On Thursday, the Washington Post published an investigation casting doubt on whether Shifa Hospital in Gaza was being used as a Hamas command center.
Its top major finding: "The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas."
The key to the story is the word "immediate:"
“The law is about what was in the mind of the attacker at the time the attacker planned and executed the mission with respect to both what they expected the collateral damage they expected to cause and the military advantage they anticipated gaining,” said Michael Schmitt, an emeritus professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
The IDF would not comment on the military advantage sought or achieved.
“What was the urgency? This is not yet being demonstrated,” said Yousuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer with Global Rights Compliance, a law firm, who has drafted U.N. reports on siege warfare.
While the underground tunnel uncovered by Israeli forces after the raid does point to a possible militant presence underneath the hospital at some point, it does not prove that a command node was operating there during the war.
“We’re getting more of a granular, three-dimensional understanding of al-Shifa Hospital, the tunnels underneath it,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at Crisis Group.
“What we’re really lacking here is a confident understanding of the fourth dimension, which is time. When were various elements of the hospital being used in certain ways? When were the tunnels beneath the hospital complex being used in certain ways?”
The Washington Post has its doubts:
The bare, white-tiled rooms showed no immediate evidence of use — for command and control or otherwise. There are no signs of recent habitation, including litter, food containers, clothing or other personal items.
Let's look at the context.
Hamas' use of the hospital for military purposes was well known as early as 2006. Even the Washington Post itself wrote in 2014 that it “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”
Israel had built bunkers under the hospital when Gaza was under Israeli control, but bunkers aren't tunnels. However, we know that there were tunnels under Gaza's Al Wehda Street that were bombed in the 2014 war, and that street leads directly to the hospital compound. Given that Hamas built hundreds of tunnel shafts underneath their offices and leaders' homes, it is apparent that there were connections between Hamas offices in the hospital basement and the tunnels under Al Wehda Street.
Israel might not have revealed the specific locations of each shaft, and that is hardly important considering that there is no doubt that these tunnels existed directly underneath a hospital.
Just as there is no doubt that the only purpose of these tunnels, underground rooms and bathrooms is military. They aren't hotels or summer camps.
The IDF first laid out a specific series of accusations about the Shifa Hospital on October 27, nearly three weeks before the raid, before the ground war even began. There were unofficial discussions of Shifa Hospital before that. It didn't show "urgency" - it showed unheard-of patience before moving in.
Hamas knew the IDF was coming for them. And they had weeks to clear out and clean up the evidence from the tunnels (even though they left behind plenty of weapons on the hospital grounds themselves, which were harder to clean up since there were so many people around.)
Here's the part that no one is talking about: The IDF knew quite well that they were giving Hamas a heads up that they were coming. They knew Hamas would not stay and it would hide evidence of explicit military use. So why give the warning at all? Why not surprise Hamas? What army tells the enemy where they will be going?
The warning was meant to force Hamas commanders to move to other areas.
This achieves three military aims. Firstly, it disrupts their operations temporarily. Secondly, it allows the IDF to go there, gather evidence and valuable intelligence like footage from cameras, and destroy the military infrastructure beneath Shifa without a firefight and endangering patients and civilians taking shelter. And thirdly, Hamas leaders moving to other areas allows Israel to attack them without worrying about the complexity of protecting hospital patients during a battle.
Israel has now released evidence that Hamas brought hostages to Shifa. The tunnels had electricity and plumbing that were attached to Shifa's infrastructure. Weapons were found in the radiology ward and in a garage on Shifa's grounds. We know that employees and even directors at other hospitals were also Hamas terrorists. The Gaza health ministry is Hamas and it admits its officials have Hamas military rank. While there might not be direct evidence of Hamas using those tunnels underneath Shifa in mid-November as their main headquarters, no one can seriously doubt that Hamas used the hospital for military purposes and that the reason was to use the patients as human shields.
Israel managed to clear Hamas out of the hospital it was using for military purposes with a minimum of fighting and a minimum of physical destruction. That is not violating international law - it is adhering to it in ways far beyond the limited imaginations of those whose entire worldview is poisoned by always assuming malevolence from Israel.
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There is still an assumption that there are two sides to this war, Gaza and Israel.
It isn't true. There are four distinct groups that are players (not counting other fronts:) Hamas (and other terror groups,) Gaza civilians, Israel and Israeli civilians.
One needs to separate the civilians from the armies because civilians are an integral part of Hamas' war strategy. Hamas targets the IDF and Israelis, the IDF tries to protect the Israeli civilians. Israel only targets Hamas. Hamas hides behind the Gazans as their main line of defense and the IDF tries to avoid hitting the Gazans.
What most people refuse to believe is that just as Hamas uses Gaza civilians as shields, Hamas will attack Gazans as well, when it helps their survival.
Gaza civilians only exist to help Hamas, from Hamas' perspective.
Which means that just as Hamas is happy to see Gaza civilians die in attacks that the IDF targets at Hamas, it has no hesitation to attack Gazans when it is helps them - sniping Christians in a church and elsewhere and blaming Israel, shooting at Gazans trying to flee to safer areas when Hamas instructed them to stay put and act as shields.
To Western ears, this sounds nearly impossible. But is there really any moral difference to Hamas between using civilians as defensive weapons and killing them when it is convenient?
Surely, you are saying, Hamas is evil, but we need more evidence that Hamas really doesn't care about Gaza civilians.
Here is a very incomplete list of specific attacks or threats that Hamas and other terror groups made to hurt their own people, directly or indirectly:
July 2007: Israel offered to allow thousands of stranded Gazans in Egypt to return to Gaza via Kerem Shalom; Hamas threatened to shoot them all dead if they came that way.
May 2021: Both Hamas and Fatah shoot many mortars at Kerem Shalom, killing 2 Thai workers and stopping aid deliveries.
I'm not even talking about Hamas placing rockets and weapons in schools and houses, nor about "work accidents" that killed civilians. That is disregard for civilian lives, but Hamas has a record of attacking its own civilians and depriving them of aid for its own selfish ends.
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To say our elites have a blindspot where anti-Semitism is concerned is a grotesque understatement. Having spent years obsessing over fantasy forms of racism and fascism, having spent years soberly telling us that Boris Johnson was Eton’s answer to Hitler, the great and good look upon Jew-hating marches, attacks and even terror plots… and it barely registers.
Whether these people are ignoring anti-Semitism, making excuses for it, or participating in it, the story remains the same. Our supposedly ‘anti-racist’ betters, people who during the Black Lives Matter uprising just two years ago were taking knees and ‘doing the work’ and tweeting #SilenceIsViolence from their £4million townhouses, are so marinated in a divisive identity politics and a demented ‘anti-imperialism’ that they see Jews as ‘white’ oppressors, even when they’re being beaten up, and Israel as the aggressor, even when it is under attack.
The silence of the ‘anti-racists’ over the barbaric rise of anti-Semitism reminds us that these people were never anti-racists at all. Woke leftists and the liberal-left midwits who defer to them on these matters have just imbibed a new version of racial hierarchy, apportioning worth and solidarity not on the basis of phoney racial superiority but of questionable racial victimhood. What the new has in common with the old is that the Jews are still, at best, not to be trusted.
Rather than just shaking our heads at the moral self-immolation of the woke left, we need to do what they are so clearly incapable of doing and tackle this foul, racist scourge. We cannot allow Jew hatred to become the background noise of Western life. We cannot stand idly by while our fellow citizens are menaced for no other reason than who they are.
We need to fight this new Jew hatred with words and actions – in argument and in the streets. A society that allows anti-Semitism to become normalised is not only failing to defend its Jewish citizens, it is also a society that is deeply sick – that is overcome not only by hatred of a particular group, but by a deep-seated irrationalism and unreason, too. A society in which conspiracy theories about Jewish power – in which some people can convince themselves that 7 October didn’t happen, or wasn’t half as bad as ‘they’ are saying – is one that has become deranged and deprived of its moral bearings.
It’s high time we ignored the confected race rows that clutter public debate and confronted the very real hatred in our midst.
Abe Foxman and David Harris, two former longtime leaders of prominent Jewish communal organizations, called for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy at colleges on Wednesday.
In separate statements, the former heads of the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee argued that DEI efforts on college campuses should be overhauled because of the major challenges it poses to the liberal understanding of societal aims.
Foxman and Harris’ stances contrast with their organizations’ current positions on how to deal with DEI. ADL and AJC leaders told JI this week their organizations are urging universities to better incorporate Jews into the DEI infrastructure, instead of calling on them to dismantle the ideology behind DEI altogether.
Foxman, who served as the Anti-Defamation League’s national director for 28 years until 2015, insisted that DEI “cannot be fixed.”
He said that part of the problem is that DEI is “based on a faulty premise — that racism is a function of oppressed and oppressors [and] that all white people are oppressors and all people of color [are] oppressed.”
The results, Foxman said, are “bias, illiberalism, reinforced, legitimized and institutionalized antisemitism in many institutions.”
Foxman added: “It has built a huge funded bureaucracy which is today difficult to change or amend. Efforts by communal Jewish organizations to include the Jewish community or soften its impact on antisemitism have failed. It cannot be fixed, it needs to be scrapped and replaced by a vigorous implementation of our civil rights laws that are color blind, and apply equally to all. If necessary some civil rights laws can be amended and strengthened. DEI was developed to eliminate bias but sadly it created bias.”
David Harris, the longtime CEO of the American Jewish Committee CEO, echoed similar criticisms of DEI.
“DEI has evolved into a mammoth, ideologically-driven presence on many campuses, some of which have literally hundreds of staff working exclusively in this space,” Harris told JI.
“Accordingly, I don’t believe that outside efforts, however well-intentioned, that nibble around the edges or simply seek to add Jews to the DEI agenda, address the heart of the problem. DEI today poses a major challenge to liberal understanding of American societal aims, so the goal of rethinking it conceptually is far more urgent than just trying to get along with it.”
Puar is a tenured professor at Rutgers University. Her rise to fame—expressing anti-Semitism is the quickest way to the top in higher education—came after a Vassar lecture she gave in 2016, which later became the book under discussion. Her main accusations are that the state of Israel engages in organ harvesting from Palestinians and that the Jewish state deliberately maims and stunts Palestinians.
As Cary Nelson has shown at length, these accusations can be definitively debunked, although it feels icky even engaging them. There is no organ-harvesting project, obviously, though a single doctor’s team 30 years ago took cornea extractions and the like almost certainly largely from Mizrachi Jews—illegal in Israel but legal in much of the West under presumed consent laws precisely because it is not “organ harvesting.” The growth of young Palestinians is monitored and studied regularly by the UN and Palestinian health bodies, all which refute the idea that there is a stunting crisis in the Palestinian territories and the that Israel was responsible by withholding nutritious food.
And the “maiming” accusation requires a special level of madness, since it is a criticism of Israeli troops shooting to injure instead of to kill in various situations. There is obviously no such thing as “shooting to maim,” a spectacularly idiotic invention that requires knowing less than nothing about all involved subjects, including basic science.
Puar is neither the first nor the last pseudoscience fanatic to incite the world against the Jews. She is, in fact, following a very old formula, hence the reference to medieval blood libels. And yet her work poses a very particular challenge to the concept of academic study, and it is one that the academy has failed.
As Nelson has pointed out, Puar announced her commitment to “an anti-Zionist hermeneutic,” which means she begins from an anti-Semitic position and interprets all information to fit that worldview. This is the opposite of honest inquiry, and it is what she teaches her students. Additionally, her accusations “represent the kinds of conspiratorial thinking that can influence faculty who are teaching about contemporary Israel.”
In other words, and this is a hugely important point, our most esteemed academic institutions are teaching students to think conspiratorially. They are rewiring the brains of generations of future leaders in public service and private industry to process information in an anti-intellectual manner.
If you think there is a predilection among the public to glom on to wild conspiracy theories, this is a major clue as to how it came into existence. Ivy League schools are teaching students to un-think. And we have only begun to see the consequences for wider society.
Arabic media is reporting that an Israeli soldier left Gaza, quit the army and made a video about the truth of what he witnessed: 3000 IDF soldiers killed, hundreds of tanks an other vehicles destroyed, no way to defeat Hamas.
He is obviously not an Israeli.
So a little research showed that there really was a video - but it wasn't of an IDF soldier. It was created by a "motivational speaker" named Chris Jones on TikTok a month ago who makes videos from his car. His "facts" are made up. (He also says witchcraft is real.)
Someone took his video, cropped it to only his face, and put it on TikTok claiming he was an IDF soldier and now it is going viral among equally stupid people dying to find anything that supports the Hamas narrative outside of Hamas itself. Others are copying it and adding their own lies.
This is only one example of thousands. On TikTok, on X, on Instagram, thousands of people share complete garbage that their audiences want to hear. Real videos and photos are miscaptioned, or fake ones are made from other wars. Al Jazeera in particular is making things up that get repeated by the world, including the UN, including American Muslim leaders - CAIR publishes all of these lies without any hesitation.
Yes, Israel needs to do a better job in countering these lies. Even though the people who spread them will never believe it, there needs to be a database where the lies can be looked up and exposed. there are simply too many of them, but one can see which ones are spreading the fastest and prioritize those. Perhaps more importantly, the sources for the more reasonable sounding lies (like the Gaza health ministry or Al Jazeera itself) often also spread lies that no one believes, and it would be worthwhile to pro-actively discredit these sources ahead of time.
Israel has a job to do and cannot let itself get distracted. But the war is also one of perception, and it needs to prioritize the cognitive war even more than it has been.
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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Shuja'iya, December 22 - Dozens of Gaza Strip militants who surrendered to Israeli forces recent weeks have received offers from lingerie marketers to display the products on their ample, curvy bodies, a spokesman for Israel's prison service disclosed today.
Lt. Col. Adi Poss told reporters that manufacturers and retailers of bras and underwear for the full-figured have contacted the prison service to express interest in using some of the captured Hamas fighters as models, having seen pictures of the men stripped to their underwear as a security measure, and thus displaying portions of the body well-suited to flattering presentation of the intimate apparel products.
"At least six companies shave expressed interest," noted Lt. Col. Poss. "The feasibility of any arrangement remains open to question, given the uncertainty of these men's futures. Will they still be in captivity when arrangements are finally made? Can modeling the bras take place within the prison? It's definitely possible, but obviously not a priority for us tight now."
A representative of Victoria's Secret volunteered that her company seeks to ascertain the practicality of using the well-fed captive Hamas personnel as models. "What first caught our attention was that they were obviously not unfamiliar with a good meal or two," recalled the Vice President for Marketing, Ella Stick. "Victoria's Secret switched back to more traditionally-shaped models last year, but we acknowledge the buying power of those whose bodies do not match the perfection on display in our advertising. VS still aims to signal to the full-figured woman that our products suit her, and the shapes of the men captured by Israel during the fighting would meet those requirements nicely."
She added that the presence of so many well-fed people in the photos caught executives by surprise. "We were told Gaza was running out of food, but that's clearly not the case," she stated. "That's what made the images all the more striking. Perhaps under other circumstances we wouldn't have given a second glance at the man-boobs on display, but notice them we did. I'm thinking with the specimens in the photos, we can find models for almost every size we manufacture."
Another company that declined at this stage to be identified revealed that it already has a formal name for the marketing initiative, the Al Moob Project. Lt. Col. Poss offered assurances that enough "big-boned" Hamas fighters remain available for all the interested companies.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
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Iran has already keyed most of them in, so the question for Tehran is what to do next. Hezbollah has lost more than 115 of its members since October 7. Hamas has lost thousands of its terrorist fighters. The Houthis are unscathed. The Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria are unscathed. Palestinian Islamic Jihad has suffered some losses, in the West Bank and in Gaza, but it was never a very large organization to begin with.
For Tehran, there are questions to be asked about their next phase. Iranian pro-regime media may reflect some of this thinking. They have toned down their coverage of Gaza. This could indicate a calm before the next storm. It could also indicate a very real decision to move away from too much coverage as Iran senses that it won’t get much more success in Gaza.
Tehran and Hamas may be suffering from diminishing returns. Iran will be asking itself who benefits from a war of attrition. I think that Hamas will benefit, the way Hezbollah benefited from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It thinks Hamas can benefit from a ceasefire and international pressure on Israel. Then, Hamas will leverage its claims of “winning” in Gaza to achieve influence in the West Bank and prepare for the next phase. Towards this end, the Iranian regime media accuses Israel of prolonging the conflict and not accepting a ceasefire.
The fact that Iran’s Fars News, which is close to the IRGC, had a main headline on December 21 about the president of Iran “solving problems, fixing the holes” would appear to mean Iran is focused a lot on domestic issues. It has distracted the region and the world by backing Hamas and creating war around the region. Now with the world distracted, Iran can focus domestically. Of course, that could be media reporting that is just for domestic consumption, while Iran prepares another surprise for the region. The only issue facing Tehran in this regard is that it has already tried to use its proxies to do their worst and they haven’t succeeded.
Some decisions are simple, which can be both a blessing (you know what to do) and a curse (you don’t have much excuse for not doing it). The Biden administration faces just such a situation at the moment: It must put a stop to the Houthi attacks on cargo ships traversing the Red Sea.
The Houthis are Iran’s proxy in Yemen. They have been firing upon merchant ships that pass through the Suez Canal, sometimes via drone. Attacks have increased since Israel’s latest war with Hamas began in October. The U.S. announced this week it is sending a multinational naval force to accompany ships through the troubled waters. That is a start but it won’t be enough: Naval escorts will likely slow the flow of commerce through the waterway and therefore aren’t a long-term solution to the market disruption. Biden & Co. have to be prepared to do more.
One reason the West’s hand is forced here is economics. One-fifth of all global container trade, as the Wall Street Journal reports, passes through the canal. Oil giant BP has for now stopped sending its ships through that route; others have started to follow suit. According to the New York Times, crude oil has already risen 8 percent since mid-December.
Other costs also get passed on to consumers: The alternate route for these ships runs around Africa, adding time and fuel to every trip. If the problem persists, the Times says, economic forecasters expect the price of oil to increase by as much as $4 a barrel. Insurance rates will also rise with either the increased danger of the normal trip or the extended time frame of the alternate route.
The other reason to act is that the Houthis, and by extension Iran, are gaining at the expense of the U.S. and our allies. “At the end of the day, what they really want is a bigger stake in Yemen, and perhaps they want to do that through becoming a global problem,” Yoel Guzansky, a senior research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told the Times. The Houthis are negotiating with Saudi Arabia for recognition in part of Yemen, so this display of strength only improves their hand.
What Israelis understand, and Biden and most Americans refuse to accept, is that a diplomatic solution that would place Gaza under the role of the Palestinian Authority will simply be a formula for more terrorism. Even worse, should the Americans and the international community succeed in forcing the Israelis to accept a two-state deal removing Israeli forces from Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), that would just repeat Sharon’s catastrophic Gaza experiment on a much larger scale.
As the most recent polls conducted by Palestinian analysts show, more than three-quarters of Palestinians support the Oct. 7 attacks. That is shocking but it is easier to understand when you remember that the majority—as well as their supposedly “moderate” leaders—have always rejected peace and an independent state if it meant accepting the legitimacy of a Jewish state, irrespective of its borders.
They share Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel and slaughtering its people because their national identity is inextricably tied up with their century-old war on Zionism.
The choice is security or Hamas
It’s hard for those, who believe in the two-state solution as something akin to a religion rather than a policy proposal, to accept that aspect of the Palestinian national identity.
It’s equally difficult to accept for politicians like Biden, who has spent his career advocating for a two-state solution. But if he is now in a minority in his own party about Israel, it’s because the “progressives,” who advocate for the woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) catechism, are likelier to support the Palestinians than Israel.
The further he goes to appease them, the more it strengthens the will of the Palestinians to continue their quest for Israel’s destruction. As with every previous attempt to impose a peace process on Israel, the only thing that will be achieved will be more terrorism and more Israeli blood shed.
After Oct. 7, it’s time for even liberal American Jews to say “enough” to this farce.
Those who purport to be friends of the Jewish state must speak up and support not so much Netanyahu or the members of his unity coalition but the Israeli people’s will. It’s important for those in the pro-Israel community to not just respect the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Israelis but to back it up with political advocacy—even if it’s not what Biden wants.
The choice isn’t between Netanyahu and peace. It’s between Israeli security and Hamas’s vision of endless war, in which most Palestinians believe.
Anyone with a shred of sense, or even the most minimal knowledge of Palestinian politics, knows that another two-state push will fail. But if you care about preventing more Oct. 7 slaughter, you need to respect the sensible desire of the Israelis to defend themselves and give up on fantasies about the Palestinians choosing peace.
The only way Palestinians will ever come to their senses will be after the complete defeat of Hamas. It will also require the Arab and Muslim worlds and the international community to cease propping up a national movement—whether it is led by Hamas or Fatah “moderates”—whose ultimate aim is wiping out the one Jewish state on the planet and killing its people. That is exactly what a return to two-state diplomacy won’t do.
Most Americans continue to support Israel. But supporters of Israel must not betray that stand by advocating for two-state diplomacy that Israelis deem to be not merely ill-advised but insane. Like the Israelis, Americans must draw conclusions from Oct. 7 and oppose giving the Palestinians the chance to do it again.
There’s another important way of making these same points.
Many of those justifying the October 7 massacre do so on the basis of supporting “decolonization.” As one representative professor, Marc Lamont Hill of CUNY, put it shortly after, “So many … academics who insist upon doing performative, virtue signaling ‘land acknowledgements’ at every public event are eerily silent as real liberation struggles are happening. Guess decolonization really is a metaphor for some folk…” He clearly derides those who are all talk and no action, so for him, at least, decolonization apparently justifies the slaughter. Similarly Students for Justice in Palestine, the national campus group with some 200 chapters, defended the massacre by proclaiming that “decolonization is a call to … actions that go beyond … rhetoric,” including “resistance … in all forms,” including “armed struggle,” and illustrated their social media with images of the homicidal hang gliders in case we missed the point. So all that slaughter is apparently fine for them and so many others, if it’s for “decolonization.”
Now many of these same people—those who openly celebrated October 7, who more gently justified it, and even who remained silent—have spent the weeks since October 7 angrily demanding a ceasefire, meaning that Israel should cease its military activity against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Among their main arguments is that this military activity constitutes “collective punishment” against the civilians of Gaza, who, they claim, were not responsible for Hamas’s actions. Now there’s much to be critiqued in this argument, including its presumption about the degree of civilian complicity and its poor grasp of the international norms and laws of warfare. But let’s grant them the principle, that collective punishment is morally objectionable, i.e. unjust. For surely it is unjust to punish people who are not themselves responsible for the injustice for which they are being punished?
But that is just the point. For now what is their ongoing “decolonization” campaign against Israel, in particular in its October 7 manifestation targeting mostly Jewish civilians including babies and children, but a massive example of the injustice of collective punishment?
Even if we grant that 1948 was itself an injustice, those babies and children, those dancing teenagers, and almost every single one of the 1200 killed on that day could in no way be held responsible for it. They were born long afterward, and even if they were “partying on stolen land,” as the M.I.T. antagonists above claimed, they were in no way responsible for that. They were born there, to parents who were born there, to parents who were likely born there, and so on—and so have every right to be there, to be raised there, to live there, and to defend themselves from the violence directed against them. Nor do the Hamas militants have any right to reclaim that land from them, for they themselves were born long after it was allegedly “stolen”—and may well themselves be descendants of colonizers who earlier stole that land from others.
The entire campus anti-Israel campaign—which overwhelmingly endorses not a “two-state solution” but the replacement of Israel with “Palestine,” “from the river to the sea”—is one large campaign of collective punishment against the vast majority of contemporary Israeli Jews. Like it or not, there is simply no way to violently undo Israel, and thus rectify or compensate for the alleged injustice of 1948, that does not ultimately perpetrate an equal or likely even greater overall injustice.
The campus anti-Israel campaign is therefore not, despite its self-description, motivated by human rights and principles of justice, but in fact by flagrant violations thereof. That is why the campus anti-Israel campaign is, at its heart, nothing more than a hate campaign against the Jews.
7. A Short Legal Interlude
This is not the place for a legal brief, but there’s a very important point that is both widely misunderstood and which coheres with the arguments just above. Detractors are fond of the principle that “resistance” to “occupation, apartheid, etc.,” including “by any means necessary” (i.e. violence), is justified by international law. When pressed for a legal source for that principle they invoke United Nations Resolution 37/43 (3 December 1982), in particular the clause that “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” With this in hand, along with the (counterfactually) granted assumption that the establishment of Israel was unjust and thus that contemporary Israel “occupies” Palestine either in part or in whole, it’s a small step to openly justifying the October 7 massacre.
First, General Assembly resolutions do not have the force of law, merely of “recommendations.”
More importantly, the Fourth Geneva Convention, which does have the force of law, is precisely designed to protect civilians in the time of war. Article 33, for example, is unambiguous: "No protected person [i.e., civilian] may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." There is no exception to this rule. The Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, article 51(2), is even more explicit: "The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.” Period. The article goes on in detail to proscribe almost every sort of action that Hamas undertook on October 7 and has generally undertaken in its years of terrorist activity.
Even further, UN Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004), passed under Chapter 7 thus with the force of law, condemns all acts of terror “irrespective of their motivation,” and states explicitly that “criminal acts, including against civilians,committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages … are under no circumstances justifiable by considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature” (italics added).
And finally that same year, addressing these very issues, the UN Secretary General determined that “there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.”
You can’t get any clearer than that. Even if the establishment of Israel were unjust, even if Israel may be said to occupy Palestine in whole or in part, international law proscribes the attacks on civilians that constitute the heart of “resistance” activity. My arguments above aren’t merely good ideas; they’re the law.
8. So What Is Left To Do, For Those Seeking Some Resolution To The IPJAMC?
Answering that is obviously beyond the scope of this article, but one thing seems clear. As Thomas Hobbes himself suggested when describing the transition from the pre-modern state of nature into civil society, the parties are going to have to find a way to get over past grievances and commit themselves to some form of forward-looking social contract. In Leviathan I.14-15 he provides some “laws of nature,” i.e. general rules based in reason “by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life … and to omit that by which he thinks it may be best preserved.” The sixth law states that “upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offenses past of them that repenting, desire it,” and the seventh, quite poignantly, that in deciding how to respond to past offenses we must “look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow.” That obviously means that one must look forward far more than looking back; and it requires working with Jews and Israelis rather than trying to physically eliminate them (as Hamas just did) and “dismantle Zionism” (as the campus campaign would have it). I’m inspired here again by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, who, after rehearsing the history of violent Palestinian rejectionism that has repeatedly produced disastrous results for the Palestinians, writes this:
Repeat [the cycle of violence], at the expense of Palestinians, Lebanese and many other Arabs, who, instead of investing their time in building their human resources, growing their economies, improving their lives and working for a better future, these Arabs continue wasting their time on "Palestine," letting their collective delusion lead them to repeat their idiocy of warring with Israel. Delusion makes them think, again, that they've become stronger this time, that Israel has become weaker, that the world has changed (none of this has happened over the past century, unlikely to happen in the future). These Arabs then commit the exact same mistakes, not heeding past lessons. In Arabic, the proverb says "repetition teaches the donkey." It apparently does not teach the Free Palestine terrorists and their enabling global mob. My Take: It is high time for the Arab elite and intellectuals to break this cycle, learn from the past, let go of the worthless Palestine Cause and focus on a better present and future. Land is only a tool in the service of a better life. Life should never be sacrificed in the service of land (and Zionists don't die for the land, like many Arabs thinks, they die to protect themselves, their heritage, their freedom and their social contract).
In sum, even if most or all of what they say about the founding of Israel were true, no amount of those alleged grievances could justify the terror of October 7, “root causes” and all—and until the detractors start looking forward more than looking back, prospects for peace, much less prosperity, are dim.
Let 2023 be the beginning of 2024 and beyond, rather than the continuation of 1948.
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Yesterday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said that if Israel would reduce the intensity of its Gaza campaign, that could reduce the risk of broader conflict with Iran and its regional proxies.
There may be reasons for Israel to change its methods, but assuming that it will cause a reduction in hostility from the other side is definitely not one of them.
For years, I have discussed what I call the If/Then fallacy. So many people who really do want peace make a completely wrong assumption: that conciliatory Israeli actions will lead to conciliatory Arab responses without signed agreements mandating that response.
There are many examples. Back in 1988, people said that if Israel offered a peace plan than no one would fault Israel is the Palestinians rejected it. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was assumed to lead to a stop in rocket attacks from Gaza. Israel's withdrawal from the Blue Line in Lebanon was said to end Hezbollah's very reason for existence.
Last year, Israel negotiated a maritime border agreement with Lebanon, and "experts" said that this would stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel because it has something to lose.
How has that worked out since October 7? How many nations would support Israel wanting to reclaim the disputed areas in the Mediterranean because Hezbollah resumed firing rockets and murdering Israelis?
The if/then fallacy assumes that Israel's enemies are rational actors who respond to goodwill gestures or conciliatory actions with their own goodwill. It is Westerners applying their own moral standards towards people who most certainly do not share them.
Peace Now's entire existence is based on the idea that if Israel withdraws from the territories, then the world will be on Israel's side should war break out. We see in Gaza now that the world's sympathy with Israel has a time limit, and the world really expects Israel to live and cooperate with terror groups dedicated to its destruction. If/then doesn't work.
Even Israel had bought into its own if/then fallacy: If Israel would loosen up restrictions on Gaza, then there would be less friction and Israel would be more secure. Yet October 7 occurred at the very moment when Israel had allowed more imports and exports to Gaza, and more movement between Gaza and Israel, then at any time since before the Hamas takeover of the sector.
If/then logic says October 7 should have been impossible.
The same people who insist on the goodwill portion of the if/then fallacy have a flipside version: if the US would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, it would unleash a torrent of terrorism against the US. They were wrong even then.
Israel lives in a region where goodwill isn't respected - but strength is. Israelis would much prefer if this wasn't the case, but sadly, it is. That is one reason why Arab reaction to the Gaza war has been so muted on the diplomatic front (the other being that most Arab governments see the Muslim Brotherhood as the same existential threat to them that Hamas is to Israel.)
In the Middle East, goodwill gestures never lead to peace. But unwavering strength leads to deterrence, and with luck and the proper leadership, that can lead to peace.
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PBS decided to tackle the topic, and they interviewed the decidedly non-expert Nazi memorabilia collector Marc Garlasco along with someone who really is an expert, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula.
Even though the interview was quite brief, Deptula wiped the floor with Garlasco:
The use of a weapon is highly dependent upon the effects that need to be accomplished.
The collateral damage concerns regarding a particular target, and the accuracy of the weapon system in its entirety, not just the bomb itself. A dumb bomb delivered by a smart aircraft can still be accurate.
So, there are legitimate reasons to use low-cost dumb bombs. An example is hitting a weapons storage location in an area where intelligence has determined there are no collateral damage or civilian casualty concerns.
In other cases, there are fleeting targets that don't allow for the process of obtaining coordinates for GPS-guided weapons or obstacles that prevent a laser-guided delivery. So the pilot with a precise delivery system can quickly get to the target and deliver accurately before the opportunity evaporates.
The bottom line is, I have seen the exquisite care the Israeli Defense Force takes to avoid civilian casualties. They have extraordinarily stringent rules for avoiding collateral damage. And I'm told by a very good source that Israel only uses dumb bombs after they clear an area.
AFP then got more information that CNN didn't bother with:
Israeli air force officers on Monday defended their actions in war against Hamas.
"All the bombs we use are high-precision bombs," an officer told reporters during a military-organized visit of the Palmahim air base, on the Mediterranean coast south of Tel Aviv.
To the Israeli officer, whose name is barred from publication due to Israeli censorship rules, "we don't need the Americans to understand we want to limit casualties."
"We did not need to change our principles" in light of international concern, he argued, saying Israeli forces had aimed at limiting civilian casualties "from the beginning".
"There (are) no dumb bombs" used in the current war, he told reporters.
"All the bombs have accurate (targets), some of them by GPS, some of them by cameras, some of them by computers" on board fighter jets.
The terminology is inconsistent - bombs without internal guidance systems are still considered "dumb" - but his point about precision is accurate.
When he says "computers," he is referring to systems like a Continuously Computed Release Point (CCRP) which can be used to accurately bomb targets (even when covered by clouds.) CCRP uses radar to identify the target. The computer then puts a bomb fall line on the pilot's heads up display. The pilot flies on that virtual line, and the computer will automatically take into account altitude, speed, drag and all the other factors needed before it releases the bomb at the right moment to accurately hit the target.
Even a "dumb" bomb.
As mentioned, the implication that Israel does not care about civilian casualties because some of the weapons it uses do not have internal GPS systems or fins to help keep them on course is simply a libel. The smarts are with the pilot, the fighter's computer and the circumstances that allow the IDF to use a cheaper weapon effectively and save the smarter ones for when they are needed.
But, hey, if human rights groups are so concerned about the Palestinian lives they claim are being needlessly lost because the Israeli Air Force cannot be accurate enough in its bombing, they should lobby for the US to supply Israel with more JDAM kits and smart bombs. Sure it costs American taxpayers more, but they really want to save innocent lives and agree that Hamas targets are legitimate, don't they?
(h/t Adam L)
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
To the literal-minded, and others who do not yet recognize the character of the pathologies ushered in with the age of the Empire of Palestine, it may seem bewildering, for instance, to see LGBTQ+ organizations demonstrating on behalf of a Hamas triumph. But Queers for Palestine don’t need to be told how Hamas actually deals with queers in Gaza and the West Bank. That’s irrelevant. In the Empire of Palestine all difference is transcended. It’s not a place, it’s a spiritual principle guided by the inversion of reality and governed by the equation 2+2=5.
Few in the climate change movement could have been surprised to hear Greta Thunberg express her desire to “crush Zionism.” In her strident warnings of catastrophic global climate change and the end of humanity, the Empire of Palestine has always been the subtext, a land of chaos and confusion, an inverted Eden in the desert presided over by an unforgiving earth goddess.
The Empire of Palestine is an aesthetic convention. It’s an “open-air prison” and “the Riviera of the Levant.” It’s a forgery. A postcard from the continent of unreason.
Climate millenarianism, the mass replacement of native populations, the government-sanctioned sterilization of children—everywhere you look the mark of civilizational suicide is on the horizon as Western elites assemble under the imperial banner. Flown in European capitals and university campuses, it represents the longings of a powerful faction within the West of those exhausted by life and wanting one last time to feel something like life coursing through their veins as they await the cleansing fire, redemption culminating in the coup de grace.
It was inevitable they, too, would stand against the Jews, who have chosen life over death.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said last week that America will impose travel bans on “extremist [Israeli] settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank”.
He went on: As President Biden has repeatedly said, those attacks are unacceptable. Last week in Israel, I made clear that the United States is ready to take action using our own authorities. Today, the State Department is implementing a new visa restriction policy targeting individuals believed to have been involved in undermining peace, security or stability in the West Bank, including through committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities.
Who will these blacklisted “settlers” be? Apparently no names will be published. The Times of Israel has reported: The announcement will likely only include the number of settlers being banned from the US, rather than their names, the Israeli official said, explaining that the US hopes that the anonymity will serve as a deterrent against those considering targeting Palestinians who won’t know whether they’ve been blacklisted or not.
How will the US authorities identify these violent “settlers”? Will they be people who have been convicted by the Israelis? How will the Americans obtain those names and details? Or will they perhaps just pluck a number at random without even knowing any details?
In subsequent briefings, the State Department seemed to suggest that Palestinians who had committed violent attacks on Israelis would also be blacklisted. Blinken didn’t spell this out, merely saying: We will continue to seek accountability for all acts of violence against civilians in the West Bank, regardless of the perpetrator or the victim
but added:
We will also continue to engage the Palestinian Authority to make clear it must do more to curb Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
Really? What exactly has the State Department been doing up till now to get the PA to curb attacks on Israelis? Does “continue to engage the PA” to this end include the funding that the Biden administration continues to pay the PA, regardless of its refusal to stop paying rewards to terrorists and their families — funding that contravenes the Taylor Force Act that restricts such funds unless the PA ends such stipends? Surely such rewards for terrorism are actions that “undermine peace, security or stability in the West Bank”?
Will the Americans perhaps be blacklisting those terrorists the PA has rewarded with American money? Will they indeed blacklist the PA’s leader Mahmoud Abbas for glorifying, funding and inciting terrorism? Or does Blinken think the murder of Israelis isn’t as bad as Israeli “settler” hooliganism?
These soldiers were thrown into a war that they did not want. Many of them have left regular civilian jobs to go risk their lives in a land full of boobytraps and where ruthless murderers could be popping out of a multitude of tunnels at any time.
Since the ground operation started on October 27, I have been thinking of these soldiers and I have been praying for them, at least as much as an atheist can pray. If there is any form of God above, I want that God to see and hear that the soldiers of the IDF are doing the necessary work of peace.
I want that God to understand that the world failed Israelis and Gazans by allowing Hamas to transform Gaza into a terror machine that uses civilians as its shield. They failed by providing funding that was to be used for services to Gazans but was used for terrorism instead, right under the eyes of the so-called charitable organizations.
I want that God to understand that decades of lies and a false narrative about Jewish history and about Israel are responsible for this war and for every death on both sides. The common canard that Israel is a colony of Europe is not an innocent lie. It is a lie that perpetuates war by brainwashing generations to hate Israel and all Jews.
I want that God to be on the side of the soldiers of the IDF every second of every day until they are done and back home safe with their families.
This is my prayer as an atheist. Since the powers on this earth do not have the correct priorities and do not recognize those who are risking their lives for peace, I am left to hope against any real expectation that there is a power above us who cares.
Residents of Efrat Concerned for their security say yes to only
Jewish and foreign workers
Interview with Stephanie Treger
Stephanie Treger is determined to keep her family safe by
keeping Arabs without Israeli citizenship out of Efrat where she lives. Here
in Efrat, in the heart of Judea, we know what happened on October 7th.
Regular Gazans stampeded that fence, alongside Hamas, and joined right in with
the slaughter.
From Treger’s point of view then, there is no choice. We
have to stop letting them in to clean our schools; build our homes; and fill
our prescriptions at the pharmacy. To be clear, “them” means non-Israeli Arabs.
As such, Stephanie Treger has sparked a modest grassroots effort
to explore the exclusive use of Jewish and foreign labor in her town. She began
by gathering the opinions and ideas of lots and lots of women. A petition was carefully
composed in language hopefully inoffensive to all, and circulated in both
Hebrew and English.
Will Treger succeed in her mission? Where are things going,
and how will it all play out? Will the residents of Efrat be forced to allow
the entry and use of non-Israeli Arab labor?
Stephanie Treger
A busy mother of eight, Stephanie gave graciously of her time
to answer my many questions about this initiative. As I always do with
interview subjects, I asked her for a few lines of biographical data from which
I would cobble together my intro. What she wrote was so cool, I’m quoting it
here verbatim:
My name is Stephanie Treger, I am 36 years old. I live in
Efrat, Gush Etzion, Israel, with my husband Brandon and our eight children. We
made aliyah seven years ago from South Africa, Cape Town. We own Power Coffeeworks, a
coffee roastery in Shuk Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem. We made aliyah based on
our Zionism and belief in the Jewish people, our past, present, and future.
Varda Epstein: You’re
one of the women at the forefront of the effort to bar non-Israeli workers from
Efrat. The petition has been up since December 7th, a full two
months after the October attacks. Why now? Were the attacks the impetus for
this effort or had you already been working on this?
Stephanie Treger: Correct, I am. It did take some time to
get the ball rolling to start this initiative. I believe the women who have
started this organisation together with me were in survival mode for some time after
7/10. Most of our husbands and partners are serving, which left us alone, and
once the true magnitude of the devastation became apparent, we got right on it.
It also took time to go public; even with a simple petition
it had to be done slowly, the wording of our letter needed to be politically
correct. We took opinions from many women at the start. This is a very large
issue, politically and emotionally. There are over 3 million Arabs living in Judea
and Samaria who need jobs, and who also fulfill jobs that keep our cities
running. Before the attacks on 7/10, this was a background issue for us all,
but we just carried on as normal, it was just too big to deal with.
Varda Epstein: Efrat
is a very modern town with many professionals among the residents. Are you
meeting any resistance to your campaign? Can you talk about that? What
percentage of Efrat residents would you say support allowing in only Jewish and
foreign workers?
Stephanie Treger: In all honesty, I am shocked at the lack
of support to date. At the same time, though we have not yet opened the tables
for discussion, we are at least not in argument with or meeting resistance from
non-supporters. Still, nearly two weeks after launching a simple petition, we
have only retrieved 650 odd signatures in a city of over 14,000 residents.
After the 7/10 massacre by thousands of non-Israeli Arabs, I
am surprised that this community, made up of extremely intelligent
professionals, would want to resume “the norm” and continue bringing in
non-Israeli Arab workers. At two months after 7/10, our eyes have been truly
opened, watching the videos and testimonies of the survivors as they are
released. We know how horrific this infiltration was and how it was planned. The
intelligence collected to launch such an attack took a certain kind of evil
genius. This was planned meticulously and we have proof of that from a variety
of sources.
How can we possibly stand by and say “Never again”? More
like “again” every few years, if we continue on in this way.
Varda Epstein: Some
would say the idea of barring entry to your town of a specific ethnic
demographic is racism. What would you say to them?
Stephanie Treger: I am a non-racist South African. I was
raised in a racist country, and this is not racism. This is not an issue of
color or ethnicity. This is an issue of protecting our families from a cult of
terrorists whose sole intention is to murder us. If that were not the case, we
would be living in peace. Simple.
We Jews cherish life. We want peace, we do not want war and
we do not want poverty, but sadly, until Hamas and the other terrorist cells
seize to exist, we have to protect our people.
Varda Epstein: Arab
workers can only enter and work in Efrat accompanied by a security guard. Why
is this measure not enough to keep the residents of Efrat safe?
Stephanie Treger: Since this rumor was brought to the fore,
I have documented many occasions where Israeli Arabs were not accompanied by
armed guards. So no, the measure is not enough to keep us safe.
The problem here is manpower and I don't personally blame
the municipality or the mayor as some do. We have a huge problem on our hands.
Our resources are low, we have zero manpower and I have no doubt that our local
government is trying to find solutions. But we also need to take responsibility
as a community.
We have to mobilize and work within the system to find
solutions. There are many residents in this community who do not work. These
residents could pull together and assist in cleaning the schools or work at
local cafes. There are ways to create solutions but we need all hands on deck.
Varda Epstein: What
types of work have Arab workers performed in Efrat, up until now?
Stephanie Treger: This exact question is what prompts my
concerns for our safety. The Arab workers who have previously worked in Efrat
have been able to cover every corner of our city possible. From cleaners in
homes, to cleaners in schools and emergency departments; from workers in our
cafes and restaurants to garbage disposal to street cleaners; and from handymen
to construction
workers.
There is an endless untold amount of intelligence that might
have been and probably was collected by Arab workers, endless over the passing
years. The workers are often unaccompanied by security, and safety checks are
lax, in my opinion.
Varda Epstein: Why would
a mostly right-wing populace hire Arabs to begin with? Why not Jews—their own
people?
Stephanie Treger: This seems to be the crux of our struggle.
We are not hiring Jews because Jews are more expensive. Jews need to shell out
for taxes, arnona, and pensions. At
the same time, the incomes of prospective Jewish employees are low because they
must pay the same taxes as their prospective (Jewish) employees.
Arabs, conversely, can charge below half-price; be paid in cash;
they have no amenity payments; and do not contribute to our society. This is
something that needs to be dealt with at government level. Government now has
this issue on its table. Cabinets are approving “no entry”. Now they need to
find the solutions to manage it.
Varda Epstein: The
petition appears to distinguish between Israeli and non-Israeli Arabs. Why? Are
only non-Israeli Arabs dangerous? You don’t want to keep out the others?
Stephanie Treger: Personally, I see no difference at
present. Even if Israeli Arab X doesn't want to be a terrorist, Hamas is
holding guns to the heads of X’s children. Should he refuse to comply with the
cult of Hamas, his entire family will be annihilated. I too, would surrender if
my children's lives were at risk.
I may want to keep them out, but it’s illegal to keep them
out. Israeli Arabs with ID cards cannot legally be held back from entering any part
of Israel.
Varda Epstein: This
campaign was started by women. Why do you think that is? Are men less concerned
with this issue?
Stephanie Treger: Men are at the forefront on the borders;
we women are at the forefront of our homes. It's pointless having the men
protect our borders if we are not doing the same in our communities. I live in a
35-year-old home. My doors are not secure, and my window frames are old. I do
not have a safe room. I am home alone, with 8 children under 13.
Gd forbid there was an infiltration of Efrat. I, as a woman,
armed or not, would not be able to protect my family. We women want to serve
and protect and it begins every time we wake up alive.
Varda Epstein: Is
there some kind of precedent that led to this effort? Are non-Israeli workers
known to attack their Jewish employers?
Stephanie Treger: My sister sat in her safe room for 23
hours with her baby and husband in Kibbutz Kfar Azza on 7/10, while her
sister-in-law, cousins, and friends were raped, beheaded, burnt alive, and brutally
murdered next door. Some taken hostage. My passion for this initiative is
personal. I also have a love for my people. Never again is NOW.
Varda Epstein: There are Arab
businesses that have cropped up right on Efrat’s doorstep, just outside the
northern gate, and many Efrat residents appear happy to frequent them. But recently,
a video was released showing one of these new business owners calling for
settlers to die. How do feel about that?
Stephanie Treger: When you see videos of neighboring Arabs
promote the death of "settlers" we naturally get concerned. Videos
such as those directed by Corey Gil-Shuster are eye-openers to us all. The
specific video I have in mind is of a man who lives adjacent to Efrat. His
property borders that of our beautiful coffee shop that we and our children
love to enjoy during the day and in the evenings.
In this man's driveway is a car wash and a laundromat which
until 7/10 were used by the Jews of Efrat. He was earning his living
from the Jews of Efrat. Since 7/10 he has closed his gate and is not earning a
salary to support his family. So to what extent do we believe that at some
point the consequences of poverty will kick in?
When will he get angry enough with the Jews of Efrat that
eventually he will fall in with a terrorist organisation to have revenge on the
people he hated before we even shut him down.
This new reality is sad but true. We Jews who live in Judea
are at risk for terror and we must not take risks in protecting our families
and our people.
Varda Epstein: Do you
think that there is a reluctance among the residents of Efrat, even after the
events of October 7, to adopt a general attitude of distrust toward non-Israeli
Arabs, especially those with whom they’ve formed casual relationships? Is there
a feeling of, “Oh, he’d never do something like that. He’s always polite and
friendly, and gives me good service.”
How would you
illustrate the dangers of this outlook, from your perspective?
Stephanie Treger: I would point them to the words of Professor
Arye Eldad, who headed the plastic surgery and burns unit at Hadassah Medical
Center, and is also a former member of Knesset:
I was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin
Bank, which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for
every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations. This skin
bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where
I was the chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin
for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in
Beersheba after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among
Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair. We supplied all
the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was successfully treated by my
friend and colleague Prof. Lior Rosenberg, and discharged to return to Gaza.
She was invited for regular follow up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheba.
One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant
to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved
her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they
would forgive her.
This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims
in the Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a
civilizational conflict.
Varda Epstein: Is
this campaign going to continue to be a local, Efrat phenomenon, or do you have
bigger plans for this—perhaps to take this national?
Stephanie Treger: We will see; we can't manage alone. We all
need to hold hands. We were lucky to see that it went to government last week.
We will take it day by day and do our best to succeed. It's all we can do
really.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Friday, December 22, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
