Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

What the media gets wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME when there is fighting in Gaza

Every time a war breaks out in Gaza, the media gets it wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

I described many of them in 2022; here is an updated version of that post.

A large percentage of Gaza rockets fall in Gaza, and many Gazans are killed because of them. I've documented this for years. I've shown how Hamas' own videos show rockets falling short. And there is evidence that sometimes Hamas fires weapons deliberately towards its own people!

This year, even with a dearth of coverage inside Gaza, I identified one likely victim of a jihadist rocket: Yusra Husni Salha, a 67-year old women from Gaza, who was almost certainly killed by a terror rocket that fell short in the yard of the Indonesian Hospital on Saturday, October 7.

And yes, Hamas often keeps weapons in mosques. And schools. And reporters have known for years that Hamas maintains a headquarters in the basement of Shifa Hospital, which happens to be at the hub of major Hamas underground tunnels.

When a family is killed in Gaza, it is very rare that it is an IDF mistake. Most of the time it is because a terrorist operative is in the house - either because he is a member of the family, sometimes it seems because he is using them as human shields. Other times it is because of Hamas rockets falling short. Sometimes it is because the IDF targeted a legitimate target that had a larger cache of explosives than was thought and it caused far more collateral damage than expected.

In the beginning of every war, this one included, Hamas and Islamic Jihad hides the names of most of those killed. They do this to make it look like a larger percentage of the dead are civilians. NGOs like PCHR follow Hamas' instructions and do not list the names of terrorists killed until they are told they may. (No one seems to worry that an NGO that hides the truth might not be exactly reliable.)

Speaking of, the Gaza Health Ministry and the "human rights" NGOs in Gaza (PCHR and Al Mezan) downplay any mention of terrorist casualties and often call terrorists "civilians" when they report the circumstances of those who have died. (Amnesty's obscenely dishonest "Gaza Platform" with statistics from the 2014 war relied on PCHR's initial reports, and as a result it lists more "civilians" than even the UN does. They know they are lying, I've let them know enough times, and they refuse to correct it.)

The media still has no idea what "proportionality" means in the context of international law. They make scorecards of how many have been killed on both sides as if the results are supposed to be "fair," implying that if only more Jews would be killed, then they can all be happy. They haven't done it yet because more Jews have been killed so far, but as soon as things turn around, the game will begin.

The media has never reported that Hamas' interior ministry instructs Gazans to lie to the media, giving detailed instructions.

The media (and human rights groups) also don't understand the principle of distinction, pretending that it means that Israel cannot bomb a high value target if there are civilians around. It can, under proper circumstances.

Then again, the media is also part of the problem. Hamas has almost complete control over the media in Gaza. Citizens who speak freely to media know that they will be punished. Everyone sticks to the Hamas-approved script. International reporters know that they will be kicked out if they say anything not to Hamas' liking. Yet the media hardly ever mentions this, giving a false impression that their reporting is objective.

The media will also ignore most of Hamas' war crimes. Outside the massacre that sparked this war, the media ignores Hamas using ambulances or "press" credentials to transport weapons, using Gazans as human shields, using mosques as weapons depots, shooting from schools- - I once counted 19 different war crimes that Hamas has done in the Gaza wars, but "human rights groups" somehow only notice and denounce one.

Here are some other must-read background info that will make you more knowledgeable than the most prestigious journalists from the New York Times, the BBC and CNN:

* Israel's success in keeping civilian casualties to a minimum in an urban war zone where the military targets are purposefully placed among civilians is unparalleled.

* The decisions as to what Israel targets in Gaza is detailed, lengthy and adheres to international law. The media and Israel haters portray Israel as a spoiled baby who lashes out at anything that moves and I've never seen a serious mainstream media article that describes anything close to the reality that military experts understand.

If the media would miss one or two of these topics, there wouldn't be a problem. They are in the job of simplifying things for readers. But they consistently get basic things wrong, and always in the direction of making Israel look bad.

It is no accident.

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The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company issued a statement on Saturday morning, a few hours after Hamas invaded Israel, saying, "The company confirms that all lines and feeders from inside the Green Line [Israel] have been disrupted since Saturday morning due to the current security situation, "

This means that either Hamas deliberately cut the electricity lines or that their massive rocket barrage to the South damaged every single electricity line from Israel. It was not an Israeli decision.

This was two days before Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, including electricity.

Many used Gallant's statement to claim that Israel is violating international law by inflicting collective punishment on all Gazans based on the actions of Hamas. But at least in the context of electricity, it appears that Gallant was more posturing than stating a policy.

Because international law does not require Israeli engineers to risk their lives to fix the lines that Hamas cut while Hamas is still shooting thousands of rockets towards them.

Hamas cut the lines and Hamas is ensuring that the lines cannot be repaired on the Israeli side.

(CORRECTION: An earlier version misunderstood another graphic from the Gaza electricity FB page.)

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!

10/10 Links Pt2: A community forged in pain; The Hamas Einsatzgruppen Attack; Biden vows assistance to Israel, warns others not become involved in fighting

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A community forged in pain

I am in Israel, where the sense of collective grief, horror and anxiety is off the scale. The situation that unfolded last Saturday is beyond the worst Israeli nightmare.

As thousands of missiles were fired into Israel from Gaza, around one thousand Hamas terrorists stormed across the border fence and attacked communities in towns, villages and kibbutzim across the south of the country.

Their aim was the mass murder of Israeli civilians. They went from house to house slaughtering the occupants and burning down their homes.

They gunned people down in their cars; they killed elderly men and women and small children; they hacked one Israeli to death with an axe. At an open-air music festival, armed paragliders mowed down at least 260 young people who were raked with gunfire as they ran for their lives.

Women were raped and burned alive; the bodies of murdered Israelis paraded around Gaza were stripped naked, spat upon and desecrated; babies were slaughtered in front of their parents; mothers with children in their arms were abducted and swallowed up with others in Gaza’s subterranean infrastructure of terror tunnels to be used as hostages. Their likely fate is unthinkable.

Heartbreaking images are now seared forever into the mind: an elderly, terrified Holocaust survivor being abducted into Gaza without the medication needed to keep her alive; a small Jewish child, alone and bewildered, being tormented on a Gaza street by Palestinian children who are all taught to hate and murder Jews.

Israel has been at war many times. It has experienced many terrorist atrocities and many thousands of rocket attacks.

This was something different. Barbarism and depravity against Jews on this scale hasn’t been experienced since the Holocaust.

MEMRI: A Statement By The President And Founder Of MEMRI On The Hamas Einsatzgruppen Attack

At this bitter hour of loss and calamity there are countless matters that need our attention, but I wish to address only the most crucial and important issue – namely, our loved ones, who have been murdered, wounded, abducted, or who are missing.

The most pressing issue right now is to put forward a practical offer on the table. I, Yigal Carmon, a former Colonel in the IDF Intelligence Corps and a former counterterrorism advisor to two Israeli Prime Ministers – Shamir and Rabin – who in late August published a report on MEMRI's website, the Middle East Research Media Institute, warning of the danger of a looming war in September-October – a report that nobody heeded – I propose to approach all international bodies as well as all Arab countries that speak to us – Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and make the following offer:

Hamas demands the release of all the Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails. We say yes. In fact, we are the ones offering it ourselves. We are willing to release them all, without delay, without precondition, without exception, in return for all our loved ones who have been taken hostage, who are missing, who have been murdered, injured, dead, alive. In return for all, we will immediately release all of the prisoners to any destination they choose, including Gaza, including Egypt and Jordan. This is our bargaining chip, and we offer it all.

It is crucial that the families and all Israeli citizens know that we offered everything – everything – in return for our loved ones, and if Hamas refuses this offer, the entire world, as well as the citizens of Israel and their families, will know that there is no choice but to continue pulverizing Hamas. The families of the Palestinian prisoners will understand this as well.

Now to another matter. The Hamas attack cannot be compared to the '73 war, which is a war that we now miss. Not even to the massacres of the Islamic State. The comparison to animals made by Israel Defense Minister Gallant is also not appropriate, since no animal commits murder out of sheer cruelty. The only appropriate comparison is to the Einsatzgruppen, the paramilitary death squads of the SS of the Nazi Germany, who were attached to the 4th Wehrmacht Army groups that invaded Poland and Russia in the outbreak of World War II. Their one and only mission was to murder Jews wherever they found them. That is the only relevant comparison, and I propose to anyone that has a heart to stick to this comparison.

My institute, MEMRI, is currently establishing a Telegram account in the spirit of Yad Vashem, to document the murders, including of Holocaust survivors, that Hamas committed on that day, October 7. This is a project that should have been undertaken by the Israeli government, but nothing can be expected of this government. We must document everything. These Einsatzgruppen murderers have committed the same kind of murders that their predecessors did. So that the world will know, and so that Israeli children will learn about October 7, 2023 in schools. So that the world doesn't forget and is not allowed to forget.

I ask anyone who has in his possession relevant videos of these atrocities to send them to MEMRI.org. We will post them in the appropriate manner, since we have to keep in mind that they are not suitable for any viewer, just as materials to be documented as acts of horror, like in the Holocaust. Even the horrors of the Holocaust no one can watch. But still, we created Yad Vashem to document the Holocaust.

MEMRI: The Hamas Einsatzgruppen Attack – October 7, 2023

I personally warned about the likelihood of war in my August 31, 2023 essay on MEMRI.org, titled Signs Of Possible War In September-October. While Iran's Islamist terrorist regime provides Hamas with military and strategic support, and training, the real power that enabled this operation was the Aal Thani family that rules Qatar.

The Aal Thani family is Hamas's enabler. In fact, its support of Hamas constitutes a direct attack on the state of Israel. Qatar funded the building of Hamas's military empire in Gaza: a huge underground city with military headquarters and connecting tunnels; a massive missile arsenal; and 30,000 killers and the munitions required for a long war – in short, everything that was needed for the October 7 attack.

The tragic answer is: It was a policy for over a decade under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that gave Qatar a free hand to send $1.5 billion to Hamas, which enabled Hamas to build its military empire.

The explanation for this anti-Israel policy was the presumption that the Israeli government is so wise that it is buying Hamas, and quiet from Hamas, with other parties' money. But this never happened. Instead, Netanyahu sold out our lives and our security for a reckless illusion. And the deal with Qatar may have served Netanyahu in other areas.

Hamas is not the only Islamist organizations that Qatar has supported over the years. The Aal Thani family supported the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As Richard Clarke, counterterrorism advisor to Presidents Clinton and H.W. Bush, wrote, "Had the Qataris handed [KSM] over to us as requested in 1996, the world might have been a very different place." As of this writing, Qatar finances terrorists who live in Doha, according to David Cohen, former U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, and according to the records of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT).

Qatar also supports the Taliban, ISIS, and the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Currently, lawsuits are underway against Qatar's financing of terrorism across Europe and in the U.S.

Qatar is a state sponsor of terrorism, and should be proscribed as a terrorist state on all international sanctions lists. The Aal Thani family has managed to conceal its crime of supporting Islamist terrorist organizations thanks to its tremendous wealth, which they have used as a tool for many years – even though its crimes included responsibility for 9/11.

Qatar's latest support for the Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack in Israel was also evident on its television channel Al-Jazeera, which is placed at the service of Hamas's leaders – commander Muhammad Deif and "military spokesman" Abu Ubaida – whose statements they have aired numerous times, just as they did with Osama bin Laden's speeches both before and after 9/11. To the shame of the Israeli government, Al-Jazeera has not been stopped by either administrative or legal means. With the Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack and with the killing of Holocaust survivors, they have gone one step too far. The game is now over.

This is something that neither U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is the stepson of the late American Polish-born Holocaust survivor Dr. Samuel Pisar, UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education, nor President Biden will never forgive, unless they have lost all moral consideration

Brendan O'Neill: After the slaughter, the victim-blaming

We can now see the double racism in pseudo-progressive politics. There’s the racism of hating Israel above all other nations. And there’s the racism of viewing Palestinian Arabs as so childlike, so fundamentally lacking in agency, that they can never be held meaningfully responsible for what they do. Make no mistake: when radicals say Israel is ‘the only one to blame’ for the atrocities it experienced on Saturday, they aren’t only demonising Israel – they’re also infantilising Palestine. They’re reducing the Arabs of Gaza to a kind of pre-human species capable of nothing more than reacting to stimuli. In this case, the stimuli of Israeli policy. Israel acts and these people – these curious, blameless people – respond in a Pavlovian fashion. That’s what they’re saying.

It’s a bigoted lie. At every stage of their barbarous assault on Israeli civilians, the Hamas terrorists were making a choice. They chose to plan the attack. They chose to load their guns. They chose to fire them at elderly people waiting for a bus and twentysomethings dancing at a festival. They chose to kidnap grandmothers. They chose to parade distressed or dead women before the mob. And at every stage they could have chosen not to do those things. In claiming Israel is wholly responsible for what Hamas did, the racial paternalists of the supposedly pro-Palestine woke left dehumanise Arabs to a staggering degree. They make Israel the only adult in the Middle East, the only entity with agency, the only nation mature enough to enjoy criminal responsibility, while its attackers are reduced to the naïfs of world affairs.

This is racist. There is no other word for it. We are witnessing the rise of a neo-Orientalism. The great Palestinian writer Edward Said described Orientalism as a Eurocentric prejudice against Arab peoples that tended to view them as deviant and lascivious. It was a mix of curiosity and contempt for the Arab world, he said. Under the neo-Orientalism of today’s army of upper-middle-class Palestine pitiers, Arabs are innocents, not deviants; blameless, not cruel. Of course it is racist to depict all Arabs as evil – but it is equally racist to depict them as being incapable of evil. To imply that they lack the free will to choose between good and bad that is enjoyed by us white Westerners, and also by the Jews of Israel. The woke elites might be enemies of Israel, but with their ironically imperious absolution of Palestinians of the burdens of agency and adulthood, they’re no friends of Palestine.

Some are referring to the attack on Israel as ‘Israel’s 9/11’. In fact it’s another 9/11 for us all. It’s a turning-point event for humankind. As with the apocalyptic barbarism visited on the United States on 11 September 2001, it raises the question: are we going to stand against the regressive forces of anti-Westernism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, all of which are varieties of anti-humanism, or are we not? America was likewise held responsible for its suffering in September 2001. ‘They can’t see why they are hated’, said a nauseating headline in the Guardian two days after that slaughter of 3,000 people. Many failed the moral test 9/11 presented us with. They turned against America, turned against Western values, said we had it coming, cosied up to radical Islam, disappeared down the rabbit hole of identity politics. Let’s not allow that to happen again.

October 10 marks the birthday of my late son, Danny, who would have been 60 today. A diehard humanist who wanted to believe that man is not a predator to other men. We hoped that his brutal murder would mark a turning point in the history of man inhumanity to man. Saturday's…
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) October 10, 2023

If you ask the Palestinians, their Muslim and socialist friends how they can justify heinous war crimes like kidnap, murdering civilians in cold blood, rape and beheading children, they will give a litany of reasons like Gaza is an open-air prison, they have no freedom, they are living in crowded conditions, they are desperate and hopeless, and they have no choice.

Here is an article by James Baster of the UN, describing Gaza in the 1950s, under Egyptian rule, from the Middle East Journal Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer, 1955):

[In] 1947 Gaza was a rather prosperous market town functioning as a collecting and forwarding center for the citrus, wheat, barley, and durra crops of the Gaza and Beersheba districts. About one-fifth of the whole Palestinian citrus crop and 150,000 tons of cereals were annually collected here and sent north, partly for export from Jaffa. There were small local industries and occasionally a stray tourist, fresh from the glories of the pyramids of Egypt, braved the discomforts of the railway journey across the desert from Cairo and visited Samson's tomb. The population of what is now known as the Gaza Strip, including the town of Gaza in the center, was then about 70,000. For this population, communications with the outside world were good. Both a tarmac road and the standard-gauge railway line from Egypt to Haifa and Beirut ran through Gaza. There was no port worth the name, but 40 or 50 small sailing vessels might be expected to call at Gaza during the late summer when the winds were safe. There was a small jetty for lighters at the end of the beach road two miles from the town.

Since 1947, the situation has changed indeed. The visit to Samson's tomb would now embarrass the pious, since it was continuously occupied for several years by 14 refugees. The road and railway line to Jaffa and the north is blocked by the armistice boundary south of Majdal, and the road to Beersheba by the armistice boundary skirting the eastern edge of Gaza town. The only remaining land link with the outside world is along the road and railway which run across some 200 miles of desert into Egypt. But since the Gaza Strip is under military occupation by the Egyptian army, the desert is not the only obstacle to movement across this southern frontier into Egypt.

In this small area are concentrated 219,000 refugees in addition to the original population, now increased to a further 90,000. The population density of some 3,000 per square mile is about seven times that of the United Kingdom. Since about half the area consists of uninhabitable sand dunes, the population per square mile of inhabitable land is 6,000, or about seven times the population density of Belgium.

The refugees, almost all Muslims, came mainly from the north, large numbers arriving from the Jaffa area in small boats during 1948-49. Six thousand were added when the remaining inhabitants of the Kantara refugee camp in Egypt were transferred into the Gaza Strip in September 1949. Many of the refugees live in enormous camps, of which two contain over 20,000 people each.

The population has been largely isolated since 1949, as it has always been difficult to get entry and exit permits from the Egyptian authorities. ...For all practical purposes it would be true to say that for the last six years in Gaza over 300,000 poverty stricken people have been physically confined to an area the size of a large city park.

.... Under present conditions, with access to the outer world barred by the armistice frontiers when it is not obstructed by the Sinai desert, it is doubtful whether the Strip would support by its own resources even 10,000 people at a tolerable standard of life..

High population density. Occupation by another nation. Severe restrictions on travel and goods. An open-air prison (Egypt shipped all its Palestinian refugees to Gaza in 1949.) No economic prospects. A population time bomb in the making.

In short, every single excuse people use to justify Palestinian violence against Jews existed 70 years ago under Egyptian rule - and more, since the Egyptians didn't allow Gaza to have any sort of self-government outside a puppet regime. And Gaza had no outside NGOs helping them.

So if terrorism is a "natural response" to living in an "open air prison," where was the violence by Palestinians against their jailers?

No, the only Palestinian violence in the 1950s was against, of course, the Jews. In the 1950s, Palestinian "fedayeen" murdered hundreds of Jews who lived near Gaza - without Israeli "occupation" as an excuse.

Sound familiar?

If you know a little history of continuous Palestinian attacks on Jewish civilians - many just as heinous as October 7, if not as huge - for well over century, you can easily see that the excuses given for Palestinian terror are nothing but lies.

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Earlier today, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht suggested that Palestinian civilians in fear to leave the Gaza Strip for Egypt for the duration of the war. Later, the IDF clarified that this was not an official call telling residents to go to Egypt.

Which brings up the question: wouldn't that be the best possible thing for Palestinians who are in the war zone now?

Arabs throughout history have faced wars, and many have moved from one area to the next. Millions of refugees left Syria and Iraq to go to neighboring countries. Most eventually return.

For the most part, while they aren't happy about it, their Arab neighbors have accepted (if not exactly welcomed) the influxes of refugees.

Egypt too has reluctantly hosted hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Sudan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

But almost no Palestinians!

The same "progressives" that insist that countries have open borders to welcome refugees who flee for little reason other than economic opportunity are surprisingly quiet about suggesting that the obvious place for Palestinians to flee is Egypt. Nations would bankroll the temporary structures and infrastructure needed. It would be just like Jordan's camps that still exist on the Syrian border.

People fleeing wars go to neighboring states. Why can't Gazans?

Of course, Egypt doesn't want them. Egypt's border to Gaza is heavily guarded. It has strict rules on which Gazans are allowed to enter and where they can go once they come.

But nevertheless, according to reports, Egypt is preparing for an influx of Gazans it does not want:

While the government source told Mada Masr that the government has issued a security alert on its borders with Gaza as it does not want its borders to be breached, preparations are being made in case that eventuality comes to pass.

At Sunday’s crisis management meeting, those in attendance discussed a plan that would see tents set up in the two Egyptian cities closest to Gaza — Sheikh Zuwayed and Rafah — and to identify government buildings, such as schools or service headquarters, that can act as temporary shelters, said an official source in the North Sinai Governorate General Office who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Each tent would contain mattresses, blankets, and food supplies, water and meals would be provided and medical service points set up in the vicinity.

The plan, the source continued, is to be implemented if the president’s office gives instructions to do so, said the source. Instructions from the president’s office also stated that if the president tells North Sinai to implement the plan to put up shelters, the Armed Forces are to enclose the tents with cordons and Palestinians should not enter the walled city of Arish.

No one wants to host huge numbers of refugees. But people who claim to care about Palestinians, who are raising the alarm that the Gazans have no place to go to be safe, are curiously silent about this obviously flawed but temporary solution. It is certainly the least of all evils.

So why is the very idea - of Gaza civilians taking shelter in a relatively friendly Arab country - forbidden to be discussed?

Because the people who pretend to care about Palestinian lives really don't. They only want to use Palestinians as pawns, as they've been used since 1948 by the Arab world. Every Palestinian who is in misery is a potential terrorist or a potential subject for a newspaper article about how cruel Israel is. Every dead Palestinian is a victory for those who hate Israel.

Israel would love for the Gaza civilians to get out of the way so it can destroy the terrorist infrastructure and the terrorists. Hamas wants to continue to use them as human shields. Gaza's civilians want to have the choice of where they go.

And ostensible "pro-Palestinian activists" are on Hamas' side.

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

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10/10 Links Pt1: Vengeance After a Pogrom; ‘The Babies, The Mothers, The Fathers’: Israel Shows World Aftermath of Hamas Massacre; "Gas the Jews' on the steps of the Sydney Opera House

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Vengeance After a Pogrom

So it is not enough to stop Hamas in its tracks and get it to stop doing what it’s doing, to go back into its hidey-hole and live to earn the propagandistic word-vomit support of Mehdi Hasan and Ilhan Omar. The blood of every Israeli who died (and was wounded) in these attacks must be avenged because not to do so is effectively to excuse the murders themselves in the most profound moral sense. Vengeance is an act of memory. It says the people avenged were of such value that their passing must make everything stop until that passing is commemorated in kind.

This is why the inevitable (and already sounded) calls for “restraint” in the face of the Simchat Torah pogrom are statements of moral and spiritual idiocy. Except to the extent that restraint is always warranted—if you drive 200 miles an hour on a switchback on your way to getting your vengeance, you will show a lack of restraint that will get you killed—there is no moral benefit to restraint per se. Should you act with restraint if an old woman is being beaten up on a subway car right next to you? Should you act with restraint when a tiny child is carrying a potful of boiling water? Of course not. Restraint itself isn’t a virtue. It is one of a variety of responses to immediate conditions that do not have the clearest solutions.

Israel should not restrain itself. It should extirpate the evil done to it and its people. It should avenge their blood. Sorry, milquetoasts. Go retreat into your comforting delusions. Amalek may soon come for you too.

Matthew Continetti: No Daylight

For Israel’s cause is just. It has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to provoke hundreds of terrorists to invade its country, infiltrate dozens of communities and IDF posts, murder hundreds of innocents, and seize more than a hundred captives. Unless you count the very existence of a Jewish State as a provocation—which Hamas and its fellow travelers in the West do. To their eternal shame.

Right now, moral support of Israel may seem to be symbolic or easy, compared with the hard work of military logistics and the backroom wheeling and dealing necessary to give Israel the time to finish the job. Soon, however, international opinion will mobilize against Israel. The pleas for surrender will be echoed by the "democratic" socialist squad here at home. If the Biden administration truly stands with Israel, it will ignore the jackals, explain why Israel is right, and continue to replenish the weapon stocks of the Jewish State until Hamas has no power over Gaza and the terrorists scatter to the wind.

What Biden cannot do is follow the example of his former boss. "When there is no daylight [between America and Israel], Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states," Barack Obama told the Washington Post back in 2012. As usual, he had things precisely backwards. America gains credibility among the nations of the world when we follow through on our promises, support our allies, and act from a position of strength. Obama’s second term demonstrated the costs of "daylight" between America and Israel, and it is a price everyone still must pay.

The Abraham Accords signed under Donald Trump proved Obama wrong. Israel’s allies multiply when it is strong, and when American support is unequivocal. That is the model the Biden administration must follow if it wants to make good on its pledges of support. It must work tirelessly to allow the Israelis to destroy the military capability of Hamas and to demonstrate Israel’s capacity to destroy its enemies.

This will not be easy work. America must demonstrate continual support for the IDF in the face of inevitable media criticism and global upheaval. If we falter, then the adversary, whether he is in Moscow or Tehran or Beijing or Pyongyang, will feel emboldened. In this new world, where conflicts from Eastern Europe to East Asia are beginning to merge into one, America cannot afford to waver. The U.S.-Israel alliance must be more than pieces of paper. It must be more than an emotionally satisfying Tweet. There must be no daylight between us.

Israeli Fatalities in Hamas Attack Reach 900

The death toll in Israel from the Hamas surprise attack and subsequent battles rose above 900, including at least 123 soldiers. 130 people are thought to have been abducted and taken into Gaza.

Over 500 people remained hospitalized, many with life-threatening injuries; over 2,700 have been injured since Saturday.

The IDF said it had managed to seal the border, mining areas around breaches as a stopgap against further incursions.

"In the last day, not a single terrorist entered via the fence," said IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. He added that the military had not identified any tunnels crossing from Gaza into Israeli territory.

300,000 IDF reservists have been mobilized.

Lt.-Col. Richard Hecht said the bodies of 1,500 terrorists had been located in Israel. Hundreds more have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed on one day.

As President of the State of Israel, I speak to you now from our capital city Jerusalem, under the dark shadow of war, as my nation continues to endure a savage attack from a cruel and inhumane enemy >> pic.twitter.com/1EU8fZYhIS
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) October 9, 2023

Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel is at war. We didn't want this war. It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage way. But though Israel didn't start this war, Israel will finish it. Once, the Jewish people were stateless. Once, the Jewish people were defenseless. No longer.
Hamas will understand that by attacking us, they have made a mistake of historic proportions. We will exact a price that will be remembered by them and Israel's other enemies for decades to come.
The savage attacks that Hamas perpetrated against innocent Israelis are mindboggling: slaughtering families in their homes, massacring hundreds of young people at an outdoor festival, kidnapping scores of women, children and elderly, even Holocaust survivors. Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS.
And just as the forces of civilization united to defeat ISIS, the forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas. I want to thank President Biden for his unequivocal support. I want to thank leaders across the world who are standing with Israel today.
In fighting Hamas, Israel will win this war, and when Israel wins, the entire civilized world wins.

Terror apologist and pseudo-scholar Norman Finkelstein had a podcast Sunday where he discussed with his guest Mouin Rabbani, another sham scholar, the Hamas attack on Israel.

Rabbani refused to believe that any civilians were attacked; it was all probably Zionist propaganda:

Yes, there are reports which appear to be increasingly substantiated that there was a mass casualty event at a rave that was being held in the Negev Desert. Was that part of the planning does that help explain the timing of the operation? I really don't know. I would also say given -- as you would know better than anyone -- given the nature of Israeli and pro-Israeli propaganda that I would like to withhold confirmation and judgment until the facts are out.

By Sunday afternoon, there were numerous eyewitness reports in the media of Hamas targeting civilians - and this podcast was about that topic - and neither Finkelstein nor his "expert" guest had felt that any off that information was valid, and they assumed that Hamas would never attack civilians.

Rabbani doubled down:

I think first we need to define terrorism. I would argue that any armed action that is directed at a military target can in no way be characterized as terrorism. So, to the extent that what we saw yesterday was a military offensive against the Israeli military, it simply cannot be characterized as terrorism.

That tells you a little about how much self-deception the Israel haters have.

Rabbani then gave his audience another example of his "expertise:"

And a final point concerns settlers, because settlers are typically characterized as civilians but these are effectively armed auxiliaries of the Israeli military and there was a court case - I can't remember if it was in New York or something in the late 1970s - where the judge ruled that a family that was suing I think the P.L.O. because a settler who had some connection with the United States was killed, the judge ruled that settlers were, in his words, “willing participants in a civil war.”

I found the case he referred to - it was an attempt by Israel to extradite a terrorist from the US who attacked a bus in the West Bank, killing one passenger, in 1986. A lower court judge ruled that it was a political act and therefore protected. The ruling was overturned, partially because the original judge was wrong about defining all settlers as combatants:

While Magistrate Caden adopted the broadest possible definition of what constitutes a political act, he made some effort to justify his determination here within the framework discussed above. Acknowledging that the settlers "do not fit the description of military personnel as it is commonly thought of," Magistrate's Opinion at 52, the Magistrate concluded that all settlers were subject to the kind of attack at issue here because "at a minimum they are willing participants in a civil war or violent community conflict designed to acquire a long sought after homeland." Id. This analysis, however, is contrary to the record.

Whether there was a violent political uprising sufficient to trigger the application of the political offense exception to an attack directed against an Israeli military vehicle, which is assumed for present purposes, there was no "civil war or violent community conflict" raging on the West Bank in April of 1986 of sufficient magnitude to transform every Palestinian and Israeli living on the West Bank into a combatant "capable of fitting the definition of either civilian or soldier."

Rabbani memorized the exact words because they fit his belief system, and conveniently forgot everything else about the case including the decade it happened in

Then Finkelstein weighs in with his own ignorance and bias:

Norman Finkelstein
I would like to add one more point. I recognize the distinction between civilians and combatants. [Moulin: Yes, that's the key distinction.] However, I know I will seem to be contradicting myself, and that's because I think neither legal formulas nor sociological texts can, in all circumstances, capture the complexity of life. Most of the Hamas militants, probably the ones who broke through the fence, okay?

Mouin Rabbani
It's probably their first time out of Gaza.

NF:
It's their first time out of Gaza because you assume they're mostly in their 20s. The blockade has gone on now for 18 years. They grew up in a concentration camp. They want to be free. One of the natures of the current technology is they get to see on the screen all these people walking free. They want to be free. They joined Hamas, they volunteered. Yes, by international law, they constitute combatants. Do I think they're legitimate targets because they're combatants? You'll never convince me. You will never convince me.

I know what the law says. I know what I'm legally obliged to say. I know what as a scholar or reported scholar I'm supposed to say. But, are you going to convince me a person who grew up in a concentration camp and wants to breathe free air, is - to use the language of international law - a legitimate target, I can't do it. I cannot. Now, people are going to say, “you're a hypocrite, you say you uphold international law, you know the fundamental principle of international law is the principle of distinction. Now you're contradicting yourself.” Yeah, I'll admit it. I don't think legal formulas can capture every situation. And I don't believe a child who was born into a concentration camp is a legitimate target. If he, in this case, it is he, if he wants to be free. I can't see it.

Which means, according to Finkelstein, it doesn't matter what war crimes the Hamas terrorist does - killing civilians, rape, murdering babies, hostage taking - they cannot be attacked by Israel as military targets because they only want to be free.

That is just a small indication of the dishonesty and immorality of the anti-Israel crowd.

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The Hamas attack on Saturday could have been limited to military targets. They successfully overran IDF outposts and killed scores of soldiers, kidnapping more of them. Such an operation would have been a spectacular display of strategy and intelligence. One could understand Palestinian pride at such an attack.

But Hamas' goal, and the goal of their Iranian consultants, wasn't to defeat the IDF in a battle. The army was not the target of the operation. The IDF soldiers were a mere roadblock on the way to the real goal - of murdering, raping and kidnapping as many Jews as possible.

The kibbutzim weren't a military target. The villages weren't a military target. The music festival wasn't a military target. But they were the primary targets of the Palestinian terrorists, who gleefully took videos of their attacks against women and children, showing naked women as trophies, burning houses to force Jews to leave and be murdered, shooting rockets not to directly kill the Jews but to force them to run to shelters where they could be slaughtered en route.

Today, there are many articles in Arabic media about how this operation restored "dignity" to Palestinians. Al Jazeera, which was in the forefront of celebrating 9/11, published "Al-Qassam [Hamas] succeeded in restoring all meanings of dignity, pride, power and victory among Palestinians and Arabs."

Killing Jewish civilians isn't collateral damage. It is the goal. It is the highest aspiration of Palestinians. And judging from the responses in Arab editorials, it is one that is shared by a great percentage of the Arab world.

Comparing anyone to Nazis is almost always a lazy rhetorical device, meant to shock more than illuminate. But seeing the glee that accompanied this attack, as well as all other "successful" attacks on Jews in Israel, points to one comparison that cannot be ignored.

Certainly there were some Nazis who were extraordinarily sadistic, whose hate of Jews prompted them to come up with new ways of humiliating and breaking the spirit of Jewish victims. But much of the horror of the Holocaust was that it turned murder into an assembly line process. For the Nazis, dehumanizing the Jews was a necessary precondition for masses of Germans to take part in the genocide. But the Nazis tried to shield the Germans from seeing the murders directly.

The US Holocaust Museum's article on the mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen who murdered up to two million Jews, describes how the shootings morphed into the initial gassings: "The mass shootings were resource-intensive, requiring many shooters and escort guards as well as guns, ammunition, and transport. Concerns about the inefficiency of the shootings and their psychological impact on the shooters led to the development of special vans outfitted with engines that pumped carbon monoxide into sealed passenger compartments. "

The only psychological impact we have seen in the Arab world to the deliberate slaughter of hundreds of innocent Jews in a single day is an overflow of happiness and glee.

The German people and other antisemites in Eastern Europe who enabled the Holocaust with their centuries-old hate of Jews were not, on the whole, gleeful about the killings (unless they could directly profit by stealing the Jews' possessions.) They looked at murdering Jewish children the same way they looked at someone exterminating rats and mosquitoes - a dirty but necessary job. The gas chambers murdered the Jews while protecting the ":civilized" Germans from having to witness their deaths.

The Arabs, on the other hand, revel in trading videos of dead Jews like baseball cards.

Germans didn't hand out sweets on the street corners for every dead Jew. The Palestinians do - and not one of them says publicly how disgusting this is.

The Palestinians aren't embarrassed at their glee. Much of the larger Arab world is gleeful as well. People have rightly noted that Simchat Torah was Israel's 9/11 - but this is not only true from the victims' side but from the attackers' side as well. The same spontaneous celebrations that broke out in Arab capitals on September 11, 2001 are being seen from Muslims living in Western capitals, today, because so many Jews were slaughtered. As I noted earlier today, one Al Jazeera columnist said that the entire Muslim world was celebrating, saying the massacre and rapes "inspired hope in the hearts of the Palestinians at home and abroad, and in the hearts of the Arab and Islamic peoples, in an unprecedented way."

Palestinians will be writing poems and songs celebrating their murder of Jews for years and decades to come.

The idea that killing Jews is the ultimate source of pleasure can be seen in another way. According to the IDF, some 1,500 terrorist bodies have been found in Israel. For all the hundreds of Jews killed, more Hamas members were killed already outside the airstrikes in Gaza. Sacrificing more than one militant to kill each Israeli civilian is still considered "dignified."

One can easily imagine the parents of the 1,500 dead Palestinians in terms of the story of Sisera's mother in the Song of Deborah, being comforted knowing that her son's troops are sharing "a womb or two for every soldier." But the Palestinian parents are more monstrous than Sisera's mother - they know their sons are not coming home, but they feel that the Jews they murdered and the women they raped made their deaths worthwhile.

Can anyone doubt that Palestinians would happily use a nuclear bomb to destroy Israel even if it killed most of them as well? Can anyone doubt that the Palestinians would happily architect a new Holocaust to murder the seven million Jews in Israel if they had the capability?

We are seeing Palestinian supporters worldwide celebrating dead, raped and kidnapped Jews. They aren't Nazis. But in a narrow sense, they are far worse.

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On Sunday, the Democratic Socialists of America held a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square.

As they often do, they held signs and chanted slogans like "By any means necessary" and "Resistance is justified when people are occupied."

These are old slogans to be sure, but the media and the Jewish Left never really noticed before what they literally mean - that Palestinians are allowed to do the most depraved war crimes against civilians in the name of "resistance."

Pro-Hamas rallies oversea were more explicit in their hate. In Germany, sweets were handed out celebrating the outrages.

And coming a day after Palestinians did exactly that, murdering and kidnapping babies and raping women, even the hard-core Jewish Left became squeamish at seeing their purported allies supporting the most vile antisemitic terrorist attack in the region's history.

Joshua Leifer, contributing editor for the socialist Jewish Currents, saw enough:

Turned on my phone after the holiday and was overwhelmed by the images of death and horror. My partner and I frantically text friends and loved ones to make sure they're okay. Everyone seems to have lost someone or knows someone who has. The loss, the tragedy—incomprehensible.

There's also a deep sense that the left abroad has lost the values it was supposed to stand for. I thought we were leftists because we wanted a world without war, torture, the killing of families & children in their beds

I thought we were leftists because we abhor cruelty, detest violence, and believe in the inherent, even divine, worth of all human life. I thought we were leftists because our struggle was for all people to be able to live with freedom and dignity.

Are these not the values that led us to oppose the cruel siege on Gaza? To resist the brutalities of the occupation? To oppose apartheid? Where are these values when Israeli children are held hostage, families wiped out, corpses violated before cheering crowds?

People who were supposed to have been interlocutors, partners in some type of common conversation, self-professed human rights defenders, even would-be colleagues are celebrating and glorifying unspeakable acts that violate the most basic elements of human life. I feel sick.

What part of "by any means necessary" did Leifer not understand? Did he never hear of the second intifada where his same Leftist friends justified blowing up babies in pizza shops, also using the euphemism of "resistance" for depraved terror attacks?

But for Palestinians, many Arabs and other Muslims, the rapes and baby-murdering is something to be openly proud of.

In one pro-terror rally in New York, the crowd cheered when the speaker described how Hamas murdered "hipsters" at the rave.

In Australia, in front of the iconic Sydney Opera House on Monday night, a crowd of thousands of Muslims openly chanted "Gas the Jews!" and "Fuck the Jews!"

Really hard to argue that this is just enthusiastic "anti-Zionism."

But it gets worse. A writer at Al Jazeera waxed poetic about Hamas's murdering Jews - and claimed that every true Muslim shared his enthusiasm:

Throughout the Islamic world in the four corners of the globe, you will not find anyone among the two billion Muslims who was not happy with what the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades accomplished on Saturday, unless they are a hypocrite or a dissenter

....This invasion has inspired hope in the hearts of the Palestinians at home and abroad, and in the hearts of the Arab and Islamic peoples, in an unprecedented way....

No matter the extent of the upcoming destruction in the Palestinian structure, and no matter the number of martyrs and wounded due to the retaliatory aggression, the Palestinian people will not pay attention to it in the face of the sun of this victory and the magnitude of the results and gains resulting from it.

For the first time in the history of the usurping Zionist entity in Palestine, the Jewish people have tasted the meaning of war, the meaning of destruction, killing and suffering....

The coming years in the history of the Jewish people will not be like the past years, and destruction will not only befall the Palestinian people, but will befall the Jewish people first and foremost...

The mask is fully off: the Israel haters hate Jews, not "Zionists." And they don't just love killing Jews but they thirst to humiliate them. Murdering babies are what they consider honor, and raping girls and parading them naked with bloody vaginas is what they consider dignity.

This is a sick society. It is a deeply antisemitic society. And for a brief while, even some people on the anti-Israel Left seem somewhat uncomfortable with this.

It won't last long.

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10/09 Links Pt2: The Hamas pogrom is the result of the West's refusal to accept the idea of evil; We were fools to support the Palestinian cause

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Hamas pogrom is the result of the West's refusal to accept the idea of evil

Israel’s heart has been broken. At war once again against genocidal enemies, its people are shattered by shock, grief and horror.

At time of writing, the number of those murdered has risen to 800, with 2,315 wounded and at least 100 being held hostage in Gaza.

The images of what happened will stay with us forever. Dozens of Israelis were gunned down in their homes and their cars.

Elderly people and small children were slaughtered; women were raped; bodies taken into Gaza were paraded and desecrated; mothers with children in their arms were abducted and are now being held as hostages in Gaza’s terror tunnels.

This was barbarism and depravity, not seen on such an infernal scale since the Holocaust.

Every one of these attacks on Israeli civilians was a war crime. It is a moral imperative to destroy the forces who committed them and who — as they tell us — are intent upon eradicating Israel and the Jewish people.

And yet the US State Department said after the pogrom: ‘We urged all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.”

All sides? That means the US is telling Israel to “refrain” from defending its people. Should the Americans have refrained from waging war against Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban after 9/11 as a “retaliatory attack”?

Of course not. Such moral equivalence, it seems, applies only to Israel. It is also the default position of the western left.

This has been on display once again in the media coverage of these events. Newspapers have been reporting “horrific” casualty figures “on both sides”; the BBC and other outlets announced on Monday morning that the death toll was 1,100, similarly equating the Israeli victims of mass murder with those killed in the attempt to prevent any more such attacks.

Fred Maroun: We were fools to support the Palestinian cause

As an Arab, I am ashamed. As someone who supported the Palestinian cause, I am ashamed. But now, as far as I am concerned, the Palestinian cause is dead. In fact, that cause has never existed because all evidence points to the Palestinians wanting nothing but the destruction of Israel and the Jews, at any cost.

The Palestinians have had 75 years to choose to have a state next to Israel, but they have repeatedly chosen terrorism.

Through the murder of hundreds of Israelis and the cheering for those murders, they made their final choice clear. Some people will say that it’s the fault of terrorists and not the fault of Palestinians. I won’t be one of those people. Terrorists cannot exist unless they’re supported by the people.

Before this, there seemed to still be a glimmer of hope for a Palestinian state, but I now admit that those of us who believed in that hope were naive. That hope is dead now. I see many peace activists, who previously held nuanced views on the conflict, now declaring on social media their unwavering support for Israel.

What choice do we have left? The so-called Palestinian cause will now forever be covered with the blood of Israelis that Hamas massacred and that Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists cheered.

The only hope left for Palestinians who don’t wish to be terrorists is to move out of Gaza and the West Bank. They will never have a state on that land.

In the meantime, each of us who pays any attention to this conflict must stand with Israel. It is the duty of every decent person in the world. It is the only reasonable choice left.

Amb. Alan Baker: Hamas and Islamic Jihad Are Criminally Liable for War Crimes

The deliberate and cynical use by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of their own civilians as human shields, as well as their use of mosques, hospitals, schools, and private houses as weapons storage facilities and firing platforms, are no less severe war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.

The construction of tactical tunnels beneath urban civilian areas, hospitals, public facilities, and urban roads are also a war crime and a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

Moreover, advocating a religious holy war aimed at creating a regional Islamic entity encompassing the whole of the territory of Israel contravenes the provisions of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.

For all the above crimes, Hamas and PIJ leaders and commanders are accountable and prosecutable under international law, which considers non-state actors bound by customary norms of international humanitarian law when they become a party to an armed conflict.

Hamas, even as a non-state entity or part of a non-state entity, is considered by all accepted criteria to be fully accountable under international humanitarian law for its actions in terror attacks against Israeli civilians and using its own civilians as human shields. Thus, its leadership, commanders, and fighters are punishable for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Martin Bright: Hamas is no resistance movement – it is an anti-Semitic, misogynist terror cult

he following statement should be uncontroversial. An organisation that kidnaps unarmed women, children and old people then parades the naked bodies of its dead victims should not be considered as a resistance movement. Hamas is what Hamas does: it is a violent Islamist terror cult. It has shown itself, in its actions in Southern Israel over the Jewish sabbath in its true anti-Semitic, misogynist colours.

You are waiting for a qualification, perhaps? This is not a time for “buts”. No rhetoric about the biggest prison camp on earth or the Israeli Apartheid state or the fascists in Netanyahu’s government can justify or explain the brutality of those men with guns on motorbikes and pickups. They were driven by the hatred of Jews and the hatred of women, which lie explicitly, transparently at the heart of Hamas ideology. It is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Truth may be the first victim of war, but empathy is the second. When I posted my views on Hamas on social media, the reaction to the massacres and rapes and kidnappings was an exercise in equivocation and moral relativism. I was schooled that anything goes in war and told that I should compare what happened to Dresden, Hiroshima and Vietnam (but not the Holocaust funnily enough). Both sides abuse women and children and pretend it’s for a cause, apparently. Could the “lovely old lady” depicted in one Hamas kidnap video actually be a settler who is actively stealing land and livelihoods from Palestinians.? The Israeli Defence Force has been doing the same as Hamas for years. Examine the records of post-war Jewish terrorist organisations Irgun and the Haganah. How many pieces of silver had I taken I taken?

One person suggested my comments were the final proof that the free speech organisation for which I work, Index on Censorship, is a “neo-con cut-out” (translation from the hard-left jargon: CIA front organisation). I wouldn’t mention this slew of poison if it weren’t so prevalent and consistent.

There is no correct way to react to atrocities of this kind, but this is surely the moment to show our common humanity. As the historian Anthony Glees, who advised the Thatcher government on Nazi war criminals wrote: “Few who have seen the picture of SS officers ‘interrogating’ an elderly Jewish woman with whips during WW2 will ever forget it. Same here.”

This is not the time for “buts”. There will come a time for a reckoning within Israel about the intelligence failings that led to this catastrophe. The support of any Israeli government depends on its ability to keep its people safe from harm in a hostile neighbourhood and in that Netanyahu has ostensibly and catastrophically failed. Many of these atrocities took place at a music festival for peace in the desert. What greater cultural symbol of progressive, inclusive Israel could there be? What greater symbol of everything Hamas despises. Dozens of young Israeli men and women held hostage in Gaza is Israel’s greatest nightmare.

In the wake of the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists, the world has reacted -- but not all in the same way.

Condemned Hamas

o United States
o  Germany
o  France
o  Morocco (voiced "deep concern" and condemned attacks on civilians "where ever they are".)
o  EU (EU Commission chief von der Leyen: "I unequivocally condemn the attack carried out by Hamas terrorists against Israel. It is terrorism in its most despicable form.")
o  Canada
o  Great Britain
o  Ukraine (President Zelenskiy: condemned the "terror attack" and said Israel's right to defend itself "cannot be doubted".)
o  Poland (President Duda: "Rockets attacks and detention of civilians as hostages arouse our deepest opposition. Poland strongly condemns all acts of violence")
o  Italy
o  Japan

Called For Restraint/Cease-Fire

o  UAE (Foreign Ministry: "The UAE calls for the exercise of maximum restraint and an immediate ceasefire to avoid serious repercussions," )
o   UN (UN Middle East peace envoy Wennesland: ("I appeal to all to pull back from the brink.")
o  China (The Chinese foreign ministry urged both sides "to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation")
o  Saudi Arabia (The foreign ministry called for an "immediate cessation of violence")
o  Egypt (Foreign minister called for "exercising maximum restraint and avoiding exposing civilians to further danger".)
o  Turkey (President Erdogan: "We call for restraint from all parties.")
o  Russia (Deputy Foreign Minister Bogdanov urged restraint)
o  Qatar (The foreign ministry said Israel alone was responsible for the ongoing escalation of violence with the Palestinian people, and called for both sides to show restraint.)
o Kenya (Principal Secretary Sing'oei: While Israel has a right to retaliate, a peaceful path to resolving this unfortunate development is urged,)
o  Uganda (President Museveni: "The break out of renewed violence in Israel- Palestine is regrettable. Why don’t the two sides implement the two States’ Solution? To be condemned, in particular, is the practice of targeting civilians and non-combatants by the belligerents.")

Blamed Israel

o Abbas (The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves against the "terror of settlers and occupation troops,")
o African Union (Chairman Mahamat: "Denial of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, particularly that of an independent and sovereign State, is the main cause of the permanent Israeli-Palestinian tension" and urged "both parties to put an end to military hostilities and to return, without conditions, to the negotiating table.")
o Kuwait (Blamed Israel for "blatant attacks".)
o Indonesia ("Indonesia requests that acts of violence stop immediately to avoid increasing human casualties. The root of the conflict, namely the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, must be resolved according to the parameters agreed upon by the U.N.")

Apparently, Abbas does not see a need to offer even a mild condemnation or sympathy -- not even in English.

Endorsed the Slaughter

o Iran
o Hezbollah (described the slaughter of civilians as a"decisive response to Israel's continued occupation and a message to those seeking normalization with Israel".)

No surprise here.

But in the US, there were some surprises when members of "The Squad" condemned the massacre:

o Ilhan Omar: "I condemn the horrific acts we are seeing unfold today in Israel against children, women, the elderly and the unarmed people who are being slaughtered and taken hostage by Hamas... We need to call for de-escalation and a cease-fire."

o  Bernie Sanders: "I absolutely condemn the horrifying attack on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is no justification for this violence...It must end now"

o  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "Today is devastating for all those seeking a lasting peace and respect for human rights in Israel and Palestine. I condemn Hamas' attack in the strongest possible terms...An immediate cease-fire and de-escalation are urgently needed to save lives."

o  Jamaal Bowman: "I strongly condemn the horrific attacks by Hamas and am saddened by the loss of precious lives, especially on the holy day of Simchat Torah."

o  Ayanna Pressley: "These devastating attacks on Israelis are deeply alarming, and my heart breaks for the victims and their loved ones. It is long past time to stop this cycle of violence..."

o Cori Bush: "I strongly condemn the targeting of civilians and I urge an immediate cease-fire and de-escalation to prevent further loss of life"

Seeing these politicians condemn Hamas is unusual, but understandable considering how uncomfortable they must be having to come out with public statements in response to a situation where Jews outnumber how many Palestinian Arabs have been killed.

We will see if their sympathies remain consistent.

Rashida Tlaib did not follow her fellow squad members. She offered no condemnation, settling for "I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day."

A major concern was raised by Italian Prime Minister Meloni, who announced that "particular attention is being paid to the security of the Jewish community in the country." Germany has begun dealing with this issue. On Saturday night German police broke up a pro-Hamas rally.

Some countries went further and translated their condemnation of Hamas into action:

Austria and Germany said on Monday they were suspending aid worth tens of millions of euro to Palestinians in response to Islamist group Hamas' deadly attack on Israel to ensure funds were not flowing into the wrong hands.

This will include aid to the West Bank. Meanwhile, the EU will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow that will include a discussion of development aid.

Of course, considering the $6 billion Iran is getting from the US, Hamas is not too upset.

The overall question is: will the West remain consistent in its condemnation of Hamas, and what actions will they take to back up those words.

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!