No one in the world, whether individual, group or state, dares to harm or annoy the evil Jews, despite their crimes, massacres, and fires that they ignite in various parts of the world.There is an exception to this rule: Muslims are the only nation that God blessed and Almighty has entrusted with punishing Jews for their crimes against God Almighty first, then against the prophets, peace be upon them, and then for the rights of people, especially the Palestinian people.And because Muslims are not able to reach this evil gang that is scattered in various parts of the world, God has brought them today to live in Palestine in order to make it easier for Muslims to subdue them by crawling towards them from every direction in order to punish them and take revenge on them and eliminate them completely, to rid the world of their evils.The exercises or maneuvering with live ammunition that are now taking place between armed Zionist terrorists and unarmed peaceful Palestinians who were displaced by the evil and armed Jewish gang from their homes to the Gaza Strip are rather preparatory exercises for the holy march of the return of Palestinians from all refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza to their homes, their land and their homeland, to eliminate this armed Jewish division supported by the United States, and to implement the true Holocaust against these evil people in a well-deserved way.Many indications indicate that the hour of the divine promise to implement this Holocaust is approaching.
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
- Tuesday, May 25, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Monday, May 24, 2021
Matti Friedman: The Americanization of the Israeli-Palestinian Debate
The story of the Jewish minority in Europe and in the Islamic world, which is the story of Israel, has nothing to do with race in America. My grandmother’s parents and siblings were shot outside their village in Poland by people the same color as them. If you stand on a street in the modern state of Israel and look at passersby, you often can’t tell who’s Jewish and who’s Arab. Many Israelis are from Arab countries, and for the 6 million Jews living in the heart of the Arab world (300 million people) and in the broader Islamic world (1.5 billion people), the question of who’s the minority is obviously a tricky one. Most Black people here are Jews with roots in Ethiopia. The occupation of the West Bank is supported by many Israelis mainly because they have rational fears of rockets and suicide bombings, tactics that weren’t quite the ones endorsed by the American civil-rights movement. All of this is to say that although Israel, like America, is deeply messed up, it’s messed up in completely different ways.
Nonetheless, the belief in a fundamental similarity has caught on. While following the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, which to me seemed just and necessary, I saw a sign that read From Ferguson to Palestine. This was puzzling: American soldiers still occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and American aid money was flowing to repressive regimes throughout the Middle East and beyond. If activists were seeking foreign inspiration for a domestic movement, they had hundreds of ongoing ethnic conflicts to choose from. But something about Palestine struck Americans as relevant to their own experience.
That sentiment has moved into elite opinion. In 2019, The New York Times published an op-ed by the respected scholar Michelle Alexander, the author of an important book on incarceration, that described Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as “one of the great moral challenges of our time,” the scene of “practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.” The essay didn’t explain why this conflict constitutes one of the great moral challenges or offer any indication that the author had ever visited Israel. Last year the Times ran an essay by the author Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a college professor in Los Angeles, that ridiculed “white writers” for their “white privilege,” identified the American dream as “settler colonialism,” and then segued into an attack on Israelis as settler colonialists.
For these Americans, distant Jews have become an embodiment of the American evil, racial oppression. People have always projected fantasies onto other places and groups, but this particular type of projection, in which Jews are displayed as the prime symbol of whatever’s wrong, has a long history. When it surfaces, it usually heralds an impatience with logical analysis and normal politics, and a move toward magical thinking.
Think the woke are not antisemitic? Think again.
— Ami Horowitz (@AmiHorowitz) May 24, 2021
Watch me raise money for Hamas to kill Jews from students in Portland! pic.twitter.com/osIVUKNk80
Straight up incitement from the NY Times. An entire article claiming that the problem is Jews moving from one city to another city in the Jewish state.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) May 24, 2021
Jewish lives are considered themselves a provocation. This is some mid-20th-century-Poland horsecaca https://t.co/lehEoedYuS
Noah Rothman: The Radicalization of the University of California Press
On May 21, a prestigious activist organization expressed its “solidarity and support for Palestinians in their fight for liberation.” In accordance with the radicalism of this organization, it pointedly did not refer to Israel by name, placing the Jewish state instead within “historic Palestine.” This activist organization encouraged us to donate to “local organizations,” like the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), presently celebrating what it takes to be a “courageous victory” over the Zionist regime and its “Zionist settlers” across “all of Palestine.”
The activist organization in question is the University of California Press, the “nonprofit publishing arm of the University of California system.” Because it is associated with a university system, it dutifully notes in its solidarity statement that it will “prioritize pedagogies that reflect intersectional, anti-colonial, anti-racist action.”
This statement is not exactly a departure for the press, which includes a commitment to “drive progressive change” in its mission statement. On the Israel front, it published Sunaina Maira’s Boycott, which risibly asserts that there is a virtual ban on “pro-Palestinian” speech in the academy. The assertion is risible because her book is part of a UC Press American Studies series, co-edited by scholars prominent in the successful effort to win the American Studies Association over to boycotting Israel. If there was any doubt that they had a home in one of the biggest university presses in the country, the Press has now invited them to leave a toothbrush and offered them a drawer.
In recent months, defenders of academic freedom have worried about the ham-fisted and, in some cases, unconstitutional, GOP-led legislative efforts to combat left-liberal “social justice” ideology on state university campuses. State legislators hold the purse strings and are a formidable threat to academic freedom. Perhaps that threat is more deserving of our attention than student op-ed writers. But the defense of academic freedom rests in no small part on the university’s claim to be a center of “the free search for truth and its free exposition.” When the publishing arm of a state university system decides that it is also the publishing arm of anti-Zionism, it undermines that defense.
Is the problem in Israel rooted in 1967 or 1948?
— Dan Senor (@dansenor) May 21, 2021
?@DanielGordis? joins our podcast from Jerusalem — as the ceasefire is being negotiated — to take us through a longer view of the recent crisis. https://t.co/J7m18YsZ7y pic.twitter.com/qBmkm15uIh
- Monday, May 24, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, Daled Amos
May 2018: Hamas official: 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were our members
Salah Bardawil’s confirmation means number of acknowledged members of terror groups who died on Monday and Tuesday is now 53August 2014: Hamas Admits To Kidnapping And Killing Israeli Teens
A senior Hamas leader has said the group carried out the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June — the first time anyone from the Islamic militant group has said it was behind an attack that helped spark the current war in the Gaza Strip.September 2014: Hamas Quietly Admits It Fired Rockets from Civilian Areas
The Gaza terrorist group offers that "mistakes were made" in its summer conflict with Israel.November 2010: Hamas Admits 600-700 of Its Men Were Killed in Cast Lead
The military group had previously claimed only 49 militants died during Gaza war, though Israel put the figure at 709.
Yesterday's mortar barrage on the western Negev is the most extensive operation by Hamas since Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009. The group has been involved in a few incidents with the Israel Defense Forces since then, but usually on a smaller scale, and it has rarely claimed responsibility.
Yesterday, Hamas publicly announced that its people were behind the latest incident. They said the reason was the Israel Air Force's attack Wednesday on the Hamas training camp in the ruins of the settlement of Netzarim in which two people were killed. That attack had been precipitated by a Qassam strike a few hours earlier near Sderot.
Israel had exceeded the unwritten rules of the game. The Qassam had been fired by a marginal Palestinian group, and the accepted response would have been a bombing of empty Hamas offices or an escape tunnel without casualties.Hamas did not expect Israel to hit back hard.
"Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it," he said in an interview on Lebanese TV.
- Monday, May 24, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, Daled Amos
I fear that what could happen is if Congress were to overturn [the Iran Deal], our friends in Israel could actually wind up being more isolated and more blamed.
Israel's Operation Guardian of the Walls has come to a close, assuming that the ceasefire with Hamas terrorists in Gaza holds.
For over a week, Israel fought to defend itself against 4,300 rockets fired against unarmed Israeli civilians, who were then forced to run with their children to the nearest bunker...So as usual, it was Israel that faced condemnation.
But in one place this is becoming more difficult.
Last week, the EU’s foreign policy head, Josep Borrell, convened a special videoconference of ministers in a demonstration of EU unity. The idea was for the EU to both ask Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israeli civilians and to urge Israel to be "proportionate" in its response and avoid civilian casualties -- thus equating Hamas terrorists committing war crimes with a democracy defending itself once again against the attacks.
But EU countries have long been ferociously divided over the Israel-Palestine question, as was clear on Sunday when the EU ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, delivered a statement to the Security Council condemning the violence but was prevented from speaking “on behalf of its member states.” Hungary, an ally of Israel, blocked the statement.
Borrell, similarly, is often forced to issue statements on the Israel-Palestine conflict without the unanimous endorsement of the 27 member countries, effectively leaving him to speak for himself. Without national capitals on board, the EU is impotent on foreign policy.
This is a theme I have touched upon before -- that far from being isolated, Israel has many allies and has formed alliances that have helped to prevent one-sided condemnation of Israel from the European Union.
o Hungary, which abstained when the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, joined the Czech Republic and Romania in blocking a European Union statement criticizing Washington’s decision to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.o Hungary blocked the EU effort to issue a joint statement condemning the US decision to no longer consider Israeli settlements as illegal
o Last year, the EU failed to get a consensus when it tried to unanimously condemn Trump's peace plano In response to the ICC announcement that it would investigate Israel for war crimes, Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic asked the court to let them file "amicus brief" opinions on Israel's behalf.
After decades of watching the Arab countries in the UN create alliances with third-world countries to pass all kinds of anti-Israel resolutions, this is a welcome change of pace.
And what these European states are doing in Israel's defense is not some kind of attempt to win the Jewish vote in their respective countries. According to the Pew Research Center, the total Jewish population of Europe is only a little over 1 million, which is far, far less than the growing Muslim population:
Nevertheless, there are critics of Netanyahu's policy of creating alliances with the right-wing, and possibly antisemitic, leaders of East European countries. Efraim Zuroff, Israeli historian and Nazi Hunter, is critical of Netanyahu's friendship with Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary.
This realpolitik of Netanyahu is reminiscent of Theodor Herzl's own brand of practical diplomacy, when he negotiated for the creation of a Jewish state with some decidedly antisemitic leaders.
Alex Ryvchin, the author of Zionism: The Concise History, explained in an interview how Herzl deliberately tried to win over antisemitic leaders to the idea that creating a Jewish state would be to their benefit:
Herzl dealt with a lot of ardent antisemites like the Kaiser and the Russian Foreign Minister. He felt a cold synergy between the interests of Zionism and these rabid antisemites. Herzl thought that for the Jews to achieve the return to their ancestral land, these antisemites who are so keen to purge their countries of Jews would be accommodating. And indeed, many of them saw a benefit in a movement that could absorb a large number of Jews.
In any political campaign such as Zionism, there has to be a dose of realpolitik--to think not only about the idealism, but also how to practically achieve your goal. That means creating alliances with those you find unsavory.
The danger, Ryvchin says, is to see such temporary alliances as good faith, long-term alliances.
In order to gauge whether Herzl had any success, here is a letter he received from the antisemitic Kaiser in 1898, describing how he considered the possibility of supporting a Jewish protectorate in Palestine. It is quoted from Yoram Hazony's The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul. In his letter, the Kaiser describes
the energy, creative power and productivity of the tribe of Shem...addicted to social democracy and busy inciting the opposition will move off to the East, where more rewarding work awaits him...Now I realize that nine-tenths of Germans will be horrified and shun me if they find out at some later date that I am in sympathy with the Zionists and might even place them under my protection if they call upon me to do so [the Kaiser then rambles on how Jews don't deserve further punishment for killing Jesus]...And from the viewpoint of secular realpolitik we cannot ignore the fact that, given the enormous and dangerous power represented by international Jewish capital, it would surely be a tremendous achievement for Germany if the world of the Hebrews would look up to our country with gratitude. [p.131-132]
Meeting with the Kaiser, Herzl had no illusions about converting him into a lover of Jews, but did get a commitment of support for a Jewish state.
Similarly, here is a letter from Wjatscheslaw Plehwe, the Russian czar's interior minister -- and the man believed responsible for the Kishinev massacre in which 49 Jews were murdered, Jewish women were raped and 1,500 Jewish homes were damaged. Plehwe describes the degree to which the Russian government would support Zionism:
I had the occasion of explaining to you the point of view of the Russian government regarding the implementation of Zionism...The government of Russia will look upon you with favor so long as Zionism consists of the desire to create an independent state in Palestine, and organizing the emigration from Russia of a certain number of its Jewish subjects. However, the government of Russia will not agree that Zionism be transformed into propaganda for Jewish nationalism in Russia. Zionism of this type will only result in the establishment of a separate national group which will endanger the integrity of the country. [Hazony, p. 136]
It was the possibility of saving Russian Jews, who lived with the perpetual threat of pogroms, that drove Hertzl to look into potential territories other than then-Palestine, in the short term.
Eventually, Herzl realized that he was not making the necessary progress with leaders who were fundamentally hostile to Jews, and changed the focus of his efforts to Great Britain, where he found allies who were driven by Christian ideals and had a genuine passion for Jews returning to their ancestral land.
The success that Herzl was ultimately able to achieve diplomaticall rivals Chaim Weizmann's own success which culminated in the Balfour Declaration. The British offered Herzl a Jewish settlement in East Africa (erroneously referred to as Uganda), leading to the following letter from Lord Lansdowne, the British foreign secretary:
If a site can be found which the Trust and His Majesty’s Commissioner consider suitable and which commends itself to His Majesty’s Government, Lord Lansdowne will be prepared to entertain favorably proposals for the establishment of a Jewish colony or settlement on conditions which will enable the members to observe their National customs. For this purpose he would be prepared to discuss...the details of a scheme comprising as its main features: the grant of a considerable area of land, the appointment of a Jewish Official as chief of the local administration, and permission to the Colony to have a free hand in regard to municipal legislation and as to the management of religious and purely domestic matters, such Local Autonomy being conditional upon the right of His Majesty’s Government to exercise a general control. [emphasis added]
Hazony explains that the Landsdowne Letter surpasses the Balfour Declaration because the letter expressed Great Britain's willingness to agree on Herzl's own terms that the land would be chartered with the understanding that it would be governed as a Jewish territory, by the Jews themselves. [p.135]
The alliances Israel has formed with some right-wing leaders are not in the same category as the leaders of Russia and Germany that Herzl had to deal with. Still, some do question their motives. But such alliances, as we have seen, have helped Israel.
Ryvchin makes the point:
Today, Israel has formed alliances with some nations that might really see a short-term alignment of interests, but don’t harbor any great feeling of warmth towards the Jewish people. That is dangerous, but it is also the world that we live in. And as long as the Netanyahu government and the successive governments go into this with their eyes open, I think it is something that can and needs to be done.
Ryvchin is referring to countries like Hungary.
The same could apply
to Russia, with whom Netanyahu has an understanding (so far) that allows
it to fly into Syrian airspace to challenge Iran.
We hope that the same reason for caution does not apply to the UAE and other Arab parties to the Abraham Accords as well.
After the events of the last 2 weeks, we may soon find out.
Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian Voices Blinken Won't Hear
The renewed talk about a "two-state solution" comes amid a significant increase in the popularity of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group whose charter openly calls for replacing Israel with an Islamic state. It also comes at a time when Abbas's popularity is at its lowest ebb.Blinken trip to Israel aimed at preventing aid to Gaza from reaching Hamas
The Palestinians are telling Blinken that he is wasting his time if he thinks that they would accept "so-called peaceful solutions" or "renounce any part of Palestine." They are also sending a warning to Abbas that recognition of Israel's right to exist and acceptance of the "two-state solution" is tantamount to treason, a crime punishable by death.
Abbas is afraid that Hamas will try to stage a coup against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.... Abbas, however, does not feel comfortable talking about the Palestinians' two rival entities, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and prefers to continue pretending that the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is still a realistic option.
As long as Israel maintains overall security control over the West Bank, Abbas can feel safe sitting in his office or at home in Ramallah. It is only Israel's presence in the West Bank that is keeping him in power and preventing Hamas from extending its control beyond the Gaza Strip.
A recent public opinion poll showed that 57% of the Palestinians are opposed to the two-state solution. Another 57% said they support the "armed struggle" and "popular resistance" against Israel. According to the poll, 68% of the Palestinians want Abbas to resign.
Blinken needs to go out and talk to ordinary Palestinians. There, he will get a good grasp of the Palestinians' profound anti-Israel sentiments and their deep support for Iran's proxies and others who wish to wipe Israel off the map.
The official was also asked what can be done to ensure that aid money won’t be diverted to Hamas.Where Does Hamas’ Money Go?
“We are going to work in partnership with the UN and the PA to channel aid in a manner that does its best to go to the people of Gaza,” the official said.
“We are going to do anything we can so that this assistance will reach the people who need it the most,” the official added. “We are focused primarily on making sure that the ceasefire sticks,” the official said.
“We, and other donors, are trying to structure things in a way that diminishes Hamas’s abilities, strengthens the people of Gaza, begins a process of hopefully reintroducing and reintegrating the Palestinian Authority into Gaza and is in partnership with the United Nations,” the official said.
“The United States remains committed to the two-state solution, that remains the vision of the United States,” the official noted.
“We are not wavering from that in any way.” They went on to say that “it’s probably premature at this time to invite the parties to Washington or anywhere else. This will be the secretary’s first trip to the region. He’ll be engaging with the parties and listening to them,” the official said.
Sec. Blinken Won't Say Whether He Believes Iran Is Funding Hamas Even After The Terror Group Admitted It
After a mere hours following the Friday announcement of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, a senior leader in Hamas thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran; who did not hold back with money, weapons and technical support,” according to Jerusalem Post.
“The president reiterated strong support for Israel on Friday, but he’s coming under increased pressure from progressives,” George Stephanopoulos, the show’s anchor, said, referring to pro-Palestinian statements and resolutions by Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“What’s your response to that?” Stephanopoulos asked Blinken.
The secretary of state said that he prefers focusing on the policies and leaves the politics to others. He then proceeded to tout President Joe Biden’s “relentless focus on diplomacy” which he said has produced the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.
Blinken also spoke in favor of the arms sale, arguing that Israel has the right to defend itself from “indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilians.”
“We’re committed to Israel’s defense,” he added.
Watch the Blinken interview below. If you find his logic tortured, if it looks to you like he’s uncomfortable, & if you ask, “What the hell is he thinking?” — if all of that goes through your mind, then @AcrossTheBay & I wrote the article just for you: https://t.co/BkvyTmR3cI https://t.co/lyLVwrcKPS
— Mike (@Doranimated) May 24, 2021
- Monday, May 24, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- Monday, May 24, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- "pro-Palestinian", Al Awada, antisemitism, jew hatred, Joseph Borgen, media silence, NYPD Hate Crimes, Peter Beinart, Samidoun, The Palestine Freedom Fund, Waseem Awawdeh
⚠️Thursday May 20th, approx. 6:44 PM, at 1604 Broadway, a male, 29, wearing a yarmulke, was assaulted by a group of males who, knocked him down, punched, kicked and pepper sprayed him and hit him with crutches, while making anti-Semitic statements. Know them? ☎️1-800-577-TIPS pic.twitter.com/NDgmJ79MHt
— NYPD Hate Crimes (@NYPDHateCrimes) May 22, 2021
The Palestine Freedom Fund works to support bail and legal expenses for Palestinian organizers, activists for Palestine and community members targeted for persecution.As a first initiative, we are fundraising for bail/legal support funds for Palestinian youth arrested at New York City demonstrations for Palestine on Thursday, May 20, 2021.
- Monday, May 24, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
All reporting should take into consideration that Israel occupies Palestinian territory, and that Palestinians — whether they live in the West Bank, Gaza or inside Israel — are subject to an unjust and unequal system...Avoid “both sides” framing. Recognize the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinian people.Do not call Gaza “Hamas-controlled.” It is sufficient to say “Gaza,” or “Gaza’s Health Ministry,” for example.Replace “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” with “forced removal.” The terms “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” suggest a disagreement between a landlord and tenant, obscuring the Israeli government’s efforts to forcibly displace Jerusalem’s Palestinian population.Be cognizant of how you’re identifying Palestinians. Do not use the identifiers “Arab-Israeli” or “Israeli-Arab,” unless requested by the individuals described. Instead use “Palestinian citizen of Israel” if that applies, or “Palestinian.” Also recognize Palestinians represent multiple faith backgrounds, including Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Samaritan, Baha’i and others. Ignoring this diversity perpetuates the misleading notion that the conflict is a religious one between Jews and Muslims rather than political in nature.
"Use Judea and Samaria instead of the Jordanian-created term West Bank.""Ensure that every mention of Hamas includes the fact that is it an internationally recognized terrorist group.""Never say 'occupied territories,' they are disputed.""The term 'settlers' has become derogatory, instead refer to them as Israeli citizens resident in Judea and Samaria."
Sunday, May 23, 2021
- Sunday, May 23, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Ben Shapiro: If you side with Hamas, your antisemitism is showing
The media coverage of the conflict has been predictably morally absurd. The Associated Press, an outfit that has regularly covered up Hamas' atrocities, has condemned Israel for hitting a Hamas building in which the AP had offices. Trevor Noah suggested that Israel's military superiority means that Israel must absorb hundreds of rockets per day and allow its civilian population to live under the shadow of radical Islamic terrorism. "If you are in a fight where the other person cannot beat you, how hard should you retaliate when they try to hurt you?" he asked. HBO's John Oliver accused Israel of "killing civilians and children."
Members of the Democratic Party's radical, antisemitic fashion have been no less morally inverted. Rep. Rashida Tlaib has encouraged President Joe Biden to cut off Israel's defense supplies. Rep. Ilhan Omar has accused Israel of "terrorism." Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called Israel an "apartheid state," despite the fact that Arabs are full citizens of Israel while not a single Jew lives under the predations of Hamas. And this week, nearly 200 Democrats voted not to cut off funding to groups linked with Hamas.
The conflict between Hamas and Israel is not a dispute over borders: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip a decade and a half ago. It is not a dispute over religion: Israel allows Muslims full freedom of worship throughout Israel, particularly on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, where Jewish worship remains essentially forbidden in favor of kowtowing to Islamist diktats. It is not a dispute over homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a suburb of Jerusalem that has been the subject of a decadeslong property dispute between private parties and in which Arabs who aren't subject to such disputes continue to live.
The conflict between Hamas and Israel is about a stubborn fact: Israel exists, and Hamas wishes it didn't exist. Hamas will target civilians in Israel, use Palestinian children to shield its rockets and lie to the press to achieve its goals. Israel, meanwhile, is seeking to minimize civilian casualties at great risk to its own citizens. Opposing Israel's actions doesn't make you an anti-Semite. But siding with Hamas in a conflict like this one certainly does.
Ben Shapiro: IDF Spokesman Explains How The Iron Dome Actually Works
I had the privilege of speaking with Jonathan Conricus — International Spokesperson for the IDF — about Israel’s life-saving Iron Dome Defense System. Conricus also provides a glimpse into other strategies Israel has implemented to defend itself against missile attacks being launched by the terrorist group Hamas.
The BBC, child fatalities and shortfall Palestinian rockets
The IDF also investigated an additional incident that took place around the same time in Jabaliya in which four children aged 18 and under and four adults died. That too was found to be the result of a rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists. The NGO ‘Defence for Children International’ described that incident as having been caused by “a homemade rocket fired by a Palestinian armed group”.
If the BBC’s previous record is anything to go by, it is highly unlikely that audiences will be relieved of the inaccurate impression that Ibrahim al-Masry and other members of his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike.
As has so often been the case in previous escalations, the BBC continues to uncritically amplify casualty figures which are part of Hamas’ framing of the story without any evidence of the type of independent verification that responsible, accurate and impartial journalism requires having taken place.
How do we know these are actually terrorists and we're not just saying so?
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) May 23, 2021
- Hamas & PIJ publish "shaheeds" on their websites
- Confirmed pictures of terrorists on social media
- All backed up & supported in the following @terrorisminfo report:https://t.co/kHOp4eG4Lc
??fin
Hamas spokesman confirms Hamas is committing war crimes. He tells @Stone_SkyNews that international law gives Hamas the right to ignore international law and wage war "by all feasible means." He confirms that Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas and targets Israeli civilians. pic.twitter.com/fnJ3wUf7qn
— Daniel Rubenstein (@paulrubens) May 22, 2021
- Sunday, May 23, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- Sunday, May 23, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Peter Savodnik: The New Furies of the Oldest Hatred
Take a good look at who is speaking out against Jew-hate. And who is staying silent.BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY: Eyeless in Gaza
Let us dispense with the fiction, once and for all, that hating the Jewish homeland, which contains the largest Jewish community on Earth, is different from hating Jews.
It has been exceedingly difficult in our blinkered, hyper-secularized present, so removed from the primal animosities of not so long ago, to conceive of a world in which tens or hundreds of millions of people who have never visited Israel or never met a Jew want Jews dead. We’ve been blinded by the oceanic success of life under the Pax Americana. We think this is how people are.
This is not how people are. This is a wondrous aberration. There were 2,000 years of ghettos, blood libels and pogroms, of dehumanization and second-class citizenship that culminated with the Shoah. For the past several decades — a sneeze in the span of Jewish history — we American Jews have been maundering through the happy, mournful echoes of the recent past.
That recent past meant that we weren’t shocked to see this violence from the Europeans, who have never stopped hating Jews, but who had been forced, by the camps, to camouflage their Jew hate in their criticism of Israel, their obsession with it.
But America?
We were not steeped in the Old World hatreds. We were deeply flawed — who wasn’t? — but our flaws were always in conflict with our identity. One of the many problems with antisemitism, like Jim Crow, was that it made a mockery of our ideals, which made it impossible to hold onto the old bigotries forever. One had to reject Jew-hate and support the Jewish right to self-determination for the same reason one had to dismantle literacy laws that limited voting rights: It was central to the American weltanschauung. It was part of our animating ethic. The progress was glacial and uneven but inexorable. It was America becoming more American.
We were supposed to have transcended the old blood-and-soil stupidities. But they can’t be transcended. That was a beautiful myth, a myth that was fundamental to our idea of ourselves. But we are losing ourselves.
Hamas has no clear objective that might be the subject of a dialogue and eventual compromise.Fantasies of Israel’s Disappearance
More precisely—because “objective” can be translated in two ways in Carl von Clausewitz’s language—it has no Ziel (a concrete, rational aim about which the antagonists could negotiate during and after a ceasefire), but it does have a Zweck (that is, one strategic objective, which is the reaffirmation of its utter merciless hate and intended annihilation, spelled out in its charter, of the “Zionist entity.”
I ask myself another simple question, as should others, whenever thousands of demonstrators take to the streets in Paris, London, or Berlin “to defend Palestine.”
Is it the death of Palestinian civilians that bothers them? If so, it is hard to understand why they are silent when it is Palestinians who are pursuing, tormenting, gunning down, assassinating, or using artillery to attack other Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel or Fatah.
Are they concerned with human rights, everywhere and under all circumstances? Then one wonders why, without going all the way back to the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia and Darfur, we hear nothing from the protesters in defense of the Uyghurs being “cleansed” by the Chinese dictatorship, the Rohingyas being “displaced” by the Burmese junta, or the Nigerian Christians being exterminated by Boko Haram and Islamist Fulanis. We hear nothing about the violations of human rights being committed on a grand scale in Afghanistan, Somalia, Burundi, and the Nuba Mountains, places I’ve visited and know well and where it’s not hundreds, but thousands, and even tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians who are dying from conflict, some at a simmer, some at a boil.
Are the demonstrators outraged by the indifference of a complicit West that allows a Muslim city to be bombed? If so, why didn’t they spill into the streets to show their solidarity with the Kurds of Kirkuk, assaulted in October 2017 by planes financed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards? Or with the Kurds of Rojava bombarded by Erdogan in 2018 and 2019? Where were they when Syrian cities were barraged by the planes of dictator Bashar Assad, supported by those of Vladimir Putin, with a savagery seldom seen.
No.
However you look at it, there are crowds of people in France, the United States, and Great Britain who are not truly interested in human rights, forgotten wars, or even the Palestinians. They simply seize the opportunity to demonstrate only when it enables them to kill two birds with one stone and chant “down with Israel” or “death to the Jews.”
As Munayyer sees it, the Hamas-initiated Gaza war represents the Palestinian goal of “breaking free from the shackles of Israel’s system of oppression.” These “shackles” include “the impending expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.” The only problem (ignored by Munayyer) is that these homes are not theirs; in 2008 the Israel Supreme Court affirmed that the property is owned by the Sephardi Jewish community, which purchased it more than a century ago.
Grounded in this false claim, Munayyer writes: “Palestinians across the land who identified with the experience of being dispossessed by Israel rose up, together.” In translation, Palestinians were justified in pursuing their false claim of property ownership with waves of violence in Jerusalem and a cascade of rockets from Gaza. Palestinian defiance, especially in Gaza where Arabs are “caged and besieged,” exposed the “ugliness” of Israeli rule. The only problem is that Israel does not rule Gaza; Hamas does, and bears full responsibility for launching waves of rockets — against Israel.
Munayyer seems to favor the (preposterous) goal of “equal rights in a single state if the two-state solution fails.” But the two-state solution has failed because Palestinians have repeatedly rejected it, preferring the disappearance of Israel, by war if necessary. The alternative, for Munayyer, is another fantasy: “equal rights in a single state.” That would only require Israel to relinquish its identity as the Jewish state that it is, and always will be — a state, he fails to notice, where twenty per cent of its population are Arab citizens.
But even a two-state “paradigm,” Munayyer suggests, is “dead.” Why? Because, predictably, “Israel buried it under settlements long ago.” In the end Munayyer is the perfect New York Times advocate for the disappearance of the world’s only Jewish state. Not coincidentally, it located in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people.