Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Palestinian antisemites "cancel Christmas" - and blame Jews

Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem, and Jews are to blame.

That's the message from the Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor:

In Bethlehem, Christmas is canceled. Palestinian Christian leaders across denominations in the West Bank city decided last week that they will forgo all festivities this year as a mark of solidarity with their brethren in Gaza. There will be no public celebrations, no twinkling Christmas lights and no decorated tree in Manger Square — not as long, they say, as a state of war reigns over the embattled Gaza Strip, and the majority of its residents cope with Israeli bombardments, the devastation of their homes and a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

“This is madness,” Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, told me. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.”

But what about Hamas? Oh, they're pretty cool, according to Isaac:

The delegation’s members condemned Hamas’s actions and deplored its killing of innocent civilians and abduction of hostages. But they questioned Israel’s declared intention to wipe out an organization that is part of the fabric of Palestinian society and seen as a standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli military occupation and domination. “As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there,” Isaac said. “And you cannot just begin the story from there and as such, give a green light for Israel to do what it’s doing right now, which goes way beyond, which is a revenge campaign.”

In other words, empty words of condemnation for generic violence on both sides is the worst that Hamas can expect from these Palestinian Christian leaders.

Why? Because Palestinian Christian leaders are antisemitic on a theological as well as deeply emotional level.

The churches in Jerusalem issued a statement on October 7 that didn't condemn Hamas, but instead implied that Israel was responsible for all violence, using the standard keywords of "justice and respect for human rights" which are only applied to Israel.

They didn't even hint at the pogrom before first blaming Israel for violating the "status quo" in Jerusalem - another dog-whistle for Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

Compare this wishy-washy, passive-voiced, both-sides call for ending hostilities with their sharply phrased condemnation of the "criminal attack" on the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital, which is obviously worded to blame Israel ("Military Forces") even though it was actually done by Islamic Jihad:

While the churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Gaza pretend to care about all human lives, Jewish lives really don't matter to them.

And that is because they are doctrinally antisemitic.

The churches in the region still espouse replacement theology, saying that all the Biblical promises to the Jews really apply to Christians (although the curses still apply only to the Jews.) The existence of Jews and Israel itself is a huge challenge to these churches. They still adhere to the worst forms of historic Christian Jew-hatred. The "Kairos Document" that they wrote concretizes this antisemitism as official Palestinian church policy that promotes supersessionism and denies any Jewish connection to the land.

This is the background that needs to be understood before examining why the churches in the region decide to "cancel Christmas" and send representatives to lobby America. Antisemitism in the region has always been at least as prevalent among Christians as it has been among Muslims. Nothing has changed theologically for those churches in their approach to Jews - we are still guilty of deicide and we are still a challenge to their very existence.

In 1864, way before modern Zionism, an observer described how much Jerusalem's Christians hated Jews:

On Good Friday the Jews cannot quit their own quarters, as the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians would insult and otherwise illtreat them. On some occasions the pasha has been obliged to guard the entrances of their streets with bodies of soldiers and police to protect them from the fanatical Christians, who would have made an attack upon them. No Jew, who lives at Jerusalem, dares to pass in front of the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for he well knows how great a risk he runs of suffering for his curiosity. If, on an occasion like this, he were murdered, the malefactors would not be severely punished; for all the native population unfortunately hold the opinion that to injure a Jew is a work well pleasing in the sight of God. This is due to the fact that the Jews, although numerous, do not know how to make themselves respected; and to the sermons constantly delivered by the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, in which the most opprobrious and unseemly epithets are heaped upon them, even in the churches themselves, and of course still more in less sacred places. These are all believed by the faithful, who are thus excited by their priests to insult all whom they meet. Again, the poorer Jews when going or returning from pilgrimages between Jerusalem and Hebron, avoid passing through Bethlehem to escape the insults which the "good Christians" of that place, excited by their monks, always inflict upon them.

And that is the problem with all coverage of Israel. Antisemitism, both Christian and Muslim, has permeated the region for hundreds of years before modern Zionism. The worst insult an Arab could call another has always been "Jew."

Nothing has changed for Palestinian Christians since then. They are taught the exact same hate, lately refined by specifically anti-Israel "liberation theology." . They have not accepted the 1965 Nostra Aetate of the Vatican that re-evaluated the relationship between the church and Jews. Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, rank among the most antisemitic people on Earth.

It may not be politically correct to call all Palestinians antisemitic, but every survey shows that the overwhelming majority indeed are. Ignoring that is ignoring the very foundation of the conflict. And covering, say, a visit by Palestinian Christians to the US without acknowledging this hatred is simply another dimension of antisemitism itself - because to deny the long history of Palestinian antisemitism is to excuse it.

Munther Isaac is entirely correct when he says, "As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there." They started long before October 7, with historic Arab prejudice against Jews that remains a constant through today.

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!

Arabs boycott e-commerce site for "supporting the Jews"

Noon is a Saudi-based e-commerce site, much like Amazon, that markets and sells a wide variety of items.

Over the past couple of days, Arabic media have been asking the question: does Noon support the Jews or not?

The answer given is yes, Noon does support "Jews" and therefore must be anti-Palestinian.

This may sound surprising, especially since its website homepage says solicits funds for Gaza and offers multiple ways it will donate to Gaza charities.

So what's going on?

It turns out that the founder and owner of much of Noon, Mohamed Alabbar, is a billionaire business tycoon. His company also owns the Burj al-Khalifa Tower in the UAE.

In 2021, it was revealed that he, together with four other mega-rich people, donated $170 million to feed poor people in Israel between 2003 and 2021. Alabbar himself only started donating in 2018 so his share was significantly less.

Donating to the "hungry in Israel" means that probably half of the funds would go to the Arab community there.

This charity towards Arabs and Jews in Israel is now being spun as "supporting the Jews" or "funding Israel's war" or being "anti-Palestinian."

It is pretty clear that Arabs who boycott a company because its owner gives charity to poor Jews and Muslims in Israel are all antisemitic.

Levels of antisemitism have been rising steeply over the past seven weeks, and Arabs are in for forefront of that bigotry.

There is a cottage industry in Arabic media trying to determine which multinational companies support Israel, by their own bizarre standards. Cinnabon does not but Dunkin Donuts does - because someone took a photo of a donut with a blue Star of David on it. Dominos Pizza does but Nike does not. (Actually, Nike has a store in Tel Aviv. Sorry, boycotters.)

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!

11/28 Links Pt2: 10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages released; We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity; IDF names three soldiers killed in Hamas captivity

From Ian:

10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages arrive back in Israel after 53 days in Gaza captivity

Nine Israeli women and a 17-year-old girl were released by Hamas on Tuesday night after 53 days in captivity in Gaza, amid an extended truce deal with the Palestinian terror group that is expected to last at least until Wednesday, when another group of about 10 hostages is expected to be freed.

Hamas on Tuesday also released two foreign nationals from Thailand as part of a separate agreement.

The release of eight Israeli women, six of them elderly, and one mother and her teen daughter on Tuesday came hours after an apparent violation of the temporary halt in fighting, now in its fifth day, when Israeli troops were targeted in northern Gaza by Hamas explosives and gunfire. A number of soldiers sustained light injuries.

All the hostages were handed over by Hamas and terror ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Red Cross in Gaza Tuesday night, then arrived in Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing — sidestepping a transfer in Egypt — in a process that was also observed for the past two days of hostage transfers.

They were being brought to hospitals in Israel for further treatment and monitoring, before being reunited with their families.

Hamas released footage of the handover in which the women can be seen walking, flanked by armed, masked terrorists. One of the hostages, Ditza Heiman, 84, was in a wheelchair and was helped into the Red Cross ambulance by medical staff. The handover, brightly lit and filmed by multiple cameras, was stage-managed by the terrorists in front of a large crowd.

Teen hostage Mia Leimberg, 17, was seen in initial clips of the release from inside the Gaza Strip holding her dog Bella, which was thought to have been killed in the October 7 onslaught. That day, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took some 240 hostages including about 40 children.

The youngest among the nine remaining child hostages is Kfir Bibas, who was just nine months old when he was captured along with his parents and four-year-old brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The baby’s aunt Ofri Bibas pleaded Tuesday for the family’s release as soon as possible.

The IDF said Monday that the Bibas family had been transferred by Hamas to another Palestinian terror group in Gaza, dampening hopes of their release during the current truce.

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light

Dr. Hagai Levine worries about four-year-old Abigail Edan, who saw her parents murdered by Hamas terrorists before she was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 and released on November 26.

He worries about 84-year-old Alma Avraham, deprived of essential medication for the seven weeks she was captive in Gaza.

He worries about each of the remaining approximately 160 hostages, from the youngest baby to the oldest octogenarian.

But Levine isn’t just sitting around fretting.

While national leaders are working out the difficult details of getting hostages released back to Israel, Levine is working out the difficult details of their medical care.

Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, volunteered to head the medical team of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum established by the families of the approximately 240 abductees less than 24 hours after the deadly Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.

“This is an unprecedented event,” says Levine.

“Hostages ranging from a nine-month-old baby to an 85-year-old woman with dementia and Parkinson’s were taken and held underground in inhumane conditions. Hamas did not allow them access to the Red Cross or connection with their families,” he says.

“Very early on, we established a medical and resilience team with the aim of bringing them home now, safely, and protecting the health of the hostages and their families.”

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light
Hostage Eitan Yahalomi is reunited with his mother on his return on Nov. 27, at the Kerem Shalom meeting point. Photo courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson.

Levine and the forum worked with the Health Ministry to innovate new guidelines for treating released hostages.

“We are writing a textbook that wasn’t written before because nothing like this has ever happened before,” adds Orna Dotan, head of the forum’s resilience team comprising hundreds of mental-health professionals.

We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity

The Jewish homeland has been a constant throughout our history. In exile we yearned to return. Then, as the state was granted independence, a partnership across the diaspora brought those dreams to life. When Jews needed to flee persecution, Israel wasn’t just ready and waiting, it orchestrated their escape. It has been a relationship of existential necessity.

And then, October 7, in an instant, Israel stopped feeling like a safe haven. Worse, it felt like its existence was under threat. Those of us too young to remember 1948, 1967 or 1973 had taken Israel for granted. Even with every lesson from our history, we still took Israel for granted.

As it evolved, as the skyscrapers rose and the military grew in power, Israel became an insurance policy to cash in, as and when needed. Israel was there for us. Yet, as a result of our complacency, we could not always say the same.

The immediate response to October 7 has been everything you would expect and more. People who have not given for years have dug deep. The insurance premium is being paid in full — for now. But what happens next? The relationship between Israel and the diaspora had stagnated. As we come out of this trauma we need to press the reset button and, together, re-establish what it means to be the Jewish homeland and to be a Jew outside its borders. The starting point must be a focus on that which brings us together as opposed to the things that drive us apart.

On peoplehood, on a shared history and a desire for a better Israel without demanding a perfect Israel. Too many had made their support for and relationship with Israel conditional. We looked over our shoulder to determine when, how and even if we should state our Zionist credentials, as we sought to avoid the political or social wrath of those who would hold Israel to a higher standard.

Israel is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Never has this been more apparent than when it is seemingly at its most vulnerable.

As people take to the UK’s streets in their hundreds of thousands, some calling for the dismantling of Israel, others for jihad and a number even glorifying the murder of babies, it would be naive not to ask, again, “What if?” What if the baying mob gets its wish? What if it becomes too dangerous to send our kids to Jewish schools?

What if university campuses become no-go areas for Jewish students? Just pick up the suitcase and get on the next flight to Israel? What if there were no Israel to turn to? What if that insurance policy suddenly got cancelled when we needed it most?

And as I look at Britain and look to Israel, struggling to work out how any of this has happened I ask myself, where do we go from here?

Jake Wallis Simons: The Jewish State Is Determined to Defeat the Enemy, Whatever the Price

On Oct. 7, in the sleepy kibbutz of Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, Aviv and Livnat Kutz were hoping to spend the afternoon with their three teenage children and other likeminded locals flying kites near the fence as a gesture of peace towards their Palestinian neighbors. The corpses of the murdered Kutz family were later found huddled together in the same bed.

Looking back, the complacency that prevailed in Israel regarding the threat from Gaza was not only remarkable but agonizingly naive. In the conventional Israeli security picture, the Gazan militias were dwarfed by the threat of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Iran, which was on the threshold of nuclearization. Indeed, as one defense source told me: "If Iran had directed the attacks, Mossad would have known about it."

What Hamas has always missed is the fact that Israel is not a colonial power like France in Algeria. The Israelis have no other country to which to withdraw. And such is the alchemy of Israeli society, whose conscription culture creates deep bonds of social responsibility and national pride, that turning up the volume of agony on its public produces an equal and opposite reaction of solidarity and grit. The Jewish state is determined to defeat the enemy, whatever the price.

On the Israeli side, everything changed on Oct. 7. In butchering the innocent with such savagery, Hamas had changed the security calculation. Israel's policy of containment was torn up.

By way of spectacular success, Hamas had signed its own death warrant. If an effective deterrent is to be re-established, Hamas must be dispatched unequivocally, as costly as this will prove in terms of blood, treasure and international standing.

Last week, an old Palestinian colleague called me from the grounds of the hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Hamas was facing a groundswell of repressed rage from its own people, he confided in hushed tones.

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!

Firebombs bullets, graffiti, death threats: Jews in Canada are being attacked every day

A Jewish community centre in Montreal was firebombed early Monday morning. The firebomb was thrown into the building through glass window on the front door and it exploded in the hallway, causing some damage.

This is only the latest incident of many in Montreal.

Earlier this month, shots were fired at a synagogue and two Jewish schools, and another synagogue was firebombed.

At Concordia University in Montreal, a class-action lawsuit is being filed against the school and the student association, saying that they have fostered a safe space for antisemitism over the years, causing emotional harm to Jewish students and faculty.

And it is not only Montreal.

In Toronto's Forest Hill neighborhood, home to the largest Jewish community in Canada, pro-Nazi graffiti was sprayed on a branch of the Starbucks coffee chain. Michael Levitt, CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, published photos of the event on social media. "In case you're struggling to read the hate graffiti,” it says, “a cup of coffee, you mean a cup of blood" "stop killing babies” and “blood on your hands.” This is the daily reality for Jews in Canada," he wrote.

...The community also reported the tearing down of mezuzahs, the spraying of blood-soaked Stars of David on Jewish homes and a school, as well as protest events held outside community centers.

Someone wrote "Hitler" on a Toronto bus stop.

This antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on an underpass in Winnipeg.

An Ontario family saw "Jews Die" sprayed on their garage, and received this death threat note:

It might not be Nazi Germany, but things are feeling a lot like 1932.

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!

11/28 Links Pt1: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948; Ten Israeli hostages freed as Hamas breaks ceasefire in Gaza; Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

I’m in Tel Aviv and have only been here for about 24 hours, so my impressions are just that—impressions. But walking the streets on Monday night and Tuesday morning and afternoon, the overwhelming feeling is one of heartbreak. Not mine—no, it’s as though the emotion of heartbreak is somehow present in the air of this usually vibrant, often chaotic-seeming city. And that seems to be the case even though Israelis, as far as I can tell, are finding a measure of relief in the release of the hostages that began a few days ago, which they have not experienced since October 7.

Ask people here how things have been since that day and they say the feeling is unlike any they’ve ever known. What does that mean exactly? I think it means very different things to different people, but the common thread seems to be that everyone is experiencing what might be called a personal crisis of national confidence.

The story of Israel, despite the wars and the strife, is a story of building and creation. A hundred years ago, Tel Aviv was a town of 15,000 people. That town is now home to 435,000, and sits in the midst of a metropolitan area 4 million strong. Through decades rife with political maelstroms and economic reversals and ideological spats, Israel has simply gotten bigger and more competent and stronger and become a more desirable and prosperous place to live. My sense is Israelis, no matter how slightingly they have spoken of the economy’s inequalities and the disgracefulness of its politicians, nonetheless swell with pride at their own place as a living and breathing element inside one of the world’s most purposeful countries—a place they hold in part because so many of them serve in the military as their first acts of adulthood.

Because security is a paramount concern, and because security is so much a part of Israel’s national identity, the collapse of that sense of security on October 7—and the collapse of the security itself—has been devastating. Blame it on whomever you choose. There’s Bibi, because he’s been the person in charge since January (and was in charge from 2009 to 2021). There are the political leaders that preceded him in government in 2021 and 2022, who also failed to pick up the signals that Hamas was planning something very big and very clever. There’s the active military, which apparently thought a chain-link fence would suffice as a border. There are the officials in the chain of command who dismissed the eyewitness warnings literally sent to them from the soldiers—women, mostly—who served in the watchtowers overseeing Gaza over the course of 2023 that there was mischief afoot. There are the once-vaunted and legendary intelligence services, which almost certainly were being fed false info by fake spies that lulled the government into a false sense of complacency.

Seth Mandel: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948

On Oct. 6, Eilat was a town of 50,000 residents. Less than two months later it is currently at about 110,000, unofficially. The resort town in Israel’s south has become an absorption center for Israelis all over the country whose own towns were evacuated in the wake of the attacks.

Some of those were “routine” evacuations—towns in the north in range of Hezbollah rockets. (As strange as it is to consider such an evacuation “routine.”) But others are as far from normal as Israelis have ever dealt with. Sderot, a community of 30,000 near Gaza that has become synonymous with living under the threat of rocket fire, is a ghost town. Because the threat isn’t “just” rockets anymore.

Nir Oz, the kibbutz that lost nearly a quarter of its residents to Hamas’s bloodlust on Oct. 7, has existed in one form or another for almost as long as the state of Israel has. Kfar Azza is even older than Nir Oz. Be’eri was founded in 1946 to enable Israelis to repel an Egyptian invasion. These places represent the ideal of the chalutzim—Jews, often fleeing nearby Arab states, willing to move to Israel’s sentry towns.

And now they are empty.

This occurred in the state’s early years too. Occasionally a community would be forced to relocate temporarily for its own safety. But soon that stopped happening.

Until it happened again on Oct. 7, 2023.

This is crucial to understanding Israel’s stated resolve to fight this war until it is won. The current conflict isn’t just a more-intense version of, say, the 2014 outbreak of violence in and around Gaza. The difference isn’t one of degree; it is one of kind.

This is obvious to Israelis, even as Westerners are largely oblivious to it. “It was a shocking moment because it felt like it was a scene from 1948,” Einat Barzilai, a writer, told the Times of Israel two days after the attack.

JPost Editorial: Finish the job

While there are questions about how many hostages Hamas can actually produce – dozens, if not more, are reportedly being held by other terrorist groups and perhaps even private individuals in Gaza – so long as the group is indeed able to hand over hostages, Israel should keep this arrangement going, provided it does not impair the IDF’s ability to continue the military campaign once the pause ends.

Israel launched this campaign with two stated goals: toppling Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Military leaders had been supportive of the initial four-day pause in hostilities, saying that not only would it not undermine the army’s ability to continue its efforts against Hamas – it would actually facilitate them. This appears to hold true for the additional two days, as well.

Israel must finish the job
In Israel’s understanding, its two goals are mutually reinforcing: it is the military campaign against Hamas that applied the pressure necessary to force the group to start freeing the hostages – and it is the release of the hostages and the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza in the context of the deal that will enable the campaign against Hamas to continue once the pause concludes.

Our message is simple: Israel should finish the job: Both jobs.

Israel should continue to do whatever is necessary – and within the bounds of what its military leaders determine is bearable – to free the hostages so long as the pause continues, and it should be prepared to immediately relaunch its military effort to eradicate Hamas’s capacity to carry out a massacre like October 7 ever again.

In so doing, Israel’s leaders will fulfill their commitment to the people of the Jewish state and bring this painful episode to its natural conclusion.

At the end of the Gaza War’s first half, Israel’s position is strong

Israel negotiated from strength
While all Israelis want the hostages back, not all support the dangerous trade. Yet the War Cabinet, the full Cabinet and the Knesset all backed the deal. While opponents of the deal claim that Israel negotiated from a position of weakness, the exact opposite is true. Israel negotiated the hostage deal from a position of great strength.

First, the IDF is one of the world’s strongest militaries. It is absolutely destroying Hamas, with only a portion of its military might. Israel and Hamas both understand well that a four-day pause does little to change Israel’s overall strategic advantage on the battlefield, even if Hamas manages to regroup and rearm.

Israel’s moral superiority
Second, in placing such a high value on retrieving its hostages, Israel has once again demonstrated its moral superiority. While Hamas values martyrdom and a culture of death, Israel values life, and will risk life and limb to save one of its own. That is a message being heard loud and clear inside Gaza, where civilians recognize that Hamas has invited death and destruction into the Strip, and does little to protect its residents.

It is a message that is reverberating around the world as well. The return of Israeli hostages to the headlines reminds the international community that Israel was severely victimized on Oct. 7 by a brutal terror organization.

That Hamas has been essentially forced to give up 50-70 of its bargaining chips for only 4-6 days of pause in the fighting demonstrates how desperate a situation Hamas is actually in.

Netanyahu shames Hamas in Gaza
Adding insult to injury for Hamas was a surprise visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the strip on Sunday, where he held situational assessments and met with IDF soldiers that continue to hold their positions.

Netanyahu’s visit sent clear messages both in Israel and Gaza. First, Netanyahu has not-so-subtly signaled that as the head of the strongest military force in Gaza, he is now the Strip’s sovereign leader. From this point forward, it is Netanyahu who will determine the fate of Gaza, not Hamas.

The visit is a terrible embarrassment to Hamas, and this is the reason they have not openly commented on it. The visit would have gone viral globally and been more difficult to ignore had Netanyahu opted to record statements in English, in addition to the statements he made in Hebrew while with the Israeli soldiers.

IDF pressure campaign to resume
Second, as Netanyahu repeatedly told the soldiers, as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Gaza the day before, the military campaign will resume as soon as Hamas is no longer able to deliver hostages. Gallant has repeatedly insisted that it was IDF pressure that forced Hamas to negotiate the return of hostages, and he continues to insist that further IDF pressure will lead to the release of additional hostages in the days and weeks to come. The defense minister has stated that fighting in Gaza is expected to continue for months yet. Netanyahu and Gallant have no choice but to beat Hamas at its own game.

Understanding Hamas’s strategy
On Oct. 7, Hamas intentionally launched an attack so heinous that Israel would have no choice but to retaliate on an unprecedented scale. And it is obvious that the IDF, as one of the world’s strongest and battle-ready militaries, has enough might to defeat a terror entity with fewer soldiers and inferior weapons.

Hamas understood from the outset that it could never defeat Israel on the physical battlefield. Instead, it sought to use the physical war to defeat Israel on the psychological battlefield, and in the realm of public opinion.

Interview With Judean Rose On The Repercussions Of October 7 (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Varda Meyers Epstein lives in Eretz Yisrael and contributes to the Elder of Ziyon blog under the pseudonym Judean Rose. I wanted to get her perspective on the repercussions we are seeing in the wake of October 7.

Judean Rose

In the 2 weeks following the Hamas Massacre on October 7, there was a 400% increase in antisemitism, according to the ADL. Were you surprised by the breadth and intensity of these antisemitic protests and their violence?

No. I was not surprised, only sad. I’m sad that there was no other way for Diaspora Jewry to understand that this is still with us, other than for October 7th to happen. Now they understand and it’s heartbreaking. We feel it. They feel it, too.

What do you think caused this ferocity?

It was a powder keg getting ready to blow. When Hamas did what it did on October 7th, the call went out to make excuses for this in the context of supposed Israeli occupation and oppression, which of course is delusional propaganda. But the West that wants to hate Jews doesn’t care to examine things any too closely.

Do you think there is anything that can be done?

No. But while I don’t believe in boycotts, I do believe in individuals taking a stand against giving antisemitic actors, for example, royalties. I read about Susan Sarandon spouting falsehoods about Israel and I said to myself, “I will never watch another movie with her in it, again.”

The majority of creatives really hate the Jews. Sure, there are the actors who wrote a letter in support of Israel and against terror and antisemitism, but it’s all a numbers game. There are more haters than there are moral people on the side of right.

Protecting yourselves is another thing. If you want your Jewish child to get an education, you have to leave. It’s no longer safe for them to go to school. The hatred is no longer just on isolated college campuses. Antisemitism and antisemitic attacks have even hit elementary schools in the US and Canada.

I’m assuming you get where I think all Jews should be. I believe that were every Jew to make Aliyah today, the world would be too afraid of us to ever mess with us, again. Here too, it’s a numbers game. There needs to be more of us in Israel, since there are not more of us in the world. The terrorists, for example, are terrified of the God of Israel. When they see the Jews massing and banding together, they quake in their boots. It subdues them, and the world quiets down for a bit, maybe goes into hiding for decades. But it always returns at full force at some point.

While Israel retaliates, we have seen media bias as Israel strikes back against Hamas. But have there been any differences this time in the media? Considering the callousness of the Hamas massacre, do you think the media has been more circumspect?

No. But perhaps they get caught lying more frequently. Look how the BBC had to retract what they wrote about the al Shifa Hospital.

They reported the exact opposite of what happened, stating as if it were fact that Israel targeted medical teams as well as Arabic speakers. Unbelievable chutzpa, or as they might say over at the Beeb: “cheek.”

I read a lot of news and listen to a lot of podcasts and talk shows. Israel is more in the news now, and I am impressed that Fox News is sympathetic to Israel. But they get so much of it wrong! Dana Perino, whom I really like, has spoken about how people are so ignorant of the history of the region, so they come to the wrong conclusions. She mentions, for example, that Israel left Gaza in 2005 and that claims of occupation are therefore imaginary.

Dana Perino

But if Perino is so knowledgeable about the region, why does she refer to Gaza as “Palestine.” One after the other, I have heard Fox news people refer to “Palestine” as if it were a thing. It is not. They get it wrong, and by doing so, they perpetuate the violence. They think they’re on the side of right, but in their smug ignorance, they are anything but. They’re spreading propaganda, thus carrying water for the other side and perpetuating falsehoods.

What do you see as the cause of this bias -- is it ignorance or maliciousness?

Malice. If it were merely ignorance, they would still be culpable for malice, because they didn’t care enough to discover the truth and were willing to smear Israel and the Jews without doing even minimal research.

There are codes of ethics for journalists. They have to follow the rules because otherwise people get hurt. But if no one is following the rules, they can get away with it, especially in a Jew-hating, Israel-hating world.

Are there any in the media you would single out, one way or the other?

By far, the BBC is the worst.

Their blatant bias is the norm. It’s never an accident. The incident with Jeremy Bowen reporting that Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza “was flattened” is a good example. The network was forced to issue a vague apology when the story was discovered to be a complete fabrication.

Asked if he regretted the damning report, in which Bowen, citing a Hamas source, also claimed that hundreds had been killed and thousands injured, the reporter said he didn’t “feel bad at all.” He went with what the photos looked like to him at that time. Is this proper journalism? No. It’s the unspoken policy at the BBC. Make Israel the lede; make it, Israel, bleed.

But the BBC is only a reflection of British society and seriously ingrained British antisemitism. When it comes to antisemitism, I always say that “the British are first and worst,” going all the way back to 1144 and William of Norwich, the first known case of the blood libel.

Can anything be done?

It’s difficult because you have useful idiot Jews they can parade before the public and then they can forever more say, “Even so and so with a yarmulke says Israel is evil,” as happened with Christiane Amanpour’s Benzi Sanders interview.

What about Israel and Hasbara -- What else can be done?

I’m not big on Hasbara. I’m big on the truth, which is why I think there should be more support for independent bloggers advocating for Israel. We say things you won’t hear in the media, and right now our people are thirsty for accurate information. The best bloggers always bring reputable sources, which they link to for credibility so you can read more deeply on the subject.

The media bias parallels the overall anti-Israel propaganda that we have seen. In what areas has anti-Israel propaganda been successful?

The anti-Israel propaganda has been so rip-roaringly successful on so many levels that it’s difficult to know where to begin. But let’s start with the worst one, in my opinion, legitimizing the massacre. There is no context that makes the events of October 7th okay. Anyone who parrots such thoughts, even if they don’t really care and just want to be popular, should not be part of normative society.

Ripping down posters of captives? Why is that a thing? Because they’ve legitimized the massacre.

Why does a professor say he is "exhilarated" by the massacre? He says it to let you know that the massacre was not only legitimate but indicated. He also says it in order to normalize genocide, to laud terrorists for murdering Jews in cruel ways.

The success of this propaganda is enabled in part by the distancing of American Jews from Israel. What do you think has led to this alienation of American Jewry?

Jews are very vulnerable to Stockholm Syndrome. In order to be accepted by the predominantly non-Jewish world, they adopted beliefs antithetical to the good of their own people—of themselves. Why does any Jew call for a two-state solution? Don’t they know that the Arabs got 78% of the British Mandate for Palestine? Don’t they know that when they sing “Next year in Jerusalem” at their Passover seder they are actually affirming the right to return to their indigenous territory?

Do you think the Hamas massacre has served as a wake-up call?

Yes. Just as Kristallnacht served as a wake-up call. So tell me: why do we still need wake-up calls? When will we understand antisemitism as a permanent feature of life that can only be dealt with by strengthening Israel?

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Hamas never lied about its intentions to destroy Israel, kill all Jews and create a new caliphate. Why can't the intelligentsia understand that?

Peter Coy is "a veteran business and economics columnist [who] unpacks the biggest headlines" at the New York Times.

Looking at world events through the prism of economics is usually a useful endeavor. But Coy, and the experts he consults, completely misread Hamas and its rationality. They are making the same mistakes that most analysts do.

Coy writes:

In an influential article in 1995, James Fearon, a Stanford political scientist, then at the University of Chicago, showed that in most cases (not all), a rational leader should be able to clear up confusion and make decisions with sound information. Given how destructive and deadly wars are, political leaders have a strong incentive to use “diplomacy or other forms of communication to avoid such costly miscommunications,” Fearon wrote in “Rationalist Explanations for War,” which was published in the journal International Organization.

...Fearon specified three cases where leaders might miscalculate even while behaving rationally. One is where one side or the other has private information about its power or resolve and incentives to misrepresent such information to the other side. Bluffing, for example. Another is where one or both parties can’t reliably commit to an agreement to keep the peace because they have an incentive to renege on the terms. A third is where the parties can’t compromise by splitting the prize down the middle because the prize is indivisible — say, a throne that two princes are vying to occupy.

The second of the problems that Fearon highlighted, the commitment problem, comes up again and again in diplomacy, [Eli] Berman [an economist who studies war at UCSD] told me. Combatants do battle for years because neither trusts the other to abide by a peace agreement — and there’s no third party that has the power or motivation to force them to do so. The United Nations is too weak. The United States has lost interest in serving as the world’s policeman.

The decades-long failure to reach a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is a classic example of a commitment problem. Israel resists the formation of Palestine as an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza out of fear that it would become a base for attacking and destroying Israel. And to many, attacks like the one by Hamas on Oct. 7 justify those concerns, pushing the prospect for peace even further into the distance. Each side believes that the other understands only force.

No, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not "a classic example of a commitment problem." It is a classic example of the "indivisible prize" problem, the third situation Fearson mentions, not the second.

The "prize" - Israel's existence - is what the conflict is about.

Hamas leaders have described their desire to eradicate Israel consistently and virtually daily since it was founded in 1987. There is no ambiguity there. They aren't trying to hide it. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and Israel doesn't want to be destroyed. There can be no compromise between the two.

Yet these very smart people like Coy and Berman simply cannot wrap their heads around this concept. They want to look at the conflict as a "commitment problem," hoping that if only Israel would give up more, then the goodwill would be reciprocated. There is literally zero evidence that this is true - Israel already gave the Palestinians Gaza with no strings attached! - but these academics want it to be true so badly that they ignore all the evidence.

(Fearon's article also downplays the possibility of a true indivisibility problem in real life: "the issues over which states bargain typically are complex and multidimensional; side-payments or linkages with other issues typically are possible; and in principle states could alternate or randomize among a fixed number of possible solutions to a dispute. War-prone international issues may often be effectively indivisible, but the cause of this indivisibility lies in domestic political and other mechanisms rather than in the nature of the issues themselves." That is probably true in most of the world, but certainly not with Hamas or the other Palestinian terror groups.)

Moreover, Hamas is also explicit in its other goals: to murder all the Jews in the world, and to create not a Palestinian state but a pan-Islamic 'ummah that is ruled by Islamic law.

Given Hamas' stated aims, its leaders are indeed acting rationally.

From an economist's perspective, Hamas miscalculated - if you assume that Hamas cares about the two million people living under its control. On October 6, the Gaza economy was the best it had been since Hamas took over the territory. There were more imports and exports from Gaza than there had been in decades. Thousands of Gazans had well-paying jobs in Israel, an experiment that appeared to be doing quite well. The "siege" was over by any objective measure.

But Hamas is indeed rational in its irrational goal to destroy Israel and murder all Jews. Hamas never cared about its own people. Just as with Nazi Germany, murdering Jews is a higher priority than the wellbeing of its own population. Once you understand that about Hamas, everything that seems crazy makes sense.

But doesn't Hamas at least want to survive? Of course it does - and the hostages are its life insurance policy. Israel cannot destroy Hamas while ensuring the safety of its own people. This is all supremely rational once you understand Hamas is truly evil.

Anyone who bothered to read its charter that is still in force would know that.

The real question is how intelligent people can be so self-delusional as to not believe Hamas when Hamas has stated its goals and its jihadist strategy as clearly as possible for 36 years.

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NPR is thoroughly clueless about Israel's released hostages, saying their families - most of whom are still in mourning or praying for other family members - have been made "whole" again.

NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke with Liz Cathcart, executive director of the non-profit Hostage U.S., about "what life can be like for hostages once they’re free."

Clueless doesn't begin to describe this interview.

I'm sure that Cathcart is an earnest person who deals with Americans who are held hostage abroad for various reasons. But she clearly doesn't know anything about what the Israeli hostages went through.

She says things like "The best story of hope that we can give is that the vast majority of cases that we deal with and with a family who is whole again, who recognizes that they went through an incredibly traumatic experience and they are built stronger and have learned coping mechanisms that they can apply to many different scenarios in their lives."

The hostage families are not whole again. Most of them have family members who were murdered. Some of them witnessed the murder or rape of their loved ones or friends. Certainly all of them lost friends and neighbors. Many have husbands or fathers still in captivity. They are not living in their own homes and won't be for months, and many homes were destroyed. The trauma is not just for the hostages themselves but for the other surviving members of their families, and for their entire communities who have lost so many.

Chang and Cathcart use a tone of voice indicating how much they care, but they couldn't be bothered to do even a modicum of research. They don't care. They just thought this would be a good segment, and pretending to care is what they need to do for their audience.

The entire segment is an advertisement for Hostage US. The "advice" given is utterly useless in helping any Israeli hostage who was released, and it is tone deaf about what they went through. It trivializes the real trauma that they are continuing to go through and instead it recommends vacuous kumbaya cheerleading.

(h/t Irene)

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11/27 Links Pt2: Hamas Is Lying About the Hostages; The hypocrisy of the feminists; What is up with Ireland?; Exposing Max Blumenthal's Lies

From Ian:

Israel Can Either Win the Narrative or Win the War

Why have the Jewish people long occupied mental real estate in non-Jews’ minds? Andrew Klavan recently clarified. The Jewish people are, Klavan said, “The theater in which God plays out his relationship with humankind.”

The God of the Jews harshly judged child sacrifice (Isaac and Jacob), sexual immorality (Sodom), and slavery (Egypt); these were common in pre-biblical civilizations. Introducing a new moral code was disruptive and revolutionary to the established order.

The Jewish followers of Jesus, a Jew, introduced Christianity to mankind. Muhammad was, according to Islam, a descendant of Ishmael, son of the Jewish patriarch Abraham.

The Jews are the theater in which God plays out his relationship with humankind.

What movie are we watching today? The West’s mainstream understanding of just war is shifting, and Israel is the theater.

Our traditional view of good and evil emerged from the Torah.

“The destitute you shall not favor in his complaint” (Exodus 23:3).

“You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man” (Leviticus 19:15).

Justice, strength and wealth are not mutually exclusive. Neither are injustice, weakness and poverty.

But news coverage has reduced a war that Hamas started on October 7 to a scoreboard where Israel’s relative strength becomes its greatest diplomatic weakness. In this movie, the higher the body count reported by Hamas, the crueler Israel becomes.

But more German non-combatants were killed in World War 2 than American or British.

So the Allies were baddies, and we ought to feel guilt over the 1-3 million dead German civilians, including many children.

In future conflicts, will the U.S. military’s rules of engagement be further tightened to account for voters’ preferences?

Seth Mandel: Hamas Is Lying About the Hostages

Why wouldn’t Hamas know where some of the captives are being held? Because, the Financial Times reports, “Hamas has told Qatar that its fighters did not capture civilians, blaming it on other militant groups and Palestinians who rampaged through southern Israel after fighters broke through the Israeli security barriers around Gaza, [Qatari Prime Minister] Sheikh Mohammed said. When the hostage deal was brokered, it was agreed 50 women and children would be released because that was the number Hamas said it had been able to secure, Sheikh Mohammed said.”

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani may or may not believe his own statement, but it doesn’t really matter. Two paragraphs later the Financial Times makes clear: “Video posted on social media on the day of the October 7 attacks, as well as footage collected by the Israeli military in subsequent weeks, showed Hamas fighters, some in uniform, and other Palestinians going through Israeli houses killing civilians and taking others captive.”

The fact that anyone would pretend to need video proof to believe Hamas harms civilians in the year 2023 shows us the level of intellectual dishonesty we’re dealing with. According to the IDF, Hamas seems to have kidnapped some of the hostages and transferred them into a different faction’s custody. If true, that goes even further toward exposing what a sick and farcical shell game this whole hostage negotiation is. And one of those believed to be in that group of hostages is a ten-month-old child. A baby.

It’s also worth noting, as Seth Frantzman did last night, that whatever lack of communication Hamas has with “other groups” in Gaza didn’t get in the way of a relatively clean ceasefire. The agreement was with Hamas, but everyone stopped shooting at Israelis. Either Hamas has tight control of Gaza… or Iran does.

You know who doesn’t have control of Gaza? Qatar. The filthy rich middleman. Good work if you can get it.

Hamas is lying in order to stay in power and continue murdering and torturing innocents. It cannot be allowed to succeed. That’s the whole ballgame. Everything else is noise, and Biden should filter it out.

Hamas leader Sinwar spoke to hostages in Gaza, released Israeli says

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the man behind the planning of the October 7 massacre, spoke to Israeli hostages while they were held in Gaza, one Israeli who was released from captivity this week told her family, Israeli media reported on Monday evening.

Sinwar allegedly arrived in a tunnel where she and other hostages were being held, checked how they are, and told them in fluent Hebrew that they would not be harmed.

Israel's Channel 12 claims that this report was verified by her investigators in Israel's security systems.

Current concerns among Israel's defense and military analysts relate to Sinwar's plans for the rest of this war - namely, the exploitation of the humanitarian crisis among Palestinian civilians in order to advance Hamas's terror goals.

Sinwar's Israeli interrogation of 1989
The use of his people's suffering for the terrorist organization's gain is nothing new to Sinwar, whose 1989 police interrogation in Israel was recently unveiled, during which he expressed a deep antipathy for the Palestinian people.

For example, in 1987, Sinwar wanted to experiment with dropping explosive charges. Of all places, he chose Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a dummy target.

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There is something almost refreshing about Houthi antisemitism.

It doesn't pretend to be only "anti-Zionism." They aren't worried about being shamed by MEMRI translations. They don't claim that they treated Jews well in the old days.

No, their hate for Jews is full force, and based directly on Islamic texts.

From the September 26 Houthi site:

The most eloquent description of the Jews is as stated in the Holy Qur’an, the Blessed and Most High, saying: "And neither the Jews nor the Christians will be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. Say, 'Indeed, God’s guidance is guidance. And if you were to follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you will have neither guardian nor helper with God.'" (Al-Baqarah (120))...

The Jews are aware in advance that the eternal and absolute hostility between them and the Muslims is a historical hostility that extends for decades. This is a fact established by the Holy Qur’an that the Jews are most hostile, hateful, and spiteful to Islam and the Muslims. As stated in the Almighty’s saying: "You will find that the people most hostile to those who believe are the Jews and those who associate others with others." (Al-Ma’idah: (82)..).

For this reason, the Holy Qur’an decided not to be loyal to them, or to normalize relations with them, or to court them, or to enter into negotiations with them, for fear of falling into the snares of their cunning and deceit, and the nets of their machinations... in accordance with the Almighty’s saying: "O you who have believed, do not take my enemy and your enemy as allies. You will meet. To them with affection, but they have disbelieved in the truth that has come to you." (Al-Mumtahana (1)).

Therefore, Islam acknowledges that the only and best way to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem is to declare absolute jihad. The Jews are more cunning and hypocritical, and their cunning is fighting, in accordance with the Almighty’s saying "And fight in the way of God those who fight you, and do not aggress. Indeed, God does not like aggressors." (Al-Baqarah (190).

Therefore, the leaders of the Arab and Islamic nation as a whole must heed the lesson of history and keep in mind that the liberation of Palestine was not and will not be through negotiations or truces, but rather through declaring absolute jihad. Failure to prepare militarily for any reason is evidence of weakness that leads to terrible defeat.

One of the Jewish leaders says: We do not fear socialist, revolutionary, or democratic regimes in the region, but rather we fear the Islamic awakening.

The Islamic awakening is the imminent danger that the Jews fear and tremble at.

Therefore, the components of the Arab-Islamic renaissance must be based on a comprehensive conception of man, the universe, and life derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet, closely linked to Islamic studies and work, and laying down Islamic educational foundations that take into account Islam’s conception of the individual, society, and the universe, based on the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the biography of the Prophet, and the scientific and cultural achievements that Muslims have achieved throughout history. ..

Naturally, none the Muslims who swear that they are not antisemitic and respect Jews ever say anything negative about the Houthis' explicit Jew-hatred.

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