As with every incident involving Gaza airstrikes, no matter how limited it was against civilian structures, Gaza's photographers are eager to stage photos with old women carefully placed in the midst of rubble.
Here, an old woman took a seat for a helpful photographer in the middle of rubble that could seriously injure her if she fell.
When Gaza photographers find a good old woman to be a model, everyone wants to pose her differently:
A Palestinian woman from the Abu Khatir family reacts next to their destroyed house after Israeli air strikes in Beit Hanun town in the northern Gaza Strip, 12 May 2023. EFE-EPA/MOHAMMED SABER
A woman gestures next to rubble, in the aftermath of deadly Israeli strikes, in the northern Gaza Strip May 12, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
A woman reacts near a damaged house following an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, May 12, 2023. . (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)
One Gaza photographer that is excellent at finding women and children to pose for him is Mohammed Abed.
A woman sits among the rubble of her house at Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza, on May 14, 2023. Mohammed Abed/AFP
A child watches from a window as people sift through the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli airstrike in Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Friday. Credit: MOHAMMED ABED - AFP
By an incredible coincidence, he caught an image just like it in 2020:
Abed went to Islamic University of Gaza - which is run by Hamas. He knows his job is not to record history, but to create it.
And major media still pay for Gaza photographers to stage these photos.
I couldn't find a single wire service photograph of a sad Israeli sitting in the rubble of the building struck by a rocket in Rehovot. No, that only happens in Gaza.
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Gaza militants fired a rocket at southern Israel on Sunday, a day after an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire ended five days of cross-border fighting, and Palestinian militant groups said the launch had been a “technical error.”
Ah, a "technical error." That explains everything!
Because usually they blame natural causes.
In January 2022, two rockets were fired from Gaza towards central Israel, terror groups blamed "the weather."
In November, 2020, two rockets were shot towards southern Israel, and Hamas blamed "lightning."
In October 2018, two other rockets were shot at Israel, one damaging a house in Beersheva with the other landing off the coast of Tel Aviv, and lightning was blamed then. The IDF seemed to accept that explanation.
I'm just wondering if other devices just go off by themselves in Gaza regularly. Do their toasters mysteriously start themselves? Their motorbikes? Do taxis self-drive at night after a lightning storm?
Or is it more likely that some Islamic Jihad member on Sunday decided that shooting a lone rocket would mean "victory"?
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Neither Ukraine nor Israel has any territorial ambitions or aggressive intent against their attackers — both Ukraine and Israel are fighting purely defensive wars to protect their civilian populations.
There is another common factor. Islamic Jihad in Gaza is an Iranian proxy terrorist group, funded and directed from Tehran. Iran's hand is behind this conflict....
I do not recall any Western government or international body suggesting moral equivalence between the aggressor and the defender in the Ukraine war, but that is exactly what we have seen repeatedly in this and previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza with the UN Secretary General calling on "both sides" to exercise restraint.
Unlike the immediate condemnation of Russian violence, we have seen only silence in the US and Europe since Islamic Jihad's rockets began to fall on Israel. The best we have heard from the White House is that "Israel has the right to protect itself", a statement of the blindingly obvious. None of this is good enough when what is needed is the strongest support for Israel and the most blunt condemnation of Islamic Jihad, along the lines we see over the Ukraine war.
The usual media suspects, such as the BBC and CNN, both cheerleaders for Ukraine's defensive operations, have predictably been doing their best to slant their coverage against Israel.
As we can see from the Western approach to Ukraine as well as wars everywhere, no other country that is unlawfully attacked by a foreign power is portrayed as the aggressor or at best on a par with the attacker.... The IDF takes the greatest possible care to defend its civilians while avoiding unnecessary casualties among civilians on enemy territory, frequently aborting attacks when there is the risk of killing innocent people....
Gaza terrorist leaders, on the other hand, make sure their wives and children are nearby and ready to die whenever there is the risk of attack against them. They deliberately position their weapons stores, missile launch sites and fighters among the civilian population, including in schools, hospitals and occupied residential buildings. The IDF will frequently warn civilians to get out of the area when preparing an attack. Understanding how this undermines their policy of causing maximum casualties on their own civilians in order to achieve international condemnation of Israel, terrorists in Gaza have warned their citizens that anyone who complies will be punished.
These are the lessons Israel learnt – the hard way. This is why the Israeli peace camp imploded – as Israelis became aware that there is no Palestinian peace partner. It does not mean that there are not Palestinians who would make peace – but that the Islamic terrorists – those who want war – control the Palestinian street.
This means that every time Israel moved towards peace with the Palestinians – it paid a bloody price. It is worth remembering that in the 1990s there was enormous pressure to get Israel to give up the Golan. Given what happened in Syria we can only be thankful that the naivety of the Israeli ‘peace bloc’ did not leave ISIS just a few miles from Tiberias.
Egypt wanted peace – and got it. Jordan wanted peace – and got it. The Palestinian leadership has no interest in peace – it just wants Israel gone. This is why there is still conflict.
The truth is that everything we see in Gaza today is a result of Israel ‘playing nice’ and doing whatever it could to make peace. Every time Israel ceded ground, or did what the west was telling it to, the price was paid in Israeli blood.
If there was a radical Islamic enclave firing rockets and cities in the US, UK, France, or any other western nation – these nation’s forces would have obliterated the terrorists long ago – at whatever cost. In consistently showing self-restraint, Israel is – as always – going above and beyond what every other nation would do.
Never forget this when reading the distorted news reports that circulate during times of conflict.
I have reason to understand how these foreign states manipulate the Palestinian people. When I was a child, our family was forcibly moved from our East Jerusalem home to the Shuafat refugee camp, not by Israel, but by Jordan. Today, Gaza has devolved into a base for terror groups that follow an Iranian, not a Palestinian, agenda. About a quarter of all PIJ rockets launched in this week’s fighting fell short and landed within Gaza; at least four Palestinian civilians, including children, were killed in Gaza on May 10 alone as a result of failed rocket launches. And yet day after day and night after night, the brutal rocket onslaught continues, rendering normal life impossible in many Israeli communities, necessitating a targeted defensive response from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Operation “Shield and Arrow,” that has brought daily life in the Strip to a screeching halt.
Strategically, the tragedy of the ongoing escalation represents a loss of opportunities, political and economic, for the Palestinian people. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have much in common with Israel, the Middle East’s most remarkable economic success story that can’t be attributed to fossil fuels. The Palestinians have repeatedly been invited to join their neighbors in a zone of peace and prosperity, which the late Israeli statesman and peacemaker Shimon Peres called “the New Middle East.” Simultaneously, the Palestinian leadership at least three times (in 2000, 2001, and 2008) rejected comprehensive peace agreements with Israel that would have created an independent Palestinian state, solved the refugee problem, and ended the crisis. Instead, our leaders – the terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat and the perpetual dictator Mahmoud Abbas, now serving the nineteenth year of his four-year term – have committed us to endless war.
What is happening in the Middle East right now is very simple. The theocratic regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran, not content with quashing women’s dignity and hanging youthful protesters at home, seeks to impose its apocalyptic medieval vision upon the whole region. Just as the terrorist factions that claim Palestinian leadership were used as enthusiastic pawns in the fascist-style wars of aggrandizement waged by the pan-Arab regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt and the Ba’ath totalitarianism of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, PIJ and Hamas are now attempting to pull the Palestinian people into Iran’s bloodthirsty schemes. I have a better idea. Let’s give our families and our children peace and prosperity, not projectiles and pain. Let’s have an agreement and understanding with Israel, instead of endless fighting and religious tyranny under Iran.
The Secretary-General condemns the civilian loss of life, including that of children and women, which he views as unacceptable and must stop immediately. Israel must abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportional use of force and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of military operations.
The implication is that Israel is not being careful, and that if Israel really was being careful, no civilians would be injured at all -- conveniently side-stepping the issue of terrorists using human shields, a detail which Guterres does not mention at all.
He then addresses the terrorists afterwards, as if they are merely retaliating:
The Secretary-General also condemns the indiscriminate launching of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which violates international humanitarian law and puts at risk both Palestinian and : Israeli civilians.
It's nice of him to mention that the terrorists are firing rockets randomly into Israel, but Guterres does not condemn PIJ by name at all. Apparently, he is holding the rockets themselves responsible -- "the indiscriminate launching of rockets."
Of course, this is not unusual at this point. We are used to the media reporting on terrorist attacks by guns without shooters and cars without drivers. Rockets launching themselves is an obvious next step.
It is at this point that Guterres politely asks the terrorists to please get a grip:
The Secretary-General urges all parties concerned to exercise maximum restraint and to work to stop hostilities immediately. [emphasis added]
On the heels of asking that the rockets not be fired indiscriminately, Guterres now asks that the terrorists who are launching the rockets show restraint? Is he trying to appeal to their better nature?
Finally, he addresses the legal experts among PIJ:
He reiterates his commitment to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.
Right. Because international law and UN resolutions are the bread and butter of terrorist organizations. And just what bilateral agreements have the PIJ signed on to?
...We urge all parties to exercise maximum restraint, promote calm and work towards a political horizon and regional stability in line with the commitments in the Aqaba and Sharm el Sheikh declarations. [emphasis added]
Again, a terrorist group that wants to destroy Israel and has no qualms about killing unarmed civilians, is being urged to exercise restraint. These same terrorists are also being asked to work towards "regional stability." Does the EU seriously think that stability is a goal that the PIJ -- again, not mentioned by name -- has utmost in their minds?
This is the same mentality that wants to claim that terrorists are really freedom fighters -- as if history was full of groups that fought for freedom for their people by targeting innocent, unarmed civilians.
Why can't the UN and EU bring themselves to at least refer to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad by name? And why do they make believe that the terrorists are a moderate, democratic that will listen to reason -- if only they are reminded of the legal ramifications of their actions?
Have things sunk so low that they are afraid of implying any sort of support for Israel? Or has the pro-Palestinian propaganda been so successful that Palestinian terrorists can now kill Jews with impunity because no one dare criticize them?
The UN and EU go out of their way to avoid identifying the Palestinian terrorists behind the violations of international law. This is just a more circumspect way of covering up for the Palestinian Arabs than Francesca Albanese's strategy to claim that Palestinian terrorist attacks are just their exercise of self-defense.
We strongly condemn the indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza into #Israel. The violence must stop immediately. Every civilian live must be protected under all circumstances.
Islamic Jihad media is reporting that this morning, Gazans are waking up to the "euphoria of victory" even though they admit they suffered "painful losses" as many of their leaders were "martyred."
Let's look at their "victory."
Over 1,200 rockets were fired by Islamic Jihad and its allied terror groups. Those rockets killed six civilians.
Five of them were Gazan, including three children.
Layan Belal Mohammed Modawikh, 8 Killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket on 5-story house on al-Sahaba Street in Gaza City
Yazan Jawdat ‘Eliyan, 16 or 17 Killed in same incident
Rami Shadi Mousa Hamdan, 16 Killed by Islamic Jihad rocket on his house in Beit Hanoun, Gaza
Ahmed Mohammed al-Shebaki, 50 Killed by Islamic Jihad rocket in Qleibo area in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza
Abdullah Abu Jaba, 34 Gazan killed when a PIJ rocket hit a building near Shokeda, Israel, where he was working
Inga Abramian, 80 The only Israeli victim of PIJ rocket fire, Rehovot
This the the "victory" that they say Gazans were celebrating this morning - killing five of their own civilians and one elderly Israeli woman. As far as I can tell, they did not damage a single military asset.
Palestinian "human rights groups" know very well that the four Palestinians killed in Gaza were victims of Palestinian rockets. PCHR admits this explicitly, saying "PCHR’s preliminary investigations indicate casualties fell after homemade rockets had fallen in three incidents" which were the three incidents listed here; Al Mezan says they were killed by "projectiles" which is their euphemism for Gaza rockets that fell short.
Even though these deaths are documented by Palestinians themselves, I have yet to see a single "human rights group" condemn Islamic Jihad for killing four civilians in Gaza and two in Israel.
Every single civilian killed this past week was either killed by Palestinian rocket fire or were involuntarily acting as human shields for Palestinian militants who were legitimate targets under international law.
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On Saturday, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights issued a press release claiming that a statement by Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) was part of a "smear campaign" against them.
Yet in that very statement, PCHR published this bullet point:
PCHR affirms the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, all the way to achieve their legitimate rights, end the occupation, and establish their independent state.
"All available means, including armed struggle" means that this "human rights" organization officially supports terror attacks against civilians. There is no caveat there.
Indeed, PCHR has never, to my knowledge, said a word against Palestinian terror attacks or rocket salvos towards civilian areas.
Yet this terror -supporting "human rights" organization is still respected by the international community.
It is becoming more and more apparent that killing Jews and "human rights" are not considered incompatible by an increasing umber of people and organizations that style themselves as supporting "social justice."
In a sane world, this statement would result in an immediate outcry and end to international funding of PCHR, which are listed on their website:
1 Al Maqdese for Society Development
2 Al-Quds Association Malaga-Spain
3 Arab Human Rights Fund (AHRF)
4 Bertha Foundation
5 Christian Aid
6 Dan Church Aid
7 European Commission through Oxfam
8 Foundation to Promote Open Society
9 Grassroots International
10 Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat
11 Iris O’Brien Foundation
12 Irish Aid
13 Kvinna Till Kvinna Foundation (KTK)
14 KZE through MISEREOR
15 NGO Development Center (NDC)
16 Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
17 Oxfam Novib
18 Representative Office of Finland
19 Representative Office of Norway
20 San Sabastian
21 San Sabastian council
22 Spanish Cooperation
23 Terre des hommes foundation (TDH)
24 Trocaire
25 UNDP
26 UNVFVT
Email these organizations and ask them if they are aware that they are funding a pro-terror organization. They might not have been impressed with the news that PCHR is strongly linked to the PFLP terror group, but when the organization says it supports terror explicitly, that is a little harder to ignore.
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Sweden won the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool early Sunday morning, with Israel’s Noa Kirel finishing in third place.
The win for Sweden’s Loreen, with her power ballad “Tattoo,” marked the Scandinavian country’s seventh-total win at the competition, tying it for most overall victories with Ireland. It was also the second Eurovision win for Loreen, who took home the top prize at the 2012 contest with “Euphoria” — becoming only the second artist to ever win twice. Finland took second place, and Italy fourth.
Kirel, 22, finished with 362 points overall — 177 from the juries and 185 from the televote. Israel received top marks from the juries of Italy, Azerbaijan, France, Armenia and Poland, and finished the jury vote in second place overall. Among just the audience vote, Israel finished in fifth overall. The third place finish for Israel is the best showing for the country since Netta Barzilai won the competition in 2018 with “Toy.”
After completing her powerhouse performance on Saturday night, Kirel broke down in tears just before exiting the stage.
“Wow, I don’t have the words to explain how exciting it was to represent my country when millions of eyes around the world are watching every movement and note,” Kirel said in a statement shared by the Kan public broadcaster following her performance.
After the final results were announced, Kirel said she was “so proud to complete this incredible journey in the top 3!” adding that she was thankful “for the privilege to hold the flag of Israel on the biggest musical stage in the world.”
Many see the creation of the modern-day State of Israel as part of a historical narrative, in which Israeli independence was a reaction to the Holocaust. “The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe—was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State,” the provisional government of Israel declared on May 14, 1948.
But when JNS interviewed nearly 30 veterans of the 1948 War of Independence in Israel from October 2022 to January 2023, all of the octogenarians, nonagenarians and centenarians said that 3,000 years of Jewish history—and not the Shoah—drove them to help reclaim the Jewish historic homeland.
JNS found the interviewees by visiting nursing homes, kibbutzim and other sites in Israel and abroad, often asking to speak with the oldest people present. The roughly 30 who agreed to talk about their experiences spoke with JNS—the majority in English with some Yiddish—for more than 60 hours collectively.
The veterans spanned Israeli-born sabras who were active in the Jewish militias Irgun, Lehi and the Haganah, as well as foreign fighters who came to assist what would become the Israel Defense Forces in Machal units. Both sabras and foreign volunteers knew a great deal about the Holocaust, and many had lost relatives and friends. They met survivors who recounted their experiences. But invariably, the veterans told JNS that they were motivated in their service by a long cultural and historical memory rather than World War II itself.
Ahead of Yom Ha’atzmaut—Israel’s Independence Day, which begins on the evening of April 25 and continues through the following day—JNS shares a few of those stories.
Haganah messenger
JNS spent some eight hours at kibbutz Gan Shmuel with Itzik Mizrachi, 90, who shared his story, gave a tour of the kibbutz where he lives and invited JNS to lunch at its dining hall. The Jerusalem-born Mizrachi said he was a messenger in Haganah’s youth wing, Gadna.
During the outbreak of the war in May 1948, Itzik and his family were in the Mount Scopus area, and Arabs blocked them from taking roads to other safe areas. A mob mobilized to try to kill them, he said, but the patriarch of an Arab family, Abu Mustafa, who shared their home stood guard at the door and told the mob it would have to kill him first.
Soon thereafter, Haganah members came in an armored truck and told the family it had half an hour to gather its things and come to safety.
Mizrachi, who remains in good health, and walks and drives on his own, told JNS that he is the seventh generation in his family to live in Israel, after his ancestors, Sephardic Jews, left Spain during the expulsion.
As a Haganah message runner, he studied KAPAP—an acronym for krav panim el panim, or close-quarter fighting—which Haganah used to disguise its weapons training. Mizrachi later studied with Imi Lichtenfeld, founder of krav maga, and his son Rhon Mizrachi is now one of the recognized experts in that area.
Mizrachi told JNS that the Holocaust was only one chapter in Jewish history. “Why would we allow that moment alone to define us as Jews?” he said. “Long before the Holocaust, we said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ every year during the Passover seder.”
The Holocaust was a motivator, but not the main one. “For generations, we yearned for our independence. There were many pogroms, massacres and expulsions in our history. We never let any of these define us either,” he said.
Some lies are clever. Then there are The Guardian’s lies.
Take a May 12, 2023 article by Patrick Wintour titled “Israel treats Palestinian territories like colonies, says UN rapporteur.” That rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, has a lengthy rap sheet of extreme bias and overt antisemitism that should raise alarm bells for any credible journalist. But rather than contextualize and challenge this UN rapporteur’s remarks, Wintour’s 600-word article simply quotes her at length, including demonstrable, but unchallenged, falsehoods. What is particularly disturbing is that these lies and misleading characterizations, some of which are Wintour’s own, are so easily disproven with minimal investigation.
Wintour begins by downplaying the controversy Albanese’s rank antisemitism and bias have caused, depicting it as just “Israeli government ministers” and “Zionist groups” who hold such beliefs. Notably, the author didn’t think to provide any examples of Albanese’s remarks that have prompted charges of antisemitism. For example, when she claimed the “Jewish lobby” has “subjugated” the United States, while a “sense of guilt” has “subjugated” Europe to the same “Jewish lobby.”
Who else has charged Albanese with antisemitism and bias? The U.S. Ambassador to the Human Rights Council, the U.S. Special Envoy on Antisemitism, members of the U.S. House of Representatives and European Parliament, and a U.S. Public Delegate to the General Assembly, to name a few. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called Albanese’s “public stances completely unacceptable.” More recently, Italian Senator Giulio Terzi, a former Italian Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the UN, called on the Italian government (Albanese is Italian herself) to take action over Albanese’s antisemitism and bias.
Wintour leaves unchallenged Albanese’s denial that she has equated the “Nakba” with the Holocaust. Here she is on video doing exactly that, even beginning by acknowledging the problematic nature of what she goes on to say anyway. A glance at her Facebook profile (before she hid her account after a Times of Israel report exposed her antisemitic remarks) revealed she has a fondness for comparing Jews to Nazis.
by Liel Leibovitz, John Podhoretz, Dan Senor, Ben Shapiro, Meir Y. Soloveichik and Bret Stephens
This conversation took place over Zoom on April 27, 2023. Liel Leibovitz is a columnist for Tablet and wrote last month’s cover article, “The Return of Paganism.” John Podhoretz is the editor of COMMENTARY. Dan Senor is a member of COMMENTARY’s board of directors and the co-author of Start-Up Nation. Ben Shapiro is the author of The Right Side of History and host of The Ben Shapiro Show. Meir Y. Soloveichik is a rabbi and academic who writes the Jewish Commentary column in this magazine. Bret Stephens is a contributing editor to COMMENTARY and a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the New York Times.
JOHN PODHORETZ: In 1948, the Jewish population of Palestine—just as it was about to become Israel—was 716,000. It is now 7.1 million, a tenfold increase, 75 years later. This very radical experiment that under almost preposterous circumstances, and horrible circumstances, was undertaken. Other experiments in the creation of new nations had taken place, of course, in the wake of World War I, and proved illusory or weak or incredibly destabilizing. The other great incepted nation of the 20th century was the Soviet Union. It lasted 74 years. Israel has made it to 75. Why did this experiment in nation-building succeed?
Meir Soloveichik: I can answer that question with Jeremiah 16:14: “Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.”
What Jeremiah was predicting is that there would come a time when the Jewish ingathering will be so beyond questioning that it will be seen as a providential miracle, or perhaps the providential miracle of Jewish faith. This is not, of course, to say that human initiative—indeed, genius—played no role in the founding of the Jewish state, or in the inception of the Zionist movement that was at the heart of the endeavor. But even with that in mind, what has occurred is so stupefying that something greater, someone greater, is revealed behind this series of events.
On a recent trip to Israel, I took the new high-speed train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When I came back to New York, I took out my train ticket and saw the words in Hebrew: Rakevet Israel, “Train of Israel.” And I suddenly remembered The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet. His idea of that state seemed fantastical at the time, but Herzl spoke as though it could absolutely come into existence again. But in the section where he discusses what language the residents of the Jewish state will be speaking, he writes that, of course, they’re not going to speak Hebrew. He says it will be akin to Switzerland, where everyone, he says, will speak their own language and miss the country of their origin. That Hebrew train ticket means that Israel has exceeded even Herzl’s most incredible imaginings.
Liel Leibovitz: Since Solly dropped the H bomb and invoked Herzl, I want to offer one of my favorite thought experiments. We’re now 152 years after the Risorgimento, which unified the Italian city-states. Today, if you were to walk the streets of Napoli and ask any Italian if they consider themselves a Garibaldist, they will look at you as if you’d just fallen from the sky. What was once a national movement to kind of create a homeland for a group of people who could define themselves as Italians achieved its goal a century and a half ago and vanished. But here we all are speaking of ourselves as Zionists, which many people are taught was some kind of 19th-century national movement to rebuild the Jewish homeland for the Jews for reasons of safety and to protect us against anti-Semitism. I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the Israeli story really makes very little sense independently of the Jewish story. And seen as such, it is simply the fruition of the ancient, theological, emotional, philosophical, historical story of the Jewish people. This is not to downplay the tremendous ingenuity, courage, sacrifice, and valor of people who did so much and gave so much for this to become a reality.
Amid the sturm und Drang surrounding the judicial reform proposals put forward by the new Israeli government, which many have called a “constitutional crisis,” the words of the Jewish state’s former attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, were especially telling. In decrying the proposed reforms and what would happen if they take effect, Mandelblit said, “What remains of the Declaration of Independence? It will just become a piece of paper we can throw in the trash.” Mandelblit’s reference to Israel’s Declaration of Independence sent me back to the text itself in search of answers. Just as I had remembered from my Zionist upbringing, which included regularly listening to David Ben-Gurion’s famous reading of the Declaration on May 15, 1948, Israel actually has no constitution, despite the fact that the Declaration promises one in the future.
A fascinating new book by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler tells the story of the writing of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and offers some insights into why, 75 years after its founding, Israel still has no written constitution. Israel’s Declaration of Independence offers readers a ringside seat. As in any good story, there is a hero, in this case David Ben-Gurion. Rogachevsky and Zigler tell the stirring story of how Israel’s first prime minister wrestled with earlier drafts of the Declaration in the final hours before he declared Israel’s statehood and, mediating among competing Zionist ideologies, put his own indelible imprint on the final document.
The book builds on the work of Yoram Shachar, who discovered the earliest draft of the Declaration, written in late April 1948 by a young government lawyer named Mordechai Beham. Rogachevsky and Zigler carefully trace the development of the Declaration from Beham’s draft through subsequent versions hastily composed by Tzvi Berenson, Herschel Lauterpacht, Moshe Shertok, and finally Ben-Gurion during the frenzied days before the British Mandate ended. Taken as a whole, the various versions offer readers a tour of the diverse and often competing political philosophies that framed the modern Zionist movement.
One integral part of the settler-colonial claim is the argument that, unlike Arabs, Jews are not indigenous to Palestine. But that turns history on its head. Jews populated Palestine at least a millennium before the advent of Islam and the subsequent Arab conquest. They have lived there continuously ever since.
Moreover, a report by Moshe Aumann, Land Ownership in Palestine, 1880-1948, shows that Palestinian Arabs are not as indigenous or historically connected to the land as people like Khalidi would have us believe. Aumann cites studies showing that most Palestinian Arabs are the descendants of immigrants from other countries who arrived after 1882. That included large-scale Arab immigration into Palestine between the two world wars. The main cause of that immigration was “Jewish development, which created new and attractive work opportunities and, in general, a standard of living previously unknown in the Middle East.”
Aumann concludes: “The constant influx of non-Palestinian elements, Arab and non-Arab, even before 1882 and certainly after that date, puts an entirely different complexion on the alleged and largely assumed ‘antiquity’ of the Arab element in the Palestinian population.”
But the biggest problem with the settler-colonial argument is this: At least half the Jewish population of Israel is made up of Mizrahim, whose families were expelled from Arab countries before and right after the founding of Israel. They are non-European and just as indigenous to the Middle East as any Arab.
Lyn Julius details the history of those expulsions in her seminal book, Uprooted. She writes that “after the Second World War, Arab states passed Nuremberg-style laws to undertake the wholesale eviction of their Jewish citizens and the theft of their property.” Hundred of thousands of Jews were then expelled from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. In every one of those countries, the Jewish community predated the Arab conquest by centuries.
Altogether, 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries. More than half a million fled to Israel. Those expulsions were largely inspired by the anti-Semitism of the Nazi collaborator and propagandist Amin Al Husseini who, at the time, was the leader of the Palestinian national movement. Thus, Arabs are hardly in a position to complain that Mizrahim sought refuge in Israel or to claim that Mizrachi immigration to Palestine was a settler-colonial project.
The history of the Jews in the Middle East is still not widely known. As Julius notes, “the story of the forgotten Jewish refugees is invariably omitted from Western coverage of the Israeli-Arab (or more commonly, Israeli-Palestinian) conflict.” Moreover, “Propagandists eagerly exploit this ignorance to perpetuate the lie that Israeli Jews are all from Europe and America.”
Khalidi is a good example. In The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, he mentions Mizrahim twice, very briefly, referring only to those who were indigenous to Palestine. He fails to acknowledge those who were refugees from Arab countries. That lets him maintain the falsehood that Israel is a European-style, settler-colonial project. It also helps him avoid the fact that half the “colonists” in Israel are there because of Arab anti-Semitism.
That’s not historical analysis. It’s intellectual dishonesty.
Operation Shield and Arrow has been carried out to date with breathtaking effectiveness. The shield of Iron Dome and David’s Sling have prevented major loss of life among the civilian population, although so far one man has been tragically killed and some have been injured, despite a barrage of 547 deadly rockets fired at Israel at the time of writing.
The arrows of target intelligence, air strikes and missile attacks have decimated the Gaza terrorist leadership and destroyed many of their weapons. No other military is capable of defending its people with the ferocity and precision the IDF has been showing.
Unfortunately, some of Israel’s arrows have also killed uninvolved civilians. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said yesterday that the civilian deaths in Gaza are “unacceptable” and called on Israel to “abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law”.
This amounts to a grave slur against the IDF which is known by all Western military commanders to be more effective than any other force in the world in preventing the deaths of civilians in enemy territory. Instead, Guterres should have held the Gaza terrorists directly responsible for the killing of their civilians, for it is they who have a deliberate policy of using human shields — a war crime. Not least, Islamic Jihad commanders keep their wives and children close to them as proper military commanders would wear their body armor and helmet.
Guterres’s comments — and their echoes in the media and among human rights groups — also play directly into the hands of terrorists whose prime operational objective, short of its destruction, is international vilification of Israel. The UN Human Rights Council’s condemnation of the IDF that will follow this conflict as night follows day, flowing from thinking such as the Secretary General’s, will help ensure that Islamic Jihad and terrorists everywhere continue to use human shields and will cost many more lives.
Knowing the IDF as I do I can be confident that they are closely adhering to — and going beyond — international laws of war in this conflict. But there is another question as well. Should they have been given political direction to conduct offensive operations in Gaza, knowing that innocent civilian lives would be lost? Some argue, following Guterres’s line that civilian deaths are unacceptable, that Israel’s shield is sufficient to blunt the rockets and protect its population without the accompanying arrows.
Of course, the reality is that no defensive system can provide 100% protection, as we have seen from deaths, wounding, and property destruction in Israel during this conflict and previous rocket attacks; and no country can sit back and watch while its enemies lash out. On top of that the stakes in the current round of violence are much higher even than 547 rockets fired out of Gaza in two days.
In a jaw-dropping display of irony, on Wednesday the Neve Dekalim Girl’s High School was forced to cancel a scheduled celebration to mark its 40th birthday.
Since 2005, the school has been located in Nitzan, around 30 kilometers outside Gaza. For its first 22 years, it was located in Neve Dekalim, the capital of the Gush Katif settlement bloc in southern Gaza. The school moved to Nitzan when the Sharon government ordered the IDF to expel all Jews from Gaza, destroy their communities and withdraw IDF forces to the 1949 armistice lines.
On Wednesday, Nitzan, like all the other communities in the western Negev, came under missile assault from the ruins of Neve Dekalim and the ruins of the other destroyed communities of Gaza. After Israel withdrew 18 years ago, Hamas and its fellow terror groups transformed what had been flourishing communities into terror bases and rocket launching sites.
Islamic Jihad, which is currently attacking Israel with rockets, missiles and mortars, is supposedly Hamas’ junior partner. But even as a junior terror master, the organization formed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1988 has become a formidable problem. With rockets and missiles capable of attacking Tel Aviv, Beersheva and their environs, the supposed little guy in Gaza managed to shoot off close to 600 missiles, mortars and rockets in two days and force more than two million Israelis to run to bomb shelters for cover. The wizened experts sitting in the TV studios all explain that Israel is right to try to keep Hamas out of things, because if we think Islamic Jihad is a problem, their capabilities are but a faint echo of Hamas’ amassed power.
It is considered impolite to discuss the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza these days. It’s old news. Time to move on, irritated anchors and editors insist. And anyway, no one wants to sound like a broken record. That’s why the story of Neve Dekalim Girl’s High School barely registered on Wednesday.
But from time to time, it’s imperative to bring up the 2005 operation. It stands as a glaring lesson that we ignore at our peril.
For all the misery that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terror forces in Gaza rain down on Israel—particularly on the western Negev communities—the fact is that Gaza is a sideshow. Lebanon, Judea, Samaria and even Syria are also sideshows. The main event remains Iran, its nuclear weapons program and its rising power in the region. Israel’s main effort has to be focused on Iran—not on its puppets. Without Iran, none of them would be anywhere near as dangerous as they are today.
Israel must "exploit" the regional conflicts to frustrate Iran's entrenchment efforts at a much larger scale, especially by destroying the arsenals and its various capabilities to manufacture and convert munitions in order to prevent their use in the future. The main efforts should be vis-à-vis the warehouse and the PGMs capabilities in Lebanon, but also vis-à-vis Syria and Gaza.
At the same time, Israel must prevent Iran (economically and practically) from rearming its proxies after their weapons will be destroyed. To do it effectively, Israel must pressure Washington, in coordination with the Gulf states, to deal with all three components of the Iranian nuclear program – fissile material, weaponization (which should be now the main effort), and the means of delivery – and at the same time create maximum economic pressure and a credible military threat.
A partial and weak nuclear deal will send a false signal to Iran (and to the markets) that the West will agree to everything Iran did and will do. Israel will be left alone again, and it will be very difficult to take out the nuclear program under an agreement. In addition, any agreement will give Iran windfall revenues, allowing the regime to rehabilitate its economy, and continue arming its proxies around the region while reducing the effectiveness of Israeli operations to destroy their capabilities.
Israel should continue improving its military capabilities toward a broad future confrontation with Iran, alongside building other capabilities. It's time to change Israel's thinking and take the initiative, as has been the case in recent days in Gaza. A plan must be built to turn lemons into lemonade by having Iran's plan of a multi-front confrontation become a double-edged sword, and by severely undermining their efforts to entrench themselves in the region and arm their proxies. The paradigm shift will also strengthen Israel's standing in the region, including the efforts to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, despite the agreement it recently signed with Iran, under the auspices of China.
As we approach 2024, politicians are beginning to line up to announce their candidacy for the approaching presidential elections. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are among the Republicans who will apparently battle it out in the primaries. On the Democratic side, Biden has announced that he and Kamala Harris will run for re-election.
And the presidential campaign season means that at some point, these politicians will feel the need to brag about being a friend of Israel.
One of those will be the current vice president, Kamala Harris.
The last time around, Harris could rely on the ringing endorsement she received from Kveller.com, which reminded us that Kamala Harris Has an Adorable Yiddish Nickname - Momaleh. On top of that, while growing up in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Harris collected money in the Jewish National Fund boxes to buy trees for Israel. According to Kveller, that qualified her as a mensch and earned her their approval for office.
At the time, the Jewish Insider had a more serious evaluation of Harris on her pro-Israel record and relationship with the Jewish community:
o The first bill she co-sponsored in the Senate condemned UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criticized Israeli settlements.
o She sponsored resolutions condemning the 2018 Tree of Life shooting and the April 2019 Chabad of Poway shooting.
o In 2017, she co-sponsored with Sen. Marco Rubio the Senate resolution condemning hate and antisemitism
o She opposed the BDS movement
This seems to bear out the claim made by Harris's campaign spokesperson, Lily Adams that “her support for Israel is central to who she is.”
But on the other hand:
o Despite her opposition to the BDS movement, Harris voted against a bipartisan 2019 anti-BDS bill, saying she was concerned it could violate First Amendment rights.
o In June 2020, she sent a letter to Trump opposing Israel’s potential unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank.
o When asked in a 2019 interview with The New York Times, "Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?" she responded, "overall, yes."
o Harris expressed support for the US rejoining the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran.
This does not necessarily negate her positive actions and statements, it merely places her among the moderate Democratic supporters of Israel After all, you can't expect 100% support for all of Israel's policies from a US politician.
But there are other statements and actions that do not mesh with the pro-Israel image Harris and her staff want to cultivate.
One position that the Jewish Insider does not mention is Kamala Harris's support for Ilhan Omar. In 2019, Harris defended Ilhan Omar against criticism of her attack on AIPAC and Omar's accusations of Jewish dual loyalty
We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry.
But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. [emphasis added]
I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism.
In addition to claiming that Omar's accusation of Jewish dual loyalty, Harris expressed concern for Omar being put "at risk," by being subject to criticism while being oblivious to the risk to Jews by Omar's comments.
As California’s attorney general and then as U.S. senator, Harris forged a relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the nation’s top anti-Israel groups and advocates for boycotts of the Jewish state. CAIR advised Harris on community issues during her time in California politics, and she later offered the group her "gratitude and admiration" in a 2018 personal letter to the group.
Also jarring -- coming from someone whose "support for Israel is central to who she is" -- was Harris's Chief-of-Staff Karine Jean-Pierre, who is currently the White House Press Secretary for the Biden Administration (Biden being another politician who claims to be a long-time friend of Israel). Before all this, she was a spokesperson and senior advisor for the Soros-funded MoveOn.org
"Ms. Jean-Pierre repeated the blood libel that “Israel may have committed war crimes in its attacks on Gazan protesters" and in addition
Ms. Jean-Pierre also falsely accused AIPAC of “alarming,” “severely racist, Islamophobic rhetoric,” of being an “obstacle to progress,” and of “trafficking in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric while lifting up Islamophobic voices and attitudes.”
In September 2021, Kamala Harris seemed to show similar feelings.
funds allocated to continue backing Israel, which hurts my heart because it’s an ethnic genocide and a displacement of people — the same that happened in America — and I’m sure you’re aware of this.”
Harris's nodded in agreement, with no counter to the comment. When the student expressed her need to speak up, Harris responded:
I’m glad you did. And again this is about the fact that your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed and it must be heard, right? And one of the things that we’re fighting for in a democracy, right, a democracy is its strongest when everybody participates…[emphasis added]
Here is the video:
Harris and her staff had to go into damage control mode, assuring Jewish leaders that despite her apparent agreement with the comment, she did not actually share the student's view.
When it comes to "truth", however, Kamala Harris seems to find it in the oddest places.
Kamala Harris is just another politician who follows the popular positions of the Democratic party. As long as there is a sizeable portion of Democrats who support Israel, she will follow along.
And if the Democratic party decides it will follow Biden in supporting the JCPOA, she will support that too, despite the threat to the Middle East in general and to Israel in particular -- just as she will praise a student who accuses Israel of ethnic genocide, since after all, free speech is a good thing, right?
When it comes to Israel, we cannot judge a politician by their carefully crafted speeches or support for popular pro-Israel bills. Their associations and unprepared off-the-cuff remarks give a better idea of their positions.
Based on that measure, Kamala Harris is not a friend of Israel. She is merely another politician looking for the Jewish vote.
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Elder of Ziyon
