Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 18, 2023

Israel is fighting a completely different war since the ceasefire

The Economist published this map of structural damage in Gaza. Light pink is before the ceasefire, and darker red is since the ceasefire.

Even at a glance, one can see that Israel's targeting is much different now.

If you compare this with a satellite map of Gaza, you see that most of the damage since the ceasefire has been outside of crowded residential areas. Most seem to be aimed at industrial districts and what appears to be farmland. (I imagine tank damage might count as structural damage as well.)

The Economist maps seems to be slightly off when comparing their streets with the satellite, but this section near a curve in Wadi Gaza where there is heavy damage is illustrative.

Here's the satellite image of the area:

The apparent target north of the wadi is the Al Zahraa Chalet hotel and a structure next to it.

What appears to be happening is that as Israel gathers more and more intelligence, especially from captured terrorists, it is discovering many more specific targets that Hamas uses. As its intel improves, the need for heavy bombing to collapse tunnels decreases, since now the IDF can target specific tunnel entrances - very likely under a hotel - or weapons caches.

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!

An op-ed in Al Jazeera by Mahmoud Abdel Hadi tears off what little mask it might have ever had that it was only "anti-Zionist."

Regarding Biden’s statement which he repeats constantly and with determination, "If there was no Israel, we would have to create Israel," but in the course of the genocidal war led by the Zionist-American alliance against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is proven day after day; The truth is the opposite, and the most accurate sentence in expressing this relationship is (If there had not been a United States, the Jews would have had to create it), which is consistent with the facts of history regarding the birth of the United States of America, and its relationship with the Freemasonry movement, in which the Jews had the largest role establishing and leading it.....This is the truth that we always run away from, for fear of being accused of a conspiracy theory, or of calling for a defeatist tendency in front of the Jewish minority that controls the most powerful country in the world, and even many other Western and non-Western countries.

Hadi's evidence is, frankly, hilarious.

The rise of Jewish influence in the United States

The history of Jewish influence in the United States is very similar to its history in other ancient and modern Western countries. We can quickly go through the history of Jewish influence in the United States. The Jewish presence there was linked to the early colonial campaigns in North America in the 16th century AD, before the United States declared its independence, and it was not long before large numbers of Jews immigrated there. The Jews of Europe came in the middle of the 19th century AD, and their number reached about a quarter of a million by 1840 AD.. They were involved in trade, industry, banking, banking, cinema, media, literature, art, and others.

Yes, we cannot discount the Jewish movie moguls of the 1840s.

There's no pretense here of "anti-Zionism." The most popular Arab media outlet is unabashedly antisemitic, and half a billion Arabs consume pure Jew-hatred regularly.

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!

What you can learn from Gaza tunnel steel doors

The IDF released this video showing construction of Gaza tunnels (h/t Adam)

The video gives a small indication of how much Hamas has invested in building these huge, extensive tunnel networks.

One small part of that that struck me are the many steel doors that Hamas placed in strategic locations to make any Israeli attack much more difficult.

These are custom built doors that are effectively the same as bank vault doors.

Where does Hamas get them from?

I couldn't find any mention of steel doors in the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism site that monitors all legal imports into Gaza. And chances are even if a Gaza bank would request such an item, Israel would have rejected it as a banned dual-use item.

Which means that Hamas owns or pays major steel works industries in Gaza to build these doors.

The same goes for the steel tracks that the tunnels use for moving material.

The tunnel industry is not only underground. The support for the tunnels - ventilation, heavy digging machinery, furniture, lighting - are all set up aboveground and then brought down. It isn't only Hamas members doing this, but regular Gazans who need jobs being paid by Hamas for terror support.

To Hamas, all of Gazas' local industry is a support structure for their terror operations. Anything they do that is legitimate is simply a cover for their main goal of murdering Jews.

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!

12/17 Links: President Herzog: ‘A war for Middle East stability’; IDF reveals largest Hamas tunnel discovery; We Were Taught to Hate Jews

From Ian:

Andrew Roberts: ‘A war for Middle East stability’: Israeli President Isaac Herzog on what’s at stake in the conflict with Hamas

President Isaac ‘Bougie’ Herzog is Israeli aristocracy. His father, Chaim Herzog, was the sixth president, serving between 1983 and 1993; his grandfather Yitzhak Herzog was chief rabbi; his maternal uncle was Abba Eban, the most famous of the country’s foreign ministers. After leading the Israeli Labor party and the parliamentary opposition in the Knesset between 2013 and 2017, Isaac became Israel’s 11th president in July 2021. He is the first to be born in Israel since the Declaration of Independence 75 years ago. My first question rather asks itself: how is the war going? ‘Depends on what you mean by war,’ Herzog quickly replies, before turning the discussion away from Gaza to ‘the grand picture’. He believes worries about whether the battle against Hamas might morph into a larger regional conflict are already out of date. ‘It’s regional already,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately, it is regional because elements that emanate constantly from Tehran and its proxies are carrying out this war, whether it’s attacks from Lebanon, from Iraq, from Syria and, of course, from Gaza, which was the original perpetrator of this heinous atrocity.’ He points to the recent Houthis’ piracy in capturing the Galaxy Leader, an Israeli-owned ship in the southern Red Sea, as merely the latest manifestation of the phenomenon.

Continuing in this vein, I ask about the disturbing claim that a Hamas terrorist had been found with instructions on how to launch chemical warfare in southern Israel. ‘Yes, [it is] true, including how to create a cyanide-deploying device and how to use it,’ he says. ‘Way beyond the horrible atrocities that we have seen; atrocities that humanity hasn’t seen in generations.’

Herzog, 63, who was a lawyer before his political career, believes that everybody should watch the footage that Hamas terrorists filmed themselves of the 7 October attack. ‘It is simply inconceivable,’ he says. ‘For all of us who believe in the family of nations, and the rules of liberty, and the dignity of human beings, seeing the Gazan people, not only from Hamas, [but] Gazan civilians, celebrate in the middle of Gaza’s streets over a body – a mutilated body of a young girl who simply went to a dance festival with her friends – is horrifically shocking.’

I ask why he thinks some Ivy League universities – including his alma mater, Cornell in New York – and so many liberal western elites have turned away from supporting Israel to embrace the Palestinian cause? There is even a director of a Canadian women’s group who has denied Israeli women were raped by Hamas terrorists. What is it about western civilisation today that means people can’t accept the things we have seen?

‘Because they are afraid to look in the mirror which has shattered before their eyes,’ he replies. ‘Unfortunately, I find rust: rust in the establishment, and rust in the temples of learning that we all admired and adored. They grew sclerotic in the way they looked at things, rather than judging the truth as it is, meaning there are cruel people in this world and sometimes it is very difficult to make peace with a culture that glorifies such attacks which have been going on for years.

‘And there are those who still do not understand that there is something called a war between good and evil. It somewhat reminds me of the way the approach was [in the 1930s] until Winston Churchill took over and explained the reality to the British people and the rest of the world. It takes time. It’s difficult. People don’t like to change their views so quickly, but we have to understand this is the culture we’re faced with.

‘There are evil forces who believe in jihad, which means none of us are eligible to live in this world because there will be another empire, an empire of evil which wants the infidels out. This is the real story. You can see it when they behead a teacher in France, or kill people on the Underground in Britain, or when they carry out 9/11, or when they chop the heads off babies in Israel.’

JPost Editorial: Israel-Hamas War: The stories of humanity, bravery the news misses

Swept up in the bad news frenzy that comes with war – which can hit everyone personally, directly affecting individuals, their family and friends, as well as communally and nationally – the soft stories of humanity tend to escape us: both those of us working in the journalism realm, as well as all of us on the consumer side of it.

In the whirlwind of all this, many journalists fall short in their responsibility of telling the stories of individuals.

From the moment Hamas’s brutal cross-border infiltration attack began on October 7, those accounts began flowing in at a sickly speed, along with everything else that day. The stories of bravery and humanity during Hamas's massacre

On that disastrous Saturday morning, IDF St.-Sgt. (res.) D. managed to get to Kibbutz Be’eri, which bore one of the larger brunts of violence on that tragic day. Upon arrival, he saw a house with flames licking up its side. He inched closer to see if there was anyone trapped in the house, and saw an elderly couple; he helped them out and brought them to safety, the IDF said.

Rami Davidian, from Moshav Patish in the northern Negev region, received a phone call early Saturday morning from someone begging him to help the friend of a friend stuck at the Supernova music festival in Re’im.

“By about 11 a.m., I understood the full picture of what was going on,” he said. The friend at the party sent him a GPS location for pickup. On the way, he said, he saw more young party-goers attempting to escape – some injured, which significantly slowed them down – among the trees and in the fields. “I picked them up as well,” Davidian said.

From that point on, he said, it became a race against time to try to save as many people as possible. He set up a system with a few friends to spread out as far as they could to rescue the injured. All of this under constant fire both from the Hamas terrorists and the IDF, because it was a chaotic situation where communication was cut, and he had no protection for himself.

We Were Taught to Hate Jews

The following five ex-Muslims grew up in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, but they were all indoctrinated, they say, with the same views on Jews and Israel. They remember a childhood shot through with antisemitic moments ranging from the mundane (one woman recalls her aunt claiming Jews put cancer in her vegetables at the market) to the deadly (a former extremist went as far as to pick a location in London for a terrorist attack he planned to carry out at 17).

These hateful ideas, repeated by their family members, religious leaders, and teachers, are part and parcel of the same animus, they say, that fueled Hamas’s attacks on October 7.

Some of the people you will hear from below have received death threats for speaking out on issues like antisemitism and sexism in the Muslim world. One uses a pen name to protect herself and her daughter from her terrorist ex-husband, who is currently jailed in Egypt. All of them came to reject their loathing for Jewish people and the West, and have rebuilt their lives in the wake of their realizations. Here are their stories, which you can read or click to listen to each author recite in the audio recordings below.

Darya Safai, 48, is a member of the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium. She was born in Tehran, Iran and lives in Belgium.

When I was born, Iran was still free. You could drink and dance, and women could wear whatever they wanted. I’ll never forget my first day of school after the Islamic Revolution. I was six, and my mother entered my room with a long, dark, and formless manteau and a piece of fabric for my hair and neck.

“My darling,” she said, “this is your uniform.”

I didn’t understand. I pointed to my closet and said, “But I have so many other beautiful dresses.”

She explained that I had to wear it if I wanted to become educated. I remember seeing the boy next door walk out his front door. He wore the same clothes he always did. I knew, but couldn’t accept, that my life would change, and his wouldn’t.

At my school in Tehran, in my new shapeless uniform, we read the Quran every morning and repeated sayings like, “Down with the USA, down with Israel.” To enter our classroom, we had to step on a painting of the Israeli flag on the ground. There are still universities in Iran that have painted American and Israeli flags on the ground, but most students walk around them.

The Iranian people and the Israelis are victims of the same monster—Islamists. In 1999, I was imprisoned under Ayatollah Khamenei for speaking out against the marginalization of women. I was 24. I was afraid that they wanted to execute me in jail, but instead they released me in the hopes that I would lead them to my husband, who was one of the leaders organizing protests against the Iranian regime. Luckily, a friend smuggled me in the back of his car to reunite with my husband in secret. We lived in Turkey for six months before moving to Belgium and have been married for 26 years.

When I saw the problems that we face in Belgium regarding radical Islam today, I began to write opinion pieces on the subject and eventually entered politics. I was elected to the Belgian Federal Parliament in 2019.

Islamists have ruined Iran, and they have destroyed the Middle East. Do we want to wait until this atrocity ruins everything in our Western countries too? As an elected official here in Belgium, I try to be the eyes and ears of some of the people who are sleeping.

Two @NYTimes reporters call IDF "Israeli occupation forces"

New York Times reporters Raja Abdulrahim and Iyad Abuheweila wrote this:

Israel haters never refer to the Israeli army by its official title of Israel Defense Forces. Instead, they consistently call it the "IOF," or "Israeli Occupation Forces."

And that is how these two reporters referred to the IDF as well.

The New York Times editors caught the slander and silently changed it to "Israeli forces" in a later version, but this shows that even they know that they hire reporters who hate Israel. Apparently, that us a feature, not a bug, but they are supposed to be a little less obvious.

The entire story is biased against Israel.

The IDF showed videos of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, showing dozens of people in civilian clothes with weapons surrendering from the hospital itself.

It released a video showing how weapons were hidden in the NICU of the hospital.

But the reporters wrote, "The Israeli military’s claims could not be independently verified."

Yet when Gazans made their own absurd claims, the reporters accepted them without any caveats:

“This is a big crime here inside Kamal Adwan Hospital,” said a local journalist, Anas Al-Sharif posted a video on social media of the rubble at the scene. “Dozens of bodies, the bulldozer rolled over them and left,” he said in the video he posted.

That is an absurd and completely slanderous claim. Yet the NYT reporters don't challenge it or add any additional notes about not being able to independently corroborate it.

Even information that could easily be proven false was not checked:

Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Gaza health ministry, said in a statement that at one point during the siege, the hospital’s medical staff and patients were forced to evacuate the hospital’s remaining buildings and gather in the courtyards in the cold winter weather.

The high temperature in Gaza City on Saturday was 81F, the low about 51F. It is not much different from the weather in Miami this week. The reporters are on the scene and know very well that Gaza is not cold. This is hardly "cold winter weather" - but they know they are writing for New Yorkers who will see that phrase and picture wintry, freezing weather.

This is not an oversight. This bias is deliberate, and the New York Times editors know very well that they are dealing with reporters who have no interest in the truth. They just soften the parts that make it too obvious that the New York Times has become a Hamas mouthpiece.

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!

We've discussed the honor.shame culture of the Arab world many times, and last week a perfect example came up.

From Times of Israel:

Visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that public pressure will not work on Hamas, rejecting the notion in Jerusalem that her agency isn’t doing enough to secure visits to the remaining 135 hostages in Gaza.

“You have every avenue, every right and every expectation to place public pressure on Hamas,” Netanyahu told Spoljaric during a portion of their meeting that the premier’s office filmed and issued to the press.

“It is not going to work because the more public pressure we seemingly would do, the more they will shut the door,” the Red Cross chief responded.

“I’m not sure about that. Why don’t you try?” Netanyahu asked the unconvinced Spoljaric.

This is how the West misunderstands the honor/shame culture, and how Hamas (and other Palestinians) take advantage of it.

When Hamas reacts strongly against the idea of allowing the ICRC to visit prisoners, that very vehemence is proof that pressure does work! Their anger is designed to keep the pressure off. The Western world usually recoils from confrontation and the Arab world takes advantage of that to avoid shame, making Westerners their own deputies in guarding their honor.

Arabs are very sensitive to looking immoral to the West. Insisting that they allow visits by the ICRC - especially when they falsely accuse Israel of not allowing those visits to prisoners - is not something htey can argue with logically, so they fall back on lashing out. That strategy almost always works, because the West doesn't understand honor/shame mechanism that caused the response.

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!

Two out of three young people believe Jews as a whole are "oppressors." Yes, 67% of young Americans have antisemitic opinions.

Last week I reported on a YouGov/economist survey that found that 23% of Americans from 18-30 felt that the Holocaust was "exaggerated," and 28% say Jews have too much influence in America.

I thought that this high percentage of young Americans holding explicitly antisemitic attitudes was the worst news I'd ever seen on that front.

It only took a week for something worse to come along.

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll of American voters taken December 13-14 found that two thirds of American voters aged 18-24 consider Jews as a class to be "oppressors" and that they should be treated as "oppressors."

This language is specifically oriented towards left-wing antisemitism, where all people are divided into "oppressed" or "oppressors." DEI, "intersectionality" and similar ideologies are creating a new class of American antisemites.

Look at the consistent increase of this antisemitic attitude across all age groups from older to younger. This shows, as clearly as possible. that the American education system is getting worse and worse over time. It has abdicated teaching morals and now is doing the opposite.

Young Americans were also the only group that felt that calling for the genocide of Jews on campus should be allowed as free speech:

This is even though 70% of that same group recognizes it as hate speech.

We thought we defeated the Soviet Union 30 years ago. But the exact hate that the Soviets taught are now mainstream in US education.

These results should be a clarion call to every American who cares about the future of our country. We are going down a path that, if left unchecked, will ultimately destroy the country.

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!

12/16 Links: ‘Never Again’ Is Right Now; The Hostage Tragedy Deepens; IDF Chief on the Death of Three Hostages: “I Am Responsible for What Happened”

From Ian:

Michal Cotler-Wunsh: ‘Never Again’ Is Right Now

While 'Never Again' signifies a call for the global community to adopt a proactive, preventative, and comprehensive stance against antisemitism, for the 75-year-young Jewish nation-state and Jewish communities worldwide, 10/7 represents a reawakening and solidification of a collective consciousness. It underscores the Jewish peoples’ status, on equal footing with all other nations, reaffirming our identity and our equal place in the world.

What the genocidal perpetrators of 10/7 and their allies did not factor in, is that for the “new Jew,” who returned to Zion after millennia of yearning and prayer to rebuild a sovereign state, bowing our heads to avoid drawing attention or identifying friends who would hide us in the attic is no longer an option.

The 10/7 massacre marks a pivotal “Never Again is Now” moment, symbolizing 75 years of the Jewish nation-state's journey of return as a people, reclaiming our collective identity, roots, memory, and homeland. It epitomizes the self-confidence required for action and courage in equally confronting hate of all kinds, including antisemitism. It renews the hope of generations by rightfully assigning blame to the perpetrators rather than internalizing it.

This must be a moment of reckoning for the many spaces that allowed antisemitism to fester and percolate, in its many forms, for decades.

A true commitment to “Never Again” — one that effects lasting global change — will recognize the 10/7 massacre of Jews in their nation state as the assault on humanity that it was intended to be, and “the Jewish question” as a litmus test for civilization as we know it, under attack by genocidal terror organizations and their supporting authoritarian regimes.

Together, we must rise to the challenge, lighting the way forward with moral clarity and courage, renewing our shared commitment to combatting antisemitism, so that — post 10/7 — “Never Again” will indeed be “Never Again.”

John Podhoretz: The Hostage Tragedy Deepens

The news today that the IDF, working to free hostages in Gaza, instead shot and killed three of them in a tragic battlefield calamity is so horrible it’s hard even to think about. But the truth is that scholars of war have thought about such matters before, and have come to an unambiguous conclusion. The Geneva Conventions require combatants in war to wear insignias or clothing that clearly identify them as combatants. Hamas does not do so, and in failing to do so, it was impossible for IDF forces to know the difference between captive and captor.

Article 44: “In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack.”

This language is mirrored in other places in the Geneva conventions to protect combatants should they be captured by the enemy—they need to be in uniform or wearing insignias indicating their status as combatants so that their opponents will know who they are and grant them prisoner-of-war status, which obliges humanitarian treatment.

Israel will mourn, and Israelis will rage and weep, and will demand to know how such a thing could have happened. The one thing they can be sure of is that the blame resides entirely with Hamas.

12/15 Links Pt2: Atrocity denial in real-time; How Terrorists Exploit Humanitarian Organizations; The Problem Isn’t Hypocrisy, It’s Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Atrocity denial in real-time

It was a wake-up call for many, especially those of us in the global Jewish community. Overnight, the illusion of safety shattered, much like the dreams of anyone who's binge-watched a horror series alone at night. But now we were all collectively trapped in that nightmare, and couldn’t wake up no matter how hard with pitched.

The history of the Holocaust is taught in many schools around the world. “Never forget” and “never again” are sentiments that are echoed within that curriculum. Yet, while some might scoff at the persistent advocacy for Holocaust education, insisting that it’s hitting them over the head, a nationwide survey in 2020 reveals that the under-40 crowd seems to have missed the memo. Shockingly, one in ten respondents haven’t even heard of the word “Holocaust,” let alone being aware that as many as 6 million Jews perished in it.

Further, nearly a quarter of those questioned said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, had been exaggerated or that they weren’t sure. Meanwhile in Canada, one in five young people (under 34) either hasn't heard of the Holocaust or isn't sure what it is. And in Britain, one in twenty adults flat-out deny that it ever took place. Ah, the privilege of blissful ignorance.

But it's not just ignorance; there's an entire industry that has been propped up and dedicated to Holocaust denial, complete with books, “movies,” and groups. To make matters worse, alarmingly, fewer Holocaust survivors are around to share their firsthand accounts and counteract the flames of denialism.

Nearly half of the 1000 people surveyed had stated that they’ve seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.

I’ve always thought that denials of genocide—such as the Holocaust —were something that happened over time, with history slipping away and being re-written.

However, I never expected to be observing this in real time.

While initially the so-called “resistance” was celebrated by a subset of society, this soon turned into full-fledged denials of Hamas’ actions on Oct 7. Despite overwhelming evidence in the form of videos captured and shared by Hamas themselves and shared on Telegram channels and elsewhere, I would read and hear people claiming that they had only targeted Israeli military. Absurd claims emerged using supposedly ‘leaked’ footage where an Israeli helicopter shoots at Nova music festival goers. That video was viewed over 30 million times on X alone. The video, which was actually originally shared by the IDF on Oct 9, was showing their attacks on specific Gazan targets—certainly NOT indiscriminate bombings of music festival attendees in Israel.

I’ve heard countless denials of the rapes of women (and men), despite overwhelming evidence in the form of physical evidence, forensics, and a number of witness testimonies. Women’s rights groups, meanwhile, remained silent—thus offering a vacuum for denialists to fill. Proponents of “me too” also stayed silent. Worse, the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre’s director signed an open letter calling Hamas perpetrating “sexual violence” an “unverified accusation.” It took UN Women nearly two months to issue a lukewarm condemnation of the brutal attacks. “We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks,” they wrote, following a letter writing campaign urging them to speak up. Better late than never though, right?

John Podhoretz: The Hostage Tragedy Deepens

The news today that the IDF, working to free hostages in Gaza, instead shot and killed three of them in a tragic battlefield calamity is so horrible it’s hard even to think about. But the truth is that scholars of war have thought about such matters before, and have come to an unambiguous conclusion. The Geneva Conventions require combatants in war to wear insignias or clothing that clearly identify them as combatants. Hamas does not do so, and in failing to do so, it was impossible for IDF forces to know the difference between captive and captor.

Article 44: “In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack.”

This language is mirrored in other places in the Geneva conventions to protect combatants should they be captured by the enemy—they need to be in uniform or wearing insignias indicating their status as combatants so that their opponents will know who they are and grant them prisoner-of-war status, which obliges humanitarian treatment.

Israel will mourn, and Israelis will rage and weep, and will demand to know how such a thing could have happened. The one thing they can be sure of is that the blame resides entirely with Hamas.

Seth Mandel: The False Narrative of ‘Indiscriminate Bombing’

CNN has been excitedly promoting an “exclusive” story that about 40 percent of Israel’s airdropped munitions in Gaza have been “unguided,” due to the use of “dumb” bombs. This, the piece suggests, is what the White House was referring to when it accused Israel of “indiscriminate” attacks. A Washington Post story picking up on the CNN piece repeats the word “indiscriminate” like a mantra.

“Unguided munitions,” CNN tells us, “are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in such a densely populated area like Gaza.”

“Typically,” you say? So there are ways to use these bombs that are not, in fact, “less precise,” yes? What might be an example of such a case?

Twelve paragraphs later we find out—plot twist!—that Israel’s current war in Gaza is one such case. Which is to say, the subject of the story is a prime example of when the thesis of the story isn’t true.

The CNN piece thus reveals itself to be a “dumb bomb.”

Here is CNN debunking itself: “A US official told CNN that the US believes that the Israeli military is using the dumb bombs in conjunction with a tactic called ‘dive bombing,’ or dropping a bomb while diving steeply in a fighter jet, which the official said makes the bombs more precise because it gets it closer to its target. The official said the US believes that an unguided munition dropped via dive-bombing is similarly precise to a guided munition.”

Ah. Well, glad we settled that. Unfortunately, other outlets picked up the story before they read that paragraph. It’s almost as if, instead of educating its readers, CNN was preying on their lack of knowledge.

When asked about the president’s own comment that some Israeli attacks were “indiscriminate,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Biden was referring to “global opinion, which also matters.” Indeed it does, and this story itself is a great example of the feedback loop that manufactures such “global opinion.”

Aiding Terror: How Terrorists Exploit Humanitarian Organizations

More evidence that military force deters terrorism comes from a recent statement of Hamas’s second-in-command Moussa Abu Marzouk, who recently told the Washington, DC-based news outlet Al-Monitor that his organization would consider subsuming itself under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and seeking a two-state solution. Although he can hardly be taken at his word, this sudden embrace of what Hamas has long considered anathema must be chalked up to the success of the IDF’s campaign in Gaza—which hasn’t caused Abu Marzouk to radicalize his rhetoric, but to moderate it.

This same Abu Marzouk stated in an October 23 interview that it is the responsibility of the United Nations, not Hamas, to provide for and protect Gazan civilians. This surprisingly frank admission gets to the heart of how the group has used the massive international aid—from the UN, from NGOs, and from Western and Muslim countries—that flows into the strip. Ari Heistein and Nathaniel Rabkin explain:

Over the fifteen years during which it has controlled the Gaza Strip, Hamas has honed exploitation of aid into a science. The group does not generally expropriate aid items directly, but rather uses its control of the government apparatus in Gaza to ensure that donor funds are siphoned off, either directly to Hamas or to entities it controls. For example, the strip’s private security companies are all licensed by the Hamas Ministry of Interior, and their staff must be approved and trained by the ministry. UN and other aid-group facilities therefore end up paying Hamas to guard them.

Hamas also imposes high taxes on goods in the strip, including food staples, meaning that a substantial portion of the salaries paid to local aid-agency employees winds up in Hamas’s coffers. Given the enormous role played by the UN and other international groups in Gaza, taxes paid by their employees likely account for a substantial fraction of Hamas’s revenues. . . . Hamas also tries to directly involve itself in the work of UN agencies in Gaza.

A similar strategy, write Heistein and Rabkin, is employed by another Iran-backed terrorist group, the Houthis, who have plunged Yemen into a disastrous humanitarian crisis and are now profiting from the aid meant to alleviate it. “In Syria,” Heistein and Rabkin add, “a government that operates more like a terrorist organization provides a hint of what Hamas and the Houthis could become, if they win international recognition.”

The UN Human Rights X account tweeted something spectacularly stupid:

Israel’s flooding of tunnels with saltwater could have severe adverse human rights impacts, some long term. Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk, as well as widespread, long-term & severe environmental damage. Civilians must be protected.

Hold on: when they say " Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk," doesn't that mean that they are admitting that Hamas tunnels are warehouses for the aid that the world has been sending into Gaza for the past decades?

Critics of the flooding plan, like Eurasia Review, also say things like "Flooding the tunnels could damage Gaza’s aquifer and soil, if seawater and hazardous substances in the tunnels seep into them."

"Hazardous substances" means "explosives."

Now, why might there be explosives in the tunnels?

People don't mind that Hamas definitely places explosives underneath Gaza population centers - only that Israel's plan to destroy the tunnels might cause them to leak into the groundwater. They don't care that Hamas definitely digs tunnels underneath civilian buildings - only that those tunnels' collapses could affect the buildings above.

Anyone see a problem here.

The list of bad things listed in that article that "could" happen if Israel floods the tunnels is almost comical, but the pièce de résistance (so to speak) comes at the end.

Flooding the tunnels could affect the cultural heritage and identity of Gaza, which has a rich and diverse history and culture. The tunnels are part of Gaza’s landscape and memory, and they reflect its character and spirit. Flooding the tunnels could .. affect the cultural expressions and practices of Gaza’s people, such as the art, literature and folklore that are inspired by or related to the tunnels.

Yes, the terror tunnels must be protected because they are an important part of Gaza's culture!

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12/15 Links Pt1: More Than 30 Americans Died on October 7 — Where Is the Outrage?; Israel Is Flushing Hamas Out of Gaza; Hamas rigs dolls, in ambush on IDF forces in Gaza

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: The Left’s Discomfort with Israel’s War on Hamas Doesn’t Matter

Kirby’s admission — one he has made before — that Israel has subordinated its operational goals to humanitarian concerns in a way that exceeds even what the U.S. would condone is certainly true. The IDF exposed its soldiers to unnecessary risks in the effort to capture the Hamas stronghold in Shifa hospital, in stark contrast to how America cleared out an ISIS-occupied hospital in Mosul from the air. Unguided munitions and submunitions are part of America’s arsenal and the U.S. does not hesitate to use them on the battlefield when it makes operational sense to do so. Nor do we have any problem exporting those weapons to our allies and partners abroad, including Ukraine. Speaking of Ukraine, the United States has expressed its concerns with how Kyiv conducts domestic law enforcement, but that has not stopped Washington from exporting weapons platforms and ordnance to Ukraine in the effort to beat back the Russian onslaught. The alleged misconduct of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is just that — a domestic law-enforcement issue that should have little bearing on how the White House views the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas.

And that war has so far been wildly successful. In an interview with Al-Monitor, senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk all but sued for a peace that preserves his terrorist organization’s existence. “A senior Hamas official suggested the Gaza-based militant group would recognize Israel as a step toward ending the long-running divisions between the Palestinian factions,” the report read. “You should follow the official stance,” Marzouk conceded. “The official stance is that the [Palestinian Liberation Organization] has recognized the state of Israel.” That overture may not appeal to Israeli policy-makers, but it is an overture, nonetheless. The remark betrays the terrorist group’s recognition that its days are numbered if the war continues apace.

Does the Biden administration recognize that this is the outcome it needs? Does it realize that it has invested American prestige in the speedy and victorious conclusion of Israel’s righteous war, and the failure to secure that outcome with all possible alacrity saps it of its credibility? Does it understand that the double standards it is applying to Israel to appease an unappeasable faction of malcontents on the fringes of the Democratic coalition imperil far more important objectives?

The Biden administration is getting wobbly at precisely the wrong moment, and for no discernible reason other than that a loud minority within Biden’s coalition cannot abide its association with Israel’s war. The proper response to this queasiness would be to tell the dissenters to make themselves a chamomile tea and lie down for a spell while the responsible adults in the room advance U.S. interests abroad. The grownups can take it from here.

More Than 30 Americans Died on October 7 — Where Is the Outrage?

Where is the outrage that so many Americans were killed? Why is it that Americans with dual Israeli citizenship are treated with such disdain? If my suspicions are correct, this is another example of the antisemitism that is deeply and sadly ingrained in American society. Perhaps some Americans don’t consider these dual citizens as fellow Americans. Sure, some of these dual citizens speak like they come from Brooklyn, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, because they do, but in reality, the argument would go, their loyalty must be to the state of Israel. It’s vile nonsense but I fear this is what some in the U.S. who don’t seem to care about these victims secretly believe. In their minds, Jewish lives don’t count as much, even if they are American citizens.

But U.S. government counterterrorism officials treat all American citizens the same.

The U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities appear to be working well together, particularly after the intelligence debacle that allowed the Oct. 7 attacks to happen. The hunt for Hamas members in Gaza is at its heart an intelligence-driven exercise. And it appears that after 60 days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has killed some 5,000 Hamas foot soldiers, half of the group’s battalion commanders, and several other targets.

While the senior leaders of Hamas remain holed up, either in southern Gaza or hiding elsewhere, the IDF appears to be on track in its campaign to destroy Hamas as a threat. Israel is following a model of operations driving intelligence — the capture of Hamas prisoners as well as safe houses, for example, results in battlefield interrogations and sensitive sight exploitation — which then drives future operations. Those in the U.S. media who question Israel’s progress in the war, most of whom have no experience involving counterterrorism operations, probably should recall that it took us 10 years to find Osama bin Laden after 9/11. and to reduce al Qaeda to an ineffective threat to the United States. Such campaigns take time, which the IDF leadership has said.

Importantly, Mossad — Israel’s national intelligence agency — almost certainly has begun planning the hunt for Hamas members worldwide. From experience, Israel’s enemies fear its reach, and that fear is a powerful tool. One evening many years ago, in a Middle Eastern city where I attended Libyan National Day at the Libyan embassy, there were two notorious terrorist leaders: Khalid Mishal from Hamas and Ahmad Jabril from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). It was a surreal evening — we joked about it but knew that, in reality, we were all at risk from an Israeli airstrike. As I paid my respects to the Libyan ambassador that evening, he commented that he was glad I was there; he figured Israel would not strike the event with a U.S. official present.

The Biden administration is sticking with Israel, for now, though it has offered public critique of the Gazan casualties. Secretary of State Antony Blinken essentially has told Israel that the U.S. wants to give it more runway, understanding that the counterterrorism campaign must continue, but that it wants Israel to take more care regarding Gaza’s civilian population. In the words of Hollywood’s Jerry Maguire: “Help me help you.” In my view, this is the right approach and Israel must respond accordingly — not just in words, but in actions.

Not long after 9/11, a poster appeared and remained hanging for years in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. It stated: “Every day is September 12.” This signified the resolve of CIA officers to avenge the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and to prevent al-Qaeda from attacking us again. I would hope that a similar resolve exists in the U.S. intelligence community today, as we assist Israel in its campaign against a terrorist group that killed some 1,200 people, including more than 30 Americans. I am confident that the sentiment “Every day is October 8” exists in the corridors of Mossad and Shin Bet.

Col. Kemp: Israel Is Flushing Hamas Out of Gaza

Heavy fighting continues in the north and south of Gaza, both above ground and in Hamas' extensive tunnel network, which is assessed to be even more extensive than the London Underground's 250 miles.

I was inside Gaza on Tuesday and witnessed two terrorist tunnels being destroyed with explosives by IDF engineers in Shejaiya. A short time later, the IDF suffered one of its deadliest single skirmishes, with nine soldiers killed in a gun and explosives battle with terrorists.

The tunnels bring yet another incredibly formidable dimension to urban combat, which is itself among the most challenging of battle environments, characterized by particularly high casualty rates, especially among attacking forces.

I've been into those tunnels: they are heavily fortified, concrete-lined and with lighting, electric power and air supply. Over two decades they have been constructed using vast sums of money, including international aid that should have been spent on civilian infrastructure, and costing the lives of many Gazans including dozens of children sent underground to work on them.

Tunnel entrances are mostly inside civilian houses, schools, hospitals and mosques. Terrorists use them to store weapons and ammo, protect commanders and move fighters around to outmaneuver forces above ground. Some have been fitted with heavy blast doors to complicate assaults by Israeli troops. They allow Hamas to ambush troops by emerging from the rear in areas that had already been cleared.

Whenever possible, the IDF avoids going into the tunnels and getting bogged down in fighting on Hamas' terms. Yet the Israelis are entering the tunnels when necessary, to rescue hostages, gain intelligence from underground command posts, and target high-level terrorist leaders. There is still a lot of hard fighting ahead and Israel's allies should be working to do what they can to further demoralize Hamas.

Truth is tough. The fight in Gaza is our fight too. pic.twitter.com/Y1wDDKjBUk
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) December 15, 2023

Gaza war must dismantle Hamas, tunnel flooding on table - IDF spokesperson

The war in the Gaza Strip is continuing for its third month and Israeli military casualties are mounting. In an interview with The Media Line's Felice Friedson, the Israel Defense Forces international spokesman, Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus, discusses the short- and long-term goals of the war and says Israel is paying a heavy price, but its goals remain unshaken: Hamas must be toppled, he says, and the hostages being held in Gaza, who still include 17 women and children, must be returned. Israel has no other choice. For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

Conricus says the Israeli army has exposed hundreds of meters of tunnels, some of which are very sophisticated. Many of the tunnels lead to homes, and house after house is filled with weapons, explosives, and rocket launchers. One possible scenario for destroying the massive underground city is flooding it with seawater, an option Conricus didn’t dismiss. “At the end of the day,” he tells The Media Line, “these tunnels will hopefully be the undoing of Hamas.”

The Media Line: Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus is the international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with me here at The Media Line.

Lt.-Col. Conricus: Thank you for having me, Felice.

TML: On the day that Israel declared war on Hamas, those speaking on her behalf stressed that the path to victory would be a slow one, deliberate and costly. Now, some 68 days into the conflict, observers are amazed that rockets continue to fly into Israel, and that the Hamas fighting remains pretty lethal. What "unexpecteds" have you encountered in the last two months?

Lt.-Col. Conricus: So, we’ve been fighting for 68 days, since the 7th of October, and as we said from the beginning, even before we started ground operations in Gaza in order to dismantle Hamas, we said that we understand and know that it is going to be a long and difficult fight, that unfortunately we are going to have to pay a price in blood in order to achieve our goals, and that it will not be easy, but that our resolve is very clear.

And all of us, soldiers in the IDF, and officers, commanders, the High Command, all understand that we have to dismantle Hamas in order for Israeli civilians to be able to go home.

Now, we have seen Hamas continue to operate throughout the war, and we see that they still retain certain rocket firing and combat capabilities. Unfortunately, yesterday we had a mass casualty event in Shejaiya [in the northern Gaza Strip] where 10 Israeli soldiers were killed from the Golani Brigade and our elite aerial rescue unit, our tactical Air Force unit [669].

So there are still pockets of resistance in northern Gaza, and the fight isn’t over there. There are still rocket launches and there are still tunnels, and there are still terrorists there. Of course, greatly degraded, but still there. And in southern Gaza, specifically in Khan Yunis, the fighting is ongoing and it will take a lot of time and a lot of effort in order to dismantle Hamas, but we shouldn’t confuse time and patience with a lack of resolve.

The resolve is very clear, and we are going to defeat Hamas. There is no other option.

TML: Lt.-Col. Conricus, looking at the bloodshed, the loss of lives of your soldiers, did you underestimate, did the IDF underestimate, the power of Hamas?

Lt.-Col. Conricus: I think what we can say safely is that Hamas has prioritized their military capabilities over everything else, and we can see as our forces advance and as we clear areas, houses, neighborhoods, and parts of cities from Hamas terrorists after we defeat them and dismantle the enemy activity there, what we expose is hundreds of miles of tunnels, hundreds, almost a thousand, tunnel shafts. Some of them are very high-tech and high-level and a high finish of infrastructure. And we find house after house full of weapons, IEDs, explosives, rocket launchers, and anything that Hamas could get their hands on.

So what I think I can see is that I think it’s clear where Hamas priorities have been. They definitely have not been developing Gaza, caring for civilians, building civilian infrastructure, schools and hospitals and mosques and roads and clinics. No. It has been in furnishing themselves with tunnels and buying and smuggling weapons so that they can go on their continued jihad against Israel. That will now be brought to an end.

Hamas will be dismantled, and as our forces on the ground advance, we uncover what Hamas is leaving behind. We’re documenting everything, and we’re also sharing it with the world so that everyone can see where international aid has gone, where it was supposed to have gone above ground, and where it evidently ended up underground in the hands of Hamas.

@UNHumanRights Of course, when Egypt did the same thing (flooding Gaza tunnels to stop smuggling, not to stop terrorist massacares and rape), you said absolutely nothing.https://t.co/CwERMB9x4i
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 15, 2023

By Daled Amos

Following October 7, the media's anti-Israel bias is again a topic -- not that it ever stops. Journalists keep jumping on the topic of Israeli retaliation against Hamas, magnifying claims of indiscriminate bombing and accepting Hamas's number of casualties.

In a recent article for Haaretz, Laurel Leff takes another angle and examines how the media omits the history behind the founding of the State of Israel:

For Jews, the six million murdered in the Holocaust and the 500,000 survivors without a home helped spur the state's creation...[But] when Israel's origins are evoked in contemporaneous press accounts of the Israel-Hamas War, and it happens often, the Holocaust is almost never mentioned.

Leff's concern is that the omission of the Holocaust from the story leaves a gap in the history of the re-establishment of the State of Israel, "a blank that can be filled by motivations such as settler colonialism or white supremacy." To establish the existence of this pattern of omission, Leff sifted through over 500 news articles and opinion pieces in the top US newspapers following October 7.

One example is the Boston Globe, where an article explains that the slogan "From the river to the sea" generates fears that

touch on memories of genocide and displacement instilled in Jewish communities by Nazi Germany’s eradication of some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

Leff argues that while the article recognizes the Holocaust, it fails to connect it with the establishment of Israel.

In another example, an article in the Washington Post runs the headline: "Israeli operations uprooted Palestinians in 1948. Many fear a repeat," but when it refers to "Jewish immigration" increasing "under decades of British authority" there is no reference to where those Jews were coming from or why.

A New York Times article refers to "the young state's triumph against its Arab neighbors in 1948," as "a cherished national story." Leff criticizes the article for failing to connect the dots: the triumph is not revered because of some kind of joy in warfare, but rather because this victory comes against the background of the Holocaust.

Her argument is that because the media glosses over the connection between the Holocaust and the State of Israel, it creates a faulty narrative about Israel:

A powerful state controlled by Jews emerges out of nowhere and immediately persecutes and displaces Arabs living in its midst. Who the Jews are, why they are there, what they hope to create is never explicated. Into the void flows more noxious accounts, of colonial settlers who migrated to the region only to pillage and exploit, of white supremacists whose sole interest is in subjugating an indigenous population.

But is Leff right -- is knowledge of the Holocaust key to presenting a proper history and understanding of the re-establishment of the modern Jewish State?

After all, the Holocaust seems to be an important component in presenting Israel's case. It is an emotional argument -- and one of the criticisms of Hasbarah is that it is too focused on dry facts and numbers instead of making a visceral, emotional argument.

But the genocide of Jews under Nazi Germany does not resonate the same way that it did in the past. Just as importantly, historically the Holocaust only supports the case for the re-creation of Israel from 1948 forward, not for anything before.

Holocaust history is important, but it does not generate Jewish pride in the same way that the 3,000+ year indigenous history of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel does. Knowledge of Jewish history, language, culture, and religion plants the seeds for Jewish pride in a way that knowledge about the Holocaust alone does not.

I remember being told as a child that it was important to maintain one's Jewishness so as not to give Hitler a victory. Today, that argument will not fly.

This long historical Jewish bond to the land is something that Palestinian Arabs can never have, no matter how many times they claim to be descended from the Jebusites. That may explain in part why they are looked down upon by other Arabs. Rafael Patai writes in his book, The Seeds of Abraham:

Sentiments in French mandatory, and later independent, Syria were thus related back to the great days when Syria, with Damascus as its splendid capital, was the center of the great Umayyad caliphate, while the newly reestablished Iraq saw herself as heir to the Abbasid empire whose center was the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. However, no other Arab country had as solid a basis for priding itself of its glorious past as Egypt, which, although its greatest age lay far back in the millennia of the jahiliyya [Arabia before the advent of Islam], nevertheless came to view that early Pharaonic period as part of its national history.

However, Palestinian Arabs lack that rich Arab heritage.

In Palestine, such attempts at establishing a great Arab national past ran into a vexing problem. Since Palestine had never been an independent Arab country, its period of pride had to be sought in the biblical Israelite age.

And their claims of a rival connection to the land are periodically contradicted by archaeological discoveries.

Thus the resort to the Nakba.

Leff sees the Holocaust as both an argument for the Jewish right to Israel as well as a defense against the claim that Jews are not sufficiently woke:

But without mention of the then fresh Jewish trauma of the Holocaust, Jews' reasons for wanting, perhaps needing, a state, are absent, leaving a blank that can be filled by motivations such as settler colonialism or white supremacy.

But Jewish indigeneity and our uninterrupted presence on the land for over 3,000 years is just as effective in making our case. It is a source of pride and of Jewish identity in the fight against assimilation that Holocaust studies cannot match.

The media may not remind their readers of the historical Jewish bond to Israel, but we cannot afford to fail in passing on this heritage to future generations.

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 @NYTimes article on Gaza cemeteries is nothing less than an antisemitic conspiracy theory

One of the major problems with both "human rights groups" and major media reporting on Israeli military actions is their underlying assumption that the IDF is a malevolent force that enjoys causing death and damage for no legitimate reason.

So many articles are built with the same structure:

- We notice the IDF doing something that seems wrong.

- We cannot figure out why they are doing that.

- Therefore,we must assume the reason is because Jews are vindictive little shits who deliberately direct enormous resources and firepower towards civilian objects for no valid reason.

We saw it yesterday with CNN not understanding why the IDF might use "dumb bombs" and assuming they are being used indiscriminately against civilians. we saw it with HRW reports on Israel using white phosphorus. We've seen it countless times with stories about specific Israeli airstrikes where residents are interviewed saying "We never saw any militants here!"

Today's example comes from The New York Times, saying that since they cannot fathom why Israel might be razing Gaza cemeteries, they must be doing it maliciously and are therefore guilty of war crimes.

The headline summarizes the article:

Why assume that a modern, professional army would do anything without military necessity? If the IDF told hundreds of soldiers, "go destroy this cemetery for no reason" or "because we hate Muslims" wouldn't you think there would be dozens of soldiers running to Breaking the Silence to complain about it?

The NYT is implying a conspiracy theory, that lots of Israeli military leaders secretly work to humiliate and hurt Gazans, and in the middle of a war zone they waste time and resources on things that have no legitimate reason.

Yes, that is antisemitism. But it is acceptable antisemitism nowadays, justified because the IDF did not comment on the accusation.

As is often the case, the newspaper doesn't bother to speculate on why a cemetery might be a legitimate military objective.

It does mention that "In Gaza City’s Shajaiye neighborhood, where heavy combat raged in recent days, Israeli forces razed part of the Tunisian cemetery to set up a temporary military position. " It doesn't say that this is a necessary part of any ground combat operations.

Wars require logistics. Soldiers have to be physically there in safe positions, they need to be supplied with ammunition and food, their equipment needs to be secured. The actual fighting is only a portion of what military necessity means. And as difficult as any war is, an urban war is far harder because the army needs to find space where the defender holds great military advantage of hiding among buildings and underground. Securing an area for thousands of troops means they have to use what is there to keep their soldiers safe.

Tank crews need to eat. They need to relieve themselves. You don't just park a tank in an exposed position on the street surrounded by buildings where the enemy can spend all night placing powerful explosives in its treads. If there is a choice of placing a tank in a cemetery where a perimeter could be secured or in the middle of a residential neighborhood, any sane military commander uses the cemetery assuming it can be secured properly.

Securing the cemetery means bulldozing the gravestones to ensure no tunnel entrances or mines are there and no terrorists are hiding behind trees or monuments. Protecting soldiers' lives is a higher priority than protecting gravestones.

Here is an article on urban warfare that should be required reading for everybody. It gives a small idea of what is involved. Most importantly, it shows how and why urban warfare is the most difficult kind there is. Real journalism would report on these issues and inform readers about the difficulties and choices commanders have to make. Lazy, biased journalism doesn't bother.

And as bad as the article is for what it says and implies, it is worse for what it doesn't bother to say. Which is that Hamas has a history of using cemeteries for military purposes.

Here's video of rockets being shot from a Gaza cemetery in 2014.

Hamas has shot hundreds of rockets from these supposedly sacred cemeteries.

Did the New York Times ever castigate Hamas then for desecrating a religious site? On the contrary when Islamists destroyed a large cross in a British military cemetery in Gaza in 2006, the New York times didn't report the story.

Cemeteries are ideal places to hide rocket launchers. There are no tall buildings around and any digging that happens there is considered normal activity. Which also makes cemeteries ideal places to hide tunnel shafts as well. Hamas loves using cemeteries - and soccer fields - as rocket launching pads.

And some neighborhoods in Gaza are so crowded that people have been building houses on cemetery grounds. No NYT stories about that desecration either.

The idea that the IDF, in the midst of a highly complex military environment, wastes time and energy on wanton, needless destruction of a cemetery is not just ignorant. It is not just a libel. It really is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that is eagerly spread by the "newspaper of record."

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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