Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 27, 2023

Just a video of Palestinian terrorists firing on Jewish homes

During the State Department briefing yesterday, Said Arikat badgered spokesperson Vedant Patel trying to get him to condemn Israel, and in part of his diatribe he said, "Now, who guarantees that equality? Who will guarantee that Palestinians and Israelis can actually have the same equal measures, as you keep repeating? It’s not the Palestinians that keep going day after day into Israeli villages and towns and so on and attack them during night raids..."

Actually, Palestinians attack Jews literally every day. They brag about it. They keep detailed statistics, is this poster of last week's attacks shows:

Today, Islamic Jihad issued a press release: "The Al-Quds Brigades - Jaba Groups announced, this morning, Friday 27-1-2023, that they were able to target the Homesh settlement with dense and successive salvoes of bullets."

What exactly does that look like?

On January 15, another division of the Al Quds Brigades published a similar statement saying they attacked the village of Hermesh. This time they included a video showing automatic machine gun fire aiming at random Jewish homes.

Do the residents of Hermesh deserve to live in peace, without worry that they would be subject to automatic gunfire randomly shot at their houses?

Does any human rights group ever say that?

Do any of the reporters at the State Department even know that this happens every day?

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Disgusting @Amnesty parrots lie that IDF shot tear gas at a hospital

Amnesty International's response to Israel's raid at a terrorist nest in Jenin yesterday is yet more evidence of its anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic bias.

Responding to the killing of at least nine Palestinians by Israeli forces during a military raid on Jenin refugee camp this morning, Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty International, said:

“In the space of just a few hours this morning, Israeli forces killed at least nine people and injured 20 more; blocked ambulances from accessing the wounded; and fired tear gas at a hospital, reportedly causing suffocation injuries to sick children.

The charge that Israel fired tear gas at a hospital came from PA health minister Mai Al-Kaila who absurdly claimed that the IDF "stormed" the hospital and "deliberately" fired tear gas to the children's ward.

Luther knows that she is lying, because he doesn't mention her charge about "storming" the hospital, which makes no sense.

The IDF denied the charge immediately:

Israel's army denied a Palestinian claim that soldiers deliberately fired tear gas at a hospital during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

"No one shot tear gas on purpose at a hospital," an army spokesman told AFP. "But the activity was not far away from the hospital and it is possible some tear gar entered through an open window."

Amnesty's statement was published ten hours after Israel's emphatic denial.

Which means that Amnesty chose to parrot the obvious lies of a Palestinian minister, watering it down a little because they knew her entire statement was propaganda. Then they chose to ignore Israel's denial as not being even worth considering.

To Amnesty, Palestinians are trustworthy and Jews are simply liars whose words aren't even worth considering.

And what really happened in the hospital? Middle East Monitor published video that they claimed shows the mothers and children choking:

There's no panic, no running, no choking, no one looking like their eyes hurt, and the women aren't even covering their own or their children's faces to protect from the tear gas.

The IDF explanation makes perfect sense - the mothers and nurses smelled the tear gas and are looking for a room that didn't have an open window, and hospital staff directs them where to go.

Middle East Monitor knows this, so they caption the video with what they want you to believe, not what you are actually seeing - a time honored Pallywood propaganda technique. People are conditioned to implicitly trust captions and then view the photo or video through the lens that the propagandists helpfully provide.

But even worse than repeating obvious lies and treating Israeli rebuttals as not even worth considering, from reading Amnesty's statement one wouldn't even know that there was a three hour battle going on. Amnesty makes it sound like the IDF went into Jenin to kill a bunch of civilians because of "impunity." No one reading Amnesty's statement would know that this is what nearly all of those killed were doing at the moment of their deaths:

The statement also doesn't even hint at the reason the Israeli forces must go into Jenin to begin with - because a wave of deadly attacks in Israel last year where Jenin was the source.

While Amnesty rushes to condemn Israel going after armed terrorists, Amnesty did not condemn a single one of those attacks on Israeli civilians. Here are their press releases during the time period between March and May 2022 when there were five multiple-casualty terror attacks in Israel:

This is beyond simple bias. This is the world's leading human rights organization actively choosing to support Islamic terrorism over the Jewish state.

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Earlier this week, Francesca Albanese - the UN Special Rapporteur for the territories - tweeted out a call for issues she should write reports about.

I responded asking her to write about Palestinian terror groups recruiting children.

Of course she didn't answer. But in a way, she did.

Shortly thereafter, Albanese tweeted "As I took office 8m ago, I committed to making children & youth a priority for my mandate," then calling on Israel to release a Ahmed Mansara who, at 13, had stabbed and critically injured a 13-year old Israeli boy on a bicycle outside a candy shop.

Clearly, she doesn't consider the human rights of Jewish children to be under her mandate.

But she doesn't seem to care about many Palestinian children, either.

Joe Truzman, of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, unearthed a video made last summer from Jenin. It shows masked terrorist going around the city, followed eagerly by children. Sometimes the terrorists give the children guns.

During a parade, the terrorists - and teenagers - are firing into the air in the middle of the crowded streets with young children all over.

Between this video and the five child militants who were killed this year after being recruited and brainwashed into wanting to become martyrs, it is pretty clear that there are serious human rights violations happening against Palestinian children - by other Palestinians.

Truzman tweeted, "The amount of militants in Jenin, guns, and children walking around who are seemingly armed in this video is astounding, yet not surprising. There's a serious problem in the West Bank, especially in Jenin, and this video demonstrates it perfectly. "

In an astounding response, Albanese tweeted, "Yes there is a serious problem and not only in Jenin. It is called colonial occupation."

Yes, when children are exposed to gratuitous violence by Palestinians, Albanese blames...the Jews.

It is quite clear that Albanese's claim that she "committed to making children & youth a priority" for her mandate only applies to a specific subset of children: only Palestinian children whose situation she can blame on Jews.

All the others can go to hell because they don't advance her anti-Israel, antisemitic agenda.

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80 years ago: Nazis massacre Jewish leaders in Tripoli before leaving

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I searched for the word "Jews" in newspapers from 80 years ago today, and saw many versions of this story:

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01/26 Links Pt2: Israel Was Created to Ensure the Survival of the Jewish People; Our Duty to the Dead: Remember Their Names; ‘Jews who give money to Harvard are dumb’

From Ian:

Israel Was Created to Ensure the Survival of the Jewish People

Critics refer to some of the newly ascendant parties in the Israeli government as "hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist." If by these epithets they mean that their members and supporters care more for Jews - their national family - than they do for the enemies of the Jews; that they are hell-bent on putting a stop to the weekly slaughter of innocent Jewish civilians by Arab terrorists; and that they believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People, and oppose the erection of a jihadist Palestinian polity controlled by Hamas, then this is just classical Zionism. Ben-Gurion would affix his signature to these propositions.

We, whose children and grandchildren will, God willing, grow up here in Israel, want peace more than anybody. We believe, as has many an Israeli strategist hailing from both sides of the political-ideological divide, that peace will come only if we are strong, and only if we are insistent on our rights to this land. In addition, we have noted that when Yair Lapid was at the helm, he came up with no better or more humane ideas for dealing with the conflict than any of his predecessors.

The State of Israel was created, and continues to exist, for one purpose: to ensure the survival and prosperity of the Jewish People. Unless we keep present in our minds our polity's Jewish nationalist raison d'etre, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms, this country is done for.

Dani Dayan: Our Duty to the Dead: Remember Their Names

"Remember only that I was innocent and that, like all of you, mortals of this day... I too had a face marked by rage, by pity and by joy, an ordinary human face!"

Benjamin Fondane, a French Jew, wrote these poignant words in one of his final poems, Préface en Prose, before being murdered, shortly after his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Fondane's plea for remembrance was frequently voiced by Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II; an appeal for a solemn and everlasting commitment by all humanity to recall, in essence, every Holocaust victim. Fondane insisted that we never forget their humanity, their individuality.

Indeed, no two persons are identical. We each possess our own distinctive features, personality and traits, as well as the name given to us at birth. That name marks each of us as an individual, whose story—past and future—is forever unique.

Our names define us. Even when we leave this world, our names, and our stories, remain—for generations.

Remembering the Murdered
During the Shoah, the German Nazis and their collaborators sought not only to annihilate the entire Jewish people through an unprecedented and systematic campaign of mass murder. They also aimed to eradicate any trace of their culture and religion, of their very existence, down to the very last Jew. Even before arriving at the concentration and death camps, the Jews were marked as mere numbers by the Nazis and their collaborators. Once they had reduced the Jews to nameless masses, the perpetrators could more easily erase them.

By our understanding how the names and identities of the Holocaust victims were brutally stolen from them, we can better appreciate how important it is to remember them. Like Fondane, the final hope of many of the victims, aware that they were on the verge of death, was to be remembered. Thus, refusing to fade into oblivion, they demonstrated their undying human spirit. It is our duty to ensure the eternal fulfillment of that hope.

Dear Non-Jews, this is what to do this Holocaust Remembrance day

‘Antisemitism – the hatred of difference – is an assault not on Jews only but on the human condition, as such,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l (of blessed memory).

Most Israelis and Americans mark the end of what we commemorate on Yom Hashoah as 1945, yet the incidents of ugly antisemitism continue around the globe. Here in Boca Raton, Florida, messages of antisemitic hate were distributed on January 15, 2023, terrorizing Jewish residents and causing their non-Jewish neighbors to question the state of the world. A day later, a swastika was projected onto a building, nearby in West Palm Beach, Florida.

In the midst of this trend, January 27 – the day we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day – could not be more critically important to recognize.

Even as some people continue to trivialize Yom Hashoah, marking when nearly one-third of the Jewish population perished, others deny its very existence. Public awareness and acknowledgment – or lack thereof – are trending dangerously. Antisemitism is at its highest levels since World War II, with attacks on Jewish centers and synagogues, and acts of assault, harassment, and violence on the upswing globally. This troubling wake-up call means that the current climate needs to change.

Even as we face dwindling numbers of aging survivors, the Shoah remains a contemporary issue. It is a critical time for the lessons of Yom Hashoah, which require the confrontation of a number of emotionally and intellectually difficult questions. In a world where prejudices are still being manipulated and amplified, going largely unchallenged, discrimination must not be allowed to flourish. We cannot allow a people’s very existence to be threatened ever again.

George Santayana said, “He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill used similar language as part of a speech in the British Parliament in 1948, the year Israel was formally established by the Israeli Declaration of Independence, an irony not lost on us.

This fundraising email from J-Street is kind of amazing on a number of levels.

Israel is in the midst of a major political struggle.

On one side, those fighting to protect Israel’s founding ideals of democracy, equality and justice. On the other, the new hardline Netanyahu government, bent on centralizing power, circumventing the courts and cementing permanent occupation in the West Bank.

...The government’s radical plan was drawn up by the Kohelet Forum, an increasingly powerful right-wing, pro-settlement think tank that’s funded largely by two right-wing American billionaires.

They’ve been called “the brains of the Israeli right wing” and helped draft the problematic “Nation-State Law” -- which according to Netanyahu made Israel “the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.” They were also behind Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo’s tenuous legal argument claiming that Israeli settlements in occupied territory do not violate international law.

The group is funded by two Republican Jewish-American billionaires from Pennsylvania who have also helped fund the campaigns of MAGA extremists like Lauren Boebert. They hope that GOP-style policies and values can come to dominate Israeli society....

We might not have right-wing billionaires backing our work, but we do have thousands of supporters like you. Can you chip in $18, $54, $90 -- or any other amount -- to help us fight back?

Their use of the word "Jewish" here is telling. It is meant to be a dog-whistle, just like "right-wing" and "billionaires" and "Republican." Not that J-Street is against Jews per se, but when you add Jewish to the other terms it makes them sound so much worse - as if Jewish conservatives are traitors to the liberal Jewish people.

J-Street, of course, takes millions of dollars from wealthy left-wing people (like Bill Benter, who helped fund its start-up.) And of course, only last year George Soros gave J-Street's SuperPAC a million dollars, in addition to his other donations to the group over the years, a significant percentage of their annual budget.

Now, how would it sound if far-right people said that J-Street was heavily funded by a "Jewish left-wing billionaire"? It would sound like a dog-whistle. And that is exactly what J-Street is doing here - trying to raise money from leftist donors to counter the evil influence of "Republican, right-wing Jewish billionaires."

Beyond that, J-Street cannot counter the Kohelet Policy Forum. What exactly would funds raised be used for? To create left-wing think tank to criticize Israel in Israel?

They are creating a bogeyman to inflame the feelings of people who hate the Right, people who hate Republicans, people who hate billionaires, and people who especially hate Jewish right-wing billionaires. They hand-wave as if giving J-Street money will do something against these nefarious forces, but the entire mailing is simply a lesson in propaganda: "Here are people you never heard of before that you should loathe so much that you will want to give us money to pretend to counter them." The fundraising wouldn't work without the appeal to emotion, and the word Jewish is used as part of that appeal.

If it looks, sounds and smells like an antisemitic dog whistle....

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

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Powerful Jewish Interests Kept Me From The Presidency Of This Synagogue By Kenneth Roth (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Powerful Jewish Interests Kept Me From The Presidency Of This Synagogue

By Kenneth Roth, former Director of Human Rights Watch

Ken Roth New York, January 26 - It's happened again. Just weeks after America's premier educational and research institution bowed to pro-Israel donors and rescinded its offer to me of a position, now my local house of worship has acted in similarly corrupt fashion - it has submitted to a group of Jews opposed to my candidacy to lead the synagogue for the next two years.

This phenomenon of Jews with money and a political agenda silencing critics of their pet Zionist project must end. Nothing in my history or campaign platform for the presidency of Temple Beit Khashoggi suggests that I would perform in a non-exemplary fashion in the position, just as, a few short weeks ago, I was blindsided by Harvard University's decision to back away from its invitation to me, at the behest of those who perceive my criticism of Israel as disqualifying. Disqualifying! Simply because they count my tweets about Israel vs. those about every other country? Because they claim to detect anti-Israel bias in my token, infrequent criticism of Israel's terrorist enemies that I wield as a shield against charges of tendentious reporting and analysis? They even go so far as to accuse me of fomenting antisemitism - what imbecile would associate criticism of Israel with antipathy for Jews, or think that violence against Jews in reaction to criticism of Israel has ever happened?

The same forces are at play at the synagogue, I fear. The board refused to accept my application, citing some obscure, little-invoked bylaw specifying that only members in good standing for at least two consecutive years may stand for the presidency. I only recently paid my membership, having only of late made more permanent living arrangements following my departure from Human Rights Watch. The monied agenda opposed to my activities and goals is behind it, as always, securing that provision in the bylaws long before I thought to run for the office. That is how underhanded and corrupt they are.

I cannot help but sense this is an intentional, vindictive campaign of harassment and persecution because of my staunch position over the years putting Palestinians' predicament at the top of the international human rights agenda, relegating such issues as persecution of LGBT people in the Islamic world, or antisemitic violence unrelated to Israel, to the sidelines, or, when I did invoke them, it was either grudgingly or as a way to make the criticism really about Israel after all. We all know exactly what kind of powerful (((people))) would want to show their displeasure over that.

I will not be deterred. Let's see how much influence they have against my campaign to join the board of the Nation of Islam.

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

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01/26 Links Pt1: Mark Levin, Eugene Kontorovich Explain Israel’s Judicial Reforms; 9 Palestinian gunmen killed as IDF foils terror cell in Jenin; The Saudis are growing sick of Palestine

From Ian:

HRC Op-Ed In The Hill Times History Doesn’t Support Giving Israel An ‘Occupier’ Label

HRC’s Op-Ed entitled: “History Doesn’t Support Giving Israel An ‘Occupier’ Label” was published in The Hill Times on Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, is not an “occupier” of its own land and of its own eternal and undivided capital, Jerusalem.

No UN resolution or political proclamation can distort these historical truths.

Furthermore, Jews have historical ties to Judea and Samaria which dates back thousands of years. Israel strenuously disputes claims that it’s an “occupier,” citing pre-existing legal, ancestral, and biblical claims to lands it acquired in a war of self-defence in 1967 against pan-Arab armies seeking its destruction and as there was no recognized sovereign of these areas at the time.

Jordan controlled the area now regarded as the “West Bank” from 1948-1967 following the War of Independence, which saw combined Arab armies try to wipe the nascent State of Israel off the map. Jordan didn’t have rightful title to the land according to international law. Same equally applies for Egypt, which controlled the Gaza Strip from 1948-1967, unlawfully, and which Israel acquired in 1967, but from which, in 2005, it unilaterally disengaged, removing 21 settlements, 8,000 settlers, and its combined armed forces in a unilateral concession for peace.

Importantly, the Palestinians have never had sovereignty and statehood, and according to Israel’s position and many leading international jurists, the laws of occupation aren’t applicable.

Melanie Phillips: Netanyahu at bay, but what about the facts?

So, how’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faring in his supposed program to smash democracy at the behest of the religious extremists in his government?

Well, as Israel’s newly-minted dictator, he’s not doing too well in that regard.

Consider: Netanyahu has demonstrated his supposed craven subjection to the ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, to whom he gave authority over civilian administration in the disputed territories, by brutally slapping Smotrich down when he attempted to overrule an IDF and Defense Ministry decision to tear down an illegal Israeli outpost.

Netanyahu has shown his allegedly despotic determination to ditch the rule of law by bowing to the Supreme Court’s ruling against his minister and long-time ally Aryeh Deri and firing him.

And Netanyahu showed himself captured, bound and gagged by the zealots in his government who want to turn Israel into a theocracy when he effectively overruled the Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar, who said he would stop funding cultural activities on Shabbat.

In other words, in every case, Netanyahu has chosen to uphold the existing order rather than overthrow it.

Undoubtedly, the fight between Smotrich and the defense establishment has further to go. Netanyahu has said he will somehow bring Deri back into his government. We have yet to see how these and other issues will turn out.

Maybe Netanyahu will yet morph into a cross between Viktor Orban, Herod and Mussolini. But so far, he has been behaving as a cautious, risk-averse prime minister determined to keep the liberal, constitutional show on the road.

Of course, this has received no acknowledgment from the “progressive” Jewish world, both in Israel and the Diaspora. To such people, Netanyahu is personally irredeemable, and because the government he has formed is committed to defending Jewish interests rather than left-wing principles, it is deemed incapable of doing anything sensible or good.

Gadi Taub: The Struggle for Israel’s Democracy

In his previous administrations Netanyahu was careful not to pick a fight with the country’s judicial oligarchy, preferring to spend his political capital on other subjects—primarily Iran and economics. He assumed, based on experience, that Israel’s judicial oligarchy would continue to abide by an unwritten rule: If a politician doesn’t try to reform the justice system, they will leave his person—though not necessarily his policies—alone. The flip side of this arrangement was, in any case, more obviously true: Try to advance a reform, and you almost always end up with a criminal investigation, often one that was fabricated, as in the cases of Yaacov Neeman and Reuven Rivlin, both of whom were among those barred from serving as justice ministers by contrived investigations that ended up with nothing. The judiciary had its own praetorian guard in the Office of the State Attorney, which cultivated a culture of promiscuous yet slow-moving investigations that made sure politicians didn’t step out of line.

After Netanyahu won his fourth term in 2015, the despair on the left reached a fever pitch, and the various centers of left-wing power began to clamor for Netanyahu’s head. The press led the way with investigative pieces accusing Netanyahu of corruption. Despite the speculative nature of these investigations, law enforcement pursued them with new vigor, leading, finally, to indictments.

The indictments had a paradoxical effect on the struggle for power between bureaucracy and democracy. First, they showed Netanyahu that the judicial oligarchy posed a direct threat to his political fortunes that could not be reasonably abated through the usual program of mutual noninterference. Second, the attacks by the judiciary on Likud’s undisputed leader had an energizing effect on his voters.

While removing a justice minister can be seen as a peripheral event, taking down a prime minster, and thus overturning the results of a national election, is a wholly different matter. It can fly, even with his supporters, when a prime minister is clearly proven to be corrupt, as was the case with Ehud Olmert, who ended up serving jail time. But when more than half the public feels its standard-bearer was framed and its ballots effectively shredded, it is unlikely to just accept that result. So both Netanyahu and his voters came to see, more clearly than before, the severity of the problem and the urgency in restoring the balance between the branches of government.

But the indictments and later trial also threatened to neutralize Netanyahu’s ability to act. It is difficult for a prime minster to reform the judicial system and put checks on politicized law enforcement when he himself is facing a trial. How would he escape the obvious suspicion that he is trying to save himself and is willing—as the left dramatically phrases this talking point—to “smash the justice system just to save his own skin”? True, judicial reform is unlikely to interfere with an ongoing trial, except maybe by making the judges more hostile. But perception is crucial here, and so Netanyahu seemed caught in a bind. The question came down to this: Will voters support a reform, or will enough of them see it as cynical, self-serving move on his part?

Last year’s election turned precisely on that question. And the voters gave a clear answer.

Turkey's Anadolu Agency reports:

"Those who burn books will in the end burn people," Jewish and Muslim communities in Sweden have warned, quoting famous German Jewish author Heinrich Heine following recent burnings of the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

In a reference to book burnings in Nazi Germany, the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities and the AMANAH Muslim Jewish Partnership of Trust said in a joint statement on Wednesday that book burning often indicates the beginning of the normalization of hatred towards a group in society.

"Historically against Jews, now against Muslims," said the statement, warning that racists and extremists are once again "allowed to abuse democracy and Freedom of Speech in order to normalize hate against one of the religious minorities in Sweden, by burning Quran."

Drawing attention to the intensified attacks on Jewish and Muslim people in the country, they expressed concern.

There are two strange things about this story.

One is that, while there is certainly plenty of right-wing antisemitism in Sweden, a great deal of it is fueled by the immigrant Muslim community there. I hope that behind the scenes of Jewish-Muslim cooperation against hate, the Jewish community is not sweeping Muslim antisemitism under the rug.

The other is that I cannot find this story in any Swedish media. In fact, the only place it is being reported is Turkey. I have no idea why.

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

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Palestinian Authority trying to spin today's fighting as new "Jenin Massacre"

In April 2002, Israel mounted a major military operation in Jenin that resulted in a pitched battle where 23 IDF soldiers and 52 Palestinians, mostly terrorists, were killed.

But Palestinians and their supporters claimed that between 400-500 Palestinians had been killed - and for weeks, the world's media believed them with no skepticism, and assumed that Israeli denials were lies. There were wide reports of a "massacre." An Amnesty International "forensics expert" visited the camp and said "I must say that the evidence before us at the moment doesn't lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see."

Months later, the UN and human rights groups grudgingly admitted that there was no massacre.

Yet even though the PA had lied so egregiously, they paid no price. The media continued to report their lies as fact and to regard Israeli denials as lies.

The Palestinian Authority has learned that lesson well.

Today, the IDF entered Jenin again, to stop an Islamic Jihad cell that was planning an imminent attack. As of this writing, it appears that the IDF killed eight terrorists and one civilian.

And like in 2002, the Palestinian Authority and media are again calling it a "massacre."

Palestinian Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Israeli government is committing a massacre in Jenin and its refugee camp, amidst international silence.

He added that the international silence is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against Palestinian people before the eyes of the world.

PA prime minister Shtayyeh "called on the United Nations and all international human rights organizations to intervene urgently to provide protection for Palestinian people and stop the bloodshed of children, youth and women."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the United States to "intervene immediately" against what they called the "Israeli killing machine."

The Jenin-based armed groups freely admit that they attacked IDF troops and even brag that they scored direct hits but that contradicts the favored narrative of Palestinians as innocent victims, so international media doesn't bother quoting them.

Just as in 2002, Palestinians are making ludicrous allegations, including that the IDF directly shot an ambulance.

The PA's health minister claimed "the occupation stormed Jenin Governmental Hospital, and deliberately fired tear gas canisters at the children's department in the hospital" (some tear gas seems to have wafted in.) She also claimed the IDF shot bullets at the children's ward. She called these "war crimes."

Sure, in the middle of fighting highly armed Islamic Jihad terrorists, the IDF decided to break into a hospital and shoot bullets and tear gas canisters at the pediatric ward. Makes perfect sense.

The PA called a general strike, and declared three days of mourning for the terrorists.

The Palestinians are hoping that the media and NGOs will believe them implicitly. And they have every incentive to lie, because the media never reports that they have a history of lying to manipulate the media.

The Palestinians have nothing to lose with their lies.

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

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On Wednesday, Muhammad Ali Abd Musa Muhammad Ali, 16, was killed after aiming a (fake) gun at IDF soldiers in Shuafat.

Hamas said that he was a member.

That is the fifth Palestinian child soldier killed this year - fully 25% of all the Palestinian militants killed by Israel this year have been children.

All of them were claimed as members of terror groups.

These include:

1/2 Fuad Mohammad ‘Aabed, 17 (Hamas)

1/3 Adam Essam Ayyad, 15 (PFLP)

1/5 Amer Abu Zeitoun, 16 (Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades)

1/16 Amro Khaled Al-Khumour, 14 (PFLP)

1/25 Muhammad Ali Abd Musa Muhammad Ali, 16 (Hamas)

These kids are being groomed to be cannon fodder. Some of them wrote notes to their families, meaning that they intended to be killed.

I have not seen one word from "human rights groups." about Palestinian child soldiers this year. Nothing from UNICEF. Nothing from Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Nothing from the EU. Nothing from the State Department. Nothing in the Western media.

And each "child" is promoted as an innocent victim by those who want to destroy Israel,with no fact checking.

The child soldiers is a scandal. The lack of information about them in the West (indeed, the fact that the media has not once mentioned that nearly every Palestinian killed was participating in fighting at the time) is perhaps an even greater scandal.

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

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01/25 Links Pt2: Woke ‘ESG’ investors guilty of anti-Semitism as they target Israel; Harvard Deserves Kenneth Roth — the Master of Human Wrongs; Senate Republican Blocks Biden Pick of Soros BDS Activist

From Ian:

Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger: When Discourse about Israel Becomes Antisemitic: A Guide for the Perplexed

Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger argue for understanding antisemitic anti-Zionism as ‘a prejudice with definable characteristics’ and of the need for ‘a standard that can help us identify antisemitic bias in articles, books and public statements about the Jewish state.’ In bringing specificity to the broad guidelines of the IHRA definition, Nelson and Saenger provide much-needed clarity by offering a comprehensive list of examples of the types of statement about Israel which cross the line from legitimate criticism to antisemitism.

Any nation can and should be criticised, both by those who live within its borders and those who do not.[1] But heated debates for years have raged over whether and when attacks on Israeli history and national policy actually falsify that history or so misrepresent Israeli policies that they cross a line from reasoned political critique to demonisation and antisemitism. This debate sometimes takes binary form, with some acting as if no criticism of Israel is ever antisemitic, and others behaving as if all criticism of Israel is antisemitic (though the latter belief has waned in public forums). We believe matters can be clarified by supplementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) influential list of general examples of extreme anti-Zionism with more specific examples of current accusations.

One example of the debate’s binary character is represented by the circulation of the term “whataboutism.” It often serves to dismiss any attempt to contextualise criticism of Israel with comparisons to other countries. On the one hand, “whataboutism” is used to invalidate legitimate complaints about Israeli policy by referencing other, harsher regimes. On the other hand, “whataboutism” is also used to invalidate any comparisons between Israel and other countries, even though such comparisons are normal and necessary practice for international political science.

We need a standard that can help us identify antisemitic bias in articles, books and public statements about the Jewish state. While such a metric will never be perfect or offer definitive guidance, it can demonstrate that antisemitic anti-Zionism is a prejudice with definable characteristics linked to specific arguments. In what follows, we identify common forms of antisemitic bias featured in discussions of Israel. Like the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, we define bias against Jews not as an animus in individual psyches, but rather as the effect of distinct conceptual distortions.

While the examples dealing with Israel are the most contested feature of the IHRA working definition, that document is primarily designed to identify resulting antisemitism in the wider world, whereas we target the perception of Israel itself. IHRA is focused in part on how biased characterisations of Israel are weaponised against Jews worldwide, whereas we limit ourselves to addressing the claims and strategies embodied in hostile characterisations of Israel.

StandWithUs: Northwest Regional Manager of StandWithUs’ H.S Department, John Michael Graves, at Snohomish County

StandWithUs commends Snohomish County, Washington Councilman Nate Nehring and the other councilmembers for voting (5-0) to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism for county agencies on January 18, 2023. Snohomish is the first in the state to take such a strong stand against antisemitism.

John Michael Graves, Northwest Regional Manager of StandWithUs’ High School Department, spoke courageously in front of councilmembers, stating, “Each of the students I educate have a similar story to tell. Antisemitism is happening today and its perpetrators are becoming emboldened at a rate unseen in decades.” Click HERE to read the StandWithUs press release, and HERE to read the press coverage in the Lynwood Times

Richard Goldberg: Woke ‘ESG’ investors guilty of anti-Semitism as they target Israel

Israel boycotters have a new home for waging economic war against the world’s only Jewish state: environmental, social and governance ratings. Federal and state officials should respond by demanding transparency for investors, enforcing existing anti-boycott laws and preventing retirement funds from being weaponized for anti-Semitic purposes.

Take the case of Motorola Solutions, a global leader in two-way-radio systems and command-center software for first responders. Headquartered in Chicago, the company boasts it strives to reduce carbon emissions and increase its workforce diversity. In almost every category, Motorola Solutions looks to be a model ESG-compliant— read “progressive” — corporate citizen.

Yet despite its low overall risk profile, Yahoo! Finance warns ESG-minded investors that Motorola Solutions carries a “significant controversy level” twice as large as its peer average. What it doesn’t disclose is the supposed controversy surrounds the company’s sales of counterterrorism equipment to Israel to stop suicide bombers from blowing up restaurants and buses.

For that level of detail, investors need to subscribe to the data’s source: Morningstar, a company just blocks from Motorola Solutions in downtown Chicago.

The financial-research giant, best known for its mutual-fund and 529-accounts reviews, expanded its ESG work in 2020 by acquiring Sustainalytics, a Dutch ESG-ratings firm.

But Morningstar’s due-diligence team either overlooked or ignored one red flag: years-long accusations Sustainalytics negatively rates Israel-connected companies in alignment with the global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Morningstar Sustainalytics mars dozens of Israeli companies, including the country’s leading banks and cellphone providers, with significant controversy ratings merely for providing services to Jews living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Fighting back against the thuggish ‘ESG’ woke agenda

There’s no such thing as blue money or red money. Only the green stuff will pay bills.

On Friday, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell became the latest of officials from nearly half the states across the country — including Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona and West Virginia — to protest Wall Street’s blue investment strategy, called ESG.

What is ESG? E stands for environment, S for social justice and G for corporate governance. ESG funds invest in companies that oppose fossil fuels, push for unionization and stress racial and gender equity over merit in hiring and board selection.

That’s a partial definition because at least a dozen rating firms tag companies with an ESG score, often based on subjective and somewhat secret criteria, even including a company’s stance on abortion rights.

State officials are pulling billions of dollars out of Wall Street asset managers like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, citing ESG’s lousy returns and strong-arming of corporations that don’t bow to the left-wing agenda.

Pay attention to these officials’ warnings, because ESG is also hurting small investors. In fact, even if you don’t invest at all but you pay taxes, ESG puts you at risk. You’ll be on the hook when states invested in ESG funds incur losses and have to come to taxpayers for more money. New York City taxpayers, beware.

Folwell calls ESG “wacktivism,” warning that “a focus on ESG is not a focus on returns.”

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!

In yesterday's State Department briefing there was this exchange between Said Arikat and spokesperson Ned Price:

Q: The Arab press and the Israeli press are both reporting that Israel is planning a – like a – to accelerate the demolishing of – the demolition of Palestinian homes in Area C and in other areas. Do you have a comment on that?

MR PRICE: Our comment on this is – remains the fact that we believe it’s critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. This includes the annexation of territory, settlement activity, and demolitions.

I just went through a selection of press briefings that used the word "unilateral" in respect to Israel and Palestinians over the past year, and while the spokesperson often says that the US is against either side making any unilateral moves that could increase tensions, I cannot find a single example where any Palestinian actions are considered unilateral.

Not them submitting complaints to the ICC. Not them building entirely new Arab settlements in Area C. Not them praising suicide bombers and other terrorists. Not paying terrorists and their families lifetime salaries.

Someone should ask Ned Price explicitly what Palestinian unilateral moves the US opposes.

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!

01/25 Links Pt1: The UNIFIL Follies Turn Deadly on the Israel-Lebanon Border; Congress members urge removal of UN official for antisemitism

From Ian:

The UNIFIL Follies Turn Deadly on the Israel-Lebanon Border

Four decades on, UNIFIL’s mission has clearly become untenable. Not only is the organization ineffective, the deployment serves as a key driver of the economy in south Lebanon, employing and sustaining Hezbollah’s supporters and constituents. At $500 million a year—$125 million of which is paid by Washington—the deployment is also expensive. Already, the force is in harm’s way, and during the inevitable next war between Israel and Hezbollah, this 10,000-strong contingent will provide the militia with an impressive human shield.

Recognizing these deficits, in 2020, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to veto UNIFIL’s renewal in the Security Council if changes weren’t made to the mandate to improve the security situation along the border. Judging from Hezbollah’s aggressive response to even the slightest amendment to the mandate’s language, it’s unlikely these changes would have improved UNIFIL’s performance.

Absent these revisions, the Trump administration pressed to downsize the force, consistent with its limited mission. But stiff opposition on the Security Council, particularly from France, prevented this proposed change to the mandate. Then with the August 2020 Beirut port explosion—which killed over 200 and decimated the capital—the administration balked, dropping any talk of vetoing the mandate renewal. In the end, it settled for strengthening the organization’s reporting requirements and symbolically lowering the troop cap from 15,000 to 13,000 peacekeepers

While UNIFIL provides a useful forum for talks between the Israeli and Lebanese militaries, and its maritime task force is beneficial, the peacekeepers will never play a role in constraining Hezbollah or securing the frontier. Making matters worse, neither the government of Lebanon nor the LAF will fulfill their U.N. obligation to support and protect the organization. Notwithstanding the enormous sums of U.S. funding provided to the LAF since 2006, the Lebanese military remains and will continue to remain beholden to Hezbollah. And Hezbollah’s sponsors in Tehran have zero interest in securing the Lebanese-Israeli border. As a result, south Lebanon remains volatile and UNIFIL isn’t helping. To wit, just weeks ago, Israel downed yet another Hezbollah drone in its airspace.

Three years into a devastating man-made economic crisis and months into a vacuum in the presidency in Beirut, Washington and Paris—the Security Council penholder for UNIFIL—are sure to resist significant changes in the status quo. Indeed, the annual French refrain during mandate renewal discussions has long been “now is not a good time.” To be sure, when it comes to Lebanon, which exists in a perennial state of crisis, there will never be a good time. But now, with Hezbollah increasingly threatening UNIFIL and with Lebanon actively obstructing the mission, it’s incumbent on the Biden administration to reassess the utility of the deployment and of America’s unqualified support for the LAF.

Given its deficiencies, a compelling argument could be made to scrap UNIFIL entirely. Washington could do so simply by vetoing the organization’s mandate renewal this summer—as the Pompeo State Department nearly did. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, however, Israel continues to support the persistence of UNIFIL, believing that the so-called tripartite mechanism, the maritime task force, and the continued presence of some peacekeepers along the frontier may be useful in deescalating tensions.

While the administration may not be able to dispense with UNIFIL, it’s time to downsize the deployment so its size is commensurate with the limited access the organization has in south Lebanon. It will take some heavy diplomatic lifting for Washington to right-size this self-perpetuating interim U.N. bureaucracy, but the effort will be worth it. Reducing UNIFIL will mitigate the risk to the peacekeepers while having only a negligible impact on stability along the Israel-Lebanon frontier. Along the way, it might even convey the message that Washington’s patience with an impotent UNIFIL and intransigent Beirut is limited.

Hezbollah blinding Israeli drivers, pedestrians nightly with lasers

Hezbollah activists have been harassing residents of the northern town of Metullah from across the border for the last several weeks by using powerful lasers, Channel 11 reported Monday evening.

Standing on a hill in Lebanon that is perhaps 180 meters from the town, they shine a blinding green light into Jewish homes, at pedestrians, and perhaps most hazardously, into the eyes of Israeli drivers.

This kind of laser can cause irreparable damage to people’s eyes, including permanent blindness, the report said.

The IDF has not yet found a solution to the problem.

In an effort keep the long-distance stalkers away from their gathering spot, a large floodlight was placed for several days at the most directly affected area, the town’s popular promenade, to shine a revealing beam at them. This has not discouraged Hezbollah, and it was taken away a few days ago.

The Northern Command has turned to the UNIFIL forces that have been stationed on the border since 1978 and whose formal mandate includes assisting the Lebanese government to return its effective authority in the border area rather than leaving Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, in charge.

BBC ‘Newshour’ listeners hear one side of a story

Listeners then heard an interview with Rashid Khalidi – who had published an op-ed in the New York Times on the same topic three days earlier and has been campaigning on the long-running issue for some time – in which Iqbal asked:
Iqbal: “On the issue of the building of a US embassy in Jerusalem, what do you know about the land that will be used to do that?”

Khalidi: “What we know – have always known – is that most of this land is privately owned Palestinian land. Many of the owners, many of the descendants of the owners, are – as it happens – US citizens. This has always been known. We, a group of heirs, descendants of owners, presented this evidence to the then Secretary of State Madeline Albright in the late 1990s and the State Department took note of it and at that point the plan was frozen. So we’ve known about this and it has been known by the State Department – unless they don’t know how to access their own archives – for the better part of 25 years. We’ve known it, the Israeli government knows it, the US knows it.”

Later on Khalidi mentioned the related planning documents that have been submitted to the Jerusalem planning authorities, stating:
Khalidi: “And Adalah, the legal group that represents all of the Arabs, is filing an objection to this planning document which we will have the results of towards the end of this month.”

Referring to what he termed the “so-called Allenby Barracks site”, he later added:
Khalidi: “This is a site that the British government during the mandate period before 1948 rented from my family and a large number of other families for use as a British military barracks. That site is going to be the embassy if the United States plans that have been submitted to the Israeli planning commission go ahead.”

In July 2022 the NGO ‘Adalah’ published documents dating from May 1947 which show a “hiring agreement” between several individuals and the Government of Palestine – i.e. the British mandate authorities. All those documents relate to a block numbered 30113 which, as can be seen on a map from the same era, made up one part of the Allenby Barracks. Adalah claims that the plots concerned were expropriated by Israel in 1950 under the Absentees Property Law but does not address the topic of any compensation that may have been received.

The area known as the Allenby Barracks was originally an Ottoman military site set up in 1916 during the Second World War which included an airfield for the use of their German allies. The site was conquered by the British in late 1917 and used as a military base up until the end of the mandate period.

As the British mandate came to an end, the mandate authorities handed over that site and other military camps in Jerusalem to the Jordanian Arab Legion. The site was captured by Israeli forces during the War of Independence which broke out when surrounding Arab countries attacked the nascent Israeli state.

In 1950 a financial agreement was signed between the Israeli and British governments. Under that agreement, part of the Allenby Barracks remained under British ownership.

In 1964 the British government agreed to sell part the Allenby Barracks to the Israeli government for 140,000 British pounds and in November 1966 the sale was completed. As can be seen in the document below (p.44), the area is numbered Block 30113 – the same number as the block including the plots claimed by Rashid Khalidi and others.

Clearly this topic is far more complex that listeners to ‘Newshour’ would understand from Rashid Khalidi’s obviously partisan version of the story. While Iqbal did say at the end of the item that a response had been requested, but not received, from the US State Department, no right of reply was given to any Israeli representative – for example from the Jerusalem planning department or the government – which would enhance audience understanding of the issue.