Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

05/19 Links Pt1: Bassem Eid: Hamas, not Israel, is to blame for the latest bloodshed; The War You Aren’t Seeing: A Clear-Sighted View; Ami Horowitz: My interview with Hamas.

From Ian:

Amb. Dore Gold: Hamas is Acting as an Arm of Iranian Power

The Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was supposed to produce a more stable outcome and not four Israeli-Palestinian wars. The Israel Defense Forces pulled out of Gaza, together with the 9,000 Israeli civilians who lived there.

It is hard to find the basis of outstanding grievances that could justify Hamas launching salvo after salvo of rockets at Israeli population centers and devoting scarce resources to an endless war with the Jewish state. It makes sense then to look elsewhere for Hamas' motivation.

It was reported last week that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, spoke by phone with Esmail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the man who replaced the notorious Gen. Qassem Suleimani. A senior Hamas official described a visit by a Hamas delegation to Tehran in 2006 with $22 million stuffed into suitcases, and claimed that Suleimani had agreed to transfer an even larger sum. In 2017, Ali Baraka, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, said, "Iran is the only country that supports the resistance with money and weapons."

The current Hamas offensive against Israel should be placed in a broader context of Iranian ambitions. An illuminating study published by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change this February asserted that "the premise that Iran would moderate its commitment to creating and sponsoring militias due to the thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations after the 2015 nuclear deal and sanctions relief for Tehran was false....The number of militias created by the IRGC surged after this period."

It is imperative that Israel defeat Hamas in this round of conflict. It is important that Iranian expansionism through Middle Eastern militias is halted.

Moreover, the mistake of the 2015 nuclear deal must not be repeated, with billions of dollars going to Iran, fueling the next wave of terrorism - including the terror of Hamas. Not only is the security of Israel at stake but the security of the wider Western alliance.

Bassem Eid: Hamas, not Israel, is to blame for the latest bloodshed

I was born in the Jordanian-occupied Old City in Jerusalem and lived in a UN refugee camp from 1966 until 1999. During the First Intifada, I worked for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and in 1996 I founded the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring group. With my background in Palestinian campaigning and as a resident of East Jerusalem today, you might assume that I am against Israel’s current military actions. But this could not be further from the truth. The blame for this month’s bloodshed lies solely at the feet of Hamas.

Those who wish to divert attention from Hamas’s war crimes would like to blame the latest conflict on a complicated legal dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. But this was a private matter between Jews who have a property deed from the 1800s and the residents of four homes who have refused to pay rent. This cannot be framed as ‘ethnic cleansing’. It is little more than a landlord-tenant squabble. It should have been a matter for the local courts, but instead this small-time event wound up in an appeal at the supreme court, and hit the press. Hamas quickly saw an opportunity.

Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah party, is at his weakest point in many years. He had just cancelled parliamentary elections because he knew he would lose. Hamas saw Sheikh Jarrah as an opportunity to show Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere that they could ‘do something’ while Fatah could not. They spread lies and propaganda on social media, deliberately inciting violence among Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Hamas then ‘responded’ to the riots by firing rockets indiscriminately towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, guaranteeing an Israeli military response.

Hamas does not care where these missiles land: as many as one in seven, in fact, have been reported by the Israel Defence Forces to have crashed down within Gaza during this latest round of fighting, resulting in 20 casualties. They see a lopsided body count as a positive development, as it allows them to claim that Israel is the aggressive party in the conflict they started. This Islamist terror group is dangerous for our people: we cannot continue to be a conduit for their work.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How President Biden Emboldened Hamas, Islamic Jihad

Second, was the Biden administration's offer to resume negotiations with Iran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, enabling Iran, in a few years, to have unlimited nuclear weapons -- while ignoring Iran's continual breaches of the deal. The administration also apparently ignored Iran's harassment of American naval vessels. In fact, as if the US is about to reward Iran for all that.

Earlier this year, the Gulf Cooperation Council expressed deep concern over the Houthi terrorist attacks on Saudi Arabia and called on Iran to stop its efforts to destabilize the security and stability of the Arab countries by supporting terrorist groups. This appeal, however, appears to have been ignored by the US and other Western powers.

"The Houthis and their Iranian backers think that the American move was the result of their military perseverance and a reflection of their superiority in the field. Moreover, the two sides (the Houthis and Iran) understood the measure as an indication of the new American administration's soft position towards them and bias against Saudi Arabia... Such messages enhance Houthis conviction that force is the key factor.... Revoking the Houthi designation without receiving anything in return raises the question about the efficiency of decision-making in this administration. In addition, revoking the designation of Houthis sends a message that Biden might return to Obama's hesitant and weak policy." — Emirates Policy Center (EPC) report, March 13, 2021.

Buoyed by the decision to resume the financial aid with no conditions attached, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are now convinced that the Biden administration's next move will be to rescind Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. That is why the Palestinians have chosen to call the current wave of attacks on Israel as the "Jerusalem Uprising."

"Moderate" terrorists attacking goods crossing in Kerem Shalom, @UNRWA blames Israel for closing it

UNRWA issued a statement that is the best reason why UNRWA should be dismantled.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) urgently calls on the Government of Israel to enable humanitarian supplies and its staff timely access to Gaza, in accordance with its obligations under international law.

The Agency has not received approval for critical access to Gaza for essential humanitarian supplies meant to provide relief to the distressed population, including particularly vulnerable persons such as pregnant women, children, persons with disabilities and serious medical conditions, and the elderly, despite immense needs following nine days of conflict. Approval has also not been received for its highest official to assess and support UNRWA emergency operations.

“UNRWA is urgently awaiting approval through established mechanisms to cross into Gaza,” said UNRWA Director of Strategic Communications, Tamara Alrifai.

Here is what actually happened yesterday:

Israel today coordinated a complex operation to transfer humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The transfer was hindered by repeated Hamas mortar fire launched at the crossing, in which civilians were killed and injured, and an IDF soldier was wounded
The timeline of events:

This morning, the Keren Shalom crossing was set to open to allow for the transfer of humanitarian aid, and the exit of foreign nationals.

There were 40 trucks loaded with food, medical equipment and humanitarian aid on their way to the crossing from Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, donated by OCHA, UNICEF, the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders.

Close to 11AM, Hamas fired mortars at the crossing, preventing the transfer of humanitarian aid. At 13:30, there was another attempt to allow the convoy to go through. While 8 trucks managed to enter, there was another mortar attack in which an IDF soldier was injured.

At 14:45, a third round of mortars was fired at the crossing, killing two Thai workers and injuring another 10 people.
Israel remains committed to ensuring the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah (the supposedly "moderate" rival of Hamas) has been bragging on its website about how many mortars it has shot towards Kerem Shalom, which they call Karm Abu Salem. It lists 15 separate attacks of some 30 mortars and missiles.

But UNRWA does not call on Palestinian terrorists to stop attacking the crossing, only some generic

Fauxtography returns in Gaza, eagerly published by the NYT

Photojournalists in Gaza stage photos.

You can see the series of photos taken by Shaban Elsousi on his Instagram account - and some of these ended up being used by media outlets.

It is very obvious that he posed the little girl with a toy and, sometimes, her Palestinian flag. None of this is real.

The New York Times also hires freelance photographers in Gaza who have every incentive to show Israel in a bad light and ignore Hamas war crimes like shooting rockets from populated areas. The NYT is highlighting obviously staged photos as well, like this one, with a bassinet that somehow landed right side up, meters away from the demolished building that supposedly housed it - and without a speck of dust on it. The photographer was also amazingly lucky to find a photogenic, sad boy who just happened to be walking right in front of it, but to the side, so we could see both.

Or this one, where elderly women climbed over dangerous rubble where they could fall and break their hips so they could sit (one on a convenient plastic chair) and look sad in this supposedly candid shot:

Note the colorful toy truck in the background, again suspiciously dust free:

Seeing the beach in the background, this airstrike may have been at the Shati camp, where Israel said Hamas leaders were meeting - but the New York Times won't mention that.

Speaking of toys, we are seeing plenty of them, always pristine, just as we've seen in previous wars.

Western media has no choice but to rely on local Gaza photographers, but Western editors are eagerly choosing photographs that fit their anti-Israel bias.

(h/t Michael)

NYT blames Hamas shooting rockets to Israel on....Trump!

This headline from Sunday's New York Times is almost too stupid for words.

It starts with a straw man premise - that the Abraham Accords was meant to be a comprehensive peace plan that would solve all the Middle East problems - and then knocks it down.

It was, President Donald J. Trump proclaimed in September, “the dawn of a new Middle East.”

Speaking at the White House, Mr. Trump was announcing new diplomatic accords between Israel and two of its Gulf Arab neighbors, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“After decades of division and conflict,” Mr. Trump said, flanked by leaders from the region in a scene later replayed in his campaign ads, the Abraham Accords were laying “the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region.”

Eight months later, such a peace remains a distant hope, particularly for the Middle East’s most famously intractable conflict, the one between Israel and the Palestinians. In fiery scenes all too reminiscent of the old Middle East, that conflict has entered its bloodiest phase in seven years and is renewing criticism of Mr. Trump’s approach ...

Only in paragraph 38 (!) does one of the architects of the accords get to say that the premise is wildly wrong:

Even some Trump administration officials said any suggestions that the accords amounted to peace in the Middle East were exaggerated.

“During my time at the White House, I always urged people not to use that term,” Mr. Greenblatt said.

But in between we see the kind of flawed logic that has been the basis of the failed Obama Middle East policies - and absurd criticisms of Trump's achievements:

Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official, conceded that Israel had also clashed with the Palestinians under Democratic administrations that had adopted a more evenhanded approach to the conflict than Mr. Trump’s nakedly pro-Israeli stance.

And he said opportunistic missile attacks on Israel by Hamas after the eruption of Jewish-Arab violence within Jerusalem was not Mr. Trump’s fault.

But Mr. Goldenberg argued that the current internecine violence within Israel “at least partially is driven by the fact that the Trump administration supported extremist elements in Israel every step of the way,” including Israel’s settlement movement.

In November 2019, for instance, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo changed longstanding U.S. policy by declaring that the United States did not consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law. (The Biden administration intends to reverse that position once a review by government lawyers is complete.)

Mr. Trump also moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, officially recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, in a move that infuriated Palestinians who have long expected East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future state they establish.

“Trump opened the door for Israel to accelerate home demolitions, accelerate settlement activity,” Ms. Hassan said. “And when that happens and you see Israel acting upon it, that’s when you see the Palestinian resistance.”

Palestinians can't be blamed at all for starting wars. It is always Israel's fault.

But that wasn't the only NYT piece on this issue.

Michelle Goldberg wrote a nutty editorial that echoed this premise:

But the explosion of fighting in Israel and Palestine in recent days makes clear something that never should have been in doubt: justice for the Palestinians is a precondition for peace. And one reason there has been so little justice for the Palestinians is because of the foreign policy of the United States.

“I don’t think that there’s any way that this occupation and creeping annexation process could have gotten where it is today if the United States had said no,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist group J-Street.

It takes spectacular ignorance of the politics and history of Hamas to think for a second that "occupation" has anything to do with Hamas rockets. But old, stupid memes die hard.

05/18 Links: Melanie Phillips: A murderous co-operation; The left’s shameful silence on anti-Semitism; Mike Pence: Violence in Israel Is the Price of Biden’s Weakness; Associated Press, Hamas Propagandists

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A murderous co-operation

The idea that journalists in Gaza — or indeed most of the western media corps, with some very honourable exceptions — have ever delivered objective and balanced reporting about Israel and the Palestinians is absolutely ludicrous. The implications of this systemic corruption of journalism — the certainty of it inflaming and inciting a Muslim population already fed a diet of paranoid lies about Israel and the Jews and whipping up hatred of Israel and the Jewish people in the rest of the population — are horrific.

We’ve had decades of this abuse of journalism, with the effects that are all too appallingly obvious to those with eyes to see. Now we are experiencing the latest round in this terrible war against the Jews, truth and elementary decency.

Please bear all this in mind when you next read or tune into the Guardian, New York Times, BBC, Channel Four News, Sky News or much of the the rest of the so-called reporting on the Gaza war by the mainstream media.

Or better still, cancel your subscriptions.

Brendan O'Neill: The left’s shameful silence on anti-Semitism

The modern left’s blind spot on anti-Jewish racism is a depressing testament to the confusions and contortions of identity politics. The ideology of wokeness is obsessed with categorising people according to their levels of presumed ‘oppression’ or ‘privilege’. In this eccentric worldview, now being bought into not only by middle-class professional protesters but also by the political class, numerous institutions and the education system, ‘whiteness’ is a signifier of privilege while ‘Muslimness’ is an experience of relentless pain. Identity politics has helped to inflame and exacerbate contemporary anti-Semitism through its depiction of Jews as hyper-white, as uber-privileged, and we all know what privileged people deserve, right? Criticism, censure, ridicule, possibly harassment. They definitely cannot be empathised with as victims of racism. That doesn’t compute for a woke left that has decreed that Jews are super-white, and therefore super-privileged, and therefore super-suspect.

And it is the woke left’s paternalistic pity for the Muslim community, its tendency to infantilise Muslims as perma-victims in desperate need of our moral succour, that makes it reluctant to call out Muslim anti-Semitism in particular. Much of the vile anti-Jewish commentary and behaviour of the past few days, including in London, Bonn and Toronto, has come from Muslim pro-Palestine protesters. The identitarian left turns a blind eye to Muslim anti-Semitism because it doesn’t fit into its rigid, racialised narrative. The ‘oppressed’ being racist to the ‘privileged’ doesn’t add up. So they make a trade-off, wittingly or unwittingly. They decide that Muslim anti-Semitism is not worth talking about, far less condemning, because Muslims deserve the protections of political correctness while Jews do not. Jews are abandoned to preserve the orthodoxies of identitarianism. It is now seen as virtually Islamophobic to talk about anti-Semitism.

And then there’s the relationship between anti-Israel agitation and anti-Semitic hatred. This has got to be confronted, honestly and forcefully. Every time there is a rise in anti-Israel protest, it is accompanied by acts of anti-Jewish animus. Why? Everyone who considers himself or herself genuinely progressive, and genuinely committed to tackling racism, should at least attempt to address this question. Left-wing protesters and commentators argue that it is entirely possible to be opposed to Israel’s military actions in the Palestinian Territories without being anti-Semitic, and they are absolutely right. But the uncomfortable truth is this: the modern left isn’t only opposing Israeli militarism. It is obsessing over it, to a distorted degree. Leftists treat Israel as uniquely barbaric, distinct from every other nation that engages in war. We have to ask ourselves if this hyper-moralisation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, this denouncement of Zionism as a pox on both the Middle East and broader global affairs, contributes to the prejudicial conviction that the Jewish State is the most evil state, and the Jewish people thus a suspect people.

‘Silence is compliance’, the woke left is fond of saying. So should we take their silence on recent acts of anti-Semitism as a sign of compliance with this hateful ideology? People are setting fire to Jewish monuments in Germany. They’re driving through Jewish areas of London calling for the rape of Jewish girls. They’re parading through the streets with images of hook-nosed Jews. If this doesn’t concern the woke left, then it is clearly even more lost than some of us feared.

Mike Pence: Violence in Israel Is the Price of Biden’s Weakness

President Biden has emboldened anti-Semitic terrorist groups such as Hamas by shunning Israeli leaders and restoring more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians that had been canceled by the Trump-Pence administration. He unilaterally took the Iranian-backed Houthis off the list of designated terrorist organizations. And worst of all, he has announced his intention to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, destabilizing the entire region.

When asked, Biden’s press secretary couldn’t even say whether Israel remains an “important ally” of the United States.

Every tepid statement uttered by the Biden-Harris administration is built on a false equivalency between Israel and Hamas. One is a sovereign nation with a legitimate government, and a trusted ally. The other is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that has fired more than 3,000 rockets at Jewish families and businesses in the past week. There is no moral equivalency between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. President Biden and every American leader should uphold Israel’s right to self-defense and condemn the terrorists of Hamas — as well as their supporters and apologists — in the strongest possible terms.

Apparently, Biden learned nothing from the tragic foreign-policy blunders made during his time as vice president. President Obama’s thin “red line” in Syria, his decision to “lead from behind” in Libya, and his slipshod withdrawal from Iraq each created power vacuums that were quickly filled by America’s enemies.

Now Biden is repeating those grave errors by creating a power vacuum of his own. He has replaced strength with weakness, moral clarity with confusion, and loyalty with betrayal. Biden’s void, too, is being filled by America’s enemies — and Israelis are paying the price in blood.

Americans should pray for the peace of Jerusalem and stand without apology for our most cherished ally, Israel, until the violence is quelled and Israel’s security is restored.

Associated Press, Hamas Propagandists

As more than 1,500 Hamas rockets were flying toward Israeli cities with the express purpose of murdering civilians, CNN could spare only around four minutes — in total — to cover the topic during an entire week of prime time. Typically, it’s only when the Jewish state begins defending itself that the story gets any real traction.

And, needless to say, the focus got intense after Israel destroyed a twelve-story high-rise building in Gaza that housed foreign press outlets, including the Associated Press. Israel claims that al-Jalaa Tower was home to Hamas military-intelligence assets. It called ahead to warn those inside, so, fortunately, no journalist was killed.

AP CEO Gary Pruitt said that his organization “had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” adding, “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”

This is nonsense. Pruitt knowingly puts journalists at risk every day he sends them to places such as Gaza, where the ruling regime wages war behind civilians it uses as shields. But how did Pruitt “actively” check? Did he ask Hamas? Did he call the landlord? Did he ring everyone’s bell? And how could we trust that a media outlet that is unable to track down a single Hamas militant shooting Qassam rockets — from dense civilian areas right near its offices — would be able to figure out who was in their building, anyway?

It is, of course, highly probable that Hamas was using journalists as human shields. This is what it does. During the last major outbreak of violence, in 2014, Gaza’s Shifa hospital became “a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders,” who could “be seen in the hallways and offices,” according to the Washington Post — but not the Associated Press, which had around 40 journalists working on the Israeli–Palestinian story, including a number of them filing stories from inside that very hospital.

Andrew Klavan: I Read The Hamas Charter To Prove How Racist They Are

The democrats like to stick up for Hamas - but do they really know who they are defending? If they don't, then they should figure it out by watching this video! If they do...well...then they're the worst.

Commentary Magazine Podcast: Gaza Madness and Masking Madness

Chag sameach!

This has been a rough few weeks for Israel, between the Lag B'Omer tragedy and the collapsing balcony today. Along with a few thousand rockets from some garden variety antisemites.

Let's learn some Torah!

Because I am in the Diaspora, I will not be blogging or tweeting until Tuesday night.

Chag kosher v'sameach!

A wave of blatant antisemitism - and the "anti-racists" of the Left are sickeningly silent

The antisemitism that has been unleashed in the past week has been horrific and widespread.

In Belgium, crowds screamed "Khybar, Khybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return" - a direct call to genocide of Jews.

In New York, a Jewish man is beaten and bloodied during an anti-Israel rally and others scream "Fuck you!" to him as he sought safety in a store.

In Toronto, a Jewish man is beaten with sticks during an anti-Israel rally.

At a London anti-Israel rally, a man literally jumps on top of Jonathan Hoffman's head.

On Finchley Road, London, this morning, a car with a loudspeaker broadcast, ""Fuck the Jews" "Fuck their daughters" "Fuck their mothers" "Rape their daughters" ...and "Free Palestine."

Also in the UK, a "messianic synagogue" in Norwich was sprayed with graffiti saying "Kike/Free Palestine" and a swastika.

The amount of pure antisemitism in social media is unreal. Every minute there are new tweets comparing Jews (not Israelis - Jews) to Nazis, or that Hitler was right, all day and all night.

Not to mention a Pakistani actress with 1.2 million followers admiringly shared a fake Hitler quote, "'I would have killed all the Jews of the world… but I kept some to show the world why I killed them." To make it clear, she added, "Free Palestine."

This isn't about Gaza. We've never seen such hate after any Western action in Syria or Afghanistan. No British crowds marching through malls to protest airstrikes in Iraq.

This is bigotry in its most ugly, rawest form.

Gaza is an excuse to find a socially acceptable way to publicly express Jew-hatred while pretending that your hate is righteous.

And while it is more subtle, that is exactly what is behind nearly all the obsessive hate of Israel we see every day of every year. Nothing else explains this level of hate, and clearly it isn't because of the supposed victims - Arab persecution of Palestinians is ignored by the anti-Israel crowd as well.

The way we know that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is that the anti-Israel Leftists who swear up and down that they are against antisemitism have not said a word about these incidents. And certainly none of them have popped up and said they would protect the Jewish right to counter-protest or even walk around unmolested.

05/16 Links: Melanie Phillips: The pathology of evil; Almost Nothing You've Heard about Evictions in Jerusalem Is True; Israel showed US ‘smoking gun’ on Hamas in AP office tower

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The pathology of evil

As the funeral was being held in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat today for five year old Ido Avigal, whose mother and sister were wounded in the rocket strike from Gaza, Palestinian war criminals fired projectiles at the town forcing the mourners to take cover. According to the Kan public broadcaster, the timing of the rocket fire was clearly aimed at disrupting the funeral since Kiryat Gat has not been a regular target during the current fighting.

This was a war crime. All two thousand or so missiles that the Arabs have been raining down at Israel from Gaza over the last week are war crimes because they are intended to murder civilians. Hamas and their fellow jihadi attackers are guilty furthermore of a second set of war crimes in using their own civilians as hostages and human shields by deliberately siting their missile launchers, ammunition dumps and other infrastructure of war in and around apartment blocks, hospitals and schools.

Yet in most of the media coverage in Britain and America, there is virtually no mention of these Palestinian war crimes. Instead, Israel is being presented as the wanton slayer of Palestinian children.

The Hamas-run health ministry today put the Gaza death toll at 119, of whom 27 were minors.

Israel has consistently said that about one third of the now almost 2,000 Hamas rockets aimed at Israeli civilians in recent days have fallen short and landed in Gaza, some of them killing Palestinians.

Now Hamas itself has admitted that its own rockets have been killing its own people. The Gaza NGO “Defence for Children International - Palestine” says that eight Palestinians, including two children, died in a Hamas rocket attack. And on Tuesday alone, according to Palestinian NGOs, Hamas rockets killed 16 Gazans including eight children.

Yet British and US media have been misleading the public into believing that the entire Gaza death toll is the result of Israeli strikes. Not only is this media falsehood inflaming general anti-Israel sentiment, but it is also exacerbating the hysterical, paranoid and even murderous hatred of Israel among Muslims.

The media is refusing to acknowledge the fact that, far from bombing civilian targets indiscriminately as it implies, Israeli forces are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid unnecessary loss of civilian life.

Avi Bell and Eugene Kontorovich (WSJ): Almost Nothing You've Heard about Evictions in Jerusalem Is True

The narrative of Israel's critics connects Hamas' current onslaught to eviction proceedings in Israeli courts concerning a few properties in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The truth about Sheikh Jarrah is that it involves an ordinary property dispute between private parties. The Jewish claimants' ownership of the few plots of land has been confirmed repeatedly in court, following laws that apply equally regardless of ethnicity. Israeli courts have gone out of their way to avoid evicting the Palestinian residents who haven't paid rent for half a century.

In the case now before Israel's Supreme Court, the owner is an Israeli corporation with Jewish owners whose chain of title is documented back to an original purchase in 1875. Until 1948, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was home to both Jewish and Arab communities. Then Jordan invaded Israel and occupied half of Jerusalem, expelling every one of its Jewish inhabitants and seizing their property.

This case has nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. The only discrimination in the legal treatment of Sheikh Jarrah property is historic, by Jordan, and against Jews to the benefit of Palestinians.

The plaintiffs have spent four decades in court seeking to recover possession of the properties. In the latest lawsuits, the courts ruled that four of the eight defendants were squatters with no legal rights to the land, and the remaining four were descendants of tenants who had never paid rent. Nevertheless, Israeli courts have treated the Palestinians as "protected tenants," and would shield them from eviction indefinitely if they paid rent. They have refused to do so.

Israeli courts adjudicate property disputes in Jerusalem between Arab parties, or by Arabs against Jews, with no protest. There is only one objection in this case: the owners are Jews. The manufactured controversy this time is an attempt to pressure Israel effectively to perpetuate Jordan's ethnic cleansing - in the name of human rights.

Richard Kemp: Trumpets and Tank Engines: A Turning Point in Gaza?

Hamas is no match for the IDF and could be quickly and much more cheaply defeated by blunt and crushing military force were it not for one thing — the Israeli need to minimise loss of civilian life. Hamas know that.

Over many years of conflict in Gaza, the majority of the world's media have enthusiastically reported the deaths of Palestinian civilians as though they were the deliberate object of Israel's callous and uncaring way of war. This blatantly false propaganda has been taken up by Hamas supporters and "useful idiots" in the West.... Human rights groups around the world have been doing the same.

The wilful ignorance combined with malice has always been breathtaking. Every commission of inquiry determined Israel's guilt before it even met for the first time.

Every debate and vote has overwhelmingly and of course falsely affirmed Israel's supposed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile Hamas's actual multiple war crimes have been brushed aside.

[T]he IDF did all they could to ensure minimum loss of civilian life by selecting targets where the lowest levels of innocents would be harmed.... As in previous conflicts in Gaza the IDF has made radio broadcasts in Arabic, sent SMS messages and even phoned civilians inside the strip to warn them of impending strikes.... Gazans have given interviews confirming this.

Many in the media, human rights groups and international bodies have rushed to characterise all civilian casualties (other than those inflicted by Hamas of course) as war crimes. But the Geneva Conventions disagree. Inflicting civilian casualties is not illegal provided a military operation is necessary for the prosecution of a war, they are not disproportionate to the planned military gain and that combatant commanders do not intentionally target civilians while doing all they can to avoid hitting them.

The media takes reports from the Gaza health ministry as authoritative and objective. That is disingenuous and they know it. The health ministry is controlled by Hamas and follows their every order.

Despite all of this, as the media unceasingly show us, the real victims in this campaign have indeed been Gaza civilians. But they usually get the cause wrong. Every one is due to Hamas's unprovoked aggression against Israel. None would have occurred without it.

If Western governments, international bodies and human rights groups are genuinely interested in avoiding suffering in Gaza, they should start now, striving to end Hamas's reign of terror rather than support it by parroting their baleful narrative.

Last week, Israel killed a large number of senior Hamas terrorists, including Bassem Issa.

Hamas has issued a martyr notice for Bassem Issa which admitted that he was killed "with a group of his brothers" - but it doesn't name them.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry is not reporting their names.

The Gaza "huamn rights" NGOs that pretend to list every person killed in Gaza don't mention that they were killed to begin with, let alone their names.

Even though we know that many Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists have been killed, there are very few public funerals.

This is all deliberate policy - to make it look like Israel is indiscriminately dropping bombs and killing only civilians. Everyone is in on this deception, whether by choice or by intimidation. Journalists, NGOs, ordinary Gazans - all are keeping quiet about Hamas deaths, Hamas rocket firings, Hamas misfires that result in Gazan deaths.

If they would announce the names of their dead, it would be easy to see that many of the civilians killed were effectively meant to be human shields for them. In 2014, Hamas commanders were invariably among large families who were killed - but it took months to find that out.

Sometimes, the terrorist was a member of the family that was killed. Here are two examples from 2014, which come from B'Tselem, showing the names of the terrorists who were killed along with their families:

More chillingly, sometimes it was found that one of the people killed with a family was a terrorist - NOT related to the family.

Mohammed al-Maqadma

In 2014, there were articles about the deaths and injuries to the Ziyada family in an Israeli airstrike, mentioning that they had a relative by marriage who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Among the dead in the rubble of the home was Mohammed al-Maqadmah, pictured above, apparently unrelated to the family but a member of the Qassam Brigades

Why was he there?

Perhaps he used the house as a command and control center. Perhaps he held them hostage as human shields. Either way, the IDF was targeting him, not the family.

Similarly, we saw other lists of people killed in family homes who were not members of the family - and were members of terror groups.

25 members of the Abu Jame' family were killed - along with a single terrorist named Ahmad Sahmoud, according to B'Tselem.

8 members of the Abu Nijem family were killed while hosting two terrorists, Daniel Mansur, 44 and Abd a-Nasser al-'Ajuri, 32.

3 members of al Al Masri family were killed while hosting terrorist Amjad Hamdan, 24.

6 members of the Al-Bakri family were killed , along with 32-year old Ibrahim al-Misharawi of Islamic Jihad.

We cannot know the circumstances of every incident yet - whether families were killed by errant terror rockets or IDF bombs - but we do know that the IDF warns civilians before it attacks a site where the target is terror infrastructure.

So if there was no warning, either the target was a major terrorist or it was a mistake.

Based on what I know of the layers of approvals needed before the IDF drops bombs in populated areas, mistakes are rare.

It is a shame that the IDF cannot publicize its targets while fighting is raging, because that would compromise security. But we have a large amount of information from previous wars that shows quite definitively that the IDF does not target random innocent families as the media likes to portray.

Journalists should be doing the job of identifying the actual targets of these attacks. But journalists in Gaza will not do anything Hamas doesn't approve.

Now, one an argue if such a strike is proportionate under international law. This means that given the information available to a military commander, the anticipated civilian toll is proportional to the anticipated military benefit gained from the attack. I don't know how important these militants are - but the IDF does, and given how much care they take to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties and the number of approvals needed before an airstrike, we can assume that they are operating within the law, despite what armchair critics say from thousands of miles away.

The hypocrisy of journalists' anger at the IDF deception

As has been widely reported, the IDF apparently engaged in misleading journalists into thinking that IDF troops had entered Gaza last Thursday night.

Here was the IDF tweet:

Given that IDF ground troops were firing artillery into Gaza at the time, it appears that this was constructed to be purposefully ambiguous. Most media ran with this story, although the New York Times says that it confirmed with the IDF spokesperson that this meant IDF troops were on the ground inside Gaza.

Now journalists are upset because this breaks the sacrosanct rules of telling the truth to journalists.

Except that spokespeople lie to journalists all the time, and when it isn't from Israel, the journalists shrug it off.

During Operation Desert Storm, General Norman Schwartzkopf showed the media dramatic video of what he said was the US destroying mobile Scud missile launchers. It was a lie - they were tanker trucks, and the US was ineffective at neutralizing the Scud threat. Reporters were in the dark for months, and there was very little outcry when the truth was discovered.

And that is the US military. Statements by Palestinian officials are often out and out lies, like just this past week with the revelation still unreported by nearly all that many of the children killed on the first day of the war were killed by errant Hamas rockets - yet journalists are reporting Gaza Health Ministry information as fact, without question.

The New York Times coverage of the IDF deception shows how little journalists themselves care about supposedly sacred journalistic ethics. It describes a raucous, off the record media event:

But the possibility that the military had used the international news media to rack up a bigger body count in Gaza generated sharp questions for Colonel Conricus in the conference call. Israeli officials insisted that the call be held off the record, but a Times reporter who did not join the call obtained a recording of it from another news organization.

If something is clearly stated to be off the record, journalistic ethics insist that reporters cannot even admit that the conversation happened, let alone the contents. The NYT here created a loophole that never existed before: if a journalist unethically recorded the off-the-record meeting and then gave that recording to a colleague from another media outlet, somehow it becomes on the record.

It is so obvious that this fake loophole can be abused that it is ridiculous to even think that this is OK. It would be like saying that journalists could install a secret microphone in the room, or even listen with an ear to the door, and not be bound by the "off the record" restriction.

If journalists are upset that they cannot trust anything IDF spokespeople say - which is a valid concern - now every single newsmaker must believe that "off the record" really means that journalists can reveal the entire conversation using a flimsy subterfuge.

The New York Times just proved that journalists cannot be trusted when they say that a conversation will not leave the room.

Ethics are for other guys.

Journalists in Gaza are carrying water for Hamas.

There is no other way to spin the faux outrage they are writing about after Israel bombed a building that housed the offices of AP, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and other media outlets.

Al Jazeera issued a statement accusing Israel of targeting them:

Al Jazeera condemns in the strongest terms bombing and destruction of its offices by the Israeli military in Gaza, and views this as a clear act to stop journalist from conducting their sacred duty to inform the world and report events on the ground. Al Jazeera vows to pursue every available route to hold the Israeli government responsible for its actions.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch quoted a journalist saying "The last attack by @IDF raises the specter that Israel is deliberately targeting media facilities in Gaza to disrupt coverage."

Notice that none of these journalists are denying that Hamas had offices in that same building they were in.

Chances are very good that they knew about it - and withheld that information from the public.

An IDF source told Noah Pollak that the Al Jalaa tower contained multiple Hamas operations and offices including weapons manufacturing and military intelligence. It also hosted an Islamic Jihad office. And, the source says, AP's local reporters knew about it.

If AP and Al Jazeera knew about these terrorist offices, then they have been and continue to withhold relevant information from the public. It isn't Israel that is trying to disrupt coverage - it is the media themselves who self-censor and don't tell the world the truth about Hamas.

More color comes from Matti Friedman, who used to work for AP, and wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:

Hamas understood that journalists would not only accept as fact the Hamas-reported civilian death toll—relayed through the UN or through something called the “Gaza Health Ministry,” an office controlled by Hamas—but would make those numbers the center of coverage. Hamas understood that reporters could be intimidated when necessary and that they would not report the intimidation; Western news organizations tend to see no ethical imperative to inform readers of the restrictions shaping their coverage in repressive states or other dangerous areas. In the war’s aftermath, the NGO-UN-media alliance could be depended upon to unleash the organs of the international community on Israel, and to leave the jihadist group alone.

When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)

It is beyond absurd to imagine that Israel targeted journalists to slant coverage. If anything, coverage of Israel would become more critical as a result. There is absolutely no gain for the IDF to target journalists while trying to cripple Hamas' rocket attacks. Only people who know nothing about professional armies would even imagine that.

Unfortunately, that includes journalists whose entire job is to understand and explain the fact to their readers.

The sad fact is that Gaza journalists only say what Hamas allows them to say, and they willingly deceive the public who think that there are still journalistic standards.

05/15 Links: Netanyahu: Gaza operation is ‘just and moral,’ a few days of fighting lie ahead; The Squad’s Noxious Anti-Semitism; Don't Compare Israel to Hamas

From Ian:

Behind the Outbreak of Palestinian Violence - Amb. Dore Gold

Amb. Dore Gold addressed an Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) webinar on May 12, 2021.

The eruption of the violence that we're seeing occurred during the month of Ramadan among the Muslims. While most Muslims find Ramadan to be a joyous time, for a small but very dangerous minority it's a time to initiate what they call jihad.

Whenever I see violence erupting, one of my questions is: Is it something spontaneous? Did the population suddenly decide to go out for its own crusade or was this something that was pre-planned? Was it something that was incited and for political purposes?

The evidence that the disturbances in Jerusalem were incited and planned is overwhelming. It was not spontaneous. One of the most disturbing aspects of what went on in Jerusalem is the evidence that the Palestinian organizations - Hamas and Islamic Jihad - were pre-positioning the implements they used for attacks on Israelis on the Temple Mount.

This is not a new phenomenon; it goes back to the days of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, when they would store firearms on the Temple Mount to be used during times of violence. The Israel Police had no choice but to go up on the Temple Mount, where they found large amounts of rocks and boulders which had been brought there to be used first against the Israeli security forces, and secondly, against Jews who prayed at the Western Wall just below the Temple Mount. But when you see material stored for future violent use, you know that this is a pre-planned operation and not something spontaneous.

The Abraham Accords was one of the biggest sources of defeat for Hamas and for Iran. All of a sudden you have Israelis coming to Gulf States and speaking about their joint interests, which include dealing with the problem of Iran. That was something which Iran wants to see rolled back and defeated. I believe they set as a goal for themselves to break the Abraham Accords.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has been developing ties with think tanks in the Gulf. I'm on the phone with their leadership quite frequently, and recent events did not lead to any sudden cooling on the other end. They were concerned, they wanted information, and they wanted to know why this is occurring and when it's going to end. The fundamental interest they have in a warm relationship with Israel continues, but it is under a potential strain should events drag out.

It's going to take a long time to defeat the forces we're dealing with. It's going to require a lot of patience on the part of the Israeli public. Some people get very frustrated in these situations and would like to see us take our F-35s and carpet bomb whole sections of the Gaza Strip. That's not what we're going to do. It's not smart and it's also not moral. One of the things we should take pride in is that Israel wages war with a sense of the moral elements of modern warfare, particularly when the other side is completely immoral and uses human shields to protect its highest-level officials.

Biden Repeats Obama’s Israel Mistakes

Congress can and should take immediate material steps to provide both the rhetorical and the material support the administration is not offering, starting with robust support for Israel’s obligation to defend its sovereignty. This has gone far beyond the milquetoast “right to self-defense,” which prompts the inevitable question of whether the Palestinians have a similar right. Of course the Palestinians can defend themselves, but they are not a nation-state under relentless attack from a terrorist group sponsored by a sworn enemy. There is no equivalence, and to pretend that there is does both sides a disservice.

In addition, Congress should insist that we not repeat the mistakes of 2014 and ensure that Israel has expeditious access to any resupplies it may need if the fighting is prolonged. In the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, Congress authorized the transfer of $600 million to replenish the WRSA-I for the period 2021–24, as well as the transfer of precision-guided munitions to the stockpile. The Pentagon could use the obligated funding provided for under the WRSA-I to supply, for example, an additional 1,000 Hellfire missiles to Israel, which would allow the Israel Defense Forces to target Hamas as precisely as possible. Members of Congress can also urge the Department of Defense to deploy a destroyer such as the USS Arleigh Burke, one of the four ships equipped with an AEGIS Combat System permanently based in Rota, Spain, to the Eastern Mediterranean. These vessels patrol the Mediterranean and Black Seas as part of our collective missile-defense effort to protect Europe against the Iranian threat; by making a port call at Haifa, the Arleigh Burke would also supplement Israel’s missile defense and deter Tehran’s other regional terrorist proxies from joining the fray. Such actions would be defensive in nature, designed to reduce potential civilian casualties while sending the signal that Israel is not in this fight alone.

Congress also can vigorously defend Israel from the standard attacks that will be coming from the United Nations in short order. While the White House originally protested that this week was too soon for a U.N. Security Council meeting on the fighting, the administration has now agreed to an open meeting on Sunday that will inevitably descend into a chorus of condemnation of the Jewish state and potentially include a UNSC resolution. It should be remembered that in its closing days, the Obama administration reversed decades of bipartisan U.S. rejection of such measures by abstaining from, rather than vetoing, UNSC Resolution 2334 condemning Israel. But given that the U.N. is almost as unpopular with the American people as Israel is popular, if Congress focuses sufficient attention on whatever goes on there, it may deter the Biden administration from repeating this particularly shameful bit of history in the event another UNSCR is proposed. And if the White House falters, Congress can continue leading support for the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The Squad’s Noxious Anti-Semitism

And yet, the Squad and their anti-Semitic rhetoric can no longer be considered mere outliers; they are, after all, treated as the vanguard of progressivism by the media, still the subject of fawning profiles and praise (the craven Peter Beinart praised Tlaib for the “raw honesty” of her speech on the House floor). In a stunning display of woke ignorance, Daily Show host Trevor Noah suggested Israel shouldn’t defend itself from terrorist rocket attacks because . . . .technology? “Like, set aside motives and intentions and just look at technology, technology alone,” he said. “Israel has one of the most advanced militaries in the world.” Even Teen Vogue agrees with the Squad’s talking points.

The Squad is engaging in what has become all too familiar a tactic on the progressive left—what Dominic Green, writing in the Spectator, called anti-Semitism as a form of “aspirational racism.” Green notes how “the glamorization of ‘resistance’, the overriding of the law, the calls for violence, the conspiracy theories, the obsession with Israel, the willingness to believe any lie about the Jews” are all hallmarks of this approach—and all clearly on display during the past week.

The Squad is also in open rebellion against the policies of the Biden Administration and of many fellow Democrats in Congress, who have been firm in their support of Israel’s right to defend itself from terror attacks (although the Biden Administration is also sending $10 million in aid to unspecified groups “in the West Bank and Gaza” to support “reconciliation” projects with Israel, according to reports yesterday).

The administration might want to spend more time discussing its policies with its own members. As people like Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib and Omar and Bush invoke the rhetoric of religious war, falsely accusing Israel of “attacking” al-Aqsa during Ramadan and using progressive buzzwords like “colonialism” and “apartheid” to describe the only democracy in the Middle East, they spread lies and misinformation about an American ally. In their incendiary rhetoric and attacks on Israel, they echo the violent and hateful talking points of the terrorists whose stated purpose is the destruction of the Jewish people. Here’s a senior Hamas official on television this week telling Palestinians in Jerusalem to behead Jews: “With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels.”

If woke Democrats really believe that words are violence, they might spare a few for a long-overdue condemnation of the members of their own party who continue to spread anti-Semitism.

JINSA PodCast: The Taylor Force Act and Regulating Aid to the Palestinians

The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to run a “pay for slay” program, where terrorism against Israelis is incentivized and funded by the governing faction of the Fatah. This episode discusses the importance of the Taylor Force Act, passed by Congress in 2018, in thwarting the use of U.S. aid until the PA ceases its support for terror. Stuart Force, the father of U.S. Army Capt. Taylor Force, as well as JINSA Distinguished Fellow Sander Gerber, join Erielle to unpack the particulars of the legislation and how the Biden Administration can continue to push for meaningful reforms within the PA.

One Way of Thinking about Israel

It is only the Jewish state whose right of self-defense is denied.

Loathing of the Jewish state is inseparable from loathing of the Jewish people. What Ludwig von Mises wrote about Nazi anti-Semitism in 1944 continues to apply in our own time:
Nearly all writers dealing with the problem of anti-Semitism have tried to demonstrate that the Jews have in some way or other, through their behavior or attitudes, excited anti-Semitism. Even Jewish authors and non-Jewish opponents of anti-Semitism share this opinion; they too search for Jewish faults driving non-Jews toward anti-Semitism. But if the cause of anti-Semitism were really to be found in distinctive features of the Jews, these properties would have to be extraordinary virtues and merits which would qualify the Jews as the elite of mankind. If the Jews themselves are to blame for the fact that those whose ideal is perpetual war and bloodshed, who worship violence and are eager to destroy freedom, consider them the most dangerous opponents of their endeavors, it must be because the Jews are foremost among the champions of freedom, justice, and peaceful coöperation among nations. . . . As the parties seeking to destroy modern civilization and return to barbarism have put anti-Semitism at the top of their programs, this civilization is apparently a creation of the Jews. Nothing more flattering could be said of an individual or of a group than that the deadly foes of civilization have well-founded reasons to persecute them.

Hamas has its advocates and apologists in the United States. So did Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, etc. — all of them “deadly foes of civilization.”

Don't Compare Israel to Hamas

The British Prime Minister's "both sides" response to the terrorist attacks on Israel underscores how Western political elites lose all critical reasoning when it comes to one tiny strip of land in the Middle East. Israel is under assault from Hamas, the Islamist mafia that runs Gaza like 19th-century Sicily.

You will have seen a lot of headlines about Israel "storming" the al-Aqsa Mosque. Buried in much coverage is that Israeli police raided the joint because Palestinians were rioting and using this sacred Islamic site to store concrete slabs, rocks and fireworks, which they turned on officers.

The pretense of equivalence between the IDF and a kill-the-Jews terror gang would be offensive if it weren't so risible, because the values of Hamas and the values of Israel don't exist in the same moral universe. Israel arrests Jews who try to pray at Judaism's holiest site while facilitating worship and pilgrimage by Muslims.

Israel is urged to show "restraint," as though more than a decade of rocket attacks without going into Gaza and toppling Hamas doesn't show a level of restraint most nations wouldn't dream of showing.

The international community from the Bush administration on down piled pressure on Israel to withdraw from Gaza, promising international legitimacy and recognition of its right to self-defense in return. When it withdrew, it was calumnied and arraigned for war crimes in the court of international public opinion every time it defended itself.