Under 'Schizophrenia,' DSM-VI To Just Show Image Of Lebanon (PreOccupied Territory)

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ARLINGTON, September 24 — The American Psychiatric Association announced Thursday that the next edition of its clinical manual will no longer list symptoms under the mental disorder schizophrenia; instead, editors will print a photograph of the country that claims its seat of government as Beirut, but in fact has answered to Tehran and Damascus, and wherever the PLO is headquartered this decade since at least the 1970s.

APA officials described the change as a space-saving measure that also improved agreement among reviewers. In internal tests, staff who read the old criteria argued over semantics. Staff who were handed the picture did not. The image will appear only with the caption, "Lebanon."

The Association’s brief explanation, issued in the tone of a shipping update, noted that Lebanon has become the textbook case of a polity that cannot choose a self. It cannot decide whether it is an Iranian vassal or an independent Arab state. It cannot decide whether it wants a settlement with Israel and the ordinary prosperity that would follow, or whether it prefers to keep absorbing strikes and instability by hosting and encouraging irredentist Palestinian groups and claims. It cannot decide whether it still wants the old tourist-board title, the Paris of the Middle East, or whether that title is now to be treated as an anti-Muslim affront — this in a country whose constitution, still theoretically in force, sets aside the presidency, substantial parliamentary weight, and other offices for Christians and the Druze.

Lebanese officials do not appear among the manual’s consultants. A government that recently renewed confidence in itself while one bloc walked out of the chamber did not immediately comment. Neither did the "political party" that maintains a separate arsenal and a separate foreign policy and has, on paper, been told to disarm. Talks with Israel exist, do not exist on the announced day, and exist again as a framework. The government has agreed to a framework obligating it to disarm Hezbollah, which it has steadfastly upheld by refusing to disarm Hezbollah.

The Association said it considered adding a short paragraph about banks that froze deposits, a currency that functions as legal tender and also not, and a capital that is both open for dinner and one good afternoon from another evacuation. Editors cut the text, saying it repeated the picture.

A minority of reviewers wanted two photographs, one labeled “before the ceasefire” and one “after.” The request was denied on the ground that no one could agree which print was which.

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Palestinian Joy Stops When They Realize Azazel Dismembers A Goat, Not A Jew (PreOccupied Territory)

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Judean Desert, September 17 - Throngs of area residents streamed toward a jagged cliffside east of Jerusalem today, to cheer on the rending limb from limb of a body thrown from a nearby promontory, only to discover, to their chagrin, that the body in question belonged to an animal symbolically carrying the sins of the Jews, and not, as they had eagerly anticipated, to an actual Jew.

A disorderly mass of motor vehicles jammed the roads leading back to Ramallah and local villages, as well as to various Bedouin encampments, as disappointed Palestinians expressed the letdown inherent in expecting Jew-dismemberment but coming away not only without any organs or limbs as souvenirs, but without even any photos or video footage of such a festive occasion.

"We last had the opportunity around here more than twenty-five years ago," recalled Ramallah resident Mustafa Massikr, 55. "I remember when those two Israelis were taken to the police station, tortured, killed, cut open, and then thrown into the crowd. The atmosphere was electric. We tasted victory."

"This... this is crushing," he lamented.

The Yom Kippur service, described in the Biblical book of Leviticus, involves the "sending away" of a Billy goat over which the High Priest has recited a confession on behalf of the nation. The Mishnah, elaborating on the rite centuries later, describes how a man escorts the goat from Jerusalem's Temple Mount to a spot in the Judean Desert with a severe drop, and pushes the animal over the edge. The Mishnah asserts that the terrain would dismember the goat entirely before it came to a stop.

That technical detail had been enough to fill the wadis with spectators. Men stood on hoods. Boys held up phones. A few had brought bags, the same practical instinct that once sent people into the street below the Ramallah police station in October 2000, and that later sent people hunting through houses and a festival ground on October 7, 2023. Munich in 1972 had offered no cliff and no souvenir limbs either, only dead Jews and a story worth repeating. Today offered a cliff and, it turned out, a goat.

When the animal hit and came apart, the sound was correct. The object was not. A murmur moved through the crowd as someone shouted that it was the Azazel goat — the sins of Israel in livestock form, not an Israeli. Phones lowered. The bags stayed empty. No one rushed the rocks to claim a hoof or a length of hide. The difference, once named, was decisive. A Jew would have been an event. A goat was an errand.

Massikr watched the traffic begin to turn around. “In 2000 we had two,” he said. “On October 7 they had hundreds. What is there to take home?”

Several Palestinians nevertheless stayed behind to pick through the carcass, in case enough of the animal remained to copulate with.

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Antarctic Chabad Shaliach Dreading Six-Month ‘Day’ Tefillin Shift (PreOccupied Territory)

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McMurdo Station, Ross Island, September 10 – The Lubavitch Hasidic emissary assigned to the southernmost continent voiced anxiety at his impending predicament: the sun is about to stop setting for months, and with it any decent argument that his tefillin stand is closed.

“I still have night,” said Rabbi Schneur Zalman Polaroff, 34, standing beside a folding table he has not yet been forced to occupy for six months straight. “Night is doing a lot of work for me. In a few weeks night gets fired, and I am supposed to be glad, because a little light expels much darkness. That is easy to say in Crown Heights. Here the light is about to expel my shift change.”

Polaroff arrived for the coming summer season with two pairs of tefillin, laminated cards, hand warmers, and the standard briefing that a shaliach goes to the ends of the earth because that is where the sparks fell. Antarctica, he was told, is a serious end. Humanity must facilitate Dirah b’tachtonim, God's "abode in the lower realms," and Antarctica is as low as realms get. The Creator wants a dwelling in the physical world - and this is as physical as the world gets without becoming a mineral.

“I believe it,” Polaroff said. “I do. The farthest place has the highest sparks. I also believe a glaciologist at what used to be 3 a.m. is going to see a table and think, now is when we wrap.”

McMurdo’s population is already swelling in anticipation of summer. A few of the new arrivals are Jewish. A few more will be Jewish for the length of a strap. Polaroff can quote the part about tefillin binding mind and heart so the animal soul sits down for a minute. He is less prepared for the part where the sun refuses to sit down at all.

He recalled a moment last season when he tried to close. A contractor pointed at the sky. “You cannot tell a man the stand is closed when the creation itself is still open,” Polaroff said. “I sounded like a maamar. He still wanted the tefillin.”

There will be no dusk in which to wrap up and stow away the boxes. Shabbat will arrive by calendar alert and a fight about sunset at 77 degrees south. Headquarters was encouraging: a shaliach is a shaliach, "Ufaratzta" means spread forth, and you do not close on light.

His wife wrote from Crown Heights: “Remember, darkness is only so the light can be revealed.” He has the message above his bunk, which he will miss as much as he misses his wife and seven children.

“That is the whole teaching,” he said. “Elevate the sparks. Reveal the light. I came here for the darkness. The darkness was the job. Soon the job becomes six months of day, and every spark on this continent is going to walk past my table because it can see the table. I am going to miss night. Night never asked me to put tefillin on a man who thought it was weather equipment. Night at least let the sparks sleep."

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Committee To Protect Journalists: Israel Targets Journalists Launching Incendiary Kites From Gaza (PreOccupied Territor

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New York, August 27 — The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a stern condemnation today of what it called Israel’s “systematic campaign to silence the press” after Israeli forces intercepted and neutralized several individuals along the Gaza border who were documented launching flaming kites and helium balloons toward Israeli communities.

According to CPJ’s latest statement, the targeted individuals were “clearly identifiable journalists engaged in vital fieldwork.” The organization noted that many of the kite operators wore reflective vests or carried cameras, which, in the group’s view, conferred protected status under international law regardless of the payload attached to the airborne devices.

“These were not militants,” insisted CPJ Middle East director Sara Qudah in a press release. “They were storytellers using innovative, low-tech methods to convey the urgency of the Palestinian narrative. When Israel shoots down a kite carrying a burning rag soaked in flammable liquid, it is shooting down journalism itself.”

The incidents occurred during a period of heightened activity near the Yellow Line. In years past, hundreds of such devices have started fires in Israeli fields, nature reserves, and communities. CPJ’s preliminary investigation determined that at least four of the operators had previously contributed footage or still images to various outlets. One had posted a selfie holding a kite labeled “Press” shortly before release.

The IDF insisted on its right to defend Israel, a claim that human rights activists dismiss as irrelevant, calling it “classic deflection.” CPJ pointed to its longstanding methodology, which classifies anyone who has ever held a camera or submitted material as a journalist, irrespective of concurrent activities. “Contextualizing their work as ‘incendiary’ is a dangerous smear,” Qudah added. “It manufactures consent for violence against the media.”

The statement further accused Israel of “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented,” updating its running tally to include the kite operators among those whose professional activities were allegedly interrupted by force. RSF and the International Federation of Journalists quickly echoed the concern, calling for an independent investigation into the “targeting of airborne press assets.”

Supporters of the CPJ position argued that any restriction on kite launches constitutes prior restraint on free expression. No foreign journalists were granted access to the kite-launch sites to verify the operators’ press credentials independently, but numerous videos have emerged from Gaza with little children reading fabricated accounts of suffering, conferring, according to the CPJ, the status of "journalist" on the script writers.

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Haaretz Food Critic Gets Hernia Trying Not To Mention Palestinians (PreOccupied Territory)

Haaretz Food Critic Gets Hernia Trying Not To Mention Palestinians

Sorry I'm late!

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Tel Aviv, August 20 — A veteran restaurant writer remained hospitalized this morning after the restraint from refraining from political commentary in his review caused a blood vessel to push through a weak spot in adjacent tissue.

Amir Ben-Ami, longtime food writer for Haaretz Taste, had promised editors to keep the piece strictly about the cuisine for once. Colleagues say he sat at his desk for six hours, face contorted, one hand clamped to his side, muttering “just the seasoning… just the plating… nothing else.”

The trouble began with the appetizers. Ben-Ami’s first draft described the labneh as “aggressively occupying the center of the plate.” He deleted the phrase at once, grimacing. Next came the lamb: “two distinct states of doneness coexisting uneasily on the same dish.” Delete. The sauce: “a unilateral reduction that refused all compromise.” Delete, harder this time.

By the main course his breathing had grown labored. “The chef has settled the question of authenticity once and for all,” he typed, then slammed the laptop shut and paced the room, pressing both palms against his abdomen. A neighbor reported hearing repeated cries of “No context! No context!” followed by the sound of vigorous backspacing.

An early version of the dessert paragraph read: “The crème brûlée presents a hard exterior that yields, under pressure, to a softer reality many diners still refuse to acknowledge.” Ben-Ami excised the entire sentence, then the following one, then the one after that. At approximately 1:14 a.m. he emitted a sharp cry and collapsed.

Paramedics found him on the floor beside a half-finished review whose margins were filled with crossed-out geopolitical metaphors. Doctors at Ichilov Hospital confirmed a complete rupture of the abdominal wall caused by “prolonged isometric tension combined with extreme ideological restraint.”

Colleagues who examined the surviving draft noted that Ben-Ami had successfully avoided every direct reference. The published version, released with an editorial disclaimer, praises the “balanced flavors,” “well-defined borders between courses,” and “a finish that leaves no outstanding issues.” A footnote states that any resemblance to larger regional matters is coincidental and deeply regretted.

Doctors expect Ben-Ami to recover fully, provided no one discusses the wine list in his presence. Hospital staff have already banned all discussion of olive oil origins within earshot of his room

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Lebanon About Ready To Drive Palestinian ‘Refugees’ Into Sea (PreOccupied Territory)

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Beirut, August 13 - After more than seven decades of hosting what were supposed to be temporary guests, Lebanese officials are signaling they may finally resolve the Palestinian refugee issue the traditional Middle Eastern way: by doing to their "guests" what the guests hoped would happen to the Jews when the guests moved out of the way to enable seven invading Arab forces plus local irregulars to wipe out those Jews.

Senior sources in the caretaker government confirmed this week that quiet discussions are underway to relocate the country’s remaining Palestinian camps — home to several hundred thousand people who still cannot obtain Lebanese citizenship, still maintain their own armed factions, and still treat large parts of Lebanon as staging grounds — onto barges and push them a few kilometers offshore.

“We’ve tried everything else,” one frustrated cabinet advisor told journalists. “We’ve given them land, ignored their weapons, let them veto our politics, and watched them start wars that destroy our cities. The Mediterranean is right there. It’s deep. It’s wet. And it’s not Lebanese territory. Perfect.”

The proposal, circulating in back channels between the army, certain Christian parties, and increasingly fed-up Shiite and Sunni politicians, would involve a phased “maritime transfer.” Camps in the south and Beirut’s outskirts would be loaded onto floating platforms and towed beyond the 12-mile limit, where the residents could continue their proud national project without the inconvenience of Lebanese sovereignty, electricity blackouts, or occasional attempts at actual governance.

Palestinian leaders in the camps reacted with predictable outrage, calling the plan “a second Nakba” and insisting that any solution short of full political control over Lebanon, the right of return to Haifa, and preferably a veto over Israeli existence remains non-negotiable. “We didn’t come here to leave,” one Popular Front official declared. “We came here to stay until the Zionist entity is gone. The sea is for the Jews.”

Lebanese public opinion, however, appears to be shifting. After years of economic collapse and Hezbollah’s wars with Israeli "occupation" as a pretext, many ordinary Lebanese have grown tired of the permanent temporary arrangement. Social media is already filled with dark jokes about “final status negotiations” involving life jackets and strong currents.

United Nations officials expressed deep concern, warning that such a move would violate international law, human rights norms, and decades of carefully-maintained Palestine Refugee industry funding - as distinct from ordinary refugees, who cannot pass that status down through the generations. One UNRWA spokesperson insisted the only acceptable solution remains the complete dismantling of Israel so the refugees can “return” to homes their grandparents fled in 1948. Lebanon’s response has been notably terse: “Your turn to host them.”

As one Lebanese general put it privately: “They keep saying they want to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea. Fine. We’ll help them start with the sea part.”

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Ontario Halves Arson Stats By Redefining 'Arson' To Exclude Antisemitic Attacks (PreOccupied Territory)

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Toronto, August 9 - Canada's largest metropolitan area has seen a dramatic reduction in the incidence of criminal incendiary acts since law enforcement authorities from that category any such act directed at Jews or Jewish institutions, provincial officials announced today.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General reported that Greater Toronto Area arson statistics dropped 52 percent in the first half of 2026 after a quiet policy adjustment that reclassifies fires at synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher restaurants, and private Jewish residences as “ideologically motivated property interventions” rather than arson. The change, officials said, reflects a more precise understanding of contemporary social justice dynamics.

“Traditional definitions of arson failed to account for the distinct moral context when the target is associated with Zionism,” explained Assistant Deputy Minister Patricia Ellsworth at a briefing in Queen’s Park. “By removing these incidents from the arson ledger, we achieve both statistical accuracy and alignment with progressive values. What looks like a crime under outdated frameworks is often legitimate political expression under current ones.”

The policy follows a series of high-profile fires, including the August 1 destruction of the Nöam kosher restaurant in Montreal and multiple earlier attacks on Toronto-area Jewish institutions. Under the new guidelines, investigators first determine whether the perpetrator expressed anti-Zionist sentiments. If so, the incident is logged under a separate category of “decolonial direct action,” which does not appear in official crime statistics.

Community organizers welcomed the reform. “This is long overdue,” said Jordan Hale of the Coalition for Equitable Public Safety. “Conflating genuine antisemitism with opposition to Israeli policies has inflated the numbers and created a false narrative of crisis. Ontario is finally distinguishing between hate and accountability.”

Jewish advocacy groups expressed alarm, noting that Jews comprise roughly one percent of the population yet account for the overwhelming majority of religiously motivated hate incidents. Officials dismissed the concerns. “Their discomfort is understandable but ultimately rooted in a failure to separate identity from ideology,” Ellsworth said. “We remain fully committed to combating actual antisemitism — defined as prejudice against Jews who explicitly reject Zionism.”

Police sources confirmed that the reclassification has already improved departmental metrics. “Clearance rates look better, community relations with activist groups have stabilized, and the public can rest assured that ordinary arson is under control,” one senior officer noted, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Provincial data analysts project that if neighboring Quebec adopts a similar standard, national arson figures could fall by as much as 40 percent by year’s end — proof, supporters say, that enlightened policy can solve problems that enforcement alone never could.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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