seat to me, is deep in conversation with a Bicom representative about the war. “I don’t like Arabs,” he says. The Bicom employee is keen to correct him.

Peace feels very far away.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



AddToAny

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Search2

Hasbys!

Hasbys!

2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Show All

Blog Archive

Copyright © Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News | Powered by Blogger
Blogger Templates