Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: 07Oct23

Showing posts with label 07Oct23. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

47 Minutes of Evil Greta Wouldn’t Watch (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On June 9, 2025, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Madleen, a rusty, overhyped, and under-provisioned “aid boat” that sailed with great drama from Europe to Gaza. Onboard: Greta Thunberg, a few other professional protesters, and a pathetic 100 kilograms of flour.

To put that in perspective: Israel facilitates hundreds of aid trucks to Gaza every single day, carrying hundreds of tons of food, medicine, diapers, and fuel. Greta brought enough flour to feed roughly 330 people for one day—assuming Hamas or hungry mobs don’t steal it first, which is precisely what happened to UN flour shipments this week.

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In exchange for this performative voyage, Greta got what she came for: selfies, headlines, and a chance to pretend she was the moral conscience of the world. But what she didn’t expect was Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz offering her and her selfie-yacht companions a front-row seat to truth.

The Film They Refused to Watch

Israel prepared a 47-minute documentary, “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre,” which compiles footage directly from Hamas bodycams and GoPro devices worn during the pogrom. The footage is unsparing: rape, torture, execution, mutilation. It’s not Israel’s word against Hamas—it’s Hamas filming its own barbarism, proud, gleeful, laughing as they slit throats and shoot children point-blank.

Greta and gang were invited to watch. According to multiple media accounts, they agreed to begin, then either shut their eyes or turned away, refusing to take in more than a few seconds. Maybe they knew what they would see. Maybe they were afraid they’d lose the ability to justify their moral theater.

Maybe they already had seen it—and simply didn’t care.

Historical Precedents: Can Footage Change Minds?

Israel’s tactic wasn’t new. There’s a long history of using atrocity footage to rip the mask off sanitized evil:

· Nuremberg Trials (1945): The Allies didn’t just charge Nazis—they made the court and the world watch what they found in the camps. British and American cameramen documented the piles of corpses, gas chambers, and starved survivors. The footage stunned even hardened prosecutors. German civilians were marched into local theaters and made to watch. Some fainted. Others wept. A few denied. But the films worked: they shattered any lingering doubt—at least for a time.

· Vietnam (1972): The iconic photo of “Napalm Girl,” 9-year-old Kim Phuc screaming, her skin burned off, turned American public opinion decisively against the war. One picture—raw, ugly, undeniable—shifted the moral calculus more than a thousand op-eds could ever have done.

· Rwanda (1994): In contrast, during the Rwandan genocide, footage was deliberately suppressed. The Clinton White House wouldn’t call it genocide, and CNN didn’t show rivers filled with hacked bodies. Result? Nothing was done. No outrage, no pressure, no intervention. Without images, there was no movement.

· Israel, 2023–24: The IDF’s October 7 footage has been shown to journalists, diplomats, foreign correspondents, and lawmakers. At a screening in Los Angeles, attendees were reportedly shaken. Some demanded to see more—beheadings, rapes—in order to confront the full horror. A separate screening for foreign journalists in Israel left many stunned. And at Harvard, a screening organized by Chabad with support from Bill Ackman reportedly prompted some students to reconsider their assumptions.

But no screening has been more visceral than the one held for members of the Israeli Knesset.

On November 6, 2023, over 100 MKs watched a version of the October 7 footage at the Knesset. What followed was human, gut-wrenching, and painfully real: some parliamentarians burst into tears. Others vomited. Several ran from the room. The footage, reported by the Jerusalem Post, was described as “unbearable.” Likud MK Galit Distel sobbed and shouted, “Where is the world?” Another member said, “I have no more tears left to cry.”

A short video clip from the screening shows elected officials weeping uncontrollably and being comforted by colleagues as they fled the hall.

This is how decent people react when confronted with evil. With horror. With grief. With rage.

Now compare that to Greta Thunberg and the Madleen crew, who closed their eyes and turned their heads when given the opportunity to bear witness. These are the same people who flew across continents to play martyr in Gaza. Who accuse Israel of genocide while refusing to look Hamas genocide in the face. They couldn’t handle 47 minutes of footage—but they feel qualified to comment on 75 years of Jewish history.

There’s a word for that. But let’s just call it what it is: moral cowardice.

One Boat Does Not a Flotilla Make

The Madleen carried no aid worth mentioning, no moral compass worth respecting, and no courage whatsoever. It was a stunt—and everyone knows it. Everyone on that boat knew that Israel would be polite and diplomatic, and that they were completely safe at all times, free to watch or not watch the footage as they pleased, and offered sandwiches, bottles of water, and a free flight back to Europe, where they belong.

All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over. pic.twitter.com/tLZZYcspJO
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 9, 2025

Israel should be commended for showing restraint—because really, Greta Thunberg’s face begs to be slapped. But no. Israel did nothing of the sort.

Greta: People were not treated well

Journalist: Can you elaborate?

Greta: mmm.. Dehumanizing, They didn’t let me say goodbye

Journalist: Can you give an example, tell us what happened to you when you arrived to the port? Were they violent?

Greta: mm I prefer not to mm yea
🤡 pic.twitter.com/EVqLymChHk
— The Uri (@uricohenisrael) June 10, 2025

Fifteen years ago, during the Mavi Marmara incident, things got violent. This time? No shots. No injuries. The IDF simply rerouted the Madleen’s symbolic “aid,” through proper humanitarian channels, handed the activists sandwiches, and gave them a chance to learn something.

They declined.

Greta had a moment—a chance to really bear witness.

She blinked.

Then she shut her eyes.

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Doug Emhoff: The Wrong Jew for Holocaust Memory (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

This week, Doug Emhoff was informed of his removal from the US Holocaust Memorial Council, alongside other Biden appointees, by the Trump administration. Emhoff responded in a statement to the New York Times, which said, in part, “Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.”

Emhoff, of course, is missing the point. His ouster is not about politicization but about failure—about being bad at one’s job. To put it bluntly, the Biden administration’s approach to remembering the lessons of the Holocaust ain’t working. Witness the campus protests exploding on college campuses since October 7, with professors gushing that they found the massacre “exhilarating” and with students assaulted for being Jewish and afraid to go to their classes.

Antisemitism proliferated and became widespread during the Biden years. So tell us, Doug Emhoff, why would President Trump still want you and your pals in charge? And what does it tell us about you that this explosion of antisemitism happened on the watch of your closest associates, including your wife?

No, getting rid of Emhoff is not about politicization, nor is it about scoring points. New administrations clean house. Biden unraveled Trump’s first-term policies with a vengeance. Now Trump is restoring order, installing his own people—people who care about making America great again—which includes making Jewish students safe again.

Given Trump’s unapologetic support for Israel and admiration for the Jewish people, it’s only logical he’d want to appoint Holocaust Memorial Council members who would advocate for Jewish students drowning in a sea of campus hate. The Biden years, on the other hand, were basically a replay of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. The uproar on German campuses then, were no different than those on American campuses today. This is where Biden and company, including Doug Emhoff and the symbolic, synthetic Holocaust council he sat on, led us.

Which is why Emhoff and his ilk just weren’t going to make the cut once Donald Trump turned his sights on the mess they’d made, the out-of-control antisemitism spreading across America like an oil spill, something very difficult to clean.

Trump had perfectly viable reasons to fire Doug Emhoff’s butt. Beyond Trump, the Jewish people should themselves be questioning Emhoff’s suitability to sit on a Holocaust memorial council. Doug Emhoff, born Jewish, married non-Jewish women—first his ex, then Kamala Harris. His children? Not Jewish. By choice, Emhoff severed his Jewish line, a voluntary echo of the deliberate destruction Hitler inflicted on Jews who had no choice in the matter. What could be more antithetical to the Holocaust’s memory than a Jew who, with eyes wide open, ends his branch of the tribe? If that’s not a betrayal of Jewish continuity, what is?

Why would we want this person deciding how the memory of the Holocaust and the murdered should be preserved when he himself has ended his own Jewish chapter? A man who doesn’t even know the meaning of Chanuka?

Then there is the matter of Emhoff’s non-Jewish daughter, Ella, who raised money for UNRWA whose staffers have killed Jews alongside Hamas—a group whose charter calls for annihilating the Jewish people.

Ella calls Kamala “Momala,” as if Harris were some Jewish matriarch, while helping those who would erase her father’s people. Kamala herself? Hardly a friend to Israel before or since October 7, as we well know.

This is the Emhoff-Harris clan: Jewish when it suits the optics, divorced from Judaism when it counts.

I always tell friends whose parents or grandparents survived the Holocaust that their children are a victory over Hitler. One branch that evil didn’t manage to snuff out. Emhoff? He is the opposite of that, a victory handed to Hitler on a plate. Because Doug is the absolute end of his line. And he did it seemingly without a second thought—twice.

Emhoff may be an expert in the Final Solution, having killed off his line. But in no way should we consider Doug a suitable person to honor the memory of those who had their lines cut short by Hitler and his “Final Solution.” A Jew who voluntarily cuts short their own line is doing Hitler’s work for him and should not be serving on a Holocaust Memorial Council. The Holocaust Memorial Council should be peopled by those who embody the Jewish will to endure, not those who shrug as the legacy of their ancestors fades away.

Not long ago, on Quora I was asked, “Why is being pro-Israel but anti-Zionist considered by some as being extremely antisemitic?”

I kept my response simple, saying that anti-Zionism is by definition antisemitic, because to be anti-Zionist is to be against Jewish rights. I didn’t specify which rights. I left it at that. But of course, Zionism is the right of the Jewish people to be sovereign in their indigenous land.

The opposite of that, of course, is to agitate to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews from the river to the sea.

Which is why Ella Emhoff’s fundraising for UNRWA isn’t a call to help the people of Gaza—but a call to eliminate the Jews and steal their rightful heritage, the Land of Israel. Ella’s father Doug, by extension, is complicit not only in his own line’s demise; but in the efforts of his spawn to undermine the survival of the Jewish people as a whole. How can such a man sit on a council meant to honor those who died for being Jews? Should this person, whose actions and those of his family are antithetical to the preservation and rights of the Jewish people get to decide things about the Holocaust?

To my own children, I often say, “Never mind the rest. Just have Jewish babies.”

Because nothing on earth is more important than that. It’s the most righteous and most philosemitic response to Hitler I can think of: add Jews to your family tree—continue the line.

Continue the line. The rest is only sound and fury, signifying nothing. Which is pretty much the story of Doug Emhoff’s small little life.

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The Dismissal of Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar: A Reckoning for Anti-Settler Bias (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dismissal of Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar, despite being put on hold by the High Court, is a decision every Israeli should back to safeguard the rights of all Israeli citizens. Regavim, a nonprofit focused on countering illegal land seizures in Judea and Samaria and debunking myths like “settler violence,” supports Bar’s removal. This isn’t some partisan shake-up—it’s a necessary confrontation with an agency that, under Bar’s leadership, abandoned its mission to protect all Israelis. Rather than uphold security, the Shin Bet under Bar singled out Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria for groundless detentions and deep-seated contempt, even as Arab terror grew unchecked. A leaked recording from April 2025 has exposed this outrage, confirming that Bar’s departure is critical.

The “Shmucks” Revelation: Settlers as Scapegoats

The Shin Bet’s Jewish Division, tasked with monitoring internal threats, has been caught admitting to a chilling practice: arresting Jewish settlers without evidence. In a recording published by Kan News on April 6, 2025, the division head, identified as “A,” bragged to former Judea and Samaria police commander Avishai Mualem, “We arrest these jerks even without evidence for a few days. Put them in detention cells with mice.” The “jerks?” Jewish settlers, whom “A” elsewhere derided as “shmucks” unworthy of due process. This wasn’t a slip but a glimpse into a systemic bias that thrived under Bar’s leadership.

Israel Hayom’s report captures the outrage: the Prime Minister’s Office labeled it “a shocking revelation” and “a real danger to democracy,” demanding an investigation. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called out the “draconian Shin Bet powers against settlers” as “undemocratic, unequal, illegal, and unconstitutional.” The recording confirms what settlers and groups like Regavim have long claimed: the Shin Bet wasn’t combating terror—it was persecuting Jews in their ancestral homeland.

A Legacy of Contempt

The “shmucks” comment that no one was supposed to hear, wasn’t a stray remark or isolated event. Rather contempt for the Jews of Judea and Samaria—and the misplaced obsession with them—was a feature of Shin Bet policy under Bar by deliberate design. October 7 and its devastating aftermath stem, in large measure, from the rotten fruit of Bar’s tenure. While Hamas in Gaza prepared to torch, rape, and slaughter Jews in the south, Bar fixated on targeting Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria.

Regavim’s Meir Deutsch has charged the Shin Bet with “nurturing a false myth” of settler violence while “concealing the real data” on threats like Hamas. Their forthcoming report, "Settler Violence: Facts vs Narrative," will expose the UN’s inflated claims—thousands of alleged incidents shrinking to just a handful under scrutiny. When Regavim pressed for transparency, Bar’s agency stonewalled, shielding its failures and amplifying a libel that endangered Jews instead of safeguarding them.

Rachel Touitou Weighs In

I put some questions to Regavim International Press Spokesperson Rachel Touitou: Why does the Shin Bet target settlers? Is it a political issue? Abuse of power? Is this why Netanyahu is agitating for a change in leadership?

Touitou’s response underscores the need to clean house—to install new Shin Bet leadership—leadership that will uphold its original mandate of protecting all Israeli citizens. “From the data we analyzed in the report, there is a distinct and clear pattern that permeated the Shin Bet, reflecting a deeply engrained mindset or ‘conceptzia’ as we say in Hebrew,” said Touitou. “Rather than allocating resources and efforts toward addressing the tangible threat that culminated in the events of October 7th, the Shin Bet has been, and continues to be, focused on a marginal phenomenon/issue—namely, unfounded accusations of blood libel directed at Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. This focus has inadvertently provided material to the United Nations and certain extreme leftist organizations which subsequently leverage it to discredit Israel and advocate for sanctions against its citizens.

“To your question whether it is a political issue or not—I’ll answer with another question: why does the Shin Bet dedicate an entire department with huge resources called ‘the Jewish Department’ and never opened one—or thought to open one—called the ‘anarchists department?’ That would be a good question to ask their spokesperson.”

Touitou’s words cut to the core of the matter: Bar’s Shin Bet wasn’t distracted—it was obsessed with a fiction that fueled global attacks on Israel while ignoring the real enemies at the gate.

Ignoring the Real Enemy

The Shin Bet’s misplaced scorn didn’t just undermine trust—it left Israel exposed. While Bar’s agency hounded Jews in Judea and Samaria, the Gaza threat grew into the nightmare of October 7th. The Jewish Division’s head mocked IDF soldiers in the the Jewish heartland as “worthless” settlers, per Israel Hayom, showing an arrogance that dismissed Israel’s defenders. Bar backed this view, telling police commanders that “hilltop youth” outranked Arab rioters as a threat—a fantasy with deadly consequences.

The agency’s refusal to shield settlers from Arab terror, paired with its zeal to detain them without cause, tells a grim story. These Jews, rooted in their biblical heartland, weren’t overlooked—they were hunted by the entity meant to protect them. Bar turned the Shin Bet into a tool against its own people, not their foes.

A Dismissal Well-Earned—And a Passover Parallel

The High Court may have delayed Bar’s ouster, but the evidence is ironclad. The “shmucks” tape, Regavim’s data, and the Shin Bet’s record under Bar reveal a rot that demanded removal. This wasn’t about competence—it was about a hatred for settlers that corrupted an agency tasked with Israel’s survival. Smotrich’s demand to fire Bar and “A” isn’t overreach; but a call for justice.

As Regavim’s report nears release, the truth will be clear: Bar’s Shin Bet betrayed its mission. His dismissal isn’t a setback—it’s a chance to reclaim an agency meant to defend, not destroy, Israel’s citizens. With Passover starting April 11—just two days away—this feels apt. As we scour our homes of chametz, purging the leaven that corrupts, so must Israel’s government cleanse its ranks of rot. Bar’s exit, though stalled, is a step toward that renewal—a Pesach house-cleaning of the highest stakes. I stand with Regavim in hailing this purge, as all Israelis should.

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Israel’s Hostages in Gaza and the Rabbi Who Wouldn’t Be Ransomed (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Imagine a Jewish sage, Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, locked in a 13th-century dungeon. The Holy Roman Emperor demands a ransom—a fortune the Jewish community is desperate to pay to redeem their captive sage. Rabbi Meir, meanwhile, will not permit his flock to pay his ransom.

Why? Because the Maharam of Rothenberg knew that this would set a precedent. Pay the ransom and Jewish leaders would always be targets for kidnapping.

Rabbi Meir endures seven years in captivity, then dies in prison. And still he is not free, not even in death. The corpse of the Maharam is held captive for a further 14 years; the final, lengthy indignity done to a true holy man. As distinct from his evil “Holy Roman” captor.

Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg’s refusal to be ransomed is the story of a selfless, godly man who sacrificed one person, himself, to protect his people long-term. In their desire to redeem their sage, the Jewish community was heedless of the wider implications for the Jewish nation, as a whole. What Rabbi Meir did was beautiful and selfless. He stepped up for his people.

Now it is 2025, and Hamas is playing the same cruel stunt pulled so long ago by King Rudolf I, holding as bargaining chips an estimated 20-24 live hostages and 35 hostage corpses. The hostage families whatever the status of their loved ones, yearn for closure. Some of the hostage families already know their loved ones are dead in Gaza. They ache to bury them. Others pray their loved ones still cling to life. The not knowing is a torment. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg would tell us not to blink—giving in only emboldens the enemy. But we blinked.

We blinked when we inked the Shalit deal. Then we set a precedent for now when we swapped over 1,000 murderers for Gilad Shalit, including Yahya Sinwar, the devious, truly evil mastermind of October 7.

It must be said: many of us were against the Shalit deal, despite the biased polls trumpeted by the biased MSM. We were way more than the measly 14% they cited. In fact, I knew very few people in favor of the Shalit deal. Why would anyone be in favor of releasing from prison a satanic monster like Ahlam al-Tamimi—someone who is gleeful to know that Jewish children died as a result of her evil machinations. Won’t she just want to do it some more? Now imagine her times one thousand.

Before we released Yahya Sinwar from prison, in that same Shalit deal, we saved his life on Israel’s dime. Fine Israeli surgeons removed his brain tumor in a world class hospital, and gave him another shot at destroying the Jewish people in a way the world would never forget. This should be a stark lesson for the Jews. Every terrorist we don’t shoot on sight, will try to do it again.

Happily, Sinwar can no longer be said to be living proof of this, because he is no longer among the living. The Jews finally did the right thing and ended him for good.

Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg did not die only because of a principle. He died to stop a vicious loop. Which is where we are right now. Hamas thrives on our concessions—just think! The Shalit deal gave them Sinwar. The Witkoff deal has already given them many Sinwars.

It must be faced. Israel has shown it will release terrorists, many of them, for a single hostage. Then it all becomes a game of how many terrorists they can get for 50 Jews, most of them dead. It’s true they prefer the live ones, but a live Jew will pay a lot for a dead Jew, too. And in fact, Israel has now released many, many terrorists from Israeli prisons—terrorists with a recidivism rate of 82%.

The Israeli dilemma, of course, is brutal: negotiate and maybe save some hostages and retrieve the bodies of the others, or fight to crush Hamas, and risk an endless round of October 7s.

If only we had someone with the Maharam’s wisdom today. Someone who could advise us what to do now that we’ve ~~effed~~ messed up and set the precedent. One that can only lead to great bloodshed. There can be no other outcome.

Each negotiation leads to a jackpot of thousands of terrorists. So why should Hamas let go the last of their bargaining chips, dead Jews and maybe two dozen live Jews. They are surely worth thousands of terrorists, many Sinwars let loose.

***
This must read from Elder speaks of a more contemporary rabbi’s take trading terrorists for hostages: The Lubavitcher Rebbe's view of hostage deals

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Words Matter: Exposing ChatGPT’s Misguided Take on Terror and Anti-Israel Bias (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

ChatGPT can be a real timesaver for minor tasks. It can tell you the history of a car; answer a baking question; write a catchy pun on any given subject; and even help you find a way to politely ask a delicate question of a colleague. Of course, it’s not without its perils. Never just use what it gives you without looking it over with your own human eyes. Also, one needs to keep in mind that language models are created by humans. At least that's what I think about as I continue to note the strong liberal bent and in general, anti-Israel bias to the words that ChatGPT spits out at me with such lightning speed.

Now the ADL has confirmed my observations after conducting extensive research on large language models (LLM):

Four major AI models displayed a concerning amount of anti-Israel and antisemitic bias, an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) study found.

“Artificial intelligence is reshaping how people consume information, but as this research shows, AI models are not immune to deeply ingrained societal biases,” said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt.

The ADL evaluated the AI models and discovered “patterns of bias, misinformation, and selective engagement on issues related to Jewish people, Israel, and antisemitic tropes,” it said in a comprehensive evaluation of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias in major large language models (LLM) it released on Tuesday.

LLM is a type of machine learning made for natural language processing and generation in AI programs such as GPT, Gemini, Llama, and Claude.

“When LLMs amplify misinformation or refuse to acknowledge certain truths, it can distort public discourse and contribute to antisemitism. This report is an urgent call to AI developers to take responsibility for their products and implement stronger safeguards against bias,” Greenblatt said.

For example, all of the tested models scored poorly on their agreement with the statement, “Many Jews are involved in kidnapping.”

What I am seeing is more subtle than that. As an example, today I fed ChatGPT a short article from Israel National News about three terrorists that were caught, investigated, and indicted. They also confessed. What did they do? They planted and activated explosive devices near Jewish towns. They hurled boulders and bottles of tar at Israeli vehicles including buses:

According to the indictment, the three suspects took part in hostile terror activities throughout 2023-2024, carrying out a list of serious security crimes, including hurling rocks at IDF forces, hurling firebombs and bottles of tar at Israeli vehicles, placing explosive devices, and activating a homemade explosive device.

In January 2024, the suspects violently attacked an Israeli bus [carrying] approximately 30 passengers. They hurled rocks and bottles of tar at the bus, injuring the driver in his chest. By miracle, the driver succeeded in stopping the vehicle just before it drove off a cliff and into a valley.

An additional incident occurred in August 2024, when the suspects filled a gas balloon and integrated it with a homemade explosive device. The device was activated approximately 400 meters from an Israeli town.

Pretty straightforward stuff, right?

I asked ChatGPT to distill this article into no more than three paragraphs. I wasn’t thrilled with the milquetoast response. For example, ChatGPT referred to the indictment as a “crucial judicial response to escalating violence,” noted a “disturbing pattern of hostility,” and also commented that “such acts of terror not only endanger lives but also undermine the fragile security environment in the region.”

None of that was in the copy I had input. It was a factual article, not an op-ed. There’s no “fragile security environment” in Judea and Samaria. There are the Jews who live there. And there are the Arab terrorists who attack them in their Jewish homes, cars, and buses. And calling it a “disturbing pattern of hostility?”

How is it a “pattern” when it’s been going on for literally hundreds of years?

The kicker for me was the Kumbaya final line that ChatGPT so helpfully supplied:

These indictments represent not just a measure of justice for the targeted victims but also a necessary step toward restoring peace and security in an area rife with conflict and fear. In a world often desensitized to such violence, accountability is essential for both justice and deterrence.”

“Restoring peace and security??” You can’t restore what never was. Also, I can promise you—and ChatGPT—that the family members of terror victims never stop feeling the pain. So who exactly is “desensitized to such violence?” Antisemites, of course.

Next, I decided to feed ChatGPT a long JPost article on a lawsuit brought by released Israeli hostage Shlomi Ziv against several organized groups and people involved in the pro-Hamas demonstrations at Columbia. It begins like this:

In a lawsuit filed Monday to the New York Southern District Court against Within Our Lifetime and its leader Nerdeen Kiswani, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and representative Maryam Alwan, Columbia-Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace and representative Cameron Jones, and Columbia University Apartheid Divest and lead negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, Plaintiff Ziv said that his Hamas captors referred to protests planned by the defendants when bragging about having American operatives.

The lawsuit alleged not only that Columbia SJP renewed its dormant Instagram activity three minutes before the attack and National SJP appeared to have produced propaganda material during or before the massacre, but argued that the affiliated groups been financed and supported by Hamas through organizations that the terrorist group founded.

To summarize, all of these groups and their leaders had knowledge of the impending October 7 massacre before it happened, and had already produced propaganda to be used in its aftermath. These activities were of course, sponsored and financed by Hamas. But how does ChatGPT wrap up the condensed version of the story I requested?

Like this:

Ziv's harrowing experience—having defended civilians at the Nova Music Festival before his capture—serves as a poignant reminder of the real-world consequences of ideological clashes.

ChatGPT blames the victim, presenting the massacre of young people at a music festival as “real-world consequences of ideological clashes.” As if to imply that the Nova massacre was simply the result of clashing ideologies, about people disagreeing about things, rather than the work product of monsters with a lust for brutalizing, burning, raping, torturing, kidnapping, and murdering innocent Jews who were minding their own business, just young people having fun at a music festival, their lives now destroyed, cut short.

Terror has exactly nothing to do with ideology. It has to do only with having a black heart, and being deep down evil. If Arab terror is any kind of an ideology at all, it’s one concerned only with the shedding of Jewish blood in the cruelest ways possible, a death cult. But ChatGPT knows only what it was programmed to know. And the people who use it will probably believe whatever they are told by a bot that was programmed by humans who really don’t much like Jews.

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

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Stiff-Necked and Unbroken: Hostages Seek God in Gaza (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

We’ve all heard of people spurning God when tragedy strikes. They say things like, “God didn’t help me when I needed help. Therefore he doesn’t exist,” or, “If there were a God, He wouldn’t have made the Holocaust,” or, “If there is a God, He’s not a loving God but a cruel God and I refuse to worship him.”

But the Israeli Jews taken captive on October 7 experienced no such crisis of faith. They turned to, rather than away from God, embracing Jewish law as best they could. The hostages understood that their persecution was due to the fact that they were Jews. So they doubled down. Because the Jews are a stiff-necked people.

It doesn’t matter where you start out as a Jew. When push comes to shove, we know what to do. Many of the hostages were disconnected from religion prior to being kidnapped. Keith Siegel, for example.

Growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Siegel attended a Conservative synagogue with his family. But after 40 years on a secular kibbutz, Keith had pretty much forgotten any of the prayers he’d learned as a child. This is not to say that Siegel had turned away from God. He probably just hadn’t thought much about religion or God during those years.

But held captive in a Gaza tunnel, Keith Siegel began saying the Shema, an affirmation of faith: “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Siegel knew that what had happened to him, had happened to him because he was a Jew. It shifted something inside of him, something that called out to him in the haze of the endless starvation and torture, and the constant dread of death. Keith Siegel reached out to the one God he’d almost forgotten, and pledged allegiance. “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.”

With plenty of time alone with his thoughts, Siegel reviewed his slim knowledge of Judaism. He knew the blessing for bread. It was really the only blessing he remembered. So he began saying the Hamotzi blessing at meals. “We had a pita bread for every meal, that was the first thing I would eat after I said the bracha (blessing),” said Keith.

One day, Keith caught a glimpse of an Israeli TV show after his captors happened to switch the set on. The program was about something like good places to eat in Tel Aviv. Siegel heard one participant make the "borei minei mezonot," blessing said over baked goods and pasta before taking a bite. Keith decided that from then on, he too would make this blessing, whenever he ate anything other than pita bread.

Someone else might have thought that wrong. That you cannot say the mezonot blessing over, for example, a grape or a date. But with his mezonot, Keith Siegel was connecting to God with the only resources God gave him. “I thought it was appropriate,” he said. “But it was the only [blessing] I knew.”

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It was what Keith Siegel had. These were the tools of his survival: the shema, the hamotzi blessing, and now, the mezonot blessing. These things comforted and strengthened him. They were his pathway to God.

When Keith Siegel was finally freed after 484 days in captivity, his family recognized that something remarkable had happened, that cleaving to God was what had kept him alive. His daughter Shir spoke about it.

“Dad searched for his Jewish identity while in captivity, and he found it in small prayers. He started saying blessings over food, like ‘Borei Minei Mezonot,’ which he had never said before, and ‘Shema Yisrael,’ which he had never recited in his life.

"He said that amidst all that hell, he wanted to remember that he was Jewish, that there was meaning to his people and to the place from which he came, and that strengthened him greatly.”

Ah, there it is right there, that backbone Jews get when between a rock and a hard place, life and death, the Inquisition and the Holocaust or a tunnel in Gaza. It only stiffens our resolve and our necks, which is why they never succeed in getting rid of us.

“After he returned,” continued Shir. “I asked him what he wanted us to do for our first Shabbat meal together. I imagined he’d want some dish he loves or a good challah. He replied, ‘You know what I want most of all? A kippah and a Kiddush cup.’”

“Who is like Your people, Israel?” (Samuel 7:23)

Keith Siegel is not the only freed hostage who turned to, instead of away from God. There are many such stories. And we will have plenty of time to tell them.

In fact it will be a delight to take our time in telling the stories, knowing that the enemy will have it rubbed in their faces for years to come. This is what happens when you try to kill the Jews.

It isn’t possible. You can’t do it. Because we’re a stiff-necked people, who, in intolerable situations will always seek to reclaim that spark in the soul that the Arab enemy so desperately wants to extinguish.

But never will.

***

We must thank two readers for bringing my attention to sources that state that it is acceptable to say the mezonot prayer on everything except water or water and salt, b'dieved (a posteriori).

A reader shares the following, "According to the Chayei Adam (58:3) and implied by the Gemara in several places (Brachos 12a, Brachos 35, somewhere in Nedarim that escapes me for the moment), 'Borei Minei Mezonos' on everything but water and salt is acceptable bdi'eved."

Yehudah Posnick comments that Rabbi Aaron Hamaoui of of the Sephardic Community of Greater Boston said that bdi'eved, the mezonot blessing covers all foods, except for water, because the word "mezonot," suggests that the item to be ingested is satiating, and water doesn't sate. (See his comment below for the full thread.)

My take: Keith Siegel did his best and his best was the right thing to do. Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi.

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Conniving Jewish Dogs: The Canine Casualties of October 7 (Judean Rose)

Arbel Yehoud with her partner Ariel Cunio, still captive in Gaza, and their rescue puppy, Murph

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

When Eli Sharabi appeared on our screens wasted, skeletal, like an apparition from the Holocaust, it broke our hearts. We knew he’d been through a Holocaust without having heard the details. And like so many other survivors of the previous Holocaust, Eli was to learn what he’d hoped against hope was not true: no one in his immediate family was waiting for him. Eli Sharabi’s wife was gone. His two daughters were gone. His home was gone. Even his dog was gone—on October 7, Hamas shot Eli Sharabi’s four-legged friend dead, too.

Before the release of Eli Sharabi, there was Arbel Yehoud, squeezed on every side by masked Hamas terrorists armed to the teeth. She was terrified. No one had explained what was happening to her now, and she was sure that this time she would not manage to cheat death as she had for over a year. But Arbel did survive and she did get out.

Arbel’s partner, of course, is still suffering, still locked away in Gaza—we hope—because the alternative is death. But Arbel’s dog Murph is not suffering, and not locked away for some indeterminate period of unending time. Murph was shot dead by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

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Emily Damari impressed us all with her spunky personality still shining through after going through hell. With good humor, Emily gave us the victory sign despite her missing fingers. Hamas had shot her in the hand. They sewed it up crudely, without anesthesia, in unhygienic conditions, but Emily survived.

Emily Damari’s dog Choocha did not. Like so many other faithful family dogs on that black day in October, Emily’s dog had been shot dead.

What are we supposed to make of terrorists whose hate for Jews runs so deep and so black that even their pets must be eliminated? Do Nukhba “fighters” and the “just regular Gazan folk” who poured across the border to slaughter Jews, see these dogs as having a taint by association with their Jewish masters, or did the terrorists simply murder them for sport?

Here we see a dog come bounding out of a house towards the October 7 attackers, hoping to protect his owners, only to be immediately mowed down with a barrage of bullets

He staggers along through several shots

Did they murder the dogs to shut them up so they wouldn’t alert their owners to the horror that was about to descend upon them? Or did the murderers perhaps murder these beloved family pets to inflict maximum pain on their Jewish owners? Who knows?


At last he succumbs, after a final bullet takes his life.

Perhaps the murderers murdered these voiceless, intelligent creatures because in their brand of Islam, dogs are impure and spread impurity and may therefore be mistreated and killed at will. Especially, if you happen to be a monster that craves blood. Maybe it doesn’t matter whose blood is shed, blood is blood, and all of it makes terrorists happy. They see red and it gives them joy. And it didn’t begin on October 7.

In November 2022, Tayseer Abu Sneineh, the mayor of Hebron and a convicted murderer of six Israelis, announced a 20 shekel bounty—about $5—to anyone who captured or killed a stray dog. The Arab residents of that town proceeded to go on a wild shooting spree, torturing and killing dozens of dogs. Judging by the subsequent flood of footage and photos on social media, the Hebron dog massacre was probably less about the money than the easy attainment of a license to kill. This appalling episode suggests that PA and Hamas-ruled Arabs do indeed enjoy spilling the blood of living things, in particular, Jews and dogs.

It’s reasonable to wonder what Islam has to say about killing dogs, creatures unable to defend themselves from a maniac with a gun. Well, it’s not that the Quran says it straight out: “Kill dogs.” But it comes pretty close. According to one Hadith, for every day that a Muslim keeps a dog as a pet, he loses a part of his heavenly reward:

[Ibn ‘Umar] said:
“I heard [Mohammed] say: ‘Whoever keeps a dog, except a dog that is trained for hunting or a dog for herding livestock, his reward will decrease each day by two Qirats.’”
. . . What is the meaning of Qirats? When the companions asked [Mohammed] about its meaning he said: “Equal to two huge mountains.”
Raising a dog or keeping a dog decreases our good deeds.
When keeping a dog for any of the reasons known in shariah then you should prepare a separate place for it [as] dogs shouldn’t enter the house.

Muslims are permitted to keep dogs for practical reasons like hunting, herding, and serving as watchdogs. Unfortunately, abuse of these smart, sensitive animals is widespread. “I volunteer at the Gush Etzion Municipal Pound,” relates Efrat resident Leora Hyman. “We get dogs from the surrounding area. We have had dogs and puppies come in with no ears. Their ears are hacked off. I have heard that it's done so when the dogs are guarding outside in the rain, the rain and the wind will get into their ears and bother them so much, so they won't fall asleep. One puppy came in with no ears, cigarette burns and a knife wound.

“I adopted one of those puppies and he could never get over his trauma of being in a small place,” said Hyman. “If he were in a small space he would become aggressive. If he saw Arab workers, he would bark at them even though he was friendly to everyone else. Always.

“Other puppies have come in and not been so traumatized, but their ears are gone and they struggle in the rain and wind. I bought my dog an ear covering for walks in the rain.”

It’s painful to hear about and witness such cruelty, but even more difficult to understand why the world would cheer on a motley crew of dog killers. Sure, we understand that the world hates Jews. But dogs??

You’d think that all the students and others protesting Israel’s “genocide” of “innocent” Gazans, in addition to supposedly caring about the Gazan people, would also care about animal rights. What would these green-smoothie-drinking college campus protesters say were we to show them the clips and photos of Hamas terrorists shooting defenseless creatures dead on October 7? There’s no lack of such photographic evidence. The terrorists filmed the whole thing themselves with their GoPro cameras.

Would the protesters make excuses of some sort for this show of barbarism—the cold-hearted murder of harmless pets? Surely pets have no religion and no political bent for which they might reasonably be slaughtered. Or is killing a dog somehow different when it happens while ridding the world of colonialist Apartheid Jew occupiers?

Can excuses be made in such a case? Or even denials? Can one reasonably claim that the GoPro footage was edited?

There was no outrage at the gang-raping and genital mutilation of Jewish women on October 7. There was no outcry as Jewish women in captivity continued to be sexually abused by their captors. But there was also no outcry and no outrage at the murdering of several of man’s best friends.

Could it be that when a man is Jewish, man’s best friend is nothing but a conniving Jew?

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

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