Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 13, 2023

10/13 Links Pt1: Why Hamas' Brutality Must Be Shown; Israelis Rush to Volunteer after Hamas Attacks; Israeli diplomat attacked in Beijing as Hamas calls for global ‘mobilization’

From Ian:

There Can Be No Palestinian State under the Rule of Hamas—or of the PLO

What are the effects of this war on the viability of some kind of Palestinian sovereignty? Yesterday, Evelyn Gordon argued in Mosaic that the Jewish state’s best safeguard against terrorism is occupying territory. Efraim Karsh takes this argument one step further:

Hamas’s latest aggression may well have driven the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. For one thing, while most Israelis have been disabused of the idea by Yasir Arafat’s war of terror and the subsequent confrontations with Hamas, Saturday’s horrendous massacres may convince other international players of the mortal dangers that would follow if Israel withdraws from key West Bank areas (which would be needed for a viable Palestinian state to exist).

After all, were such an invasion to ensue from a West Bank state, hordes of terrorists would be able to roam the more populous streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in no time. What do two-state solution campaigners believe would happen then? What sovereign state could possibly allow a situation that would arise in which their citizens could be indiscriminately slaughtered on its streets?

What’s more, the grim brutality of Hamas’s recent atrocities may also draw international attention to the corrupt and oppressive nature of its regime. And just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation, so long as the West Bank and Gaza continue to be governed by Hamas’s (and the PLO’s) rule of the jungle, no Palestinian civil society, let alone a viable state, can possibly develop there.

Dennis Ross: What Israel Must Do: Disarming Hamas Will Be Costly but Essential for Peace

In launching its unprovoked, heinous attack on Israelis on Oct. 7, Hamas created the bloodiest day that Israel has seen in more than five decades. This unprecedented assault has left Israel in a state of shock but also with the resolve to end Hamas' ability to threaten Israel again. In setting off what will by necessity be an overwhelming onslaught on Gaza, Hamas has brought to a new level the punishment of Palestinians that it has inflicted over and over for nearly two decades.

Hamas' priority is destroying Israel, not building Gaza. Its main agenda for Gaza is building its own military infrastructure and arsenal. It has constructed dozens of miles of underground tunnels to protect its own fighters and weapons.

Israel can no longer be satisfied with a punishing response, followed by a return to the status quo. The assumption that Israel could live with Hamas and manage periodic conflicts with it has been shattered. It is determined that Hamas will never again be able to threaten the Israeli people. Israelis across the political spectrum now believe that Hamas must be destroyed as a military power and that Gaza must be demilitarized. Israel will no longer accept a truce with Hamas.

Hamas is not a partner for peace; it is an agent of war and destruction. If there were any doubts about Hamas' intentions in the past, its attack has permanently laid them to rest. But Hamas has gravely miscalculated this time. Israel's leaders are now contemplating options that they have not been prepared to consider since the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

As the toll in Gaza mounts, some Western and Arab leaders will likely argue that Israeli military action is disproportionate. But if Hamas retains any ability to threaten Israel, it will present itself as the victor, and that will be a tremendous boost to radical and destabilizing forces across the region.

Western and Arab leaders have a responsibility to support Israel's campaign against Hamas even as they frame essential objectives: unconditional release of the hostages and an end to Hamas rockets, mortars, and weapons- and bomb-making facilities. Aid for reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to its demilitarization. For Israel this is the minimum. Israel's endgame is making sure that Hamas cannot threaten it again.

Steve Israel: How Not to Let Hamas Win

We hear and are heartened by statements that Israel has the "right" to defend itself. But a right confers optionality: One can choose whether or not to exercise it. Israel has not the right but the paramount responsibility to defend its citizens from invasion, abduction, annihilation, and beheadings. Any nation that abdicates that responsibility might as well not exist.

The fundamental issue that drives today's conflict in Israel and Gaza is Israel's existence. It's not about the so-called occupation (after Israel unilaterally and unconditionally left the Gaza Strip in 2005). It's about a hateful worldview that Jews have no right to govern their historic lands.

Hamas is counting on Israel's responsibility to retaliate. Hamas is betting that the resulting images on social media and television will incite the Arab street, weakening the Abraham Accords and triggering Hamas' allies in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere to join the conflagration. Have we not been here before? The world expresses its revulsion when terrorists strike Israel, then turns against Israel when it responds.

It will take strength, imagination and the gritty tolerance of risk to deny Hamas that victory. First, America must continue to support Israel as it dismantles Hamas once and for all. Let Israel do the world, including the Arab world, a favor. Second, rather than allowing Hamas to undermine the Abraham Accords, we must double down on them.

The time will come for a new coalition of Middle East nations to rebuild Gaza. Gaza must be rebuilt not as a terrorist training base, but as a fit place for innocent Palestinians to live.

Just like today's "anti-Zionists," Nazis also blamed Jews for all the evils in the world

One of the tells that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is when the haters go out of their way to associate everything that they consider bad with Israel - US police brutality, global warming, colonialism, water pollution. Every single trendy item becomes a hook to bash Israel as we are told that feminism, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, racism, animal rights, even abortion is related to "Palestine."

Hating Israel warps the brain.

Up until now, it was easy to dismiss this as just more stupidity from the haters. But now that their Hamas heroes are calling on them to kill Israelis (i.e., Jews) wherever they can find them, this blanket blaming of everything on Israel is changing from amusing to sinister. After all, if Zionists (Jews) are the source of all evil, then they need to be eliminated "by any means necessary." College campuses are now places of real fear for Jews.

It is demonization. And we've seen this before.

In the not-so-distant past, Jews were also blamed for anything and everything

Just like today.

Some of these are comical, just as blaming Israel for every social justice crime is. But the Nazi knee-jerk blaming of everything on Jews were part of a campaign of dehumanization and demonization that we are seeing today from the anti-Israel crowd - people who claim to support social justice but who also support massacring Jews as "resistance."

Today's social justice warriors saying that animal rights is a Palestine issue aren't so funny anymore. Their plan is all too familiar to 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!

Israel haters aren't embarrassed by Hamas. They are energized.

I reported on Wednesday that a Hamas spokesman said on Sky News that the unprecedented orgy of murder, rape and infanticide proudly videoed by Hamas animals achieved something great: Palestinians are in the headlines again.

He wasn't kidding.

The Palestinian principle of hijacking any cause to make it about "freeing Palestine" even extends to opening up the womb of a pregnant Jewish woman and stabbing the baby inside before shooting the mother.

This week there were far more protests every day, worldwide, against the victims of the pogrom than against the perpetrators. While some of the protestors proudly say they are happy that Hamas raped, murdered and injured thousands of Jews, most of them are just using the massacre as a springboard to redirect attention back to making Palestinians the biggest victims and the Israelis the worst criminals in world history.

There is even an element of "10/7 inversion" as seen in these signs in Milwaukee, days after Jewish babies were slaughtered and Jews died protecting their communities, which Palestinian leaders called "defending the land."

The main objective is to change the subject as quickly as possible from the atrocities. CAIR issued many bulletins this week with their game plan. Here were their instructions on Monday to their members:

CAIR Urges Congress to Address Root Cause of Mideast Violence - Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Lands

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 10/9/23) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is responding to the ongoing situation in Israel and Gaza by urging all Americans to reach out to their respective members of Congress and request the following actions

Acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians.
Express support for an immediate ceasefire.
Demand the United States to reassert its leadership role as a negotiator in pursuit of a lasting peace. This entails addressing the root causes of violence, terminating Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, and ending the Israeli government's apartheid policies.

CAIR continued in its inversion strategy by responding to threats to synagogues and Jews by issuing a press release urging mosques, and the pro-Hamas protesters themselves, to protect themselves from the Zionist violence they predicted will happen.

The sad thing is that this strategy is time tested and effective. The haters will flood the media with photos and videos of dead kids in order to flip people's sympathies. Israel's targeting Hamas will be framed as worse than Hamas raping and murdering young women at a concert. The news media are only hungry for the latest thing, and this upcoming war will likely take months.

Ironically, if Israel listens to the advice of "human rights organizations" on the side of these activists, the war will take much longer and kill far more civilians than if Israel is allowed to wage it properly.

But in the end, these anti-Israel, Jew-hating fanatics want to see dead babies - dead Israelis symbolize "resistance by any means necessary" and dead Palestinian babies are fuel for their campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

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!

Qatar-owned Al Jazeera is still one of the top two Arab TV stations with hundreds of millions of viewers. And during the current Gaza war, it has reverted to the same antisemitic, pro-terror mode it became famous for in the years after 9/11.

Here are three articles published on its website on Thursday:

The legend of Solomon's Temple among the Jews...does it stand up to historical facts?

The article includes such gems as "The existence of Al-Aqsa Mosque long before the alleged Temple is one of the strongest historical evidence that invalidates the claims of the Jews and reveals the extent of the credibility of the Islamic vision regarding Muslims’ right to Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine." Of course, makes perfect sense? And the fact that one of the Muslim named of Jerusalem is "Bayt al-Maqdis," a direct translation of the Hebrew "Beit Hamiqdash," the Holy House - the Temple.

The entire point of the article is to invalidate the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, and as such, it is antisemitic.

A sad, crying history for the purpose of propaganda.. How does Israel present itself as a victim?

This article says that "Jewish history, including their history in some countries of the Islamic world, is being portrayed as a series of tragedies for political goals." In other words, Jews lie about our history just to hurt Arabs.

Yes, that is antisemitism.

Are the Zionists in Palestine civilians?

If we agree that the land of Palestine is occupied, by virtue of Sharia and international law, and by the rule of all rational people, then everyone who resides in these lands has no right to them, but rather is an occupier. Each of them participates with the occupier in a certain way.... Whoever studies the nature of Zionist society knows that it is entirely a military society, with all its members under the army’s reserve order, and the military is no longer as it was previously defined, which is the one who rides a tank or a plane. Otherwise, who would prepare for all of this in an occupied country? The ministries of defense and military professions are no longer limited to the military in the traditional sense. Rather, many military actions are carried out using drones. Is the person who operates these drones with a button or devices considered a civilian, even if he is a graduate of a civil college and works in a job that appears to be a civilian? In an occupied country, everyone who lives on its land is an occupier.

The upshot is that Jews (because they don't consider any Israeli Arabs to be Zionists) have no legal standing to live in the area and Israel is wholly an occupying state, not just the territories.

There is no logic here or in any of these articles - they have foregone conclusions and the authors just throw lies at the wall hoping something will stick. But these are the propaganda lies being given to the Arab world today in order to incite hate against Jews as they fight to destroy the perverted Hamas terrorists.

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!

10/12 Links Pt3: Hamas is a Palestinian ISIS; The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas; Was Biden’s Speech as Pro-Israel as You Think?; We Are Seeing Who Believes that Jewish Lives Matter

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Hamas is a Palestinian ISIS

If Hamas is ISIS, we must treat them as such.

What was on display was the organization Hamas has always been, has always said it was, but which many chose to ignore: a fundamentalist, Islamist organization utterly committed, in word and deed, to the destruction of the State of Israel and the wanton slaughter of all Jews.

The world is recoiling at the savagery, which is reminiscent of that exhibited by ISIS and, in some ways, perhaps even worse.

Hamas is indeed the Palestinian ISIS, and Gaza is a territory held and controlled by the Palestinian ISIS. If that wasn’t obvious before, it is now.

The question, of course, is what can be done about it?

When ISIS rose to gruesome prominence and started sweeping across Iraq and Syria in 2014, the world mobilized in response. An international coalition led by the United States carried out a massive military campaign that succeeded in pushing back ISIS’s territorial gains and containing the threat it posed.

ISIS supporters were identified throughout the world, and they were deported from their countries of residence; in many cases, they were stripped of their citizenship. Bank accounts associated with ISIS were shut down, and their funding sources were choked off.

That is precisely what must happen to Hamas, the Palestinian ISIS, now.

While Israel is leading the military charge against Hamas, it must receive full and unequivocal support from its allies in the West, including military aid and assistance, if necessary. Those who express support for Hamas must be arrested, prosecuted, and, if necessary, deported from their countries of residence. Any entity found to be providing material support to Hamas must be shut down, and the organization’s sources of funding must be eliminated.

This is a war against a cruel and relentless enemy driven by bloodlust and hate. Hamas cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be contained. It must be resolutely defeated, and that defeat must be crushing and unforgiving.

That is Israel’s task in the days and weeks ahead. The world must have Israel’s back – if not for Israel’s sake then for its own.

The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas

A mob of Islamist Arabs incited by Jew-hatred went door to door, broke into the homes of their victims, and slaughtered innocent men, women and children. These gangs raped, mutilated and tortured them while screaming "Kill the Jews!" That was 94 years ago, on Saturday, Aug. 24, 1929, in Hebron, when Arab riots ended with 133 Jews murdered.

The events are virtually the same as Saturday's Hamas attack on Israel. Why? There was no state of Israel in 1929. There were no "occupied" territories, no "settlers," no "blockade," no security fence, no checkpoints, nothing. The excuses of today's murderers did not exist at that time. What did exist? A deep, maniacal, murderous hatred of Jews - the same essential factor operating today, to which all other excuses are subservient.

The videos showing mass murder are there for the world to see, propagated by the assassins themselves. They use them to show their strength and prove Israeli weakness. To demonstrate to the Palestinian Arab population that the Jews can be killed like flies.

What does it say of a society that these monsters think this is a good way to mobilize the population? It screams of a deeply perverse and murderous culture, in love with death and destruction. It is the same culture that teaches toddlers to hate. The same society that pays wages to mass murderers and celebrates on the streets with sweets and shooting when Jews get killed.

Hamas needs to be destroyed for the same reason and by the same method that the Nazis were. Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil residing next to it. Israel has a moral right to finish the job, and the West has a moral duty to support it.

Was Biden’s Speech as Pro-Israel as You Think?

There is only one word that mattered in President Joe Biden’s remarks on the terrorist attack on Israel—and it was a word he didn’t say.

For those who care about actual U.S. policy rather than feel-good schmaltz, the point of Biden’s speech was not the oft-repeated dubious anecdote about meeting with Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War. Nor was it Biden’s rich declarations about how he was raised in synagogues—along with being raised in Puerto Rican communities and growing up in Black churches. Rather, the entire speech was centered around the absence of one word: Iran.

Biden’s glaring omission of Iran, the chief sponsor, funder, and weapons supplier of Hamas, and the intended beneficiary of its monstrous suicide attack, was an affirmation that his administration’s policies remain unchanged after a weekend of unprecedented horror in Israel. Namely, Biden still fully intends to continue providing cover for the Iranian regime, to whom he released $16 billion of held funds before the attack—in addition to the tens of billions more that the administration has gifted Iran by not enforcing sanctions on its oil sales.

Instead, the administration has rather bizarrely been expending all its diplomatic capital since the attack to avoid connecting Iran in any way to a massacre perpetrated by a terror group that Iran clearly funds, arms, trains and directs. The administration has expended particularly large amounts of energy responding to an inconvenient Wall Street Journal article that reported that the Iranians planned the attack in the joint operations room they have established in Lebanon (the existence of which Hezbollah media had announced in 2021 after the last Gaza war).

Responding to the Journal article, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the press that they have absolutely no “confirmation”—zero, none—to back up the claim of Iranian foreknowledge, planning, or help in directing this particular attack. Yet in nearly the same breath, Sullivan called Iran “complicit” in Hamas’ attack. “They have provided the lion’s share of the funding for the military wing of Hamas. They provide training, they have provided capabilities, they have provided support, and they have had engagement in contact with Hamas over the years and years.” Come again? NSC spokesman John Kirby then added that there was nothing that suggests the Iranians were “witting, involved in the planning, or involved in the resourcing and the training that went into this very complex set of attacks over the weekend.”

The "Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council" issued a disgusting statement that avoids condemning the murderers, kidnappers and rapists of Jews but "decries" the "senseless killing" of hundreds. Once it gets that distasteful obligation out of the way, the statement goes on to do what it really means to do - use murdering Jews as an excuse to attack Jews.

Let's examine how they crafted this statement:

As U.S.-based rabbis, we are watching the crisis unfold, grieving so many hundreds of lives lost. We decry the senseless killing of hundreds of Israelis by fighters from Gaza on Simhat Torah, a traditional, Jewish day of rejoicing. The killing of civilians is always a war crime. We grieve Palestinian lives lost, in these days, and in the previous 75 years, during the ongoing destruction of Palestinian land by the Israeli military and government. And this case is no different. We call for an immediate end to the violence.

They don't mention Hamas. They don't mention what, exactly, Hamas did to those civilians beyond merely "killing." And without even being able to have a single paragraph that says killing Jews is bad, they have to "all lives matter" the slaughter of Jews. To do that, they expand the universe of Israeli crimes to condemn 75 years of Israeli actions.

Why not mention over 100 years of Palestinian Arab attacks on Jews?

Because they want to minimize what Hamas did and then expand on the evil that Israeli Jews do.

The next three paragraphs condemn Israel, the Biden administration, and the American Jewish community for supporting Israel.They really want to distract you from Hamas terror outrages and war crimes!

But the letter circles back to mention antisemitism. And this is where JVP's immorality is incontrovertible:

We grieve the decades of killing and displacement of Palestinians. We grieve the centuries of antisemitism and violence against Jews that fuel many’s belief that perpetrating this kind of violence is the only way to secure our people’s safety.

So that's the problem with antisemitism - not that Islamists and Nazis and JVP's fellow socialist groups like the PFLP actually murder Jews because they are Jews, but because antisemitism provides an excuse for Jews to be violent towards their murderers!

The "Jewish Voice for Peace" is a pro-Hamas propaganda outlet that supports neither Jews nor peace.

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!

10/12 Links Pt2: Publish the Names of Students and Professors Who Support Hamas Lynching and Rapes; University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Publish the Names of Students and Professors Who Support Hamas Lynching and Rapes

Student groups at many elite universities -- including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, CUNY -- have come out in support of Hamas at a time when its terrorists have raped, murdered and kidnapped women, toddlers, the elderly and other civilians, and have reportedly beheaded babies.

The students who anonymously vote to support Hamas' recent attacks need not be fearful of anything but disdain and criticism. They should be willing to subject themselves to the marketplace of ideas. They should not resort to cowardly hiding behind the names of prominent organizations such as "Amnesty International at Harvard" -- one of the groups that said they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all" the massacres and rapes.

Fellow students, future employers, and others should be able to judge their friends and potential employees by the views they have expressed.

Some students who belong to these organizations argue that they do not personally support Hamas' recent barbarities. They are free to say so and to dissociate themselves from the groups they voluntarily joined. Silence in this context is acquiescence. So is hiding behind anonymity.

Today, too many students are judged by their "identity." Identity politics has replaced meritocracy.

Let the student newspapers, many of which are rabidly anti-Israel, publish the names of all students and faculty members who belong to groups that support and oppose Hamas. Hypothetically, if a club were formed at any of these universities that advocated rape or the lynching of African Americans, the newspapers would most assuredly publish the names of everyone associated with such a despicable group. Why is this different? Rape has become a weapon of war for Hamas, along with lynching, mutilation, mass murder and kidnapping. Expressing support for these acts, while constitutionally protected, is wrong. The answer to wrong speech isn't censorship; it is right speech, and transparency.

John Ware: Jeremy’s friends: Hamas and its cheerleaders

The Israel-Palestine crisis is following a familiar pattern. When Israel suffers a terrorist attack, it typically gets a grace period, which almost immediately fades with the graphic reports of spiraling deaths from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

This time, Israel’s grace period will last a little longer because of Hamas’s house-to-house butchering of Jews — over 1200 and counting — including the slaughter of young Israelis at a music festival and reports of babies being beheaded and burned. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed on one day, says Israel’s President Hertzog. It may not, however, be long before these atrocities are overtaken by the collateral consequences of Israel’s vow to destroy Hamas and its “capabilities”.

Of course, for the many thousands of Hamas supporters demonstrating around the world, there was no grace period. “Gas the Jews” shouted Palestinian supporters in Sydney. In Britain there was jubilation in cities up and down the country.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Glasgow were told by an impassioned middle aged non-Palestinian: “Resistance is not a crime.”

In Coventry, banners proclaimed “Victory to the resistance.”

In Hackney, London, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was so taken with the T-shirt of a smiling demonstrator that they posted it on their website. “Beautiful resistance” said her T-shirt.

“Victory to the Intifada” they shouted in Newcastle.

In Manchester, the crowd was told that Hamas had “inspired the world.”

To cheers of “Free Free Palestine” two men replaced the Israeli flag atop Sheffield Town Hall with a Palestinian flag. The Israeli flag had been briefly hoisted at the suggestion to local authorities from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to “show solidarity with the innocent people in that country who faced appalling acts of terror”.

In London a wannabe “fighter”, aping his Hamas heroes with a head mask, smiled when asked how he felt about the murders of Israelis. A keffiyeh-clad teacher said that the dead were not “innocent” because they were “settlers, colonialists”.

In Brighton, Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters were told “we need to celebrate these acts of resistance” because Hamas’s genocidal rampage was “a success”. Revolutionary violence “initiated by Palestinians” was “not terrorism”, said the speaker who declared herself a Palestinian: “It’s self-defence.” What happened was a “human rights issue”.

It has taken this most bestial chapter of the Israel-Palestine conflict so far to expose beyond any doubt the Orwellian sloganeering of these activists, who have convinced themselves of their commitment to human rights and anti-racism.

I Was You, “Defender of the Palestinians,” and Now I Want to Puke

No struggle so generously slaked our need to summon virtuous victims as that of the Palestinians. Outraged dignity was the only possible response to anyone who dared suggest our vitriolic fixation on Zionism might be related to antisemitism. How dare you! was the thunderous reply. It was our side, the Red Army, that smashed Hitler’s Third Reich. Thus reassured of our unimpeachable virtue, we sallied forth to cheer (however “critically”) forces that draw inspiration directly from the builders of the gas chambers.

I took leave of my party some years ago, but today I encounter their spirit in Rivkah Brown, commissioning editor and reporter at Novara Media. On October 7 she exulted on Twitter: “Today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide, as Gazans break out of their open-air prison and Hamas fighters cross into their colonizers’ territory. The struggle for freedom is rarely bloodless and we shouldn’t apologize for it.” Confronted with objections that Hamas’s actions had been singularly terroristic, she explained that “obviously” she doesn’t condone rape and other atrocities. “I’m celebrating Palestinian armed resistance,” she tweeted. Except Hamas’s “armed resistance” is the atrocities it is now carrying out. Its only program (beyond misogyny, murderous anti-gay bigotry, corruption and all-purpose reaction) is genocidal antisemitism. “The Palestinian armed resistance” is a fantasy, conjured by Western leftists to cover for the purest evil.

My former comrades, members of my parents’ generation, sometimes lamented about the 1967 war. The Jews used to be some of the left’s most loyal supporters, they recalled, but 1967 turned them all into ardent Zionists. It never occurred to my ex-comrades that Jews responded as they did because the threat to the Jewish state had shattered their belief that Jewish survival after the Holocaust was assured, and because they were horrified by the sheer hatred the left directed at Israel for defending itself.

This is my 1967. I became a Zionist several years ago, but it was a decision of the mind: an extension of the tenet that was impressed upon me by the party, that if all people have the right to self-determination this includes the Jews. I then spent a period immersed in studying antisemitism until it dawned on me that I knew little about the Jewish people, themselves—only as victims. And that this victimhood is the uneasy legacy of my own family background: my Jewish mother’s murdered relatives, her childhood flight from her Dutch homeland during World War II. So I began exploring my dormant Jewish identity, but that too felt like an intellectual pursuit, not really drawing in my heart. The Jewish people have been astoundingly welcoming and forgiving of me, more than I often feel I deserve. Yet I’ve found it hard to entirely believe I belong.

Now it feels personal. I am a Jew and a Zionist, and I intend to use whatever insight I have from my ignominious past to fight for my people. About the only thing that is certain about the coming weeks and months is that there will be another deluge of hatred against the Jews for continuing to exist and even struggling for it. Count me in, heart and soul.

International Law Supports Israel Besieging Gaza (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The outpouring of sympathy and concern from around the world in reaction to the massacre of Israeli men, women and children by Hamas terrorists is welcome and appreciated.

But we are talking about Israel, so we knew that it would only be a matter of time -- after Israel struck back -- than some of that sympathy would dry up. More than that, critics are now claiming that Israel is the villain and is guilty of war crimes because of its efforts to remove the dangerous threat of Hamas.

Specifically, in an effort to not only get rid of Hamas but also save the hostages being held by the terrorists, Israel is imposing a siege -- and the West is crying foul.

The reasoning for the condemnation is that by cutting off water and electricity, Israel is supposed to be guilty of violating international law due to the collateral damage caused to Gazans. The problem of course is that while critics of Israel enjoy throwing around phrases like "international law," "genocide," and "war crime" they do this without knowing -- or caring -- what these terms actually mean.

The legal issue here is the concept of siege.

The US Law of War manual summarizes the legality of a siege in warfare:

It is lawful to besiege enemy forces, i.e., to encircle them with a view towards inducing their surrender by cutting them off from reinforcements, supplies, and communications with the outside world. In particular, it is permissible to seek to starve enemy forces into submission.

Article 23 of the Geneva Convention (IV): Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing says:

Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.

The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:
(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,

(b) that the control may not be effective, or

(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

The key point is that while supplies are not to be automatically held up from the enemy, international law recognizes that this is subject to exceptions where those consignments may be diverted or aid the adversary's military efforts. Concrete for underground tunnels and piping used for rockets come to mind.

Then there is Customary International Humanitarian Law, rules based on general practice that has become accepted as law and is independent of treaty law.

According to Rule 53, The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited. That being the case, how can Israel apply a siege on Gaza?

The answer is that those who blindly claim that Israel is violating International Law by using a siege just don't know what they are talking about:

Sieges that cause starvation

The prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit siege warfare as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This is stated in the military manuals of France and New Zealand. Israel’s Manual on the Laws of War explains that the prohibition of starvation “clearly implies that the city’s inhabitants must be allowed to leave the city during a siege”. Alternatively, the besieging party must allow the free passage of foodstuffs and other essential supplies, in accordance with Rule 55. States denounced the use of siege warfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was also condemned by international organizations.

Israel's goal is not to cause starvation to civilians. The goal it to achieve the release of the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and get rid of Hamas. As far as allowing "the free passage of foodstuffs and other essential supplies," we saw above in Article 23(c) that international law recognizes the advantage gained by an enemy that is relieved of the responsibility for providing for its citizens -- plus there is an obvious concern that Hamas would take the supplies for itself. Recall that the consignments are to be intended for children under 15.

Now let's see how lawyers apply these principles.

Eugene Kontorovich asked the question in an article in 2014, Does Israel have to give free power to Gaza? He writes that civilian power stations are legitimate targets for attack when they are also used by the enemy military, and all the more so does Israel have the right to merely turn off the power it provides to Gaza, adding:

I do not believe such an affirmative duty to provide energy to one’s enemy has ever been suggested in any other context [other than Israel].

He points out the obvious military advantage that Hamas would be deprived of by withholding electricity: providing the lighting necessary for its underground tunnels.

This week, international law professor Avi Bell published a paper Imposing a Siege on the Gaza Strip During War. He writes that Israel has no obligation to provide anything to Gaza under the current conditions of war. And he goes further:

In addition, there is no doubt that the obligation to allow foreign parties to supply food and medicine does not exist under the circumstances of the current war, when there is a well-founded fear that Hamas will take control of the products or take a share for itself or use them to improve the enemy's economy or military efforts.

Bell wrote further on the topic in yesterday's New York Post: Israel has the right — and the duty — to besiege Gaza, clarifying the legal basis of Israel's siege of Gaza:

As the besieging state, Israel is not required to fund or assist Hamas’ war effort as it attempts to butcher Jews.

Siege law includes a humanitarian aspect: International law requires that Israel facilitate the passage of food and medicine by third parties, but only if such goods can be reliably delivered without diversion to Hamas and without fear the goods will give Hamas an economic and military boost.

Given Hamas’ 16-year exploitation of humanitarian aid and infiltration of human-rights and international organizations in Gaza, diversion is not merely a possibility — it is a certainty. [emphasis added]

Instead, Professor Bell suggests how allowing humanitarian workers or aid into Gaza will have the exact opposite of its intended effect:

Doing so would prolong the conflict, worsen Gaza’s physical destruction and result in greater loss of civilian life.
If governments and international organizations are serious about aiding Gazan civilians — to date, such organizations have been more invested in condemning Israel and immunizing Palestinian terrorists from accountability and punishment — they should devote their resources to facilitating the safe and rapid evacuation of Gaza’s civilian population outside the conflict zone.

It is up to the governments and international organizations to recognize Hamas for what it is, for what it has proudly done, and to take the appropriate measures to put this war to an end.

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10/12 Links Pt1: The Whole Middle East Is Counting on Israel to Destroy Hamas; Media willfully misunderstand what 'disproportionality' means

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: The Whole Middle East Is Counting on Israel to Destroy Hamas

Much remains unknown about Saturday’s horrific attack on southern Israel—the worst in Israel’s history, including wars, in terms of the number of civilians killed and kidnapped. But some things are already clear.

First, it was made possible by Israel’s 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip. Terrorism from the West Bank has never approached this scale; the second intifada (2000–2004) didn’t achieve in four years what Hamas did in two days from Gaza—over 1,200 fatalities (civilians and soldiers). And the key difference is Israel’s military presence.

Israel’s presence in the West Bank makes it much harder for Palestinian terrorists to build up massive arsenals, whether through smuggling or homegrown production; Hamas in Gaza does both. That’s why virtually no missiles are fired at Israel from the West Bank even as Hamas fires thousands from Gaza every few years: the Israel Defense Forces are there to suppress both smuggling and arms production.

Israel’s presence also makes it impossible to train for the kind of large-scale maneuvers Hamas successfully used on October 7; any large-scale exercise would be swiftly broken up and its participants arrested. In Gaza, the IDF can observe such exercises but can neither prevent them nor arrest the participants, because it isn’t there.

Finally, Israel’s presence in the West Bank enables much better intelligence than it has in Gaza, where preparations for Saturday’s massive attack eluded the intelligence agencies completely. That’s because aerial photography, spyware, and other technological tools can only do so much. But to run human agents, intelligence operatives generally need to meet with them in person and develop a relationship, at least initially. That’s easy in the West Bank, where Israel is present. It’s virtually impossible in Gaza, where Israel is absent.

Indeed, the indispensability of a military presence in the West Bank became clear to most Israelis during the second intifada, which was made possible by Israel’s withdrawal from significant swaths of the West Bank under the 1993 Oslo Accords: then, too, the IDF’s absence allowed Palestinian terrorists to arm and train without hindrance. Although the army’s presence in other parts of the West Bank was a mitigating factor, it was only after Israel reinvaded Palestinian-controlled areas in April 2002 that Israeli casualties begin dropping, by about 50 percent a year, after having risen steadily for eighteen months.

Yet Gaza, which borders Israel’s sparsely populated south rather than its densely populated center as the West Bank does, seemed a safe place to test a competing hypothesis—that if Israeli soldiers and settlers left, Palestinians would have no reason to attack Israel and would focus on state-building. And when that hypothesis proved false—rocket fire on southern Israel quickly escalated once the IDF left, and the first war with Hamas in Gaza erupted just three years after the pullout—a new theory arose: yes, Hamas is a nuisance, but a small terrorist organization can’t really do Israel much harm from across a well-guarded border, so the pullout is still preferable to bearing the costs, in terms of both military casualties and money, of an Israeli presence in Gaza.

That theory has been eroding for years, as each successive Hamas-Israel war (we are now on the fifth in eighteen years, by my count) produced ever-more-intensive rocket fire on ever-growing swaths of Israel. But it collapsed completely on Saturday. It turns out a small terrorist organization across the border can wreak massive harm.

Nor is it plausible to argue that while quitting Gaza didn’t satisfy the Palestinians, quitting the West Bank would—because Hamas’s primary goal is neither statehood nor prosperity, but Israel’s destruction. As the senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said in 2021, the organization wants Israel “to come to an end just like it began.” Granted, the West Bank is controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, not Hamas (though Fatah also isn’t enthusiastic about fighting terror; the IDF does most of the work). But so was Gaza when Israel left. A year later, Hamas won the Palestinian election. And a year after that, fed up with Fatah’s refusal to cede power, it ousted Fatah from Gaza militarily in a week.

That Hamas truly seeks Israel’s destruction is hard for Westerners to grasp; many feel it must have sought some diplomatic or economic gain from Saturday’s attack. But Hamas itself made no such claims. It certainly wasn’t seeking to improve Gaza’s economy; a Hamas source told Reuters that its negotiations in recent months about Qatari aid and letting more Gazans work in Israel were a deliberate deception aimed at convincing Israel it wasn’t interested in war. Nor was it seeking to pressure the Saudis over normalization with Israel. As a Hamas operative told Israel’s Channel 13 television, preparations for this attack began a year ago—long before normalization was anything but a fantasy. And those preparations were massive, even including construction of a mock village so the terrorists could practice invading civilian homes.

Moreover, despite Gaza’s ongoing humanitarian nightmare under Hamas rule, polls consistently show that its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, would trounce Abbas if Palestinian elections were held today. And its enduring popularity is precisely the result of its single-minded focus on Israel’s destruction, a goal that most Palestinians—including Fatah members and supporters—unabashedly share.

Hamas Must be Destroyed — and Israeli Sovereignty Reestablished in Gaza

The main objections to reconquering Gaza and reestablishing Israeli sovereignty are 1) it will require a long and painful ground campaign, which will entail a large number of casualties on both sides; and 2) occupation of Gaza will result in a continued insurrection that will tie the army down and sap our strength.

I propose a rapid campaign, using the air force, armor, and artillery, to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to drive the residents south to the Egyptian border, and to persuade Egypt to open the border to refugees (Egypt is dependent upon Israel for natural gas). The UN, the EU, and the NGOs would have to provide for the refugees and resettle them. This would be a good time to disband the failed UNRWA and treat the refugees like all other refugees from armed conflict.

With most of the civilian population removed, the army could use its firepower to advance quickly. A temporary military occupation would be practical. To prevent the reappearance of a hostile entity there, it should be settled by Jews and ultimately annexed to Israel.

While there is no doubt that the present residents of Gaza would suffer greatly for a time, it needs to be understood that this is an enemy population. It voted for Hamas in Palestinian elections, and while much of it finds the regime oppressive, the overwhelming majority supports its goal of destroying Israel and killing Jews. Its welfare cannot be the responsibility of Israel.

Expelling Gazans would violate international law. But international law must take a back seat to national survival. In any event, international law is not obeyed by the great powers like Russia or the US, by the medium-sized powers like Turkey or Egypt, and certainly not by Israel’s enemies. The double standard that demands compliance by Israel is a gift to Iran, the biggest violator of all.

These actions would permanently eliminate the threat of terrorism and war emanating from Gaza, and would restore Israel’s honor and deterrence in the region. It would be a small step in the long process to secure a Jewish state, but a necessary one.

The modern state of Israel was founded in part to put an end to the continued pogroms and depredations committed against the Jewish people in the diaspora. After the Holocaust, the slogan “never again!” became popular. But it has happened again. And it will continue to happen, again and again, as long as Israel does not take its proper place as a Middle-Eastern nation with the strength and resolve to survive in the Middle East.

And may Hashem help the Jewish people if we don’t.

Israel has the right — and the duty — to besiege Gaza

Thus Israel cannot allow Hamas to resupply during the war; a complete siege is needed.

Unsurprisingly, the terrorists’ propaganda machine is working overtime accusing Israel of violating international law.

Hamas-controlled institutions, from the Gaza “health ministry” to Gazan “human rights” organizations, together with their Western allies in the United Nations and European Union, insist Israel has no legal right to besiege Gaza and is legally responsible for the price ordinary Palestinians are paying for Hamas’ actions.

These claims are perverse and without legal foundation.

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Both the Geneva and Hague conventions include instructions on conducting sieges under international law, recognizing they may be effective tools for bringing a conflict to a rapid and successful end.

The basic rule they outline: Sieges are lawful unless deliberately aimed at starving the local population.

Israel’s aims, repeatedly stated, are to defeat Hamas terrorists by depriving them of resources and to rescue hostages.

International pressure demanding Israel provide terrorists with electricity and other goods is absurd and without basis in international law.

As the besieging state, Israel is not required to fund or assist Hamas’ war effort as it attempts to butcher Jews.

Siege law includes a humanitarian aspect: International law requires that Israel facilitate the passage of food and medicine by third parties, but only if such goods can be reliably delivered without diversion to Hamas and without fear the goods will give Hamas an economic and military boost.

Given Hamas’ 16-year exploitation of humanitarian aid and infiltration of human-rights and international organizations in Gaza, diversion is not merely a possibility — it is a certainty.

So it would be unthinkable for Israel to place humanitarian workers in Gaza or allow aid to reach Hamas.

Doing so would prolong the conflict, worsen Gaza’s physical destruction and result in greater loss of civilian life.

If governments and international organizations are serious about aiding Gazan civilians — to date, such organizations have been more invested in condemning Israel and immunizing Palestinian terrorists from accountability and punishment — they should devote their resources to facilitating the safe and rapid evacuation of Gaza’s civilian population outside the conflict zone.

While this is a heady mission, it is not impossible: Indeed, five times the population of Gaza was evacuated from Ukraine under fire.

The media - and the world - has been excusing Hamas for a long time

In 2009, Amnesty International wrote a report on the Gaza war of 2008-9 called "Operation 'Cast Lead': 22 days of death and destruction.". It summarized the war this way:

At 11.30am on 27 December 2008, without warning, Israeli forces began a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip codenamed Operation “Cast Lead”. Its stated aim was to end rocket attacks into Israel by armed groups affiliated with Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

What it doesn't mention is that Hamas had a different name for the war - calling it "Operation Oil Slick." And that Hamas declared that war three days before Israel's response, with a salvo of rockets and mortars sent to Israel on December 24. It wasn't a 22-day war started by Israel, but a 25-day war started by Hamas.

This has been how NGOs and the media have been writing about Hamas for over a decade - downplaying its terror, ignoring its own actions, not reporting its public threats to murder Israeli civilians, erasing its genocidal nature. Instead, Hamas is portrayed as merely reacting to Israeli actions.

Excusing Hamas in the West is standard operating procedure. And Hamas has taken full advantage of that - by manipulating Western analysts to believe that it is a pragmatic ruler in Gaza, it wants peace and that it really isn't antisemitic anymore.

In 2011, the New York Times had a scoop: Hamas accepted a two state solution!

But if one reads what Meshal actually said, he did not in any way accept Israel's existence. He said he would accept a Palestinian state in the territories, but not a word about stopping there and ending terror attacks to take over the rest of Israel.

Meshal didn't lie. He just knew that the reporter was too enamored with interviewing him that he could lead him to report things he never said. And it worked like a charm - throughout the 2010s, the tantalizing idea that Hamas accepted a two state solution kept popping up when they said no such thing - and explicitly denied accepting two states in Arabic..

Unless, of course, that second state is also Arab.

Hamas' main PR problem in the 2010s was that Hamas' charter was antisemitic and that fact was slowly becoming known thanks to Israelis mentioning it in TV interviews. The charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jews, quoting a hadith, "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." It has lots of incitement to kill Jews, such as

We should not forget to remind every Moslem that when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967, they stood on the threshold of the Aqsa Mosque and proclaimed that "Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women."

Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."

To counter this, in 2017 Hamas fooled the entire Western world into claiming that it has changed. It announced with fanfare a new manifesto that didn't have the same explicit antisemitism as the charter.

And they knew that the media, wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, would misinterpret this document as a replacement for the antisemitic, genocidal Hamas charter .

There was only one problem: Hamas never claimed that this "political document" replaced the charter, this was all wishful thinking by Western "experts." It didn't need to lie - the clueless Western media was happy to fill in the blanks with their wishful thinking.

In Arabic, Hamas explicitly said that the charter - and its antisemitism - was still its legal covenant. And if you carefully read the new political document you can see that it doesn't contradict the charter.

And in Gaza, Hamas still held explicitly antisemitic events, like this 2014 rally:

Hamas knows how badly Westerners want to believe that it was moderating. it was a masterful manipulation of "experts" because wishful thinking about Hamas trumped sober analysis.

Hamas has never said one word that indicates that it has changed its positions since the charter was written. Yet pundits, professors, world leaders and the media have wanted to see a two state solution for so long, and wanted so much for the Hamas obstacle to such a solution to be removed, that they deluded themselves into thinking that Hamas has changed from the organization that proudly blew up Jewish children during the 1990s and 2000s.

Wishful thinking is no substitute for reality. I don't think there will be anyone apologizing for getting Hamas so wrong for so long, though.

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!

Why Israel must wage all-out war

Normal Westerners try to find win-win solutions, and are expected to respond to goodwill with goodwill of their own.

Palestinians look at everything as a zero-sum game and look at any goodwill gestures as proof of weakness, and an opportunity to double down on demands.

The biggest single mistake that Westerners make is thinking that everyone thinks and acts like we do. As a result, for decades, the West has gotten this conflict spectacularly and fatally wrong.

This is why they pressure Israel to always make more concessions, as the stronger party in the conflict. But it doesn't work unless your partner shares the same basic mindset. But the Palestinians and much of the Arab and Muslim world do not.

This year, according to UN-OCHA figures, the supposed "siege" of Gaza effectively ended. Western media didn't report it, but Israel has been loosening restrictions on Gaza for years to the point that the amount of goods and people crossing the borders with Israel are at higher levels since before the Hamas takeover of the area. Israel has given work permits to many thousands of Gaza workers - a couple of years ago it was zero. They have allowed more "dual use" items. August was a record month for Gaza imports of goods. The number of people entering and exiting also have been higher than before 2007. There have been no restrictions on fuel, no restrictions on medicine, no restrictions on food in over a decade (except during wars.) Gaza has luxury car dealerships, high-end hotels and resorts, glittering jewelry stores. Life wasn't wonderful - unemployment was still very high, for example - but things were getting better for average Gazans under every metric.

To Western thinking, this should result in Hamas reacting in kind - or at least wanting the improvements to continue.

Hamas knows the difference in the mindsets between themselves and Israelis - and took advantage. They didn't participate in the Islamic Jihad mini-war earlier this year. They kept rockets mostly quiet. They pretended that they were acting in a western way, and trading the effective end of the closure of Gaza for calm with Israel. A win-win for all.

But all that time while life has been improving in Gaza they were planning this mega-attack on Jews.

Some of the workers Israel allowed in gave intelligence to Hamas to maximize the number of Jews to be murdered. Some of the residents in the towns and kibbutzim attacked recognized the terrorists as people who worked there every day. They murdered their employers and the Jews who considered them friends and co-workers.

Before Saturday, the thinking was that Hamas wants calm and doesn't want to upset the people it rules. The previous military operations in Gaza were waged with a carrot and stick approach, thinking that reminding Hamas they have something to lose would keep things calm and following up with further moves to make the lives of Gazans better.

It was a fatal miscalculation. Hamas never intended for long term calm. It wanted (with its Iranian masters) to take advantage of what they think of as a weak, stupid Western mentality. Arabic media, especially that aligned with Iran (from Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Syria, and Yemen) have been filled with articles about how Israel is as weak as a spider web. This intentional slaughter of ordinary Israelis is regarded by Hamas and most Palestinians (yes, most) as the paradigm of regaining honor and dignity and as only the first salvo in the war to ultimately destroy Israel.

There is not even a hint in Palestinian media - whether Fatah or Hamas or independent - that looking into the eyes of a frightened Jewish baby and then slaughtering her is something to be ashamed of. Right now, the Hamas baby killers are more popular than ever. Mahmoud Abbas and PA prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh didn't make even a pretense of a condemnation of their political rivals this time - they called the murder and rape of innocents "defending the land."

That's why this war has to be different from the previous ones. A limited war that leaves the murderers and rapists in power, and an Iranian-controlled statelet mere meters from Jewish communities, is no longer acceptable or even thinkable The evil cannot be allowed to stay. Israel has to adopt the Hamas mentality of eradicating the enemy, and treat the terrorists like Hamas wants to treat every Israeli man, woman and child.

Israel has to wipe out Hamas and the other terror groups. No matter the cost.

Hamas is embedded in houses, buildings, tunnels, bunkers, all in populated areas. Israel needs to take them all out, not some. It needs to kill or imprison all the terror leaders, not some. It cannot tolerate having these monsters living freely next door.

Being nice was repaid with the worst day in Jewish history since Auschwitz. Israel's entire purpose is to protect Jews. It must eradicate the terror organizations completely and ruthlessly - no matter the cost.

Doing anything less would be immoral.

(This is an expansion on an essay I wrote on X/Twitter.)

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Major terror groups always avoid mentioning their "martyrs" at the start of any war, trying to give the impression that Israel is only killing civilians.

But smaller terror groups cannot exactly hide when their top person is killed.

From the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Movement:

We mourn the companion of the path, the martyr, Commander Abu Al-Abd Abu Hilal, the leader of the Al-Nasser Brigades, and the martyr Umm Raafat Abu Hilal, ... killed in a cowardly assassination operation at dawn today, Monday 10/09/2023 AD, after a bombing of the house they was in.

Given that they share the same last name, it appears that the woman was a relative who was a human shield.

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

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