Terror Unleashed: The Dangerous Cost of Hostage Freedom (Judean Rose)

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

The night before the first three women hostages were released, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the nation. Attempting to placate a nation appalled at the prospect of another terrorist release, the prime minister made a promise [emphasis added]. “We have established that terrorists who have killed will not be released to Judea and Samaria; they will be expelled to the Gaza Strip or abroad, and we also decided in the cabinet on a very significant reinforcement of our forces in Judea and Samaria to protect our citizens,” said Bibi.

Because we have been lied to before, we didn’t really believe this declaration. But it didn’t much matter. The only difference between a terrorist who has killed and one who hasn’t, is that in the first instance, the victims died, and in the second, they lived. That is why the distinction isn’t much comfort to the 5,700 or so Jewish residents of Beit El. Of the first 200 terrorists released in this deal, 114 of them were sent to Ramallah, adjacent to Beit El.

One woman in my town of Efrat heard that a further 22 terrorists “who have not killed” were released to Hebron, quite close to us. I asked how she knows this, since everything about the mass terrorist release has been cloaked in mystery. It turns out her son’s friend is serving there. He said he would have been safer in Gaza.  

In truth, there is a general air of despondency here. Many assume that what we hear about the terrorist release is not true, or at least not the whole truth, because so little information filters down to the common man that it makes us suspicious. Others are more pragmatic. “I'm not sure it's a ‘lie’ as much as politics and hands tied and deals behind the scenes,” says Chani Ugowitz of Efrat.

Be that as it may, the lack of information has created an air of distrust. Victim families directly affected by the release have yet to be contacted by the government. Those of us who live in close proximity to locations where terrorists will now roam free, have not been briefed.

 “This is a crazy complicated situation. I am so against this "deal"/ blackmail but know so many people that are going with it because they feel we had no choice. We tried the other way and it didn't work. I don't know. Makes me mad, scared, and sad,” says Ugowitz.

“It’s incredibly painful,” said another Efrat friend, Rachel Schwartz, “Statistically, half of those will do another terror attack. 170 out of 200 hundred that were released had life sentences. Varda, it is so incredibly painful. I can’t stand it.”

I had heard the same figure regarding terrorist recidivism. But it seems this figure has been updated. Lt. Col. (res.) Attorney Morris Hirsch formerly of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, writes that [emphasis added], “[As] part of the cabinet discussion going into approving the deal, the head of the Shin Bet noted that 82% of those released in the Shalit deal returned to terrorism.”

In the frightening Hebrew-language article, Without you knowing: This is how Israeli terrorists will be released back to the country, Hirsch shares a further, little known but profoundly disturbing fact, “The list of terrorists who will be released as part of the deal includes no less than 73 terrorists who hold Israeli citizenship or residency. This means they will be released back to the country.”

“Of that list, 21 terrorists are serving life sentences – that is, murderers. Of these, eight terrorists are to be released to Israel (within the 1949 armistice lines), while the rest are to be deported, although at this stage it is not clear where,” writes Hirsch. “Five of the eight are affiliated with Hamas and the rest with Fatah. All eight were arrested between 2001 and 2003, during the terror attacks initiated by the PA, starting in September 2000.”

All in all, of the 73 Israeli terrorists to be released from prison, 45 will be released into Israel, writes Hirsch, “while the remaining 28 terrorists will be deported abroad, either temporarily (3 terrorists) or permanently (25 terrorists).”

We may not know nearly enough about the terms of this deal but one thing seems certain, exactly none of the terrorists slated for release will be deported to America. President Trump wants Americans to feel safe. He doesn’t want any more innocents killed, people like Jocelyn Nungary and Riley Laken. So Mr. Trump is having these criminal elements deported. He doesn’t want them in his country.

“And there they are deporting murderers and criminals,” said Chani Ugowitz of the new administration, “while forcing us to take them to our streets with our children.

“I've gotten very harsh in my views since the war and I don't like it but I don't like how the other side has pushed me to think in an "us or them" mentality. There is no partner on the other side of the negotiation table so it becomes blackmail on their end and force on ours.”

Then too, what does it say about Israel that we’re freeing murderers into the wind? Whatever it was that was held over Bibi’s head to agree to this deal, it’s hard to hear that it was worth letting these murderers roam loose. Why would anyone even ask us to do so? 

“How depressing that monsters like these are the price of getting innocent Israelis freed from the Hamas underworld,” remarked Arnold Roth, father of 15-year-old terror victim Malki Roth, murdered in a pizzeria. “and that there's no one so monstrous that Israel would keep him or her in prison if the blackmail demands were perceived as warranting an even more painful surrender.”

Meantime, outside of Israel, Jews are giving Trump's Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff multiple ovations (!) for forcing Israel into accepting Biden’s May horrific deal. Yet he managed to get not a single American hostage released. 

What then, was the point?

I wonder if President Trump is aware that among the terrorists released or slated for release in this deal, are many who were convicted of murdering Americans. JD Vance begged us Israeli Americans to vote for Trump, and we did. Now we wonder at the betrayal of American Israeli victims of terror whose murderers we were leaned on to release.

Why was Israel pressed into this deal now, when we were ahead of the game, when we were winning, when we were no longer between a rock and a hard place because it was no longer Joe Biden threatening us, slow-walking arms, and supplying the enemy with cash dollars? Trump had won and could now push Hamas into releasing the captives with just a few threatening words. Why then force Israel to release murderers from Israeli jails into the wild? 

Will we ever know why we were compelled by Trump to sign a bad deal months after it had been rejected? Or why not one American hostage has yet been released since this ceasefire was implemented. As of this writing, Keith Siegel is not to be released in this latest batch of hostages, and we know he is fast fading. Emily Damari was so worried about Siegel that she offered to switch places and let him go first. Hamas refused.

Keith Siegel, an dual American citizen held captive in Gaza

So we watch as no Americans are released, but the murderers of Americans like Dr. David Applebaum and his daughter Nava, who were blown up in the Hillel Café on the night before what would have been Nava’s wedding are going free in this “deal.” 

Dr. David Applebaum, Nava Applebaum, murdered at the Hillel Cafe in Jerusalem

Member of the cell that killed them, released or about to be.

The same is true of the murderer of American citizen Asher Palmer and his baby son Yonatan, who were on their way to spend Shabbat with their family when their murderer stoned their car with boulders.

Asher and Yonatan Palmer, murdered when their car was stoned while driving to family for Shabbat

 

On the list of terrorists demanded by Hamas

Ditto the murderer of Tuvia Yanai Weissman, an American killed by a child terrorist in 2016 while shopping at a supermarket.

Out or about to be out and free as birds.

It was that last name that grabbed at my throat, as I finished scanning a new list of the terrorists to be released, this time in English, from Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). It was just before Shabbat, and I had to shut down my computer, but I remembered that one. I never could get Tuvia Yanai Weissman out of my mind, because of the photo that circulated of him with his young wife and infant son. He had such a beautiful baby face, and his wife’s face was so full of joy and light. How awful to lose her young husband with whom she was clearly smitten. I mentioned Tuvia at the Shabbat table, and my youngest son told me that Weissman’s wife is his friend’s sister.

Tuvia Yanai Weissman, a dual American citizen, murdered in a supermarket.

Every Israeli has multiple connections to multiple terror victims. Connections upon connections upon connections. That’s the way it is.

Ari Fuld, dual American citizen, murdered while talking to his wife on the phone

I wonder: does President Trump feel a connection to the American victims whose murderers are now being set free in this deal we were compelled by his man Witkoff, to sign?

Why don’t we hear President Trump threatening Hamas if they don’t release Keith Siegel, now? 

Why don’t we hear Witkoff saying to Hamas, “No. You can’t have the terrorists who killed American citizens. You can’t have the murderers of Americans Marla Bennett and Ben Blustein, exchange students killed in the Hebrew University Cafeteria,” or “No. You can’t have the terrorist who killed American citizen Ari Fuld while he was standing outside a supermarket talking on the phone with his wife,” or “No. You can’t have the murderers of David and Nava Applebaum, or the murderers of Asher and Yonatan Palmer. You can’t have the murderers of Tuvia Yanai Weissman.”

Ben Blustein, American exchange student

Marla Bennett, American exchange student, who along with Ben was murdered in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria on the Hebrew University Mt. Scopus campus

Instead, we hear none of this. We hear people say things like, “What if it were your family members being held in Gaza?” as if those of us who feel as I do, that this “deal” is a horrible, unjust, and dangerous thing, are heartless.

But two things can be true at once. We are joyous at the release of each hostage, and sick at the release of murderers of loved ones we tracked down, caught, and jailed. Where is the justice for the victims? 

How do you think their families feel?

And how would you feel if you lived in Beit El, and 114 murderers had just been released next door to your home?

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The Imam and Me: Tim Walz and his Love Affair with the Imam Asad Zaman (Judean Rose)

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

Tim Walz just can’t seem to get enough of the imam Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS Minnesota). We should examine why Walz is a fan of the cleric of an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Does the man who may become vice president of America share the philosophy and goals of the Muslim Brotherhood? Or is the association of Walz with the imam—an avowed, Hitler-loving, Hamas-loving antisemite who wants to eradicate the Jews—completely innocent?

To give the devil his due, Walz may be using his relationship with Asad Zaman only to curry favor with his Muslim constituency. But it’s awfully difficult to overlook the implications of the more than $100,000 Walz has contributed to MAS Minnesota. Walz must want something for that cash payout, unless of course, he deeply admires Zaman’s worldview.

It was Gabe Kaminsky, investigative reporter at the Washington Examiner who brought the affiliation between Tim Walz and Asad Zaman, to light:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas‘s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel and promoted a film popular among Neo-Nazis that glorifies Adolf Hitler, the Washington Examiner found.

The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz’s gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman also spoke at a May 2020 event to call for peaceful protests with the governor during the riots in Minnesota sparked after George Floyd’s death. In April 2019, the cleric delivered an invocation before Walz’s state address — just months after Zaman called for an end to a government shutdown at a press conference with Walz in January 2019.

Zaman, moreover, attended a May 2019 event that Walz hosted for Ramadan, social media posts show.

 

 

For the first time ever, we will have chaplains of 3 different faiths deliver the invocation at #MNSOTS tomorrow. I am humbled to welcome Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman, Imam Asad Zaman, and Bishop Patricia Lull – three faith leaders who truly understand the meaning of #OneMinnesota.

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) April 2, 2019

More from the Washington Examiner about the worldview of Walz’s friend, the cleric Zaman (emphasis added):

Zaman, who is from Bangladesh, said on Oct. 7 of last year that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.” That day, which saw 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, he also shared an image of a Palestinian flag on Facebook in response to a post by Yusuf Abdi Abdulle, director of the Islamic Association of North America, declaring that “Palestine has the right to defend itself.” The Biden-Harris administration, Abdulle wrote in the post, was “on the wrong side of history” in “supporting the extremist Zionist regime and its illegal settlements.” 

Asad Zaman’s loyalty to “Palestinians” should be translated as “loyalty to Hamas,” since he once shared a Hamas press release. The occasion? The 2016 hanging of Motiur Rahman Nizami, a Bangladeshi Islamic leader, after he was convicted of genocide, rape and torture.

One of Asad Zaman’s favorite things, of course, is Hitler. Zaman even shared a link to the website of the pro-Hitler film, The Greatest Story Never Told.

Here is a text from the website of this 6-hour documentary on Hitler:

Since the mid-20th century, the world has only ever heard one side of an incredible story. The story of a boy from an ordinary family whose ambition it was to become an artist, but who instead became a drifter.

His destiny however was not to drift into the awaiting oblivion, but to rise to the greatest heights of power, eventually to become one of the most influential men who ever lived.

Now for the first time, here is a documented account of a story many believe to be…

The Greatest Story NEVER Told!

Learn the untold story about the most reviled man in history. Adolf Hitler, The Greatest Story Never Told is a 6-hour Documentary by TruthWillOut Films.

This ground-breaking documentary chronicles the rise of Germany from defeat in World War I, to communist attempts to take over Germany; hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic, widespread unemployment and misery, and Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

It also reveals a personal side of Adolf Hitler: who he was, his family background, his artwork and struggles in Vienna and what motivated him to come to power.

There’s so much hidden history to recount; FDR Pearl Harbor conspiracy, Soviet brutality, betrayal and treachery on all sides. Do we really know the true cost of war? Do we really possess all the facts?

Watch this series and uncover the real root causes of World War II. Do your own research and decide what you choose to believe. Think differently.

The Washington Examiner explains that the 2013 movie is popular among antisemites, citing an Anti-Defamation League spokesperson. “Imam Zaman has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel.

“He also has justified violence against Israel, including from terror groups. Given his hurtful remarks post-Oct. 7, and absent any recognition of the pain he has caused the Jewish community, we urge all public officials and leaders to avoid meeting with him in the future. Those who have met with Imam Zaman should clarify that they don’t agree with his toxic views about Jews and the Jewish state.”

After a terror attack, it is always meaningful to see who rushes to support the Jewish State; and all the more so after the slaughter of October 7. On that black day, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) was quick to offer sympathy and support to Israel and the Israeli people. At the other end of the scale was Asad Zaman, who asked Porter if she were willing to “reaffirm the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.”

@RepKatiePorter. Do you also condemn Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians and children? Do you also stand with the Palestinian people? Do you also reaffirm the right of Palestinians to defend themselves?

— Imam Asad Zaman (@ImamAsadZaman) October 8, 2023

Beyond Porter, there is Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin, who wrote on social media that he was “beyond heartbroken” to hear about Israeli acquaintances “brutally killed or kidnapped” on Oct. 7. Of course, Zaman was there to respond with the threat that his group would be shunned by the Muslim community, that it “cannot be joined at the hip to apartheid Israel and still hope to court the Muslim vote.”

Ken. Did you visit Gaza? Did you visit any Palestinians living under apartheid in the West Bank?

The DFL cannot be joined at the hip to apartheid Israel and still hope to court the Muslim vote.

When can we see a similar expression of grief over Palestinian children suffering?

— Imam Asad Zaman (@ImamAsadZaman) October 10, 2023

The Zaman way is to twist the truth, equating Hamas terror to Israel defending itself. Because this is how they roll at the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot known as the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. On October 7, MAS Minnesota issued a statement that it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.” We don’t wonder that MAS Minnesota expresses its support for Hamas, a fellow branch of the Muslim Brotherhood; but why has the Walz administration forked over more than $100,000 in funding to MAS Minnesota?

Sam Westrop, a terrorism researcher and analyst at the Middle East Forum think tank, told the Washington Examiner that Walz’s ties with Zaman suggests that the Harris-Walz cabinet will be filled with anti-Israel extremists.

“It is astounding that with all the available public reporting and information about the iniquities of Imam Asad Zaman and MAS Minnesota that Gov. Walz has repeatedly given public platforms and taxpayer money to this extremist,” said Westrop.

“Across the country, Islamists hungry for government support will surely welcome Walz as vice president.”

Note that the Muslim American Society has been described by federal prosecutors as being “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” In the United Arab Emirates, the Muslim Brotherhood was designated as a terrorist group in 2014. There was a brouhaha in 2019 when a video surfaced online of children at an event held by MAS Philadelphia calling to murder Jews.

“We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque,” recite two young girls, reading from a prepared text.

 How does Tim Walz describe his pal, the pro-Hitler movie fan Asad Zaman? Walz calls Zaman a “master teacher” who offers Walz lessons whenever they spend time together.

“I would like to first of all say thank you to imam,” Walz said at the MAS Minnesota 2018 event, standing next to now Lieutenant Governor of the Gopher State, Peggy Flanagan:

“I am a teacher, so when I see a master teacher, I know it. Over the time we’ve spent together, one of the things I’ve had the privilege of is seeing the things in life through the eye of a master teacher, to try and get the understanding. It was imam talking [saying that] ‘in those times is where we find who we are, in those times is where we really see.’

“That brings me to the second lesson that imam taught me,” said Walz, going on to accuse Congress of feeding on “fear more than hope” and “division.”

EXCLUSIVE: Tim Walz—in footage unearthed by @dcexaminer—called Hitler-promoting imam Asad Zaman a “master teacher” who offered Walz lessons over the time they “spent together"

The footage further contradicts the Harris campaign’s claim Walz has no personal relationship w/ Zaman pic.twitter.com/F1lKcJyzI1

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) August 13, 2024

Ben Shapiro spoke with Gabe Kaminsky after his exposé of Walz’s friendship with Zaman. During the interview, Kaminsky said that MAS Minnesota had been deemed a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot as far back as 2008, in a terrorism financing case.

“But this individual, Asad Zaman, has a controversial history on social media, on his Facebook page. He has, in one case, promoted a pro-Hitler movie, a movie that glorifies Adolf Hitler. On Oct. 7, when 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered in the Jewish state, his immediate response was to say that Palestinians had a right to resist, a right to defend themselves. And this individual has promoted other conspiracy theories on his social media history.”

Fox News also asked for clarification from the Harris campaign regarding Walz’s links to the imam. The Harris-Walz campaign responded to Chicago-based correspondent Mike Tobin by lying, telling him that "Gov. Walz does not have a relationship with [Zaman],” though Walz has hosted Asad Zaman on numerous occasions.

For the first time ever, we will have chaplains of 3 different faiths deliver the invocation at #MNSOTS tomorrow. I am humbled to welcome Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman, Imam Asad Zaman, and Bishop Patricia Lull – three faith leaders who truly understand the meaning of #OneMinnesota.

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) April 2, 2019

The campaign also said that Walz "strongly condemns Hamas terrorism.”

Fox's Tobin expressed his concerns:

We start to see more appearances with Zaman and Gov. Walz in 2019, January, April and May. At one point, Zaman delivers an invocation to the state of the state address.

He appeared with Gov. Walz in May of 2020, calling for calm in the George Floyd riots, and again in 2023 following a string of vandalism at mosques.

Sam Westrop of The Middle East Forum says Gov. Walz has been willfully ignorant of Zaman’s radicalism because he relies on the Arab or Muslim voting bloc and cannot do anything that would make him appear Islamophobic.

Westrop said, “This is a serious problem. Under a Walz-Harris ticket, given Walz's ability to embrace really just the worst kind of radicals within the Muslim community, one can only imagine this will be replicated at the White House level. Walz clearly doesn't want to know about the extremists he embraces.”

Even the Dem-friendly CNN wants to know what’s up with Walz and the imam. They got the same response from the Harris campaign’s Lauren Hitt, who told CNN that Walz and Zaman do not have a “personal relationship.”

“The Governor and he do not have a personal relationship.”

Is Hitt getting around what is now known by all, by qualifying the nature of the Walz Zaman relationship? It’s not “personal.” Does Hitt mean they’re not gay, they’re only friends?

Hitt, still sticking to the script, blah-blah-blahed the same thing she’d said to everyone else who’d inquired. “Governor Walz strongly condemns Hamas terrorism,” said Hitt to CNN.

Zaman separately told CNN that he does not have a “personal relationship” with Walz. Pressed by CNN about his antisemitic social media posts, he said that sometimes he shares links “without fully looking at them.” 

“People, myself included, will sometimes pass along social media items without fully looking at them. I support organizations, leaders and efforts to bring greater justice, equality and wellbeing to all people whether Muslim or Jewish, Christian or Hindu, believer or atheist. Desiring harm to people is against my faith and my personal convictions,” said the imam to CNN.

Asad Zaman isn’t the only terrorist with whom Tim Walz has fraternized. There’s also Hatem Bazian, an antisemitic academic. Bazian has been an ever-abundant and dependable source of antisemitic propaganda in the wake of October 7. Naturally, this is someone Walz wants to cultivate. In fact, Walz cozied up to Bazian the Jew-hater for a photo opp in 2019, at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) event. The views of CAIR and Bazain were transparent even then. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Washington Free Beacon (@washingtonfreebeacon)

CAIR, much like MAS, was labeled by federal prosecutors an unindicted co-conspirator of Hamas in a terror finance case from 2008. In 2017, Bazian was compelled to apologize for posting an antisemitic meme depicting a Jewish man with the caption, "Mom look! I is chosen! I can now kill, rape, smuggle organs & steal the land of Palestinians Yay #Ashke-Nazi."

Walz posed for photos with this man, Hatem Bazian. What does this say about Walz? By now we know. He likes hanging out with known antisemites. And giving them money.

Meanwhile, you won’t get any kind of admission from the Harris campaign about the vice presidential candidate and his close associations with terrorists. When questioned, all they do is lie. Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition was blunt not only about Walz’s relationship with Asad Zaman, but how the Harris campaign responds when confronted with the evidence:

It is an outrage to the American Jewish community that Tim Walz would champion Hitler-promoting cleric Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. On Oct. 7, 2023, as Israel was suffering the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mr. Zaman disgustingly asserted that he ‘stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.’ Appallingly, under Tim Walz, Minnesota has awarded over $100,000 in funding to Zaman’s Israel-hating organization.”

At a time of spiking antisemitism here at home and as Israel faces an existential war for survival, it is essential for the American Jewish community to have confidence in our leaders—and it is clear that we cannot trust Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Their priorities are not our priorities, and the American people will reject their radicalism and extremism in November.

Does anyone else get weird, creepy vibes from Tampon Tim? pic.twitter.com/nFrtacDtoc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 13, 2024

Beyond the stolen valor issue and more, the American public has begun to notice Tampon Tim's affinity for terrorists. Florida Senator Rick Scott spoke out about Walz hosting a Hamas-affiliated terrorist who celebrated October 7 on some five occasions, saying that Harris/Walz is the “pro Hamas ticket.”

As Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz — on at least 5 occasions — hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Harris/Walz is the pro-Hamas ticket. https://t.co/1uL3ElxU54

— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) August 9, 2024

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) meanwhile questioned the response of the Harris team: “Why did Tim Walz lie about his obviously friendly relationship with a Minnesota Muslim cleric who promoted Hamas and Hitler?

“Weird—and disqualifying.”

Why did Tim Walz lie about his obviously friendly relationship with a Minnesota Muslim cleric who promoted Hamas & Hitler?

Weird — and disqualifying. https://t.co/5V2CThKazR

— Anthony P. D'Esposito (@ANTHONYDESPO) August 13, 2024

Many are the accusers who call Donald Trump “Orange Hitler” with no proof. There’s just a call that goes out to the echo chamber, and the media and its audiences, fall in. Meantime, in Walz we have a potential VP who has the very bad habit of legit hanging out with genuine Hitler fans. Donald Trump told Elon Musk that any Jew who votes for Harris should have his head examined; and in truth, an examination of the facts about Walz and his Muslim cronies can lead to only one conclusion: Walz is a terrorist sympathizer.

If you vote for Harris, you’re voting for Walz.

And if you vote for Walz, you’re voting for Jews to die. 

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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!

 

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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."

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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!

 

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The Rafah Refugees: Why Won’t Egypt Let Them in? (Judean Rose)

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

Photos of Rafah refugees fleeing however they might—by car, on foot, by bundle-laden donkey-driven carts—were everywhere yesterday, the unseasonable rain adding a poignant touch of pathos to their plight. The parents looked grim for the photos, while the children seemed cheerful enough, with smiles on their faces. They were leaving Rafah. It was an adventure.

The much-anticipated IDF operation in Rafah had already begun if you count the evacuation of some 100,000 Rafah civilians to a new humanitarian zone created just for them. For the refugees, it would be no picnic, obviously, but there would be “field hospitals, tents, and increased provisions of food, water, medicine, and other supplies,” said the Jerusalem Post.

Some of the refugees attempted to cross into Egypt, to no avail. They were turned away by the Egyptian military, who had beefed up their presence and level of preparedness along the 12-kilometer border between Gaza and Egypt.

You read that right: Egypt shares a border with Gaza. If you look at a map, you will see it is true.

(Red line: border fence between Rafah and Israel. Brown line: border line between Rafah and Egypt.)

But Egypt will not provide a haven for the desperate-to-leave Gazan civilians. Not unless they pay a fee of anywhere from $5,000-$12,000 a head.

Most refugees don’t have that kind of money.

A touching Ynet piece, 'We hate Hamas like we hate Israel': the Palestinians who managed to flee Gaza, shares the stories of various Gazans forced to relocate—in some cases, more than once—as a result of the war Hamas started on October 7:

The procedure of leaving Gaza went on for days. In the first stage, Dr. Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who lived near the upscale Al Rimal neighborhood, was forced to move with his wife Rosanne and his children to Khan Younis where he found shelter at a relative’s apartment. Two weeks later, IDF forces told the area’s residents to move to Rafah where the man, who until recently was head of the department of political science at Al-Azhar University, huddled with his family in a tent in appalling conditions.

Only then did they receive word and the family reported at the border crossing. They waited in line. Someone had made sure to pay $8,000 per person. Only then were they granted a permit to cross into Egypt. “It was a nightmare,” he says in an interview from his new home in Cairo. “We didn’t know until the last minute whether we’d be able to get out of there.”

Despite the upheaval, Dr. Abu Saada is considered one of the lucky ones. Since the start of the war, very few Gazans have managed to leave the bombed and burning Strip. Some only passed via Egypt en route to Europe or Arab countries that had agreed to take them in. Others have settled in Egypt. The transition cost a great deal – amounts of money most Gazans could only dream of . . .

 . . . Since November, when the Rafah crossing opened for around-the-clock activity, 600 Palestinians holding dual nationality have managed to leave the Gaza Strip. Then came the privileged, like Abu Saada, whose people paid for their departure. At the moment, it’s the rich who can get out. At first, they paid $8,000 per person. The price then dropped to $,5000 and it’s now risen to $10,000 (children paying $2500). The permit arrives at night and is only stamped the following day. If you miss that window of opportunity, you have to start the process all over – with increments of thousands of dollars per person. Only a few dozen people have so far managed to get out in this way. . .

 . . . Like Abu Saada, M., along with five family members, managed to make it to Cairo. “We were lucky,” she says, “we only paid $5,000 per adult and $2,000 per child. The price is now twice that.” She doesn’t want to disclose her complete name, and definitely not to an Israeli newspaper. “Yes, I’m in Egypt in a safe place, but I have first- and second-degree relatives in Gaza and I need to think of them.”

The Rafah civilians should be safe in the humanitarian zone created for them by Israel—unless Hamas finds a way to use them as human shields. But the homes they left may very well be reduced to dust. Hamas is behind that—behind all of the death and destruction. The rapists have wormed their way through Gaza every which way: from belowground in tunnels, and from aboveground, too, embedding itself in apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals.

Hamas makes extensive use of human shields, putting civilians in harm's way to shield itself. It’s a very effective tactic from the terrorists’ perspective. Hamas hides behind the civilians, and the IDF holds its fire. In this cruel manner, civilians provide the perfect protection for Israel's real nemesis: the Hamas rapist cowards.

When, however, Gaza civilians do get caught in the crossfire and subsequently die, it's a win-win proposition for Hamas. There’s nothing quite like photos of dead Gazans to demonize Israel and further Hamas aims. The photos are framed in such a way as to take the onus off the true culprit, Hamas, for  the Gazan death and destruction, while shifting the blame onto Israel. 

The AP and Reuters, of course, just lap this stuff up. It’s what their audiences crave most: Israel as murderer without mercy, the Gazans as poor innocent lambs. That’s the media narrative and they're sticking to it. And it is this narrative that continues to empower and embolden Hamas, who holds not only Israelis hostage, but the people of Gaza, too.

One might have thought, if one were inclined to think, that among the 22 Arab nations, there’d be one or two that might take pity on the people of Gaza, and absorb and resettle at least some of them, and on their own dime. They share a common language along with the same culture and religion as the fleeing refugees. Yet, not one of these 22 Arab countries will let them in. That’s a lot of places that might extend a charitable hand to the Gaza refugees, but fail to do so.

Of course, one cold-hearted country stands out from among the rest in regard to its lack of concern over the plight of its Gazan brethren, and that country is Egypt. Egypt shares a border with Gaza. And all Egypt has to do is open its gates and heart to its Arab brothers and sisters—the ones who will die if it doesn’t.

But it won’t.

There are many reasons why Egypt won’t take in its kin—won’t take in its own. But we won’t go into that here. Instead we will talk about the shame of it. How shameful it is that Egypt won’t take in its own people.

Confronted with this truth, those plugging the anti-Israel narrative have a rote response at the ready, "What does Egypt have to do with any of this—this Hamas war with Israel?"

Actually, quite a lot. Beginning with the fact that many if not most Gazans are of Egyptian heritage.

"Masri” is slang for "Egyptian" and according to “Palestinian Tribes, Clans, and Notable Families,” a prominent surname in Gaza:

Notable Families

The third clan-like grouping in Palestine in the urban elite notable family, a social formation typical throughout the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the most well known and prominent Palestinian families come from this notabsle, or a’yan, social class: Husayni, Nashashibi, Dajani, Abd al-Hadi, Tuqan, Nabulsi, Khoury, Tamimi, Khatib, Ja’bari, Masri, Kan’an, Shaq’a, Barghouthi, Shawwa, Rayyes, and others. These are extended families that dominated Palestinian politics until the 1980s, and are still relatively prominent today.

The preponderance in Gaza of the surname “Masri” (also “al-Masri” and other variations), betrays the Egyptian origins of a large number of Gazans. They’re the same people of the same stock; they’re Egyptians. But Egypt shares more than blood ties with Gaza. Egypt shares a border with Gaza, something the stupid don’t know when they talk about Gaza being an “open-air prison”

There are TWO ways in and out of Gaza, two shared borders. One with Israel and one with, Egypt, from whence the people of Gaza come. The Egyptians are their family, their kin.

But kids these days. These ignorant protesting dummies on college campuses, so drunk with genocide cool aid, that they haven’t even looked at a map. How could we expect them to do a bit of digging, apply some critical thought to the idea that they're fighting for—to look at the clues contained in the surnames of the people they claim are subject to Israeli genocide? It's their own family who won’t let them in!

Smart people know better than these campus idiots because they bother to look at a map, and investigate the facts. They see how shameful this is, how Egypt, only steps away from Rafah, should be ashamed of itself. That’s what intelligent people know to think when they see photos in the media of the sad and grim refugees set to wandering yet again. 

It’s what we should all be thinking and asking out loud: Why won’t Egypt give refuge to its brethren? Why won’t it save its own people? Why has Egypt trapped the people of Gaza in an open-air prison even now, when it counts most, when the homes and lives of the Gazan people of Rafah, lie in the balance?

History will not be kind to Egypt for its despicable behavior toward the people of Rafah. All will be noted and recorded, a new black mark on the reputation of Egypt, the country that once oppressed the Jews and now oppresses its own.

It's a shameful thing, a shonda. 

For shame, Egypt. 

For shame.

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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!

 

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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.

Earlier: Part I: Varda wakes up, and begins to feel truly ill, and Part II: The medics arrive.

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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!

 

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