Monday, July 28, 2025

07/28 Links Pt1: The myth of obstinate Israel; How the West prolonged Gaza’s misery in the name of virtue; Israel's wartime Gaza aid is historically unprecedented

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Why the Truth Matters
In an episode of the drama House M.D., the patient at the center of the medical mystery is a brilliant physicist who has intentionally made himself dumber. He takes a careful mix of the drug dextromethorphan and alcohol every day, which lowers his IQ—but only while under the influence of the cocktail. He does this because he finds it less stressful and less lonely to live in ignorant bliss.

The Gaza discourse is filled with such people. Over the weekend the journalist David Collier revealed that the Palestinian child who’d been used by nearly every major news organization as the living representation of the mass starvation of Gazan children was in fact suffering from cerebral palsy and hypoxemia, plus apparently a genetic disorder.

The ubiquitous image of the boy’s skeletal frame in his mother’s arms is indeed heartbreaking. Terribly sad as well is the fact that the boy is now fatherless. But it does not appear to be the case that, as has been reported, the boy’s father was killed by the IDF while looking for food. Videos and contemporaneous reports strongly suggest the father was killed while looking for Israeli soldiers to engage in battle. Many scenes of urban warfare are deeply tragic, and Gaza is no different.

Where Gaza is different is in the desire by global information institutions to lie about what specifically is creating those scenes, and for otherwise intelligent people to embrace those lies, because it’s less stressful and less lonely to live in an online world where the Israelis are always monsters and the truth is treated as a distraction.

A baby starving to death whose father was shot by Israelis while searching for food for his suffering child: It’s the kind of story that so completely flatters a certain worldview that the holders of that worldview ought to treat it with respectful skepticism. Again, the child’s suffering is real and tragic. But it was not deemed useful, and so it was falsified in service to The Cause. One can forgive the desperation of a parent; one cannot forgive a journalist or a “humanitarian” NGO official who finds it easier to join the mob than to be honest.

Lying about famine in Gaza is a tactic that Hamas and its useful idiots have used repeatedly, because the truth is disadvantageous to Hamas’s war and propaganda machines. And the truth is that there are real concerns about possible near-term hunger and malnutrition in Gaza because Hamas steals aid, hoards food and medicine away from civilians, and punishes dissent.

The truth, then, is that Hamas has engineered real suffering in Gaza, and the lie—that Israel is intentionally starving children—enables Hamas to engineer more suffering by creating global pressure on Israel to let Hamas control the aid again. That way Hamas can keep the cycle going.
Matti Friedman: Is Gaza Starving? Searching for the Truth in an Information War.
Because the GHF is an acute threat to its power, Hamas has been doing what it can to foment unrest around its distribution sites, kill its workers, and intimidate people accepting its food. The Americans running the sites have reported the distribution of more than 90 million meals directly to Gazans.

But on the ground, the word directly—according to friends of mine serving with reserve army units close to GHF operations—has often meant chaotic scenes of thousands of men descending on the distribution sites and picking them clean, coming into dangerous and sometimes fatal contact with Israeli soldiers who are understandably scared of disguised Hamas fighters and unprepared for the kind of mass chaos they’re expected to control.

It’s impossible to know how many Palestinians have been killed in these incidents, because Hamas numbers are part of the group’s information war. But my friends serving nearby told me that there have been fatalities in multiple incidents, and that poor Israeli planning is partly to blame. One friend, a committed and capable officer, told me despondently that the distribution effort “isn’t working and can’t work.” It’s not that they’re not trying. The army simply doesn’t have the ability to run orderly food distribution in a hostile and war-ravaged territory that has devolved, to a large extent, into the rule of gangs and clans.

An experienced Israeli civilian involved in the aid efforts, from an organization that works both with international aid groups and the Israeli military, said on Friday that mass starvation is not yet the reality but could be in the near future. There are already “pockets” of malnutrition and real hunger, he told me. The only way to avert a deterioration, he said, is for Israel to abandon the mistaken idea that withholding aid weakens Hamas, and to urgently flood Gaza with food. It’s the right move morally, he said, but also strategically, because the humanitarian crisis is devastating what’s left of Israel’s international support. He praised efforts by the United Arab Emirates and American-led groups like the World Food Program. Israel needs to work with them, he said, rethink its own policy, and move fast before things go from bad to worse.

This is already happening. In the meantime, news consumers worldwide were galvanized over the weekend by disturbing photos like those of the Gazan child Muhammad al-Matouq, who appeared on the front page of Britain’s Daily Express and then on that of The New York Times and elsewhere as the symbol of Israel’s cruel starvation of innocents. After the photographs were seen around the world it became clear that the child in fact suffers from cerebral palsy and other conditions unrelated to starvation. The suffering child ended up being less the intended symbol of Israeli evil than of how genuine misery can be put to use by practitioners of narrative war.

You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true: The disaster they’ve engineered in Gaza fuels the global campaign against Israel. That’s presumably why the crescendo of hunger stories coincided on Friday with reports that Hamas has now hardened its positions in the talks, leading to their suspension. (One of Hamas’s top demands, according to an American official cited by The Wall Street Journal, is shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.)

One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop.
John Spencer: Israel's wartime Gaza aid is historically unprecedented
There is no precedent for this. None.

Throughout history, wars between nations or between governments and insurgent groups have often involved humanitarian disasters. And in most of those wars, the fighting side does not provide relief to the enemy’s population. In World War II, the Allies provided no aid to German or Japanese civilians while those governments were still fighting and in control of their territory. In Vietnam, the United States never delivered humanitarian assistance to North Vietnamese or Viet Cong–held areas. Even during battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, U.S.-backed forces facilitated aid only after clearing territory, not while ISIS still held it.

But Israel is doing what no military has done. It is facilitating direct humanitarian aid to the population of a territory governed by a terrorist army that it is still fighting in close-quarters urban combat.

Whether this fact is recognized or not by the international community, it is a historic first.

At the same time, this war has produced another anomaly. One that should deeply trouble anyone who cares about humanitarian norms. There is no historical precedent to a non-warring party with the sole ability to assist, Egypt, not allowing civilians to flee a war zone.

Egypt has refused to open the Rafah border crossing to allow Gazan civilians to escape, even as active combat, food shortages, and humanitarian collapse have worsened. This is not a case of reluctance by a distant country. This is the only nation that borders Gaza besides Israel. It is not a party to the war. And it is not constrained by law, logistics, or inability. It is constrained only by political choice.

In almost every other modern war, neutral countries have opened their borders to civilians seeking safety. Poland did so during the war in Ukraine. Jordan and Turkey took in millions during the Syrian civil war. Tanzania and Congo (then called Zaire) accepted refugees during the Rwandan genocide. Egypt is doing the opposite. It is keeping the gate closed and leaving civilians trapped while the world blames Israel for what happens inside.

This too is without precedent.

It is easy to criticize Israel for the humanitarian costs of its war. It is much harder to hold Hamas accountable for embedding its fighters in schools, hospitals, and civilian neighborhoods. And harder still to acknowledge when a military is doing something not just legal, but extraordinary.

The truth matters. And the truth is that no military in modern history has delivered more aid to an enemy population during active war than the Israel Defense Forces have to Gaza. That fact stands, regardless of whether anyone wants to say it out loud.


Saul Sadka: How the West prolonged Gaza’s misery in the name of virtue
It was all avoidable, even after October 7. If everyone Hamas cared about had stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel and told Hamas it was doomed, the group would have had fewer reasons to believe global pressure would deliver them Israel’s surrender to their demands. Without all that international pressure on Israel, Hamas may have folded already. Now Gaza is mostly ruined – in a just war – after Hamas booby-trapped half the buildings. Just the clean-up will take years.

The new American administration finally seems to have received the message that the last one didn’t. To quote Trump: “We're down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after we get the final hostages out.”

This has been the issue for twenty-one months: most hostages can be freed via deals, but Hamas knows what happens when the last of them are released – their defeat. What leverage can you have against fanatics who relish the deaths of their own people?

And what of French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration to recognise a Palestinian state, issued just hours before the US administration announced that hostage negotiations had collapsed because Hamas was presenting “increasingly insurmountable obstacles” to a deal? Only the Hamas leadership in Qatar knows if France’s push for Palestinian statehood emboldened them – but it certainly didn’t help the cause of a Palestinian state. If anything, it likely pushed it further out of reach by reinforcing in Trump’s mind the notion that the very idea of such a state was weakening his and Israel’s hand in talks.

One detail of Macron’s statement went mostly unnoticed – except by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who was recently sanctioned by the Trump Administration.

Albanese was naturally appalled by Macron’s insistence that any future Palestinian state be demilitarised. The French President’s declaration is a double-edged chalice for the proponents of Palestinian statehood with full sovereignty. Netanyahu’s own demand for a demilitarised Palestine is now effectively baked into the starting point – likely far in the future – of any eventual negotiations with French backing.

In the end, the Israeli public now has a firm veto on the terms under which Palestinians will have a state. Hamas didn’t just lose a war, they collapsed their entire support network on their own heads, while turning their Jewish neighbours, including many former supporters of a two-state solution, against giving them sovereignty for at least a generation.
Brendan O'Neill: How the West’s Israelophobia has made life hell for Palestinians
What’s more important to the UN – feeding Palestinians or shunning Israel? Getting food and medicine into Gazans’ hands or jealously restoring the monopoly on aid it once enjoyed in Gaza? Judging by its shameful behaviour these past two weeks, it’s the latter. The UN’s bigoted urge to sideline ‘untrustworthy’ Israel and repair its own tattered power over Palestine motivates it more than the human imperative of keeping Gazans alive.

Then there’s Hamas’s truly sick role. Hamas has killed Gazans who work for the GHF. It has fired rockets at GHF facilities. Why? Because it is experiencing a calamitous financial crisis and is desperate to return to the old system where it creamed profits off the UN-led aid system. Last week, in one of the vanishingly few informative pieces about the Gaza crisis, the Washington Post reported that Hamas’s coffers are almost entirely depleted, meaning it can ‘no longer adequately pay the salaries of its fighters’. The GHF, by monopolising the distribution of aid, has been a key cause of Hamas’s ‘revenue tumble’. So Hamas furiously targets the GHF, even where that means it becomes more difficult for the GHF to distribute food.

There’s an even more sinister motive to Hamas’s murderous interruption of food distribution in Gaza. It is ‘counting on the humanitarian crisis to bring the war to an end’, says the Washington Post. That is, it believes it can benefit from Gaza’s agony, because it knows the Western media will pin all the blame on Israel, thus heaping more global pressure on the Jewish State to down arms and back off. The claim that Israel is intentionally starving Gazans is a grotesque inversion of reality. In truth, Israel has handed out millions of meals while Hamas has used menaces and violence to try to thwart this mass feeding in the hope that the sight of emaciated Gazans will lead once more to Israel being damned by the West as ‘genocidal’.

And that’s exactly what has happened. The Israelophobes of the Western establishment have dutifully played their part in Hamas’s despicable morality play and pointed a collective finger of judgement at the Jewish nation. They have obediently marshalled the hungry of Gaza to the end of further criminalising Israel. They are recklessly incentivising Hamas’s barbarism. Hamas now knows that dystopic images of hunger work to its apocalyptic advantage. In using the nightmarish vision of Gazan hunger to further harry the Jewish State, the West’s media elites witlessly goad Hamas to further thwart Israel’s distribution of food. Once more, Israelophobia intensifies Palestinian suffering.

It is so clear now: the West’s anti-Israel derangement is bad not only for Israelis but for Palestinians, too. It has trapped women and children in Gaza. It has rewarded the murderous machinations of Hamas. It has incentivised the creation of yet more hunger to serve as a propagandistic weapon in the anti-Semitic war against Israel. Enough is enough. Those of us who support Israel’s right to exist and cherish Palestinian life should agitate for the opening of Gaza’s border with Egypt, for the UN to do that bare minimum of feeding people in Gaza, and for the media to tell the truth for a change.
The myth of obstinate Israel
Throughout the Gaza war, Hamas-originated propaganda has been absorbed unquestioningly by swaths of Western opinion. There are, for example, the highly questionable figures about civilian deaths and casualties. Many Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms, so how many, legitimately killed in the course of battle, have been counted as civilians?

The death or injury of any child is truly tragic. If only war had not been forced on Israel by Hamas’s bloodthirsty pogrom of October 7, 2023. Yet the highly emotive figures issued by Hamas of children killed must take into account that “child” is defined as individuals “up to the age of 18,” and that Hamas trains youngsters aged 15 or younger to participate in fighting the IDF. How many of the claimed children killed were in fact armed militants actively engaged in the conflict?

The claims in the joint statement about the construction plan known as E1 are not strictly accurate. The E1 proposals envisage connecting Ma’aleh Adumim with Jerusalem, and they would certainly have strategic, political, and emotional impact. However, as a glance at the map can verify, the assertion that this would entirely sever the West Bank’s north from its south is untrue. Palestinian territorial contiguity would be affected, but the entire Jericho corridor would remain open, and north-south access in a variety of ways could remain. Ma’aleh Adumim would still be the easternmost Israeli settlement in the Jerusalem area.

The joint statement said that E1 would undermine the two-state solution, but ignores the obvious ever-present question: Why wasn’t a Palestinian state created in 1947 based on the UN Partition Plan; in 1993 and 1995 from the Oslo Accords; from the Ehud Barak offer in 2000; at the 2007 Annapolis conference; from the 2008 Ehud Olmert peace offer; or from US secretary of state John Kerry’s initiative in 2013-2014?

The Palestinian leadership has in the past rejected every possible opportunity of achieving a two-state solution, yet the 28 foreign ministers continue to promote it. Nothing in their joint statement takes account of Palestinian preferences, or even treats the Palestinians as active participants in the conflict, whose past decisions have shaped events.

In their calls for “negotiations” as the only means for liberating hostages, the foreign ministers ignore the fact that negotiations have been in progress for some time. As the Foreign Ministry response to the joint statement noted: “There is a concrete proposal for a ceasefire deal, and Israel has repeatedly said yes to this proposal, while Hamas stubbornly refuses to accept it.”

Following Hamas’s bloodthirsty pogrom on October 7, 2023, Israel had no alternative but to retaliate. Benjamin Netanyahu announced two war aims: to bring back the hostages seized by Hamas, and to ensure its total defeat, so that it could never pursue its aim of repeating October 7 “again and again” as its spokesmen said it intended.

Neither aim has yet been fully achieved, but neither has been abandoned. The foreign ministers discount the fact that a complete end to hostilities at this stage would leave Hamas with a continuing foothold in Gaza, and the certainty of an enemy remaining on Israel’s doorstep, intent on pursuing its declared aim of eliminating Israel and killing as many Jews as possible.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement at Daystar's "Together As One" event in Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement at Daystar's "Together As One" event in Jerusalem with Pastor Paula White, leader of the White House Faith Office.




NYPost Editorial: To end food shortages in Gaza, the world should unite to end . . . Hamas
The plight of Gazan civilians lacking enough food has made headlines, but make no mistake: Whatever hunger exists in Gaza is Hamas’ fault — and the way to address it is to end Hamas. And thus, the war.

Claims of “mass starvation,” of course, are utter baloney. They’re based by all sorts of falsehoods, including, most recently, lurid, upsetting photos of supposedly sick, malnourished kids, whose protruding bones make them look like Nazi concentration-camp prisoners.

Numerous publications published one particularly disturbing photo, of a boy named Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, to show the effects of “widespread hunger.”

Only it turns out the boy is not malnourished but has a genetic disease; uncropped pictures show his well-fed brother nearby.

It’s likely many Gazans have trouble getting enough food for their families day-to-day. But relying on any information out of Gaza about food supplies is a dangerous business.

Reports of “mass starvation” there have been circulating from early in the war. In May the BBC reported that “14,000 babies in Gaza could die in the next 48 hours,” yet that turned out to be a willful misreading of a projection by the United Nations (itself an unreliable source).

Meanwhile, Israel is permitting truckloads of aid into Gaza, and facilitating air drops. This week it even paused military action for 10 hours a day to allow for humanitarian aid.

Remember, though, that food shortages in Gaza have largely been orchestrated by Hamas, which steals international aid for its own members and to resell to finance its war efforts.

And this morally perverse group actually wants its people to starve, so the world will blame Israel and pressure it to halt its attacks on . . . Hamas.
Graham: ‘Israel to take Gaza down like we did in Tokyo, Berlin’
Israel will change its Gaza strategy by putting an end to its negotiations with Hamas and pursuing total victory via military force, just as the U.S. did in World War II, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday.

“I think President Trump has come to believe, and I certainly have come to believe, there’s no way you’re going to negotiate an end of this war with Hamas,” the senator said in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“Hamas is a terrorist organization, chartered to destroy the State of Israel. They’re religious Nazis. They hold Israeli hostages,” he added.

Graham said that Israel has “come to conclude that they can’t achieve a goal of ending the war with Hamas that would be satisfactory to the safety of Israel and that they’re going to do in Gaza what we did in Tokyo and Berlin—take the place by force, then start over again, presenting a better future for the Palestinians, hopefully having the Arabs take over the West Bank and Gaza.”

The American lawmaker continued, “I think going forward, you’re going to see a change in tactics; a full military effort by Israel to take Gaza down like we did in Tokyo and Berlin.”

Trump said on Sunday that Israel will have to make a decision on the next steps in the war on Hamas, adding he did not know what would happen after the terrorists blew up the ceasefire negotiations.

“You know, they had a routine discussion the other day and, all of a sudden, they hardened up,” he said of the talks, speaking alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland.

“So Israel’s going to have to make a decision,” Trump told reporters. “I know what I do, but I don’t think it’s appropriate that I say, but Israel is going to have to make a decision.”
Israeli President Rebukes Dutch PM for Lying About Phone Call, Ignoring Hostages
Israel President Isaac Herzog rebuked Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof for allegedly misrepresenting their phone conversation and for failing to mention Israeli hostages in a subsequent communiqué about the call.

Herzog’s role as Israel’s president is a ceremonial one, but as a left-wing counterweight to a right-wing government, he is a unifying figure in Israel, and often conducts diplomacy on behalf of the Jewish state.

Schoof had called Herzog to discuss a proposed European Union (EU) boycott of Israeli participation in a research program, and to threaten additional boycotts, in protest against Israel’s war of self-defense in Gaza.


A fundamental error: Recognizing ‘Palestine’ under international law
Prima facie, any treaty or treaty-like agreement is void if, at the time of entry into force, it conflicts with a “peremptory” rule of general international law, jus cogens, accepted and recognized by the global community of states as one from which “no derogation is permitted.” And because the right of sovereign states to maintain military forces essential to self-defense is precisely such a rule, Palestine could credibly argue its right to abrogate an arrangement that had “forced its demilitarization.”

In the late 18th century, Thomas Jefferson—later, America’s third president—wrote knowledgeably about obligation and international law. While affirming that “compacts between nation and nation are obligatory upon them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts … ,” at the same time, he acknowledged that “there are circumstances which sometimes excuse the nonperformance of contracts between man and man; so are there also between nation and nation.” Specifically, Jefferson continued, if performance of a contractual obligation becomes “self-destructive” to a party, “ … the law of self-preservation overrules the law of obligation to others.”

Summing up, a presumptive Palestinian state could lawfully abrogate any pre-independence commitments to Israel to demilitarize. Recent declarations of recognition by France and other countries have no legal bearing on the creation of such a state.

On the contrary, these declarations seriously undermine the authority of law-based international relations, generally, and Israel in particular.

In the final analysis, Jerusalem needs to assess the existential threat of Palestinian statehood as part of a larger strategic whole; that is, in tandem with the continuously intersecting perils of conventional and unconventional war. More precisely, this points to a comprehensive analytic focus on potential synergies between enemy-state aggressions and Israel’s nuclear doctrine. Despite recent victories over Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, Israeli leaders need to calibrate incremental shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” While recent declarations of national support for Palestinian statehood can be countered on a legal level, even a non-state “Palestine” would remain tolerable.

International law is not a suicide pact. Ipso facto, Israel has no legal obligation to carve an enemy state aggressor from its own still-living body. Though expressed in the stirring syntax of high moral authority, recent recognition of “Palestine” by four major states misses larger justice issues altogether.

Assigning formal statehood to violence-centered entities that openly seek an existing state’s elimination violates justice and logic. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, such an assignment is wrongheaded on several levels and signals an evident contradiction in terms. Rather than accept the law-ignoring policy urgings of France, Spain, Ireland or Norway, the law-based community of states should remain faithful to unambiguous treaty expectations.
Danon decries ‘circus,’ as Israel sits on sidelines of UN two-state solution event
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, was blunt about this week’s U.N. two-state solution conference.

“We are not participating in this circus,” the envoy told JNS on Monday, on the sidelines of the event at U.N. headquarters in New York City.

“As we speak, you have 50 hostages in Gaza. Nobody is speaking about that. Hamas is in charge. You see the suffering of the people of Gaza,” Danon said, as Israel refused to take part in the French and Saudi-led event to develop a pathway to a Palestinian state.

“Instead of dealing with the real problems, this conference—this circus—discusses a two-state solution detached from reality. We are not taking part in this game,” Danon said. “Not only us, the United States and many other countries.”

Tammy Bruce, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, said on Monday that the two-day conference is “unproductive and ill-timed” and a “publicity stunt that comes in the middle of delicate diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.”

Danon called for participating member states to take urgent issues related to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza “more seriously.”

“It’s very easy to come to the General Assembly to deliver a very nice speech, but at the end of the day, you have to deal with Hamas,” he told JNS. “You have to deal with the radical elements in the Middle East, and you have to think about a brighter future for all of us.”
Macron’s Dangerous Delusion — Recognition of a Palestinian State Will Lead to More War & Terror
French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement that France will move to recognize a so-called “Palestinian state,” headed by the kleptocracy known as the Palestinian Authority, is not only morally indefensible — it’s also strategically foolish, historically blind and deeply corrosive to the prospects of real peace. It is a gift to terrorism, an insult to international law, a betrayal of France’s own long-standing commitment to “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and democracy itself.

Let’s be clear: There is no historical, legal or ethical justification for rewarding the Palestinian Authority (PA) — a regime neck-deep in corruption, antisemitism and incitement to violence — with statehood. Macron’s decision signals to the world that terrorism, rejectionism and the glorification of murder can achieve diplomatic rewards. It sends a chilling message not only to Israelis, but to the free world.

Rewarding Terrorism, Undermining Morality
Hamas’s Oct. 7 pogrom — the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — saw babies murdered in cold blood, women raped, civilians burned alive and entire families slaughtered. It was not carried out in a vacuum, but in a culture of hate that has been nurtured for decades by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). That culture is taught in PA schools, echoed in its mosques and broadcast daily on PA-controlled media. Macron’s recognition of a Palestinian state — in the wake of this savagery — legitimizes the very ideology and actions that produced Oct. 7.

Let’s remember: the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas (now in year 19 of a 4-year term), not only fails to condemn Hamas’s atrocities — it has long partnered with Hamas politically and ideologically. The PA’s infamous “Pay for Slay” program uses foreign aid to reward Palestinian terrorists and their families with generous monthly stipends. This isn’t conjecture — it’s well documented. France, like other Western democracies, knows this. Yet Macron ignores it.

What message does this send to the world’s other secessionist or ethnic-nationalist movements? That insane, intentional mass-murder and intransigence pay. Why should the Kurds, Catalans, Basques or Baluchis continue to pursue peaceful solutions to their lack of sovereignty & self-determination, when the Palestinian model — the model of plane hijackings, suicide bombings, rocket attacks, random stabbing attacks and glorification of violent jihad — gets you a seat at the U.N.and recognition by Paris?


UN Watch: Background to July 2025 UN Conference on Two-State Solution
The UN has scheduled a high-level conference on the two-state solution in New York, co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France. The conference was originally set to take place on June 17-20, 2025, but rescheduled to July 28-29, 2025. As detailed below, the original aim of the conference was to obtain recognition of a Palestinian state from UN member states. On July 25, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize a Palestinian State at the UN General Assembly in September.

Why Unilateral Recognition of a Palestinian State is Counterproductive to Peace
- Encourages Palestinian intransigence. The Oslo Accords is the treaty that governs the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians. It obligates the Palestinians to negotiate final status issues with Israel, including borders — a prerequisite for Palestinian statehood. Since Oslo, the Palestinians have categorically rejected all offers of statehood that have been put on the table. Granting statehood to the Palestinians without demanding of them to engage in good faith negotiations with Israel rewards their intransigence. The fact that France’s President Macron announced France’s plans to recognize a Palestinian state just after Hamas refused the latest ceasefire offer disincentivizes Hamas from agreeing to any deal to release the hostages and end the Gaza war. It sends the message that Hamas will achieve its goals without having to make any concessions.

- Prioritizes Palestinian statehood over Israeli security. Israel’s right to security and the Palestinians’ obligations to combat terrorism are key components of the Oslo Accords, which are completely ignored both by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its July 19, 2024 advisory opinion and by the UN in its resolutions setting this upcoming conference and its modalities. Palestinian statehood cannot come at the expense of Israel’s right to secure borders and the safety and security of its citizens.

- Rewards October 7th atrocities. The timing of this conference, as Hamas continues to hold 50 hostages and Israel’s war against the terror group in Gaza is ongoing, can only be seen as a reward for the horrific October 7, 2023 atrocities which will incentivize more Palestinian terrorism.

- Fails to address so-called “Right of Return.” The issue of Palestinian refugees and the so-called “right of return” is a final status issue under the Oslo Accords that must be resolved through negotiations. As it is taught in schools—whether run by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or UNRWA—implementation of the “right of return” looks like October 7th, i.e., a violent invasion of Israel and massacre of its citizens. Peace can be achieved only if the Palestinians relinquish their so-called “right of return” and stop inciting their children to hatred and violence. Palestinian statehood alone will not bring peace.

- Belies established principles of international law. The Montevideo Convention sets out the requirements for statehood, which include having a “defined territory.” The so-called State of Palestine fails to satisfy this requirement as it does not possess a defined territory. While many in the international community simplistically refer to the pre-1967 armistice lines as borders, these are not and never were borders. The UN Security Council recognized this in Resolution 242 which contemplated “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories [not ‘the’ territories] occupied in the recent conflict.” Moreover, the Oslo Accords made clear that borders were to be agreed by the parties in final status negotiations. The international community lacks the authority to unilaterally declare the borders of a future Palestinian state.


US boycotts UN conference on two-state solution, calling it ‘publicity stunt’
Washington skipped a conference held by the United Nations on Monday aimed at promoting a two-state solution between Israel and a Palestinian state, as did the State of Israel.

The Trump administration called the conference, co-chaired by the foreign ministers of France and Saudi Arabia, “unproductive and ill-timed.”

“This is a publicity stunt that comes in the middle of delicate diplomatic efforts to end the conflict,” read a statement from U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce.

Far from promoting peace, she said, the proceedings will “prolong the war, embolden Hamas, reward its obstruction and undermine real-world efforts to achieve peace.”

The statement criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for announcing last week that France would recognize a Palestinian state and echoed sentiment from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called the effort a “slap in the face to the victims of Oct. 7 and a reward for terrorism.”

“The United States will not participate in this insult but will continue to lead real-world efforts to end the fighting and deliver a permanent peace,” the statement continued. “Our focus remains on serious diplomacy—not stage-managed conferences designed to manufacture the appearance of relevance.”

The conference was originally scheduled for June but was postponed due to Israel’s war with Iran.

“We must ensure that it does not become another exercise in well-meaning rhetoric,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres during opening remarks.


Hamas’s Triple-Hostage Strategy By Abe Greenwald
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Suddenly, a chorus of onlookers, Jew and Gentile alike, who have been largely supportive of Israel’s post–October 7 efforts have decided they’ve had enough. People who well understood Hamas’s campaign of moral blackmail have chosen to succumb to it. That’s it, they say. I support Israel, but this headline or that image is one too many for me. Make the headlines and images stop. I am willing to be manipulated into blaming Israel and letting the mass murderers off the hook.

Having been captured by Hamas, they are the group’s third tranche of hostages, surrendering their moral compass to facilitate more suffering. Yes, more suffering. Not only do these people know that Hamas is to blame for the carnage; most of them know that, were Israel to fight Hamas to anything short of total victory, it would mean many more Israeli and Gazan deaths down the line. If Hamas were interested in peace, it would have seized one of the countless times it’s been on offer.

The most prominent of the newly captured is the New York Times’s Ross Douthat, who admits in a recent column that “there is no way to look at the rubble in Gaza and the death-toll estimates and offer a mathematical proof that Israel is failing to exercise adequate restraint.” Yet, he writes, “I just think it’s true.”

That’s as clear a loss of moral spine as you’ll ever see in print. And you can be certain he knows it—because he predicted it. Almost two years ago, in a column from October 28, 2023, Douthat unhappily noted that support for Hamas among Middle Eastern Muslims and Western academics already counted as a “provisional victory.” And he closed the column forebodingly: “But you can see, for now, the shape of a dark strategic triumph that only extreme violence could obtain.”

He and others saw it all along. They’ve only now stopped resisting it.

There’s only one moral way to respond to terrorists who try to kill their way to consensus: war. Anything else is submission. Don’t submit.


Gaza ‘starvation’ poster child has genetic condition, left Strip with Israel’s help
A Gaza boy who became the poster child for the alleged famine caused by the war in the Strip suffers from a genetic illness and was evacuated for treatment last month, the Israeli Defense Ministry said on Monday.

A picture of Osama al-Rakab, 5, was “used to falsely depict Israel as responsible for his condition, claiming Israel is starving children,” including in Italian media and on Al Jazeera, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit stated.

“Osama suffers from a serious genetic illness unrelated to the war. On June 12, we actively coordinated Osama’s exit from Gaza with his mother and brother through the Ramon airport,” stated COGAT.

The boy is currently being treated in an Italian hospital, it continued.

“Tragic images rightfully stir strong emotions, but when they’re misused to fuel hatred and lies, they do more harm than good,” said COGAT. “Don’t let compassion be exploited for propaganda.

“Check the facts before parroting blame,” the Defense Ministry unit stated, attaching a picture showing Osama in a hospital gown in Italy.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday morning announced a series of humanitarian measures aimed at refuting “the false claim of deliberate starvation” in Gaza, including “tactical pauses” in the war on Hamas.


Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: I’m a scholar of international law: This is not genocide
Omer Bartov’s recent New York Times op-ed, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” levels a grave accusation: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As someone committed to the study of international law and the accurate use of language in matters of life and death, I must respond. I know propaganda when I see it, and Bartov’s essay is drenched in it.

Bartov’s argument leans heavily on a selective reading of statements made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials. Yet not a single one of these statements – when placed in proper context – supports his claim that Israel seeks the extermination of Palestinians.

Netanyahu vowed after October 7 that Hamas would pay a “huge price” and that parts of Gaza used by Hamas would be “turned to rubble.” He warned civilians to evacuate because Israel would strike “forcefully everywhere.” These are not genocidal threats; they are statements of military intent against a terrorist enemy embedded within civilian infrastructure – the same enemy that murdered 1,200 Israelis, including entire families, in a single day of atrocities.

Bartov further cites Netanyahu’s biblical reference to Amalek. In Israeli political discourse, “Amalek” symbolizes ultimate evil, not a literal call for genocide. The reference was directed at Hamas, not Gaza’s civilian population. Likewise, phrases like “human animals” and “total annihilation” referred to Hamas’s fighters – those who committed acts of rape, torture, and slaughter – not to Palestinian civilians. No Israeli official has advocated for the extermination of the Palestinian people.

Bartov knows this but chooses to blur the lines between the legitimate rage of a nation and the legal definition of genocide.

Biased sources, corrupted standards
Bartov also leans on the authority of Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur, and Amnesty International – two bodies with long, documented histories of hostility toward Israel. Albanese’s public statements routinely minimize Hamas’s crimes and openly question Israel’s right to self-defense. Amnesty’s reports have consistently exaggerated Israeli wrongdoing while downplaying terror. Neither is a neutral, credible legal voice. Neither has direct knowledge of Israeli war aims. Bartov treats them as if they are impartial legal arbiters; they are not.

Most fatally to his argument, Bartov ignores international law itself. Under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, armed forces are required to wear insignia, distinguish themselves from civilians, avoid using civilians as shields, and operate from legitimate military positions.

Hamas violates every one of these principles. It fights from schools, hospitals, mosques, and densely populated neighborhoods. It stores rockets in UN facilities and clinics. Its fighters wear no uniforms.
In first, two major Israeli human rights groups accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ in Gaza
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights on Monday published a report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, becoming the first major Israeli human rights organizations to join a list of international groups making the charge.

“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,” reads a statement presenting the report. “In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. ”

A growing number of Israel’s international critics have accused it of genocide in its war against Hamas — some even in the days immediately following the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages and sparked the fighting.

Major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have endorsed the charge as the death toll in Gaza has mounted. But this is the first time that leading Israeli human rights watchdogs have made the accusation.

Hamas’s attack on Israel sparked a shift in the country’s policy toward Palestinians in Gaza from “repression and control to destruction and annihilation,” B’Tselem said.

Israel has consistently and vehemently denied that it is committing genocide, including in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice. The Israel Defense Forces says that it takes extensive measures not to harm civilians in Gaza, and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.


Call me Back Podcast: From famine to statehood? - with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal
On Thursday, French President Emanuel Macron announced that France will recognize a Palestinian state at the UN meeting set to take place in September. France will become the first major Western country to recognize a Palestinian state, prompting many to wonder if this will set off a chain reaction. Is it possible that Hamas’ savage attack could set off a chain of events that results in the establishment of a Palestinian state?

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of press in recent days about starvation among Gazans. Research by Yannay Spitzer of Hebrew University on the price of flour in the Gaza Strip has convinced many reluctant Israelis that this time, unlike before, the reports of starvation are real. In response, Israel announced that it will halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of the strip, as Jordan and the UAE resumed airdrops of humanitarian aid.

To discuss the food crisis and the significance of President Macron’s declaration, we were joined by Call me Back contributors Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal.

00:00 Introduction
5:01 Vote for a Palestinian state
08:48 Hunger crisis in Gaza?
28:03 Hostage and ceasefire negotiations
31:44 Could 10/7 go down as Independence Day for the Palestinians?
41:57 Retrospective on Israel’s strategy
53:10 What happens to the hostages?
58:31 Outro


Commentary Podcast: The Starvation Blood Libel
We have to restrain our rage on today's podcast at the now-blanket assertions of a blood libel against Israel—that it is deliberately causing death by hunger in Gaza, conveniently everywhere simultaneous to Hamas tanking a cease-fire negotiation with Israel. The attacks on Israel's immorality are themselves the true immorality.
Gaza at a Boiling Point - with Jonathan Conricus
Host Aviva Klompas is joined by Lt. Colonel (Res.) Jonathan Conricus to discuss the escalating pressure on Israel—from mounting international outrage over the humanitarian situation in Gaza to the breakdown of hostage negotiations.

As accusations of starvation and civilian suffering dominate global headlines, Israel faces growing condemnation from foreign governments, the UN, and aid organizations. Meanwhile, with 50 hostages still in Hamas captivity and no deal in sight, tensions are rising at home.

What’s Israel’s strategy now—militarily, diplomatically, and morally?

Guest Bio:
Jonathan Conricus is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on the Middle East. He served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for 24 years as a combat commander in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. He also served as a military diplomat, foreign relations expert, and international spokesperson. He recently retired as lieutenant colonel. Jonathan was the first Israeli officer to be seconded to the United Nations (UN), during which he provided military and strategic analysis for UN peacekeeping forces. He has directed social media and public diplomacy efforts and has extensive on- and off-camera experience from his years as a spokesperson.


The Gaza “Starvation” Lie Is Much More SINISTER than we Thought!
Today’s Jerusalem minute show breaks down all the latest developments, including trumps recent statement on Gaza amongst a slew of other headlines.


BUSTED! Media pushes Gaza ‘famine’ story, leaves out this SHOCKING detail
Host Emily Schrader opens the discussion with the viral image of Mohamed Zakaria Ayub Al Matuk, the young boy misrepresented as a victim of starvation in Gaza. This photo, widely spread across global media, is just the tip of the iceberg. While the narrative of a Gaza famine circulates, critical humanitarian aid sits unused, blocked by the UN and caught in political limbo. Why is this vital detail being ignored? And why does the New York Times continue to deny evidence of Hamas stealing aid?

Joining Emily is Ruthie Blum, Senior Editor at JNS, Shoshana Keats-Jaskel, Co-Founder of Chochmat Nashim, and Ateret Shmuel, Founder of Indigenous Bridges to uncover the latest layers of misinformation surrounding the conflict. From misrepresented photos to the deliberate spread of fake news, this episode reveals how the media is fueling hatred and violence through false depictions of Israel’s role in Gaza.

Tune in for a candid discussion about the real situation on the ground, the manipulative forces at play and the global impact of this dangerous disinformation campaign.




‘Hamas propaganda’: Demonisation of Israel ‘sinking to new depths’
Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses the demonisation of Israel in the West and how it is “sinking” to new depths in Australia.

“The Middle East debate and the demonisation of Israel is sinking to new depths,” Mr Kenny said.

“We all know the situation in Gaza is horrendous, but allegations Israel is starving people or deliberately killing civilians are just disgusting; they are not based in fact.”


‘Mouthpiece for Hamas’: Journalist calls out Al Jazeera's ‘opposition’ to Israel
Freelance Journalist Ian Lloyd Neubauer calls out Al Jazeera for being a “mouthpiece” for the terrorist organisation Hamas.

“Al Jazeera is focused on one thing, Al Jazeera suffers from Israel's compulsive obsessive disease, and it is because it is ideologically opposed to the existence of a Jewish state,” Mr Neubauer told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

“They are known as a mouthpiece for Hamas.”


‘Advancing his own agenda’: Bob Carr’s ‘shameful’ comments on Israel slammed
Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin slams former New South Wales premier Bob Carr for his comments on Israel’s war against Hamas.

“Anyone who knows Bob Carr … knows the only thing Bob Carr cares about is Bob Carr,” Mr Ryvchin told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio.

“This is about him advancing his own agenda.”


‘Buffoonery knows no bounds’: Pro-Palestine group to march over Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses pro-Palestine activists planning to march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

“Well, good luck if you’re planning to travel to and from the Sydney CBD on Sunday, the Harbour Bridge is about to be hijacked by anti-Israel activists,” Ms De Giorgio said.

“Do they understand anything about notices and permits? And look, it is not just in Sydney where these people are seeking relevance.”


‘Knight of humanitarian nonsense’: Bob Geldof’s bizarre Gaza solution roasted
Sky News host James Macpherson reacts to Bob Geldof’s bizarre solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict in the Middle East, describing it as “breathtakingly idiotic”.

“As the world struggles for a solution to the Gaza crisis, Bob Geldof has descended from his castle of irrelevance to offer a solution so breathtakingly idiotic, it could only come from a celebrity,” Mr Macpherson said.

“The knight of humanitarian nonsense has decided the solution is for Jews to pack their cars with sandwiches, drive into Gaza and feed the starving Palestinians themselves.”


Jonathan Sacerdoti: Jewish comedian barred from Edinburgh Fringe venue for attending October 7th vigil
Jonathan Sacerdoti on LBC discussing Jewish comedians being cancelled from the Edinburgh Festival


Thank you, Bernie Sanders, for showing critics of Israel lack rational judgment



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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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