Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

05/19 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Britain slides into an antisemitic sewer; Dershowitz: Why does the hard left glorify the Palestinians?; Martha Gellhorn Loved Hemingway and Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Britain slides into an antisemitic sewer

This is what British and American so-called “progressives” — including, appallingly and tragically, many “progressive” Jews — are actually supporting when they endorse the Palestinian cause. But the point is that this horrific collusion has been going on for decades. And there’s a direct line connecting the west’s systematic incitement against Israel and incitement against Jews.

Over the years, demonstration after demonstration against Israel on the streets of London and elsewhere has featured mobs of Muslims marching shoulder-to-shoulder with leftists, liberals and other useful idiots behind the banners of Hamas — whose charter is committed to the genocide of the Jews, whom it dementedly accuses of every perceived ill of the world from the French Revolution onwards.

Such pro-Hamas demonstrations therefore represented a threat to British Jews. No-one ever did anything about this.

For years, such mobs have screamed on the streets of Britain the genocidal jihadi war-cry: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — in other words, a call for the eradication of Israel. This represented at the very least intimidation of British Jews for whom Israel is intimately bound up with their identity. No-one ever did anything about this.

These mobs have also screamed in Arabic, as they did again on Saturday: “Khayber Khayber Ya Yehud jaish Mohammed Sauf Ya’ud”. This means, “Khayber Khaybar oh Jews, Mohammed’s army is returning” — and is an inflammatory reference to Mohammed’s seventh century slaughter of the Jews of Khybar, and a threat to replicate it.

This represented an unmistakeable menace against British Jews. Not Israelis. Not Zionists. Jews. But no-one ever did anything about it. And unabashed western “progressives” continue to support these people’s cause.

But the threat isn’t limited to this chilling alliance. It’s deepened yet further by the fact that the murderous lies about Israel, which are so dangerously inflaming emotions against Israel and the Jews, are never repudiated by those who shape British political discourse.

Alan M. Dershowitz: Why does the hard left glorify the Palestinians?

The Palestinian people have suffered more from the ill-advised decisions of their leaders than from the actions of Israel.

Back to the present: Hamas commits a double war crime every time it fires a lethal rocket at Israeli civilians from areas populated by its civilians, who they use as human shields. Israel responds proportionally in self-defense, as President Biden has emphasized. The Israel Defense Forces go to extraordinary lengths to try to minimize civilian casualties among Palestinians, despite Hamas’ policy of using civilian buildings — hospitals, schools, mosques, and high-rise buildings — to store, fire and plan their unlawful rockets and incendiary devices. Yet the hard left blames Israel alone, and many on the center-left create a moral equivalence between democratic Israel and terrorist Hamas.

Why? The answer is clear and can be summarized in one word: Jews.

The enemy of the Kurds, the Tibetans, the Uyghurs and the Chechens are not — unfortunately for them — the Jews. Hence, there is little concern for their plight. If the perceived enemy of the Palestinians were not the Jews, there would be little concern for their plight as well. This was proved by the relative silence that greeted the massacre of Palestinians by Jordan during “Black September” in 1970, or the killings of Palestinian Authority leaders in Gaza during the Hamas takeover in 2007. There has been relative silence, too, about the more than 4,000 Palestinians — mostly civilians— killed by Syria during that country’s current civil war. It is only when Jews or their nation are perceived to be oppressing Palestinians that the left seems to care about them.

While the United States provides financial support for Israel, we also provide massive support for Jordan and Egypt. Even if the United States were to end support for Israel, the demonization of Israel by the hard left would not end.

The left singles out the Palestinians not because of the merits of their case but, rather, because of the alleged demerits of Israel and the double standard universally applied to Jews. That is the sad reality.

David Collier: Sky News and Mark Stone – the anti-Israel propagandists

The recent reporting from Sky News in Israel has been shameful, and their Middle East Correspondent Mark Stone has been leading the charge off the cliff. It wasn’t always this way – something seems to have broken in Stone, and his reporting seems to have recently deteriorated into one-sided anti-Israel activism.

Because of the sense of normality Israel tries to retain, despite rockets raining down around it – conflict in Israel is like nowhere else. It presents reporters with a unique challenge – an imbalance and distortion that they must contextualise to remain professional. The very fact they are there, walking around and able to witness these type of protests in a conflict zone – is repeated nowhere else on earth. This context is everything, and Mark Stone has lost it.

Mark Stone and the ‘peaceful protest’
Although this has been deteriorating for days, the public Mark Stone ‘jump the shark’ event occurred yesterday. Stone got shaken and angry. It is visible in both his online posts and Sky News reports.

There was a ‘Day of Rage’ called for by Palestinian leaders. Both Fatah and Hamas asked for violence, and the ‘Palestinian Street’ was called upon to rise up and confront Israeli security forces. The day started with guns paraded in Ramallah and a thwarted terrorist attack in Hebron. Stone was based in Jerusalem as crowds gathered.

Stone’s reports were all about ‘entirely unnecessary, provocative behaviour by Israeli police/military.’ Stone produced several tweets of the same nature.

The articles went viral online – as of course, they would. But the key issue in all this is not what his partial understanding of what was occurring might have been, it is in his description of the protestors as a ‘peaceful Palestinian group’. He refers to it as a ‘peaceful protest’ several times.

What on earth does he mean? This group literally turned up to a violent ‘Day of Rage’ protest.

It might be possible to have suggested that the protest ended peacefully – had it done so. It is also legitimate to suggest that the Israeli police reacted badly – if this is what Stone felt that he saw. What no journalist trying to report the truth can do in this circumstance, is refer to a group who turned up to a ‘Day of Rage’ in the middle of a conflict – as ‘peaceful’. If they were peaceful – they would have stayed at home. Period.

Our small apartment is, at present, full to the brim with refugees: children and grandchildren from Israeli towns and cities under bombardment by rocket fire. It is noisy, crowded, and messy, and still, we are urging yet more of our many children to leave their homes in cities getting the worst of it, to seek refuge with us—we can always accommodate one more.

The horrible people shooting rockets at my children and grandchildren find the town where we live to be too small to be an interesting target. They aim for maximum casualties and we’re just not enough people for them to bother with (for now). As such, it is a relief to have the ability offer my family refuge, as inconvenient and hectic as that may be for all of us.

As my home overflows with people, my inbox fills with notifications of anti-Israel Quora questions, or rather propaganda not very well disguised as questions. I answer some, and decline to answer others, as the mood strikes, just a surgical in and out of the Quora interface. Those who seek a genuine understanding of what is happening on the ground in our region always thank me, however they are few and far between. The others either ignore my responses or attack and insult me.

That’s fine. Once the haters get out of bounds, I report them, and then they are banned from Quora. Of course, these baduns proliferate like cockroaches, so I just don’t get too caught up in the (mean and snotty) repartee. I have a job and a life.

People are always asking me to supply a source for their side of a debate, or worse yet, to jump into the fray of a debate when they’ve lost their way. But I don’t do debates. Debates on subjects specific to this region are always about who hangs in the longest, and not about either facts or history. They get ugly and ad hominem and keep you up at night gnashing your teeth, thinking, “I should have said this. I should have said that,” and seriously, there’s no point. It doesn’t persuade. It doesn’t end the rockets or the hate. It’s just people bumping egos one against the other online, just zeroes and ones.

But hey. If debate is your thing, knock yourself out, and I’ll even supply some grist for your mill—just don’t ask me to take over when you lose steam—I’m too busy wiping noses, changing diapers, and serving as a short-order cook and entertainment center, while holding down a fulltime job. Not to mention grinding my teeth down to the nubbins in my sleep in my fury at the nasty people of Gaza.

Varda’s Primer on Some Basic Anti-Israel Questions and How to Answer Them (but you probably shouldn’t bother):

Q. Why does Israel complain about Hamas? Hamas is weak and doesn’t have advanced weapons. Most of its rockets fell short.

A. Children and grandchildren have been made refugees by rocket fire. They’ve taken refuge in “safer” smaller towns because the rockets have made their lives a living hell. Adults cannot work. Children cannot go to school. Schools and synagogues have been hit. We witness, on a daily basis, preschool boys and girls completely traumatized by having their sleep interrupted by sirens, booms, and broken glass, the rush into safe rooms, the nervous adults, and reports of a child they know, or close to their age, who lives close to their home, dying of a direct rocket hit. They hear sirens and their homes shake at all hours.

To even ask this question is insane. How would you feel if your town was targeted with rockets day and night? Are “only” 10 Israeli deaths, including that of a 6-year-old child, not enough for us to have the right to “complain” about Hamas? Are rockets that kill and traumatize, not advanced enough for us to respond?

Clearly, those who want us to put up and shut up are antisemites, full stop.

Q. Why can't the Middle East become peaceful? Who should be blamed?

A. Blame those who will not accept a Jewish State on Jewish indigenous territory within any borders—those who won’t stop targeting Jewish Israeli civilians.

Q. Why is Israel reluctant to grant the Palestinians full rights and representation in the Israeli government? Why won’t they end apartheid and attempt to unite all people of their country?

A. Your question has a flawed premise. “Palestinians” don’t want full rights and representation in the Israeli government, which is why we gave them autonomy in their villages in Judea and Samaria, and in Gaza, from which, by the way, Israel expelled thousands of Jews from their homes in 2004, in order to offer the Arabs self-rule on Jew-free Israeli territory. But does this make them peaceful? No. Because they want all the territory and will not stop targeting Israeli civilians, because they cannot have all of the territory, which is, by the way, Jewish indigenous territory.

In other words, in the PA-ruled areas of Judea and Samaria, and in Hamas-ruled Gaza, Arabs have their OWN representation by their OWN democratically elected governments.

In Israel, there is no apartheid. Israeli Arab citizens of Israel have full rights. The same rights as Jewish citizens of Israel.

None of this unites all the people of the country, because the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza want the country to be totally expunged of any Jewish presence.

Q. Why did Israel embark on the unjustifiable policy of evicting Palestinians from their own homes in Gaza and stoop down to the level of grabbing and occupying those houses for themselves, thus causing the present war?

A. It didn’t. The Arabs residing in this Jewish-owned property agreed in court to pay rent for the privilege of living there, and then refused to follow through. They have lived there without paying rent to the Jewish owners for years and years and years, and this is against the law, as it is in every country in the world. The eviction hasn’t even happened, and there is still an appeal pending.

The land has been Jewish-owned since before 1948. No one wants to “grab it” or occupy it. They want the effing tenants to pay the rent.

Q. Considering Israel’s strong defense system, the rockets launched cause very little damage. Aren’t these attacks a waste of resources? In business it’s called a “loss making venture.” Damage caused is not as desired. Why do they still continue to do this?

A. If you call the loss of ten lives, including a 6-year-old boy “very little damage,” then you have checked your morals at the door.

Q. In its latest large attack, the Israeli military leveled a building that housed many media outlets including The Associated Press. What reasons might Israel have for doing this?

A. Hamas terrorists were embedded in this building with the AP’s consent. Thus you have a case of the media establishment wearing its antisemitism on its sleeves by colluding with terrorists who have the sole goal of killing Jewish civilians. Oh, and by the way, the Israeli military gave the AP and others in the building a full hour’s warning to evacuate. All the staff had sufficient time to leave and were unscathed. Can you think of any other nation that gives warning before bombing terrorists who are shooting rockets at and killing its citizens? The better question is: why must Israel alone warn terror targets before taking them out?

Q. All the countries surrounding Israel are populated by Arabs. How can anyone thus make the claim that Palestinian Arabs never existed?

A. Israelis certainly know that the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza exist. But these have no nationality, because no existing Arab country has absorbed them and they can’t be “Palestinian” if “Palestine” doesn’t exist. And if “Palestine” exists, there would already be two states, in which case, why would anyone still be speaking of a “two-state solution?” And if there is a “Palestine” and two states, why has that not solved the problem of Arab terror against Jewish Israeli citizens?

Q. What are some good ideas to stop Hamas from firing rockets, yet not blow up any buildings in the process?

A. How about this? America, the EU, the UN, and other Hamas allies can stop funding the terror machine. That will stop the rockets quickly enough, and without any need for blowing up buildings.

Q. When will the time come to end the Palestine and Israel war? What are the solutions to end war?

A. Every time this question is asked, one must marvel at the chutzpah of anyone suggesting that there must be a two-state solution. It seems obvious that if “Palestine” existed, there would already be two states (or more if you count Jordan, for instance). As such, either the existence of two states is not a solution, or there is no such thing as “Palestine.” Because surely Israel exists, which is the entire reason for the war. Israel exists and the Arabs don’t want her to.

Q. Why can't Palestinians in the West Bank relocate to other Arab states and let Israel enjoy peace in its traditional biblical land? I see that Bethlehem, Jericho and other biblical sites like Hebron are located in the West Bank?*

A. That’s what should happen, just as the expulsion of Jews in Arab countries led to their absorption by the Jewish State. But the Arab nations don’t want to absorb the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. They’d rather keep them as pawns. They want these fellow Arabs to retain their refugee status in order to force Israel to negotiate. The negotiations are for the purpose of chipping away at the territory that is the Jewish State of Israel, bit by bit, until such time as the entirety of the Jewish State ceases to exist and comes under Islamic domain as part of the wider Islamic Caliphate. This won’t happen. Israel is here to stay, as the bible also foretells.

*This last is to be cherished: the rare question from an actual truth seeker wanting information, clarification, and understanding.

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.