Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 16, 2022

06/16 Links Pt1: The UNHRC's diplomatic terrorism; From Peace Deal to Military Pact: Congress Wants Israel, Arab Allies To Unite Against Iran

From Ian:

Danny Danon: The UNHRC's diplomatic terrorism

The bias and absurdity of the report are made clear by a simple scan of the contents and the observation that throughout 18 pages of Israel-bashing only a handful of paragraphs are allocated to the atrocities committed by Arab terror organizations such as Hamas, which publicly declares that one of its goals is the complete destruction of the State of Israel. Given that the council has been outed time and again for its anti-Israel bias, it is unsurprising that the UNHRC report perpetuates and even intensifies this hostility towards the Jewish state.

For example, the report completely disregards the more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israel over the course of the 11-day conflict last May. Not only does it ignore this crucial issue, but it goes further. It undermines and criticizes a democratic country whose only "crime" is to defend itself against this barrage of rockets launched at an innocent civilian population.

Instead of rallying to Israel's defense against a brutal attack by bloodthirsty radicals, the UNHRC report sides with the aggressive Arab terrorists who injured not only Jewish citizens but Arabs in Israel and the Gaza Strip. Instead of aligning itself with a democracy that had no alternative but to defend itself and its citizens, the report collaborates with terrorists.

This does nothing to promote peace. In fact, it does precisely the opposite. It nurtures terror and simultaneously attempts to penalize a sovereign state for exercising its right to fight terror. No one gains from this. Not the innocent Israeli Jewish or Arab civilians who were killed, wounded or suffered stress and trauma as a result of rocket attacks. Certainly not the Palestinian Arabs whose lives were harmed during Hamas's senseless assault. The only victors are the terrorists and radicals whose goal is destruction and devastation no matter the human cost.

The UNHRC inquiry and its report are flagrant diplomatic terrorism against Israel. The investigators responsible for it should themselves be investigated for aiding and abetting acts of terrorism and violence against innocent civilians.

The UN vs. Israel, Yet Again

This year, the U.S. rejoined the UN Human Rights Council to try to advance fundamental values and address political corruption. Exhibit A of this corruption is the UN's unparalleled misuse as a propaganda tool against Israel, a country of fewer than 10 million people, barely the size of New Jersey, which is excoriated more than all other countries.

In the new UNHRC Commission of Inquiry report, relentless Palestinian violence - and rejection of sweeping overtures for two-state coexistence in 1947, 2000 and 2008 - does not register as a "root cause" of the conflict. The commission claims "Israel has no intention of ending the occupation," ignoring Israel's sacrifice of territory for peace with Egypt and Jordan, and its surrender of land to the Palestinians. It also ignores Israelis' dramatically worsened security following their total withdrawal from a security zone along the Lebanese border in 2000 and pullout from Gaza in 2005.

Nor does the commission even feign interest in Palestinians' endemic dehumanization of Jews, denial of their equal legitimacy and glorification of violence. There is talk of past "Gaza conflicts," as if the conflicts didn't involve indiscriminate bombardments upending the lives of millions within Israel.

Clifford May: Is international law dead?

According to the United Nations, Gaza remains "occupied territory" even though every Israeli soldier, farmer, synagogue and cemetery was withdrawn in 2005.

Hamas's subsequent takeover of Gaza in 2007 following a civil war against the Palestinian Authority, and the multiple wars that it's launched since, have led most Israelis to conclude that relinquishing more land without a peace agreement in place may not be a great idea.

Future COI reports will attempt to build the false and libelous case that Israel is an "apartheid state" committing "crimes against humanity" and that the "root cause" of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is – can you guess? – Israel's very existence.

It will follow that taking steps to terminate Israel's existence is justifiable. That message will resonate – not least in Tehran.

Could that lead to a repeat of what happened in Europe in the 1940s (genocide) or in the Middle East over the years that followed (expulsion of Jews from Iraq, Egypt and other Muslim lands)? Were that to happen, would the COI shed salty tears? Or would it say the Israelis had it coming? Would it matter?

Here in Jerusalem, I had a long conversation about these issues with a prominent international lawyer.

"What we're seeing in regard to Israel," she told me, "is not really the application of international law. It's 'lawfare' " – the use of tendentious and politicized interpretations of international law as weapons of war.

Combined with the inability or unwillingness of the "international community" to hold the world's most brutal tyrants accountable for their ongoing crimes, we may have the answer to Zelensky's question.

If we are returning to a world order in which, to paraphrase the Athenians to the Melians, despots do what they will and small nations suffer what they must, the consequences are enormous. Western leaders – if they are leaders – will give this possibility serious consideration.

I always see the Forward find Jewish angles in the most goyishe seeming parts of pop culture, so I'll do one too - from decades ago.

"Bewitched" was a hugely popular TV series about a witch Samantha, who marries mortal man Darrin Stevens. Most plots involve her magical relatives meddling in her marriage, especially her disapproving mother, Endora.

The show was created by Sol Saks under executive director Harry Ackerman and director William Asher. Saks and Ackerman were Jewish, Asher's father was Jewish and he married Bewitched's star, Elizabeth Montgomery.

Many people see the show as an allegory for the Jewish American experience. Samantha comes from the old country but wants to assimilate in American society, while her relatives disapprove of her mixed marriage to a mortal. Endora looks very "foreign."

Darrin loves her but wants her to be a "normal" woman and not perform her strange rituals. He's tolerant - but not that tolerant.

In the pilot episode, when Darrin marries Samantha, the theme of prejudice is made explicit. Endora says, "You’re still very young and inexperienced. You don’t know what prejudice you’ll run into!" And later, when Samantha first tells Darrin her secret, he exclaims, "Okay, if you're a witch, where's your black hat and broom and how come you're out when it isn't even Halloween? Samantha answers, "Mother was right, you're prejudiced!"

There is one other telling incident in the pilot. Darren's ex-girlfriend Sheila invites the newlyweds to a party, where she attempts to demean Samantha as not being sophisticated while making snide comments. At one point, Sheila engages Samantha in a conversation - about nose jobs:

“Do you know Dr. Hafter, dear? Samantha?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Dr. Hafter, do you know him?”

“No.”

“The plastic surgeon. Does beautiful nose work.”

"No, I don’t know him.”

”Funny, I could have sworn…”

In the 1960s, nose jobs were considered de rigueur for young, upwardly mobile Jewish women.

In the end, as much as Samantha tries to assimilate and stop doing her magic, she can never deny her witchhood.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

I mentioned yesterday that the founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, started insulting my research about the Shireen Abu Akleh while refusing to actually say what my mistakes were. This pattern continued throughout the day on Twitter as people pressed him that an OSINT researcher should take criticism seriously.

Higgins has been ignoring my responses, but he started answering others today. Here are his few specific critiques of my research as he engaged with tweeter Jonah Balfour, who is a fine researcher:

EH: The interpretation of the "sniper" videos are a real tell when it comes to the author's biases.

JB: In what way? He had someone translate the video in which one of the witnesses points to “snipers” in houses towards the southeast. Again, you criticize his interpretation without saying what’s wrong with it. Screenshot of his transcript below:

EH: Does that transcript state they were IDF or Palestinian snipers? Are they pointing directly at snipers or the approximate direction they believe them to be in? Do they claim they were shooting at the group of journalists?

This is an amazing response. First of all, the people in the video definitely mention "shabab," the Jenin Islamic Jihad members. But even if they weren't, this video is proof that there were other gunmen in the general area that almost certainly had a line of sight to the journalists. There is zero evidence of IDF activity in the area. These gunmen that we have witnesses for, as well as the gunmen that we do have video of, are ignored by Bellingcat.

It is especially jarring that Bellingcat spends lots of time disproving that the militants to the south of the IDF could have shot Shireen - but none on the militants who we have video of who were to the southeast between 175-195 meters away! (Again, I don't think that they were the shooters without finding line of sight, but Bellingcat prefers to not even admit they exist.)

How can anyone trust open source research from an organization that deliberately ignores multiple pieces of evidence that counters their thesis?

Not only that, but while the Bellingcat analysis painstakingly tries to tease out facts that seem to support IDF culpability, suddenly the standards of proof skyrocket when dealing with evidence of Palestinian culpability. Higgins implies that this video conversation is worthless unless there is direct video of the snipers shooting towards the journalists, and otherwise is hearsay. Yet there is no such video of the IDF shooting at journalists, and the witnesses Bellingcat refers to in its report are no more reliable than these witnesses to gunmen are. In fact, the witnesses in Bellingcat's report have incentive to lie, a random conversation between Jenin residents in Arabic is not likely to be disinformation.

JB: And again, the strongest evidence showing it wasn’t the IDF is the evidence you uncovered in the Bellingcat report. The forensic audio analysis is solid. But the IDF was too far away, according to your analysis, to be the shooter.

EH: It's an estimate that can be effected by a number of environmental factors, so the claims it's a hard limit is false, which is why I'm saying it's bad analysis because it ignores those details to make its point.

I didn't ignore that detail at all. I asked Rob Maher explicitly whether the environmental conditions could make that much of a difference, and he said no:

I asked the expert used by CNN and Bellingcat, Rob Maher of Montana State University, if there were any circumstances like weather or wind that could stretch the 195 meter estimate to 210 or 215 meters. His answer was, "I think that if the average bullet speed is assumed to be at least 760 m/s , the effect of wind and temperature would only move the estimated distance by a few meters, not tens of meters."

It was not a windy day and it was not a very hot day that would even move the estimate a couple of meters.

[760 m/s which is the slowest known speed for a 5.56mm bullet at 100 yards, which would be the slowest average speed at ~200 meters - the scenario where the estimated distance would be the maximu, of 195 meters.]

The only ways that the IDF could be within the range of the audio analysis would be if they moved much closer and no one noticed, or if they are using a gun with 5.56mm bullets that go much slower than anyone if aware of. Both of those are highly unlikely.

EH: It doesn't need to be, it's still in range

JB: How is it still in range? According to the estimates in your report the IDF was 20-25 meters outside the range given. Even according to CNN and WaPo’s estimate it’s ~15 meters out of range.

The total range given in your report was 177-184, that’s a 7m margin. The IDF was 20-25 m outside that margin, so about 3x the margin itself. How is that not relevant? Especially when there WAS an armed group within the range you identified??

EH: We measured the lead vehicle being about 190m away from the location, which puts it in range.

...I'd also note the expert WaPo spoke to gave a longer range, which also puts the IDF in range.

Bellingcat said that the lead IDF vehicle was 190 meters from where Abu Akleh was shot. This is not correct.

Their picture shows Abu Akleh in a location about 8 meters south of the tree that she collapsed next to. With a massive brain injury, she didn't stagger 8 meters. You can see where they say she was shot and the tree to the north.

The tree is the most obvious landmark. Bellingcat gives no reason - video, photo or otherwise - to place Abu Akleh in that position to the south of the tree.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Bellingcat researcher tried to fit the data to make the IDF as close as possible to the their audio forensics estimate of 177-184 meters (Bellingcat and CNN gave different assumptions to the audio expert, so he gave different responses).

Interestingly, Higgins seems to realize that Bellingcat's estimates simply do not add up, so he refers to the Washington Post estimates from their different audio expert of between 175-195 meter range. That's fine - I think that is more accurate based on my research of the types of weapons used by both the IDF and militants.

Even at 195 meters, the IDF is way out of range because none of the analysts, Bellingcat included, are measuring between the IDF and the microphone - they all measure based on their own assumptions between the IDF and the journalists.

The IDF - based on Bellingcat's own map of their position - was 210-216 meters from the microphone.

It is virtually impossible for a gunshot from 210 meters to have the audio signature in the videos. Which means it is virtually impossible for the IDF to have shot Abu Akleh. And no one has managed to disprove that.

We have now seen several sleights of hand by Bellingcat and Higgins: fudging Shireen's location, referring to the longer audio forensics estimate when theirs doesn't make sense, seemingly purposefully ignoring evidence of gunmen anywhere besides south of the IDF, and insisting on far higher standards of proof of the existence of Jenin gunmen in the potential band of firing than they use to "prove" IDF fire.

They are accusing me of bias - but could they be the biased ones?

I admit that I am pro-Israel. That is why I am trying to be as scrupulous and transparent as possible. But what about Eliot Higgins own biases? He presents himself as an OSINT expert, does bias enter in Bellingcat's analyses?

His tweets over the past couple of days, where he makes assumptions that not only am I biased but so are my readers, indicate more than a little projection. (My readers are not shy about calling out my mistakes!)

Finally, there is a huge irony in Higgins claiming that I have no credentials and am not an expert like he is.

I am not prone to bragging. As an anonymous writer, I need to make up for my lack of credentials by doing....OSINT. Like most Bellingcat articles, I show my work and anyone can reproduce my methodology. (I generally don't issue reports, though, since I write multiple articles a day - I show my work even as I'm doing it. And I correct when I'm wrong.)

But once Higgins wants to bring in qualifications, let's do it.

I have been doing what can be defined as OSINT since at least 2007. I have broken more stories than I can count based on open sources that the media ignores - video analysis, databases, statistics, photo analysis. I do not only rely on the experts - as much as possible, I try to reproduce their methodology. I do my own math. I test different assumptions. In this case, I did my own audio analysis to confirm the physics of the gunshots. I verified the geolocation. I may be a little rusty but my college education is in engineering and science. Higgins, on the other hand:

The very person who encourages ordinary people to do their own research, who has no education in the topic of OSINT, who dropped out of college and who never had a professional job, is saying that I am unqualified to do what he does.

That is bias. That is ego. And those are the enemies of objective OSINT research.

I am not fond of attacking people - I want to prove the truth about Shireen Abu Akleh and that's it. But if this person is attacking my objectivity and my methodology, then it is fair game to point out his hypocrisy and his bias.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa has an article claiming that Hamas is stealing land in Gaza from its proper owners.

According to the story, Hamas continually seizes thousands of dunums of land by force of arms in Gaza.

It turns around and gives some of this land either to its own members, or to employees in lieu of paying salaries.

It has evicted hundreds of families from their homes, including some who were allotted land back when Egypt controlled Gaza.

An investigative report by journalist Muhammad Othman, published in 2021, revealed that Hamas seized 42 dunams of land belonging to Al-Azhar University in Gaza and gave it to "others ."

According to Othman’s investigation, Hamas granted some to Hamas sports clubs and other plots of land totaling about 8 dunums for the benefit of the Young Muslim Women Association of Hamas .

Hamas regularly send notices to residents telling them to evict, because the land belongs to the government, as it scours old records looking for an excuse to steal their land.

One journalist tweeted sarcastically, "[Hamas] is looking through the old books...it wants the right of lands from the days of the Egyptians...soon they get to the lands from the days of the Ottomans, and eventually they will claim Canaanite land records as well."

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

06/15 Links Pt2: Gazan aid worker convicted of embezzling millions for Hamas; We must stop sweeping woke antisemitism under the rug

From Ian:

We must stop sweeping woke antisemitism under the rug

How effectively is the Jewish establishment confronting intolerance?
In a recent editorial, Morton Klein and Elizabeth Berney of the Zionist Organization of America criticized the ADL’s latest report on radical violence, “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021,” arguing that it focused on white supremacism but downplayed threats from minority extremists.

Similarly, critics of the secular liberal establishment lament its tendency to understate progressive bigotry and excess. Indeed, politics seems to set the tone for those communal leaders who appear restrained when social justice warriors target Jews and their institutions, leftist professors malign Israel on college campuses, or progressives promote global conspiracy theories on their social media platforms.

This begs the question of whether cultural survival is possible when Jewish identity is conflated with partisan politics. Or whether invoking tradition in name while equating it with modern progressive values – many of which contravene traditional Judaism – will instead facilitate assimilation.

Those who believe political progressivism is synonymous with Jewish prophetic tradition are just as misinformed as evangelicals who claim Jews can only be “completed” by accepting Christianity. Neither view has any foundation in Jewish Scripture or tradition.
The more confounding question is whether activists who equate Jewish advocacy with jingoism or ethnocentricity can honestly claim concern for Jewish continuity. While many liberals pay lip service to heritage, they also support organizations hostile to traditional Jewish priorities. Can they be effective guardians against antisemitism if they ignore Jew-hatred from the left? Is it chauvinistic to rebuke antisemitism in minority communities?

Incredibly, some progressives claim Jews are part of the power structure and that, accordingly, anti-Jewish bias in minority communities is understandable or even justified. The insidiousness of such woke drivel, however, has finally alarmed some within the liberal mainstream and spurred protest resignations from radical synagogues where anti-Israel activists are validated.

Jonathan Tobin: Cancel culture isn't just for academics anymore

For a lot of people, the phrase "cancel culture" is still a theoretical concept. They know it refers to people being punished in various ways for saying things others don't want to hear, but they have little personal experience of it. Indeed, up until not all that long ago, the idea of being "canceled" was something that was largely limited to the rarified world of academia.

College campuses were the beachheads for those seeking to spread toxic ideologies about intersectionality and critical race theory. Inevitably, that meant that they were also the places where intolerance for differing opinions incubated from an outlier position into mainstream practice.

We have gotten used to seeing stories about colleges canceling appearances from guest speakers whose views on a variety of subjects might offend someone. The offended parties were almost always left-wing students, often egged on by leftist professors, who considered the enunciation of opinions they deemed beyond the pale unacceptable. We were told that hearing ideas that challenged these students' pre-existing opinions and prejudices would "trigger" them, causing them to feel "harm" or to be "endangered."

H.L. Mencken, the great skeptic and cynic of American journalism, once defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." The woke left has embraced its own brand of rigid orthodoxy in which they are haunted by the idea that someone, somewhere may be questioning their ideas about race, gender, government power, and above all, whether open debate about these issues should be tolerated.

But dust-ups about guest speakers at colleges have now morphed into ongoing controversies about whether institutions of higher learning ought to allow those guilty of wrong-think about affirmative action or the notion that America is an irredeemably racist nation to continue teaching. Social media, which was once believed to be the method by which free speech would proliferate even in repressive nations and cultures, became the vehicle for detecting and then enforcing violations of the new orthodoxies.

Gazan aid worker convicted of embezzling millions for Hamas

An Israeli court on Wednesday convicted Mohammad el-Halabi, a Gazan aid worker, of transferring millions in funds to the Hamas terror group, on all but one of the counts against him.

Israeli forces arrested Halabi, who worked at World Vision — a highly respected Christian humanitarian organization that operates around the world — in 2016 and charged him with transferring millions of the nonprofit’s funds to Hamas. Since then, he has been held under arrest.

The aid worker’s extended detention, combined with little publicly released evidence of his guilt, saw Israel’s justice system draw international condemnation

Halabi intends to appeal the ruling to Israel’s Supreme Court, according to his attorney. His sentencing has been set for July 10.

The 254-page ruling, like much of the evidence against Halabi, is classified. In a condensed version released to the press, the Beersheba District Court leaned heavily on Halabi’s confession to Shin Bet security agents, which he has since withdrawn.

“The defendant’s confession, given in various ways, is detailed, coherent, with signs of truthfulness,” Justice Natan Zlotchover wrote in the decision, adding that it was corroborated by additional confidential evidence.

Halabi and World Vision have both emphatically rejected the charges against him. The aid worker, who hails from Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, is a member of the Fatah group, Hamas’s enemy, according to his family.

According to the ruling, Israeli authorities determined Halabi had been recruited in 2004 by Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. His handlers later sent him to World Vision in order to “gain influence at an international organization.”

At which point will @hrw cease shilling for Hamas and more dead Jews? #AlHalabi https://t.co/X9gMZ8ffka
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 15, 2022

Who Killed Abu Akleh and the Bullet they Wont Let Us See (Judean Rose)

Who killed Abu Akleh is an important question for some, and not at all for others, but no matter how you feel about the question, the answer lies with the bullet the PA does not want you to see. Some of those who want the answer to the question of who killed Abu Akleh may be desperate to prove Israel’s innocence or guilt. Others don’t care to know the answer at all, as long as they can smear the Jews. A third, likely much smaller group includes Elder of Ziyon, host of this column, who cares only to find the definitive truth, no matter where it leads. For the rest of us, however, there is no question of who killed Abu Akleh. There’s a bullet. The PA won’t allow Israel to examine it. Case closed.

It’s really very simple: if they won’t show us the bullet, Israel’s not guilty. End of story. That works for me, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Some of us need to see what is, and not what isn’t. The truth is more important than a cynical surmise.

At one point convinced that IDF gunfire was responsible for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death, for example, Elder laid out his reasoning, concluding with these words: “I hope that I can also always be on the side of the truth tellers.”

This is an admirable goal for an honest blogger swimming against a tide of anti-Israel hate. The fact, however, is that for many of us, attempting to answer the question of who killed Abu Akleh is moot. We know who killed her, if not their names, their allegiance. Because if it were Israel who had killed Abu Akleh, you’re darned tooting that the PA would be showing everyone and his dog that bullet, the one that would point a definitive finger at Israel. The fact that they—the PA—won’t show us that bullet is proof positive that Israel is of a certainty not responsible for the death of Abu Akleh.

At one point we might have been persuaded to believe that the PA lacks the expertise to know for sure who killed Abu Akleh. This would have been reason enough not to show anyone the bullet or Shireen’s helmet, for that matter. The PA may not be able to tell whodunnit, but could be concerned at the possibility that an outside ballistics expert might yet exonerate Israel. But this is a case of trying too hard to be impartial.

The world is not on Israel’s side. No matter what proof there is, the world will continue to finger Israel for the deliberate murder of a journalist who willingly entered a combat zone. So there really is no reason to hide that bullet. The world doesn’t even care about the truth. They only care about demonizing the Jewish State.

Let’s look at what we do know. On the same day that Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed, May 11, the Jerusalem Post reported that “An initial autopsy of her body by Palestinian coroners said that she died after a bullet that was fired several meters away struck her head. Dr. Ryan al-Ali of the Pathological Institute at the a-Najah University in Nablus was quoted by al-Jarmak TV channel as saying that they could not determine who had shot her.”

The next day, according to Ynet, a top Palestinian official—Hussein a-Sheikh—the Palestinian Authority's (PA) liaison to Israel, announced that “the Palestinian Authority will not transfer the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to a ballistic inspection in Israel, despite Jerusalem's call for a joint investigation of the incident.”

Despite the fact that PA coroners could not determine responsibility for Abu Akleh’s death, and in spite of the fact that the PA refused to show Israel the bullet, the media et al., not only claims that Israel killed Abu Akleh, but that we did it intentionally and with malice. Wikipedia, in its entry on Abu Akleh, states that the “Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that the IDF killed her.” Only way, way down the page on this very long entry do we learn the truth: Israel asked to examine the bullet, and the PA refused:

“The Palestinian Authority refused an Israeli request to conduct a joint investigation, insisting on the results of its own investigation which found that the IDF had deliberately killed Abu Akleh. The Palestinian Authority also refused requests to hand the bullet over to Israel for ballistic testing. The Israeli government identified the gun of a soldier which may have killed her but insisted that it could not determine which side had fired the fatal shot without the bullet. A bipartisan group of United States Congress members urged the Biden administration to press the Palestinian Authority to release the bullet for tests.

“Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz said the IDF had requested that Palestinians let Israelis examine the bullet. Israel also suggested a joint probe into the death, which was rejected by the Palestinian Authority on the grounds that it wanted an independent investigation.”

Israel even admitted one of its soldiers may have been responsible, and still—STILL—the PA refuses to let anyone see the evidence. What conclusion can we draw other than that the bullet shows that in fact, Israel is not responsible for the death of Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who, of her own free will, entered a conflict zone erupting with active gunfire to cover a story.

Those of us who are not military or ballistics expert may not be able to offer intelligent theories about the angle of the bullet or the distance of the gunshot from the unfortunate journalist, and we may not be able you a thing about muzzle speed. There is nothing we can add to the discussion of who was closer to Abu Akleh, the Jenin shooters, or the IDF soldiers. But we know that the PA won’t show us that bullet.

There is other evidence, of course. Elder of Ziyon has done a wonderful job of following leads, for example, uncovering eyewitness testimony suggesting there were no Israelis nearby and that Shireen was shot by snipers from a building (no IDF soldiers were shooting from buildings). EOZ also gave us a brilliant piece about bullet math, how the sheer number of bullets overwhelmingly suggest that it was not an Israeli gun that fired the shot that killed Abu Akleh.

Here in this blog, Elder also looked at errors of fact and omissions by online investigators like Bellingcat, and called them on it, too. Elder exposed the cherry-picking and outright lies of Time Magazine, CNN, the NY Times, the AP, and even Israeli fifth column Haaretz. This coverage is important. We can’t just let them lie and omit. We can’t let them smear us and not respond.

We can’t let reporters get away with it when they know there were Arab snipers in the vicinity of Abu Akleh, but hid that from the public. Elder didn’t. We can’t allow the coroner to retract his decision and tell the world that IDF soldiers shot Shireen with a gun they don’t use, a Ruger. Elder called them on it. And when members of Congress pressed the FBI to do an independent investigation of Abu Akleh’s death based on the fact that she was a US citizen, Elder was there to question whether the FBI would be in violation of its own long-standing policy should it do so (it would).

All of these issues were important to expose. And yet, in some ways, none of it matters. Because the PA is hiding that bullet, so we already know the truth. Susan Sarandon and Rashida Tlaib can spout all the hateful antisemitic lies about Israel they wish but we will still know the truth: Israel did not kill Abu Akleh, not intentionally, and certainly not by accident. Else the PA would be showing us that bullet, evidence of that literal smoking gun.

When will the world and those who stand by Apartheid Israel that continues to murder, torture and commit war crimes finally say: "Enough"?

Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by a government that receives unconditional funding by our country with zero accountability. https://t.co/c2yLpM7UC1
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 11, 2022

Elder has also remarked on the refusal to share the bullet and the bias of the PA “investigation” into who killed Abu Akleh. He is certainly not naïve, but looks for proof of what is, rather than what isn’t, for example, that bullet they won’t let us see. His work is important and good and I am content to sit back and let the cynic in me watch him do all the heavy lifting, because as far as I’m concerned, I already know the truth, and the world does too, and if they say they don’t, they’re lying.

We know it wasn’t Israel who killed Abu Akleh, because it all boils down to the bullet that they, the PA, will not show you. That the world looks away from this fact is not a surprise—their hate for Israel and the Jewish people is nothing new. This inappropriate use of a reporter’s death to demonize the Jews and their state is just one more salvo in thousands of years’ worth of the same damned thing. All the haters are happy to have the truth hidden from you as they spout their anti-Jewish hate from their various platforms.

It doesn’t matter because they will not win. However it looks to your naked eyes, the collective they—the anti-Israel media, the celebrities, and everyday haters—have already lost and we have won, even as their guts grind inside them. Because we will always know the truth—that they hid the bullet—and we will always know why. The world knows this, too. They know they’ve lost and the Jews have won.

They can’t get away from it. The evidence confronts these haters smack in the face. The Jews have been winning for thousands of years.

The proof is we’re still here.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Shatha Hanaysha is the woman who was next to Shireen Abu Akleh when she was shot.She has insisted that Israel targeted Abu Akleh deliberately, and has been telling all news media that story.

But she was involved in another shooting incident, in Jenin, only a few months ago.

Hanaysha, who works for the site UltraPal, had been covering clan clashes and "security chaos" in Jenin, where people wantonly shoot weapons all the time. She apparently upset someone with her reporting and they shot her car.

It was a death threat from the "shebab" of Jenin.

The Palestinian Media Forum denounced the shooting, saying it was "an attempt to deliver a message of threat and intimidation to her, for her coverage of the issues of lawlessness, family problems and the chaos of arms in Jenin Governorate on more than one occasion."

The Human Rights Institutions Association also condemned the shooting, saying that journalists are being targeted for their reporting.

By Palestinians.

At the same time that the world is reporting Hanaysha's lies that Israel targets journalists, she herself was targeted by the Palestinians who she doesn't want to blame. She is known for reporting on Jenin youth wildly shooting at people - but she doesn't want the world to know that part about Jenin.

I'm not saying that the Jenin terrorists targeted Abu Akleh or Hanaysha, but this proves that Jenin gunmen are known to threaten and intimidate journalists - with guns.

We've seen the wild shooting from Jenin youth.

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is more consistent with trigger-happy, immature youth with guns and inflated egos than with a professional army.

There is a lot of context about Jenin that the world is refusing to report, because the lie of Israel targeting civilians has become the mainstream narrative.

(h/t @iTil972)

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06/15 Links Pt1: The UN continues Israel-bashing after Biden promised to stop it; Landmark deal: Israel to export natural gas, via Egypt, to Europe

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg: The UN continues Israel-bashing after Biden promised to stop it

When the Biden administration last year reversed its predecessor’s decision to abandon the UN Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged his team would use diplomatic engagement to stop its focus on delegitimizing Israel. That promise remains unfulfilled — and the administration stands on the verge of complicity in UN-sponsored anti-Semitism.

If US diplomats can’t put an end to the council’s anti-Semitic circus in Geneva this month, Congress should put an end to US participation in the council.

After Hamas terrorists rained down thousands of rockets on Israeli civilians last year, forcing the democratically elected Israeli government to respond militarily to defend its citizens, the Human Rights Council voted to establish a commission of inquiry into Israel. It has a mandate not just to compile alleged human-rights abuses but to concoct a body of so-called evidence to buttress broader anti-Semitic efforts to label racist the very notion of a Jewish state.

Why does the mandate rise to the level of anti-Semitism? It meets the criteria of the US State Department-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition. The alliance cites two prime examples of modern anti-Semitism: “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The Human Rights Council has long applied a double standard to Israel — the only country for which it has a dedicated agenda item. But its new commission’s mandate goes even further, aiming to produce a UN document that countries can cite to justify anti-Semitic claims that Zionism is racism.

Amb. Danny Danon: The investigators who should be investigated for their own crimes

The U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has just published an 18-page report on the May 2021 conflict between Hamas and Israel. From the outset, Israel knew the report’s conclusion was predetermined and rightly refused to cooperate with a biased investigation, labeling it “a moral stain on the international community and the U.N.” This assessment has proved correct.

The inquiry that led to the report—the first such inquiry to be open-ended—is led by Navi Pillay, a former UNHRC high commissioner who has spearheaded more investigations of Israel than of any other country in the world. She has a long history of anti-Israel statements. Miloon Kothari of India and Chris Sidoti, an Australian expert on international human-rights law, were also involved in the inquiry. Both of these individuals have documented records of anti-Israel bias.

No information has been provided as to how these three commissioners were appointed or who else was involved in drafting their report.

It is clear, however, thatsomehow these three individuals—none of whom set foot inside Israel over the course of their investigation—managed to draw firm conclusions about the conflict based solely on visits to Jordan and Geneva.

One wonders what the motives of these unelected officials might be. Given their history and clear hatred of Israel, it’s not hard to understand why their report is filled with lies.

The bias and absurdity of the report are made clear by a simple scan of the contents and the observation that throughout 18 pages of Israel-bashing only a handful of paragraphs are allocated to the atrocities committed by Arab terror organizations such as Hamas, which publicly declares that one of its goals is the complete destruction of the State of Israel. Given that the council has been outed time and again for its anti-Israel bias, it is unsurprising that the UNHRC report perpetuates and even intensifies this hostility towards the Jewish state.

In landmark deal signed in Cairo, Israel to export natural gas, via Egypt, to Europe

Israel, Egypt and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday in Cairo that will see Israel export its natural gas to the bloc for the first time.

The landmark agreement will increase liquified natural gas sales to EU countries, which are aiming to reduce dependence on supply from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

Last year, the EU imported roughly 40 percent of its gas from Russia. It has faced energy difficulties since imposing sweeping sanctions on Moscow.

The agreement will see Israel send gas via Egypt, which has facilities to liquify it for export via sea.

Energy Minister Karine Elharrar said the signing of the MOU had cemented Israel’s role on the global energy stage.

“This is a tremendous moment in which little Israel is becoming a significant player in the global energy market,” Elharrar said.

Energy Minister Karine Elharrar, signs a deal to boost East Mediterranean gas exports to Europe with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Egyptian Minister of Petroleum Tarek El-Molla, in Cairo, Egypt, June 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) In a joint news conference alongside European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla, Elharrar said the deal came about in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The memorandum ofunderstanding will allow Israel to export Israeli natural gas to Europe for the first time, and it is even more impressive when one looks at the string of significant agreements we have signed in the past year, positioning Israel and the Israeli energy and water economy as a key player in the world,” she said.

Caroline Glick: Time to help the Iranian people overthrow the regime

In this week’s episode of “Mideast News Hour” with Caroline Glick, she talks with Cameron Khansarinia, director of the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI) in Washington, D.C., to discuss the latest round of national protests and the regime’s response.

From the protests and domestic repression, Glick and Khansarinia move to the IAEA’s announcement that the regime has crossed the nuclear threshold, mastered the nuclear enrichment cycle and has the independent capacity to build nuclear weapons without foreign assistance.

They also discuss what governments and private citizens can do to help the Iranian people free themselves and the world from this evil regime.

Academic journals allow themselves to be centers of anti-Israel propaganda

Here's another academic paper that is purely meant to smear Israel but hides behind a pretense of objectivity:

Vaccine apartheid and settler colonial sovereign violence: from Palestine to the colonial global economy

This article examines the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine both in Palestine and globally through a decolonial lens. In dominant Euro-American discourse, the invention, production, and distribution of the vaccine is largely judged as an indicator of sophisticated and advanced health care systems and economies. The underlying premise being that the advanced, wealthy, and capable nation-states have endogenously earned the position of power and prosperity. The world’s poor nation-states are posited as the recipients of charity from these rich states only after the latter have sufficiently inoculated themselves. The entire discourse turns the question of vaccines into a series of technical questions about capabilities, facilities, infrastructure, economic purchasing power, and so on. Concealed in this discourse is a settler colonial foundation – an aspiration towards omnipresent and absolute power – which not only creates the contrast between Palestinians and Israelis, rich and poor, colonizer and colonized, but also seals a forcefully imposed settler colonial contract in which colonizing populations ensure their ability to inoculate themselves by debilitating the colonized.

Ostensibly, the paper is about the larger question of whether it is fair or acceptable for rich states to ensure that their own populations are medically safe before offering help to poorer countries. That is a reasonable question and one worth exploring. (The answer is that the supreme obligation for any state is to protect its own citizens first.)

But the abstract makes it clear that this is only an excuse for attacking Israel. The very title, "Vaccine apartheid," is meant only for Israel. It pretends that the Palestinian issue the paradigm through which the entire world is viewed, when it is nothing of the sort - an analysis of how Australia and New Zealand gave vaccines to their own citizens before providing them to small island nations that depend on them would never been called "apartheid" and yet it is the model for how the entire world acted when vaccines were scarce.

I don't quite know how the paper includes "settler colonial sovereign violence" in this topic, but I bet that the paper does not mention:

1. The Palestinian Authority never asked for vaccines from Israel except in small amounts, which Israel gave them.

2. The PA claimed throughout the process that it will procure its own vaccines.

3. Israel inoculated tens of thousands of Palestinians who work in Israel.

4. The number of deaths per million remained lower in the Palestinian territories than in Israel even during the months that Israel had the vaccine and the PA did not.

This is nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda, and modern antisemites finding new venues to spout their hate.

Either Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory doesn't realize that it is being used - or it does. Given the state of social sciences today, I'm afraid it is the latter.

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When investigators like Bellingcat refuse to answer questions about their own methods, how can you trust their reporting?

A week ago I wrote a letter of complaint to Bellingcat about flaws in their investigation of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh using their published procedures.

Their site said, "We will acknowledge your complaint by e-mail or in writing within 7 calendar days and will normally respond to your complaint with a final decision letter within 21 calendar days. If we uphold your complaint, we will tell you the remedial actions we have taken."

I dutifully waited the seven calendar days and received no acknowledgement.

When I went back to their website, I discovered something amazing. The complaint procedure which has been displayed on their website since at least March 2019 had been removed within 24 hours of me filing a complaint against them last week.

(As of this writing, they have not yet removed that complaint procedure from their Russian language page.)

Bellingcat boasts, "With staff and contributors in more than 20 countries around the world, we operate in a unique field where advanced technology, forensic research, journalism, investigations, transparency and accountability come together." This incident casts doubt on whether they themselves are transparent or accountable.

Bellingcat has done some fantastic work. I went into this process in the hope that, given their commitment to objective investigative research, they would acknowledge the problems I uncovered with their investigation of the events in Jenin on May 11 and would issue corrections or clarifications. I don't expect any corrections from CNN or the Washington Post, but Bellingcat has a great reputation.

When this issue was brought up to Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, he responded they are changing to a Dutch regulator because they are based in the Netherlands, but that is not a reason to leave themselves in a regulatory vacuum in the meanwhile.

I asked him if Bellingcat will respond to my letter. He dismissed my research:

We now have AP, CNN and the Washington Post saying the same thing as Bellingcat, and an initial look at your complaint indicates we'd be wasting our very valuable time responding to it as it's poor quality analysis.

This is an amazing response on a number of levels.

First of all, I've been in contact with other OSINT researchers as I've been uncovering facts about the case. While some have quibbled about some details - and I have modified my assertions as a result - none of them have disagreed with the main points that I have made: Bellingcat ignored known militants who were videoed in the area, Bellingcat didn't consider evidence of Palestinian snipers that they didn't have video of but that witnesses mentioned, and Bellingcat misunderstood the audio forensics expert and didn't measure distances to the IDF properly - and when done properly, that key piece of evidence actually disproves that the IDF could have fired the bullet that killed Shireen.

Secondly, to have him claim that the findings of the mainstream media who made the exact same mistakes as Bellingcat (in fact, they aped Bellingcat's methods) is evidence is astonishing.

Thirdly, the complaint process is meaningless if it can be ignored because the very people being accused of sloppy reporting can choose to ignore the complaint.

Higgins doubled down on his argument from authority:

I've had 10 years experience doing this work and have won multiple awards for doing so, so I'm going to rely on my own judgement on what's good & bad analysis, and save my staff valuable time giving detailed responses to it when it's only impressing people who want to believe it.

"I'm an expert! Trust me!" This is the exact opposite of what Bellingcat claims to be about!

If Bellingcat truly cared about the truth they would have eagerly responded to my list of issues, to either confirm or refute them. Ego should have no place in an organization that fearlessly uncovers the facts.

I am disappointed that Bellingcat would choose to drop its stated commitment to responding to complaints rather than to...respond to a complaint.

And if Bellingcat is so adamant about protecting its own reputation over finding the truth, then one must question its commitment to objectivity and transparency in all its reports.

UPDATE: I received a response from IMPRESS and they said that Bellingcat's contract with them recently expired. So it may be a coincidence that they removed the Complaints section that day, although I would guess that the contract expired previously and my letter prompted them to update the page.

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Read all about it here!

Jerusalem isn't in any country, according to The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel thinks Jerusalem isn't part of Israel. It's just part of something called the "Jerusalem District."

Israel has lots of districts. And sometimes the Jerusalem district is in Israel.

But some communities that are considered "settlements" have no district or country. They don't belong to anyone.

This becomes obvious when you search for "Ma'ale:"

Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem aren't part of the Jerusalem District. They are part of the "Jerusalem Governorate:"

The only other time Weather.com uses "governorate" is for towns in the Palestinian territories. (There are exceptions there - for some reason Jericho has no governorate.)

At least one Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem has no district or governorate:

While it is not consistent, it seems that the policy of the Weather Channel is that the Green Line divides Jerusalem, Jews who live across it are no longer in Israel, Arabs who live on the east side of the Green Line, even in Jerusalem, live in what will be a Palestinian state.

Accuweather says Jerusalem is in Israel. It lumps all the major settlements under "Jerusalem, IL" and doesn't list any that aren't near Jerusalem, like Ariel.

(h/t Allon)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Read all about it here!

06/14 Links Pt2: Ben & Jerry’s requires new employees to watch lectures on Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Stacey Abrams Org. funded Israel-Hating Terrorist Sympathizer

From Ian:

Ben & Jerry’s requires new employees to watch lectures on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

New employees hired by Ben & Jerry’s are required to watch four video lectures featuring activists discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of their orientation, Jewish Insider has learned.

The videos are part of what the ice cream company dubbed “Scooper Series: Social Mission” and address racism in the U.S. and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an employee who viewed the videos.

In a portion of one of the videos, which was reviewed by JI, Omar Shakir, who serves as Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, attempts to explain Israel’s policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
“If you look at the recent escalation that took place in May of 2021, it started over discriminatory efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem as part of this larger policy,” Shakir says in the video.

“The policy also extends to the Gaza Strip,” he continues. “Although the Israeli government withdrew its settler population and ground forces in 2005, the Israeli government continues to exercise control over Gaza. And our study of Israeli policy over the last 16 years shows that it sought as [well as] pursued a written policy of separation between Gaza and the West Bank. Its enforcement of this policy largely aims to prevent Gaza residents from moving to the West Bank as part of a policy to remove the large Palestinian population in Gaza — 2 million people living in a 25-by-seven-mile territory — off Israel’s demographic balance sheet.”

The ice cream company did not respond to a request for comment.

Shakir, who was expelled from Israel in 2019, had reportedly counseled the Ben & Jerry’s board last year, ahead of the ice cream company’s decision to stop selling its products in what it referred to as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Shakir did not respond to a request for comment.

How Stacey Abrams Helped Funnel Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars to an Israel-Hating Terrorist Sympathizer

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams sits on the board of a foundation that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to an anti-Israel activist who has praised terrorists and encouraged violence against Jews.

Abrams joined the Marguerite Casey Foundation board in May 2021, business filings show. Roughly six months later, the foundation announced its 2021 cohort of "Freedom Scholars," a group of "leading thinkers and scholars … in critical fields including abolitionist, Black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies." Included in the group was UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley, a leading Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activist who works with groups that collaborate with Palestinian terrorists.

Kelley, who received $250,000 through the program, praised the Palestine Liberation Organization—a U.S.-designated terror group—as "revolutionary combatants" and "models for those of us dedicated to Black liberation and socialism" in a 2016 article. Three years prior, Kelley encouraged Palestinians to use violence against Israelis, calling the notion that Palestinians should only protest non-violently a "bludgeon to beat down Palestinian organizations." Kelley also advises the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that operates to advance the BDS movement on college campuses. The campaign's fiscal sponsor, Al-Awda, works with Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas to grow BDS and routinely hosts convicted Islamic jihadists at its events, the Jerusalem Post reported in 2019.

Abrams’s role in funding Kelley provides a startling window into how the Democrat could handle the BDS movement and larger issues of anti-Semitism on Georgia’s college campuses should she defeat Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) in November. As governor, Abrams would appoint members to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. Georgia legislators passed a law in 2016 that forbids the state from contracting a person or company that promotes a boycott of Israel, but a federal judge struck that law down in May 2021. Abrams opposed the law as a state representative and reportedly refused to meet with pro-Israel activists at the time.

It is unclear whether Abrams was directly involved with the grant to Kelley. When she joined the foundation's board in 2021, she emphasized that a major part of her role would be determining "how the philanthropic network targets its contributions." Neither Abrams nor the foundation responded to inquiries on her involvement with the Freedom Scholars program. Abrams has earned more than $52,000 from the foundation since 2020, her financial disclosures show.

In addition to Kelley's anti-Israel activism, the professor has called himself a "communist for life" and argued that capitalism is inherently racist. The Marguerite Casey Foundation also awarded $250,000 to a pair of academics—Angelica Chazaro and Ananya Roy—who advocate for the abolition of prisons and private property, respectively.

How Imprisoned ISIS Terrorists Obtain Cash and Legal Aid

Jihadist militants imprisoned in the United States are receiving cash and legal assistance from a website similar to Facebook that connects them with terrorist sympathizers and publicizes their location, including "GPS-coordinated satellite imagery of the facilities at which the inmates are held," according to a watchdog group.

"At least two incarcerated ISIS operatives maintain registered profiles on the website, suggesting the accounts were generated by the operatives themselves," according to a new investigation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a watchdog group that tracks jihadist behavior online. "Online ISIS supporters have raised awareness about ISIS operatives' profiles on the website, raising potential security risks." MEMRI is withholding the website's direct address to avoid aiding in its recruitment.

ISIS uses social media and the internet as a recruitment tool, and its online efforts to assist convicted terrorists in American prisons raise domestic "security risks," according to MEMRI. ISIS wants to establish a direct line between imprisoned terrorists and their supporters across the globe, allowing them to exchange information and potentially plot attacks. The prisoners are also receiving monetary support from the website, raising concerns that these funds are coming directly from ISIS affiliates.

The website allows these convicted terrorists to connect with other militants and ISIS sympathizers who can provide them with monetary assistance and legal help, according to the report. In-depth information about the federal detention centers where these inmates are held also is available on the site, making these locations vulnerable to a possible attack or other ISIS-backed operation.

"Chatter in pro-ISIS chat rooms about the website may raise security concerns for the facilities where the operatives are held," according to MEMRI. "The website provides addresses and GPS-coordinated satellite imagery of the facilities at which the inmates are held."

Inmates who join the site can "claim their criminal records" by providing photographic documentation and verifying their identity. Entries include contact information, links to similar websites, writings from these terrorists, and other information about their crimes.