Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 22, 2023

"Forensic Architecture" tries to say hospital explosion wasn't a terror rocket, creating a conspiracy theory

We've already proven in the past that Forensic Architecture is an anti-Israel group that partners with media and human rights NGOs to pretend to use cutting edge 3-D modeling to prove its lies.

They helped create the Amnesty International "Gaza Platform" that is filled with data that is provably wrong to reach conclusions that are obviously wrong.

In 2021, using their signature 3D modeling, they claimed that a Palestinian car ramming attack at a checkpoint was really a simple car accident whose driver was executed for no reason. Yet the video clearly shows both the car accelerating towards the soldiers - and that the driver jumped out of the car to attack them less than a second after the crash, something a stunned victim of an accident would never do.

In 2022, they teamed up with Al Haq and falsely accused Israel of targeting "cultural heritage sites" in Gaza. Not only were they wrong - Israel was shooting at rocket launchers on top of the site - but their own video proved that Hamas was building right on top of those old Roman ruins!

Later that year the two groups accused Israel is purposefully trying to create an ecological disaster in Gaza - using the worst possible munition for that purpose.

Now, Forensics Architecture is pretending that the explosion near the Al Ahli hospital was really from Israel:

Preliminary analysis by FA, @alhaq_org & @earshot_ngo into the #AlAhli hospital blast in Gaza casts significant doubt on IOF claims that the source of the deadly explosion was a Palestinian-fired rocket travelling west to east.

3D analysis shows patterns of radial fragmentation on the southwest side of the impact crater, as well as a shallow channel leading into the crater from the northeast. Such patterns indicate a likely projectile trajectory with northeast origins.

In reviewing our analysis, investigator & explosive weapons expert @CobbSmith agrees the fragmentation patterns may indicate the projectile came from the northeast—the direction of the Israeli-controlled side of the Gaza perimeter—and not from the west, as claimed by the IOF.

Our/@CobbSmith’s analysis of the crater size suggests a munition larger than eg a Spike or Hellfire missile commonly used by IOF drones. It is more consistent w/ the impact marks from an artillery shell—but w/o additional material evidence, we cannot make a definitive assessment.

@earshot_ngo analysed the recording released by IOF officials of an alleged exchange between members of Hamas implicating the Islamic Jihad in the attack. They found that the recording was manipulated and therefore not a credible source of evidence:

...A conclusive investigation into this attack requires full access to the site and munition fragments, as well as witness interviews. We continue our work on this case, and reaffirm our solidarity with Palestinian people under attack, including our friends & colleagues.

This is 9/11 Truther conspiracy theory level stuff. All evidence that shows it was Islamic Jihad, such as multiple videos of the rocket being shot from the same location as a salvo of other Gaza rockets, or how the rocket fuel would explain a huge fireball but no artillery shell would, is ignored.

The videos clearly show a rocket that fell apart in mid-air. Any analysis of direction after a mid-air breakup is useless - chances are the part that hit the parking lot of the hospital was corkscrewing towards the ground as it has probably lost its tailfins. Assuming their debris analysis is correct, it probably simply hit the ground while facing a southwest direction. (After I wrote this, I see that CNN's experts agree: "If the projectile malfunctioned and broke apart in the air, as CNN’s analysis suggests, the direction of impact reflected by the crater would not be a reliable finding.")

Interestingly, CNN interviewed the same Chris Cobb-Smith and he said something nearly the opposite than what Forensic Architecture says he said:

Cobb-Smith said that the conflagration following the blast was inconsistent with an artillery strike, but that it could not be entirely ruled out.

AP's analysis agrees with CNN and the IDF.

Of course the IDF manipulated the audio. They edited out information that was sensitive. As far as the two audio channels, chances are that they were wiretapping both ends of the conversation separately and combined them, and chose to use stereo to make it easier to understand.

But the most obvious proof that Forensic Architecture cannot be trusted - besides its track record of lying, that is - is that its own language calling the IDF the "IOF" ("Israel Occupation Forces," meaning that all of Israel is "occupied territory") and their statement of solidarity with Palestinians. They are admitting their agenda, proving that they are not even close to objective. They are only interesting in supporting their biases, not the truth.

The question is why any organization would pay them for consulting services, unless they want manipulated and biased results to begin with.

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!

10/21 Links: Douglas Murray: The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel has exposed the West’s moral collapse; Antisemitic NGOs justify terror in three stages

From Ian:

Josh Frydenberg: Terror, trauma, but still there is hope

I am anguished and anxious about the future.

When fears over safety see Jewish students afraid to attend lectures on campus, Jewish parents feel the need to keep their children home from school and Jewish schools advise students not to wear their uniforms that make them identifiable outside school grounds, we know we have a problem.

And when demonstrators in Sydney chant “f--- the Jews” and “gas the Jews”, we know just how dangerous and serious that problem really is.

What happened last week outside the Sydney Opera House was nothing short of an abomination. A national disgrace that has become an international embarrassment.

Just think for a moment what just happened in our own country. Instead of being able to show solidarity with Israel as our national icon was lit up in blue and white, sympathetic Australian Jews and non Jews were told to stay away for their own safety as a rampaging mob was given centre stage.

No such behaviour was tolerated near the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate or Number 10 Downing Street when they were lit up in blue and white. To the contrary, thousands rallied outside these landmarks, singing the Israeli national anthem, the Hatikvah, and showing their spontaneous support.

If that was not bad enough, it’s been reported that it was said to the leadership of the NSW Jewish community that “maybe it’ll just be easier if we don’t light up the Opera House to protect you people”.

“You people”: what a disgraceful term for a community of proud Australians that has never seen a conflict between their faith and their nationality. Loading

A community that has produced our greatest citizen-soldier Sir John Monash, governors’ general, governors, chief Justices, chief scientists, Nobel Prize winners, leading business figures, philanthropists, medical professionals, among so many others ...

I can dwell on the death, despair and darkness that is dominating debate, or I can share some of the lessons of history and what they tell us about how the light will shine again.

For more than 2000 years, the enemies of Israel have been seeking its destruction. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Nazis, to name just a few. But history tells us that the enemies of the past are no more. The Jewish people survived and Israel prospered.

So now, despite the huge challenges ahead, I see the light returning.

This is an excerpt of a speech given in Melbourne on Thursday night to support victims of terrorism.
Josh Frydenberg is the former treasurer of Australia.

Boris Johnson and Bernard-Henri Lévy: Our Support for Israel Is as Important as That for Ukraine

There can be no binary, zero-sum choice here—between helping the Ukrainians to fight Putin, and helping Israel to fight off the terrorists of Hamas. When we look at Putin’s thugs in Adviika, or jihadi thugs in Gaza, we are looking at different heads of the same hydra.

We see the difference between those who are trying to kill and terrify civilians, and those who are trying to save civilian life. We see the difference between democracy and autocracy, between tyranny and the rule of law.

It is no surprise that Russia has failed to condemn the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, or that the Russian media draw comparisons between the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the Nazi siege of Leningrad in WWII.

It is hardly accidental that the Russian government maintains such good relations with the two most important global sponsors of Hamas—Iran and Syria. That is because Putin’s Russia shares with Hamas a blatant disregard for the laws of war.

We have seen in the war against Ukraine how Putin’s armies have wittingly and deliberately trained their fire on crowded train stations, on theaters, churches, restaurants. They even attacked the Babyn Yar memorial, in Kyiv, to the victims of the Holocaust—as if to symbolize the new barbarism of their approach, their cold indifference to the loss of innocent human life.

Putin’s thugs and Hamas terrorists are morally identical in making no distinction between civilian and military targets; and that is no wonder, because their objectives are really the same—to destroy liberal democracy. The children killed or deported from Mariupol are victims of the same brand of barbarism as the children killed in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza.

This is not the time to give priority to one set of victims. They both deserve the protection of the West. We are now fighting on two fronts, for the same values and the same ideals, against the same anti-democratic and terroristic forces.

To our American friends we say: We must help protect Israel, and help save Ukraine. To choose one would be a betrayal of both.

Antisemitic NGOs justify terror in three stages

It must be difficult to be a pro-Palestinian propagandist these days. After all, how can you possibly defend the gruesome slaughter of over 1,400 innocents, torture, rape, defiling corpses?! Yet there is a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are doing their best to justify the unjustifiable.

For the past week, my colleagues and I at NGO Monitor have carefully examined the output of NGOs that claim human rights agendas, many funded by European governments, and analyzed their claims and argumentation. We have identified a three-staged process by which NGOs work to erase the heinousness of Hamas crimes and fuel the international demonization of Israel.

Justifying and celebrating attacks
The first stage is open justification and celebration of the attacks as “resistance” against a “settler-colonial state.” For example, the 150-member Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) “saluted this honorable image that our people are sketching,” having faced, “for more than 75 years, a racist, fascist occupation,” and stated that “the Palestinian people… are resisting this with all valor and sacrifice.” BADIL, a Palestinian “return” NGO, wrote, “resistance is the most human and legitimate act” because “the Palestinian people have been suffering for 75 years of colonial-apartheid regime, ethnic cleansing, forcible transfer/displacement.”

Similarly, an advocacy officer from Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) referred to “Palestinians resisting Israeli colonization & trying to take back their land.”

These and other examples demonstrate how the initial NGO responses celebrated the “accomplishments” of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist groups, i.e. the mass killing, abduction, and other heinous crimes against thousands of civilians.

Whataboutism and shifting focus
Next, NGOs moved on to stage two: trying to shift media and political focus by inventing Israeli atrocities that are similar to the actual brutality of Hamas. Palestinian NGOs have always delegitimized Israel’s right to self-defense and denied the existence of Palestinian terrorism, which they invariably decorate as “resistance.”

Israel’s military response targeting terror infrastructure in Gaza provided another opportunity to accuse Israel of committing the worst crimes. For example, a joint statement from the PFLP’s NGO network – Al-Mezan, Bisan, Al-Haq, DCI-P, Addameer, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committes (UPWC), and others – demanded that the EU “fully denounce Israel’s indiscriminate military reprisals…and intervene to protect the Palestinian people against Israel’s incitement to genocide.”

In another statement, Al-Haq accused Israel of “targeting male and female civilians and civilian objects in such a way that amounts to acts of genocide.” Zakaria Bakr, who heads the Union of Agricultural Work Committees’ Gaza Fisherman Committee, wrote, “We are living through an action of ethnic cleansing and genocide accompanied by starvation…what we are living through is more powerful and stronger than the holocaust which the Zionists talk about.” Palestinian Medical Relief Society Director Mustafa Barghouti published a statement referencing an Israeli “plot…to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.”

Of course, all these NGOs, primarily funded by their European government patrons under the facade of “human rights,” were entirely silent on Hamas’s genocidal violence. Stage three is reminiscent of a standard tactic employed by those caught red handed – deny, deny, deny. As they recognized the need to salvage international support for the Palestinian cause, some NGOs began denying that the atrocities and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Hamas actually happened. Good Shepherd Collective, which describes itself as “an anti-Zionist, anti-colonial organization,” alleged that “zionists” (sic) were sharing “AI generated images, trying to convince us that Palestinian resistance fighters simply must be the barbarians they believe them to be.”

10/20 Links Pt3: 2 Israeli-Americans hostages released; A ceasefire would normalise the pogrom; Courage in an age of moral degeneracy; A new generation of hate rises in America

From Ian:

Cary Nelson: A ceasefire would normalise the pogrom

Two to three thousand members of highly organised murder squads cross an international border and set about murdering civilians in as gruesome and indiscriminate a manner imaginable. In fact, the wanton indulgence in blood lust exceeds anything that had been foreseen or imagined. With that barbaric mission completed in a day, some in the international community immediately begin calling for a ceasefire. The critical point to make is that a ceasefire keeps Hamas in power. The consequences of that must be faced.

Those urging a ceasefire stand behind what appears to be the most basic humanitarian motive: prevent further loss of life; end the massacre of innocent civilians. And then the coup de grace is delivered in hypocritical feel good rhetoric: everyone should respect international humanitarian law. Except that Hamas never has and never will honour international humanitarian law.

Meanwhile, no reprisals for murdering men, women, and children are to follow. No sanctions. No punishments. No accountability. The barbaric intimacy of so many of the killings is to be met with stability, frozen in time. We are all to accept what happened and move on.

Fools, hypocrites, dreamers, and antisemites alike stand in solidarity. Except that if the crimes are allowed to stand unanswered they will be repeated or more likely horrifically reinvented within a few years at most. A new standard for monstrous assault on Israelis will be in place.

Keep in mind that many in the international community have advocated the normalising of repeated rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel. Since Iron Dome protects most Israelis, destroying the rockets in midair, that should suffice. Intercepting Hamas rockets constitutes the moral limit of Israel’s right to defend itself.

Israel has but this one chance to demonstrate that organised, wanton, antisemitic murder sprees will not be tolerated. If it fails to do so, these new forms of Hamas butchery will become Israel’s new normal. Eliminating the invading killers will be the limit of Israel’s internationally acceptable response. If Israel wants to draw a line and establish that what Hamas did is absolutely unacceptable, it must respond in a way that is different in kind, not just degree. Simply increasing the number of air strikes will not suffice. The Hamas pogrom presents Israel with what really is this time an existential threat. It has to be treated that way.

Douglas Murray: A new generation of hate rises in America

Sure there have been pro-Israel protests. And people like Mayor Adams should be applauded for their strong stance in defense of the state which was actually attacked here.

But underneath that top-level things are very rotten indeed.

Look at the professor at Cornell who the Post exposed for calling Hamas’s massacre of over a thousand Israelis “exhilarating” and “energizing.”

Or NYC Councilman Charles Barron telling an anti-Israel rally in NY that Israelis were “European converts to Judaism” who had “stolen” Palestinian land. He went on to say “We can’t be kowtowed and afraid of the Israeli lobby.”

Or what about the member of the faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mika Tosca, who this week called Israelis “pigs,” “savages” and “irredeemable excrement.”

Tosca calls herself a “radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist.” But I wonder if her dehumanizing, anti-Semitic language reminds anyone of anything?

Across this country there has been an outburst of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate.

And it isn’t from gnarled old bigots of the type Hollywood would paint.

It is from youngest people in the country. From the youngest members of Congress. From the youngest people on campus. And from people like Mika who think they’re radically progressive while saying the most regressive things imaginable.

One instructor at Stanford was suspended this week after singling out Jewish students from their classmates and referring to “Only 6 million” Jews being murdered in the Holocaust.

That clearly wasn’t enough for him. And it’s clearly not enough for many of the other psychopaths who have decided that the murder of Jews is a good moment to call for more of the same.

The top floors of the American apartment building may be OK. But down below it’s not. No other minority would put up with being murdered and then taunted for being murdered. I don’t know why Jews should either.

I’m relieved that they are being supported from the top. But where is the support on the streets? And what has happened to the rest of the damn building?

Melanie Phillips: Courage in an age of moral degeneracy

It’s very important, therefore, to acknowledge that this is itself a distorted picture of public opinion. There are millions of decent people who are horrified by what happened in Israel, who are aghast at the jubilant Jew-hatred now rampant on the streets and university campuses of Britain, America and elsewhere, and who understand that this evil that’s been unleashed threatens them too.

And there are also some individuals who are bravely and publicly telling the unambiguous truth, and confronting head-on the nauseating hypocrisy and cowardice of the so-called liberals who are dominant in political and cultural life and whose accommodation with evil has brought western civilisation to this terrifying inflexion point in its existence.

Here are some who have caught my eye over the past few days.
This is Mohammad Kabiya, an Israeli Arab Muslim reservist in the Israel Defence Forces, telling the unvarnished truth about Hamas and Israel’s need to defend itself — while the BBC Arabic station’s anchor vainly tries to “put the other side”, ie defend Hamas, in the BBC style to which we have become accustomed.

This is Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, packing a terrific emotional punch at a “New York Stands With Israel” rally.

“You marched with us with Dr. King. You stood with us with all the fights we have. And I’m saying we’re going to stand with you and stand united together. And we don’t have to be all right. We should be angry at what we saw. Thank you, Israel.”
The British commentator and author Douglas Murray, interviewed on Talk TV by Julia Hartley-Brewer, took apart the “deep perversion” of Britain’s callow and idiotic requirement for Israel alone to make a “proportionate response” to genocidal attack. To watch, click here.

This is British politics professor Matthew Goodwin on BBC TV’s Politics Live, letting fly at the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Hamas.

“I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve felt more ashamed by our national debate”. Read Matt’s Substack blog here.
This is US Senator Ted Cruz, at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee confirmation hearing for the prospective US ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew, absolutely ripping into both Lew and the Biden administration over their responsibility for the Hamas pogrom by having systematically appeased and empowered Iran. Epic.

Finally for now, Shai Davidai, an Israeli-American Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, New York, called out university presidents by name for allowing incitement against Jews by pro-terror organisations on campus.

“To the pro-terror organisations on campus…my two year-old daughter is a legitimate target of resistance; that’s what they’re saying, you’re allowed to murder and kidnap my two year-old daughter in the name of resistance; and none of the presidents of universities all around the country are willing to take a stand”.

10/20 Links Pt2: Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters; Inside Black Lives Matter's Long History With Hamas-Friendly Activists

From Ian:

Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters

Yazmeen Deyhimi, who the organization Stop Antisemitism identified as one of two New York University students caught on video tearing down flyers depicting the faces of people Hamas kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, began volunteering for the Anti-Defamation League when she was just a freshman in high school. While still a young teen, she “took part in the ADL Peer Training Program,” according to a short biography of Deyhimi included in the ADL of New York and New Jersey’s announcement of its 2019 high school summer intern class. “She quickly joined the No Place for Hate Committee and has been committed to help facilitate events such as Unity and Equality Days,” the blurb continued.

The then-high school junior was a Girl Scout, as well as a tennis instructor for the underprivileged. “She is,” we learn, “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”

The ADL could not have been expected to know that a bright and socially conscious high school student from the extremist hotbed of Port Washington, New York, would proudly announce a sociopathic lack of sympathy for Jews in terrorist captivity four years later. At the same time, Deyhimi’s story is a look into how little sticking power the ADL’s brand of consensus-seeking, center-left politics might have in the long run, even with people who volunteered with the group through most of high school. “We fully condemn her actions and hope that the apology she issued is the first step towards working to repair the harm and deep hurt her actions caused,” an ADL spokesman told Tablet by email when asked about Deyhimi.

“As a matter of policy, ADL does not comment on personnel matters,” the ADL spokesman wrote. “However, we will say that ADL and our staff are steadfast in our support of Israel, that our body of work speaks for itself, and that we are grateful for the tireless efforts of the entire ADL team in the wake of the largest mass murder of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Deyhimi’s apology, which came after she was widely identified by name on social media, opened with the acknowledgement that “My actions that were caught on camera are a poor representation of what I believe: all innocent lives—Israeli and Palestinian—should be spared and all terrorist organizations should be condemned and punished.” The sentiment is blameless, of course. Who could argue otherwise?

In her apology, the NYU junior proved herself to be a fluent writer of officialese, proof her education at a hyperselective American college did not go to waste. What do young high-achievers learn at expensive universities these days—aside from, perhaps, the necessity of supporting terror attacks against Israeli families, children, and old people, of course—if not the language of virtuous self-presentation, a survival skill in a world in which one might flip from being a victim to victimizer in a hot minute? Handling these kinds of passages is a delicate art, worthy of the courtiers of Versailles.

As the NYU junior continued, “I have found it increasingly difficult to take my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times. I find myself more and more frustrated about the time we currently find ourselves in.”

The honesty is laudable, and it is hard not to identify with it, whatever your beliefs about the war: Everyone is at least a little frustrated right now. People want to repair a horrific breach in reality, wherever they are and however they can, even if their real motive isn’t to improve much of anything in the external world but to quiet their own inner turmoil. All the better if one’s emotional pain-relief racks up the maximum number of points on the great peer group-social, media-victimhood scoreboard.

While tearing down flyers of kidnapped Jews isn’t most people’s idea of helping the situation, or seems a strange way of assuaging an individual sense of helplessness, the thought process Deyhimi describes in her apology is chillingly legible, common to people of good and ill intent on both sides of this awful conflict. We all want to do something, don’t we? But do what? Hard to say, now that “reality” is an increasingly vague chaos in which our own ever-multiplying “identities” can seem like the last pillars of certainty.

People want to repair a horrific breach in reality, wherever they are and however they can, even if their real motive isn’t to improve much of anything in the external world but to quiet their own inner turmoil.

Deyhimi’s trajectory tracks with that of a generation of rising elites for whom staid, establishment institutions have served as a pipeline to a much edgier, more militant set of values, which themselves are admission tickets to prestige institutions. Thirty student groups at Harvard, including, initially, the university’s Amnesty International chapter, signed on to a statement endorsing Hamas’ slaughter of 1,400 Israelis—many of them believing, no doubt, that a public display of fealty to a terror group wouldn’t hurt them in the elite job market.

Daniel Greenfield: 1 in 10 College Students Support Hamas Atrocities

Some people are describing this poll as good news. It only seems that way because we’ve lowered the bar so drastically that anything short of a majority committing to bombing the Empire State Building seems good.

It’s not good news.
The poll finds 86% of college students saying they’re aware of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And of that share, 67% describe the attack as an act of terrorism by Hamas, versus 12% who see it as a justified act of resistance by Hamas. Another 21% describe it as something else other than an act of terrorism or resistance.

1 in 10 college students support the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians. Only 2 out of 3 can even bring themselves to call it terrorism. 1 in 5 are not even sure how to define it, but don’t want to call it terrorism.

These are catastrophic numbers for what should have been the lowest of low bars, horrifying atrocities against civilians caught on video and recorded in photos, widely discussed and made available, and not even 70% will call it terrorism.

The numbers predictably get worse with party and race breakdowns.
By party, 73% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats and 50% of independents say they blame Hamas for the attack on Israel.

And by race, 58% of white college students, 47% of Latinos and 36% of Black college students believe Hamas deserves blame for the attack.

50% among non-Republicans. Not even a majority among non-whites. A third among black people.

Generation Lab doesn’t make its polls public so I can’t dig into the data any further, but there’s little here that inspires optimism and plenty that shows where the hate on campus is coming from.

Kassy Dillon: Father of IDF reservists compares those denying Hamas’ brutality to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels

An American frustrated by activists downplaying Hamas' brutal attack detailed the horrific massacres his family in the Israel Defense Forces have seen.

"Anybody who claims that this didn't happen is just denying the truth and is part of the problem and should be lumped together with the people of Hamas," Marc Tobin, who lives in Israel, told Fox News.

Some activists around the U.S. protesting the Hamas-Israel war have downplayed Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers and resulted in nearly 200 hostages. Anti-Israel demonstrators have called Hamas' massacres "resistance," accused Israel of genocide for carrying out retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza and been filmed ripping down posters of Israeli hostages.

In response, Tobin, who has three sons and 13 nephews serving in the IDF, relayed his families' experiences. The IDF sent his middle son to the Gaza border last Monday to find terrorists still in Israel and to ensure survivors were accounted for in the nearby villages. He and his fellow soldiers went door-to-door in Kfar Aza.

"Unfortunately, they saw the massacre," Tobin said. "A lot of the bodies had been put into — already — body bags so they saw all the different sizes of bodies, the adults, the children and unfortunately, the infants."

Tobin said his son fortunately didn't see the bodies before they were put in bags, "but there were enough in his unit that did see that people were butchered." body bags israeli soldiers

Israeli soldiers remove bodies of civilians who were killed days earlier during Hamas terrorists' attack in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office last week released photos of babies that it says Hamas terrorists "murdered and burned" in Kfar Aza during the attack. More than 70 of the kibbutz's 765 residents were killed, according to the Times of Israel.

IDF troops found about 200 dead, including babies, some of whom they said were decapitated, Israeli media reported.

"I think Hamas is just like the Nazis were," Tobin said.

Tobin said protesters and activists ignoring Hamas' atrocities are taking a page out of Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist's playbook to create and spread disinformation.

"[Joseph] Goebbels had a strategy of if you say it enough, then people believe it," he said.

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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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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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.

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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.

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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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Read all about it here!