Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: hamas

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Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Biden Giveth and Biden Taketh Away (Judean Rose)

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

The United States has approved a whopping $14 billion military aid package for Israel and has also sent troops and aircraft carriers to the region. But the hand that giveth, also taketh away. A month before the savage Hamas attack of October 7, widely believed to be financed by Iran, Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. Now Biden has approved a sanctions waiver that will put $10b into Iran’s coffers. This leads to the question: If Biden frees up $16b for Iran, and gives Israel $14b, don’t these gifts kind of cancel each other out—or worse?

Biden freed up money for Iran in September, and in October we had Iranian proxy attacks in Israel. Now Biden gives aid to Israel to defend itself from the Iranian proxy, but frees up more money for Iran. The president gets away with this by swearing that the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes.

The president said the same thing about his aid to Gaza. It’s only for humanitarian aid. Neither of these assurances are worth a damn. Hamas literally runs humanitarian aid in Gaza. The money goes straight to Hamas. The unfrozen funds for Iran, will similarly not go to fund humanitarian aid, but will go straight to the terror machine.

It’s true that the Biden administration put a “pause” on unfreezing the original $6b ransom payment to Iran due to Republican criticism. But with this $10b coming in, as Hillary might say, What difference does it make? Iran is still getting way more than it was slated to receive in the first place, thanks to the generous hand of Joe Biden. The question is why? Why is Biden freeing up ever larger amounts of cash for Iran?

Speaking to the Washington Free Beacon, Richard Goldberg, a sanctions expert who previously served on the White House National Security Council, said, "The world is living in a post-Oct. 7 world, but the White House is still running an Oct. 6 policy toward Iran. Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran's hands."

It would make sense to freeze the funds only if protecting the Jews was chief among your aims. This lack of desire to secure the safety Israeli Jews was also evidenced by Biden agreeing to send weapons to protect Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, only so long as no guns went to the people who need them, Israeli civilians:

The guns are critical to Israel’s defense as it faces down the most significant threat in decades. With the military engaged in an assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Jewish civilians in dangerous areas like the West Bank are being trained and equipped to defend themselves against potential attacks.

On an emotional level, it feels as though Biden doesn’t want me, a dual Israeli American citizen, to have protection. He is not on my side. On the other hand, he does seem to like the terror-sponsoring, nuclear bomb-producing mullahs.

How do we know? He keeps giving them money in creative ways, such as lifting sanctions on Iranian revenues or putting stipulations on how the money is to be spent so as to forestall criticism. Biden knows that Iran doesn’t play by the rules, especially where money is concerned, and yet he frees up their funds even directly after they slaughter us.

Then, there is Biden’s insistence that Israel allow for “humanitarian pauses” which of course, allow Hamas to rearm and retrench, increasing the danger to Israel and to Israeli soldiers. Like a lot of Israeli Americans, my sons serve in the IDF. They are also American citizens and Biden is endangering them with these pauses. How is this at all humanitarian? Biden allows the “innocent people of Gaza” who voted for and overwhelmingly support Hamas, have time to flee, at the same time as he puts MY children in harm’s way? Biden giveth and he taketh away. And somehow it’s always the Jews who lose out.

So, we have billions of American aid flowing to Israel, but also to Iran. And we also have billions of American aid flowing to Hamas in Gaza. The $106 billion national security aid package that Biden presented to Congress in October includes $9b for humanitarian aid, and while some of that may go to Ukraine or Israel, the White House acknowledges that it’s largely for Gaza, and that means it will inevitably end up in Hamas’ hot little hands.

Sending aid to Gaza is, by the way, illegal, according to Prof. Avi Bell:

Any country providing aid to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip indirectly supports Hamas, thereby breaking United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, explained Prof. Avi Bell of Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law.

He said the resolution, which was adopted by the UN Security Council in 2001 and is therefore legally binding, includes several duties states have to fight terrorist organizations, one of which is to not provide any form of support – active or passive, direct or indirect.

"As long as we have a degree of certainty that some of the aid [entering from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah crossing] is being diverted to Hamas – and we do have that certainty – then all the states of the world must refrain from providing this indirect support to Hamas," Bell said.

We are, of course, certain that humanitarian aid is being diverted to Hamas. The IDF provided 300 liters of fuel to Shifa hospital and Hamas took it. Just swooped down and seized it to “fuel” its terror machine. Well, actually Hamas didn’t just swoop down and seize that fuel. First the Hamas terrorists blocked the hospital from receiving the fuel, and then the Hamas terrorists seized the fuel for their own “use.”

It is, by the way, also illegal for Israel to be giving aid to Gaza, knowing it goes to Hamas, and that’s been happening ever since there was a Hamas. But this is a different story. Israel is pressured by corrupt leaders like Joe Biden—Israel is fighting for its life and cannot say no to Biden’s demands. Also, Israel is held to a different moral standard. Because Jews.

Take what happened with Shifa Hospital. The White House let Israel know, in no uncertain terms that it did not want to see fighting there (emphasis added):

“The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire. And we’ve had active consultations with the Israel Defense Forces on this,” [said US National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan.

We know what happened with that one, don’t we?

The White House on Tuesday said it had its own intelligence that Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital Al Shifa to run its military operations, and probably to store weapons, saying those actions constituted a war crime.

"We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control mode" and probably to store weapons, national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One. "That is a war crime."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

That was Shifa Hospital. But we also know what happened at Rantisi Hospital.

Today, in response to bitter criticism of Biden by an American Israeli, I heard my Israeli-born neighbor gently chide him, saying “We have to say thank you to America.”

But do we? Really?

Biden gives Israel money, but he gives it to Iran as well. He gives aid to Israel, but also to Gaza, ergo Hamas. Should we say thank you to America for giving aid and succor to those who perpetrated the single worst massacre on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and who, even now, have Jews in their sights?

The October 7 Massacre was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and the deadliest terror attack in world history after 9/11.

Hamas declared war on Israel.
And Israel will win this war.

My interview with @mattfrei on @Channel4News. pic.twitter.com/jR0wIesEW6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 15, 2023

What in the name of God is happening here, and why aren’t the people in the rallies demanding accountability?

With one hand, the president of the United States facilitates Iranian and Hamas terror, while simultaneously tying Israel’s hands with the other. The Jews are expendable, he reasons. Give Iran a little nip to take the edge off. And it won’t hurt his creds with Rashida, et al.

But it all has to have a veneer of respectful support for and generosity toward Israel, to appease the other side, as well. It’s a balancing act, but Joe’s been doing this for half his life. He’s a career politician. A hack. The emperor in new clothes.

It’s all a political balancing act: Biden giveth and Biden taketh away. He’ll give us guns, but we can’t use them. He gives money to Iran to take Jewish lives.

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

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Read all about it here!

Who Paid for the Simchat Torah Massacre? (Judean Rose)

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

On or around September 7, President Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. One month later, there was a massacre in Israel, sponsored by Iran. No less than a Hamas spokesman affirmed that Iran lent its assistance to Hamas as its proxy to murder Jews.

Was Biden’s generosity to Iran in September responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas in October? While White House officials say that none of the $6b went to Hamas, they have yet to relate to accusations that Biden’s munificence served as a green light to Iran to do what it always says it will do: murder Jews.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking from Tel Aviv, pretended that money was not fungible. The money, he said, had been sent from South Korea to a Qatari bank, and Iran hadn’t even had a chance to touch it, yet. “None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” said Blinken to Netanyahu during his diplomatic blitz of the Middle East in the wake of the atrocities.

Yes, dummy. We know that. But when there’s money in your future, you can take money from elsewhere to fund what you like. Iran likes to kill Jews. Tony Blinken knows this, because in reality, Blinken is no dummy. He is, however, a Biden hack.

Look (as Biden likes to say), it’s called “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” While Iran could not give the $6b straight into the hands of Hamas, there’s always a workaround. It’s called creative accounting. You take money away from a hospital or a school, whatever, and send it to Hamas. Wherever Iran took the money from, it used it to fund the massacre, secure in the knowledge that there would be $6b to cover the difference.

This really is not complicated, yet we can expect Blinken will continue to deliver the same unsatisfactory message each time he is called upon to answer for the October 7th war crimes. These were acts of war against Israel, against America and others, with various nationals among the hostages. What is now happening was brought to us by Iran, directly after they received a windfall from Joe.

Yes, we know the $6b is not a gift. We know that the money technically belongs to Iran. This is, however, an irrelevant factoid. Funds have been freed, released to madmen. Whether the money is a gift or just a case of restoring it to its rightful owner “in good faith,” matters not. The end result is the same: money in the pocket to buy weapons and pay savages to kill Jews.

One could write off the $6b as a miscalculation, a mistake by the Biden Administration. But not really. Joe Biden has been around a long time (cough). He has an equally lengthy history of browbeating and bullying Israel’s leaders, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the relevant actors in the region. President Biden knows that Iran and Hamas are evil. And he knows that Israel is not.

Israel is Joe Biden’s sacrificial lamb. Perhaps Biden reasons that everyone would like the Jews to be gone. Whatever his excuse, it is Joe Biden who strengthened the hand that fed us tragedy, in his final coup de grâce to the Jews.

We may never know all the ways in which Biden tied Israel’s hands to keep the Jewish State from defending itself. We don’t know what went on between Biden and Netanyahu behind the scenes. Rest assured, however, that Joe is using everything at his disposal to stall Israel as long as he can, from launching its inevitable ground incursion into Gaza. In so doing, Biden continues to strengthen the hand of the enemy. Each day that passes without the ground incursion gives the enemies of Israel that much more time to prepare, more time to get ready to slaughter the Jews (they will be sorry they tried).

We can see some of what Biden is doing against Israel, for example, forcing Israel to allow aid to go through to the “innocent people of Gaza,” unimpeded. Joe Biden himself is providing $100m to Gaza for humanitarian aid.

What does it mean to give $100m to “Gaza?” It means to give $100m to Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. The humanitarian aid, as well, is the opposite of that. Sure, the hundred mil is ostensibly to be used only for things like water, food, and electricity, but that will never happen. Thanks to yet more “creative accounting,” the money will not go to civilians. The $100m is right now literally funding Hamas, funding murder and inciting the world to war—whether we can see the actual transactions, or not.

Here too, a Biden hack offers an irrelevant response to criticism of Biden for sending aid and comfort to the enemy. This time it is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman who pretends that money is not fungible. "Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine," says Miller.

Habibi, you are not fooling us. The hundred mil can only go to Hamas, the government of Gaza. And even if this filthy lucre is channeled through UNRWA, it will still go to Hamas. One way or another, wherever it lands in Gaza, that $100m will be lining the pockets of Hamas’ worst, the dutiful proxies of Iran.

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!

Latest memes

Cartoons will be in a separate post.

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

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CAIR is a terrorist supporting group right here in America - and it never condemned Hamas

I just received a press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations declaring that they consider Israel's attacks on Hamas to be "genocide."

It is disgusting. CAIR fully accepts Hamas' lies about how many were killed.

Looking back, their press releases since the massacre on October 7 have been truly disgusting. The very first one, drafted when the first news of a huge attack on Israeli civilians were being published, was a blatant attempt to change the subject and imply that no matter what happened to the Jews, it is their own fault.

It was an obvious attempt to exonerate Hamas and blame Jews for being massacred.

The following Monday, their first statement was more of the same, "CAIR Urges Congress to Address Root Cause of Mideast Violence - Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Lands." They reluctantly said that anyone calling up their representatives should first "acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians" before urging Congress to do exactly what Hamas wants it to do: handcuff Israel.

CAIR never condemned Hamas. Not once - not even when Hamas was blowing up buses and pizza shops in the second intifada.

This is even though the only genocide in the Middle East was Hamas' attempt to murder every Jewish man, woman, senior citizen an child it could find.

This is even though CAIR claims that it always condemns terrorism, no matter who the guilty party is.

It never condemned the rapes or murders or kidnappings. It never called on Hamas to release the hostages.

This last part is interesting because CAIR has called for the release of other hostages, even those held by Muslims in Iraq and by the Taliban.

Apparently, CAIR condones the attacks on Israelis. There is no other explanation.

Moreover, CAIR condemned Israel for the Islamic Jihad rocket that fell in the parking lot of a hospital. There has been no correction even as every major government and independent researchers all agree that Israel had nothing to do with it.

Remember, CAIR was consulted on the US strategy to fight antisemitism.

But its website makes it quite clear: CAIR implicitly supports Hamas and everything it does.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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A brief history of Gaza aid being stolen by Hamas

In 2018, Middle East Online reported:

Hamas is accused of deepening the crisis of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, after the criticism it has been exposed to regarding the seizure of international grant funds and aid from more than one party.
Hamas, as it controls the Gaza Strip, receives millions of dollars in support from countries and international organizations to build hospitals, schools, and roads for more than two million Palestinians stuck in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the harsh measures and siege imposed by Israel on Gaza under the pretext of preventing Hamas from arming, which further complicates the lives of Palestinians, the movement spends a lot of money to purchase and develop weapons and equip its military arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas is accused by the Palestinian National Authority of practicing a policy of blackmail by seizing international support, as the Palestinian government said in 2018 that Hamas “steals the money of the Palestinian people and seizes all of the sector’s revenues, refuses to transfer them to the public treasury, and imposes fees and taxes on citizens for its treasury.”

It is one of the great untold stories of Gaza: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid has been diverted by Hamas into its own terror operations.

Here are some examples:

In 2009, dozens of Hamas militants attacked a charity, Cooperative Housing Foundation International (CHF), arrested its workers, and confiscated aid meant for needy families.

In February 2009, UNRWA accused Hamas of stealing over 3,500 blankets and 406 food parcels meant for UNRWA "refugees." Days later, UNRWA said Hamas stole 200 tons of wheat and 100 tons of rice.

In 2010, French aid group Help Doctors accused Hamas on Wednesday of seizing computer equipment, telephones, chairs, office equipment and medical files.

Also in 2010, Hamas was accused of stealing medicine and medical equipment provided by the PA and putting them for sale in Hamas-owned pharmacies. People talked about seeing medicine clearly labeled "in support of the Palestinian people" or "donated by Charity X."

In 2014, Hamas was again accused of stealing medicine meant to be given for free to Palestinians.

In 2019, poor Gazans accused Hamas of stealing meat sent by Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and reselling it on the black market, along with medicines and other aid.

Meanwhile, Gaza stores could be seen selling UNRWA-marked food packages, saying in English "not for sale."

We don't know if Hamas stole than and then sold them to stores, but clearly aid to Gaza was not reaching its intended recipients.

With this history, why would anyone believe that current aid to Gaza will not be diverted to Hamas first? That's what they do. (And so does the Palestinian Authority.)

So as terrible as this sounds, aid should not be sent if Hamas is the primary beneficiary. All the controls in the world cannot stop that theft from happening, and Hamas threats keep the witnesses mostly silent.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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How do we know Amnesty International is antisemitic?

I once listed 15 separate reasons, examples of egregious Amnesty bias and lies about Israel. And I could have listed dozens more.

Here's yet another.

Amnesty released a report on the early part of Israel's bombing campaign against Hamas.

The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.

“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Agnès Callamard.

“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

These three paragraphs show that culminate in the "apartheid" libel which has nothing to do with Gaza proves that Amnesty's aim is dismantling Israel, not justice for Gazans.

If Amnesty does not know the targets of the attack, then it cannot call the attacks unlawful. In the past I've documented scores of cases where Amnesty claims that only civilians were killed and weeks later terror groups published the names of their members killed in the same attacks.

The fact is that Amnesty is clueless as to what the real targets were. If the targets were senior Hamas members, then no warnings could or should have been given.

That is real international law, not the fabricated version Amnesty pretends exists.

Amnesty's methodology is to interview survivors who claim that there were no terrorists around,. Often these people are lying, and sometimes these people are themselves members of terror groups!

Moreover, when Amnesty publishes these reports, it doesn't even consider that a professional army would not shoot expensive precision weapons at civilians for no reason. No, Amnesty thinks it can read the IDF's minds, and knows that there was no possible reason for the attack. To Amnesty, the IDF - with multiple layers of checks and balances, lawyers reviewing every target and every airstrike, and approvals needed at all levels - is just randomly attacking civilians.

Amnesty's track record of investigating these types of events is beyond awful. It shows a pattern where Palestinians are believed without question without even Googling their names, and where Israeli denials are assumed to be lies.

Even worse, an Amnesty researcher has admitted that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie. But they haven't changed their methodology of believing their lies implicitly.

Beyond that, Amnesty never mentions that Gazans would be punished by Hamas if they were known to be saying anything Hamas doesn't like. That is a salient fact when they quote Gazans but Amnesty doesn't want anyone to know that.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is beyond sloppiness and beyond ignorance of how modern warfare works. That is antisemitism - assuming malicious intent from Jews and nothing but the truth from those with a long track record of lying to Amnesty.

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

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The most moral army in the world needs to fulfill the promise of Never Again (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

Ours is the most moral army in the world. The people of Israel like that. We want to be moral and good. We don’t like the idea of fighting or killing.

The IDF is the Israel Defense Force (not the Israel Attack Force) for good reason. We have no desire to attack anyone. The mission of our military is to defend the Nation of Israel – our State and our People. To protect our homeland so that Jewish people everywhere know that, in a world that is dangerous for Jews, there is one place on earth where Jews can defend themselves and are not left to the mercy of others.

The IDF is supposed to fulfill the promise of “Never Again”.

The problem is that the world, including many Jews, have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Lessons, sharp and clear (though different for Jews and non-Jews) have been diluted and universalized to the point of being meaningless.

The Hamas massacre of October 7^th, 2023 is a harsh reminder.

This isn’t a general issue. It’s a particular issue.
This is about me. My family. My friends. My home. And Never Again is NOW.

For Jews, the promise “Never Again” means that never again we put our safety in the hands of others, no matter how civilized they seem. Never Again will we wait for other people to rescue us. It is up to us to be powerful enough to defend ourselves.

For non-Jews, “Never Again” was supposed to be a promise to never again remain silent while Jews are being abused, tortured, and slaughtered. To not remain silent when they see evil occurring. To never again, turn away and pretend they don’t see what is happening – no matter how frightened they are of the people committing the atrocities.

Because there will always be someone eager to commit horrendous acts against Jews.

And what happened?

Jews built the State of Israel, powerful enough to defend herself from invading armies, prevent enemy states from building nuclear bombs, and even fly across the globe to rescue Jews, targeted for being Jewish. And then we allowed ourselves to be convinced to hand our security over to other people and let monsters live on our doorstep.

Over and over, we were attacked, innocent people brutally murdered, our country bombarded with missiles and the “civilized” nations of the world told us to stand down, that the “stronger side” can swallow abuse for peace. That the monsters on our doorstep were our chance to live in peace.

And we, because we want peace and hate war, because we want to live in a kind world, decided to believe them.

The problem is that this decision was immoral.

It is one thing to be proud of succeeding in eliminating murderous terrorists without hurting bystanders because that is more moral than carpet bombing. It is another thing to know that the people on your border want to wipe you off the face of the earth and allow them to have hope that one day they will succeed.

We knew the problem existed. We watched it grow. We suffered the results of it when it was still small. Worst of all, we listened when we were told “The world is condemning you. Don’t retaliate. Lick your wounds and pretend it never happened.” We wanted to be loved.

The Hamas Charter states that it will eliminate the Jewish State through jihad. On October 7^th, Hamas showed the world what that jihad looks like – they came with Go-Pro cameras and proudly filmed their actions for posterity.

Well-trained Hamas commando units broke through our borders under the cover of a missile bombardment. That opened the way for swarms of regular Gazans, eager to join in.

"Crimes against humanity" is too mild and technical a term to describe the atrocities they committed.

They slaughtered men, women, and children and chopped their heads off.
They entered homes, tortured the parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, gouging out eyes and chopping off fingers – all while eating the family’s food and laughing.
They gang-raped girls and then ripped their limbs off.
They ripped open a pregnant woman’s stomach and stabbed the baby.
They tied children together and burned them alive.
They did more and worse. It is not possible to detail all the horrors.

And then they stole money from the wallets of the people they murdered, looted their homes, taking everything from TVs to tractors, identity cards, and passports.

And then they took as many hostages as they could get their hands on - including babies and elderly people, entire families, and dead bodies.

They came with maps and details about homes, how many people in each family, whether there was a dog or not - all spelled out by individual Gazans who Israelis had employed for years, doing construction work and odd jobs in their communities.

They didn’t come as an army trying to conquer an enemy state, soldiers fighting against soldiers. They came as a tidal wave of death, to exterminate everything living in its path and before doing so - humiliate and create as much suffering as possible.

They know that we love life and hold it sacred. They know that we honor the dead, putting supreme importance on respectful burial. This is why they hurt us where it would be most painful.

They violated the sanctity of our homes, showing that Jews are not safe anywhere.

They violated our past, terrorizing Holocaust survivors and bringing the Holocaust into the present with fire and sending Jews into hiding where they had to hold their hands over the mouths of babies, praying that they wouldn’t make a sound so the monsters wouldn’t find them.

They committed mass rapes of women, grandmothers, and children as more than a by-product of vicious bloodlust – in the context of people who come from an “honor culture”, this is the deepest violation, the theft of our honor, a display of utter disgust and domination, “dirtying” our beloved, grinding them into the earth – and mocking our men who were not able to save them.

Dismembering bodies, scattering them, and burning people is not just a matter of gruesome cruelty. The terrorists were given deliberate instructions to commit these acts by people who understand how serious Jews are about respecting our dead and bringing them to a proper burial.

They know us well and they deliberately used everything we care about most to hurt us.

And after all this, around the world, we are seeing people marching in the streets, chanting their support for the Hamas Massacre. Jews are being marked in “civilized” countries. Homes marked with Stars of David, businesses smashed, and students humiliated and abused because they are Jews.

Never Again is NOW.

For years we have said that had Israel existed, the Holocaust would never have happened. Now it is time to make sure that is true. That is what the IDF is for.

The IDF must fulfill the promise of Never Again. This is not about revenge (though well warranted). This is about the survival of Jews everywhere.

It is necessary to crush Hamas so thoroughly and completely that all enemies of Israel will learn that there is no impunity and no safe haven for those who dream of our extermination.

And that, unfortunately, is just the beginning because they are just one of the monsters on our doorstep. We are surrounded (and some are within our borders) and they are watching us. Without utterly crushing them, Israel will not survive.

Without Israel, no Jew, anywhere on earth, will ever be safe again.

Fulfilling the promise of “Never Again” doesn’t look nice on TV. Already the “civilized” nations are telling us to wait, delay, and consider the humanitarian needs of Gazans. It is crucial to retain our morality and fulfill our obligations.

Being merciful to the cruel ultimately makes you cruel to the merciful.

Allowing our enemies to have hope that they can succeed in wiping us off the face of the earth is immoral. We allowed this evil to grow too large. It must be stopped now, no matter how bad the process looks, no matter what our “friends” say.

“Never Again” is the moral obligation of the IDF.

The obligation of decent individuals everywhere is to make sure everyone else knows this.

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!

Hamas Has A History of Threatening Those Who Report The Truth From Gaza (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

These days, along with the rush to condemn Israel in its war to eliminate the Hamas terrorist threat, there are instances of retractions and deletions of hasty anti-Israel posts. One of the more unusual and unexpected examples is Ilhan Omar backtracking on her accusation that Israel bombed a hospital:

While Omar has reacted to pressure, Tlaib is still at it.

Another example of backtracking comes from Secretary of State Blinken. It's not that Blinken condemned any particular action of Israel, but rather that he came out with a suggestion that was so insulting and ill-timed that he soon deleted it. Just one day after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, Blinken publicly recommended a cease-fire:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deleted a social media post Monday morning that expressed support for a "cease-fire" in Israel after Palestinian militants invaded the nation late last week.

The now-deleted post, which appeared on Blinken's X account late Sunday, described a conversation Blinken reportedly had with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

While the tweet was deleted, it did not go unnoticed -- and was saved for posterity:

Fernandez is a former US diplomat and vice-president of MEMRI.

Keep in mind that it is unlikely that Blinken would publicly suggest this and try to set the idea for a cease-fire in motion without Biden's approval. A friend suggested to me that this was a trial balloon, which was soon shot down.

But there is another example of deletion, one not intended to save face but intended instead to save the Hamas terrorists and save their own skin.

Here is the original tweet from UNRWA:

But it didn't take long for UNRWA to delete that post:

UNRWA then posted its "clarification":

Despite UNRWA's clarification, other sources confirmed the story:

There was a time when the UN openly confirmed that Hamas violated international law.

John Ging, Director of the Operational Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in 2014 admitted that Hamas was using both UN facilities and residential areas to fire rockets at Israel.

At the time, in 2014, there were a number of journalists who reported on Hamas using human shields. Maybe because Hamas was using them as the shields.

That Shifa hospital was -- and is -- exploited by Hamas as a headquarters as well:

Shifa has indeed “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices,” the Washington Post reported on July 15. The Wall Street Journal‘s Middle East correspondent, Nick Casey, wrote on Twitter that Hamas uses Shifa “as a safe place to see media,” but removed the post afterwards.

Some journalists even tweeted about it -- even if they did delete those tweets later.

Here is a journalist tweeting about 9 children killed by Hamas -- once he was safely out of Gaza.

Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati said he was able to speak freely about witnessing a Hamas misfire that killed nine children at the Shati camp, confirming the Israel Defense Forces version of events, but only after leaving Gaza, “far from Hamas retaliation.”

Why did Barbati wait until after he was out of Gaza?
The answer has implications for the reporting by the journalists who stay in Gaza.

In 2021, when Israel destroyed a 12-story building in Gaza used by Hamas military intelligence and AP denied knowing that it shared a building with the terrorist group, a former AP journalist refuted their claim:

As to whether AP was aware of Hamas involvement with the building, Matti Friedman wrote in his 2014 Atlantic piece: “When Hamas’ leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

Friedman claimed the Hamas militants would regularly “burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

UNRWA's deletion and subsequent "clarification" shows that the same fear exists. And the history of Hamas's massive violations of international law makes the indications of Hamas stealing humanitarian supplies from their own people very believable.

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The Innocent People of Gaza (Judean Rose)

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

We hear a lot about the “innocent” civilian of Gaza, and how the “vast majority” of them are peace-loving and do not support Hamas. But what is the basis for this pronouncement of mass Gazan innocence by world leaders, celebrities, and other talking heads? The facts and statistics say the opposite: there is overwhelming support for Hamas and “armed resistance” in Gaza. Which makes a lot of right-thinking Israelis wonder why our army takes such pains not to kill them.

If there are statistics that prove this population is innocent, why don’t they show them to us? Instead, they offer empty words, devoid of reality. “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza — innocent Palestinian families and the vast majority that have nothing to do with Hamas — they’re being used as human shields. We have to reject hate in every form,” said President Biden.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the same thing in not so many words. Speaking in Egypt about his trip to the region to discuss the war, Blinken said, “What I’ve heard from virtually every partner was a determination, a shared view that we have to do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t spread to other places; a shared view to safeguard innocent lives; a shared view to get assistance to Palestinians in Gaza who need it, and we’re working very much on that.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also rushed to defend the “innocent” civilians of Gaza. This time after an errant Islamic Jihad rocket took out a hospital in Gaza.

“I am horrified by the images of the explosion in a hospital in Gaza. Innocent civilians were injured and killed. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims.”

Ich bin entsetzt über die Bilder, die uns von der Explosion in einem Krankenhaus in Gaza erreichen. Unschuldige wurden verletzt und getötet. Unsere Gedanken sind bei den Angehörigen der Opfer.

Es ist wichtig, dass dieser Vorfall sehr genau aufgeklärt wird.
— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) October 18, 2023

Scholz, like the rest of the Israel-hating world, rushed to judgement: the judgment he preferred: Gazans=innocent, Israelis=guilty. Soon scads of evidence would prove him wrong. Including a recorded conversation between Hamas operatives clearly attributing the attack to Islamic Jihad.

The hospital explosion, of course, catalyzed the entire world to damn Israel for “killing hundreds of innocent civilians.” Which of course, was not true. But like Scholz, none of them were waiting for confirmation of what they wanted to believe about Israel to somehow excuse the atrocities, while Jewish bodies are still being processed.

In the Arab world, the state news agency for Kuwait not surprisingly, “strongly condemned and denounced the Israeli occupation forces' barbaric airstrike on the Baptist Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rushed to blame Israel. “Hitting a hospital containing women, children and innocent civilians is the latest example of Israel's attacks devoid of the most basic human values. I invite all humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in Gaza.”

İçerisinde kadınların, çocukların, masum sivillerin olduğu bir hastaneyi vurmak, İsrail’in en temel insani değerlerden yoksun saldırılarının son örneğidir.

Gazze’de yaşanan ve tarihte benzeri olmayan bu vahşeti durdurmak için tüm insanlığı harekete geçmeye davet ediyorum.
— Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RTErdogan) October 17, 2023

No less than a major in the IDF reserves, Nir Avishai Cohen, repeatedly called the Gazan people “innocent” in his emotional little leftist self-congratulatory op-ed in the New York Times.

For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote: “Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little time.

I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.

Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless. The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians.

As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people and to focus on destroying the militant army of Hamas.

There is a pattern here, of making a distinction between members of Hamas and the Gazan people. But it is also here critical to note something that people either don't know or don't like to talk about; the people of Gaza, in democratic elections, elected Hamas to rule them. From the Guardian:

Figures from Palestinian officials tonight confirmed Hamas's shock win in the Palestinian parliamentary election over the once-dominant Fatah party.

Polls had predicted a coalition between the two parties as the most likely outcome of the vote, but a surprise surge in support for the Islamists took a party that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel into power.

The preliminary count put Hamas on 76 seats to Fatah's 43 in the 132 seat chamber. The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. George Bush said the United States would not deal with a Hamas-led government unless the party recognised Israel's right to exist.

As the scale of the Fatah defeat became apparent, its officials conceded defeat and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and his cabinet submitted their resignations. "This is the choice of the people. It should be respected," Mr Qureia told reporters . . .

. . . Mr Bush said a party that advocated the destruction of Israel would never be partner for peace, but also hailed the result as an example of democracy in action.

"If there are people unhappy with the status quo they'll let you know. What was positive is that it is a wakeup call to the leadership," he told a White House press conference.

"People are demanding honest government ... people want services; they want to raise their children in a decent environment."

Everywhere you read about the 2006 Gaza election, you will see the word "democracy" in its various forms and usages. In 2008, Vanity Fair ran a piece about a US plot to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power with the help of Muhammad Dahlan, a Mahmoud Abbas rival:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

Senior Policy Fellow for the European Council on Foreign Relations Hugh Lovatt wrote about the democratic nature of the 2006 Gaza elections, in a piece called, Back to democracy: Europe, Hamas, and the Palestinian elections:

Palestinians may soon be heading to the polls for the first time in 15 years. For some, this will be their first taste of electoral politics and democratic participation. Yet it will not be Palestine’s first democratic experiment. Long before the advent of the Arab uprisings, Palestine held free and fair elections to choose a president and a parliament. In hindsight, these elections, held in 2005 and 2006 respectively, marked the high point of Palestinian democracy.

The European Union and the United States were initially strong advocates of Palestinian democracy, and were a driving force behind the last elections, urging the main political rivals – the Islamist Hamas and the secular Fatah – to engage constructively in the process. The EU and the US proved less comfortable when the democratic outcome went against their interests following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative election and the group’s refusal to endorse international demands such as recognising Israel. Subsequent efforts by the EU and the US to boycott and undermine the democratically elected government led by Hamas significantly damaged the Palestinian democratic and state-building project. This stoked Palestinian political tensions and helped provoke a short civil war in June 2007 that left Hamas in control of Gaza and President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, in control of the West Bank. These events reverberate to this day.

Many will try to convince you that the Gazan people were coerced into voting for Hamas. But they were not. The elections were democratic. They were pleased with their choice and showed it, by celebrating when their party won. Al Jazeera had the story:

Hamas wins huge majority
Hamas supporters streamed into the streets to celebrate.

In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, supporters shot in the air and handed out candy. Others honked horns and waved Hamas flags from car windows.

The elections were, demonstrably, and by all accounts, free and fair and democratic. So why would anyone call the “civilians” of Gaza “innocent?” All of them supported Hamas.

They still do. Following Operation Guardian of the Walls, in May of 2021, the people of Gaza were polled.

A new poll released Tuesday finds a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas following last month’s Gaza war, with around three quarters viewing the Islamic militants as victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.

The scientific poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research also found plummeting support for President Mahmoud Abbas, who was sidelined by the war but is seen internationally as a partner for reviving the long-defunct peace process.

The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,”

The poll found that 77% of Palestinians believe Hamas emerged as a winner, with nearly as many saying that it fought the war to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites, rather than as part of an internal struggle with Abbas’ Fatah party.

Note that while President Biden, in 2023, asserts that the “innocent people of Gaza” are somehow distinct from the party they elected, he knows they are not. In fact, after Hamas won the 2006 election, Joe Biden led a push to cut off US aid to Hamas for winning, and to the Palestinian Authority for losing:

After Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza, Joe Biden called for the U.S. to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.

When Hamas, which the U.S. government had designated a terrorist organization, won a resounding victory in Gaza, it sent shockwaves through Washington. Biden called the results “sobering” and declared, “Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a party that calls for its destruction.” Biden said President George W. Bush was “dead right” in his denunciation of the election results. Within days, Biden began suggesting that the U.S. and Europe should sanction Hamas and cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority. “The fact of the matter is, you cannot pour millions and hundreds of millions of dollars into a group that, in fact, calls for the destruction of an ally, or for any country, for that matter,” Biden said. As the Bush administration called on other nations to adopt this stance, Biden said, “Unless they change their stripes, unless they recognize Israel, unless they change their charter, I think we do exactly what the president says.”

In a Senate hearing a month after Hamas’s victory, Biden offered a twisted logic on the importance of elections. “Elections a democracy don’t make,” he said, pointing specifically to Hamas’s success at the ballot. “Democracies cannot come to fruition without elections, but you need the infrastructure for a democracy, and we’ve not done all that well in the elections being held.” By March, Biden had signed onto a bill that called on Bush to “direct the United States Executive Director at each international financial institution to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States to prohibit assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”

Joe Biden understood, though he pretended he did not, with his “twisted logic” that democratic elections are somehow not really democratic, because um, other things. Biden knows that the people of Gaza are not innocent. They voted for terror, death, and destruction. And they got it.

The innocence of the people of Gaza is in reality, a legend propagated and perpetuated by Hamas. Hamas does not distinguish between terrorists and “innocents.” Why should we? Why would the leaders of the world, including Joe Biden? From MEMRI:

The Hamas interior ministry website included the following text along with its instructional video: "The Information Department of the Ministry of the Interior and National Security has instructed activists on social media websites, particularly Facebook, to correct some of the commonly used terms as they cover the aggression taking place in the Gaza Strip. The following Information Department video calls on all activists to use the proper terminology, in order to play their part in strengthening the home front and in properly conveying information worldwide."
Hamas Social Media Rules: Describe Terrorists as Innocent Civilians
The interior ministry’s “Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign” centers around an instructional video and posters published on the ministry’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Gazans are taught, first and foremost, to refer to all terrorists as innocent civilians.

“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank,” the guidelines state. “Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”

Screenshot of Hamas Facebook post, telling Gazans to use the word "innocent" in referring to terrorists.

Bearing final mention here is the Ben Shapiro video on the number of radical Muslims in the world. To be a radical Muslim means, of course, to support and/or engage in terror. The “innocent civilians of Gaza” have proven that they number themselves among the “vast majority” who share their sentiments.

In spite of knowing all of this, President Biden took a moment to inform us that the “overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s [sic] appalling attacks.” Even when he knows damned well that no such thing is true.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s appalling attacks, and are suffering as a result of them.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 15, 2023

Joe Biden is well aware that the “innocent” people of Gaza are the ones who put the terrorists in charge, and he knows that they like it like that. Are their children innocent? Does it matter? The parents of the children of Gaza sacrificed them before they were born, on the altar of their Jew-hatred. Had these children lived, they would have been reared and educated in UNWRA schools to murder Jews and steal their land. They start them young.

There is no doubt that there is much suffering going on right now in Gaza. The people who are suffering, are the same people who rejoiced when their leaders massacred Jews. Now they are suffering, but they are not innocent, and I for one, will not weep. For it is a suffering of their own creation.

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!