Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
We are members of psychoanalytic organisations in solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza, standing with Palestine against the genocide currently being waged by the Israeli state. This current onslaught, which has already resulted to date in the death of more than ten thousand people in Gaza, and many murders by settlers of Palestinians in the West Bank, is being conducted with the support of regimes in the global north that care nothing for human life. The Israeli state and those who deliberately abet it care nothing for those they portray as sub-human, and whom they tolerate, at best, as powerless victims.......Our task is to resist the ideological and state offensive carried out against the Palestinians. We call on our colleagues to dissociate themselves from the war on Gaza, and to state unequivocally that they will speak and act for Palestine. This is no time to be silent. Yes to resistance.
The Red Clinic is a collective of communist mental health workers united for a radical psychotherapy, for the care of the oppressed, and for uniting the two in the service of communist politics. We aim to develop truly accessible and sustainable provision of psychotherapy for the working-class and the oppressed in the broadest senses of the terms, attentive to the interrelations between axes of oppression, and transcending national borders. This practice will work in tandem with our efforts to develop a novel theoretical basis for psychotherapy today, informed by Marxist, anti-racist, queer feminist, indigenous, decolonial and radical disability theories, learning from our collective experiences in theoretical application, and honing psychotherapy into a better weapon of the communist movement.There you have it: psychotherapy is a weapon of the communist movement that supports murdering Jews in the name of "resistance."
What Would Victory Mean in Gaza?
Decision/victory is the only optimal outcome of a military campaign. In the last three decades, deterrence has become the desired outcome of an IDF military campaign, while decision/victory has essentially disappeared as the primary goal. This pushing aside of victory and centralization of deterrence was largely due to the limitations the State of Israel and the IDF placed on themselves regarding the use of force.WSJ: U.S. Pushes to Shape Israel’s Rafah Operation, Not Stop It
The goals of these limitations were to reduce casualties among IDF soldiers; reduce civilian losses from rockets hitting the home front; reduce enemy collateral damage; reduce international criticism of Israel over its military conduct; and avoid the need to provide a civil response to the needs of a local enemy population.
Israel's belief that it can rely on intermittent deterrence operations was painfully shattered on Oct. 7. It took a severe blow to national security to force a review of the security doctrine and a rediscovery of the concept of victory/decision. It was quickly understood that victory/decision is required in the current campaign and probably also in future campaigns.
Tactical victory is not about killing all opposing military soldiers or terrorist operatives, but about breaking their ability to fight as a combatant framework. In the current war, operational victory does not mean the threat of guerrilla warfare and terrorism has been removed from Gaza, but that Hamas' ability to cause damage, especially to the Israeli civilian home front, is declining dramatically.
Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy's ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. It is achieved by continuing military operations in order to weaken the enemy's guerrilla warfare and terrorism capabilities until they either stop completely or are reduced to the scale of individual events. Grand victory in Gaza would mean a years' long process until the creation of fundamental change. A civilian authority would be established with an effective police force and the capacity for civil, economic and law enforcement governance. The population would implement a basic approach of coexistence with Israel. Yet such a process does not yet appear practical or feasible.
This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. But the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel.
In two days of meetings between the Israeli defense chief and senior officials in the White House and Pentagon, discussions on Israel’s planned military operation in southern Gaza focused not on how to stop it, but on how to protect civilians during its rollout.Washington Denies a Bedrock of Warfighting
The businesslike tone of the talks was a departure from previous weeks, when top U.S. officials bluntly warned Israel against an all-out offensive on Rafah—where more than a million displaced Palestinians have taken refuge—while Israel’s prime minister defiantly vowed to press ahead.
Rafah has been at the center of a growing rift between Israeli and U.S. political leaders. Those tensions boiled over on Monday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a visit to Washington by top aides to discuss U.S. concerns over the planned offensive on Rafah, where Hamas fighters are making a final stand. The tit-for-tat move was in response to the U.S. abstaining from a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire while also demanding the release of hostages.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, however, proceeded with his meetings at the White House and Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday, which had been previously scheduled. Gallant is part of Israel’s three-member war cabinet that includes Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, the prime minister’s chief political rival.
While President Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu has frayed, the channel between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gallant remains strong. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the two defense chiefs have met several times and talked by phone about 40 times.
In Gallant’s closed-door meetings in Washington, a more pragmatic conversation began to emerge in which the discussions were on conducting a phased operation to reduce the potential harm to civilians while still ensuring that Israel dismantles Hamas’s four battalions in Rafah.
“I think there is an understanding we have to dismantle Hamas,” Gallant said, following his White House meetings.
At a Tuesday meeting at the Pentagon, Austin pressed his Israeli counterpart to ensure that effective arrangements were in place to protect civilians before an Israeli military operation is mounted to attack the Hamas fighters there.
“There is a sequence,” a U.S. defense official said. “The military aspect of the operation should not proceed until the humanitarian aspects have been fully addressed.”
Both sides also agreed that the Hamas battalions in Rafah must be dislodged so that the militants cannot attempt a comeback or continue to smuggle weapons into the enclave, which are prerequisites for ending the war and paving the way for a new political authority in Gaza. And that means trying to find ways to work with Israel on its Rafah strategy, for lack of better options.
The Biden administration recently pressed Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian oil refineries. Ukrainian strikes on refineries and tankers in the Black Sea have contributed to a rise in the global oil price, and specifically of oil products, especially diesel. Almost the last thing the Biden administration wants in an election year is higher fuel prices and associated inflation in other goods and services. But in acting to halt rising oil prices, Washington is undermining the Ukrainian war effort. Denying energy supplies to the adversary in war has long been a bedrock of military strategy. Washington’s policy toward adversary fuel supplies is likely to lengthen the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as the Gaza war.Bernard-Henri Levy: What If the U.S. Helps Hamas Win?
With oil and fuel product prices rising, Washington has now slammed the brakes on Ukraine’s effective strategies, effectively constraining Ukraine at a time that the war with Russia is likely to escalate soon. This is not the first time the administration has blocked an ally’s effort to choke off its enemy’s energy supplies. In the war in Gaza, the U.S. has demanded that Israel not only desist from disrupting such supplies but actually provide energy to Hamas. As a result, Hamas has been able to sustain tunnel warfare, which depends on liquid fuels. The provision of fuel to Hamas fighters enabled them to continue waging war from underground, prolonging the conflict and thereby endangering the lives of even more civilians in both Gaza and Israel.
In both cases Washington has imposed conditions on its allies that fly in the face of one of the cardinal principles of military strategy: disrupt an enemy’s energy supplies to cripple its forces. Allowing adversaries access to fuel extends a conflict and leads to more deaths as well as delays the conclusion of hostilities. Washington needs to let Ukraine and Israel finish the job, or indeed stop the wars. But hamstringing American partners is the worse option, since it extends the wars.
Let's imagine that Israel yields to the pressure, refrains from entering Rafah to finish off Hamas' four surviving battalions, and agrees to the general cease-fire of indeterminate duration that the U.S. administration seems to push. If that came to pass, Hamas would declare victory - on the verge of defeat, then the next minute revived. These criminals against humanity would emerge from their tunnels triumphant.
The Arab street would view Hamas terrorists as resistance fighters. In the West Bank, Hamas would quickly eclipse the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority, whose image would pale next to the aura of martyrdom and endurance in which Hamas would cloak itself.
After that, none of the experts' extravagant plans for an international stabilization force, an interim Arab authority, or a technocratic government presiding over the reconstruction of Gaza would stand long against the return of this group of criminals adorned with the most heroic of virtues. Hamas would set the ideological and political agenda, and hope for peace harbored by moderates on both sides will be dead.
- Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
“Under international humanitarian law, the place where you evacuate people to must, by law have sufficient resources for their survival — medical facilities, food and water,” said James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.“That is absolutely not the case,” he said.
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! |
|
- Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Wednesday, March 27, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
The conduct of hostilities in urban and other populated areas increased the risks of death and injury for civilians, particularly when fighting involved the use of explosive weapons. In 2021, 1,234 incidents involving the use of explosive weapons were recorded in populated areas in 21 States affected by conflict, resulting in 10,184 victims. Of these, 89 per cent were civilians, compared with 10 per cent in other [non-urban] areas.
This came from a British NGO called Action on Armed Violence. For other wars, it is probably accurate.
Unfortunately, their methodology in counting casualties in the current Gaza war weighs towards assuming all casualties are civilians.
They count 14,009 civilian deaths from explosives in Gaza between October 7 and March 20, but they admit that they are reporting nearly all of those deaths as civilian since terrorist deaths are rarely reported.
This figure refers to the number of reported civilians killed or injured by explosive weapon use in Gaza since 07 October 2023, gathered using incident-specific English language media reporting. ...Where a specific breakdown of civilians and combatants was not provided, casualties are reported as civilians with the caveat that combatants may be included in the toll.
Apparently they are basing their numbers on UN-OCHA daily reports where they repeat Ministry of Health reports of specific deadly airstrikes. Those are the only somewhat detailed English-language daily reports I am aware of. OCHA doesn' t investigate to see if there were military targets inside or underneath the houses that are bombed.
But the methodology appears to be sound in other wars, assuming credible English language reporting, which is reasonable given that overreporting civilian casualties has no military value as it does for Hamas, and where military casualties are not silenced as Hamas does.
Which means that if Israel's estimate of 13,000 terrorist killed is even remotely close to true, Israel is doing an unprecedented job of minimizing civilian deaths in urban warfare.
(h/t Irene)
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! |
|
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Lies of Hamas and antisemites bear fruit at UN
Like a house of cards, the artifice of lies built by Hamas and its supporters has begun to crumble.Western Guilt
A few weeks ago, statistician Abraham Wyner published a report in Tablet Magazine conclusively proving that Hamas is lying about the casualty figures in Gaza. The deaths reported by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry rose in a ridiculously linear fashion on a day-by-day basis that is virtually impossible in a real war. In addition, given Hamas’s acknowledgment that at least 6,000 of its fighters have been killed, its claim that 70% of the casualties in Gaza have been women and children is impossible unless male civilians are being miraculously spared. The extent of this lie is apparent when the true casualty numbers for terrorists and combatants killed in Gaza are taken into account, over 13,000.
Yesterday, former Al Jazeera director Yasser Abu Hilala admitted that the accusations that IDF soldiers raped women during the recent operation at the al-Shifa Hospital were fabricated.
"It was revealed through Hamas investigations that the story of the rape of women in Shifa Hospital was fabricated," Hilala wrote, adding that "The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood!"
Anti-Israel forces have made up rape allegations against Israel whole-cloth in order to distract from and excuse the well-documented mass rapes committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and the reports that the hostages still held in Gaza face constant sexual assaults and abuse from their captors.
However, the same day that the rape allegations against Israel collapsed, the constant stream of lies against Israel bore fruit as the Biden Administration caved to the pressure from those who spread these lies and refused to use its veto power against a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire during the month of Ramadan.
This resolution is merely declarative and creates no legal obligations, but it will still make everything worse. Hamas will be further convinced that its strategy of intentionally causing the deaths of its own people and constantly lying to inflate the number of civilian deaths is working and should continue, and it will be encouraged to dig in its heels and refuse any deal to see the hostages released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. It will be seen as further evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing by those around the world who support Hamas’s genocidal goals, giving a tailwind to the antisemites making life more dangerous for Jews everywhere.
Ironically, hours after this shameful betrayal at the UN, the American government stated that it knows the accusations of Israeli war crimes are lies. Addressing Israel’s compliance with an executive order signed by President Biden last month mandating that recipients of US military aid demonstrate that they are complying with international law, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “We have not found them (the Israelis) to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz,” runs a bizarre quip ascribed to the Israeli psychiatrist Zvi Rex. To deconstruct it, consult Dr. Freud. “A convenient way to dispatch guilt,” he might expound, “is to project it onto your victim” — like a schoolyard bully who huffs that the fight started when the other guy hit back.Far Right and Far Left Converge — Against the Jews
Guilt-swapping is precisely what Hamas’s cheerleaders around the world did even before Israel struck back after October 7. Hamas had tortured, raped, and murdered 1,200 Israelis. Instead of condolences, Israel reaped a global orgy of antisemitism, be it masked or overt, that also engulfed Jews everywhere, especially university students (demonstrating that higher education is no antidote for frenzy). It was a perfect reversal of cause and effect.
To plumb the Freudian mechanism, go back to postwar Germany, whose Nazi precursor had committed the crime of all crimes. After total defeat and “reeducation,” antisemitism was out. Democracy established strong roots, and philosemitism became the creed of the land. The government paid billions in restitution to the survivors of the Holocaust and the young state of Israel. At Yad Vashem, German officials from the president down would bow their head to the 6 million dead. The arms trade flourished; German-made U-boats are now one leg of Israel’s nuclear triad.
Yet the moral burden stuck, and so Schuldabwehr — “repelling guilt” — crept into contrition and atonement. By the first intifada, in 1987, Germans were telling themselves: “Israel is doing to the Palestinians what we did to the Jews.” “They are conducting a Vernichtungskrieg” — Nazispeak for a war of annihilation. “Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto.” “Haven’t the Jews learned from the past?” Auschwitz, then, was a kind of reform school.
Freud might muse: “Such parallels betray projection. Culpability continued to chafe, and, eventually, Germans sought relief by shifting it onto the victims.” Steeped in the Torah, Freud would add: “Three thousand years before I set up my couch, the Jews invented the scapegoat in Leviticus who ‘shall bear all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.’” But he would explain: “Such displacement, as I call it, spelled vast moral progress — no more human sacrifice to appease the Gods.”
There is no such advance in our days as we run through the third iteration of Jew-hatred.
The first chapter was written by Christianity. Jews were charged with killing God’s son, desecrating the Host, and committing ritual murder. A bitter Jewish joke makes the point. When a little girl was killed just before Passover, the shtetl’s Jews cowered in the shul awaiting an imminent massacre. Suddenly, the rabbi barges in, jubilating, “I have wonderful news. The girl was not Christian, but Jewish.”
The second chapter was authored by Hitler, who went from faith to race, fingering Jews as cosmic enemies of Germany and the world. Once, Jews poisoned the wells; now it is the bloodstream of the Aryans. They had to be quashed like super-deadly bugs.
Chapter 3 unfolds as we speak. “From the river to the sea,” a classic Palestinian refrain, sounds like a geographic reference, but its thrust is ethnic cleansing and extinction. Chanting this mantra, the crowds on Western campuses and squares haven’t read the 1988 charter of its leading exponent, Hamas, which in the name of Allah orders Muslims to kill Jews wherever they hide. Nor do the infuriated know the venom continually oozing from the language of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Tehran. “Israel remains a foreign body,” thundered Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah years ago, as if cribbing from Mein Kampf. Before the International Criminal Court, Israel stands accused of Nazi-like “genocide.” Hamas official Ghazi Hamad: “We must remove that country, because it constitutes a . . . catastrophe for the Arab and Islamic nation.” As for the October 7 massacre, we will do it “again and again.” And “everything is justified.”
An extremist distributes a flier about “Zionists infiltrating the media.” A political activist tweets, “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” A pundit writes about “the dirty tactics of Zionist censorship.”
Can you tell which of these haters is coming from the political right, and which from the political left? The world of antisemitism has become so muddled that it’s almost impossible to tell one from the other.
Consider: One of these three haters was recently arrested for painting the slogan “White Power” on synagogues. One co-chaired the Women’s March on Washington. One is a former New York Times correspondent and speechwriter for Ralph Nader. Can you tell which one is which?
One of the three is a Presbyterian minister. One is a devout Muslim. One owns a Ku Klux Klan robe. Still can’t tell who’s who?
Although these three bigots come from very different places on the political and religious spectrums, they have managed to find something in common: hatred of Jews, thinly disguised as hatred of “Zionists.”
Among the most troubling phenomena of our time is the extent to which antisemitism has become interchangeable among individuals who hold starkly differing views on other issues, from abortion to immigration to civil rights. Yet they all hate Jews.
There is no simple explanation for this because there is no simple explanation for antisemitism. Some bigots hate Jews for religious reasons, some for political reasons. Some focus their ire on Jewish philanthropists, some focus on Jews in the media, some focus on the Jewish state.
And sometimes they focus their hate on each other. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both violently persecuted their Jewish citizens, even as the two regimes went back and forth between being enemies and being allies. The Germans oppressed Jews and Judaism in the name of Aryan racial purity, the Soviets oppressed them in the name of working-class solidarity. Even when Hitler and Stalin hated each other, they never stopped hating Jews.
Leafing through the American Communist press in the 1930s is a ride on an intellectual roller-coaster. U.S. Communists dutifully followed the Soviet line, regularly and passionately denouncing Nazi Germany—until the Soviets signed a nonaggression pact with the Nazis in August 1939, at which point the American far left suddenly declared that the British, the French, and “the capitalist press” were the real enemy, to cite an editorial which appeared in that month’s issue of Young Communist Review. Two years later, Hitler tore up the pact and America’s Communists returned to being anti-Nazi. All the while, Jews and Judaism remained in the crosshairs of both Marxism and Nazism.
- Tuesday, March 26, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Antisemitism surged following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. Antisemitism on social media incited offline incidents including hate crimes, reflected the hostile offline environment, and promoted a social acceptability of antisemitism normalised this hostility. This report provides a vital in-depth analysis of online antisemitism in the months after the October 7 attack. It empirically compares the year leading up to the attack with what followed. It provides examples showing the nature of the harm.The report is based on 160 hours of monitoring by experts, 16 hours on each of 10 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), YouTube, Telegram, LinkedIn, Gab, Reddit, and BitChute. The data has been categorised using 27 subcategories of antisemitism, and summarised into 4 major categories: traditional antisemitism, Israel related antisemitism, problematic Holocaust related content, and incitement to violence. The systematic collection process with the same amount of time spent gathering data for each platform results in a rate of collection and sample size that reflects how prevalent antisemitism was on each platform. This is compared to work using the same methodology over the year leading up to October 7.
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! |
|
- Tuesday, March 26, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, Daled Amos
By Daled Amos
“If Hamas truly believes that the people, the Palestinian people are suffering, then why would they want to take this aid and use it for themselves to support their terrorist organization? One would hope that this aid will get to the people that are most deserving and in need.”
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder when asked how the US was going to ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians and not Hamas.
Did Ryder really acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization and then in the same breath expect that those terrorists would happily share humanitarian aid with the rest of Gaza? We shouldn't be all that surprised. Remember, this is the same administration where Biden himself wholeheartedly accepts -- and repeats -- the Hamas claim that 30,000 Gazans have died so far.
Hamas uses the suffering of the people in Gaza for its propaganda purposes and for pressuring Israel. The fact that the U.S. has fallen for this Hamas tactic is no less than shocking. It only reinforces Hamas’ incentive to use the civilian population as a human shield since this strategy works - it is more harmful to Israel than it is to Hamas.
The resolution fails to explicitly tie humanitarian aid to the release of hostages. The resolution merely puts the two issues side by side.
QUESTION: So last week when you guys presented your resolution at the UN, there were complaints from people who said that it delinked the ceasefire from the release of hostages, and U.S. officials were rather vociferous in saying that that is not the case. However, what you guys abstained on today does appear to delink them. Is that your understanding of —
MR MILLER: So we don’t believe it delinks them. You see in the same paragraph it – the resolution calling for both a ceasefire and the release of hostages. It’s not the exact language that we would have put forward, obviously, because the language that we would put forward is the language that we did put forward last week, but it is language that is consistent with our policy to call for both a ceasefire and the release of hostages, and that’s why we did not exercise a veto today.
As I said, we did have concerns about the lack of other provisions in the resolution, but as it pertains to a ceasefire and the release of hostages, both the things that we called for were there in the resolution.
QUESTION: So what’s the point?
MR MILLER: Well —
QUESTION: Why did you —
MR MILLER: — you could ask that —
QUESTION: Why did you abstain? Why didn’t you veto?
MR MILLER: We didn’t veto because we thought the language in it was consistent with something that – the language as it relates to the ceasefire and release of hostages was consistent with the longstanding United States position.
QUESTION: So you don’t believe anything is going to happen as a result of the passage of this resolution.
MR MILLER: So I think that separate and apart from this resolution, we have active, ongoing negotiations to try to achieve what this resolution calls for, which is the – an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages. I don’t – I can’t say that this – this resolution is going to have any impact on those negotiations.
Matt Lee |
If that’s the case, what the hell is the point of the UN or the UN Security Council?
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! |
|
Melanie Phillips: Israel alone Weep for America
America is punishing Israel for a catastrophe that the Biden administration itself facilitated. The atrocities of October 7 that started the war took place because Hamas’s patron, Iran, correctly perceived that America would ultimately abandon Israel rather than itself get stuck in. If the Biden administration hadn’t shown such weakness in defending the interests of the free world from Afghanistan to Yemen and Iraq and Ukraine, Hamas would not have been unleashed on October 7.Richard Goldberg: Bring them home . . . or not — Biden just sold out Israeli hostages at the United Nations
After the war started, despite the two aircraft carriers the US dispatched to the region, the Biden administration responded to continued attacks by Iranian proxies — even against its own interests — with a mere limp wrist. It has done nothing to deter Iran’s proxy army Hezbollah from bombarding northern Israel from Lebanon with hundreds of rockets and anti-tank missiles.
It could have stopped the war in its tracks by telling Hamas’s protector Qatar that, unless it instructed Hamas to release the hostages and surrender, the US would end their profitable relationship and treat Qatar instead as a global pariah. Instead, the US is not only feeding Israel to its mortal enemies; by failing to use its muscle to end this war, it is also facilitating Hamas’s war crimes against the civilians of Gaza by using snuff movies of their distress to incite hysterical hatred of Israel in the west.
Biden and Cameron fail to acknowledge that Israel is fighting in this manner because it has no choice. With Hamas almost entirely underground, Israel cannot get at it in any other way. If it doesn’t defeat Hamas, Israel will continue to face genocidal attack. Only by defeating Hamas and killing or capturing its Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, does Israel have any chance of getting any of the hostages back. Only by defeating Hamas does Israel have any chance of avoiding an infinitely more terrible all-out war with Hezbollah.
This is the rupture with America that some of us have seen coming for a very long time. But the US and UK don’t realise what they have now done. This isn’t just about Israel. It’s also about them.
The October 7 pogrom was a clear inflection point for the west. Would it support Israel in the battle for civilisation against barbarism? Now we have the answer.
But there’s a deeper question. The UK is busily destroying itself by making a bonfire of its historic culture and values. Its public administration has all but collapsed, its indigenous people are dying out and it has lost control of its borders.
In the US vicious culture wars are raging, there are unbridgeable political and social divisions, its elites have torn up its historic global mission of exceptionalism — and it has also lost control of its border.
Do the US and UK actually want to survive, or are they now in a death spiral?
Throughout centuries of persecution, the Jewish people have survived against impossible odds — while every civilisation that has tried to destroy them has disappeared. Whatever horrors lie ahead, Israel will survive. The same certainty cannot apply to Britain and America. Today has demonstrated that they don’t even know how to do so.
Against the backdrop of a hostage negotiation in which Hamas remains maximalist in demands and the arrival of Israel’s defense minister in Washington to meet with senior White House officials, the United States needed to veto any Security Council resolution that could further embolden the terrorist group.John Spencer: Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?
Biden chose a different path: abstaining on a resolution that decoupled a demand for a cease-fire from a demand for the release of hostages, thus severely undercutting Israel at the hostage-negotiating table.
The resolution had other severe flaws that demanded a US veto.
It made no mention of Oct. 7 or Hamas, let alone note Hamas is a terrorist organization, as if the world woke up one day in a vacuum outraged to find Israel at war in Gaza and Palestinian civilians in distress.
Why Israel is at war, who Israel is targeting and who is to blame for civilian suffering are unimportant questions for a resolution that simply says Israel must lay down its arms and hope a terrorist group that savaged 1,200 people and took 250 hostages will care what the Security Council demands.
These outrageous omissions, however, were no longer automatic triggers for a US veto.
During his recent State of the Union address, the president pledged to the families of Hamas-held hostages, which include American citizens, that “we will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.”
Apparently that vow did not include vetoing resolutions that disconnect demands for hostage releases from any potential cease-fire — reducing the odds of bringing them home.
The State Department claimed Monday the resolution reflected the administration’s “principled position that any ceasefire text must be paired with text on the release of the hostages.”
But that explanation itself reflects how far Biden policy has shifted. No longer must a cease-fire be conditioned on the release of hostages; the two demands must only appear next to each other for optics.
On a policy level, the two demands now exist independently — meaning America supports a cease-fire even without the release of hostages.
Israeli strength backed by American political support is needed to bring hostages home, defeat Hamas in Gaza and deter Iranian threats throughout the Middle East.
To counter the perception of an Israel crumbling under American pressure, Jerusalem must respond with reaffirmed determination to destroy Hamas on the battlefield.
And members of Congress should reaffirm their support for that objective, including a potential operation in Rafah.
Hamas scored a political victory with Biden’s help.
Israel must now fight that much harder to reverse the damage — with or without Biden’s approval.
In its operation at Shifa hospital in Gaza to root out Hamas terrorists, the Israel Defense Forces took unique precautions to protect the innocent. Doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. The IDF also brought in food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.
I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history - above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The international community, and increasingly the U.S., barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF for not doing enough to protect civilians - even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage.
The predominant Western theory of executing wars seeks to shatter an enemy with surprising, overwhelming force and speed. No warnings to the civilian population or time to evacuate cities is given. Yet Israel has abandoned this established playbook in order to prevent civilian harm.
The Hamas-supplied estimate of over 31,000 deaths in Gaza does not acknowledge a single combatant death (nor any deaths due to the misfiring of its own rockets or other friendly fire). The IDF estimates it has killed about 13,000 Hamas operatives, a number I believe credible because I believe the armed forces of a democratic American ally over a terrorist regime. That means 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians - a number that would be historically low for modern urban warfare.
- Tuesday, March 26, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Tuesday, March 26, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Tuesday, March 26, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
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! |
|
Monday, March 25, 2024
Seth Mandel: Loser of the UN Resolution: Biden
The pauper’s diplomacy of the Biden administration was on display today as it facilitated the passing of a UN Security Council resolution heavily weighted against Israel.Intl. law expert: Biden team's moral backbone collapsed
Every minor concession to moral decency was rejected in favor of “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan.” Beggars can’t be choosers, explained Biden’s ambassador to the UN after abstaining from the vote, thus allowing the resolution to pass: “We did not agree with everything in the resolution. For that reason we were unfortunately not able to vote yes. However, as I’ve said before, we fully support some of the critical objectives in this non-binding resolution.”
Let’s be crystal clear about why this was a bad resolution.
Last week the U.S. put forth a version of the resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China. That version asked for Security Council backing for “diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.” [emphasis added]
If you don’t connect a long-lasting ceasefire to the release of the hostages, you are telling Hamas to walk away from the negotiations led by the U.S. to secure those two aims. After all, that same UN ambassador fumed at the time, “we should not move forward with any resolution that jeopardizes the ongoing negotiations.”
Russia’s deputy UN envoy disagreed, insisting that everyone should be comfortable with telling the hostages to rot: “At the coordination stage, almost all Security Council members expressed the view that the demand for an immediate ceasefire should not be conditional on the release of hostages or the condemnation of Hamas.”
Today, the Biden administration declared Russia to be correct. Let the hostages rot or else Joe Biden may lose a few thousand votes in Michigan.
As for the cynical use of “Ramadan” in the ceasefire, the Biden administration should be ashamed of itself for enabling it. The language implicitly portrays Israel’s counteroffensive as a war of religious persecution, or at the very least contempt. That alone will inflame the violent resistance to the mere survival of the Jewish nation. Was there a Hanukkah resolution passed by the UNSC that demanded the release of hostages? Yesterday was Purim; the holiday came and went without a UNSC demand for Hamas to at least return the children it is holding. Next month is the holiday of Passover, in which we recount our ancestors’ prolonged suffering while they were held against their will. How does the godforsaken nest of cretinous trolls at Turtle Bay plan to honor that one?
Prof. Anne Bayefsky, president of the Human Rights Voices NGO and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva Monday about the US government's decision to abstain rather than use its veto against a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during the month of Ramadan.David Singer: The UN sows the seeds of its own demise
"The failure of the Biden administration to veto this resolution is a shocking redefinition of American priorities: mollifying Iran and its terrorist partners is on the ascent while supporting Israel in its existential battle against terror is plummeting," Prof. Bayefsky said.
She noted, "Last week the United States "demanded" the UN Security Council finally condemn Hamas for the October 7th atrocities - which the Council has never done. The Arab group of states, the Russians and Chinese said no. Just forty-eight hours later, the moral backbone of the Biden team collapsed. The United States allowed the adoption of the third Council resolution since October 7th that fails to condemn its perpetrators."
"Moreover, in her statement before the Council American Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said Hamas should achieve a ceasefire - in effect saving the terror organization and its plans for more October 7's - with the release of one hostage! In her words: “A ceasefire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage.” American hostages have been abandoned in Hamas hell holes, by their own government. And U.S. credibility and honor has taken a tremendous hit - to the detriment of Israel, the Jewish people and America," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.
Guterres has been responsible for filing only documents from 1947 – not from 1917 - with the International Court of Justice in relation to the UN General Assembly seeking the Court’s advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The Court’s opinion will be based only on those documents lodged by Guterres– which will exclude the Court considering the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and the 1936 Peel Commission.
Guterres has been the UN front man – supported by UNESCO head Tor Wennesland - pushing for the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan as called for in Security Council Resolution 2334 adopted on 23 December 2016 – when Obama refrained from vetoing it - that misleadingly claims Jews have no legal right to live anywhere west of the Jordan River. Rescinding Resolution 2334 remains an imperative to rectifying this anti-Jewish canard.
Guterres and Wennesland have refused for the last 18 months to bring before the Security Council for its consideration an alternative solution emanating from Saudi Arabia - authored by an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution published in Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022. Their extraordinary decision ensures the 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict will continue – not end.
Emboldened by these clearly anti-Israel UN decisions – increasingly strident Moslems have caused Jewish communities worldwide to become greatly concerned for their own safety as they foment demonstrations around the globe calling for Palestine from the River to the Sea to be free of Jews – supported by lawyers from Australia to artists in the USA signing letters calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza War.
Under Guterres’s leadership the UN has become the epicentre for fostering anti-Israel hatred and Jew-hatred.
The UN has lost its moral compass and is sowing the seeds for its own demise.