Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 16, 2023

10/16 Links Pt2: Hamas Uses Western Morality as a Weapon Against Israel; Hamas releases new footage of a hostage; Feminists for Palestine?

From Ian:

Haviv Rettig Gur: What Were the Palestinians Thinking?

The October 7 massacre seemed to many Palestinians as a rational step on the road to liberation rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet another in a long string of self-inflicted disasters for the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian strategy of terrorizing Israeli civilians, going back to 1920, follows the basic theory that the Jews are an artificial, rootless polity removable by sustained violence, so sustained violence must be deployed to remove them. This Palestinian vision of Israelis is taught to Palestinian children as the basic truth of the Palestinian struggle.

For Israelis, if the response of Palestinians to the Oslo peace process in the 1990s was the mass murder of Israeli civilians beginning in 2000 with a wave of 140 suicide bombings in Israeli cities and towns - killing grandmothers and infants in buses and pizzerias - and the response of Palestinians to the current stagnation of the peace process is the mass murder of Israeli civilians, then Israeli policy isn't the cause of Palestinian mass murder of Israeli civilians.

On October 7, for a moment, Israel's guard went down. Hamas was free to live out its intentions. It did so with blazing clarity and purpose. Israelis are now convinced that the massacre, in its enormity and astonishing cruelty, and especially in the joy with which it was carried out, wasn't a Palestinian miscalculation. The goal, as in 2000, was simply the complete removal of the Jews from this land.

With clarity comes closure. Israelis are unified as never before. No peace and no withdrawal will satisfy this impulse or grant Israeli Jews safety from this kind of wild, joyful hatred. And that brutality has now made itself too dangerous to be tolerated. In the Israeli mind, any brutality Hamas can commit it will commit. And so it cannot be allowed to ever commit any act ever again.

Hamas did it because we are Jews

Two days after the 9/11 attacks, French newspaper Le Monde captured the global mood. “In this tragic moment,” the paper wrote, “we are all Americans.” It gave voice to the upwelling of grief and sympathy as the Twin Towers lay smoldering and thousands of Americans lay under rubble.

As I write this piece, Israel is at war. On Saturday, terrorists launched a vicious and unprovoked attack, setting off thousands of rockets, slaughtering hundreds of innocent civilians, and taking dozens hostage. Men, women and children, young and old alike, were massacred on the streets, in their homes, and at a music festival. Their only crime: being Jewish.

And yet, in Israel’s tragic hour, no newspaper dares declare that they are now Israelis. Of course, this is sadly expected. Antisemitism finds its rawest and most sinister power in silence. For far too many around the world, Hamas’s actions were justified, even welcome.

Such is the antipathy toward the Jewish people and the Jewish state; even the most obvious and brutal terrorism can be excused and explained. Our enemies revel in Israel’s pain. The Jewish people must unite

Which is why Jewish people the world over must band together now. The hundreds of teenagers massacred by Hamas at the music festival likely did not support the ruling Likud party’s conservative politics. The scores of Kibbutz Be’eri residents killed in cold blood were not overtly religious. But that made no difference to their murderers. “They shot indiscriminately, abducted whomever they could, burned down people’s homes,” observed one survivor.

Secular or devout, young or old, liberal or conservative, kibbutznik or city dweller, pro-judicial reform or against it – our enemy made no distinctions during the slaughter. And so, neither should we make such distinctions among ourselves. This is a time for all who love the Jewish state to rally behind the banner of our shared identity, a time to put aside our internal squabbles and stare down the evil at our door. We must send a unified message: An attack on the Jewish state is an attack on all Jews. This extends the world over.

In the days following the attack, Americans – Democrats and Republicans alike – were quick to issue condemnations of Hamas. In the weeks to come, as Israel responds with military force to the threat in its midst, those political figures should keep the moral clarity of those statements in mind – particularly when armchair critics chastise Israel’s justified self-defense with the latest chorus of what-about-ism.

Hugh Hewitt: Why Hamas' Methodical Slaughter of Jews Carries a Special Horror

Evil people commit unspeakable crimes against humanity with horrifying regularity. But somehow Hamas' slaughter of Israelis feels different, in its intensity and immediacy, and not just because the terrorists grotesquely exploited social media to document their atrocities. The chilling and methodical depravity that stalked infants and the very old, as well as young people joyfully dancing at a music festival, was profoundly disturbing. An army of mass murders rampaged in search of victims targeted solely because they were Jews. No military objective, no strategic aim.

However much, over the past three-quarters of a century, we have seen crowds chant "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," many of us never imagined the existence of would-be Nazi hordes who, given the chance to kill Jews, would kill and kill and kill, and then celebrate the carnage. We clung to the ideas of deterrence and that the Islamist menace could be contained. We believed that the sort of irrational hatred that fueled Adolf Hitler's legions of killers was a thing of the past - or at least limited and incapable of producing mayhem on the scale that befell Israel.

We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of believing "Never again" actually meant "Never again." Israel will now wage the war it must, to shatter the very idea that the deep evil driving Hamas can be allowed to thrive. The U.S. and the civilized world - which of course includes many Muslim nations - must support this effort.

Alan Dershowitz: Hamas Uses Western Morality as a Weapon Against Israel

Israel has declared northern Gaza a war zone. They have given its civilians the opportunity to move several miles south in order to protect themselves from Israeli bombing of legitimate military targets. In giving civilians sufficient warning to leave, Israel has gone further than other Western nations at war. In World War II, the U.S. did not warn the civilians of Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that were about to be nuclear targets. Great Britain did not give the civilians of Dresden the opportunity to leave.

Israel is generally held to a higher standard of morality by other governments, the media, and academia. Hamas knows this and exploits it as a weapon of war. When dead children are shown on TV, many viewers fail to distinguish between deliberate targeting of civilians and unintentional collateral deaths. Hamas has named this misuse of morality "the CNN strategy."

Israel must not permit itself to be limited in its preventive military actions by any double standard of morality. It is an all-out war against Hamas-controlled Gaza, and Israel is entitled, by any fair reading of international law, to do to Gaza City what the U.S. did to Berlin and Tokyo in 1945. It has warned civilians to leave. The collateral deaths of Palestinian civilians, caused directly by the Hamas decision to use them as human shields, would be the moral, political, and legal responsibility of Hamas.

Israeli reluctance to violate the double standards imposed on it by friends and foes alike allowed Hamas to re-arm and re-coordinate its military to facilitate the recent horrible massacres. These brutal attacks against Israeli civilians must change all that. Israel should apply its own very high standards of morality in deciding how to balance the collateral deaths of Palestinian civilians against the need to prevent the intended deaths of its own civilians at the hands of Hamas.

Ken Roth, the former Human Rights Watch head, tweeted:

"International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment of...protected persons for acts committed by individuals during an armed conflict. The imposition of collective punishment is a war crime." -- Red Cross @ICRC

He gave the source from the ICRC - and it proves the opposite of his attempt to paint Israel as guilty.

The first paragraph, which he skips, defines collective punishment:

The term refers not only to criminal punishment, but also to other types of sanctions, harassment or administrative action taken against a group in retaliation for an act committed by an individual/s who are considered to form part of the group. Such punishment therefore targets persons who bear no responsibility for having committed the conduct in question.

The word "retaliation" makes it sound as if the action must be done deliberately as a punishment, not as a consequence of going after the actual guilty party.

For example, if a terrorist group gets its arms flown in on flights t a commercial airport, a nation can bomb that airport runway - even if it means that legitimate airplanes cannot land. It definitely affects innocent people but it is not collective punishment, because that is not the intent.

Similarly, other dual use targets - power stations, TV and radio broadcast stations - may be attacked if they are also used by the combatant. (All of these are subject to proportionality analysis, as with any military action.)

Looking at specific legal rulings listed the ICRC, we see that collective punishment was defined quite clearly by the Special Court for Sierra Leone:

224. The Appeals Chamber finds that the correct definition of collective punishments is:
i) the indiscriminate punishment imposed collectively on persons for omissions or acts for which some or none of them may or may not have been responsible;
ii) the specific intent of the perpetrator to punish collectively.

Although sometimes individual politicians have said stupid things in the heat of argument, but Israel has made it clear in its policy and actions that it has no intention of hurting the Gaza population for anything Hamas has done.

This brings up a bigger question. In many points of international law, such as the principle of distinction, proportionality and even genocide, the intent of the parties is paramount in determining guilt. No one is a mind reader so the only evidence we have on intent is the actions - if they can be explained without resorting to malicious intent, then such intent should not be assumed. On the other hand, if there are other examples where the malice is clear, due to what parties said or because their other actions leave no other explanation, then one can assume the intent is malicious.

With Israel, NGOs and people like Ken Roth always assume malicious intent - which they have never done for Hamas.

This is how people can quote international law to damn Israel. Even when they quote everything accurately, they are assuming Israel is breaking the rules and therefore they interpret intent in that way.

And if you automatically assume that only the Jewish state has malicious intent against civilians in war, especially when there are thousands of counterexamples that prove otherwise, that pretty much make you an antisemite.

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!

It is perverse to see so many toss around the word "genocide" for Israel's fight against Hamas.

The definition of genocide is quite clear: any of a set of acts (like killing) "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Israel has done more to preserve the lives of the civilians of its enemies that perhaps any nation in history. A genocidal entity wouldn't carefully choose munitions so as not to cause collateral damage. It wouldn't ensure a lower ratio of civilian to militant deaths that in any urban conflict in history.

But when it comes to Hamas, it isn't even a question.

The Hamas covenant - which was never replaced - says, "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it."

It incites hatred against Jews with lies: "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.'

It doesn't differentiate between Israel and Jews: "Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people."

And this: "In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised."

And more antisemitism meant to dehumanize Jews:

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. (Article 7)

The enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe... They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about... With their money they formed secret organizations - such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions - which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests... They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it. (Article 22)

Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. (Article 32)

The operative word in the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention is "intent." Hamas has broadcast its clear intent to destroy Israel (as a national group) and Jews (as a religious group.) Therefore, every single terror attack since it was founded is an act of genocide by its definition.

All the more so the slaughter of October 7, where they made very clear from their tactics and actions, as well as evidence found afterwards, that the overarching goal was to kill as many Jews and Israelis as possible.

When Palestinians accuse Israel of "genocide," it is arguably one of many examples of their own psychological projection - ascribing to one's enemies your own mindset.

But when pundits, NGOs, and op-eds use the language against Israel it is something far more insidious. Projection is a reflection of how one views the world, but when people who don't think that way accuse Israel of genocide, especially after the worst attack on Jews since the paradigmatic genocide that spawned the term itself, it is not a psychological quirk. It is a deliberate attempt to excuse Hamas and attack Jews with the worst crime there is.

It is akin to comparing Israeli Jews to Nazis. It is pure antisemitism, pure hate, that is meant to incite others to hate Jews.

How can one tell that these people accusing Israel of genocide are dyed in the wool antisemites? Because they never use that word against Hamas, even after 10/7. Even though it is impossible to chart Hamas' actions against the Genocide Convention and not come to that conclusion.

They aren't soberly looking at Israeli actions and saying, "this fits." As with the false accusations of apartheid, they are shoehorning a very distorted view of Israel to fit some bizarre definition of the term and then using it as a means to incite against Jews.

This is part of a process to dehumanize Israel - subjecting it to standards no one else is judged by and demonizing the Jewish state when it doesn't reach these imaginary human rights levels.

And the same people who are accusing Israel of genocide are trying to lay the groundwork for another real genocide against 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!

10/16 Links Pt1: West Point Professor: "Hamas is legally obligated to evacuate the civilian population; IDF displays arms, plans, torture manuals collected from Hamas terrorists

From Ian:

West Point Professor: "Hamas is legally obligated to evacuate the civilian population

Hamas reacted to the Israeli warnings by telling the residents of Gaza City to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation.”

In this post, I take issue with these assertions based on the facts on the ground and the law. They ignore the reality of what is about to occur (or perhaps has by the time of publication) and turn well-established IHL rules on their head. I will not take on the more legally and morally complex issue of the so-called siege, which has been, and will continue to be, dealt with elsewhere (see, e.g., here and here).

The Reality of the Situation
It is beyond dispute that civilians moving out of Gaza City and northern Gaza will face great hardship, especially considering the lack of access to food, medicine, and other essential supplies. The situation is tragic, and measures must be taken to provide humanitarian assistance in southern Gaza, where the population is heading (especially from across the border with Egypt). This is essential, for once the IDF moves into Gaza City and the surrounding area, delivery of humanitarian aid through the battle zone will be operationally impossible for some time.

But that Israel may lawfully defend itself against Hamas’s attacks by moving against the organization into the Gaza Strip, especially Gaza City, is equally clear (see here). It must do so for valid operational reasons to effectively defend against Hamas, especially in light of the continuing rocket attacks and Hamas’s remaining military capability (and the long lineage of Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians). In that regard, a reality that seems to have been missed by many is that the longer the IDF waits to move into Gaza, the more difficult the fight will be, placing the civilian population at greater risk. After all, Hamas is undoubtedly using the opportunity to strengthen its defenses and otherwise prepare for the Israeli assault. This explains the short suspense on the evacuation. I would also note that the ICRC’s suggestion that “it is impossible for Gazans to know which areas will next face attack” is unfounded. The IDF has unambiguously indicated the penetration of the Gaza Strip will be in the north; informed observers will have already come to that conclusion, for that is where Hamas is dug in.

Reduced to basics, an assessment of Israel’s warnings to evacuate requires a comparison of two alternatives: an urban assault into an area full of civilians; and evacuation into a place that is not fully prepared to accommodate them. Undoubtedly, residents of Gaza City and other concentrations of civilians in the north will be at a greater risk of harm staying in place than moving away from the combat zone. Moreover, once the operation starts, fleeing the hostilities will become extraordinarily dangerous, and access to humanitarian assistance will become impossible for those remaining behind. Regardless of the lawfulness of Israel’s siege-like actions, the simple fact is that civilians who head south will be safer. Moreover, warning the civilian population makes good sense not only because it protects civilians but also militarily, as U.S. forces learned in Fallujah and Mosul.

Given this reality, it is bewildering that humanitarian organizations are not encouraging the civilian population to move away from what will be a destructive and deadly urban battle, in which telling the difference between fighters and civilians is particularly difficult, especially considering Hamas’s past tactics of operating near civilians, engaging in perfidy, and failing to distinguish themselves from civilians.

Along the same lines, it is mystifying that humanitarian organizations are not condemning Hamas’s efforts to keep the civilians in place. Obviously, this is an attempt to exploit the civilians as human shields to complicate Israel’s operations, for the more civilians in the area, the more complicated Israeli targeting and clearance operations become. And, sadly, the more civilians who tragically will become “collateral damage.”

Alan Johnson: For the Total Defeat of Hamas, Against the ‘Total Siege’ of Gaza

WRONG AS POLITICAL WARFARE
A ‘total siege’ is counterproductive in the war against Hamas for another reason. As Walzer has noted, ‘the media are omnipresent, and the whole world is watching’ in modern wars, so ‘war has to be different in these circumstances’. A policy of ‘total siege’ would mean that, very quickly, the only story being told by the world’s media will be the desperate plight of Gazan civilians. Indeed, as of late Friday, it almost is, certainly on social media. Those tempted to say ‘Well, to hell with the Hamas-apologists rallying in support of the pogrom, why should we care about what they say?’ are, we believe, missing the point. A humanitarian crisis in Gaza will mean opposition to Israel’s war against Hamas bleeds into the political mainstream, and from there to resolutions at the UN, and to private calls from US presidents to Israeli Prime Ministers to wind down the war against Hamas. The outcome of the media war is organically connected to the success or otherwise of alliance-maintenance. The freedom of manoeuvre Israel needs to defeat Hamas and PIJ depends on avoiding policies — such as ‘total siege’, but also bombing that can be seen as untargeted — that will isolate Israel diplomatically and in global public opinion.

CONCLUSION
We are in no doubt: Hamas must go. It is beyond reasonable human endurance for the grieving people of Israel — and of its Gazan periphery in particular — to live adjacent to Hamas after 7 October. And we recognise that achieving that necessary goal while adhering to the distinction between combatants and non-combatants is an agonising, strategically hideous challenge.

But as it proceeds in the coming weeks and possible months, Israel’s campaign against Hamas and PIJ will be more just and more effective if it is a just war justly conducted, and is seen to be such, a liberal democratic state fighting an antisemitic terrorist organisation, not the people of Gaza. This distinction must be rendered clear to all to strengthen international alliance and influence the direction of western public opinion, or what is salvageable of it from the wreckage of pervasive anti-Zionism and media complacency and disingenuousness. For all these reasons, we suggest, the policy of ‘total siege’ is both morally wrong and an obstacle to the real goal: the total defeat of the eliminationist antisemites of Hamas.

British writer Douglas Murray praises Israel's efforts to safeguard citizens

In a heated debate on the Gaza conflict on TalkTV, British writer Douglas Murray praised Israel's efforts to safeguard its citizens, contrasting it sharply with the tactics of Hamas.

"Israel tries to use the IDF to protect its citizenry. Hamas uses the citizenry to protect Hamas," Murray said.

Sparked by Shadow Secretary of State for International Development of the United Kingdom Lisa Nandy, the discussion delved into the dire situation faced by Gazan citizens and the morality and proportionality of Israel's reactions.

'Proportionality in conflict is a joke'
Challenging conventional opinions, Murray said, "Proportionality in conflict is a joke; it's a bizarre British concept."

He further articulated that only Israelis are expected to have a "precisely proportionate response" during conflicts, which he finds unreasonable.

Highlighting the disparities in wartime goals, Murray added, "The difference between the Western way of war and the Hamas terrorist way of war is that their objective is to kill civilians. The objective of Hamas is to kill innocent people."

In contrast, he emphasized that nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel aim "to kill as few innocent people as possible."

Murray also underscored Israel's meticulous efforts to minimize collateral damage.

"Israel uses precision-guided missiles to limit civilian casualties," Murray said.

However, he also hinted at a potential shift in Israeli sentiments and tactics: "I do not doubt that after the atrocities of the last week, the appetite of the Israeli public and military and politicians to continue this precision game will change."

The discourse between Nandy and Murray underscores the multifaceted dilemmas nations face during the conflict. As the situation in Gaza unfolds, such debates bring to the fore the ethical quandaries linked to warfare, defensive measures, and the overarching principle of civilian protection.

The Arab American News reports that a crowd of 1,200 Arab Americans filled an auditorium at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn last Tuesday evening, well after the Hamas atrocities were well know and documented.

That didn't stop Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, to tell the crowd that Hamas was “not a terrorist organization.”

Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit, a Palestinian-majority mosque, said that Israel will burn.

This is only what is being reported. The full video shows more outrageous statements.

That same Imam Salha referred to the perpetrators of the massacre, saying "the Palestinians that

stand up for their rights, that protest peacefully, that they cross the border. They do not love to die.

They love life. And because they love life, they wanted to stand up for their rights." His use of past tense makes it clear he was referring to this event.

Salha also mocked the Israelis at the rave who tried desperately to escape from being murdered by Hamas terrorists: "If you really had a claim to the land, oh Israeli, why did you run away like a chicken?" the imam said to applause.

Another speaker, Nasir Beydoun, invoked antisemitic tropes by saying "Before we end the occupation of Palestine, we have to end the occupation of Congress!"

He is a candidate for the Senate.

(UPDATE) Siblani's full statement was reprehensible:

We are not going to be intimidated or silent when they say Hamas is a terrorist organization. The fact is it is not a terrorist community.

And we have to say to them that terrorist is Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. But not only Benjamin Netanyahu and his government but everyone that stands behind them and supports him, killing people in Palestine.

We are not afraid to say it. You know why? Because it is the truth. And we have to say it because we are responsible before God. ...

Let me tell you, let me tell you what happened on Sunday. So what happened on Sunday was shameful. Here in Michigan.

Our representative went to a synagogue and that is not the issue. But what they did there is shameful. While people are being dead. Under the rubbles of their homes. From the bombs that made in the United States. And give it to Israel to kill people. They were standing and dancing and laughing on our bodies, on our homes.

Sunday was Simchat Torah. The representative visited a synagogue where Jews were dancing around the Torah as is done on this holiday. The idea that they were dancing because Israel was bombing Palestinians is sickening - because in synagogues around the world, this was the saddest Simchat Torah ever, as we were only starting to learn about the horrific and genocidal attack by Siblani's Hamas friends on thousands of innocent Jewish civilians.

Where I prayed, where we do not use electronics during the festival, the first time we learned about the attack was right before the dancing. We stopped, said Psalms, prayed for the safety of the people, and then danced a subdued set of hakafot with songs centered around asking God for salvation.

For Siblani to twist that into saying that Jews were celebrating Palestinian deaths is grotesque and revolting..

Oh, and the Ford Community Center is named after an antisemite, Henry Ford. Makes sense.

...

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!

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, "Why Israel Must Reconsider Its Gaza Evacuation Order," that shows that he really doesn't understand Israel's moral obligations.

He writes:

Thursday night’s order by the Israel Defense Forces to Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate their homes within 24 hours was dangerous and deeply troubling. Any demand for a mass evacuation on extremely short notice could have devastating humanitarian consequences.

As secretary general of the United Nations, I appeal to Israeli authorities to reconsider.

We have approached a moment of calamitous escalation, and find ourselves at a critical crossroads. It is imperative that all parties — and those with influence over them — do everything possible to avoid fresh violence or spillover of the conflict to the West Bank and the wider region.

We urgently need a way out of this disastrous dead end before more lives are lost.

The article makes an implicit but dangerous assumption: that Hamas is a rational actor that can be influenced by diplomacy.

He makes the right noises: the massacre in Israel was abhorrent, he understands how Israelis feel fear.

But in the end he is arguing that Hamas be allowed to exist and continue to grow. And that is immoral.

From Israel's perspective, Hamas and the other terror groups must not be allowed to exist and operate. That is a moral imperative. And it is one that Guterres should share.

Senior Hamas official Ali Baraka went on Russia Today TV shortly after the attacks. He admits that for the two years the attacks were being planned, Hamas fooled Israel and the world by acting as if it cared about Gaza residents:

Baraka: "In the past couple of years, Hamas has adopted a 'rational' approach. It did not go into any war, and did not join the Islamic Jihad in its recent battle."

Interviewer: "But all this was part of Hamas's strategy in preparing for this attack."

Baraka: "Of course. We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza], and has abandoned the resistance altogether."

For these two years, life had been improving for Gazans. Imports increased by about 25%, exports by about 30%, and the number of people traveling into and out of Gaza increased from 7,500 to over 50,000 per month. Gazans had work permits. The economy was improving markedly.

But Hamas didn't do all this to help Gazans. They did it to give Israelis a false sense of security that Hamas actually cared about the lives of over 2 million Gazans! As Baraka brags, it was all a lie. Hamas made lives of Gazans better in order to murder Jews, knowing full well that Israel will retaliate, imports and exports and work permits would stop, and many Gazans would die.

Guterres is arguing that the leaders of Gaza who support policies to hurt and kill their own people in order to be able to kill Jews should be allowed to remain in power.

He is saying that we should explore diplomacy with the group that has bragged that it cannot be trusted and that murder is its highest aspiration.

How, exactly, does that promote peace worldwide?

Hamas and its terror partners must be destroyed. The only way to eliminate them is through war. The war cannot be a limited operation that leaves them with a bloody nose - they must be uprooted. Anyone arguing that this war must be limited is an obstacle to peace.

A lot of people will die - both Gazans and Israelis. The only reason the death toll will be so high is because people like Guterres pressured Israel to end previous wars, in the name of morality. Israel could have much more easily eliminated the threat in 2009 or 2014. Meanwhile, Hamas acquired far more weapons and built far more tunnels - all at the expense of its own people.

How immoral must one be to want that situation to continue?

If Guterres really cared about Gazans and the world, he would be not only wanting Israel to win the war decisively, but also work to isolate Iran for its obvious role not only in the planning and training for the attack, but also for its role in instructing Hezbollah and Syria and West Bank groups to join in.

His not even mentioning the Lebanese and Syrian attacks in recent days says volumes about how clueless he is.

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!

Here's a picture of Jihad Mishrawi, a BBC News reporter holding his dead son Omar in Gaza in 2012, on the front page of the Washington Post at the time. The caption says that Omar was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Many other media, especially the BBC itself, reported the same thing.

But it wasn't true. I amassed evidence (based on photos from the inside of the house where the explosion occurred and interviews with neighbors) that indicated that Omar was killed by a Hamas rocket.

The BBC was unhappy, and sent a reporter to chat with the family, and he reiterated that Omar was killed by Israel.

Months later the UN (and other sources) admitted that the baby was killed by a Hamas rocket that fell short.

Omar is far from the only child that has been killed by Gaza terrorist rockets aimed at Israel over the years. In one day in 2021 Hamas rockets - in three separate incidents - killed 16 Gazans, including 8 children.

By default, Israel is always assumed to be targeting these civilians with airstrikes. Very often, they are killed by terrorist rockets.

Given that Hamas is now shooting record numbers of rockets into Israel, dwarfing the number shot in the earlier conflicts, almost certainly there are more rockets falling short - and killing civilians.

But the only source for information on the dead is... Hamas. Who always blame Israel no matter what. Even though they appear to be setting off IEDs against their own people trying to escape Gaza.

It's a bit crazy to assume that Hamas, which now denies targeting women and children last weekend, is telling the truth about deaths in Gaza today.

But even after years of this misreporting, the media still assumes the worst from Israel, and accepts Hamas (including their Health Ministry) claims uncritically.

Over the years I have documented hundreds of Gaza casualties classified as "civilian" by NGOs and Gaza organizations who were in fact terrorists:

Abdullah Abdul Rahim Mustafa al-Madhooun, called a "civilian" by PCHR

I have documented hundreds of innocent Gazans who were human shields, killed when Israel targeted major terrorists who were in their houses.

Yet the media still assumes that people killed are just hit randomly by the IDF for no reason.

I wish the IDF was more forthcoming with documenting how these slanders are lies. But with so many of the lies disproven so many times, why does anyone still believe anything the Hamas health ministry, or Gaza NGOs, say, without checking all the facts?

At this stage of the current war, Hamas is not reporting how any of its members have been killed. It is clearly spreading misinformation. NGOs like PCHR are - almost certainly at Hamas' request - not reporting on the terrorists they know were killed. In addition, they are not gathering information as they used to because the fire from both sides is far more intense than in the past and fact finding is dangerous, even for biased organizations.

Which means we know even less in the current war than we did in previous Gaza operations.

What we do know is that Israel does not randomly shoot buildings without intelligence. It does not attack civilians for no reason - it has nothing to gain and a lot to lose. Hamas, on the other hand, gains when Gaza civilians die - in PR points against Israel.

Add it all up, and you can see that the casualty reports and specific incidents we are hearing from Gaza are suspect.

(The top half of this post was a tweet - by far the most popular tweet I ever wrote, over 1.4 million views..)

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!

Columbia U professor Joseph Massad was really happy at a massacre of hundreds of Jews

I had missed this, but Columbia University professor Joseph Massad had written what was pretty much a love letter to Hamas massacres at Electronic Intifada some 36 hours after the 10/7 massacre:

What can motorized paragliders do in the face of one of the most formidable militaries in the world?

Apparently much in the hands of an innovative Palestinian resistance, which early on Saturday morning launched a surprise attack on Israel by air, land and sea. Indeed as stunning videos show, these paragliders have become the air force of the Palestinian resistance.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the major offensive led by Hamas on 7 October, was not expected by anyone.

It came in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli pogroms in the West Bank town of Huwwara and Jerusalem, especially by settlers storming al-Aqsa mosque during the Jewish High Holy Days over the last month, not to mention the ongoing siege against Gaza itself for more than a decade and a half.

No less astonishing was the Palestinian resistance’s takeover of several Israeli settler-colonies near the Gaza boundary and even as far away as 22 kms, as in the case of Ofakim.

Reports promptly emerged that thousands of Israelis were fleeing through the desert on foot to escape the rockets and gunfire, with many still hiding inside settlements more than 24 hours into the resistance offensive.

In the interest of safeguarding their lives and their children’s future, the colonists’ flight from these settlements may prove to be a permanent exodus. They may have finally realized that living on land stolen from another people will never make them safe.

Notice that Massad considers all Israelis to be "settler-occupiers." He also says that massacring women and children is "especially" justified as a response to Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount.

Later on in his article he castigates Arab nations for asking Hamas to stop the massacres. Because the more dead Jews, the better!

This antisemitic asshole teaches at a prestigious university.

There is a petition for Columbia to fire a professor who waxes poetic at the slaughter of innocents.

Sign it. Columbia won't do anything to a tenured professor but they will hopefully at least think twice before hiring another Hamas groupie.

(h/t EBoZ)

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!

10/15 Links Pt2: Once, I Was a Peace Advocate. Now, I Have No Idealism Left; The cruelty of the Left; Our cities and streets are full of haters

From Ian:

Ilan Benjamin: Once, I Was a Peace Advocate. Now, I Have No Idealism Left.

After terrorists killed my cousin Daniel Pearl, my family called for peace. But after the worldwide celebration of our people’s slaughter, my hope for peace is dead.

I watched the news in horror as terrorists massacred over 100 people at Kibbutz Be’eri. Women. Children. I frantically messaged my host family and heard nothing back. Like my cousin Danny years ago, my family was being held hostage. The good news: unlike Danny, my host family at Kibbutz Be’eri was saved. They are physically okay. But how can they really be okay, after watching their friends and neighbors being slaughtered?

There was a time when these types of events couldn’t shake my ideals. I used to argue relentlessly for a two-state solution. I fought bitterly with Israeli friends about the decency of the Palestinian people. Even though radical Islamists had murdered my cousin, even though civilians had been blown up in buses daily during the Second Intifada, I refused to give in to nihilism.

In 2012, I returned to the States to study film at University of Southern California, and published a book about my military service that criticized the Israeli government. This didn’t win me many friends, but I continued to advocate for nuance regardless. I proudly supported Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA+, and feminist causes. I called myself a progressive Jew.

But over the years, I noticed a disturbing trend: With all the atrocities in the world, why did my social justice warrior friends hate Israel so disproportionately? Why did it feel like intersectionality excluded Jews? Why did the left—who supposedly stood up for human rights—put child-murdering Hamas terrorists on a pedestal?

At first, I thought it must be miseducation.

“Ah, they think Palestinians are the indigenous people. I’ll show that Jewish history, and the archaeology to prove it, dates back millennia.”

“Ah, they think we’re white colonizers. I’ll show how many Jews are people of color, including those who are Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian.”

“Ah, they’ll get it once I show them that there are fifty Muslim countries, and only one Jewish state.”

But my friends weren’t interested in correcting their misunderstandings.

I agreed that the settlements were unlawful, that Gaza was a humanitarian crisis, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuahu was a dictator. I assumed—if I cared enough, if I mourned for the Palestinian dead, if I put nuance above all else—our neighbors and their allies would give us the same decency.

How wrong I was. This past week, as over 1,300 Jews were slaughtered, the most murderous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I saw the true face of Palestinians and their allies. All around the world, they celebrate. They gloat. They mock our tears. They do not protest against Hamas. They embrace pure evil.

And so, to the terrorists I now say:

When you killed my family, I forgave you. When you killed my people, I forgave you. But when you killed my idealism, I had no forgiveness left.

To non-Jewish friends who have reached out, thank you. It is simply the human thing to do. To friends who dare justify what has happened, you are not friends. You are nothing but Nazi supporters dressed up in leftist intellectual language. To the Palestinians: you have lost all moral authority to claim victimhood. I will never advocate for you again. To my family, friends in Israel, and Jews around the world hurting right now, I love you. Stay safe.

In Berlin, where I live today with my German-Ukrainian Jewish wife, Germans love to say “Never Again.” Right now, Never Again is happening again in real time, livestreamed for the whole world to see. I find myself looking up my military number in case the IDF reserves call for me. Unlike our enemy, I feel no joy at the prospect of going to war. But if our people’s existence is at stake, I will do what I must. I will be the world’s favorite villain: the Jew who has the audacity to defend his people.

The cruelty of the Left

On Oct. 7, Israel suffered its worst terrorist attack in the post-World War II era. The death toll, which includes infants, women, and the elderly, stands at about 1,300. An estimated 27 U.S. citizens were murdered. Hamas also took more than 100 hostages, many of them innocent civilians.

Yet, the immediate response in so many colleges and universities was not to condemn the killings, the torture, the humiliations, or the kidnappings. The response was to praise Hamas while criticizing the victim of the slaughter. Equally disturbing is the fact that these rallies were not confined to institutions of higher learning. Large pro-Hamas rallies have taken place in major U.S. cities this week, the streets echoing the bloodlust articulated in the halls of academia.

The student groups and the unassociated rallies are not right-wing. They are not right-of-center. They aren’t even moderate. They are left-wing, espousing what has become a mainstream position on the Left - that Palestine is the righteous actor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that its resistance "by any means" is both justified and moral, including even ethnic cleansing. This isn’t a fringe opinion anymore. So widespread does this position appear, in fact, that even those on the left-leaning side of things have expressed alarm.

"In nearly 50 years of [Harvard] affiliation," former Clinton and Obama Treasury official Larry Summers said in reference to the pro-Hamas Harvard letter, "I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today." Summers also previously served as the president of Harvard.

"Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me," said Puck's Washington correspondent Julia Ioffe. “I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR. But now I see that's not it.”

Yes, some liberals are eager to celebrate Hamas’s war crimes. But surely, claiming the Left delights in cruelty is going a bit too far.

Is it?

David Collier: Our cities and streets are full of haters

Academia
While the media is still held back by certain standards, academia is the land of freedom. Islamists and the hard left can do what they like there. For decades they have been drip-feeding destructive pseudo-science into wider society. The ‘decolonisation’ agenda is everywhere from the museum space and education to the NHS. The tsunami originated in academia, alongside other poisons such as gender studies and critical race theory.

But what does ‘decolonisation mean’? Well it seems we all found out on Saturday morning, when as over 1300 Jews were slaughtered, academics reminded us that ‘decolonisation is not a metaphor’.

The author of that sickening tweet is Dr Yara Hawari, who was a product of Illan Pappe’s conveyor belt at the University of Exeter (I first ran into her at a conference in Exeter in 2015). This vile message about decolonisation was repeated throughout the academic sector- with various tweets on the subject going viral.

These horrific retweets were from Dr Sara Camacho Felix. She is an Assistant Professor (Education) and Programme Lead at the LSE. She appears to support Palestinian resistance in ‘all its forms’. Which on that Saturday morning including raping young girls and butchering babies.

Dr Sara Salem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. She deactivated her twitter account, but not before I had archived this tweet. In her eyes, no matter how bad the actions against them – Israelis can ‘never be the victims’:

How can academia be so lost, that 1300 Jews are slaughtered and these people still side with the murderers?

Students
With academics such as those above – what can we expect our students to turn out like?
- Hanin Barghouti, Women Students’ Officer at the University of Sussex students’ union spoke out at an anti-Israel demonstration in Brighton calling the Hamas attacks ‘inspiring’ and ‘beautiful’.
- The Student Welfare Officer at Cambridge University liked a run of outrageous tweets, including one that suggest the terrorist attack was a cause for a day of celebration – and the actions needed no apology.
- At a public demonstration, Dana Abuqamar, the Diversity Officer at the University of Manchester, spoke of her ‘pride and joy‘ in the Hamas ‘resistance’.

All students serving as part of their student unions. They all have roles dealing with the welfare of other students. All willing to applaud the slaughter of innocent Jews. On the streets

With academia and the media poisoned from within, the nation’s moral defences have crumbled. Within hours of Jews being slaughtered – masses of people went out to support Palestinian ‘resistance’. Images from London and Manchester:

London and Manchester
It is not just the Islamists. The hard -left put out their posters calling for victory to the Palestinians – an event about why it is right to ‘resist’.

Why it is right to resist
And then there are the open calls for violence. On 8th October, Richard Barnard (the co-founder of Palestine Action, the group that continually vandalises factories in the UK) – spoke at a pro-Palestine event about the current violence. He used the Hamas attack as inspiration – telling people listening that ‘this was just the start for them’ – and they need to turn the ‘Al Aqsa Flood’ (the name of Hamas operation) into ‘a tsunami over the whole world’.

In the clip he is supporting a proscribed terrorist group and inciting violence against British Jews. At the time of writing, he has still NOT BEEN ARRESTED.

10/15 Links Pt1: Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War; Robert Malley grew up with Arafat as his unofficial 'godfather'

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in This War

A Hamas that wanted a more prosperous Gaza could have it, simply by desisting from its ideological aims.

If Gaza is the open-air prison that so many of Israel's critics allege, it's not because Israelis are cruel but because too many of its residents pose a mortal risk.

The central cause of Gaza's misery is Hamas. It alone bears the blame for the suffering it has inflicted on Israel and knowingly invited against Palestinians.

Peggy Noonan: The October Horror in Israel Is Something New

Terrorists calling themselves a resistance movement passed over the border from Gaza and murdered little children; they took infants hostage as they screamed. They murdered old women, tormented and raped young women, targeted an overnight music festival and murdered the unarmed young people in cold blood or mowed them down as they ran screaming. They murdered whole families as they begged for their lives; they burned people alive; they decapitated babies.

There is no cause on earth that justifies what these murderers did. There is no historical grievance that excuses or "gives greater context" to their actions. This is what happens when savages hold the day: They imperil the very idea of civilization. Butchering people was the aim. It is what they set out to do. It was cruelty as an intention.

The famously dangerous neighborhood has never been more so, and one senses Israel's enemies think this is their moment. What Hamas did was stone evil. Tell the world and show the world, over and over.

Israel has led with its heart. On a Zoom call this week, a man in Israel told Americans about a young woman killed at the rave who was from Brazil. Her mother and sister flew in for the funeral. Fearing that no one else would be there to mourn, someone on WhatsApp sent out the word. 7,000 people showed up, having heard that the family might be alone. My eyes filled as I heard it, and fill again as I write.

Ex-Iran envoy Robert Malley was critical of Israel, has family ties to PLO

Malley is no stranger to controversy, and has followed in the footsteps of his father — an Egyptian-born Jew and Arab nationalist journalist who dedicated his life to anti-Israel causes and the developing world.

Simon Malley embraced national liberation movements around the world, and was a trusted confidant to Arafat and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, with whom he once conducted a 20-hour interview, according to reports.

In 1969, after covering the United Nations for the Egyptian newspaper Al Goumhourya, Simon moved his family to Paris to launch Afrique Asie — a journal that focused on newly independent states such as Egypt and Algeria and gave a voice to liberation movements around the world.

The journal embraced campaigns that disrupted France’s influence in Africa. It was banned in several African countries for supporting radical movements against King Hassan II in Morocco and dictator Mobuto Sese-Seko in Zaire, among others.

Malley, along with his brother Richard and sister Nadia, attended the posh École Jeannine Manuel, a bilingual school in Paris where his future boss Blinken was a classmate. Antony Blinken, Robert Malley and Iranian activists 9

The Malley family’s sojourn in Paris was interrupted when conservative French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing ordered Simon out of the country and stripped him of his residence permit in 1980.

The expulsion came shortly after Interior Minister Christian Bonnet told the country’s National Assembly that articles written by Simon “were genuine appeals to murder foreign heads of state. The French government cannot tolerate this.”

French authorities put Simon on a plane to New York City, the hometown of his wife Barbara Silverstein, who had worked with the United Nations delegation of the Algerian National Liberation Front, or FLN.

It has become trendy for academics to make noises about being shocked by Hamas raping girls and beheading babies and then saying it is really Israel's fault.

One particularly revolting example comes from University of Pennsylvania professor Ian Lustick writing in Foreign Policy:

To prevent the monstrousness that has been unleashed on innocent Israelis from happening again and again, along with the retribution innocent Palestinians suffer as a result, we must not rely on the certainty of our revulsion; we must identify and remove the causes of the attack.

I refer not to the specific calculations, decisions, and deployments inside of Gaza that produced this specific bloodletting, but to the machine of institutionalized oppression, hate, and fear that comprises the real infrastructure of violence. The drive shaft of this machine is the horizonless immiseration, imprisonment, and trauma inflicted on the masses of people living in what Israelis refer to as a “coastal enclave.”

And here is a letter from some 380 academics also getting the obligatory "of course we don't support beheadings" out of the way before blaming Israel for them:

In this time of pain and devastation, we call on Israel to:

Do everything in its power to rescue the hostages. Israel holds vast numbers of Palestinians in prisons, many of them elderly. Israel must seek an exchange of prisoners in order to save its own and other countries' captive citizens from certain death.

Refrain from punishing collectively Gazan civilians for the crimes of Hamas. One massacre does not justify another. This will only lead to more devastation, fueling the cycle of violence. We call for an immediate ceasefire and de-escalation.

End the violent oppression of the Palestinian people. Apartheid, the West Bank's decades-long Occupation, keeping Gaza's two-million Palestinians under siege for 16 years, erasing the memory of the Nakba, now all contribute to the brutalization and violence. They must be urgently brought to an end. There is no other way out.

The intellectual way to deal with terror is to do whatever the terrorists demand. Then they'll be satisfied!

I am so disgusted with these fake "experts" who claim that the root problem is Israel's treatment of Gaza.

Are you really that dense?

First of all, things have been improving greatly in Gaza - the level of imports, exports and travel permits was HIGHER in August than before the closure in 2007.

If you know that and don't mention it, you are liars. If you don't know that, you have no standing to pretend to be experts.

Secondly, how does that explain Hamas suicide bombings before 2007? As horrific as the 10/7 attacks were, they are only showing an increase in capabilities, but not an increase in hate, since the second intifada or earlier. Blowing up babies at pizza shops and bar mitzvah celebrations is not exactly moderate.

And if you want to fall back on the old chestnut of "occupation" being the root cause, then how can you explain the pre-1967 terror attacks? How can you explain the pre-state terror attacks?

You can't.

The root cause of the conflict is Jew-hatred. Specifically, the overwhelming sense of shame in the Arab world that Jews, who had been weak and ineffective second class citizens under Arab rule, suddenly stood up for themselves and defeated the Arab world in battle, the one field that they could not imagine losing to Jews.

That's the reason they call it a nakba. You are a professor, you should know that.

Every attack since then has motivated by a desire to erase that deep sense of shame.

And the celebrations from Palestinians after this massacre reflect their perception that they regained some of this "honor" they lost in 1948.

My theory sure fits the facts better than those of these fake "experts." But they do not want to admit the deep antisemitic feelings in much of the Arab world - it feels Islamophobic to admit that so many are so bigoted. Even though every single survey confirms that well over 90% of Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Lebanese are antisemitic.

These "experts" never write about, or they deny, the true root cause. Now, why is that?

Wake up. Old fashioned Jew-hate is the only consistent factor in all of this, and blaming Jews for being slaughtered is the moral equivalence of blaming women for being raped.

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!

Pro-Hamas rally in Iraq, October 14

In 2008, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri bizarrely castigated Hamas, saying that their "blessed Qassam rockets" do not differentiate between Israeli soldiers who are legitimate targets, and children and Arabs who are not.

Hamas was embarrassed at being given a morality lesson from Al Qaeda, and it went on to deny that they targeted civilians, saying all of their rockets were only aimed at military sites.

After that incident, Hamas press releases on their rocket fire changed the names of the targets from "settlements" to "military bases" that has the same names - like "military base Sderot" which didn't exist.

What this shows is that Hamas can be shamed when the criticism comes from fellow Arabs. And this is key.

We've written and spoken before about how powerful shame can be as a weapon against the terror groups, since they subscribe to an honor/shame culture. They avoid shame at all costs, plus they want to consider Islam to be more moral than Western society, so they are very sensitive to be told they are immoral.

In all my time watching Palestinian reaction to terror attacks, I can only think of one attack that was considered immoral: the horrific attack against the Fogel family in Itamar killing two parents and three children, one of them three months old. There was no pride in that attack, although it was not done by any organized group. Every other attack has been cheered.

But even this time, as Western media have been aghast at the massacre, Hamas has shown signs of shame, denying against all evidence that they killed any children or raped any women.

Their allies are latching onto their denials and, after the first day, the attack is being reported in Arab media as a military victory and the murders of children and women are simply not mentioned.

Israel, and to an extent the Western world, needs to take advantage of the fact that most Muslims would not defend this attack if they knew the details.

Israel needs to speak to its friends in the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. The message is: "We value your friendship, but your "both sides" statements are not acceptable. If you cannot clearly condemn Hamas for this reprehensible crime as s standalone statement, the Israeli companies you are partnering with might have second thoughts about working with you in the future. Condemning baby beheadings and kidnappings is a pretty low moral bar, and if you cannot condemn that, perhaps our friendship is not as deep as you have been saying publicly. We need you to condemn Hamas, unequivocally, now."

If they ask for more proof, Israel can respond that this is an insult but it can provide all the proof they need.

Similarly, Israel should tell Jordan, you know that water and natural gas you purchase from us? We can sell them elsewhere if you cannot make a statement clearly condemning Hamas..

Israel's Western allies who are pledging their support for Israel can put their money where their mouths are. They can tell Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Egypt and Tunisia that they have to choose to publicly side with the baby-killers or condemn them. Let the world know exactly where they stand.

The Arab countries can say they are pro-Palestinian. They can say they support a Palestinian state. But they must say they condemn the Hamas baby-killers.

If Hamas sees a string of Arab countries saying that they are reprehensible, they are far more likely to release at least the children hostages to the ICRC. And the masses of Arabs now supporting them could dwindle as op-eds and commentators start to back up their government positions.

This is a chance to use the honor/.shame dynamic for good. The West has a weapon to improve the Arab world - now is the time to use it.

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!

Here is how Time magazine's Karl Vick reported on the massacre of Israelis last weekend in this week's print edition.

Nowhere in the article does it say that hundreds of Israeli civilians were murdered.

It mentions a Hamas "assault" and "raid" that shocked Israelis. The third to last paragraph mentions that they "opened fire" at a concert. No deaths are mentioned explicitly. It only says that some were taken hostage.

The next to last paragraph implies, but doesn't say, that there were some "deaths of civilians" that may or may not have happened during this incident.

There is no mention of a single outrageous act of terror. No mention of teams of terrorists invading homes. No mention of babies slaughtered in their beds. No mention of the grandmother shot and then videoed with her own phone and posted to her Facebook. No mentions of pools of blood or stabbings or shootings in kibbutzim or the word "slaughter" that every single other Western media outlet reported on. No humanization of the victims. No mention of the victims. And the only implication that this may have been an outrageous terror attack is at the very end of the article.

This isn't "burying the lede." This is hiding the lede. It is the most irresponsible excuse for journalism I've ever seen.

Someone who gets all their news from Time would have no idea what happened except that Israelis are shocked over...a "raid" and "surprise attack" of some sort.

I should have done this long ago, but I canceled my subscription to this piece of trash.

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!

10/14 Links: Israeli envoy slams UN official: ‘Don’t forget to wash babies’ blood off your hands’; Hamas’s deception—and our self-deception;

From Ian:

Israeli envoy slams UN official: ‘Don’t forget to wash babies’ blood off your hands’

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan on Saturday slammed UN special coordinator for the Middle East Tor Wennesland for meeting with the foreign minister of Iran, and said he was cutting ties with the official.

“Don’t forget to wash the blood of Israeli babies off your hands after that handshake,” said Erdan, sharing a photo of Wennesland shaking hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian earlier in the day.

“Tor Wennesland not only met with the Iranian regime’s FM, but didn’t even bother condemning Iran for its role in the massacre of Israeli women and children,” Erdan wrote on X. “It’s no secret that Hamas terrorists are openly praising Iran for funding, arming, and training them.”

“The UN’s support for and legitimization of genocidal terrorists is a threat to civilization!” he added.

“I am officially announcing the severance of my ties with Wennesland until he publicly condemns the Iranian regime of murder and terrorism.”

Israel and the US have not directly accused Tehran of being behind the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught that killed over 1,300 Israelis, the majority of them civilians, and led to the abduction of up to 200 more. But Hamas is funded by and cooperates closely with Iran in its efforts against Israel.

Hanegbi: Israel won’t negotiate with Hamas on hostages now, will remove it from power

National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi said on Saturday that there are no active negotiation efforts underway by Israel to repatriate the Israelis and some other foreign nationals kidnapped by Hamas last Saturday, saying “there is no way right now to have a negotiation” with the terror organization.

“Israel will not hold negotiations with an enemy that we have vowed to wipe from the face of the earth,” he said, briefing reporters at the Israel Defense Force’s Tel Aviv headquarters.

His comments prompted fury from the families of the missing, with their spokesman accusing the government of abandoning them.

There are thought to be 150-200 hostages being held by Gaza terror groups.

Hanegbi also stated that the cabinet’s war goal is to remove the Hamas terror group from military and political control over the Gaza Strip, but declined to elaborate on planned next steps for the coastal enclave.

And he acknowledged that “the State of Israel did not fulfill its mission” to protect its citizens from the devastating Hamas onslaught, in which some 1,500-2,000 Hamas gunmen poured into Israel having blown up sections of the border fence and massacred over 1,300 Israelis, most of them civilians, at 22 communities and about a dozen IDF bases and posts.

Confirming that some 150-200 hostages, the vast majority of them Israeli, are being held in the Gaza Strip, Hanegbi said that the government, eight days after their capture, still does not know who they all are and their status.

He said that the government’s liaison for hostages, Gal Hirsch, updates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a few times a day.”