Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: 07Oct23

Showing posts with label 07Oct23. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Biden Calls October 7th a “dark day for the Palestinian people” (Judean Rose)

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

Joe Biden could not have chosen to end his statement commemorating the first anniversary of October 7 in a more inappropriate manner. “I believe that history will also remember October 7th as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”

A dark day for the Palestinian people? Really Joe? Really??

Of all the things to say on a day marking pogroms against the Jewish people so depraved and vicious it is an obscenity to describe them. October 7^th didn’t happen to just any people and it certainly didn’t happen to the “Palestinian” people. The events that took place on October 7^th happened to the Jews.* It was arguably the single darkest day in Jewish history, the darkest day the Jewish people have ever known.

But it seems Jewish tragedy is fair game for a crooked hack like Joe Biden to exploit for his own gain and/or nefarious pleasure. Because one thing cannot be in doubt. If we know the facts, Joe Biden knows them too.

And the facts are this: On that “dark day,” regular “Palestinian people” stormed the fence and came flooding into Israel just like the “real” terrorists, killing, raping, maiming, and burning Jews alive.

The Free Beacon’s Andrew Tobin wrote of this massive civilian assist to the terrorists on October 24, 17 days after that “dark day for the Palestinian people” occurred (emphasis added):

As Hamas terrorists carried out a highly choreographed massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, they received a source of support that amplified the horror that took place that day. A mob of ordinary Palestinians spontaneously joined in what became the deadliest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, according to videos, eyewitness accounts, and the Israel Defense Forces.

Whereas the Hamas terrorists wore uniforms and carried military-grade weapons, the Gazans who followed them into the Jewish state were dressed as civilians and mostly unarmed, two officials from Israel's devastated Gaza border region said. Young men with knives, overweight dads, and at least one elderly man on crutches were among those who exploited Hamas's rampage to create a second wave of carnage that rivaled the barbarism of the professional terrorists.

The IDF declined to provide details about non-Hamas Gazans’s involvement in the Oct. 7 attack. But IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that large numbers of Gazans who were not members of any terrorist group entered Israel and participated in the atrocities.

"They did what you say they did," Conricus said.

Gadi Yarkoni, mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council, which serves most of the Gaza border communities, told Tobin that there was no difference between the Gaza civilians who raped, burned, and murdered Jews and their Hamas “terrorist” counterparts (emphasis added):

"The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave. We saw that it was not only Hamas who came to slaughter us. It was all the residents of Gaza, including people who worked in our kibbutzim.

"I saw a scene where a Gazan civilian chopped off a man's head. It took him several attempts to detach the head from the body," said Yarkoni.

There is ample footage of these “ordinary” Gazans looting, killing, and assisting the “terrorists” in kidnapping Israeli civilians including women and children.

Security footage from 7/10 shows ordinary Gaza citizens entering Be'eri and mass looting the Kibbutz. pic.twitter.com/lvgaC05uxJ
— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 16, 2023

These “not terrorist” Gazans, including their “not terrorist” children, cheered, jeered, and praised Allah as Jews were brutalized and defiled in ways not seen before. They, the “not terrorists,” burned Jewish homes. “Not terrorists” kicked the dead bodies of the murdered Jews, and “not terrorists” spat on Jewish hostages as they were driven through the streets of Gaza.

If you can stomach it, take a look. (This is actually milder than much of what is out there.)

Tobin also spoke with an eye witness to the bestial acts of “Palestinian people” that day. (emphasis added):

Raz Cohen, a 24-year-old former Israeli commando, saw both Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans kill and rape revelers at the Supernova music festival in Re'im, where at least 260 people were slaughtered. After escaping the Hamas terrorists, Cohen hid in a bush with a group of friends for almost seven hours. He watched as a gang of Gazan civilians—men wearing Adidas and armed only with knives and axes—raped and murdered a young Jewish woman.
"While they were raping and killing, they always laughed. I can't forget how they laughed," Cohen told the Free Beacon.
Several members of Cohen's group later ran from the bush and were caught by the same gang of Gazans. He said he heard his friends' screams as they were tortured and stabbed to death.

"You know when you hear the screams of someone who is dying," said Cohen, who was eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers.

We’ve looked at the first part of Joe Biden’s appalling reference to October 7 as a tragedy shared by Jews and “Palestinians.” Now let us examine the rest. Here is the “dark day” comment again, this time with the emphasis on the second part of the sentence:

“I believe that history will also remember October 7th as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”

Joe calls the natural response to what happened that day as a “conflict,” as if there were parity between Israeli Jews and Hamas terrorists, Israeli Jews and Gazans. But the IDF is not targeting the “Palestinian” people. The IDF is not doing to the “Palestinian” people what the “Palestinians” did to the Jews on October 7th. Jews and “Palestinians” are not two kids in the sandbox who won’t stop fighting, and who share equal blame for the death and destruction. The Jews are not the aggressors, here.

Joes tries to distract from these facts, by using the word “unleashed.” Translated, Biden blames Israel for making Gaza pay for what Hamas started. It was Hamas that unleashed the violence.

But that’s not true, is it? The horrors unleashed on October 7 were unleashed on Jews by Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans alike. To compare the suffering of Jewish Israelis to the subsequent suffering of Gazans is therefore nauseating. The Gazan people support Hamas. They elected Hamas. They raped Jews and burned babies with and alongside Hamas on October 7. They are culpable.

Anyone who wanted to could and did take part in the barbaric cruelty of the “dark day” that was October 7 and that is exactly what the “Palestinian” people did, relishing every dark evil moment.

This is how Biden gives license to a Jew-hating world to hold the Jews responsible for Gazan suffering; to believe that it is somehow unfair for the Gazan people to be forced to bear the onus for the October 7 atrocities.

This is neither a fair nor true characterization of events as Biden well knows. No matter. His comments are all now nicely recorded for posterity.

On the one-year anniversary of October 7, and in the waning days of his demented presidency, Joe Biden still has enough cussed meanness in him to call October 7^th, a “dark day” for the “Palestinian people,” though the ordinary citizens of Gaza stood shoulder to shoulder with the terrorists and attacked the Jews with gusto.

Which leaves us with the question: Who is a terrorist if everyone is a terrorist?

From a moral standpoint, the answer is obvious. It makes no difference if the attackers are Hamas operatives or just plain old, regular “Palestinians.” Terror is terror. And the “Palestinian” people are now reaping the natural consequences of what they sowed on that very dark day for the Jewish people.

*As we know, there are a significant number of migrant workers who were also savaged and or kidnapped on October 7^th. Perhaps in the frenzy, the October 7^th rapists and killers got to a point where they didn’t care who they brutalized. Or perhaps these workers were considered tainted by association with Jews. None of this changes the fact that this day belongs squarely within the confines of Jewish history, alone.

Kamala Harris: MIA on All Things Bibi (Judean Rose)

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

When Bibi Netanyahu and his wife Sara got off the plane in DC, there were no dignitaries on hand to greet them. No president, and no vice president. The president was ill with COVID and far away, while Vice President Kamala Harris was, well, missing. Period.

Bibi gets mediocre greeting https://t.co/7wVRdQJkfl pic.twitter.com/TodtG4BD3O
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 22, 2024

There can be no doubt that with her absence, Harris was signaling her contempt and disrespect for the Jewish State. We know this because the vice president let it further be known that she would not be attending Netanyahu’s address to Congress—which is actually her job. "Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee, will not preside in her constitutional role as president of the Senate during Netanyahu’s address," wrote CNN.

The Vice President is supposed to preside over joint sessions of Congress. @KamalaHarris refusal to do so when the Prime Minister of Israel makes his first public address in the United States since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, tells you everything you need to know about…
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) July 23, 2024

Harris begged off with prior engagements. But the marked absence of the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee at the airport and the historic address to Congress wasn’t really about a speaking gig at a sorority in Indianapolis, and even Israel’s war on Hamas was only an excuse.

The reason Kamala Harris has been MIA on all things Netanyahu is because she doesn’t like Israel. She would say she doesn’t hate Israel; she hates only Netanyahu. But “Netanyahu” is to “Israel” as “Zionist” is to “Jew.” One is only a code word for the other, a code that renders hatred kosher, via an adjustment in terminology.

The code makes it possible to read between the lines of what Kamala Harris has said about Israel over the years, and also how she has responded to Israel’s detractors, offering sympathy to Jew-haters for their “truth.”

WATCH: Kamala Harris nods as student accuses Israel of "ethnic genocide": “your truth cannot be suppressed" pic.twitter.com/FcqCyT7Uo8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 28, 2021

Over time, Kamala Harris has become ever bolder in expressing her anti-Israel sentiments. Or maybe she was always this way. She told a man accusing Israel and the US of genocide that she appreciated his leadership.

Kamala Harris sits in silence as an audience member peddles Hamas propaganda and baselessly accuses Israel and the U.S. of "genocide."

Then she praises him: "I appreciate you raising the subject and I appreciate your leadership."

FULL EXCHANGE: pic.twitter.com/6gKMjWqspA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 17, 2023

In March she expressed her sympathy for antisemitic protesters. Harris said she understood how they felt (emphasis added):

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

In that same March interview, Harris issued a stark warning to the Jewish State. “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” said Harris on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” said Harris, referring to the residents of Rafah.

This, of course, is a lie. The residents of Rafah do have a place to go, in fact multiple places to go. They could go to the humanitarian zones created for them by Israel, but Hamas won’t let them leave. They could go to Egypt, but Egypt won’t let them in. No one should believe that Kamala Harris does not know these things. She has been briefed on and sat in briefings about these things.

She knows about Hamas blocking the way of fleeing civilians, sometimes by beating and killing them. She also knows that Egypt has refused to take in the desperate Gazans. In spite of this knowledge, during the course of the interview, Harris went further even than Biden’s “Don’t.”

“We’re gonna take it one step at a time,” said Kamala Harris, alluding to what the Jewish State should expect should it fail to heed Biden’s warning. Shipments of weapons and ammunition would be “delayed.”

This, in fact, was what happened. A loophole was found and exploited by the Biden administration in order to withhold arms from the Jewish State. Senator Tom Cotton described how they did it in a June 24 letter to Joe Biden. It was now three months since Kamala had made her threat, and the weapons, so crucial to the Jewish State, had not been released:

“Your administration is engaged in bureaucratic sleight-of-hand to withhold this crucial aid to Israel during a shooting war. As you are aware, the Arms Export Control Act requires the administration to notify Congress before sending weapons to a foreign country. Your administration has manipulated this requirement by withholding this formal notification to Congress of approved weapons sales, including F-15s, tactical vehicles, 120-mm mortars, 120-mm tank rounds, joint direct attack munitions, and small diameter bombs. Your administration can then claim that the weapons are ‘in process’ while never delivering them.”

The confluence of world events right now is intriguing. It puts one in mind of the Book of Esther. Biden steps down from his bid for reelection and Harris assumes the role, just as Netanyahu arrives to plead his case. Can we predict how the story arc will play out? What will happen to Israel in the months to come, as a heavily-funded Kamala Harris veers ever more publicly further to the left?

Here is what will happen: Israel will refuse to stand down against the vicious Hamas terrorists, no matter what Kamala Harris does or doesn’t do. But should she continue to amass power, her distaste for Israel, may end up hurting the very people she means to help. Because the longer this drags on, the more Gazans will die.

The Biden administration has not advocated for US citizens held hostage in Gaza, and has fed money to Iran and its proxy, Hamas, all the while demonizing Israel. But when it comes to sheer public hatred of the Jewish State, Kamala somehow always takes it that one step further than Biden, letting the world know she’s not going to give the Jews of Israel the means to defend themselves.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Proof of October 7th and the Glee of the Evil Roger Waters Judean Rose

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. Please note that this post contains extremely graphic descriptions.

Roger Waters is an evil antisemite. The word “evil” here is no hyperbole. Some people hate Jews out of habit or ignorance, but Roger Waters is a rabid, virulent Jew-hater, who denies that Jewish babies were burned and Jewish women were raped on October 7. Even though there is ample evidence to the contrary, as Piers Morgan rightly stated during a recent interview with the Pink Floyd co-founder and Jew-hater par excellence.

Roger Waters: Wouldn't it be great to have that conversation at some . . . and wouldn't it be great if we could have an actual real investigation beyond the very good Al Jazeera documentary that we all saw that came out and all the great work that the Gray Zone and Electric Intifada people did in debunking all the filthy disgusting lies that the Israelis told after October the 7th about burning babies and women being raped which were all completely . . .
Piers Morgan (interrupts): Actually women were raped.
Roger Waters: No they weren’t.
Piers Morgan: Yes, they were.
Roger Waters: Well, there's no evidence.
Piers Morgan: It's been must been established by the United Nations.
Roger Waters: You can say anything that you want but there's no evidence.
Piers Morgan: Actually there is extensive evidence. . .
Roger Waters (interrupts): There is no sex assault and rape.

Piers Morgan: Well, there is, okay?

Waters is only annoying. No one takes him seriously anymore, except for his fellow haters. Still, there is much frustration among those of us who are all too well aware that in fact, babies were burned and women were raped. There is more, much more, and we can prove it—Hamas recorded it all with their GoPro cameras.

That being the case, say the naysayers, why haven’t we seen this evidence?

I would answer that there are very good reasons you haven’t seen the evidence of mass gang-rapes and beheadings; the baby shoved into a microwave oven; others decapitated or burned alive. For one thing, there are families to shield from seeing how their loved ones were brutalized. We also have the dignity of the victims to consider. But then there is the issue of the footage being difficult to watch.

A 43-minute video, a compilation of raw footage of the October 7th carnage, was produced by the IDF and shown to foreign journalists. At the request of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the film was subsequently shown to Knesset members at a November 1st, closed-door screening.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Knesset screened the IDF's uncensored October 7 documentary for MKs on Wednesday.
The movie, which is made up of footage taken from killed and captured terrorists, was previously screened for Israeli and foreign journalists to show them the horrors of Hamas's attack.
The MKs who watched the footage on Wednesday were heavily affected by it, with Likud MK Keti Shitrit leaving the auditorium sobbing a few minutes after the documentary began. Fellow Likud MK Tsega Melaku reportedly fainted after the screening and was taken to the Knesset's infirmary.
Likud MK Gilat Distel-Atbaryan said the Knesset's doctor was at the entrance to the auditorium offering MKs relaxation medications before they went in to watch the documentary. Three psychologists were also available afterward to help those who watched the documentary to cope.
"I held it out in the hall for five minutes and then I ran out sobbing and shaking," said Distel-Atbaryan.
Even with the relaxation pill, which she had accepted, she said the footage gave her a panic attack like she had never experienced before.

Fox News’ Harris Faulkner reported on a screening for Members of the House:

Harris Faulkner: And on Capitol Hill, Members of the House visibly shaken after they watched Hamas’ footage of the October 7th atrocities. Many of those terrorists wore body cameras—as you know they were “GoPro-ing it,” as they were slaughtering men, women, and children, entire families, one in front of each one of them and then killing the last one.
It's torture.
Senators are planning a wider viewing tomorrow in their chamber.
(cut to reactions)
US Representative Elise Stefanik: These horrific images of atrocities are etched into my memory forever.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: You could have heard a pin drop except for the sighs and cries in the room, because the video would make anyone with a soul, cry.
Congressman Mike McCaul: Horrific scene, that I can't get into detail because they are so disgusting. They are a messianic cult, they’re a terror organization, a cult.
Harris Faulkner: The devil is what they are. Incarnate. Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens posted, “I'm gutted. This is barbarism. An attack on all humanity."

This morning I viewed the horrific footage of Hamas killing, torturing, and kidnapping Israeli civilians. I’m gutted.

This is barbarism and an attack on all humanity.

We cannot let this ever happen again and we must never forget.
— Rep. Haley Stevens (@RepHaleyStevens) November 14, 2023

California Republican Darrell Issa said, “Watching the footage made me sick to my stomach.

(cut to Harris Faulkner): Heartbreaking and dramatic newly-released video from October 7th shows the bravery of a young off-duty soldier. He was defending civilians inside a rocket shelter as the terrorists tossed in grenades. The soldier, lobbing them right back before they would explode. One after another after another.

Seven times he did that, before he himself was killed by the eighth grenade.

Martha MacCallum, also at Fox, described the experience of watching those 43 minutes:

"Everyone has seen some of these images online, but the unfiltered video is absolutely – it’s so horrific it’s hard to put into words," MacCallum told Dana Perino Monday on "America’s Newsroom."

"There is obviously so much blood, so many charred bodies, it’s very difficult, obviously, to watch this. But the two things that stuck with me, Dana, more than anything is a moment when two young boys, they’re probably [ages] 8 and 10, a grenade is thrown into the room that they are in with their father, and their father is killed and then the terrorist, the Hamas terrorist, pulls the boys out and basically pushes them into their kitchen, and they’re crying, one of them can’t see from the grenade," she continued.

"And the terrorist starts drinking water, or milk or juice out of their refrigerator… these boys are screaming, and one of them says, ‘I want my mother,’ and then he says, ‘Why am I alive?’" MacCallum became emotional when recalling the chilling video of some of the Oct. 7 terror that gripped Israel.

"I will never forget these two boys, I just can’t imagine," she said.

"Beyond the blood and the horror is the emotion of, I don’t know if they survived, but of the survivors, and the other thing that will haunt anyone that hears it or sees it, are the phone calls," MacCallum continued.

"There is a Hamas terrorist who calls his parents… he says, ‘Mom and dad, you would be so proud of me. I’m a hero. I killed 10 Jews with my own hands.’"

MacCallum said the terrorist’s parents were "cheering" on the call.

"It’s horrifying and I think that the reason, obviously, that they’re showing it to people is that they don’t want this part of the story to be forgotten, and it is important to remember what the spark was," she said.

MacCallum is absolutely correct. But no one who is swept up in the antisemitic protests cares about the nature of the “spark” that lit the fire in Gaza. It’s too late for that—they’ve been indoctrinated with the falsehood that Israel, in 1948, by its very creation, was the spark that led to the destruction in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacre.

On the other side of the aisle, Matt Gutman, writing for ABC News, talked about his turn to view the 43-minute film, and how it was for him:

"You won't see rape, there's no rape in this video... We won't show you beheaded babies," a senior Israeli officer said to a small group of journalists, saying such images existed but would not be shown.0000
The journalists were the first to watch a screening of an hour-long reel cobbled together from Hamas helmet cam, mobile phone video, surveillance video, dashboard camera video and victims' livestreams. . .
. . . Journalists were not allowed to record or use the video presented, and our phones were deposited outside the room.
The video started slowly. Hamas fighters are seen on the back of a pickup, with RPGs spiking out in every direction. You can sense their excitement. The video shows several groups cut through the fence and wave a pickup truck through.
Then it shows three separate angles of motorists in Israel being flagged down, then gunned down -- the AK-47s puffing smoke -- on the road outside the Kfar Aza and Be'eri kibbutzim. Bodies are yanked out of cars.
Then a pair of attackers in Be'eri is shown. For several minutes, we watch as they amble around the kibbutz. They poke into one house and you can hear someone's alarm going off. It's 8 a.m. You can hear them breathing heavily. The one wearing the body camera has a high, soft-spoken voice that seems to belie his mission.
At a playground, he wonders in Arabic, "Where are the kids?" The duo set fire to one house, shoot an encroaching dog, and shoot another old man through a darkened screen. They are parsimonious with their ammunition, and chillingly unhurried as they pick through the tidy vegetable gardens and open the latches of wooden fences.
Then the video gets grisly. Other militants are busy mashing a dying man's face with their boots. Another pair screams "Allahu akbar" as they use a garden hoe to try to decapitate another man.
In another house, a gunman sticks the muzzle of his rifle into a room inhabited by a family. It's a mash of colors. In one, a terrorist is standing on an Israeli man's chest and shoots him point-blank in the face.
Then, the scenes of bloodied bedrooms start to blur. The rooms and the gore are the same -- it's how the bodies are arrayed in death that's different. There are so many children. Some are jam-packed together in a slippery mass of human flesh. Huge blood stains streak the tiles.
So many of the bodies are burnt. It was unclear if this was because they were set fire to or if it was from the grenade blasts. Other videos show Israeli first responders trying to put out the still-smoldering skeletal remains of victims -- with water bottles, as if watering a parched plant.
In another video, a grenade was apparently tossed into one of the bomb shelters that line the roads in southern Israel. It was filled with partygoers who'd left the Supernova music festival. The camera shows a flash of limbs, some dismembered, some still attached to writhing, screaming bodies. A selfie camera shows a young man weeping, while someone croaks hoarsely in the background, "help, help." Hamas then drags survivors out, some by their hair, to trucks, and then batters them some more in the backs of the pickups on the way to Gaza.

Forensic images show bodies burned in cars, on beds, on the streets and in the fields in various states of incineration.

There’s a reason that not everyone should or is capable of watching this footage, or even reading these descriptions. It’s gruesome, gory. Inhuman. Bestial.

“Screams Before Silence,” available to everyone, and not just the press or the Knesset, was difficult to watch, but the worst images were blurred. Many Israelis and Jews felt the film as painful vindication of what they knew to be all too true. Here, finally, was the proof an angry, hateful world had demanded. At last, here was a way to make them understand. To see the real “spark,” as Martha MacCallum put it.

If only that were true, and perhaps it is true of most people, that on viewing factual evidence, they believe what they see. Not so, however, the evil. People like Roger Waters.

Given proof, the evil will deny and discredit what they see and hear. For the Roger Waters of the world, any proof you show them will be likened to Karine Jean-Pierre’s “cheap fakes.” You could show Waters photos of charred infants, and he will say, “The Israelis did it. False flag operation.”

You could show him the interrogation of an October 7^th terrorist describing rape and murder by a father and his sons, and Waters will say, “He’s being coerced by his Israeli interrogators,” or “That’s an actor. His accent is suspicious.”

Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18, were captured by the Israeli army in Gaza.

In their interrogation they confessed to rape and slaughtering Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

This is only part of the footage. pic.twitter.com/oOqXf5CYeD
— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) May 23, 2024

Martha MacCaullum is, of course, correct that none of this story should be forgotten, the story of the October 7^th massacre. But when it comes to evil people like Roger Waters, it’s not a question of remembering, and it’s not even a question really, of hate. Once a person says that what happened on October 7, didn’t happen, he has gone over to the other side. It’s not just a dislike of Jews, but an embrace of evil.

This, in the end, may be the most serious consideration in deciding who should and should not see real, raw October 7 footage. The last thing Israel should do is expose the bodies of my dead sisters to the scorn and ridicule of black-hearted people like Roger Waters. All it does is give him more rope to heap abuse on murdered Jewish women.

He has perfected the art of feigning belief. And he’s got an answer all at the ready, to everything. “Even if there was rape, it was limited . . .” say the Roger Waters of the world.

The evil are immune to proof, because they take glee in the murder and rape of Jewish women and children, and the burning of families alive in their homes. Should we then share our sorrow in order to give evil joy? It’s a point that is hard to absorb, because like Anne Frank—that is, before she was found out and sent to die in a concentration camp under horrible, unbearable conditions—in spite of everything we “still believe that people are really good at heart.”

We want to believe that proof will make a difference. Maybe so. For some people. But don’t bother to show that brutal footage to people like Roger Waters. They’ve gone to the Dark Side, lost for good.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas raping, kidnapping and murdering Jews. Let's give them a state!

Spain, Norway and Ireland said on Wednesday that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state.

It's literally beyond parody.

Every poll of Palestinians for the past seven months shows strong support not only for the massacre and orgy of violence, but also of Hamas altogether.

In the most recent poll, 71% of Palestinians support Hamas' decision to attack on October 7. 63% want to see Hamas restored to power in Gaza. Hamas is using the entire civilian population of Gaza as human shields, but 72% of Palestinians are satisfied with how Hamas is waging war. A plurality of 49% believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today, triple any other option. 55% support terrorism against Israelis. Most oppose a two state solution next to Israel - they want everything.

These polls do not get much publicity in Western media. But any democratically elected leadership of a Palestinian state would share Hamas goals of making the Middle East Judenfrei.

There is no way that the leaders of Ireland, Norway and Spain do not know this. Which means that they tacitly support the same goals.

In the name of "peace."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Screams Before Silence: The Proof the Evil will still deny (Judean Rose)

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

I watched Screams Before Silence* just before the final leg of the Passover holiday. I didn’t know whether I should. After all, I totally believe my recent cardiac arrest was due to the extended anguish of hearing about the atrocities of this war, and due also to thinking about what is still happening, right now, to our hostages. It has been unbearable for months, thinking these thoughts, and then chiding one’s self: ‘You think the thought is unbearable??’

Then you feel guilty for imagining that you suffer at all, for what is only in your mind, in light of what happened, is happening to them, still.

I reason with myself: ‘You shouldn’t watch—it’s almost candle-lighting time. Do you really want to go into the holiday with such darkness in your mind and heart?’

I knew the answer. That I shouldn’t watch Screams Before Silence right then, at that time. It would definitely be completely inappropriate to do so, as one is meant to be happy on a holiday. But I couldn’t help myself—I felt compelled to watch this documentary. It was a need, but also something to dread. I knew it would be bad, hard-to-watch bad.

There was time to watch all but maybe the final fourteen minutes of the documentary, so I reasoned some more: ‘I have an obligation to know, to bear witness, to internalize what happened—happens still. For me as a Jew. They are my people, a part of me.’

So I anyway watch what I can before the sun goes down. It is hard to watch and listen. I cry out, “Oh, God!” several times.

You can’t help it if you’re human.

Did watching Screams Before Silence color my yontif, my holiday? Of course it did. But I managed. By now these terrors, as well as expecting to hear of new terrors every day, are a part of life. Holiday happiness is, at any rate, for the time being, muted.

From time to time, my mind flitted back to what Dr. Cochav Elyakam-Levy, Head of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, had to say about the sexual violence of October 7:

This is a kind of pattern we’re seeing, that it’s not just sexual abuse, but it’s sexual abuse in its worst form. It’s like they wanted to inflict pain, in the cruelest manner possible. I think they have redefined evil and in ways that we will need to redefine international criminal law.

Then I would think back to somber recitation of the ZAKA volunteer, of how again and again, they saw the same thing. Hundreds of times. Perhaps more.

When you see one woman, then another and another, all with signs of abuse in the groin area, you understand that this wasn't a random thing. You can't reach that area unless you mean to. It's someone who has come to do different kinds of things to you.

If he doesn't have time, he'll just kill you. If he has a little time, he'll slit your throat. If he has more time, he'll cut off body parts. And if he has even more time, he'll also cause pain and defile, especially if it's a woman. He'll defile her body, not for pleasure but for humiliation. And that's what we saw.

ZAKA volunteer, screenshot from Screams Before Silence

After the holiday, and after I did my share of post-Passover tasks, I watched the last 14 minutes of Screams Before Silence. Then I thanked Sheryl Sandberg—on youtube, on X—we had all been waiting for this film, we needed this film, but she went and actually did it. She made the film.

We need this film to make the world understand. We need it to educate college protesters who don’t even know why they are protesting. After seeing Screams Before Silence, could these same young women continue to ally themselves with who yell, “We are Hamas!”?

🚨VIDEO: A REAL interview we had at NYU:

QUESTION: "Why are you protesting?"

PROTESTER #1: "I don't know. I'm pretty sure there's something about Israel [turns to other person] Why are we protesting?"

PROTESTER #2: "I wish I was more educated."

PROTESTER #1: "I'm not either." pic.twitter.com/8aB2ZoTCCk
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) April 24, 2024

We needed the film for the people who say it didn’t happen. For the people who say there were no rapes.

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And yet, it doesn’t help. Films, photos, testimony, proof of all sorts. None of it matters. They want to believe—choose to believe—whatever fits the narrative they, the haters, prefer to, want to believe.

Some believe the atrocities happened and are exhilarated by them.

They feel Israel/Zionists/Jews deserve atrocities and genocide—they can justify it however they like. They can say we are white Europeans who should go back to Poland or Russia, even though so many of us in Israel in particular, are dark.

Erasing both history and archaeology, they say we stole land from people who were here before us. The truth inversion continues when the liars claim that Jews do to Arabs what Arabs do to Jews, only worse. They will show you a 15-year-old photo of a dead Syrian child and curse the “criminal” Zionist soldiers, implying that to love your country is a crime. If you’re a Jew.

And when you say, “They burned a baby in an oven,” they will smugly smile and say, “That was disproven.”

You can try saying, “It was NOT disproven. It happened,” but all they will do is laugh at you.

“Where’s the proof?” they will say, and you can do nothing, can show them no proof, because that would be wrong.

There are photos, I always tell them, but you can’t see them. And that’s out of respect for the victims. For goodness sake, what have they left if not for their privacy? Do they have to forever be imagined in the world’s collective mind as naked and defiled? Like Shani Louk?

They gave that photo an award. The world lapped it up like a cat with a bowl of cream. They love it when the Jew gets it. They don’t care how.

They don’t even care that they contradict themselves. There are no photos. Give the photo an award. Which of those two statements is true?? Of the widely shared photo of Shani Louk, the antisemites make excuses, because it suits their narrative. “One rape, pffft.” they will say. “That’s your proof of systematic mass rape? One rape?? One rape is nothing compared to what Zionist soldiers do to Palestinian women in Gaza every day.”

They know that’s a lie, a convenient lie. It’s so ridiculous it makes you shake your head in disbelief. It takes your breath away by its sheer, evil chutzpah. The lie serves their purpose. It allows them to look the other way when Arabs rape and deface Jewish women. They twist the truth back on you and tell you the opposite is true.

It’s not just a boldfaced lie about soldiers (who are moral, that you care about)—it’s an aggression. They are raising you one—raising the stakes as if in a game of poker, lying right in your face/computer screen that it is Israel who is the criminal, while Hamas terrorists and their sympathizers are sweet angels, having a “justifiable” moment of rage.

Now some of these people—these liars—are truly evil. Others, we must acknowledge, are merely stupid.

So we needed this movie, and we didn’t need it. Because the film purposely does not display the really graphic images. “Out of respect for the victims and their families,” reads the text at the end of the film, in plain white letters on a stark black background, “we chose not to show explicit images in this film.”

Instead we see Sheryl Sandberg reacting to such images as they are shown to her on the phone screens of ZAKA volunteers. We watch her face as she looks at each photo and hears the volunteers describe she is seeing, what happened to each woman, all that was done to her. If you’ve got a heart and a soul, you don’t need more than you are shown in Screams Before Silence to visualize what happened, and believe it to your core. It is awful. It is the truth.

The Jew-haters on the other hand, will not be persuaded. They will keep on saying, “Screenshot or it didn’t happen.”

Those are the haters. But what about the stupid, the sheep like students caught up in the spirit of the thing, which they confuse with a spirit of justice? Perhaps they have a chance, the stupid, could be educated, if they watch this documentary.

Because the documentary rings true. You know it’s true when the women say they fear rape more than death, and when a grown man, a man big and burly, says “No one can see those kinds of things,” and then breaks into sobs.

Sometimes I think that if I could, I would show the ugly-hearted, Jew-hating campus protesters October 7^th footage on a loop. Such footage, after all, abounds. The terrorists themselves used their go-pros to document their own horrors. This footage is not hard to find. So I was excited when I read just this morning that an anonymous someone had done just that.

Played October 7^th footage to protesters. In a loop. On a big, outdoor screen.

An anonymous group has funded and constructed a giant screen with loudspeakers outside the @UCLA Pro-Hamas Encampments showing footage of the October 7 Massacre on loop.

Bravo to these geniuses. #StandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/t6bl12gvxl
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) April 29, 2024

Awesome!

Or is it? If the crowd prefers to jeer over allowing tragedy to move them, will it even matter—will it matter what you show them? No. They’ll invert the truth. Laugh at you. Say the footage is “heavily edited” or a photo is “obviously photoshopped”. Whatever lies they can throw at you, they will. That’s the game.

But we’re not playing. For us, it’s not a game. We have a duty to bear witness to the systematic torture of, and sexual violence against Jewish women by Hamas deviants, and so I remain grateful to Sheryl Sandberg. Screams Before Silence is a film that helps us to recognize Hamas for what it is, be firm in our resolve to eradicate this evil, once and for all, from our world. October 7^th was a concerted, premeditated attack against the Jewish people via its women.

As we watch and listen to protesters deny the obvious truth of Screams Before Silence, it will become easier and easier to see that they out themselves, and for us to distinguish between the humans and everyone else.

Humans will care. The evil will not. And should be eliminated from God’s green earth.

*Elder of Ziyon beat me to the punch with his excellent and concise take on the subject, Screams Before Silence, the documentary with select quotes from journalist Brett Stephens.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Longest Pause: My Cardiac Arrest and Me (Judean Rose, Part III)

I slid off the chair to the floor, but I know nothing of this. I am gone. Only later do I ask Dov, my husband, how it happened. “Slid” was his word. “You slid off the chair onto the floor,” said Dov.

“Did I hit my head?”

“No, the medics kind of caught you and eased you down to the floor.”

“Then what happened?”

“The MDA guy immediately started compressions,” says Dov, with some awe in his voice. He is obviously impressed with the grace and speed with which this impromptu team of medics sprang into action.

I chew this over for a few days, this scenario, as described to me by my husband.

Slowly more questions occur. “What did I look like?”

“You were white,” his voice catches.

I hear that it is too difficult for him to speak about it—he had watched me die. Still, I have to ask. “Like all-over white? Were my lips white?”

“You were completely white,” he says.

I take mercy on him and table my questions. For now.

As for what I remember, it was this. I knew nothing. Not a thing. And then I was aware of blackness, and slowly color came, pixelated at first, and stole over the blackness and I heard, “Varda, Varda!” my husband’s voice, and the medics’ voices, and someone was slapping my face, and the MDA guy said. “Varda, your heart stopped for two seconds. You are going to the hospital.”

“No, no. I don’t want to go.”

Basically, at this point, I was not compos mentis. I think I hadn’t been for much of the time the medics were with me, because if it had really been a money thing—my mind would have long been at rest. The medics called MDA in spite of me, which already meant I was off the hook for payment. And now that my heart had stopped, there was no way I would not be admitted, which meant I would not have to pay for an ER visit. It is therefore impossible for me to explain the true reasons for why I continued to protest. “Is it about the money, or something else?” asked the MDA guy as I continued to protest.

“It’s the money . . .” I said.

“Ah ha! Varda,” said the MDA guy,” you are not going to have to pay. Your heart stopped.”

“. . . and my husband,” I said, in a feeble voice. “He needs me to take care of him,” but no one heard me. They were too busy strapping me onto a stretcher in preparation to take me out of our apartment for transport in the ambulance.

“I’m sorry. I’m so heavy,” I said, embarrassed.

“You’re not so heavy,” said the MDA guy.

As they take me out of the apartment, I see the sky is no longer dark, as it had been when I awoke that morning. More embarrassment, thinking of the neighbors on our quiet street, waking up to the ruckus of medics loading someone in crisis (me) into an ambulance. I feel bad to be the cause of this too early, too noisy, rude awakening.

I am in the ambulance, and as we drive away, I feel as though I am flailing from side to side, unmoored. “But how will I keep from falling?” I say aloud.

“Don’t worry,” says Elisheva the medic, who is also my friend. “We strapped you in very well. You can’t fall.”

It didn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel the straps, but I trust Elisheva. There is no place to look but up, so I do. I am looking at the interior of the roof of the ambulance. Everything is as if in brownout. Then suddenly the brown lifts away and the “ceiling” looks bright white. “I feel better!” I cry out.

Elisheva says, “Good, good!” encouraging me. Then the brownout returns. This happens several times. Each time the foggy, beigey brown clears to white, I say, “I feel better!” surprised. Relieved.

Each time, Elisheva says, “Good!”

At some point during the ride to the hospital, I wonder why this is happening to me. And then I know. It is October 7. It is the atrocities, the war, the ongoing situation with the hostages. I lift my head and look at Elisheva, “The hostages,” I cry to her, knowing she will feel me. “I can’t bear it,” I say and both she and the MDA guy look at me, and the brownout comes once more.

It was the most alive I had felt since this whole thing began. And I knew that what I had promised would not happen, had happened.

At the start of the war I had said to myself, “I will not let Hamas break me,” and now it had. I had broken. It had been too much for me. I was human, flesh and blood. It was too much for a body to bear and not be overcome. I had suppressed it too much. Had tried to, anyway.

I had vowed not to write about the atrocities, not to play the poor us card before the world. I talked “around” the harshness, the hideousness of Hamas and what they had done and continue to do, in my columns. I wrote about rape fear, rather than rape. I wrote about Gazan support for Hamas; the “ceasefire deal with the devil;” the dirty money trail that led to October 7^th; the fickleness of Joe Biden in regard to his (non)support for Israel; and so on and so forth. Anything but to talk about women raped until finally dead, their legs that could not be closed, but stood at odd angles, broken. Raped front and back, the men, too. Women raped in front of their husbands, husbands raped in front of their wives. Daughters, sisters, children in front of parents, in front of each other. Sights and sounds that would haunt the survivors, the few of them that remained, forever.

I vowed not to write about any of this, even as it ate me from inside. I knew it was eating me from inside. But it was not fair for me to be feeling this. I was not the one suffering. The suffering belonged to the raped, the murdered, the decapitated—those who could no longer feel, and those who felt still, wherever they were, in the depths of some tunnel suffering unimaginable horrors.

I remember the day I heard about Hamas baking a baby in an oven. I was in the car with my husband when I read it on X, and I cried out. “What?” asked my husband.

But I could not tell him. First because I was too consumed with the pain, the thought of the baby and what it experienced, and then because I knew it was too upsetting to share. It was something that was new to me. It had obviously just come to light. I didn’t want anyone else to have to know this—to have to live with this knowledge of the baby, in the oven, and what it experienced. Even now, I can’t write about it without crying.

I moaned and cried in the car the whole way home, telling my husband, “You don’t want to know. It’s too awful. It’s too awful.”

He understood I had heard about an atrocity just come to light and he said I was right. He didn’t want to know. So I moaned and wailed the whole way home. I couldn’t stop. I cried about this on and off for days. Couldn’t, shouldn’t wipe it out of my mind, and it ate away at me and ate away at me. But I did not deserve to have this pain, I thought. It wasn’t about me, but about the victims. I had no right to make it about me.

Years ago, when my column was hosted on a different platform, it was understood that the terror victim beat was mine. I had a knack for making people feel the horror, for making it real, for making the victim real, someone the reader had never met. I had a knack for making women cry, reading my words.

And it began to feel icky, to feel exploitative. I didn’t want to have thousands of pageviews only when I wrote about tragedy that didn’t feel as though it rightly belonged to me. It was a writerly trick, no more. I stopped. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

Plus, I have to say it affected me. I took it to heart. I thought about the victims all the time. I dreamt of them. I carried them with me. It hurt my heart. My heart. And finally my heart stopped. It had had enough, had broken.

Hamas had, indeed, broken me. Broken my heart.

Several times a day I think about the hostages and the victims of October 7, and my eyes well up with tears. “No! It’s not about YOU,” I chide myself, though I know that this is my people and I too, own the sorrow and the tragedy.

And yet something inside me feels guilty for imagining that I know anything at all about what these people, MY people had suffered—even now continue to suffer! I can picture it all in my writer’s mind. I’m a creative. I picture everything in “living color,” the full horror of it all. I hear the sounds, the flames, the screaming, I picture the baby. I can’t, I can’t.

***
In the ER, Elisheva sits by me as I go in and out of that strange brownout. “How long is this going to take,” I ask her. “I need to get home to take care of Dov.”

“You’re not going to be taking care of Dov, now.”

“But he just had surgery!” I moan.

“You’re not going to be caring for Dov. And you’re not going to be cleaning for Pesach.

I continue to protest.

“Varda, this is serious,” she says.

Finally, I get it. Just as I finally understood that I had to go in the ambulance—had to go to the hospital. I lie back. I accept it for what it is. I died.

“You weren’t with us for a while,” says Elisheva, “You were lucky you were awake when it happened.”

***

The day the war breaks out, I awaken to the noise of war. Booms. Artillery. I know what I am hearing. My husband comes home from shul to tell me what he knows. But he sees that I know and understand that we are at war.

Not that I did know or understand. I could not have imagined the full horror of it all. No one could have imagined it except for the sick minds of the black-souled terrorists who perpetrated deeds the Devil himself could not imagine and would never have contemplated.

My youngest begins getting ready to go back to base. His elder brother says, “What’s with all the panic? Slow down,” and I hear the younger say, “You don’t understand!” and then whisper something about thousands of terrorists on the loose, terrible things happening, terrible.

He gets ready to go, and as he’s going down the walk to his car, the sirens go off and we make him come back in to go into the safe room. Finally, he is able to leave with whatever food I can pack for him in a hurry.

Later, as the holiday comes to a close, the other son says to me, “Don’t listen to the news. I’m telling you, Eema. Don’t listen to the news.”

Telling me not to listen to the news is like telling me not to breathe the air, not to drink water. I am all about the news. “Don’t do it, Eema,” he says, my son, so wise beyond his years. “It’s not just the war on the battlefield. There’s also the psychological war. They want to break us, Hamas.”

That stays with me. “Hamas wants to break us.”

I vow that Hamas will not break me. I say it to myself all day long—say it until I am blue in the face. But invariably, I hear things on the news. I cannot live under a rock. I need to know what is going on. And I hear terrible things. Things that break me more and more.

Each time I chide myself. “How dare you make it about you? How dare you,” but I can’t stop it from eating away at me. It nibbles at my heart, at the very core of me.

Sometimes I listen to the testimonies of the survivors obsessively. I can’t stop. I also cannot bear to hear them. “You’re not the only one,” I tell myself. “Everyone in the country feels what you feel. Everyone. And the survivors have it far worse—feel it far worse than you ever could”

But the hostages? How can I not feel this? The scenarios of what is happening to them come to me unbidden. I can’t help it. I picture it all. I picture it all. I cannot stop.

And it eats away at me, at my heart, until my heart says “ENOUGH,” and stops on a strange dark morning.

I don’t really understand why, after it stops, my heart once more begins to beat, except that God puts this instinct to live in all of us. We live, sometimes with terrible knowledge, in spite of ourselves. Whether or not we feel we can bear it all—all that life throws at us.

Later, in the hospital, the doctor comes to tell me that my heart stopped for 30 seconds. He seems impressed by this number. My son who accompanies me to the hospital trades glances with me. We’d gone from the two seconds cited by the MDA guy to 30.

That was in the ER.

Sometime after I am moved to the Intensive Care Cardiac Unit, another doctor comes and says, “You had a ‘pause’ of 40 seconds.”

My son and I look at each other, both of us thinking, “First two seconds, then 30 seconds, and now 40??”

The doctor nods. “Yes,” he says. “I counted it. There was a lot of ‘noise’ on the EKG but I counted it myself and it was 40.”

We can see this is a long time from his perspective—that he is impressed by this number.

Actual screenshot from my hospital release letter detailing the 40-second "pause."

The next morning, the ward cardiologist comes to see me and he explains that there are pauses, long pauses, and very long pauses. Mine was apparently impressively long. “That is a LOOOOONG pause,” the white-haired physician tells me, adding that in his entire career, he had never seen such a long “pause.”

After many days and much testing—the tilt test, a shot of atropine, an MRI—the doctors decide to put in a pacemaker. The local anesthetic doesn’t work, and I scream as the knife slices into my flesh. “This is nothing,” I tell myself on the table, “compared to what the hostages are suffering, compared to what the victims of October 7 suffered.”

I am certain Hashem is giving me just the smallest taste of what they felt/feel in their agony. Just the tiniest taste, so that I will have some understanding, just a glimpse of what they went through, are still going through. They deserve that, the victims and survivors. They deserve for us to know and to feel it, too.

Our people, a part of us. A part of my own flesh, my own blood, my own people, my nation. My heart. I hope that in some way, my experience on the table will serve as a kapara against whatever sins had brought this down upon our people. “This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement.”

Once home, I ask two cardiologist friends, “What’s the longest ‘pause’ you’ve seen in a patient.”

One says, “Ten seconds,” the other says, “Ten, maybe 15 seconds. Three seconds earns you a pacemaker, he adds.”

Neither one had seen a 40-second pause.

When I go back for my two-week checkup, the doctor squints at me, trying to place me. I say, “I’m the one with the 40-second pause,” and she remembers the case immediately, if not my face. What was my face to these physicians? I was a “pause.”

The longest pause they had seen. I was a miracle: In spite of Hamas, and almost in spite of myself, I lived.

Hamas broke me, but didn’t break me, because I lived.

My heart is not the same and there is lasting damage, yet I live to tell the tale.

I live.

Because that is what the Jewish people do. We live and outlive our enemies. And there is not a thing they can do about it. It’s ordained by someone far more powerful than Hamas. And Hamas will come to know this as the flames begin to lick at their feet for all eternity.

No one can best Hashem. No one. The Jewish people will dust themselves off, never forgetting what has been done to them, and they/we will continue to live.

Our God is more powerful than Hamas, than even the worst that Hamas can do to us. The evil ones will never, ultimately, win.

As for me, my heart will never be the same, and that is only right. I am not stone, should not be stone when my/our people are suffering.

Now I know: it’s not that my heart betrayed me. I had to break, a least a little. My injured heart proved to me that I am human, something that Hamas will never be.