Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 09, 2023

The "moderate" Palestinian Authority is solidly on the side of the mass murderers and rapists

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas did not condemn Hamas' murderous attack on Israeli civilians. On the contrary - he defended it.

On Sunday evening, Abbas made a phone call with Ahmed Helles, a member of his Fatah Central Committee and Commissioner of Mobilization and Organization in the Southern Governorate. During the call, Abbas "reaffirmed the right of our people to defend themselves."

Apparently, attacking families in their homes and raping girls attending a concert is "defending themselves."

Keep in mind that every time Abbas or his predecessor Yasir Arafat condemned terror attacks, it was at the urging of the United States. But without any outside pressure, the "moderate" Fatah and Palestinian Authority leaders have no problem with what is by far the worst atrocity against Jews since the Nazis.

In fact, the PA prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh parroted Abbas defense of Hamas - and went beyond it, in a call with the Norwegian foreign minister:

Shtayyeh received a phone call Saturday evening, from the Norwegian minister, during which he assured her that Israel’s continued refusal to implement international resolutions and the lack of accountability for the crimes it commits against the Palestinian people would exacerbate the conflict, and that Israel’s undermining of the two-state solution will not allow it to enjoy peace as long as the Palestinian people do not obtain their legitimate rights.

Shtayyeh stressed the right of the Palestinian people to defend their land and sanctities, which are constantly being violated.

Shtayyeh said that what is happening today is a natural result of not responding to our repeated warnings about the dangerous repercussions that will result from Israel continuing its crimes amid its feeling of impunity.

Yes, rape and mass murder is a "natural response" to Israel defending Jews from being slaughtered.

This is not an anomaly. As we've noted in the past, there have been consistent poll results from Palestinian. When they are asked in the abstract whether they support "armed resistance," their euphemism for terror attacks on civilians, a small majority usually answers positively. But when they are asked if they support specific, recent terror attacks, the percentage of enthusiastic supporters of murdering Jews skyrockets to over 80%.

Every single time.

There is no reason to think that this will be any different. When the next set of polls come out, we will see that the vast majority of Palestinians -West Bank and Gaza, Hamas and Fatah - overwhelmingly support the cold blooded murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians.

Whenever Israel-haters try to demonize the Jewish state, they will dig out a tiny minority who hold noxious opinions that are opposed by most Israeli Jews. But there is no cherry picking here - a huge majority of Palestinians really support murdering Jews, the more the better, with no regard as to whether they are "settlers" or "soldiers" or just regular Jews trying to live their lives inside the 1949 armistice lines.

Their leaders share this immoral worldview.

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10/09 Links Pt1: Eyewitness Account of the Rave Massacre; European Union suspends all financial aid to Palestinians in response to Hamas attacks

From Ian:

David Hazony: The horror of Hamas and why we Israelis will finally defeat it

Since Israel’s founding, every military conflict has taken place with foreign governments, especially America’s and Europe’s, holding a platinum stopwatch.

At a certain point — usually just days or weeks into the war — we are told, “That’s quite enough.”

It has nothing to do with military objectives or whether we’ve uprooted the terror.

It’s about what they can handle politically.

After that time, they turn to the UN Security Council and start talking about sanctions. Pressure becomes quite real.

Such premature cessation inevitably sets the stage for further conflict.

Follow along with The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel

It gives terror organizations, whether Hamas or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad, the opportunity to regroup, rearm and redouble their efforts to murder civilians.

World leaders need to know this time is different.

If you are our friends, if you are truly disgusted by what you have seen and believe in our right to defend ourselves, you’ll let us get the job done.

Defeating Hamas will take time and patience.

But it must happen, not just because it is right but also because what starts with Jews never ends with Jews.

Hamas glories in its ability to make Jewish children and elderly suffer on camera.

But with every gruesome image, Israeli resolve is further steeled.

This is an enemy of almost unthinkable evil.

Now you have all seen it — and you must not forget what you have seen.

We will bounce back from our shock and horror and defeat Hamas. Stay tuned.

Eli Lake: Delusion in the White House. Bloodshed in Israel.

The Biden administration must now reckon with the fact that it has done a deal with Hamas’s most powerful and important patron. Biden’s efforts to restore a nuclear deal with Iran and its lax enforcement of secondary sanctions have freed up capital for the Islamic Republic to invest in its terrorist proxy.

And let’s not forget Biden’s strategy with Qatar, another backer of Hamas. On January 31, 2022, President Biden named Qatar as a “major non-NATO ally.” This designation was a major diplomatic reward for a country that to this day allows much of the senior leadership of Hamas, including its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to live there. (That U.S.-Qatari deal did not include conditions to expel these figures.)

On Saturday, Qatar’s foreign ministry issued a statement that said Israel was “solely responsible for the ongoing escalation.”

The U.S. response?

Silence, except for a report that the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani “agreed to remain closely coordinated.”

Considering their many missteps, it’s no surprise the White House is on the defensive. Responding to Republicans who brought up the $6 billion hostage deal, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said on Saturday, “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”

Ah yes, another case of “disinformation” misleading Americans into thinking their government’s policy is misguided. In this case, though, the real deception is the one that has led so many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment to think that with enough patience, engagement, and money, fanatical regimes like those in Tehran and Gaza can be enticed to join the civilized world.

Daniel Greenfield: This is Not About Israel, It’s About Islam

This war was declared over 1,000 years ago

Flying planes into skyscrapers, running over French pedestrians with a truck, massacring Indian families, and Israeli concertgoers is the same war.

Islamic terrorists and their allies try to make every attack about the specific context of a situation in a particular corner of the world.

That’s a lie that too many fall for.

Even countries that are the victims of Islamic terrorism often draw lines between the “good” and “bad” Islamic terrorism. We do it ourselves. But there is no such line. Whether a country is good or bad makes no difference. Islamic terrorists come for every country eventually. There is no major nation that has not faced Islamic terrorist attacks as long as it has a significant Muslim population within or near its borders.

America, India, Canada, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil (a planned Olympic massacre) are just a few of the examples. The smaller countries that have come under attack are nearly endless. If you exist, you’re a target.

Hamas is just an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which is a global operation. Its Al Qaeda splinter group has carried out attacks all over the world.

What happened in Israel is not about Israel: it’s about Islam.

It’s all too easy to nod along with the propaganda, the claims about “Palestinian oppression”, and ignore the historical context of over 1,000 years of Islamic violence against non-Muslims that follow the same exact model, or the global reach of Islamic terrorism today. The pattern is easy to spot and so people have to be indoctrinated into ignoring it.

HRW and Amnesty's disgusting press releases blame Israel and try to exonerate Hamas

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been on a single-minded jihad against Israel for years. They have written long, detailed reports blaming Israeli Jews for the "war crimes" of living in houses in their ancestral homeland. Their obsessive hate has reached so far that they have written extensively against AirBnB for not discriminating against Jews renting out their houses.

But when it comes to thousands of Hamas terrorists invading Israel, murdering, kidnapping and raping hundreds of people, they aren't nearly as interested in details. There are no condemnations. And they blame Israel for defending itself more than they blame Hamas for their genocidal attacks.

Amnesty tweeted:

@Amnesty is deeply alarmed by the mounting civilian death tolls in Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank and urgently call on all parties to the conflict to abide by international law and make every effort to avoid further civilian bloodshed.

No condemnations of Hamas. Just "concern" about both sides.

And after hundreds of man-hours spent blaming Israel for every possible crime, real or imagined, that they can dream up, they cannot even write a single standalone tweet condemning the worst attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

Amnesty's statement continues on its website and is almost unbelievable, written on the same day as the mass murders:

Deliberately targeting civilians, carrying out disproportionate attacks, and indiscriminate attacks which kill or injure civilians are war crimes. Israel has a horrific track record of committing war crimes with impunity in previous wars on Gaza. Palestinian armed groups from Gaza, must refrain from targeting civilians and using indiscriminate weapons, as they have done in the past, and most intensively in this event, acts amounting to war crimes.

They accuse Israel of war crimes pre-emptively - but only urge Hamas not to target civilians, when that was the entire point of the attack!

If Amnesty is a human rights group, this one press release shows that they do not consider Israeli Jews to be humans who deserve rights. They are bending over backwards to assume Hamas innocence and Israeli guilt.

What a perverted, immoral organization.

Human Rights Watch is even worse. These are their (re)tweets from Saturday:

No mention of Hamas by name. Only a passive voice on how Israelis are being victimized but there is no condemnation. However, Bashi makes sure that even if the attacks aren't justified, they sort of are.

Then, to hammer home the point that Jews are responsible for their being slaughtered, she wrote this:

Yes, just in case HRW's followers might have had a slight bit of sympathy for Jews being abducted, raped and massacred, she takes pains to remind everyone that Israel is the evil party and, by implication, Hamas is the victim here.

This isn't human rights advocacy. This is antisemitism at its rawest and most disgusting.

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Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and Hamas leader Haniyeh meeting in Lebanon in April

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday:

DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

...Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.

Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.

Around that time, Palestinian groups staged a rare set of limited strikes on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, under the direction of Iran, said the Iranian official. “It was a roaring success,” the official said.

Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London. “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”

The Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ ability to coordinate with Iran will be tested in the coming days as Israel’s response comes into focus.

Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.

Of course Iran was behind this coordinated attack, the worst attack on Israeli civilians since Nazi Germany.

The attack required excellent intelligence, new weapons and methods like drones and paragliders, and an exceptional ability to keep the planning - which in the end involved thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members - hidden from Israeli intelligence. There is no way Gaza groups could have done this on their own.

It is also obvious this has been planned for months. The recent riots at the Gaza border are seen now as being likely test runs to see how quickly the IDF responds to breaches in the fence, and from there it can be calculated how many simultaneous breaches would overwhelm its defenses.

The Gaza workers who have been allowed to work in Israel for the past several months were also likely employed as intelligence agents, taking note of the defenses (or lack thereof) in the kibbutzim and villages surrounding the Gaza Strip.

Combine this with the history of Iran attacking Israel by proxy, both from Lebanon and from Gaza, while staying above the fray with plausible deniability. But in the end, Iran is ready to sacrifice every last Palestinian (and Lebanese) to weaken Israel.

The only way to break the cycle of endless Gaza campaigns is not only to eliminate major Gaza terror leaders but to - clandestinely - go after Iranian IRGC and other leaders who have been hatching these plans, as well as the Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders who live outside Gaza.

We have seen how terror leaders are afraid for their own lives while they wax poetic on the beauty of martyrdom - for those who are under them. Only a realistic threat against the leaders will dampen their enthusiasm for continuously starting these terror campaigns.

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

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The so-called "Palestinian Center for Human Rights" always tries to list all the casualties of every Gaza conflict - but they slavishly adhere to Hamas' rules not to list any dead terrorists, only people they can credibly claim to be civilians.

Their report for the first day of fighting says that the Gaza Ministry of Health claimed 256 Gazans killed in Israeli airstrikes.

But they list only about 60 deaths - meaning that they know that 200 of those killed were terrorists.

If that was the ratio of terrorists to civilians, it would already be amazing for an urban war. But that is not the whole story.

Because certainly some of the families killed were human shields for terrorist leaders. And Israel did target Hamas leader houses and offices:

At 12:40 [Sunday] : IOF warplanes bombed a densely populated area surrounding the office of Hamas Chief, Yahya Sinwar, and the vicinity of Palestine Stadium in central Gaza City. As a result, the Office was destroyed.

At 04:15: IOF warplanes bombed the 5-storey house of Hamas Leader Fathi Hammad in Beit Lahia housing project. As a result, the house, which sheltered 5 families, was destroyed. At 08:45: IOF warplanes bombed and destroyed another 2-storey house belonging to him in Jabalia.

At 06:55: IOF warplanes launched two missiles at the house of Hamas Leader Ghazi Hamad in Al-Geneina neighborhood in Rafah and destroyed it.

At 07:00: IOF warplanes bombed and destroyed the house of Hamas Leader Nizar ‘Awadallah in Al-Nasr neighborhood in northern Gaza, killing his son Muhammad.

At 07:00: IOF warplanes bombed and destroyed the 3-storey house of Hamas Leader Salah Bardawil in Al-Qarara, north of Khan Yunis. Also, nearby houses sustained damage.

At 07:30: IOF warplanes bombed the house of Hamas Leader Zakaria Abu Muammar in Ma’an area, east of Khan Yunis. As a result, the house was destroyed, and 5 persons sustained minor injuries.

Meanwhile, IOF warplanes fired two missiles at the house of Hamas Leader Isma’il Barhoum in Al-Geneina neighborhood in Rafah. As a result, the house was destroyed, and several minor injuries were reported.

The same intelligence that knows the Hamas leader houses knows what and who were in the other houses. The IDF is not in the business of bombing random civilian houses, no matter what NGOs like PCHR and HRW claim.

Beyond that, at least one Gazan was apparently killed by a Hamas rocket, based on their description:

At 14:30: a bomb fell in the Indonesian Hospital’s yard in Jabalia, killing Yusra Husni Salha (67) after she sustained shrapnel injuries, and causing damage to the hospital’s oxygen station.

When they don't claim that the bomb was dropped by Israel, that means even they know it was a Gaza rocket.

Between the human shields, Gaza groups choosing to place their military equipment in civilian areas, likely terrorists killed with families and the Gaza rockets that fall short, Israel is once again showing that it is adhering to international law in urban fighting far more than any nation that criticizes it ever has.

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!

10/08 Links Pt2: October 7th 2023 a day that will live in infamy, Pro-Hamas Pro-Murder rallies around the world.

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering: A Time of War

One of the purposes of great literature, and the need to carry it around with us, is to make sense of the world as it happens. Terrible events occur, but if we have the wisdom of the ages in our heads, we can put them into some form of context.

Recent events in Israel have made me think of the Bible, and I’m sure that’s true of many people right now. After Hamas ambushed Israel in the worst attack against the country in 50 years, leaving more than 300 Israelis dead, I’m particularly thinking of one of the most famous lines from Psalms: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

A prayer that millions of people have uttered down the ages, millions more will utter today.

Unfortunately, some people watching the footage of Israeli women dragged out of their homes and children lying slaughtered on the floors, are engaging in a spot of moral relativism, trying to see this terror from “both sides.” Others are arguing we should view this attack “in context,” as though there can be any context for what happened in places like Sderot yesterday. Still, those are the nobler reactions. Iran rejoiced over the massacre with fireworks. In London, some have been seen celebrating the attacks, waving Palestinian flags and blasting car horns.

Because, of course, Israel is the only country in the world that gets criticized when its citizens are butchered.

Fortunately, ancient civilizations have a long culture and memory from which they can draw strength. And there is no older civilization than that of the Jewish people. For millennia, they have outlived every one of their enemies. They have seen off the Romans, the Assyrians, the Pharaohs, and the Babylonians.

They will see off this enemy, too.

Israel at war: The names and faces of Israel's fallen heroes

Nissim Logasi z"l
Igal Iluz z"l
Alon Barad z"l
Shai Al Kanfo z"l
Roman Gandel z"l
Yehuda Kader z"l
Avi Buzalgo z"l
Michael Lizmi z"l pic.twitter.com/dsV4QmfBi4
— The Mossad: Satirical, Yet Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 8, 2023

10/08 Links Pt1: October 7th 2023 a day that will live in infamy, 700 Murdered, 2,000 Injured, 100+ Hostages

From Ian:

700 Israelis dead, 2,000 injured amid Hamas rockets and terror infiltrations

Hamas killed at least 600 Israelis on Saturday as it launched a massive offensive from the Gaza Strip, including firing more than 3,000 rockets and sending dozens of Palestinian terrorists to infiltrate the Jewish state.

Around 5:30 p.m., 11 hours into the terrorist attacks, there were still exchanges of fire at 22 locations inside Israel.

Just after 8 p.m., Hamas launched a massive barrage of rockets toward central Israel, with direct hits reported in Tel Aviv, Bat Yam and Givatayim.

Active combat continued between Israeli security forces and Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

There were also reports of a hostage situation in Ofakim, located some 12 miles from the Gaza border.

Hamas claimed to be holding 163 Israelis hostage in Gaza.

More than 1,800 Israelis were evacuated to hospitals across the country, the largest number to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva and many to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

People were asked to donate blood across Israel. Because of the overwhelming response, only those with type O universal donor blood were asked to come.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the Security Cabinet at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war. Our first objective is to clear out the hostile forces that infiltrated our territory and restore the security and quiet to the communities that have been attacked,” said Netanyahu at the start of the meeting.

“The second objective, at the same time, is to exact an immense price from the enemy, within the Gaza Strip as well. The third objective is to reinforce other fronts so that nobody should mistakenly join this war.

“We are at war. In war, one needs to be level-headed. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite in order to achieve our highest goal—victory in the war,” added the premier.

In response, the Israel Air Force launched “Operation Swords of Iron,” initially striking 17 Hamas “military” compounds and four operational headquarters in Gaza.

The IDF was ordered to a “state of war readiness” and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant authorized the call-up of reserve troops.

He also announced a “special security situation” within 80 kilometers of the Gaza Strip, enabling the IDF to close relevant sites and impose safety restrictions on the population.

More than 100 Israelis captive in Gaza

Hamas terrorists abducted more than 100 Israeli citizens to the Gaza Strip during Saturday’s terrorist assault, Israel’s Government Press Office said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

That assertion came hours after the Israeli embassy in the United States cited the same number in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The embassy’s post was later deleted.

Earlier on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces set up a situation room tasked with determining how many civilians and soldiers were kidnapped.

Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, asked Maj. Gen. (res.) Lior Carmeli to lead the effort.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch to coordinate the government efforts to locate missing persons.

Hamas claimed on Saturday to have abducted 163 Israelis and taken them to the Gaza Strip after dispatching dozens of terrorists into the Jewish state as part of a major attack.

The Foreign Ministry of Thailand said Sunday that Hamas abducted 11 of its citizens during the previous day’s attack on Israel from Gaza.

Channel 13 reported late Saturday afternoon that Israel has confirmed that at least 11 people have been taken hostage in the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Unconfirmed footage circulating online showed alleged Hamas terrorists ushering numerous Israelis into Gaza. A father interviewed by Channel 12 said his two daughters, aged 3 and 5, were missing and feared kidnapped.

There were also unconfirmed reports that more than a dozen Nepalese nationals, working in Israel, were abducted and taken to Gaza.

The IDF says the situation room will work to compile a “situational picture” for locating the captives, noting that “some families have already received messages about their loved ones.”

Israel-Hamas war: At least 260 bodies found after attack on Israeli music festival

At least 260 bodies were found after Hamas targeted a music festival in Israel as part of its incursion, rescuers have said.

Those killed at the Supernova festival near Re'im, in the south of the country are among hundreds killed so far.

The number dead at the music event in the desert region of Negev was given by the Israeli rescue service Zika on Sunday.

Social media footage shows people dancing late into Friday, before the attack in the early hours of Saturday.

People are then seen running through an open field with gunshots firing in the background in a separate clip.

Another video shows a young woman being forced onto a motorbike as she pleads with the two men taking her: "Please don't kill me."

Website published by IDF listing the soldiers who died in the surprise Hamas-led attack Saturday morning. https://t.co/0xAxUdSKY5
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 8, 2023

President Isaac Herzog addresses Israel

War in Israel–last 30 hours. pic.twitter.com/EdCarXTqg0
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 8, 2023

Chag sameach! Some 19th century Simchat Torah flags

The National Library of Israel recently acquired a collection of Simchat Torah flags from as early as the 1860.

The flags are generally made on cheap paper and only used by children to wave during hakafot on the holiday, so no one really tried to preserve and collect them until relatively recently.

The custom of flying flags at Simchat Torah is relatively ancient, and various testimonies indicate that the custom of flags has been known since about four hundred years ago, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and this is due to the desire to cultivate the connection between Simchat Torah and the children's world.

The unique donation to the National Library was received from William Gross, whose collection is considered one of the largest and most important private collections of Judaica and Jewish visual culture. Considered an unconventional collector, Gross already recognized in the past that objects made of precious materials such as silver, gold, silk, and velvet were beyond the reach of most Jews throughout the generations, and belonged mainly to the economic elite. This insight led him over time to expand his collections and research into other areas of Jewish material culture. One of them is the collection and research of visual and decorative images in print on paper: Simchat Torah flags, leaflets, greeting cards, postcards, inscriptions, calendars, wall decorations for the synagogue and sukkah, and more. Gross claimed that these materials serve as a valuable documentary source for the study of Jewish history and culture.

Here are some examples from the Library's collection of Simchat Torah flags from the 19th century.

Have a chag sameach!

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!

10/06 Links Pt2: Roger Waters mocked Jew murdered by Nazis in 2nd Doco; Addressing the Nazi skeleton in Ireland's closet; A new stage in the degradation of the American University

From Ian:

Oberlin College Finally To Return Drawing Stolen By Nazis To Heirs Of Jewish Holocaust Victim, After 17-Year Refusal

This is an update to our October 1, 2023, exclusive report, Oberlin College’s 17-Year Refusal To Return Artwork Stolen By The Nazis From A Jewish Holocaust Victim.

See that post for full details on a drawing, Girl With Black Hair, by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, stolen by the Nazis from Fritz Grünbaum, a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist, who was forced under duress to sign over rights to his collection as part of the Nazi confiscation of Jewish property, while interned at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he died in 1941. The Grünbaum heirs tried in vain for 17 years to get Oberlin College to return the drawing, including multiple demands and a civil lawsuit. But it was a recent criminal seizure warrant out of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and attendant bad publicity that appears to have swayed Oberlin College finally to give up the stolen property.

ArtNews is reporting that a settlement agreement was signed and the Girl With Black Hair will be returned:
The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Ohio’s Oberlin College and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh will voluntarily return works by Egon Schiele to the family of Fritz Grünbaum after the Manhattan District Attorney’s office issued warrants for them last month….

The two stipulations about the returned works were signed by Carnegie Museums president and CEO Steven Knapp as well as Oberlin College vice president, general counsel, and secretary Matt Lahey.

Emails to plaintiffs’ counsel and Oberlin College’s media relations about the settlement and dismissal have not been returned as of this writing.

We will update this post as more information becomes available.

Mark Regev: Addressing the Nazi skeleton in Ireland's closet

Most Israelis did not notice that last month Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin visited Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan. Had they paid some attention, they could have seen Martin playing the good global citizen, doing his part to promote peace and justice in the Middle East. If they looked deeper still, they may have been struck by Martin’s refusal to address the Nazi skeleton in Dublin’s closet.

Ireland’s foreign minister received a red-carpet welcome in Israel. In addition to his counterpart Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Martin was received by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog – whose grandfather, Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, was Ireland’s chief rabbi.

Martin’s Arab hosts were similarly gracious: in Ramallah, he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and in Amman with King Abdullah II.

Martin leads Fianna Fáil, the political party that dominated Irish politics for most of the 20th century. Above being foreign minister, Martin serves as deputy prime minister (Tánaiste). Until December 2022, he was Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach), but relinquished the post to Fine Gael Party head Leo Varadkar as part of the coalition agreement between them.

Possibly, it is Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil that has made it especially difficult for him to honestly confront his country’s shocking behavior at the end of World War II.

Sympathy for the devil
For almost five decades, Eamon de Valera was Ireland’s preeminent politician. He was the Irish Republic’s founding father, serving (nonconsecutively) as head of government for some quarter-century and as head of state for an additional 14 years. De Valera established and ruled supreme over Fianna Fáil.

On May 2, 1945, Irish newspapers carried headlines with the news of Hitler’s suicide. On that same day, and despite advice to the contrary from his senior foreign policy advisers, prime minister de Valera personally visited Germany’s legation in Dublin. There he expressed Ireland’s condolences on the passing of the Führer to Eduard Hempel, the Nazi regime’s senior diplomatic representative.

By then, the horrors of the Holocaust were widely known; the Nazi death camps having been liberated one after another by the advancing Allied armies.

The first major extermination factory liberated by the Red Army was Majdanek, on the night of July 22-23, 1944. The Soviets reached Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest site of industrial mass-murder on January 27, 1945. American forces entered Buchenwald on April 11 and Dachau on April 29. The British freed Bergen-Belsen on April 15.

As these liberations received press coverage worldwide, de Valera could not claim he was unaware of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews. Nonetheless, he chose to honor Hitler, knowing that he was not obliged to do so – later, he would admit that he “could have had a diplomatic illness” that would have prevented him from signing the German condolence book.

If de Valera erroneously believed that Ireland’s neutrality in World War II necessitated an official visit of commiseration, he could have sent a low-level government representative. Instead, he went himself, asserting: “I certainly was not going to add to his [Hempel’s] humiliation in the hour of defeat.”

Publicly paying respects to the Nazi leader did not prove a disqualification from high office in postwar Ireland. De Valera continued to serve as prime minister and leader of the opposition, going on to be elected president in 1959.

Variety magazine to hold star-studded Hollywood summit on antisemitism

Variety magazine is holding a star-studded Hollywood summit focused on addressing antisemitism through “inclusive storytelling, thought leadership and advocacy.”

Actor, producer and SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher will deliver an opening keynote address at the daylong event on Oct. 18. Subsequent panel discussions will cover topics ranging from the history of Jews in Hollywood to combating antisemitism through comedy and social media.

“The reason we decided to pursue something of this magnitude and scale is simple, yet vital and urgent,” Claudia Eller, Variety’s chief production officer, said in a statement on Thursday. “We wanted to encourage candid discussions about antisemitism, its disgraceful proliferation in the modern era, and how to encourage more thoughtful and accurate representation throughout the industry. Our hope for the day is to bring people together to make change happen.”

One panel is titled “The State of Antisemitism” and features prominent TV producers. Another, led by film historian Neal Gabler and “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, will tackle the industry’s Jewish history and antisemitism during its early years. Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Alex Edelman and Marc Maron will participate in another panel on how to use comedy to open up discourse on contemporary antisemitism. Julianna Margulies will discuss her own personal experiences of antisemitism.

Variety will also publish a series of online essays in conjunction with the event, including writings by Maron, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, Beanie Feldstein, Mayim Bialik, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and more.

Al Layth describes how to interpret dreams with Jews in them.

It is often bad news.

Dreaming of befriending a Jew in a dream indicates that there are friends close to the dreamer, but they are .hypocrites and wish him evil and put him in trouble

Seeing talking with Jews in a dream is evidence that the dreamer is committing many sins and immoral acts, and that he is obligated to repent

The dream of seeing a Jewish woman in a dream is evidence of many fears and sorrows, and is considered a .bad omen and bad luck

Seeing Jews in a dream, according to Imam Nabulsi, is evidence that there are many enemies around the dreamer without their knowledge

A person dreaming that he has become a Jew in a dream indicates that he is committing many sins and .transgressions, and he must repent

Seeing smiles in the faces of Jews in a dream is evidence that the dreamer is silent about the truth and clings to falsehood, and must refrain from that

Single women seeing Jews in a dream is evidence of tremendous savings, great .wealth, and obtaining a lot of money through inheritance

Seeing a victory over the Jews in a dream for a sick single woman indicates recovery from the disease and a complete recovery from it

A married woman's dream about killing Jews indicates a comfortable life and an increase in children

The dream of victory over the Jews in a pregnant woman's dream indicates that childbirth will be easy and .smooth

If a man sees a Jewish woman, it may not bode well and indicate sorrows and problems to which the dreamer will be exposed .

Seeing the Jewish army storming your home indicates the adversities and obstacles facing the dreamer

Seeing the Jews fleeing indicates getting rid of problems and troubles

Seeing a group of Jews and sitting and eating with them indicates lies and betrayal

A married woman seeing a Jewish temple in a dream indicates the evil that surrounds her

.Seeing war with the Jews for a sick person indicates that he will recover from the disease. It also indicates the disappearance of sadness and worry

Killing of a Jew indicates victory over enemies

Nothing antisemitic about this. It's science!

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!

10/06 Links Pt1: Rewarding a UN antisemite; UNRWA textbooks prompt funding ban in House bill; Jailed Iranian woman wins Nobel Peace Prize

From Ian:

Israel must rely only on itself when it comes to existential threats

One of the cornerstones of Israel's National Security Strategy, from Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923, to Ben Gurion in 1953 and Netanyahu in 2018, is the determination that Israel will defend itself by itself without any outside help, even from the United States. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added to the strategy another cornerstone clarifying that Israel must prepare itself for the scenario in which there is one or more nuclear-armed states in the region while doing everything within its power to prevent this.

There is no doubt that signing an agreement with Saudi Arabia that will include normalization is a task of the highest priority, which justifies taking many risks, so as not to miss the opportunity; but not all risks and not at any price. The reports on a potential deal, under the auspices of the Americans, raise substantial questions regarding some core issues and the required cost.

What is so problematic with the apparent nuclear concessions (in both Saudi Arabia and Iran) and how is this linked to an Israel-US defense treaty and to the certainty of this resulting in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East?

The Saudi demands that Israel can accept on the assumption that it will maintain its qualitative military edge (QME) are as follows: a defense treaty, mainly against Iran; expansion of arms deals; and a free-trade zone.

The problematic Saudi demand is the wish for a complete nuclear fuel cycle on its own soil. The "civilian excuse" is that they need these capabilities in order to exploit their natural resources: mining uranium; converting it to "yellowcake;" and then converting it to gas (UF6) and enriching it to the level required to produce fuel rods for power reactors (to generate electricity) for internal use as well as for export.

The Palestinian issue is of less interest to the Saudis, but it is being pushed very hard by the US. I think that dealing with this problem will be less problematic, as it is not an existential threat to Israel, so a solution will be incorporated into the agreements in some way. What is important is to make sure that it will not take center stage and divert attention away from the truly important and dangerous aspects of the deal.

The Saudi demands stem from the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015, which granted independent enrichment and advanced centrifuge R&D to the Iranians, on their own soil. One can understand where the Saudis are coming from without agreeing with them. The cheating Iranians received this, so why not also them? This argument will, of course, also be used by other countries such as Egypt, the UAE, Turkey, and Algeria and will start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Raising the faulty and misleading argument that if the Saudis do not receive these capabilities from the US under a controlled mechanism, they will receive them from other countries such as China, is not legitimate, as China has offered the Saudis only a controlled power reactor and not an enrichment program.

The main argument for allowing the enrichment on Saudi soil is based on Saudi Arabia's agreeing to any oversight and management requested by the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will prevent a future conversion of these capabilities to military purposes. But that is false. Teams of American and Israeli experts have reportedly found technical ways to "square the circle" but this does not change the basic cornerstone that a country cannot roll the dice when it comes to nuclear capabilities.

A New Year resolution for the UN

MK Ohad Tal is an Israeli legislator representing the Religious Zionist party and a former director of World Bnei Akiva

The whole world is starting to make good on their Jewish New Year resolutions at this time of year. I agree with PM Netanyahu that António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, should be making a few New Year resolutions of his own.

The United Nations does have its virtues. It played a pivotal role in the re-instatement of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel by irrevocably recognizing, in the UN’s very own founding charter, the Jewish people’s indigenous right to the Land of Israel (including Judea-Samaria). And as good neighbors in the Middle East, Israel is delighted that the United Nations did just as much and more, for the ancient Arab nation whose 20-odd spacious states are also members of the UN.

But today, the UN’s approach to the only Jewish state in the world is embarrassingly hostile. This was acknowledged a decade ago by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but the problem continues.

Secretary-General Guterres has personally issued twenty-six (!) reports criticizing and de-legitimizing Israel. The most recent was issued just a few months ago. These reports criticize Israel for an ordinary life activity - “advancing housing plans” - which all governments in the world engage in, of course. Criticizing normal life activities of and for the Jewish people is simply discriminatory. No-one levels such criticism on any other nation which is building homes for a budding population.

Over and over again, the United Nations’ secretary-general decries the only Jewish state in the world for alleged discrimination against the Arab nation. He disregards that an entire Arab state, Jordan, larger than Israel, has already been carved out of the land recognized as the Jewish homeland. Moreover, uncensured by Guterres, this Arab state openly practices discriminatory land practices against Jews -- by limiting land rights of those who are not “Jordanian nationals” - and by limiting “Jordanian nationals” to “any person not being Jewish”.

Arsen Ostrovsky: Rewarding a UN antisemite

Every year, the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) presents its “Outstanding Achievement Award” to a lawyer or jurist who, the organization believes, has made outstanding contributions to the field of international law.

This is a laudable endeavor, but it is puzzling that ABILA chose to give this year’s award to Navi Pillay, a U.N. official with a long-standing and deep-seated hostility towards and bias against Israel.

On paper, Pillay’s CV seems impeccable. She is a South African jurist, legal trailblazer and judge who served as a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The reality is much uglier: Pillay has devoted her long-standing international platform—including as the current chair of the permanent U.N. Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on Israel—to the relentless vilification of the Jewish state and the whitewashing of Palestinian terror under the guise of human rights and international law.

The CoI was created in the wake of the 2021 conflict between Hamas and Israel. It is ostensibly tasked with investigating supposed “underlying root causes” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the resolution establishing the commission did not even mention Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization sworn to Israel’s destruction that has fired almost 4,500 rockets at Israeli civilians.

Even before Pillay was appointed to the CoI, she had a long history of bias against Israel, referring to the Jewish state as an “apartheid regime” and accusing it of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

Pillay is an ardent advocate of the racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose primary goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. She has said that she hopes the BDS campaign will “catch on, as did the anti-apartheid movement.”

As far back as 2009, when Pillay was serving as U.N. High Commissioner, she applauded Iran’s participation in a U.N. conference purportedly dedicated to combating racism that was headed by then-Iranian president, genocidal antisemite and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

UN Watch: Confronting agenda Item 7 and anti-Israel bias at the UN

Hillel Neuer denounces agenda Item 7, the only agenda item targeting a single country at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

To find out more visit UN Watch Item 7

Humanizing the Huwara terrorist - he had a grandmother!

Yesterday, in Huwara, a Palestinian terrorist tried to murder a family driving on the main road.

Israeli police tracked him down and he was killed in a shootout.

Cue the humanizing stories in Palestinian media:

The young man, Jamal Mahmoud Majzoub, was martyred on Thursday evening, in an armed clash with occupation soldiers in Huwara, hours after he carried out a shooting attack on a settlers’ vehicle in Huwara as well.

Local sources reported that the martyr Jamal Mahmoud Majzoub, from the town of Faroh, south of Tulkarm, recently arrived in the country with his brother, coming from Jordan, and they live with their grandmother in the town of Faroh.

The occupation army launched a pursuit operation for the young man, Jamal Mahmoud Majzoub, which ended three hours later in an armed clash at the “Ainabus Junction,” as a result of which Jamal Majzoub became a martyr.

With the martyrdom of Jamal Majzoub, the number of martyrs this year rose to 255 martyrs, including 208 martyrs from the West Bank and Jerusalem, including 92 martyrs who rose in armed resistance.

Aw, he had a grandmother! And decided to murder Jews!

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!

Hypocritical Arab antisemites and bigots condemn Jews as racist

Some of the condemnations from the Arab world of the disgusting phenomenon of some idiotic Jews publicly spitting towards Christians and their churches in Jerusalem show an even greater degree of hypocrisy than we usually see - and that's saying something.

Here are a couple of examples.

The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the incidents, saying that "this behavior is a reflection of the culture of occupation, hatred, racism, and malice that is being spread by senior rabbis and extremist religious schools, whose followers take pride in practicing this behavior."

This lesson in intolerance is coming from a country whose Jewish population has gone from 20,000 to approximately zero. Not only that, but Lebanon has discriminated against its Palestinian Muslim population - while it allowed Palestinian Christians to become citizens over the years, Palestinian Muslims have been treated horribly, primarily because of their religion and concerns that they would upset Lebanon's fictional demographic balance between Christians, Shiites and Muslims.

Another laughable condemnation came from former Lebanese MP Amal Abu Zeid, who said, “This immoral behavior constitutes a sacrilege and expresses hostility and hatred, and is completely inconsistent with the sacred right to worship and pilgrimage to the holy places of all religions." Now, find me anyone in Lebanon - just one person - who defends the rights of Jews to visit and worship at the Temple Mount!

The head of the Palestinian National Council, Ruhi Fattouh, said that the Israeli government "embraces hatred towards religions and contempt for other beliefs, and expresses its lack of respect for the international community and the feelings of millions of Christians in the world." Under Palestinian rule, the population of Christians has dwindled to a token few, even in Bethlehem and other traditionally Christian cities. Palestinian Muslims routinely harass Christians in ways far worse than spitting.

The spitting is indefensible. But what the Arab world routinely does to its minorities is far, far worse. And there are hardly any anguished articles that talk about that.

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!

Pure antisemitism in @BBCArabic: "Observant Jews consider spitting on Christians a holiday ritual"

Earlier this week, some religious Jews were captured on video spitting in front of Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem.

A thoroughly stupid extremist named Elisha Yered posted on X that the custom of spitting next to a church or near priests is an “ancient and long-standing custom.”

His statements and the spitting incidents themselves were roundly condemned by Israeli officials and prominent rabbis.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner wrote Tuesday: “There is no Jewish law that you have to spit at idol worship. There is no such rule in the Gemara, nor in Maimonides, nor in the Shulchan Aruch. ... It simply causes disputes and quarrels and we lose from it. We have to educate the children to behave respectfully.”

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel David Lau said, "These immoral phenomena have certainly nothing to do with Jewish law."

After an earlier such incident in the summer, many prominent rabbis condemned the practice, including Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar issued a strong statement condemning the practice and said that those who spit at non-Jews are a chilul Hashem, desecrators of God's name, one of the most serious prohibitions in Jewish law:

But according to BBC Arabic, there are no rabbis who condemn spitting at or near Christians. On the contrary - religious Jews all agree that spitting on Christians is exactly how Jews are expected to celebrate Sukkot!

BBC Arabic released a video on their website and on X that both describes the spitting incidents and how Jews celebrate the Sukkot holiday, as if the two topics are related. Here's the headline translated into English:

One of the sections of the video says this (Arabic screenshot above; this is the screenshot translated into English:)

"Observant Jews consider spitting on Christians a holiday ritual."

Then they showed Yered's tweet.

Even the most disgusting apologists for the spitting don't say it is associated with celebrating Jewish holidays, let alone all religious Jews.

This is stright-up antisemitism and anti-Jewish incitement published by the BBC Arabic. And it isn't the first time....this week.

The BBC should not only remove the videos. They should not only publicly apologize - in English and Arabic - for posting these lies.

The BBC must immediately fire whomever wrote that hateful lie. That person has no journalistic integrity; on the contrary, the video producer is simply a hatemonger. If the BBC allows that person to remain in their job, any claims of impartiality that the BBC pretends to maintain are shown to be simple lies.

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!

10/05 Links Pt2: The Nuclear Secrets of the Yom Kippur War; Yisrael Medad: Judicial reforms protests are harming Israel; Jewish students need role models

From Ian:

The Nuclear Secrets of the Yom Kippur War

The Americans indeed confirm, through Blackbird reconnaissance and satellite imagery, that Egypt has deployed several Scud missiles in the Nile Delta that could reach deep into Israel. But suddenly, this becomes the least of their concerns. The images are sent to several American intelligence analysis units, including one specializing in identifying Soviet vehicles. Analysts conclude that the vehicles used to deploy the missiles are the same kind used for launching nuclear-tipped missiles. This alarming information is passed to the CIA's office at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, where they decide to share it with Israel.

"The Americans told us, 'What you're seeing here is essentially a Scud unit with nuclear warheads’," recounted Prof. Yuval Ne'eman, who was invited to the embassy to view the images. "The Americans gave us this picture and told us, 'There might be nuclear warheads on those Scuds’."

Shaken, Ne'eman quickly presented the dramatic information to Golda Meir and the cabinet, and later also to army chief Dado. "Dado ordered the deployment of the Jericho missiles," Ne'eman wrote, "and requested that they be positioned so that they could be clearly seen in satellite images. This way, the Russians, who were launching a new satellite every two days, could photograph them. The intent was to let them know, without explicitly stating, whether or not we had suitable warheads for these missiles, but that the missiles were ready."

This is high drama. If Israel fears it is about to be attacked with a nuclear Scud, and according to Ne'eman's account, exposes its Jericho missiles to create the impression that they are nuclear-tipped – this is a very dangerous global game, one that makes the Cuban Missile Crisis look almost like comedy in comparison. According to foreign reports, then – as now – the Jericho missiles, which can be fitted with nuclear warheads, were stored at a secret Air Force base near Beit Shemesh.

If the reports are accurate, it's likely that the base commander convened a meeting with senior officers on that particular evening. The commander briefed his team on the need for actions that would not be related to an immediate threat or actual combat. Instead, the focus would be on drawing the attention of American and Russian satellites. The goal was to provide Henry Kissinger with additional justification for escalating the airlift, while also giving the Russians a compelling reason to be concerned.

At the missile base, troops put on a show specifically designed to be captured by Soviet satellites. According to reports, a truck carrying a Jericho missile executed maneuvers in the yard of one of the bunkers. The missile was likely fitted with a dummy warhead, meaning it was not armed and would not detonate. The truck moved back and forth, raising and lowering the missile, all while in plain sight—without the usual shielding that prevents satellite imaging in similar circumstances.

Dino Brugioni, who at the time headed the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) for American Intelligence and was considered a guru among imagery intelligence analysts, wrote, "We observed activity at the Jericho missile base, and the CIA believed the missiles were armed with nuclear warheads."

Maybe yes, maybe no, but it seems likely that Israel did not yet have the capability to launch such missiles at the time, and the whole thing at the base was essentially a staged performance for Russian satellites. The Russians were supposed to interpret the images, become alarmed and instruct the Egyptians not to use their Scuds missiles. However, things didn't unfold as planned.

Instead of becoming alarmed and advising the Egyptians not to use their Scud missiles, the Soviets interpreted the maneuvers at the Israeli missile base as preparations for an attack and readied themselves for a counter-attack.

American intelligence intercepted Red Army orders to the commander of a strategic ground-to-ground missile brigade near Kyiv in Ukraine. The orders were to deploy and prepare to launch 12 missiles targeted at the Ramat David base, the nuclear reactor in Dimona and the oil refineries in Haifa.

Victims of Terror Need to Know They're Not Alone

20 years have passed since I survived one of the worst bus bombings in Jerusalem's history. On June 11, 2003, I was traveling on bus #14, when a Palestinian terrorist strapped with explosives detonated them. The explosion left 100 of us injured and took the lives of 17 innocent people, including everyone seated and standing around me. I had moved to Israel only a year-and-a-half before and, ironically, had been volunteering with organizations assisting victims of terrorism.

I can still vividly recall the sound of crushing metal and the blast tearing through the bus. Though I was burned and bleeding, I was alive, and someone helped me escape, pulling me through the torn frame to safety. I was rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital with shoulder and shrapnel wounds, burns, and cuts on my legs and face.

Currently residing in the U.S., I recently flew to Israel to mark the 20th anniversary of the attack and to sponsor a luncheon honoring the doctors, nurses and Hadassah staff members who cared for me. We invited other survivors of terrorist attacks who had been nursed back to health by Hadassah's exceptional medical team.

Those able to come included Moshe Frej, a volunteer medic in 2002 when he was shot in the back while caring for ambushed soldiers in Hebron. Gabby Elbaz Greener was a student when her bus was blown up in 1995 (she is now a Hadassah cardiologist). Aluma Mekaitan Guertzenstein, a high school senior in 2002 who lost the use of an arm due to shrapnel damage after a terrorist detonated a bomb on her school bus. Dvir Musai, who was 12 when, on a cherry-picking trip at a farm in 2002, he stepped on a landmine intended for the farm owner. Gila Halili Weiss, injured by a bomb in Jerusalem's Machane Yehudah market while buying pastries for Shabbat in 2002.

Yisrael Medad: Judicial reforms protests are harming Israel

THE CAMPAIGN camouflaged the fact that it had been the Supreme Court itself – notably its former president, Aharon Barak – that had instigated a judicial revolution three decades prior, which at the time was severely criticized by his fellow justices. Many in the political establishment were opposed to elements of what has since developed including many of those who oppose the government today.

Moreover, the etrog effect managed, for several months, to disconnect the protest activities from the background of the trials and charges that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was facing. It regularized outrageous illegal acts such as blocking main thoroughfares for hours, repeatedly, and yet escaped punishment.

(Similar actions during the 2005 Gaza disengagement had people in jail for weeks and even months.) It sanctified forms of military service refusal and disobedience and endangered Israel’s security by leading both Palestinian Authority terror groups and Iran to assume that Israel was imploding and weak, as a result of a breakdown in societal cohesion.

It made normative the usage of epithets of “Nazi,” “KKK,” “authoritarian dictatorship,” and a slew of additional imprecations, as well as poster images that mirrored far-right antisemitic portrayals of Jews.

It promoted facetious and shallow comparisons with Poland and Hungary’s internal situation while, on the other hand, ignoring the more correct comparisons with many other democratic societies. It also led to the encouragement of emigration, euphemistically called “relocation” to other countries, (the very same ones that they pointed to as illiberal and semi-fascist in order to denigrate the judicial reform).

In practice, the protest supported a policy of no compromise while threatening with voter punishment any opposition politician who sought to reach some sort of agreement. It reached out not only to Diaspora Jewry but to foreign governments, specifically the United States, to strip away any possible support for Israel’s government – and sought to have Israel punished financially.

It has assisted a revival of the worse forms of religious intolerance, with scenes at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square this past Yom Kippur, recalling the activities of the Soviet Yevsektsiya Jewish anti-clerical units.

The protest invaded private property and laid siege to the homes of ministers and members of Knesset, including in the hallways of their apartment buildings. Memorial services were disrupted and military cemeteries became political battlegrounds. Private bereavement was swept aside.

Distressingly, the protest has generated and motivated sub-groups that are exploiting the gatherings and public attention for more divisive aims – such as secularization – which has led to the breaking up of the Yom Kippur prayers in Tel Aviv, attacks on Chabad tefillin stands and the shaming of MK Tzvi Succot’s wife’s hair-covering on X (formerly Twitter).

I am sure the protesters feel they are on a just crusade. What they have wrought, I feel, is not quite right.