Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 20, 2023

Hamas Has A History of Threatening Those Who Report The Truth From Gaza (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

These days, along with the rush to condemn Israel in its war to eliminate the Hamas terrorist threat, there are instances of retractions and deletions of hasty anti-Israel posts. One of the more unusual and unexpected examples is Ilhan Omar backtracking on her accusation that Israel bombed a hospital:

While Omar has reacted to pressure, Tlaib is still at it.

Another example of backtracking comes from Secretary of State Blinken. It's not that Blinken condemned any particular action of Israel, but rather that he came out with a suggestion that was so insulting and ill-timed that he soon deleted it. Just one day after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, Blinken publicly recommended a cease-fire:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deleted a social media post Monday morning that expressed support for a "cease-fire" in Israel after Palestinian militants invaded the nation late last week.

The now-deleted post, which appeared on Blinken's X account late Sunday, described a conversation Blinken reportedly had with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

While the tweet was deleted, it did not go unnoticed -- and was saved for posterity:

Fernandez is a former US diplomat and vice-president of MEMRI.

Keep in mind that it is unlikely that Blinken would publicly suggest this and try to set the idea for a cease-fire in motion without Biden's approval. A friend suggested to me that this was a trial balloon, which was soon shot down.

But there is another example of deletion, one not intended to save face but intended instead to save the Hamas terrorists and save their own skin.

Here is the original tweet from UNRWA:

But it didn't take long for UNRWA to delete that post:

UNRWA then posted its "clarification":

Despite UNRWA's clarification, other sources confirmed the story:

There was a time when the UN openly confirmed that Hamas violated international law.

John Ging, Director of the Operational Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in 2014 admitted that Hamas was using both UN facilities and residential areas to fire rockets at Israel.

At the time, in 2014, there were a number of journalists who reported on Hamas using human shields. Maybe because Hamas was using them as the shields.

That Shifa hospital was -- and is -- exploited by Hamas as a headquarters as well:

Shifa has indeed “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices,” the Washington Post reported on July 15. The Wall Street Journal‘s Middle East correspondent, Nick Casey, wrote on Twitter that Hamas uses Shifa “as a safe place to see media,” but removed the post afterwards.

Some journalists even tweeted about it -- even if they did delete those tweets later.

Here is a journalist tweeting about 9 children killed by Hamas -- once he was safely out of Gaza.

Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati said he was able to speak freely about witnessing a Hamas misfire that killed nine children at the Shati camp, confirming the Israel Defense Forces version of events, but only after leaving Gaza, “far from Hamas retaliation.”

Why did Barbati wait until after he was out of Gaza?
The answer has implications for the reporting by the journalists who stay in Gaza.

In 2021, when Israel destroyed a 12-story building in Gaza used by Hamas military intelligence and AP denied knowing that it shared a building with the terrorist group, a former AP journalist refuted their claim:

As to whether AP was aware of Hamas involvement with the building, Matti Friedman wrote in his 2014 Atlantic piece: “When Hamas’ leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

Friedman claimed the Hamas militants would regularly “burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

UNRWA's deletion and subsequent "clarification" shows that the same fear exists. And the history of Hamas's massive violations of international law makes the indications of Hamas stealing humanitarian supplies from their own people very believable.

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

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10/20 Links Pt1: Israeli Soldiers Die Because Its Military Is So Moral; How to Fight the Next War; IDF’s speedy hospital rocket response shows it has recovered its nerve

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Israeli Soldiers Die Because Its Military Is So Moral; How to Fight the Next War

That year, I interviewed my cousin, Adele Raemer. For decades, she lived happily in a progressive paradise of the Gaza corridor kibbutzim, but was now watching as Israel’s disengagement made their lives hellish. “The IDF is the world’s most moral army,” she said. “They aim for the feet. They ‘knock on the roof,’ warning dwellers to flee an apartment-building-turned-terrorist-base before destroying it. If, God forbid, Hamas had breached the fence, hundreds would have been killed.”

Adele, who had hoped for coexistence with Palestinians, resented Israel’s impotence: “I don’t remember voting for Hamas, but they — not my government — run my life. They decide when I go into my safe room — or not. They decide when school is open for me to teach — or not.”

I warned then, that what the UN called “protests,” the kibbutzniks experienced as riots — attempts at mass invasion, with thousands trained to kidnap or kill Adele and her neighbors.

Unfortunately, Israel’s moral code shaped the “conceptzia,” the conception that decided Hamas was pragmatic, and its violence could be indulged and contained.

Fighting this new unsought war for survival, Israelis should learn from this unhappy history:
- First, military morality entails a sliding scale. The greater the threat, the more evil the enemy, the more aggressive armies can be. After October 7, it would be immoral for Israel to tolerate Hamas’s continued presence next door.
- Second, among the many anti-Israel libels distorting coverage, reporters must stop claiming that Gaza is so “densely populated,” treating Palestinians like sitting ducks. How could anyone in Manhattan, with 72,918 residents per square mile, deem Gaza overcrowded, with 16,583 residents per square mile — even fewer considering the extra living space Hamas developed in underground tunnels by siphoning humanitarian aid from the UN and other dupes.
- Third, end the charade. Although Hamas is cruel to its people — many of its people have been cruel to Israelis. Don’t blame every Palestinian. But every Palestinian who cheered this rampage, who shared snuff videos, who giddily distributed candy after any terrorist attacks — is neither innocent nor hostage to Hamas.
- Finally, this sobering historical conclusion should not encourage Israelis to behave as despicably as their enemies do. Nothing justifies targeting civilians or Hamas’ October 7 brutality. Israel should never treat women and children and elders as Palestinians treated Israeli women and children and elders. Israel will never treat prisoners as Hamas is treating some kidnapped victims — no matter what negotiating advantage Israel might gain. And Israel will never specifically target civilians. It will do everything possible to minimize what the American army antiseptically calls “collateral damage.” Ultimately, Israelis must fight as moral a fight as they can, to satisfy their own consciences, to protect their souls, not to please the world.

The IDF’s main mission remains winning the war by dislodging Hamas. As cries of “disproportionate force,” and “cycle of violence,” distract others, Israel should remember Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who headed Britain’s Royal Air Force Bomber Command during World War II. He proclaimed: “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier.”

That was the Allies’ moral standard when saving the world from the Nazis. Israel’s Lamed-Hah Morality is too ingrained in Zionism to be that brutal. Still, all Israeli soldiers must remember that in this war — and forever more — their primary moral obligation is to do their job, meaning defend themselves, their comrades, and their homeland against a most amoral foe.

It Is Heartwarming That the World Loves Dead Jews So Much

Isn’t it heartwarming that the world loves dead Jews so much? I almost feel guilty for getting that lung transplant. It pains me that I deprived so many members of Black Lives Matter — may they all be damned by G-d Almig-ty — and so many neo-Nazi White Supremacists of a small moment of extra joy.

My gosh, how beautiful their eulogies are! In England, they have projected an Israeli flag image, replete with Jewish star, on 10 Downing. In France, on the Eiffel Tower. In Germany, on the Brandenburg Gate. I could go on. Projecting six-pointed stars in the blue and white. Touching.

When was the last time England exercised its veto power on the U.N. Security Council for Israel? Once in 75 years? Twice? Never? They sip Pimms No. 1 Cup or No. 6 and leave it for America to be the heroes, as they did in The Great War, World War II, and every war since. And what about Le France? Jamais — Never. And again never. And even never again. They leave it for America to show courage while they snicker behind our backs and also leave it for us to save them — again and again. As for Germany, we Jews don’t hold our breaths for much more than that they just keep their hands off us.

In the United Nations, Israel has only one almost totally reliable ally, America. And even that was not the case when Obama was there, thanks partly to leftist Jewish votes that contributed to helping elect him twice and the likes of the snake Jack Lew who served as his “Orthodox Jewish” defender. Or as they say in politics: Obama’s human shield. And human shill.

On vote after vote in the U.N., on the most simple and obvious of opportunities to stand with Israel, the “great world powers” are gutless. The final vote tallies on some General Assembly resolutions are appalling, as one after another after another of these “great Western powers” gutlessly votes to “abstain,” leaving it to Israel and America to stand alone, backed only by — I am sorry to say — the least important of itsy-bitsy countries that no one ever knew existed until Jewish news reports started hailing them for voting with Israel. We can always count on Micronesia (name says it all), Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua – New Guinea, and Togo (not the sandwich takeout chain). Often Cameroon, Uruguay, and Guatemala. Sometimes on Canada, sometimes not. Australia used to be a surprisingly reliable friend, but their new leader is changing course, hopping backward like a kangaroo in heat.

I once wondered “How will there be room for all the souls of 6,000 years of humankind to fit in the Holy Land when Moshiach (the Messiah) comes and the era of Olam Haba (the World to Come) arrives?” Well, there is part of the answer, I guess. There will be the righteous nations of the United States of America joined by the denizens of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua-New Guinea, and Togo. And when other nations come, embodying an image some Talmud students may recognize from the first chapter of Mesekhet (Tractate) Avodah Zarah, the Holy One Blessed Is He will hear the leaders of England and France and Germany and Japan ask of Him: “May we also enter eternal life and the World to Come?” And G-d will answer: “I abstain.”

Victor Davis Hanson: Our Post-Hamas Wreckage

The Palestinian State Solution
The Left’s shrill demand for a “two-state” solution, and tolerance of Palestinian tired and serial threats to drive Israel into the sea, are for now over. The glee with which Gazans and West Bankers met the news of mass murder, mutilation, hostage-taking, rape, and the desecration of bodies is proof enough that these dictatorial governments probably do represent the majority of their citizens.

Most Gazans were giddy on hearing of the macabre methods of Hamas, and only wished that there had been more opportunity to spit on hostages, poke captive women, kick corpses, and torment the child and female trophies brought back from Israel. The Gazan delight in the grotesque was reminiscent of some medieval pogrom, or the Roman triumphs of old with their files of enslaved captives. And perhaps the desire to take captives and pass them back through the killing fields to Gaza reminds of the Aztec practice of seeking to capture rather than just kill their enemies, in order to have plenty of bodies for the human sacrifices on Templo Major.

The old idea of Gaza—self-governed since 2005-2006 by “one man, one vote, once” Hamas—as a possible “Singapore” with Hyatt and Four Seasons beaches, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars from the Gulf, Europe, the U.S. and the UN, is finally revealed as the farce it always was. That fantasy was simply antithetical to the Hamas nihilist charter, the logical manifestation of which was the slaughter inside Israel of hundreds of civilians.

BLM
BLM was always a corrupt, disingenuous operation—the craftier successor to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton 1980s corporate shake-downs. But it is has finally jumped the shark with its sick support for Hamas murderers (note its recent posters glorifying Hamas’s hang-gliding butchery).

Its pro-death advocacy of Hamas is the pièce de résistance to the corruption and abdication of its leadership, the Kendi-con, and the lethal crime wave it helped spawn in major cities. Its racist agendas may linger for a while. But BLM is going the way of the 1960s Black Panthers—that is, one leading to general disgust, then to irrelevance, and finally to nothingness.

The still-remaining BLM murals in our major downtowns are already embarrassments and eroding reminders of the insanity that swept the country from 2020 to the present.

Campuses
Universities have now crossed the Rubicon in de facto condoning their crazed students cheering on mass death. They made the argument after George Floyd that the country must listen to their pseudo-moral lectures, and now they unashamedly broadcast what they have become—traitors to the idea of an enlightened free society, and kindred spirits to the anti-Semitism, intolerance, and fascism of 1930s German universities.

Degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford will soon become, not resume badges, but either embarrassments or certifications of a mediocre education. Or both.

Universities all rushed to embrace “decolonization”, starting with empty and ahistorical virtue signals and ending up paralyzed, as thousands of their own students showed the world how ecstatic they were over news that babies were murdered and women raped.

In response, their invertebrate administrators and faculty sat frozen for days, calculating how best to issue “on the one hand…on the other hand” mush. The first serious politician who calls for the taxing of the huge incomes of their endowments, for yanking the government out of the student loan business and returning the moral hazard to the universities who impoverish their own students, will win overwhelming support.

The Gaza of Hamas is going down, but so are a lot of corrupt institutions and ideas that threw in with its lot.

I would recommend against the Nazi reference: the Nazis didn’t deny knowledge of atrocities until *after the war*, making them a bad contrast to current Palestinians.

Victor Rosenthal: Biden’s Bear Hug

How is it possible that a sovereign state can allow a foreign power to sit in its war cabinet – as US Secretary of State Blinken did for seven hours the other day – and dictate strategy and tactics? It is not possible, and therefore Israel is not a sovereign state. Our political and military leadership sold our sovereignty in return for military aid. We took what the US wanted to give us, what was most suitable for American defense contractors (and not always for our needs); and they were in turn paid top dollar from the pockets of American taxpayers. The US tried to determine the outcome of our elections and intervene in our politics in ways that are just beginning to become clear.

The Biden administration ignored the Taylor Force Act and restarted aid to the Palestinian Authority even when it refused to stop paying the terrorists who murder us on a regular basis. The US supplies weapons and training to the Lebanese army and intelligence apparatus, despite the fact that Lebanon is 100% controlled by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah, which has 130,000 rockets aimed at Israel – including precision-guided ones that are far more dangerous than those of Hamas. And speaking of Iran, the US has recently freed up $6 billion which Iran can use to fund Hamas and Hezbollah as well as its nuclear project. These are not the actions of an ally; they are those of an imperial power that uses its satellites in the service of its own interests. And American interests, as seen by the Biden administration, are not coincident with Israeli interests: today they are directly opposed. With the exception of the Trump period, American policy since the Iraq war, as expressed in the 2006 Baker-Hamilton report, has been to obtain a détente with Iran, and to allow it to obtain the hegemony it seeks in the Middle East. Although the US at least pays lip service to the existence of a Jewish state, it expects Israel to return to an attenuated, pre-1967 shape.

The policy is contradictory for several reasons. Iran sees the US and Israel as enemies, and is committed for both geostrategic and religious reasons to destroy Israel. It also implies that Israel will give up control of Judea/Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan heights, which would make her impossible to defend.

But today Israel faces an immediate problem: how to escape the American “bear hug” for long enough to recover her deterrence in the region. I don’t know the answer to this, but it seems to me that we must try. It will require our leadership to summon up the courage to say ‘no’ to the Americans. Can we do this, or has the “bear hug” already squeezed the freedom and sovereignty out of us?

The next few weeks, perhaps days, will tell.

After my last post where I found an academic misrepresenting the results of yers of surveys of Palestinians, I looked a little more at the website that published it, The Conversation.

I like the idea behind the site:

We publish trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public and edited by our team of journalists.

On this website (and through distribution of our articles to thousands of news outlets worldwide), you’ll find explanatory journalism on the events, discoveries and issues that matter today. Our articles share researchers’ expertise in policy, science, health, economics, education, history, ethics and most every subject studied in colleges and universities. Some articles offer practical advice grounded in research, while others simply provide authoritative answers to questions that sparked our curiosity.

Sounds great, right?

So I looked at more articles about the current conflict, and saw one by Robert Goldman, Professor of Law, American University, titled "How the ‘laws of war’ apply to the conflict between Israel and Hamas."

This section surprised me:

Is Israel’s siege of Gaza illegal?
Unlike in the past, total siege warfare now is unlawful regardless of whether the warring parties are involved in international or non-international hostilities.

Blocking the entry of all food, water, medicines and cutting off electricity – as appears to be happening in Gaza – will disproportionately affect civilians, foreseeably leading to their starvation. This is a banned method of warfare under customary and conventional IHL.

This surprised me since I've been looking at this exact topic. The US Department of Defense - Law of War Manual has an entire section describing how a siege may be done under international law.

So I looked at his source for the statement that sieges are unlawful. I was surprised to see that the article by Chatham House says the exact opposite to what Goldman claimed:

Sieges are not prohibited as such under either IHL or other areas of public international law. Under IHL, the besieging party is entitled to attack forces and other military objectives in besieged areas, and to limit supplies that reach them. However, in doing so it must comply with all relevant rules of IHL: the few that specifically refer to sieges, as well as the generally applicable rules that regulate the conduct of hostilities and afford civilians protections and safeguards.

The entire article describes the issues surrounding balancing a siege with humanitarian concerns, but in no way does it say that a siege is unlawful.

It notes that there is disagreement about how to interpret "starvation", noting:

One view, based on the wording of the prohibition in Article 54 AP I and, in particular, on its framing of the practice ‘as a method of warfare’, is that only the deliberate starvation of civilians is prohibited.39 A number of military manuals appear to support this interpretation.40 Additional support for this narrow interpretation comes from the wording of Article 54(2) AP I, which sets out an example of a violation of the prohibition of starvation, and refers to the destruction of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population ‘for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population’ (emphasis added).

Others disagree in that specific issue. But to flatly state that a siege is "unlawful" is simply a lie. And there is no evidence that Israel is planning to do anything illegal in its war.

Goldman also makes up international law by saying that Israel's moves today will "foreseeably" lead to their starvation, making it illegal. But that isn't the definition of starvation under IHL, as the same article he cites notes:

In terms of threshold of need, ‘starvation’ implies a high degree of deprivation, more significant than the ‘not adequately provided’ standard that brings into play the rules of IHL regulating humanitarian relief operations. However, it is not necessary for deaths to occur.

Goldman is arguing, without any source, that the cutting off of food is identical to starvation. But "foreseeable" starvation is not foreseeable nor is it starvation under IHL. If and when they get to that point, then Israel may have obligations under the law - but not beforehand.

Even that is not so clear, as the DoD manual says:

[A]llowing passage of these items [foodstuffs, medicines - EoZ] is not required by the party controlling the area unless that party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing that:
• the consignments may be diverted from their destination;
• the control may not be effective; or
• a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy.

Given that we know Hamas has stolen food and medicines in the past, this is not a theoretical concern. Meaning that even with the caveats in the Chatham House article, a "total siege" blocking food and medicine may be legal under certain circumstances - and Hamas' actions over the years indicates that those circumstances may be happening right now. UNRWA accused Hamas of stealing its own supplies. Israel is clearly not obligated to allow in food and medicine that will be diverted and used by Hamas, as that negates the entire purpose of the siege.

Why would a professor make a statement and then point to an article that contradicts that statement? Why would he make assertions on international law that are not supported by those who implement them? (Military manuals become part of customary international law.)

This is not a mistake. This is academic malpractice. It is the knowing misrepresentation of a source as well as the facts.

And while I doubt that Goldman actually supports Hamas, his lies about international law aid Hamas' cognitive war against Israel.

The Conversation clearly doesn't have any serious peer review of its articles. A citation that contradicts the article is pretty egregious.

The first item in the website's charter says they will "Inform public debate with knowledge-based journalism that is responsible, ethical and supported by evidence." This article is neither responsible, ethical nor supported by evidence.

If they want to live up to their own standards of journalism, this article must be taken down or at least thoroughly reviewed and corrected.

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Stop whitewashing mainstream Palestinian support for terror

Nathan French, Associate Professor of Religion at Miami University, conducts an analysis of Palestinian attitudes towards terror as viewed through surveys over the years. at The Conversation

His conclusion:

Support of armed resistance was not always present. When Hamas openly fought the Palestinian Authority – which governs the West Bank and questioned the legitimacy of Hamas’ victory – and seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, over 73% of Palestinians opposed that seizure and any further armed conflict.

At that time, fewer than one-third of Gazans supported any military action against Israel. Over 80% condemned kidnapping, arson and indiscriminate violence.

If read over time, polls of Gazans from 2007 to 2023 tell a story. They help make clear that Gazan support for armed resistance grew alongside increasing frustration, anger and a sense of hopelessness with any political solution to their suffering.

Either Nathan French does not know how to read polls or he is purposefully misinterpreting them.

The 73% in 2007 that he says "opposed any further armed conflict" were talking about between Hamas and Fatah. the question was not about Israel at all.

The "over 80%" question was likewise not about Israel at all; the poll said the "Overwhelming majority (82%) describes acts such as kidnappings of foreigners and bombing of internet cafes and foreign schools [in Palestinian territories - EoZ] as criminal deserving condemnation and only 3% describe them as nationalist deserving support." That poll did not ask about support for terror attacks, the only question I could find that French might be referring to is "63% supported and 34% opposed the plan presented by PA president Abbas for a ceasefire with Israel that would start in the Gaza Strip and then extend to the West Bank" appears to be about a plan where Hamas stopped rocket fire and Israel stopped retaliating - nothing to do with terror attacks.

Now, why did he start his analysis in 2007? 2007 is not a representative year - it was the height of the Hamas-Fatah fighting and Palestinians were sick of that war. But if French's theory that Palestinian support for terror is correlated with ever increasing "hopelessness" then their support for terror should have been lower beforehand.

But in 2001, 92% supported attacks against "settlers" and 58% supported terror attacks inside Israel, in the abstract. When asked about a specific murderous attack, over the years, Palestinians consistently overwhelmingly supported them. The pollster only rarely asked about specific attacks but in 2003, when asked about the Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Haifa that murdered 21 including a two month old baby, 75% of Palestinians - and 82% of Gazans - supported it.

Let's go back further. The very first PCPSR poll was held in July 2000, at the height of the intensive Clinton negotiations for peace. If there was ever a time that Palestinians should have felt hopeful, it was around then. In that poll, 75% supported reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

But when asked about support for terror, even then, 52% supported "armed attacks against Israelis" - not just "settlers."

There is no correlation between Palestinian support for terror and generic "hopelessness." Support for terror in the abstract has always bounced between 45-60%; support for specific terror attacks have always been huge majorities of 3-1 or 4-1. And if polls come out about the Simchat Torah massacre, the results will almost certainly be overwhelmingly in support. 84% supported the Mercaz Harav massacre in 2008, 77% a 2008 suicide attack that killed a woman in Dimona, 80% supported the wave of stabbing attacks in 2014 including the murder of four rabbis in Har Nof.

I have not seen a single Palestinian newspaper say a single word against the October 7 slaughter. .And remember, it happened when things in Gaza were better than at any time since the Hamas takeover, not worse.

The "hopelessness" theory has no evidence, unless you cherry pick and lie about actual surveys.

One survey in 2011 asked questions no one had asked before, and the results were so disturbing and went so far against the theory that "most Palestinians want peace" that the entire world ignored it:

Sixty-six percent said the Palestinians’ real goal should be to start with a two-state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state.

Asked about the fate of Jerusalem, 92% said it should be the capital of Palestine, 1% said the capital of Israel, 3% the capital of both, and 4% a neutral international city.

Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage, and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews, 80% agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter (and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.

The Conversation's motto is "Academic rigor, journalistic flair." This article might have the latter, but it sure doesn't reflect any academic rigor. It is more a reflection of wishful thinking - right thinking people do not want to believe that Palestinians simply hate Jews and want to see them all ethnically cleansed from the Middle East.

And the people who refuse to admit reality are not the people who should be giving advice on how to respond to reality.

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!

Gisha, a left-wing Israeli NGO that follows travel to and from Gaza, is upset:

When the heinous attack by Hamas and other armed militants in the south of Israel began on October 7, thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza with Israeli work permits were present in Israel. Prior to the attack, there were roughly 18,500 Palestinian residents of Gaza who held permits enabling them to access manual labor jobs in Israel, mainly in agriculture and construction. It is not clear how many of these permit-holders were in Israel that Saturday.

... Unable to return to their homes in Gaza given the hostilities surrounding Gaza’s crossings with Israel, and Israel’s subsequent decision to close the crossings hermetically, numerous workers from Gaza made their way to the West Bank, hoping to find shelter with local residents. A number of Gaza workers who crossed into the West Bank through Israeli-controlled checkpoints reported they were held at the checkpoints for many hours, their cell phones and cash were taken away, and they were subjected to violent and humiliating “questioning” and harassment by soldiers.

On October 11, Gaza workers discovered that the Israeli work permits lawfully in their possession had been revoked, and that there was no record of their permits on COGAT’s Al-Munasiq app, where Palestinians can check on the status of their permit applications to Israeli authorities. COGAT later confirmed to Gisha that it had revoked all work permits issued to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and that the permits “will not be reinstated.”

The mass revocation of people’s permits instantaneously turned Gaza residents who had been lawfully present in Israel into “illegal aliens,” from Israel’s perspective. Soon after the permits were deleted from COGAT’s app, the organizations learned that the Israeli authorities were arresting Palestinians from Gaza. Some were arrested inside Israel, some at checkpoints en route into the West Bank, and others still in areas of the West Bank that are under the Palestinian Authority’s civilian and security control.

Reading between the lines, one sees that Israel didn't detain all the workers. And other reports show that Israel actually sent hundreds to the West Bank after interrogation. They revoked their permits, and detained some.

Gisha doesn't even hazard a guess as to why Israel might be acting this way. So allow me.

Hamas had excellent intel about every community surrounding Gaza, and it is highly likely that some of these workers provided Hamas with that information. Moreover, there are reports that some victims recognized the workers participating in the mass violence. Of course Israel would want to question each and every Gazan worker - not only to see if they were involved in the massacre, but also to see if they were purposely sent by Hamas to be positioned as sleeper cells in Israel itself.

While some articles are framing this as a human rights issue - socialist site Jewish Currents seems to be upset that the permits were revoked, seeming to think that Israel should still allow Gazans to freely enter and exit Israel during a war -they are ignoring the basic human rights of Israelis not to be murdered. Moreover, how could anyone even consider that Israeli survivors of the attack live with people who very possibly either worked with Hamas or cheered the massacre of their friends and family?

Non citizens of Israel have no rights to be in Israel - that should be obvious. Either Israel ships them to Gaza, which makes no sense when the crossings are closed, or they send them to the West Bank, which they are doing, or they detain them if there appears to be a chance that they are dangers to national security.

Any nation would do the same.

And the fact that Israel released hundreds of them show that Israel is not engaging in "collective punishment" against them. Israel is looking at each case individually and making decisions for each person.

None of this is outrageous. None of this is illogical. All of this makes sense in the context that they are effectively citizens of an enemy state.

As always, the people who pretend to care about the human rights of Gazans are completely dismissive that Israelis have any human rights of their own.

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!

10/19 Links Pt2: The West’s fifth columnists; 250 More Bodies Discovered in Israel’s South; How CRT leads to justifying Hamas' terrorism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West’s fifth columnists

So, the BBC won’t describe genocidal Hamas butchery as terrorism, but referring to an “Israeli strike” merely on the basis of claims by that genocidal group is not “taking sides.”

Simpson provoked further fury in the Jewish community by drawing an inappropriate and offensive analogy with BBC broadcasters not calling the Nazis “evil or wicked” during World War II.

The BBC is now “urgently investigating” claims that a number of reporters at BBC Arabic shared comments hailing the Hamas pogrom as a “morning of hope” and portraying Hamas as freedom fighters.

Following this, a report revealed that Ahmed Hussain, the head of the BBC’s Asian Network—a radio station listened to by thousands of young British Asians—retweeted a post calling Israel’s retaliation in Gaza over the Hamas attacks “genocide.”

The BBC has responded to this by merely stating that its guidance sets out the need for impartiality, that any breaches of the guidance are “taken seriously” and that it has “spoken to Ahmed and reminded him of these responsibilities. The retweets have been removed.”

The BBC’s feeble response showed yet again that the broadcaster simply refuses to face up to the implications of its Israel-hating staff. Small wonder that the normally soft-spoken Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the BBC’s reporting “atrocious.”

It’s been atrocious for years. The BBC is the single most important media conduit in the world for disseminating, laundering and legitimizing Palestinian lies and incitement against Israel and the Jewish people.

Like other outlets, the BBC is the voice of the left-wing intelligentsia, for whom the lie that Israel is a “colonialist” occupier and the Palestinian Arabs its displaced and oppressed victims is an article of faith.

The Hamas pogrom has upset this narrative. The BBC and other media seized upon the Gaza hospital lie because they can’t wait to get the narrative back on track.

It’s not enough to view this as political ideology or even antisemitism. This is a profound moral sickness poisoning the West.

Such misreporting is more than irresponsible. These media outlets are the West’s fifth columnists, acting as enablers of the enemies of civilization in a time of war.

Nazism 2.0

Hamas’s ideology echoes classic European antisemitism and Nazi ideology, which incited the genocide of the European Jews. The Hamas terrorists are modern day torchbearers of Nazism.

The common bond of their ideologies is the idea of “purifying” humanity of any Jewish presence. Nazi ideology spoke of “redemptive antisemitism,” a form of antisemitism that promises to “redeem” the world by exterminating the Jews. Hamas, with its “hour of judgment,” embraces exactly the same demented apocalypticism.

The export of redemptive antisemitism from Nazi Germany to parts of the Arab world during and after World War II is not merely a supplementary feature of modern radical Islamism, but its ideological core. All Islamist groups, including Hamas, embrace it, with results that we saw in full on Oct. 7.

The connection between the Palestinians and the Nazi regime is direct. A key player was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who personally met with Hitler, as well as representatives of the Nazi SS intelligence arm during the late 1930s. Not coincidentally, he also consulted with Adolf Eichmann, one of the major directors of the Holocaust. The late Yasser Arafat, whose PLO was as dedicated to murdering Jews as Hamas, was Husseini’s nephew.

What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. The PLO practically invented airplane hijacking. So, today, at every airport in every country in the world, we now line up for security checks. This is only a small example of the global danger of dismissing the axis of Jew-hatred composed of Hamas, the Iranian regime, Qatar and the P.A, among others.

Jews around the world, make no mistake. What transpired on Oct. 7 is not only a conflict, not only a war, but part of our historical struggle against those who wish to annihilate the Jewish people.

Sickening Anti-Israel Bias in the West

We have just been subjected to a grotesque masterclass in misinformation, moral inversion, anti-Semitic hate-mongering and hypocrisy. Within minutes of Hamas claiming, with zero proof, that Israel had bombed a hospital, the world erupted into instant, unequivocal condemnation of the Jewish state.

The utter certainty with which the allegations were repeated on the broadcast media, the uncritical acceptance of the vilest propaganda from terrorists, the willingness to attribute the worst possible motives to a tiny democracy fighting for its survival: it was a chilling spectacle - the successful whipping-up of a global lynch-mob.

Millions of people in Britain, Europe, America and the Middle East knew - they just knew - that Israel must have bombed the hospital, that Hamas' claims must be true. The extreme, irrational demonization of Israel is the new blood libel of our times. This allergic reaction to Israel is so acute it can only be explained as the current iteration of the world's oldest hatred - antisemitism.

The same people who spent days claiming that the massacre and incineration of babies by Hamas was "unverified," who conveniently ignored the fact the murderers had live-streamed their atrocities - these very same people all immediately jumped to judgment. Hamas' word was enough. No proof was needed. The bias, the lack of objectivity, point to an abhorrent, endemic culture of anti-Semitism among swathes of the West's cultural elites.

Anybody who understands anything about Israel, about the Israel Defense Forces' legal apparatus, about the values of its people, knows that it is more committed to a clean war than almost any other democracy, let alone all the tyrants and fanatics that surround it.

There is such a thing as a just war, one conducted for the purposes of self-defense, even one that requires invading another country and fighting street by street until total victory is assured. It is what happened in the Second World War, when the Allies liberated Europe, and in myriad other conflicts, though Israel would be far more restrained than most Western armies ever were.

Lots of excuses have been given for the orgy of murder, rape and kidnapping that Hamas waged on Israel on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah this month. We've read about the usual litany that it was because Gaza was an "open air prison", or the "occupation," or that Israel has been fighting back against terrorists in the West Bank.

Today, Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashal gave the world a new excuse for Hamas' attack: It was to protect Al Aqsa!

Al Aqsa has been the go-to excuse to stir Arabs up into a frenzy for nearly a hundred years, ever since the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem started the rumor that the Jews planned to destroy the mosque. Countless people have died because of this lie, which continues to this day.

Mashal spoke to Al Arabiya today, saying that the massacre launched by the Al-Qassam Brigades was deliberate and "aimed at protecting Al-Aqsa Mosque." He said,“The Netanyahu government and the extremist settlers set a Talmudic agenda to Judaize Al-Aqsa, and that is why the Al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas were victors for Al-Aqsa.”

Yes, Hamas says that one is allowed to murder babies, rape women and kidnap children - for the sake of Al Aqsa.

That's a hell of a religion they have there.

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Satan Annoyed At Latest Hamas Arrivals; 'I Thought I Finished With These Bastards In 1945' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Hades, October 18- The infernal official who oversees the postmortem punishment of unrepentant sinners voiced his continued exasperation today upon the registration of a new batch of Palestinian terrorists that Israeli forces killed over the last several days, as he lamented his mistaken assumption that he had already completed handling of Nazis in large numbers almost eighty years ago, and was not pleased to discover them still operating on Earth.

The Devil told numerous demons today for at least the fifth time in the last twenty-four hours that he had had quite enough of Nazis as of 1945 already, and that the incoming waves of their ideological successors in the form of Hamas terrorists and their abettors have reopened a chapter in the history of Perdition that the Prince of Darkness would rather leave behind.

"These guys again?" Satan was heard to remark. "I thought I was finished with groups of them when the Second World War ended. But they keep showing up here all these decades later. You have to be kidding me."

Denizens of the netherworld recalled an upset Lucifer telephoning the LORD for clarification, then slamming down the receiver when the Almighty informed him of the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict.

"Bastards," he whispered. "Goddamn bastards."

The Devil shook his head clear. "Time to get to work," he barked at various minions, who began shoveling burning feces into every orifice of the terrified ex-Hamas operatives, as their own little-girl shrieks of horror and pain were played back in their ears at 130 decibels and all their humiliating moments shown on big screens, to the delighted jeers of demons who looked exactly like the people the new arrivals hated most while alive.

Even as the work on the new arrivals proceeded, Satan ordered the drafting of a communique to God, inquiring as to any forecasted end to the distasteful work of handling and processing Nazi-Hamas personnel, and beseeching the Creator for some respite.

"As You know, even I have a limited capacity for this kind of work," the Devil dictated to a demon. "I cannot and do not refuse to do even an iota of the sacred assignment with which You have entrusted me. But I nevertheless wish to express my dismay and frustration that the darkest, most intense period of my reign here in Hell comes to an end not with the large-scale deaths of Nazis many years ago, but at some unknown future date, when Hamas, its allies, and sponsors finally meet their ends. Please take into consideration my feelings in Your administration of mortal affairs so that the date in question comes sooner, rather than later."

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10/19 Links Pt1: The Biden administration must face it: Terrorism works; Press Must Be Held Accountable For Fake Gaza Story That Instigated Violence Worldwide

From Ian:

Maybe Shocked, But Not Surprised

I’m not surprised that every single Israeli action in response to the massacre has been billed by all the self-appointed experts as “violations of international law.” There has never been a single Israeli military action in my lifetime that wasn’t described this way. Concepts in international law generally have two usages: the standard one and the one applied to Israel. Forcible transfer, proportionality, blockade, targeting of civilians, occupation. The latter was suddenly redefined in 2005 to cover armies that aren’t actually occupying any land so that Israel could still be blamed for occupying Gaza, and this was just accepted by all the human rights organizations as Truth. It’s not surprising that in the years after that there was a concerted campaign to redefine “apartheid” to apply especially to Israel, and for years I have been warning everyone that the next one on the agenda was “genocide.”

And that’s why I wasn’t surprised when panels of experts began issuing urgent documents this week about “warning signs” that Israel was about to commit a genocide. This just days after actual Einsatzgruppen stormed into Israel and murdered over 1000 people, ideologically committed, by the actual official charter of the organization which sent them, to genocide.

I wasn’t surprised that campus radicals and assorted far left groups in the West cheered the massacre (nor was I surprised that some backtracked when it started interfering with their plans to join prestigious law firms and brokerage houses). The notion that Israelis are a unique and essential evil has been an article of faith in far-left theology for a long time. You don’t need to wait for violence to encounter it. People might oppose other countries’ policies. They might have more general critiques of another culture or way of life. But there is no other nation whose food, for example, is routinely described as some kind of crime. No other people whose language could be described as somehow illegitimate, as was the case in a leading left-wing journal a few months back.

And I wasn’t surprised at the anguish of the proud-to-be-ashamed crowd of Oedipal Jews who were shocked to discover their ideological comrades reveling in the murder of hundreds of Jews on an autumnal Saturday morning. Their inability to correctly assess the motivations of the anti-Israel obsessives they had partnered with at home matched only their inability to correctly assess the motivations of the terrorist group they were always lecturing us had actually moderated.

For all their furrowed brows and trendy glasses, this group never had a serious grasp on the situation in the middle east and were never really asked to. What they did have was two things that were the foundation of their entire con. First, an unquenchable need to be liked by the cool kids of the radical left, and second a distended feeling of superiority toward the Jewish community they came from.

The disappointment they felt could have been an opportunity to face the difficult questions of how they got it all so wrong. But true to form, the agonizing threads about left “losing its values” or just not being able to “handle” the discussion focused only on their feelings and not on the events that happened, the ideologies that motivated them, or how people who fashion themselves as pinnacles of sophistication could be so blindsided by reality in both southern Israel and Williamsburg.

Certainly absent from any of the indulgent online self-help was a reckoning with their own role in the intellectual ecosystem that produced the voices they came to be so shocked by. Most of them followed the same path from the Ivy League to a stint at the Haaretz English edition for some in-country cred to a sinecure at an anti-Israel foundation needing an expert with a Jewish-sounding name to churn out regular reports connecting any and all political developments to Israeli racism, or alternatively to one of the fashionable lefty journals who need a monthly feature on either Israel’s fallen morality or how powerful Americans who claim to care about antisemitism are actually up to something.

An entire generation of Israelis will begin their political consciousness from the morning roving bands of marauders raped, tortured, kidnapped, and murdered more than 1000 people in more than a dozen villages and towns. A politics that begins from the no doubt harrowing experience of being lied to at summer camp doesn’t merit being taken seriously anymore — and probably never did.

The Biden administration must face it: Terrorism works

Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered his Office of Palestinian Affairs to delete the statement as soon as journalists began calling. “Terror and violence solve nothing,” it read. It was the usual State Department pabulum. Most statements nowadays are empty and formulaic, as easily written by a computer algorithm as a diplomat.

The notion that terrorism never works is a nice sentiment. The problem is it is not true. Indeed, Blinken later telephoned his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan to discuss a ceasefire. Given how Fidan was the mastermind behind the Turkey-Hamas nexus, this was akin to asking the arsonist to lead firefighting efforts. Blinken’s gut reaction was to reward terror.

Frankly, Blinken is not alone.

President Jimmy Carter rewarded Iranian revolutionaries with the Algiers Accords, a humiliating agreement not only to release funds to the hostage-takers but also to promise to remain aloof from Iran’s internal revolutionary politics.

Ronald Reagan criticized Carter without mercy during his 1980 campaign, but once in office, he was little better. His decision to withdraw Marine peacekeepers from Beirut in the face of Hezbollah terrorism not only handed Iran a huge victory on the shores of the Mediterranean but also inspired al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

President Bill Clinton normalized rewarding terror. Under Clinton, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, the front man for the Irish Republican Army terror group, became the foreign politician to visit the White House most frequently. Clinton not only rewarded Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat with normalization, but he also pumped billions of dollars into Arafat’s coffers, even as intelligence flowed in showing the Palestinian “former” terrorist’s corruption and insincerity. It was under Clinton that terrorists embraced the formula: Terror plus patience will equal political concession and cash beyond our cause’s wildest imagination.

And so it continued under President George W. Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice greenlighted Palestinian elections but did nothing to precondition them on the decommissioning of militias and terrorist groups. The message she sent: Ballot boxes bring legitimacy, but terrorism works if unable to persuade voters. Bush may have launched a war on terror, but Rice opened direct talks with Iran, allowing that rogue regime to leverage terror into concession. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry simply took her opening and ran with it, adding billions of dollars in hostage ransoms and sanctions relief along the way, in effect making Iran’s decadeslong investment in terrorism and nuclear proliferation profitable.

Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinians

Every dead Palestinian is useful for Hamas. Just consider the explosion at the al-Alhi Arab hospital earlier this week. This was immediately held up by Hamas spokespeople as proof of Israeli war crimes. They claimed that 500 innocent people had died in the blast. Yet it now seems likely that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Islamist terror group, was responsible. All too often, rockets fired at Israel fall short of their targets and end up killing Gazans instead. But this is of no concern to Hamas, which can exploit and weaponise these deaths to its own abhorrent ends.

There is no question that Gazans have suffered greatly over the past two decades. But their oppression and exploitation has only benefitted Hamas’s leaders. They have happily reaped the rewards of their reign of terror, growing rich on their control of the Gazan black market, the largesse of their regional backers and no doubt some of the billions of dollars Gaza receives in international aid. Long-time Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh pledged to live on ‘olive oil and dried herbs’ after he led Hamas to victory at the 2006 Palestinian elections. In 2019, he shook off his asceticism and left Gaza to go on what Hamas announced was a ‘foreign tour’. He has never returned. The multibillionaire now lives in luxury in Qatar. As does some-time chairman of Hamas, Khaled Meshal. Meshal and his family, estimated to be worth something in the region of $2.5 billion, own a Doha real-estate firm, four residential towers and a 20-story mall. And all the while, the vast majority of Gazans live in extreme poverty.

Hamas is clearly corrupt, brutal and nasty. Yet we rarely hear much about just how vicious a regime Hamas runs, because Hamas also arrests, tortures and detains journalists. It is eager for the local and international press to carry stories and images of Gazans’ deaths at the hands of an Israeli missile. But less keen for the media to carry stories and images of its own treatment of Gazans.

That Hamas can treat Gazans so callously and brutally should not surprise us. Formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, Hamas does not share the interests of the Palestinian people. It is not concerned with establishing some form of Palestinian statehood, or securing rights and freedoms. No, its goals are near-enough apocalyptic – and genocidal.

Like the larger Islamist movement of which it is part, Hamas wants to wage war – perhaps the final war – against the Jews. It wants to destroy Israel, to cleanse the land of Jews ‘From the river to the sea’, as the slogan goes. ‘Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious’, reads one of the opening lines of Hamas’s 1988 founding charter. Hamas, it says, ‘is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy [Israel] is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised’.

This genocidal anti-Semitism doesn’t just pose a danger to Jews in Israel – it also makes any sort of political resolution of the Palestinian question near impossible. After all, how can Israelis be expected to make accommodations with a group that openly calls for their extinction? Meanwhile, the lives of the Palestinians are treated as mere fodder in this obscene, racist campaign.

And yet there are still many Western leftists proudly celebrating Hamas right now. There are many ‘radical’ academics cheering on Hamas’s pogrom of Jewish civilians as an act of resistance. And there are many poseurs flooding social media with Hamas-style anti-Zionism. These are not friends of the Gazans. They are friends of Hamas. And that makes them the enemies of the Palestinian people.

FBI statistics: Anti-Jewish hate crimes at record highs

From JTA:

Last year, American Jews again faced far more hate crimes than members of other religions, according to a report by the FBI.

There were 1,305 offenses committed against Jews in 2022, the FBI reported in its tally Monday of national crime statistics, far outnumbering the second-largest category, anti-Muslim crimes, of which there were 205.

That disparity is consistent with years of hate crimes reporting showing that Jewish victims far outnumber other religious targets.

The article notes a large jump in 2022 of antisemitic crimes, but adds a caveat:

Last year’s report showed a tally of 817 anti-Jewish criminal offenses, but the national increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes year over year is harder to pin down, because the FBI said the participation of local law enforcement in reporting the crimes to the FBI’s database had “significantly increased” in 2022.

If that is true, one would expect that other hate anti-religion crimes would have increased as well. But here is a chart based on these FBI statistics comparing anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes since 2010:

Anti-Muslim hate crimes hit a peak in 2017 and then went back down to roughly the rate it has been at since the 2000s. The changes in FBI data gathering did not affect the number of Muslim hate crimes; indeed, if they have better reporting, that means that anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased.

But anti-Jewish hate crimes tallied are the highest they've ever been since at least 2004. The ADL, using a slightly different FBI statistic, says "Reported single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents in the country sharply rose by more than 37%, reaching 1,122 incidents, the highest number recorded in almost three decades and the second-highest number on record."

I don't think that the FBI counts anti-Zionist hate crimes as anti-Jewish, which means that the actual number is probably much higher.

Chances are, the 2023 numbers will be worse yet.

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EU High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell gave a speech at the EP Plenary Session on Wednesday.

We have all condemned the indescribable horror of the attacks suffered by Israel. Those attacks against the civilian population have left so many dead, affecting so many defenceless people at a time when they were celebrating life, but instead they found themselves facing death.

Once again we condemn those attacks. And let us also say that Israel – of course – has the right to defend itself. It has always had this right, and anyone attacked in such a brutal way would have the right to defend themselves. But I think we can all agree that the right to defend oneself, as with all rights, has its limits. And, in this case, the limits are those set by international law and, in particular, international humanitarian law. All this is obvious and we can say it again, but repeating it will not help us move forward to make that necessary reflection, which will guide our actions.

Yes, we condemn those terrible terrorist attacks, but we must also condemn the civilian deaths – the civilian victims – in Gaza, which now stand at 3 000. Because speaking out against one tragedy should not prevent us from speaking out against another. Extending our sympathy to the dead, the victims of terrorist attacks, should not – and does not – prevent us from also expressing our sympathy for other victims.

He's correct that Israel has every right to defend itself.

He's correct that everyone should sympathize with the deaths of innocent civilians, including in Gaza.

But when Borrell condemns the deaths in Gaza, he is implying something that is sinister and immoral - that Israel does not really have the right to destroy Hamas. It does not really have the right to do what is necessary to stop the next horrific attack against civilians.

And he is also implying that Israel is violating international law in how it is waging the war, a false claim.

International law says that Hamas' use of Gaza civilians as (involuntary) human shields does not make Hamas targets immune from attack. As one top expert on international law writes,

It has traditionally been grasped that, should civilian casualties ensue from an illegal attempt to shield a military objective, their blood will be on the hands of the belligerent party that abused them as human shields. The long and the short of it is that a belligerent party is not vested by the law of international armed conflict with the power to block an otherwise lawful attack against military objectives by deliberately placing civilians in harm's way.

It has to be this way, because otherwise any terrorist can avoid retaliation by simply placing himself and his weapons among, behind and underneath civilians. Which is Hamas' exact strategy.

To be blunt, for Israel to defend itself, Gaza children must die - because Hamas is using them as human shields. The only party that should be condemned is Hamas and their blood is on Hamas' hands.

Borrell is not saying this. While he isn't explicitly condemning Israel, his words makes it clear that he is certainly not condemning Hamas for its use of human shields.

I don't think that the EU ever condemned the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Iraq War. The humanitarian conditions over years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan were at least as bad as in Gaza today. But condemnations were muted or silenced - because Western militaries were doing the best they can. They understood that when you are fighting to utterly defeat, not just to degrade, the enemy, large numbers of civilian casualties are an unfortunate side effect - and the fault all lies with the terrorists.

To the EU, however, Israel is assumed at the outset of this war to be reckless and unlawful, even though the IDF is at least as professional and far more sensitive to civilian deaths than the coalition of troops in Iraq ever were.

Which means that when Borrell says Israel has the right to defend itself, he doesn't really mean it. He means they have the right to build walls, to use Iron Dome, to stop Hamas at the Gaza border - but not beyond, unless it is a perfect shot that doesn't damage anything else but Hamas.

It is equivalent to telling the US after 9/11 that it only has the right to place anti-aircraft batteries next to all tall buildings and nothing more.

International law gives far more latitude to an army than NGOs and the EU claim. But they are trying as hard as they can to handcuff Israel so it really cannot fully defend itself - and saying that Israel must allow Hamas and other terror groups to survive and strengthen indefinitely, as long as they hide behind civilians.

(h/t Irene)

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

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