Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 16, 2024

Egyptian expert: The Arab-Israeli conflict started 3,400 years ago

On Tuesday, Egyptian political program Al Hayat al-Youm interviewed Major General Muhammad Al-Ghobari, former director of Egypt's National Defense College about the "Nakba" and all the awful things Zionists have done.

Ghobari said the Arab-Israeli conflict did not begin in 1948, but rather began 3,400 years ago when Joshua bin Nun entered the Holy Land.

See? Ghobari doesn't hate Jews, he hates Zionists! And Joshua was a Zionist. So there's no antisemitism here!

(Of course, the Canaanites weren't Arab.)

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!

05/15 Links Pt2: Menachem Begin’s Lesson for Bibi and Biden; What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like in Practice; Peace in Our Time at Harvard

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like in Practice

The progressive masses that march regularly for Israel’s destruction believe the United Kingdom is deserving of precisely the same fate for precisely the same reasons. In fact, they hold the UK uniquely responsible for Israel’s creation and thus see the two states as part of the same holy war. Back in Berkeley as elsewhere in the U.S., the tentifada is organized and run by those who also admire the pluck of the “decolonization begins at home” psychopaths.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (you can’t make this up) isn’t the first in the Bay Area to see trickle-down radicalization, the Jewish News points out: Schools in San Francisco and Oakland and other schools in Berkeley have walked out too. A couple of those walkouts took place just after Hamas’s attacks and well before Israel’s incursion into Gaza, which can only be understood as celebratory of the massacre.

Back in Britain, the police reassure the public that they “do not believe that there is a wider risk to the public connected to this case,” which is no doubt true. But there is a wider risk to the public that has been exposed by this case, and others like it.

For months, dishonest people have argued that the “river to the sea” chant, a variation on a line in the Hamas charter, isn’t necessarily indicative of a desire to carry out a genocide. But even offering the benefit of the doubt, is there a benign reason to gather outside a Jewish preschool and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at the 4-year-olds inside? There is not. And that is crucial to this discussion: The actions of these demonstrators are indefensible from any angle.

There’s another chant that has been quite popular at the demonstrations and marches in the U.S. as well as those in Britain (and elsewhere): “Globalize the intifada.” Since the intifada refers to a campaign of mass terrorism against Jewish civilians, to globalize it would be to expand the battlefield without changing the goal. Some people try to deny this, but even they do not believe their denial, because it is ridiculous. They are not cheering on individual vision quests or yoga retreats. They are not shouting “have yourself a very merry intifada in the privacy of your own home surrounded by loves ones!”

Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein were in court today because they attempted to globalize the intifada. They heard the calls of the protesters, as others no doubt will. And they didn’t misunderstand.

Genocidal, But Mostly Peaceful

It is no “moral panic” to report that Students for Justice in Palestine, the major student group on campus behind these protests, praised Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel as a “historic win” against “the Zionist enemy,” or that students at protests on elite campuses such as Yale and Princeton and Stanford have proudly displayed Hamas and Hezbollah flags and other terrorist regalia. Nor to note, as the Anti-Defamation League reported and many social-media accounts confirmed, that a Columbia protestor said, “Never forget the 7th of October . . . the 7th of October is about to be every f—king day for you. You ready?” If Michelle Cottle thinks judgments of such actions are “in the eye of the beholder,” her eye does not know how to behold.

What this soft-pedaling of the horrors being spewed on campus has produced is a disastrously incurious media. Consider the question of how the college protests are organized and funded. The encampments that mysteriously sprang up like mushrooms on campuses in a matter of days across the country, with matching Coleman tents, were funded by big-name Democratic donors with last names like Rockefeller, Pritzker, and Soros. A Politico piece declared it “surprising” that “Biden’s biggest donors” are backing the protesters. “Two of the organizers supporting the protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change.”

Politico’s article came out months after the protests began. It is a telling example of mainstream media’s ideological monoculture that journalists who delayed even asking such questions then found themselves surprised that left-wing dark money was funding radical protests on campus.

This willful blindness to the beliefs of the protesters they are covering also poses a challenge when trying to describe them. Some outlets, like the Associated Press, describe student activists as “antiwar protesters.” Others refer to them as “pro-Palestinian,” when the correct description would be “anti-Israel” and, in many cases, simply anti-Semitic. Not surprisingly, such reporters also end up uncritically repeating Hamas propaganda. The Post quoted a Barnard student who had been arrested for participating in Columbia’s encampment. “There’s these big mainstream media outlets that are making it breaking news that Columbia canceled in-person classes, but not breaking news that mass graves were discovered in Gaza,” she proclaimed. The Post reporter felt no need to mention that the claim about mass graves had been thoroughly debunked. Perhaps the reporter didn’t know. Perhaps her editor didn’t know. Perhaps no one at the paper knew. Perhaps they chose not to know.

Or perhaps they knew, and they wanted the lie to stand unmolested.

Biden can’t be trusted to take on anti-Semitism

The Biden executive branch sees the white male patriarchy behind every alleged failure of social justice, from ‘pay inequities’ that allegedly afflict females and persons of colour to ‘poor health outcomes’. No other causes of different life trajectories – personal choice, different skill levels, cultural background, substance abuse, etc – may be contemplated. The reason is always discrimination.

In February 2023, Biden ordered the federal government to incorporate equity thinking into every aspect of its operations. Ninety federal agencies have adopted ‘Equity Action Plans’ to address the ‘discrimination that underserved communities face’. The federal science agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, hand out lucrative grants to study intersectionality. They demand ‘diversity’ in research labs and clinical trials as a corrective to the racism of Western science. The US military is on a crusade to eradicate heteronormativity and colourblind meritocracy.

US representative Nancy Pelosi and US senator Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ legislative leaders, may voice support for Israel. But they and their party embrace the same philosophy that fuels the pro-Hamas campus protests. It is hard to find a Democratic state house or city hall that does not proudly proclaim its ‘anti-racist’ policies. Democratic school boards mandate ‘ethnic studies’ courses, which presume the existence of an enduring power struggle between the ‘marginalised’ and a white majority. State and local governments confer hiring preferences on non-white and female contractors, on the theory that merit-based systems of contracting are biased in favour of white males.

Democratic politicians promise ‘equity’, implying that American society is inherently unfair. They support the racial preferences in college admissions that have driven down the number of Jewish students, since highly qualified Jews take up slots needed to increase the presence of less qualified ‘underrepresented minorities’.

Biden received plaudits for his Days of Remembrance speech last week. But the performance was an exercise in hypocrisy. Campus anti-Semitism is the outgrowth of fundamental academic and Democratic commitments. Universities will not cure themselves unless they revamp their curricula and hire traditional scholars, rather than robotic practitioners of critical theory and activist wannabes. The ‘anti-Semitism training’ that administrators are proposing in the hope of extinguishing donor rebellions is a diversionary tactic. One can’t train one’s way out of a worldview that is baked into academic personnel and the courses they teach, even if adding to the diversity, equity and inclusion portfolio were not a patently counterproductive idea.

As long as the Democratic Party and its presidential standard-bearer remain committed to the narrative of white privilege and racial inequity, hatred of Israel and rationalisations for terrorism will be reliable products of the American left. No presidential speech will change that fact.

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

Joe Biden, if he hadn’t already lost the Jewish vote, lost it for sure last week. First, Joe spilled the beans to Erin Burnett: he’d already held up a weapons shipment to Israel.

President Biden tells CNN’s Erin Burnett: “If Israel Goes into Rafah, I’m not giving them the bombs” @JoeBiden @OutFrontCNN #IsraelAtWar #Gaza #HamasisISIS #Rafah Follow the TJNEWS WHATSAPP GROUP 🔗 https://t.co/jesT9DsCP5 TELEGRAM 🔗 https://t.co/x9yrB4rD4X pic.twitter.com/G5JfhXWlNu
— The Jewish Voice (@TJVNEWS) May 9, 2024

Three days later, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that an arms shipment had been delayed. "We have paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs because we don’t believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities," said Sullivan according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

In addition to the "pause" on arms shipments, the Biden administration let slip, one day earlier, that intelligence, too, had been withheld from Israel—intel that might already have led Israel to Sinwar and to the hostages as well, some of whom might still be saved, among them Americans. The Washington Post had the report:

“The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers.”

The electorate knew what it was seeing. Joe Biden had betrayed an ally and a people. Biden was withholding arms and information. He had concealed critical intelligence for later leverage, and was now using it—carrot and stick—to force Israel to stand down from Rafah.

It was/is not a good look. And it has cost Joe Biden the Jewish vote.

Everyone knows why Joe Biden betrayed Israel—he did it to swing the swing state of Michigan, the state that voted Rashida Harbi Tlaib into office. But if Joe thought that betraying Israel would serve him well in Michigan, he thought wrong. As of this writing, Trump is ahead of Biden in Michigan by 7 points, with Trump at 49 percent, and Joe with 42 percent of the vote. And that’s without looking at how many of those voters are Jews.

But, for argument’s sake, let’s look at that. The Jews are only 2.4 percent of American adults of voting age. Does it really matter if the Jews don’t vote for Biden? Could such a small number of votes make any appreciable difference to an election outcome?

Biden may have weighed this in his mind: the small number of Jews versus the loud clamor of the left, perhaps confusing “loud” with “many.” This would be a grave miscalculation. In Why the Jewish vote matters (2020) Jonathan Sarna writes: "[In] Lincoln’s day, only about five out of every thousand Americans were Jews and today that number may not exceed 20 per thousand, one wonders why anybody cares about Jews’ political proclivities. The 'Jewish vote' would seem far too small to matter."

Sarna says that the answer to this question says much about how American politics work. For one thing, elections are often “dramatically close”:

Tilden vs. Hays (1876), Nixon vs. Kennedy (1960), Bush vs. Gore (2000) – these and other razor-tight presidential elections demonstrate why small groups, like the Jews, often hold considerable sway. When every vote counts, especially in the electoral college, hundreds of thousands of Jewish voters suddenly take on disproportionate significance.

Also, says Sarna, most of the Jews are concentrated in the areas a presidential candidate would want to carry:

Some 85% of Jews live in 20 critical metropolitan areas; the four states with the largest Jewish communities (California, New York, Florida and New Jersey) carry 128 electoral votes of 270 needed to win an election. In addition, numbers of Jews also dwell in historic swing states that often decide American elections, particularly Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. This dramatically elevates the significance of the small Jewish vote.

Sarna puts Jews showing up at the polls in third place (I would have put it first):

Third, Jews are known to turn out and vote in high numbers on election day — more than almost any other ethnic and religious group. Some 85% of Jews vote in key presidential elections. Asian Americans and Latino Americans, by contrast, turn out at a rate of less than 50%. As a result, although they are but 2% of the population, Jews may approach 4% of the electorate.

Money comes in at last place, from Sarna’s point of view. Maybe it seems a little unsavory, too much like an antisemitic trope to mention it, but campaigns don’t run on air, and the Jews are, in fact, generous:

Finally, Jews contribute to political parties in totally disproportionate amounts. An estimate published in 2016 proclaimed that “as much as 50% of all monies raised by Democratic presidential candidates are from Jewish funders; similarly, 25% of the Republican donor base is comprised today of major Jewish contributors.” So far this year, according to a recent Jewish Telegraph Agency report, 15 of the top 25 political donors in the U.S. are Jewish or of Jewish origin. The Democrats among them have donated over $165 million to their party’s candidates, the Republicans almost $88 million.

Sarna concludes that Jews “punch above their weight in American politics.” Biden would have done well to heed the author's words: “Small as the number of Jewish voters may be, savvy politicians woo them intensely, as they have done since the days of Abraham Lincoln.”

In Six Months Out: The U.S. Presidential Election and America’s Jews, Dr. Steven Windmueller elaborates on the significance of the Jewish turnout:

Jews vote in exceedingly high numbers; somewhere between 72% to 85% of Jewish voters live in “purple states” (states neither “red” nor “blue”) where the 2024 contest for the control of the Office of the President, the Senate, and the House will be determined, along with several state and local contests. As a reminder for non-American audiences, the Electoral College, not the popular vote, determines the outcome for the White House, where the winner must secure 270 Electoral Votes out of 538 electors.
Approximately 1.8 million Jewish adults, just under one-third of the total Jewish electorate, live in 25 congressional districts. Of the top 25 districts by Jewish population, nearly half are in New York, with ten districts. The remaining districts with large Jewish populations are found in seven states: Florida, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Florida’s 21st Congressional District, with 152,000 Jewish voters, and New York’s 17th Congressional District, in the Lower Hudson Valley, representing a significantly high percentage of Orthodox voters, constitute the nation’s two largest centers of Jewish voters. Identified below are some key states where the 2024 campaign may play out.
Many analysts believe that at this point, Florida (3.1% Jewish), Texas (.6%), and Ohio (1.3%) are most likely situated in the Republican column for this year’s election (parenthesis indicate percentage of Jewish voters), leaving several other states that are seen to be in play, among them, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, collectively these states have 87 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. In several of these critical states (Pennsylvania and Arizona, and to a lesser degree, Georgia), the “Jewish vote” might be particularly significant in determining the outcomes:
Pennsylvania – 2.3%
Arizona – 1.5%
Georgia – 1.2%
Michigan – .09%
Wisconsin – .06%
North Carolina – .04%

Thane Rosenbaum self-describes as a "die-hard Democrat." But no longer. Not that he’s voting for Trump, mind you, whose name does not appear once in So Long, Democratic Party. No. He’s going to vote Independent. What brought about this volte-face?

For me, the breaking point came with Joe Biden’s shameful CNN interview where he made clear that the United States would not support Israel’s incursion into Rafah to route the remaining Hamas terrorists responsible for 10/7.

Let me get this straight: The United States devoted a decade to hunting down and assassinating Osama bin Laden, killing 250,000 Afghani and Iraqi civilians along the way. No condemning U.N. resolutions. No protests. No International Court of Justice proceedings. All throughout America’s War on Terror, Israel provided necessary intelligence and regional backup, and erected a 9/11 memorial—the only one outside the United States listing the names of all victims.

Yet, the Biden administration is withholding from Israel the necessary weaponry (already earmarked by Congress) with which to conduct its wholly justified military operations? Israel does not require Biden’s blessing. And the precision of the Rafah campaign will now be less precise.

Thane makes very clear, that for him, this is a moral problem, that Joe Biden’s behavior toward Israel is immoral. You can almost hear the writer gnashing his teeth in frustration:

Curiously, the president repeatedly acknowledged that 10/7 was an unprovoked attack for which Israel has a moral and legal right of self-defense, and that Hamas presents an existential threat that must be eradicated. Biden’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel has already gone limp. Apparently, unlike the United States, Israel must be denied its moral obligation to bring justice to its people and security to its borders. It can defend against missiles, but not dismantle them at the source.

Biden’s actions have given comfort to Hamas and its patron, Iran. Why should Hamas return hostages (some, Americans), if Biden is singularly focused on constraining Israeli military offenses?

Moreover, Biden just gave a shout-out to those ignorant college students and their Jew-hating, anti-American professors. Sorry, “Genocide Joe,” asserting your mojo and cultivating a youthful antisemitic constituency won’t help you come November.

Rosenbaum is bitter—to my mind, rightfully so—and concludes—as I do—that it’s all about winning Michigan:

For reasons only rabid progressives can explain, Palestinians, who are more like Hamas accomplices than true civilians, are more precious than the world’s other civilians. Is it because Jews aren’t permitted to win wars, especially against brown-skinned people? The Jewish state must always agree to ceasefires, perform humanitarian acts while fighting in self-defense, and sue for peace.
This betrayal has little to do with moral equivocation and everything to do with local politics. Biden will, apparently, do or say anything to woo the 600,000 Muslim voters of Michigan, and stay within the good graces of that dreadful Detroit Motown act, Bernie Sanders and the Squad. . .

. . . In the end, Joe Biden picked the Muslims of Michigan over moral clarity, a coherent foreign policy, and love of country. Yes, he’s increasingly addled. But he well knows that Jewish-Americans, or Jewish-Israelis, are highly unlikely to ever burn an American flag and shout, “Death to America!”

Thane is not alone in supporting Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. Back in December, a poll commissioned by the Israel on Campus Coalition found that over 80 percent of American Jews support what Israel is doing in Gaza, and wants these operations to continue:

American Jews are overwhelmingly united in support of Israel continuing its ground operation in Gaza and also approve of President Joe Biden’s response to the war, according to a new survey commissioned by the Israel on Campus Coalition.

The poll, conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research (SCR), found that 81% of American Jews support Israel continuing its military operation to “recover all Israeli hostages and remove Hamas from power.” Only 12% of respondents said they preferred “an immediate ceasefire to save Palestinian lives, even if that means “Israeli hostages aren’t recovered and Hamas remains in power.”

“We’re hearing increasing cries nationally for a ceasefire, and examples of American Jews who are against Israel’s retaliation of Hamas. That was the impetus for doing the survey, to hear where American Jews actually are on this,” Carly Cooperman, CEO of SCR, told JI.

By tradition, Jews vote Democrat as a block, but this election will be different. The viciousness of the attacks on October 7, followed by ever-increasing overt antisemitism seemingly in every sphere and in every country, have brought about a radical change. The Jewish people are no longer so divided on the question of Israel, or even on what it means to be a Jew. The Jews have closed ranks, and now they’re turning their backs on Biden. Joe’s latest perfidy against the Jewish state was likely the coups de grâce.

Thane Rosenbaum isn’t the only “die-hard” Dem who has withdrawn his support for Biden. Outspoken Israel supporter, actor Michael Rapaport has declared that not only will he no longer stump for or vote for Joe Biden, he may even vote for Donald Trump, a man he abhors.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Rapaport (@michaelrapaport)

In the run-up to the previous election, Joe Biden famously (and offensively) told black people that if they vote for Trump, it means they aren’t black, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

This time around, at least one minority will require no ignorant, bigoted declarations to tell them how to vote and who they are. With his latest double-stab in the back to Israel, Joe’s actions speak louder than any words might do.

The Jews have figured it out. Those who vote for Biden, ain’t Jewish.

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!

05/15 Links Pt1: Kemp: Biden's cynical Rafah obsession only strengthens Hamas; Biden would veto Israel Weapons Bill; Fighting Against Western Media Anti-Israel Coverage

From Ian:

Richard Kemp: Biden's cynical Rafah obsession only strengthens Hamas

Most damningly of all is Biden’s withholding supplies of some armaments to Israel, including precision-guided munitions. This from a man who said in 2019 that any such action would be “absolutely preposterous” and “beyond comprehension”.

Biden hopes that this will all win back the anti-Israel elements of his support base. In his calculation that clearly trumps any and all damage inflicted on an ally that is fighting for its life on multiple fronts. The damage will be profound.

It may not have a decisive effect on a military offensive in Rafah. The IDF has sufficient stocks of munitions to complete that mission, although some ammunition may have to be rationed, potentially costing Israeli soldiers’ lives; and any shortage of precision weapons may have to be compensated by unguided bombs, which could cost some Gazan civilian lives.

But Biden’s actions will certainly strengthen Hamas. Its survival depends on Israel being stopped from its advance into Rafah. The growing U.S.-led international pressure on Israel can only encourage Hamas to fight harder and longer.

The terrorists’ only incentive to consider releasing hostages is a pause in hostilities to buy time and potentially lead to a full cessation. If those objectives can be achieved as a result of U.S. pressure, that incentive melts away and thus Biden’s policies reduce the prospects of getting the surviving hostages back, including American citizens, or at least raise the price of any who are released.

Biden is therefore prolonging the war, both by the time that is passing as Israel wrestles with how to achieve its objectives while trying to maintain the bilateral relationship, and by the encouragement he gives to Hamas.

That is why Biden’s election-driven obstruction against Israel will operate against his intentions. Assuming Israel goes ahead regardless, which it will have to do in some way, he will be seen not to have stopped the violence. That will continue closer and closer toward voting day with even greater adverse effects for Biden’s Democrats.

Biden has opened a Pandora’s box

In his never-ending attempt to cultivate the “Where would they go anyway?” Arab vote in Michigan and other possible swing states, US President Joe Biden has opened a Pandora’s box that he is likely to regret.

I suggest that he has just succeeded in creating for himself a “four-bag error,” one with potentially decisive significance, by refusing to arm Israel with kits to be used for providing greater precision for missiles and shells in attacking Gaza.

Biden's blunders
Specifically, Biden’s blunders are the following: First, he has demeaned America both as an ally and as a great power protecting the free world. He has sent a terrible message to current and would-be allies as to the risks and costs of siding with the United States.

Secondly, and ironically, he has freed Israel’s leadership of some of their reluctance to counter American dictates. He has just hit Israel with, if not his best shot, then something close to it. Israel will not stop as a result of this. Ironically, they might thereby be forced to use less precise weaponry, thus defeating the stated American goal of minimizing harm to civilians.

Thirdly, the American people will see this embarrassment for what it is: “fair-weather friending” a close ally and clearly showing a preference for its terrorist enemies.

And lastly, he has handed his opponent, former president Donald Trump, on a silver platter no less, an issue that Trump has already railed at, and which likely will become an integral part of his campaign.

Those observers who have been wondering where Trump stands on the situation in the Middle East will not be wondering much longer. Trump has been presented with a galvanizing series of American betrayals of its friendship with Israel; despite his often-expressed disillusionment with and dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is certain to use these actions to create a glaring contrast.

That contrast was already seen recently with his walking back of support for a two-state solution. Now, on social media (Where else?) Trump quickly responded to Biden’s withholding of weaponry: “Crooked Joe Biden, whether he knows it or not, just said he will withhold weapons from Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

“Hamas murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including babies, and are still holding Americans hostage, if the hostages are still alive. Yet Crooked Joe is taking the side of these terrorists... Remember, this war in Israel... would have NEVER have started if I was in the White House... But very soon, we will be back, and once again demanding PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” (Emphases are Trump’s).

Decision to withhold bombs from Israel ‘damages entire US-led bloc’

The Biden administration’s decision to withhold shipments of air-to-ground munitions is having an adverse effect on the entire Middle Eastern pro-United States bloc, a Western official tells JNS.

Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), the precision kits that turn “dumb bombs” into all-weather precision-guided munitions, and Small Diameter Bombs are on hold, with shipments frozen of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, according to a May 7 report by Politico.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the suspension, saying during a Senate hearing on May 8, “We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions. We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”

A Western official shed light on the broader implications of this decision, indicating that the public withholding of these munitions is a significant message in itself.

“The heart of the matter is the declaration. The fact that U.S. is not transferring and declaring it, this is the message,” the official explained.

This move is perceived negatively by America’s other Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while members of the radical Iranian-led Shi’ite axis, including Hamas, see it as encouraging.

The Western official also expressed concerns about the broader regional perception of this decision, suggesting it has already caused considerable damage.

“Even if the U.S. wants to climb down from the ladder quietly, most of the damage has been done. The region has understood; if it happened to Israel, it could happen to me,” he remarked, indicating a loss of trust among American allies.

Amnesty issued a press release for "Nakba Day" that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state:

The current forced displacement of almost 2 million Palestinians and mass destruction of civilian property and infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip puts a spotlight on Israel’s appalling record of displacing Palestinians and its ongoing refusal to respect their right to return for the last 76 years, said Amnesty International marking Nakba Day. The day commemorates the displacement of more than 800,000 Palestinians following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Amnesty has a bizarre interpretation of the "right of return" generations after the population left that does not apply to any other people. In fact, Amnesty has twisted international law to justify this mythical "right."

The entire point of "return," of course, is to destroy the Jewish state by flooding it with antisemites who want to ethnically cleanse the Jews from the Middle East. Somehow that does not bother this "human rights' NGO.

Moreover, it cannot even get basic facts straight. No reputable source says 800,000 Palestinians left in 1948. Amnesty apparently learns its statistics of counting Palestinians from Hamas. And many of the 600,000-700,000 who did leave (most voluntarily) left before May 14, 1948, not after.

Amnesty, in its zeal to wipe out the Jewish state, can't even recount history correctly.

And do you know what word is not mentioned in this 800-word screed against Israel?

Hamas.

The very reason Israel is in Gaza to begin with is not mentioned at all. Amnesty wants its followers to believe that Israel just invaded Gaza for no reason, or perhaps to grab back the land it left in 2005.

Amnesty redoubles its hate for Israel and Jews by mentioning "imminent risk of genocide" in Gaza, a purely antisemitic slander

This is antisemitism. And Amnesty, knows it, because it wrote an entire paragraph to deny it:

The instrumentalization of antisemitism to discredit protesters or criminalize criticism of the state of Israel’s policies, and the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel’s violations of international law are particularly problematic and undermine authorities’ efforts to address the real and enduring scourge of antisemitism. Authorities must hold people accountable for both hate crimes and any advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to hostility, discrimination, or violence, regardless of whether directed at Jewish people or at Palestinians, Muslims or other groups.

Amnesty, by invoking "genocide," is directly guilty of incitement to violence in the many incidents of antisemitic violence especially in Europe. A Jewish man was murdered at point blank range in Egypt, on first person video, and the killer said "Shalom from Gaza's children."

The constant barrage of lies about Israel's war against Hamas, especially by "Human rights" NGOs, is indeed direct incitement to kill Jews. As such, it fits the very definition of antisemitism that Amnesty claims exonerates it.

UPDATE: I see that Amnesty used to give lower figures for the numbers displaced in 1948 and 1967. Which shows how intellectually honest they are.

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!

Israeli produce seen in Gaza markets

Ramallah News reports that 52 trucks of food made it to southern Gaza yesterday. They show photos from the markets.

Notice the Hebrew on the packaging?

Ramallah News photoshopped the avocados to remove Israeli stickers. Compare their photo with that found by Abu Ali Express:

Abu Ali Express adds another:

Israel is exporting its own produce directly to Gaza. Apparently the traders in Gaza are selling the food for very high prices.

Good luck finding this mentioned in the media.

I wonder whether BDS will condemn Gazans for importing from Israel.

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!

"Jewish Voice for Peace" ignoramuses think Israel scheduled Yom HaAtzmaut to coincide with "Nakba Day" this year

Here is a tweet from "Jewish Voice for Peace:"

Yes, they are really claiming that Israel scheduled its holidays to obscure Nakba Day!

The truth is the opposite: Nakba Day (first declared in 1998) was created to coincide with the anniversary of Israel's independence in 1948. If "Nakba" means "catastrophe," then why not choose the date of the Deir Yassin incident or the date that Arabs fled their homes in Jaffa? No, the Nakba is Israel's existence, not anything that happened to Palestinian Arabs in 1948.

But JVP's idiocy only begins there.

Yom Hashoah's date was chosen in 1959. The original desire was to have it coincide with the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising but that was the even of Passover to it was moved to a week after Passover.

Israel's Yom HaZikaron does not celebrate "Israeli militarism." Created in 1951 and enacted into law in 1963, it is a remembrance of all those who fell in Israel's wars and Arab terror attacks, including thousands of civilians. JVP, of course, doesn't give a damn about them.

And, most incredibly, JVP does not seem to understand that Israel uses the Hebrew calendar! This year the Hebrew date of Yom HaAtzmaut coincided with the secular date of Israel's independence, though that doesn't usually happen.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at how a group that writes Hebrew backwards doesn't know the basics about Israel or Judaism, even if they throw the word "Jewish" in their name.

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!

Israel-haters haven't changed since 1949

Today is "Nakba Day," the day that mourns not any expulsion or massacre of Arabs in 1948, but the declaration of independence of Israel.

And it has ever been thus. Deaths and displacement are never the main gripe that Palestinians and their Arab allies have with Israel - it is the state of Israel itself.

Nakba Day wa not celebrated in 1949. Wikipedia finds a single reference to several demonstrations in Transjordanian-occupied areas on May 15, 1949, but they were not reported in the news media (as opposed to an anti-British demonstration by Arabs in Libya at the time.)

But here is a description of Arab intransigence towards Israel on the first anniversary of independence, 75 years ago, that shows that Arab antipathy towards Israel was never about injustices or mistreatment: it was always about the refusal to accept a Jewish state in any form. And that applies today to the entire anti-Israel crowd.

Read this column by Carroll Binder in the Star Tribune, May 15, 1949 written on Israel's first birthday, and compare it to, say, this year's Eurovision. It is an eerily accurate description of animosity towards Israel 75 years later.

The Future That Faces U.N. Member No. 59

WHEN ISRAEL BECAME the 59th member of the United Nations May 11 its delegate was escorted to a seat flanked on the left by the seat of the Arab delegate from Iraq and on the right by the seat of the Arab delegate from Lebanon.

This was not a tactless oversight on the part of the protocol department of U.N. It was a routine operation of the alphabetical seating system of U.N.

But it coincidentally symbolized Israel's position in the midst of the Arab world. Symbolical also, was the conspicuous absence of the Iraq and Lebanon delegates. Unable longer to block Israel's entrance into the U.N., the Arab delegates had stalked out of the assembly while Israel was being ushered in.

This was to demonstrate Arab resentment at the world's newest republic, the U.S. and those nations particularly responsible for Israel's present status. It was a futile gesture for Israel is a political actuality and nothing the Arabs can do will erase Israel's sovereignty. But it served notice on Israel and its friends that Arab hostility to a Jewish state in Palestine remains unyielding. That is just as ineradicable a factor in world affairs as the existence of a Jewish state.

This Arab animosity finds expression in unexpected places as well as in anything affecting the Middle East. For example American and British efforts to write into international law enlightened practices of obtaining and transmitting information have been persistently opposed in the U.N. by Arab delegates.

At Lake Success the Arabs voice profound antagonism against the American press, radio and movies which they say is pro-Israel and anti-Arab. They fasor rigorous governmental controls of media of public information by way of protest against the attitude of those media.

Arab animosity crops out in negotiations for oil pipelines, control of Italian colonies, military bases. etc.

A New York Times correspondent reported from Beirut on May 8 that "opinion seems unanimous in Transjordan. Syria and Lebanon that the Arab nations have a moral obligation to fight again in Palestine as soon as they are able to. Coupled with this is a whole- hearted rejection of the U.N. as a source of justice for the Arabs. The U.N. will accept anything (in Arab opinions) that is imposed by force and the Arab can hope for justice only through the strength of their own arms"

A New York Herald Tribune correspondent, who toured the same area a fortnight earlier, told his readers of Arab "anger and humiliation"' at their defeat in a 10-month war which cost them $300 million and exposed their military weakness.

The Arabs. he said. "do not disguise their determination to win revenge - to destroy Israel. To the Arab. the 'first round' has been lost but the climactic battle is still to come; maybe 10, maybe 20. maybe even 100 years from now."

Mrs. George Antonious. widow of a renowned writer on Arab affairs and herself a social leader in Jerusalem, told the Herald Tribune correspondent, "I will slap the face of any Arah who trades with a Jew. We have lost the first round - not the war.

This mood cannot be disregarded either by the Israeli or those who concern themselves about political, economic and military conditions in the Middle East. If it is not modified. Israel will have to devote a large part of its human and material resources to national defense for years to come. Since Israel will need every resource at its command to take care of the million people already living within its narrow confines and the hundreds of thousands desirous of immigrating there, the indefinite prolongation of a state of insecurity would be a tremendous handicap. The Israeli fortunately can count on substantial help from their co-religionists in the United States. Over half of the $150 million raised in 1948 by American Jews for philanthropic work went to immigration. settlement and upbuilding in Israel.

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05/14 Links Pt2: The Meaning of Israeli ‘Independence’; The Woke Jihad; Hamas terrorists use UN vehicles, UNRWA compound; Israel marks 76th Independence Day

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Meaning of Israeli ‘Independence’

“There is no question that this year, our Yom Ha’atzma’ut celebrations are different,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an Independence Day message to Jews abroad. And indeed, the Jewish state’s transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day—as the former ends, the latter begins—was by all accounts less abrupt this evening, since the solemn and subdued atmosphere continued from one into the other.

The past seven months have been filled with fear and mourning, he said, but they “have reminded us, also, of our core qualities, of our power as a people to stand up, again and again, against hatred. To survive and speak our truth. Of our deep and sustaining caring for one another.”

Israelis used this moment to wrestle with what independence actually means to them, highlighted by two alternate takes on the traditional torch-lighting ceremony.

Forgoing the regular torch lighting in Jerusalem, reports i24 News, torches were “lit in Gaza border communities affected by the October 7 attacks, as well as in IDF bases that have suffered losses in the ongoing conflict. The individuals chosen to light the torches this year are being honored for their heroism during the October 7 attacks or their bravery in the subsequent war.”

One of those torches, notes the Times of Israel, sits “next to a giant stack of burned cars destroyed on the highway during the Hamas attack.”

As depressing as that scene sounds, it does well represent the state’s original idea of independence. As I noted in November, Israelis who lived in the Gaza border towns were raising their kids and their crops on the same land on which settled brave Jewish pioneers through the state’s birth pangs. Every inch of the land, right up to the borderline, had to be defended; anything that wasn’t guarded would be taken—some of the land that was guarded was taken anyway.

Then there is a fascinating, flipped version of the ceremony where torches are extinguished. Not torches representing Israel as a state, mind you—these aren’t anti-Zionist ceremonies. But they are harsh in their implicit and explicit criticism of the government. Relatives of hostages or victims, as well as survivors of the October 7 attacks, extinguish torches they hold that are symbolic of “sins” that led to the slaughter.

“I hereby extinguish the torch of the sin of conceit,” said one participant whose daughter was killed during the attacks. Two survivors extinguished the “the torch of indifference,” in their words.

Some were more profound than others, needless to say. But the theme seemed to be winning independence from assumptions that put the state in danger.

There is another aspect to the debate over independence that is made newly relevant by the events since October: independence from allies.

Abe Greenwald: The Woke Jihad

The first thing to understand about any left-wing protest movement is that its nominal cause is irrelevant. Black Lives Matter isn’t about saving black lives. Trans activism isn’t about protecting trans children. And intersectionality isn’t about the suffering of the diverse disaffected. Never were, never will be. Underneath their particular brands, social-justice movements are assorted fronts in a radical war against the good. And so it is for the “pro-Palestinian” encampments.

Would a group trying to save black lives have seized on a statistically tiny number of police killings as justification to rid black neighborhoods of police? That’s what Black Lives Matter did. And by the time the cops were hobbled, and violent crime spiked precisely where police were most needed, the movement’s leaders were using corporate donations to buy safe suburban palaces. BLM was an attack on law enforcement, because law enforcement maintains the good working order of the United States. Undermine that and you’re left with chaos, which is the objective.

And celebratory chaos is precisely the goal of the radical trans movement. Consider Rose Montoya, the trans activist who went topless on the South Lawn of the White House during a Pride Month celebration. How does that viral stunt protect trans kids or evoke empathy for an outcast demographic? Every aspect of the movement is designed to undo our common appreciation for a safe and sane way of life. Denying solid biological reality, throwing kids into emotional disarray, scaring the hell out of parents, endorsing ruinous medical procedures for minors, and trolling everyone who’s not convinced—that’s the game. And just as BLM leaders got rich, trans stars are furnished with endorsements and media deals once they’ve done their part to tear down the edifice of stability.

Intersectional ideology has infiltrated our lives mostly through the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training programs at work and school. To conquer, you must first divide. That’s the DEI trainer’s remit—splitting formerly cohesive groups into racial, ethnic, and gender camps, highlighting their differences and coaxing out ugly resentments. Not surprisingly, DEI work increases bigotry. As one DEI theorist recently admitted to the Wall Street Journal, “People often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups.” Because that’s what it’s supposed to do, especially regarding Jews. Soon after October 7, Tabia Lee, the disenchanted former head of DEI at California’s De Anza College, told the New York Post that she was called a “dirty Zionist” for bringing Jewish speakers to campus. And school administrators refused her request to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Lee says, “I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are ‘white oppressors’ and our job as faculty and staff members was to ‘decenter whiteness.’” Of the left’s post–October 7 bigotry, she writes, “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”

Yes, there are well-meaning individuals who support civil rights, gay rights, and gender equality. And if these well-meaning people are still supporting social-justice campaigns because they believe their stated aims, then they’ll support anyone.

But the performative lunatics who turned identity fanaticism into a national pastime are enemies of Israel, the Jews, the United States, and human decency itself. That makes them natural allies of terrorists, whatever their do-good cover stories.

As with previous left-wing campaigns, the “pro-Palestinian” movement offers nothing in support of its supposed purpose. It sides with Gaza’s governing terrorists, who start wars with the express goal of producing a surplus of dead Gazans. American Hamas supporters chant “Cease-Fire now” as Hamas refuses every cease-fire offer that Israel and the U.S. put on the table. Why? Because a cease-fire means no more dead Gazans, and dead Gazans are Hamas’s chief natural resource and most valuable export. It’s what brings in the billions of aid money that’s used to build tunnels where Hamas hides—while civilians absorb the blows overhead. If Israel were to stop short of eradicating Hamas, as the protesters want, many more Gazans would die in the future wars that Hamas has vowed to instigate.

No, the encampments aren’t pro-Palestinian. They’re the latest expression of the social-justice left’s impulse to destroy the virtuous and raise up the wicked.

Jerry Seinfeld showed anti-Jewish protesters are a minority

Ironically, Seinfeld probably worked harder for a degree he received just for showing up than many of the Palestinian flag-waving, keffiyeh-wearing future unemployed people protesting him.

Not only that, but his speech was laden with advice that would make these students’ lives infinitely happier.

“The slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkward humor is OK,” Seinfeld said. “It is worth the sacrifice of an occasional discomfort to have some laughs. Don’t lose that. Even if it’s at the cost of occasional hard feelings, it’s OK.”

But while we certainly need to address the explosion of antisemitism that has made life hell for Jewish students on campuses across the country (let alone on city streets across the world), we must also be sure to appreciate the full picture.

At Duke University, while a handful of students decided to walk out like petulant children who just couldn’t bear listening to the apolitical advice of a Jewish man, the vast majority stayed, listened, and drowned out the protesters by chanting, “Jerry.”

And while Golan endured far worse before, during, and after the Eurovision Song Contest, she received overwhelming support from the voting public, including maximum points from 14 different countries, many of whom are experiencing their own explosions of antisemitism.

None of this is to downplay what we’re seeing across the world. Life for Jews has become immeasurably worse in the West following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which somehow acted as a catalyst for further anti-Jewish hate here at home.

But it does remind us that the people marching in the streets, the people making threats, and the people stomping their way out of their own graduation ceremonies are in the minority. An incredibly vicious and vocal minority, sure, but a minority nonetheless.

And while there is certainly work to do to ensure peace and safety for Jews in the West, we should take solace in the fact that while there are some people out there who refuse to listen to Jerry Seinfeld because he is Jewish, their voices are drowned out by the majority who wanted to hear from him and cheer obvious truths: “We’re embarrassed about things we should be proud of and proud of things that we should be embarrassed about.”

Palestinian "strategist" praises Egypt for blocking aid to Gaza

The New York Times reported on Friday that Egypt has refused to send aid through the Rafah crossing while Israel is there, and it has also refused to send the trucks backed up along that border to the Kerem Shalom crossing. This was to show displeasure at Israel's operation in Rafah where they took over the Gazan

The story from the premier US newspaper has not been picked up by other news outlets. So US News, for example, reports it as "both sides blaming each other," even though Egypt didn't deny that it had closed the Rafah crossing from its side.

It's pretty clear that Egypt is the problem here. Israel is pleading with European governments to pressure Egypt to allow aid shipments to resume.

"The key to preventing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now in the hands of our Egyptian friends," Israel's Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said in comments released by his office.

Katz said he had spoken with his British and German counterparts about "the need to persuade Egypt to reopen the Rafah crossing", adding he would also speak with Italy's foreign minister later on Tuesday.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has governed Gaza, will not "control the Rafah crossing", Katz said, citing security concerns over which Israel "will not compromise".

The comments drew a swift and angry response from Egypt's foreign ministry, which said Israel was responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and that Israel's military operations in Rafah were the main factor blocking aid.

Egypt has been telling Gazans to go to hell for seven months, building a huge wall to keep Palestinians out and extracting bribes for the rich ones to escape - and ends up smelling like a rose in the eyes of the media.

But it gets even more Orwellian.

From Egypt's Al Qahera News:

Palestinians (in Ramallah, naturally) are thanking Egypt for starving Gaza! They are "principled!"

The media and NGOs all read the New York Times. They know that Egypt is blocking aid. And they want that story to die so they can resume blaming everything on Israel, which is actually trying to bring in aid (and it is bringing some in through the northern crossings, although not enough for all of Gaza.)

This one episode shows that it isn't the world being upset at Israel because it cares about Palestinians. The world is pretending to care about Palestinians as an excuse to demonize Israel.

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!

05/14 Links Pt1: Why Joe Biden Has Gone from Friend to Enemy; IDF kills Hamas terrorists embedded inside UNRWA school; The UN’s World of the Absurd

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Why Joe Biden Has Gone from Friend to Enemy

This political maneuvering just doesn’t pass the smell test. Nor do Biden’s expressions of disapproval at Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing, which has been the opposite of indiscriminate. Something else is going on here.

Now, I’m not saying the Biden people are being disingenuous. It could be, as Matthew Continetti points out in his column this month, that they’re just bad at politics and are miscalculating the electoral importance of the anti-Israel voter. But what if it’s not just that. What if it’s something darker?

For three years, Biden and his team have been fighting to get the American people to give him and themselves credit for a booming economy. Whether he deserves that credit or not, it’s not happening. They are beside themselves with frustration because they are not receiving the gratitude they think they deserve. Add to this that there’s nothing they can do about Biden’s own personal infirmities. These matters appear out of their control, and beyond their ability to fix, and it’s maddening to them. And they’re terrified—maybe even more terrified now that it’s clear that three of the four criminal cases against Donald Trump will not reach a courtroom before Election Day. They have been pinning their hopes on a turn in American opinion against Trump due to multiple Trump convictions. They might get the verdicts they want in the Stormy Daniels case, but the public’s lack of response to his being found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud might suggest even that anti-Trump moment will not be the knockout blow they desperately crave.

Ask yourself: Might there be something irresistibly seductive for the Biden team and Biden himself in the idea that his electoral woes have a foreign root? Doesn’t the disorder and crisis in and around Israel provide a convenient scapegoat for his own failings? No, it’s not that inflation has eaten away at the ordinary American’s financial gains. It’s not that Biden now needs his staff to stand between him and photographers to obscure video images of his halting gait. It’s not that he sounds like his throat is coated in sandpaper and that his tongue lolls about around his mouth when he speaks.

No, it’s that damn Bibi that’s threatening to drag him down.

The obsession with Netanyahu—when Israel’s prime minister is doing nothing more than reflecting the consensus opinion of his people about the necessity of winning the war—is reminiscent of another shameful moment in English history. “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Henry II is reputed to have said of Thomas à Becket, after which four knights cornered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and murdered him. Perhaps, in his private councils in the White House and perhaps in conversation with Chuck Schumer before Schumer’s speech, Biden offered some woke variant of the same sentiment: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome Jew?”

Biden’s policy now is that Hamas should be allowed to live to massacre another day. In the end, then, while Biden spent months being the best friend Israel may ever have had in the White House, he has now become one of its worst enemies.

And, again, for what? For Wales?

The Gates of Gaza

The healthy alternative to the Star Wars paradigm, which has so visibly and spectacularly failed to assure Israel’s security, is “Mad Max.” This alternative paradigm states that new and old weapon systems will merge, thanks to innovative concepts of operations. Mad Max understands that the twenty-first century battlefield is home to T-64 tanks, which fought their first battles in the early 1960s, as well as state-of-the-art cyber-electronic warfare. Mini drones that are commercially available across the globe can spot for Cold War-era artillery.

Never underestimate technologically inferior adversaries, the Mad Max paradigm counsels. High-tech tools and weapons will never be the sole or even the primary factor determining the winner of wars. This dictum is especially true for the wars of the Middle East, where great powers external to the region determine the balance of power on the ground.

Because war remains today what it has always been, a political activity, we cannot gauge the true advantage of any weapon—be it new and technologically advanced or old and rusty—without first considering the political-military strategy that it serves. Victory comes not to him who kills the most enemy soldiers or who fries the most motherboards but to him who converts what transpires on the battlefield into the most beneficial political arrangements. Losers on the battlefield frequently win wars, by bleeding giants until they are too exhausted to continue fighting. For example, in Vietnam, the second Iraq War, and Afghanistan, the U.S. repeatedly outmatched its adversaries militarily but lost the wars, nevertheless.

The digital revolution has enhanced the powers of technologically advanced countries in many ways, but it has also exposed them to new risks while also delivering surprising new tools to underdogs. Even the poorest of powers, thanks to the internet and smartphones, now enjoy a bonanza of open-source intelligence that just a few years ago was not available to even the richest of states. Cheap drones purchased off the shelf can offer startling reconnaissance capabilities to Ukraine against Russia. Cyber-enabled supply chains and GPS present an otherwise ragtag group like the Houthis opportunities to disrupt global commercial shipping. The list goes on.

The Star Wars paradigm also rests on the assumption, often unstated, that taking and holding territory has somehow become a secondary part of warfighting. While it is certainly possible to name wars that have been won without territorial conquest, they are few and far between. Almost inevitably, the magnitude of such victories is small, because victors who impose their will from over the horizon—from the air, sea, or through economic leverage—lack the physical presence on the ground that is necessary to shape a new political order.

The Mad Max mentality cultivates a heightened sensitivity to the phrase “on the ground.” With minor exceptions, armies translate battlefield victories into lasting changes either by seizing territory or threatening persuasively to do so. In the brave new digital world, traditional warfighting assets—large combat formations, replete with artillery, rocket systems, engineering units, and heavy armor—will not disappear, because only they can take and hold territory decisively.

Under the influence of Star Wars, Israel neglected its role by allowing its land forces to atrophy. In 2018, Brigadier Roman Goffman, who was then the commander of the 7th Armored Brigade, took the extraordinary step of airing his concerns about this issue openly before the senior leadership of the IDF at a command conference. “Chief of Staff,” Goffman said, referring to his senior most commander, General Gadi Eisenkot, “I first want to tell you that we [in armored units] are ready to fight. There is one problem. You don’t activate us… [T]here is a very problematic pattern that is developing here, namely, the avoidance of the use of ground forces.”

Eisenkot sat in the front row of the audience flanked by the top leaders of the IDF. Behind them sat hundreds of senior officers who greeted Goffman’s remarks with smirks. But he continued undeterred. The non-deployment of ground forces, he argued, “ultimately affects the will to fight. What makes us into combat commanders over time is friction with the other side.” Absent friction with the enemy, he continued, the military enters a state of “clinical death.”

On October 7, the Israelis tasted what Goffman meant by “clinical death.” The Israeli military had at its disposal a glittering arsenal of exquisite weapons, including a large squadron of radar-proof F-35s, whose capacities previous generations would have considered to be the stuff of science-fiction. As it turned out, however, none of these weapons were of the slightest use against terrorist bands, armed mainly with Kalashnikovs, who were intent on murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians.

The Legacy of the Maalot Massacre

Fifty years ago today, Palestinian terrorists attacked a school in northern Israel, taking hostages and murdering 22 students. The memories endure for those who survived, and the lessons learned in 1974 resonate anew for a country facing another hostage crisis.

An intersection opposite the central bus station in Tzfat illustrates the interwoven trauma between that city and the Galileean town of Maalot, a half-hour’s drive away. At the intersection, one sign designates the road’s name as 22 Children of Tzfat Street, while a sign at the adjacent bus stop calls it 22 Children of Maalot Street.

Fifty years after a notorious terrorist attack that killed 28 Israelis near and in Maalot, including 22 students on a field trip from a Tzfat high school, places and people testify to the lingering pain.

It’s there a few hundred yards from the Tzfat intersection, on the Fig Kindergarten sign for the school named after Sarah Madar, “murdered in the Maalot disaster of May 15, 1974, may her memory be blessed.” Bracha (meaning blessing), a teacher there, told me that it’s one of 22 flora- and fauna-named kindergartens in Tzfat that memorialize the victims.

It’s there in Maalot’s Founders Museum, where a wall placard tells of the tragedy that began May 13, 1974, when three Palestinians who’d trained in Lebanon infiltrated Israel through the border fence a few miles north, setting off a series of security failures and attacks that culminated in the same terrorists taking more than 100 Israelis hostage in the Netiv Meir School and murdering the 22 students.

It’s there down the street from the museum, where a sculpture memorializes the Cohen family, who lived in the next apartment building until the terrorists shot them to death en route to the school.

It’s in a memorial in the Maalot school building where the teens’ lives were extinguished; in Tzfat’s Amit School that they attended, since relocated and renamed The Religious Comprehensive High School in Memory of the 22; in that school’s first-floor room with a wall filled by the victims’ pictures on branches of a painted tree and, next to the tree, a stained-glass window with 22 chiseled brown circles containing their names; in a bomb shelter that a Maalot survivor renovated, inside whose entrance he hung pictures of his 22 classmates; and in the cemetery where the children were buried together down a hill from the ancient part of the city renowned for its holiness.

It is even 7,500 miles away in the Los Angeles suburb of Irvine, California, in a Reform synagogue that in 1975 renamed itself Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in solidarity. The synagogue includes its namesake, out-of-the-way town on each congregational visit to Israel and a decade ago paid for the memorial site in the Maalot classroom that it also refurbished.

“It’s part of our hearts, part of our soulful connection, how much more so in the period we’re now living in,” said Richard Steinberg, the synagogue’s rabbi.