Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 03, 2023

Latest blood libel: Hamas slaughters fleeing Gazans, Israel blamed

The health ministry in Gaza says an Israeli attack killed at least 14 Palestinians who were fleeing from the bombarded territory’s north to its south.

Witnesses said the attack hit al-Rashid road, Gaza’s coastal road which the Israeli military has previously told civilians to take to travel south.

“The occupation committed a new massacre against displaced civilians and killed 14 citizens, children and women,” ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement.

The video clip shows about a dozen civilians, clearly carrying their personal possessions, dead on the road. (Google removed the video.)

Now, does this look like an Israeli airstrike? Artillery fire? Tank fire?

Or does it look like someone with a rifle who shot these civilians, one by one, as they tried to flee, dropping their possessions? That's the only thing that explains how far apart they are from each other.

Doesn't it look alot like the Israelis who were picked off, one by one, at the Nova music festival on October 7?

Let's ask another question. Does Israel have anything to gain by slaughtering fleeing civilians - when they sent millions of texts, voice messages and flyers urging the civilians to flee? Hundreds of thousands did, and Israel didn't touch any of them.

Or does Hamas have anything to gain, given that they have told Gazans not to flee, and they gain political capital for every dead Gazan?

A final question: Does Hamas have a track record of not caring about the welfare of Gaza civilians at all?

Assuming the video really is is from Gaza today, this shows a cold blooded execution by Hamas of Gazans.

Already, places like CAIR are accusing Israel of having been the shooters, with zero evidence.

Blaming Israel for this, and for other Hamas atrocities, is a blood libel. Things don't get more antisemitic than that.

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

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11/03 Links Pt1: Victor Davis Hanson: A Therapeutic Middle East vs. A Tragic One; Caroline Glick: After Hamas Attack, The Left Needs to Finally Wake Up

From Ian:

Lee Smith: The Israel Op

No one wants to send U.S. troops to fight for Israel, and Israel doesn’t want the Americans there. Historically, the U.S. officials who want to deploy troops to Israel are anti-Israel leftists, like Samantha Power, who once imagined a scenario in which the U.S. would have to dispatch troops to prevent an Israeli “genocide” of Palestinians. When Biden sent a Marine general to consult with Israeli brass two weeks ago it was to stall the ground invasion, not to assist the Israelis. That Hezbollah has repeatedly fired on Israel is further evidence the aircraft carrier groups Biden deployed to the eastern Mediterranean are there not to deter Hezbollah, but rather Israel.

Contrary to Macgregor’s assessment, Biden is not escalating. In demanding that Israel allow aid trucks across the Egyptian border uninspected, and restore Gaza’s electricity, water, and internet, the president is dismantling Israel’s blockade. With Israeli troops on the verge of bisecting Gaza Wednesday, Biden called for a ceasefire. These are actions characteristic not of an ally but an adversary. And offering Iran negotiations for the purpose of legalizing its nuclear weapons program and giving it access to hundreds of billions of dollars are signs of friendship, not enmity.

Which is why, of course, Iranian allies are shooting at U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq: not because they’re escalating war with the U.S., but to encourage Biden to pressure the Israelis. And it’s working. The Biden administration has even prohibited U.S. small arms manufacturers from exporting rifles and handguns for Israelis to defend themselves against another Oct. 7 massacre.

Macgregor worked briefly in Trump’s administration, and thought he, too, was headed for war with Iran after the president killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s external terror unit, the Quds Force. Soleimani was behind an attack on an Iraqi airbase that killed one American contractor and then an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He was plotting more operations against Americans, and had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen in Iraq. It wasn’t complicated for Trump: If you kill Americans, you die.

Some of Trump’s base don’t like that about him. They praise him for starting no new wars but that was an effect of his being good at foreign policy: He had a clear vision of the national interest, he supported allies, and he was unpredictably violent, and sometimes emotional. He wanted to kill Bashar Assad, too, after he’d seen pictures of children murdered by the Syrian president, until Defense Secretary James Mattis talked him out of it.

Trump’s assessment of the Oct. 7 massacre shows that the man who was the immediate target of every information operation over the last seven years nonetheless sees the world clearly. “This is a fight between civilization and savagery, decency and depravity, and between good and evil,” Trump told a Jewish organization recently. “There is no comparison between a group that worships death and a group that cherishes life.” He added that every death in the conflict was on Hamas alone, and then seemed to go off script for a moment. “I think you really have to add in the word ‘Iran’—Iran, people don’t want to talk about it.”

Trump was referring primarily to the Biden White House, but he might also have been referring to some of his supporters. Trump is right. The best way for America to avoid entering foreign wars is to get the details straight, or else relaying White House and Iranian talking points will obscure the factor most likely to lead to Armageddon—that the Biden administration is determined to give Iran’s murderous regime the bomb.

It’s nearly impossible to believe it and most people won’t until it’s too late. The American right can’t afford self-pity and self-delusion.

Victor Davis Hanson: A Therapeutic Middle East vs. A Tragic One

Yet there is a tragic retort to these common therapeutic scenarios.

The more severely Israel deals with Hamas, and the more the world sees that Hamas’s massive infusions of international aid were almost all misappropriated for tunnels and rockets—soon to be rendered into rubble—the less Hezbollah will want a similar scenario in Beirut. And, therefore, the less likely it will be to intervene.

As for Iran, if Hamas is crushed, would it wish the same fate for its greater investment in Hezbollah? Would Iran like to say to the world, “Hezbollah and Beirut are in rubble, but their rocket barrages against the Jews topped even the late, great Hamas’s body count?” Without Hezbollah and Hamas buffers, will Iran be safer, or more exposed?

As for global opinion, it is now anti-Israel as never before, as the stronger power is currently shown to be the weaker. And so the anti-Israeli world concludes that there are no great consequences to its anti-Semitism, especially if Israel takes such a savage blow and does not respond. Is that not sad proof, in an abjectly amoral world, that Israel deserved the blow? If it did not deserve the blow, why did it not respond to kill the killers?

In contrast, if Israel crushes Hamas, the world will not like Israel, but it will caution prudence to anti-Semitic killers, lest they incite a righteous Israeli retribution. And they may well secretly hope that Israel deals with the murderers who deserve their fate. The more Israel hesitates, the more the EU crowd and the “moderate” Arab regimes will damn Israel: “Doesn’t Jerusalem’s hesitation reveal its guilt or fear?”

But the more it blasts Hamas into oblivion, the more the opportunists will privately shrug: “Well, that’s that – good riddance. We warned the killers not to provoke Israel, so what did the late great Hamas expect anyway?”

There are two caveats, of course. First: the worst thing that Israel could do is inflicting enough damage on Gaza to incite global empathy, but not enough to destroy Hamas – an act that would justify the rubble videos on CNN and the BBC. And, second, it must continue to regret its need to bomb Hamas into smithereens, given the unavoidable collateral damage. The quieter and less triumphalist it becomes, the more the damage it does to Hamas will resonate.

Israelis are not haughty Athenians dialoguing with an innocent, Melian Hamas and its supporters on realism and human nature. Rather, they are the ones who were attacked and who now must make reluctantly clear to the attackers that they did not ask for and do not particularly enjoy the messy work of destroying them.

So we are back to square one: only speaking seldom and quietly, with the readiness to use force when necessary, achieves deterrence—and with deterrence at last comes peace.

The tragedy is that realist deterrence is moral, while naïve appeasement is immoral. Yet the former is unpopular and falsely dubbed cruel as it saves lives, while the latter is praised as humane as it dooms them.

Victor Davis Hanson: One Sick War

There is something surreal, even sick, about the current Gazan war.

Throughout European and American cities and campuses, tens of thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants and students and radical leftists chant nonstop, "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea."

More recently, they are also yelling, "Israel, you can't hide; we caught you in genocide."

Consider the hypocrisy of that dual messaging.

Hamas and its supporters are openly and eagerly calling for the genocidal end of Israel by wiping it out from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet, at the same time, they also claim it is Israel that is committing genocide -- the very current self-described agenda of Hamas and its expatriate community of devotees!

The war has become crazier still.

Hamas and its megaphones abroad also blast Israel daily for retaliating for the October 7 butchery of some 1,400 Israeli infants, children, women, and the elderly.

They further demand Israel must be selective in its airborne targeting of the Hamas killers, who burrow beneath hospitals and mosques while using civilians as shields.

Hamas takes for granted that a supposedly heartless Israel nevertheless will be reluctant to strike the Hamas terrorists when and if civilians surround them.

Indeed, Gazans are put in more danger by Hamas than they would otherwise be by the Israel Defense Forces.

Yet the world accepts that Israel itself would never employ such a ruse of using civilians to shield its cities from indiscriminately fired Hamas missiles.

The world further knows that if Israel ever employed such a barbaric tactic, Israeli civilian shields would attract -- not deter -- Hamas rockets.

The 'Two-State' Solution to Murder Jews

Every Palestinian child knows that if presidential elections were held today, the terrorist group Hamas would win. The most recent PSR poll, published one month before the Hamas massacre, showed that 58% of the Palestinians would vote for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as opposed to 37% for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The poll also showed that 58% of the Palestinian public supports "armed confrontations and intifada" against Israel.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have proven again and again that they hate Israel as much, if not more, than Hamas hates Israel.

There is a dangerously false idea that Abbas or any other Palestinian leader would rein in Hamas in the West Bank. Abbas has no problem with Hamas operating in the West Bank, as long as the terrorist group is targeting Israel, and not him or the Palestinian Authority leadership.... but everyone who lives in the West Bank and Gaza Strip knows that this is a lethal lie.

Creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank would mean turning it into another Iran-led base for Jihad against Jews.

What appears to be missed by many in the West is that it is Israel's security and civilian presence in the West Bank that is preventing Hamas, or groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, from seizing control of the area.

It is high time for Biden and other Western leaders to stop pushing delusional ideas that will quickly lead to a repeat of the October 7 massacre. How many Jewish babies must be beheaded or baked alive in an oven, one wonders, for them to see that Palestinian leaders have radicalized their people against Israel to a point where they brag about slaughtering Jews with their own hands.

"UNRWA schools damaged" - but why won't they show the alleged damage? (UPDATE)

Yesterday, we were informed that 27 people were killed at UNRWA facilities in Gaza in four separate incidents.

UNRWA issued an X post, but the photo it used was not of a UNRWA school but of the IDF bombing in Jabaliya:

The video below shows a smoke bomb hitting the school space which caused no real damage, and one hears nearby explosions, but I can't find any damage from the strike. In fact, the editing makes it appear like they were avoiding showing certain things. (Gazans are claiming that the smoke bombs were white phosphorus, and they clearly aren't.)

The most comprehensive video I could find, which must be the Jabaliya camp, shows injured people and blood on the ground:

Yet the only scene of damage is a tiny hole in the pavement:

Something isn't adding up.

Hamas is known to quickly clean up any evidence of their own rockets in fatal attacks. But we also know that Israel was bombing nearby. Maybe there was a decision to transport bodies and the injured through the school to claim Israel struck the school itself.

I can say for sure that if there was damage to an UNRWA building, there would be videos of that damage all over the place.

UPDATE: Gaza Report says the Jabaliya school was hit by a Gaza rocket.

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

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Map of Israeli attacks closely tracks with tunnel locations in northern Gaza

In 2021, Hamas claimed that there were 500 kilometers of tunnels underneath Gaza. Earlier this week, an Iranian general claimed that Hamas has 400 km of tunnels in northern Gaza alone.

If those claims are true, that means that Hamas' tunnel system is double that of the New York City subway system, at 145 miles (233 km) of tunnels. And New York City of double the size of Gaza.

Israel released a map of the Gaza "metro" in 2021 showing where the main tunnels were.

The New York Times has been publishing its own maps of which sections in Gaza have been hit by airstrikes based on satellite imagery. And for the northern section of Gaza, the two maps are strikingly similar:

What these two maps indicate is that when we see the scenes of devastation of buildings being destroyed, and when human rights groups say smugly that "we found no evidence of militant activity in the area" and accusing Israel of war crimes, the targets are usually underground - underneath those very buildings.

The map also shows that while Israel has hit multiple targets in the south, it has concentrated the bulk of its firepower in the north, exactly where Israel has warned Gaza civilians to evacuate from over the past three weeks. While the pundits have been claiming that such an evacuation was impossible, in fact over those three weeks a significant proportion of Gazans have relocated.

These maps show that Israel is not violating the rules of war. It is not shooting indiscriminately. It is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties.

And they prove that Hamas is the only party that is guilty of war crimes by deliberately locating its tunnels under civilian infrastructure.

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!

My viral cartoon, Amy Schumer, 10/7 rape denial and other antisemitic lies

I created and posted this cartoon October 25:

It struck a chord, and immediately went viral, being copied on other platforms, because it showed the immorality of the protesters who approved of or cheered the Hamas attacks on October 7 and what they really think.

One person who re-posted this was comedian Amy Schumer on her Instagram with a short commentary:

There was an uproar and Schumer deleted it.

But let's look at the criticisms of my cartoon, since I chose my words carefully.

The Daily Dot wrote:

According to a report from FactCheck.org, claims of Hamas militants sexually assaulting Israeli women are largely uncorroborated. The Los Angeles Times quietly removed a reference to rape in an opinion piece from Oct. 9, as there was no evidence for the claim.

However, these accusations have become one of the leading allegations levied against Hamas, and by extension, Palestinian civilians.

Schumer has since apologized for posting the comic, in an Instagram post featuring empty baby strollers with red heart-shaped balloons tied to the handles.

“Hamas terrorists are who I’m talking about. No Gazans. Sorry I posted something that was hurtful to them. I’ll be more careful,” she wrote in the post’s caption. “I love my brothers and sisters in Gaza. I love Muslims. I love everyone.”

Factcheck.org says there were no rapes? When I click on the link, while it at first sad there is no solid evidence, it added two additional facts

If you check Factcheck.org, they added two updates to their original post - before this Daily Dot article was written! - saying that there was indeed evidence of rape. And since then more evidence has come to light.

So that accusation against my cartoon was a lie. And the writer knowingly misrepresented what Factcheck wrote.

Wajahat Ali wrote in The Daily Beast:

In a since-deleted Instagram post from Oct. 24, Schumer shared a single-panel comic that portrayed American pro-Palestinian supporters holding posters and signs that read “Gazans rape Jewish girls only in self-defense,” and “Proud of our rapist martyrs.” In addition to her outrageous and inflammatory claims, Schumer felt perfectly fine posting a cartoon that blamed all Gazans instead of Hamas, the militant organization that controls Gaza and was responsible for committing war crimes and killing 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7.

No, the cartoon didn't blame all Gazans. It blamed Gazans. There were many non-Hamas members - perhaps a thousand - who came out to murder, loot and rape Jewish civilians. Hamas itself claims, ignoring massive video evidence, that it did not do any atrocities - but other Gazans may have. Dr. Basem Naim said, "There are other Palestinian groups who became part of the operation, even ordinary people when they see the prison around Gaza Strip was broken, and the siege was open."

So that accusation against my cartoon is a lie and my words "Gazans rape Jewish girls only in self defense" is a pretty accurate if crude representation of the opinions of the many who defended the pogroms as Gazans defending themselves.

Antisemite Marc Lamont Hill took a different tack, saying, "Amy Schumer had to take down an Instagram post she made where she was trying to chastise people for having any kind of nuanced position on the issue by making it seem as if they were pro-Hamas, pro-rape, pro-violence, and she was really reinforcing these really nasty, orientalist, racist ideas of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular as rapists and violent."

The cartoon, as mentioned, was specifically about the protesters. And the protesters who chant "Globalize the intifada" and :"From the river to the sea" and "Khaybar, Khaybar ya yahud" and that terrorism is a legal right are indeed glorifying and promoting violence. They are openly pro-Hamas; they celebrated the attack before Israel retaliated. Sorry, there is no nuance behind saying Palestinians may "resist - By Any Means Necessary." It means what it says - rape included.

So that accusation against my cartoon is a lie.

The cartoon itself did not say that Arabs in general or Palestinians in particular are rapists and violent.

So that accusation against my cartoon is a lie.

It's funny how so many people had so many problems with my cartoon and yet not one of them is true.

If you want to see more of my cartoons, poster and memes, I've been putting them on Instagram for a couple of years now, and there are over 600 of them!

(h/t iTi)

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!

11/02 Links Pt2: We Are Not Asking for Anyone's Permission to Exist; Let Israel Win; Gaza War to Take Several Months; Thousands of Hamas Terrorists Killed

From Ian:

Amb. Dror Eydar: We Are Not Asking for Anyone's Permission to Exist

Let's talk about public diplomacy. We don't have to apologize anymore. We will no longer allow anyone in the world to harm Jews. Period. Without trying to find the reasons for the rage of those who would harm us. We will not participate in this sickening game of attempting to understand evil. Those looking to understand the psychopathology of the Gazans are like those who look for reasons why the Nazis gassed Jews.

In the wake of Oct. 7, the game is over: Anyone who harms Jews or Israeli citizens can have only one fate - to leave this world. A society that murders 1,400 Israelis in all sorts of cruel ways and holds hundreds of hostages should be under complete siege until the hostages are released. We are not asking for anyone's permission to exist, nor are we asking for legitimacy to defend ourselves.

Few in Israel now talk seriously about a Palestinian state. No sane person would agree to allow a society that sees the genocide perpetrated by Hamas and the residents of Gaza against Jews as normal to establish an independent political entity on the mountain range that looks over Israel's large population centers. Were we to do so, we would see in Judea and Samaria what happened in Gaza, multiplied a hundred-fold.

Victor Rosenthal: Passivity is Killing Us

Israel’s defensive strategy in recent years has been primarily passive. Passive defense does not target an enemy, but puts obstacles in his path. Our passive defenses include security barriers on our borders, with a billion-dollar one under and above the ground next to Gaza. We have built a technological marvel of a layered anti-missile defense system. Such means can – sometimes and to some extent – mitigate the damage that an enemy can do, and are an important part of a country’s defensive strategy. But even when they are successful, they do not deter or weaken the enemy. Indeed, they encourage him to improve his technology and his tactics and try again.

In the early days of the State of Israel, there were no Iron Domes or sensor-laden fences. We responded to terrorist attacks by vicious retaliation – for example, by the famous Unit 101, commanded by Ariel Sharon. That is active defense. Active defenses also have a flaw, especially for a country with little strategic depth, which is that an enemy can do a great deal of damage by a surprise attack before a response can be mounted. But an active defense has deterrent power that passive means do not. And, most importantly: a passive defense alone never won a war. The RAF won the Battle of Britain, but it took land invasions from the east and west to defeat the Nazis.

Over-reliance on passive defense can be dangerous. The Maginot and Bar-Lev lines were circumvented, and the Gaza fence penetrated. Iron Dome can be overwhelmed by mass launches of rockets, and is economically unsustainable. Hamas’ success in its murderous attack on southern Israel was made possible in large measure by our overemphasis, over a period of years, on passive tactics. With each round of fighting, Hamas improved its ability to get rockets through the Iron Dome. Because we haven’t seriously tried to destroy its infrastructure, Hamas was able to build and improve the tunnel system that we are now paying in Israeli lives to destroy. And because of our arrogance and overconfidence, the astronomically expensive security barrier proved almost worthless.

And there is another aspect that must be considered: the psychological effect, not just in Israel, but throughout the world. It has become generally accepted that Israel is a target, in way that Russia, for example, could never be. It became understandable that “frustrated” Palestinians could launch thousands of rockets at us while we bombed empty buildings in return, or Houthis in Yemen could launch Iranian missiles at our cities from 2000 km. away. Why not? We didn’t retaliate seriously.

After October 7, we must finally build Jabotinsky's 'Iron Wall'

Jabotinsky understood that Arab acceptance will only come after they see and feel sheer Jewish force. They will come and seek peace only when they witness the resolute and permanent nature of our power. In other words, they will be forced to give up on their goal and dream of ending the Jewish State.

We have sought to do this in the past through concessions, compromise, and peace agreements. We have tried “kind words” and offering “bread and butter”, and they have all been thrown back in our faces.

As Jabotinsky ended the “Iron Wall” essay, “the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present.”

First, we must force the recalcitrant Arabs to give up their dream of eventually destroying the State of Israel and fight Palestinian violent rejectionism using all of our force, and when this has been achieved, then, and only then, can we start to talk about some type of long-term agreement.

The problem over the last 100 years is that we have got the order wrong, and it has blown up in our faces.

As we are still in shock and trauma over the October 7 massacre, the November 7 anniversary of the publication of the “Iron Wall” should serve as our blueprint for how we act moving forward.

The Iron Wall was not something physical, but an unerring and unceasing security doctrine for the future Jewish State that understood the nature of our enemies and how the conflict must end.

Only an Iron Wall can achieve peace and security for Israel.

It is time to build it.

Fuel for fires of jihad - photo essay of incitement in Palestinian textbooks (Real Jerusalem Streets)

Guest essay by Real Jerusalem Streets:

With anti-Israel and antisemitic protests spreading throughout the world, many are asking where could this hate come from.

A look into Arabic textbooks is a place to start finding answers to the spread of anti-Israel and Jewish protesters being filled with the fuel of jihad.

Arik Aggasi, COO and head of global partnerships for IMPACT-se (The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education,) presented compelling evidence undermining UNWRA's credibility to international journalists.

From over 1,000 textbooks published since 2016, the evidence shows a shocking promotion of hate among young children and a deterioration in content, falling far short of UNESCO standards. Some examples included the removal of content discussing peace agreements, negotiations, and the Two-State Solution, as well as the encouragement of violence and demonization of Israel across all grades and subjects, even infiltrating math and science.

IMPACT-se has been diligently monitoring and analyzing education worldwide since 1998. Their aim is to ensure that education complies with international standards of peace, tolerance, and non-violence, as derived from UNESCO declarations and resolutions. They note UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia have removed some of the hate material.

IMPACT-se's findings have had a significant impact, such as the European Parliament's decision to freeze parts of Palestinian Authority funding until their curricula align with international standards. A joint report by IMPACT-se and United Nations Watch, presented to Congress, shed light on 47 new cases of incitement to hate and violence by UNRWA teachers and schools, in clear violation of the agency's policies. This report revealed a disturbing pattern of calling for the murder of Jews, glorifying terrorism, and inciting antisemitism within UNRWA's education system.

Norway's decision to cut funding over textbook incitement in December 2020 was met with a defiant response from Palestinian PM Shtayyeh, who declared that the "curriculum will not be surrendered." This resistance to reforming the curriculum, even in exchange for the release of frozen EU funds, was reiterated by PA Foreign Minister Al-Maliki in March 2022.

It is crucial to shed light on these issues and encourage international dialogue to address the root causes of conflict in the region. UNRWA's role in perpetuating hatred and violence through education must be scrutinized. Once Hamas is eliminated, efforts to promote peace and tolerance should be prioritized for the sake of a more peaceful and stable future for all parties involved.

It is time for the world leaders to wake up from woke and see what is written in Arabic, in the UNRWA textbooks.

Hopefully, it is not too late to stop the fires from spreading.

Here is a sampling of images provided by IMPACT-se, starting in lower school and included in teachers' manuals encouraging Jew-hatred and murder

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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UN: Israel Must Replace Phone Chargers Hamas Lost In Wreckage (PreOccupied Teritory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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UN: Israel Must Replace Phone Chargers Hamas Lost In Wreckage

Gaza City, November 2 - International pressure came upon Israel today to provide new devices to the Palestinian fighters who can no longer power up their cellphones after access to the original items was severed in airstrikes on Palestinian military positions.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and heads of several other UN agencies, demanded this morning that Israel replace phone chargers that Hamas and other militant group fighters lost because of IDF activity against command posts, tunnels, missile launchers, and other positions in the Gaza Strip.

"The right to free association is a fundamental human right," declared Grandi. "Denying anyone that over political disagreement - and we can all agree that modern phones are the chief vehicle for free association - is a violation of basic human dignity. Palestinians have been fighting for that dignity for decades."

Grandi made the statement in conjunction with representatives of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Btselem, Médecins Sans Forntières, and several Palestinian human-rights-monitoring groups, all of whom characterized the deprivation by Israel to Hamas of phone chargers as a war crime and collective punishment.

"There is no shortage of innocent content on those phones, and this indiscriminate severing of access to those apps and files is illegal and violates human rights law," stated Sari Bashi of HRW.

"The poor Palestinian mothers won't be able to communicate with their sons," she lamented.

A Btselem activist relayed an account by a Palestinian who had to choose between leaving his phone charger in a tunnel and leaving an Israeli child being held hostage there. "It's a cruel choice Israel forces them to make," cried the activist. "I can't imagine being in that position. But we must force ourselves to imagine it, imagine having to make that choice. There were still limbs on that child for the Palestinian man to cut off, and he was unable to finish the job."

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the chief UN organ for addressing the Palestinian plight, noted its own inability to address the lack of chargers. "Unfortunately, several weeks ago, unknown parties entered our main facility in Gaza and emptied it out of fuel, drinking water, batteries, food, and chargers," the agency stated. "We have asked our contacts in Hamas, who run everything here, and whose rosters overlap with ours, who might have done that and where the supplies might be, and we haven't gotten an answer yet."

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

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11/02 Links Pt1: Herzog: ‘Israeli society is our true secret weapon’; Why are the October 7 atrocities being denied?; An Open Letter to Hamas’ Defenders

From Ian:

Herzog: ‘Israeli society is our true secret weapon’

The following is the text of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to the nation on Nov. 1,2023:

Citizens of Israel, tonight I would like to address each and every one of you, personally, and talk about resilience, spirit and soul, on a personal and national level. It’s been almost a month since our country underwent a serious change. For almost a month we have been in a war like no other. Almost a month has passed since that cursed day, when the sun rose, the flowers blossomed and butchers slaughtered, slaughtered and slaughtered—women and men, elderly and infants, from kibbutzim, communes, communities, cities and towns. It is close to a month since that utter horror—which flashes again and again before our eyes, day after day, hour after hour.

Degrees of grief overflow in a way that cannot be contained at all, in a way that cannot be grasped in heart or mind. It surrounds and rocks us. We all feel it, for ourselves, for the parents, for the children. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, hundreds of thousands of reservist recruits, and the war being fought— from the frontline to the back—affects us, all of us, mentally, both personally and nationally. And the fallen—the best of our children— whom we have mourned over the last days, only adds to the pendulum of pain that we are all experiencing at this time.

We will forever remember those who fought bravely and fiercely in the mission of defending the people and our homeland. We embrace their families and pray that they will know no more sorrow. In war, each of us endure moments which are simply unbearable.

Every day, I meet families and communities displaced from their homes, I visit the wounded in the hospitals, and families of those missing or being held hostage. Truly an Israeli mosaic like no other. The pain of the families of the hostages and the missing is simply unfathomable. My conversations with them are the most painful conversations I have held in all of my life. Mothers and fathers, families, spouses and partners, have not slept for more than three weeks. The cruelest and darkest abyss, engulfed these families and us as a nation. I say to you what I told the families, unequivocally, the hostages are in our thoughts, and their return is an integral part of the success of this campaign—of course—alongside victory in this decisive war against the enemy and restoring security to all Israeli citizens.

I knowingly commit to you that the best minds—thousands of Israelis, from the country’s leadership to every level of the security services—will work with professionalism and dedication, every minute of the day, to fulfill our moral duty as a country—to bring them back home.

Dear world: I don’t care

World,
For so, so long, I really, deeply cared
I cared about fitting in
I cared about what you think
I cared about being a model citizen
I cared about setting a personal example of how a tiny people in a tough neighborhood could still be a Light unto the Nations
How the world’s oldest minority – now a majority here – could treat its own internal minorities par excellence amidst the complicated and messy reality of ethnic conflict
How we could painfully dismember parts of our homeland and offer them on the platter of peace to Palestinians that want neither peace nor some parts (they want all of it)
How we could dazzle you with USB sticks, drip irrigation, operating system kernels, Nobel Prize winners, swallowable medical cameras, deep tech, quantum mechanics, generative AI and cures for disease
But now I’m finally accepting that you don’t care
You never did
You don’t see and you don’t hear
And because I cared about what you think so much, that so deeply hurts
But you don’t have my best interests at heart
You take issue with my base identity, with what I represent
Don’t expect me to wait for your approval this time
It doesn’t matter what I do, you’re not going to change
It doesn’t matter how I act, because your issue is with who I am
Now I’m going to block out your noise, and do what it takes to win this war
Today
Finally
I no longer care

UK's most-read paper features Israeli child hostages held in Gaza on

The Sun, the United Kingdom's most widely-read newspaper according to data analyzed by PAMCo, published a cover story on Thursday depicting the names and faces of all 32 children being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The cover image features the faces of all 32 children arched around a black box, emblazoned on which is the text: "32 innocent children snatched by terrorists. This is why Israel must fight evil of Hamas. BRING THEM HOME."

The article was also featured prominently on the UK news outlet's website, which included a compilation of video footage depicting, among other things, Hamas taking hostages on October 7, scenes of Hamas's underground tunnel networks, and protests calling for the hostages to be returned home.

Raising awareness of the plight of children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza

Children make up a significant minority (13.33%) of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, when terrorists infiltrated southern Israel from the Gaza Strip and carried out a series of massacres and abductions.

The hostage issue remains a major factor in the IDF's ongoing war against Hamas, dubbed Operation Swords of Iron, as Israel works to ensure all of the hostages are freed.

According to the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Conventions, taking hostages during an international or internal conflict is considered a war crime.

Israel-haters/antisemites often use an exceptionally effective method to win in the court of public opinion, known a "framing." When one sets the ground rules of what is and is not up for debate, they can create a playing field where the Zionist or Jewish side cannot win. Forcing Jews to argue within those parameters gives them a huge handicap.

One classic example is to pretend that the history of Israel starts with modern Zionism. If you exclude any talk about the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel before the 19th century, they look just like the foreign colonialists that the haters claim we are.

With Operation Iron Swords, the framing has been elaborate and very effective.

The false framework goes like this:

* Telling civilians to move, whether within or without their territory, is a war crime.

* Neighboring countries have no obligation to accept refugees.

* Killing lots of civilians is a war crime by definition.

* Limiting humanitarian aid to a war zone is a war crime.

All discussions of the war on TV is bound by this framework. These four "rules" are not always explicit, which makes it harder to go against them. Who wants to see dead civilians?

The framing statements are incorrect. But the framework is carefully created to ensure that Israel cannot achieve its military objective of destroying Hamas.

* In fact, in a war zone, the attacker is obligated to tell civilians to move out of the war zone - which Israel has done and Hamas has tried to stop.

* While I don't think that Egypt is legally obligated to open its border, it never had a problem with taking in hundreds of thousands of other refugees from elsewhere. It certainly has a moral obligation to do so.

* Targeting civilians is a war crime. Knowing that civilians will die during an attack on a legitimate military target is acceptable as long as the casualties are not excessive, and international law has a much more liberal view of what is excessive than what Israel does.

* Israel has every right to inspect and limit aid to ensure that Hamas does not get it.

But the first four rules are accepted as the framework on CNN and Al Jazeera. Most news shows don't bother explaining the truth about international law because nuance is not TV-friendly.

Spokespeople on TV must break the framework by saying that they do not accept these parameters and creating their own, accurate framework:

* Hamas started this war with an unprecedented, horrific attack on Israel.

* Hamss has made it clear that they will never change or reform. This is who they are.

* The only moral choice is to utterly destroy them.

* Hamas has turned the entire Gaza Strip into a huge human shield for its army and vast subterranean military complex.

* Israel scrupulously follows international law even under these difficult constraints.

* Therefore, while Israel tries to minimize casualties, every civilian death is purely Hamas' fault.

How many TV shows or newspaper articles have you read that accepts these accurate statements as their framework?

It's going to be a long war, and Israel needs to reframe the discussion.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel's COGAT published a humanitarian status report on Monday where it describes the real situation in Gaza. (It is unfortunately not online.)

Excerpts:

Hamas possesses fuel reserves, and it is continuing to take control of private fuel reserves as well. The Hamas fuel reserves are variously located around the Gaza Strip, and Hamas is controlling the supply of fuel to hospitals and other vital facilities according to its own interests in a way that creates pressure on the international discourse and leads the public to believe that the Gaza Strip has insufficient fuel.

With Hamas in control of fuel, the water, sewage, and hospital systems are all directly affected.

Energy

The vital facilities of the Gaza Strip depend on the fuel depots controlled by Hamas, which supplies a limited quantity every few days.

There is local energy production based on solar farms and on generators powered by private fuel reserves.
All the vital facilities — hospitals, desalination plants, wells, and the like — have alternative energy sources.

Operations are adjusting their activities in order to preserve energy.

Food

Food reserves are sufficient for the near term. There is no food shortage.

International organizations are permitted to bring food aid into the Gaza Strip.

There is hoarding of food — purchasing at the groceries and hoarding by private parties.

Eight major bakeries operate in the southern Gaza Strip. During the past 24 hours, hundreds of tons of flour have been brought to the Gaza Strip's bakeries.

Health

A number of options are being weighed, in coordination with representatives of the international community, for the establishment of field hospitals.

Hamas has resumed supplying diesel fuel once in 48 hours to the hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip. Not even the hospital directors know when they will receive fuel, or how much. The matter is kept secret among the inner circle of Hamas.

All the hospitals have alternative energy sources.

At the hospitals, work is affected by the high occupancy and by the weariness of medical staff. Uncertainty regarding fuel for operating the hospitals is also a factor.

The hospitals are very full but are functioning.

There are people sheltering at the hospitals and they add to the burdens of functioning.

The Gaza Strip has a stock of medical supplies available. Hamas manages the stock and decides how to allocate the medical supplies to the hospitals. It even keeps a some of the supplies for itself, while trying to give the false impression of a shortage. The international organizations are preparing a shipment of medicines, and we will give its entry priority.

Water

There is no water shortage in the Gaza Strip as of this writing.

Most of the drinking water in Gaza was provided from within the Gaza Strip. Only about 10% of the water came from Israel. Over the past two weeks, we have opened two water lines from Israel — Birkat Sa'id and Bani Suheila — and they provide water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the central and southern Gaza Strip.

One of the water lines was damaged by a mortar shell from Hamas. The damage was repaired and the supply of water has been renewed.

How do we know that this is not propaganda? Because the information out of Gaza has consistently been shown to be lies. The health ministry has announced that hospitals are hours away from running out of fuel for weeks, and yet they still function.

Also, COGAT's information is consistent with what observers of Gaza have known for years. We know solar power generators that have been built in Gaza for years because of the inconsistent fuel supply. we know that huge water treatment plants have been built, that also rely on solar energy, tha have turned around the major water problems Gaza had years ago. We know that no one has ever starved in Gaza even after years of such warnings.

Israel has consistently provided accurate information. Hamas consistently lies. And news media consistently treats Israel's statements as suspect and Hamas' statements as gospel.

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!

A 2009 event in Afghanistan proves that Israel is following international law today

We've discussed the principle of proportionality before, and shown how Israel adheres to this principle entirely in its wartime activities.

Here's another example of what would be considered proportional, from a German court. The background:

On the night of September 3, 2009, Taliban fighters hijacked two tankers carrying NATO fuel and then got stuck on a sandbank in the Kunduz River, about four miles from the NATO base in the northern city of Kunduz.

Col. Georg Klein, a German who at the time was commander of the NATO base in Kunduz, called in U.S. military planes to bomb the tankers, saying that he believed that only insurgents were in the area and that he feared the Taliban could use the tankers to carry out attacks. But dozens of local Afghans had swarmed the tankers, invited by the Taliban to siphon off fuel.

A German Army investigation later determined that as many as 90 civilians had been killed.

The commander did not know any civilians were there, and he based his decision on his best available intelligence at the time. But the German court that ruled on the case said that even if he had known the civilians were there, he would have been justified in ordering the airstrike:

In the present case the bombing pursued to military goals, namely the destruction of the fuel tankers robbed by the Taliban and of the fuel as well as the killing of the Taliban, including not least the high-level regional commander of the insurgents. The anticipated military advantage, namely on the one hand the final prevention of using the fuel and the fuel tankers as “driving bombs” or to fuel the insurgents’ militarily used vehicles and on the other hand the at least temporary disruption of the Taliban’s regional command structure fall within the usual, recognized tactical military advantages … The fact that the goal mentioned in second place was not fully achieved is irrelevant for the legal assessment because the expectations at the time of the military action based on the facts are decisive.
...Even if the killing of several dozen civilians would have had to be anticipated (which is assumed here for the sake of the argument), from a tactical-military perspective this would not have been out of proportion to the anticipated military advantages. The literature consistently points out that general criteria are not available for the assessment of specific proportionality because unlike legal goods, values and interests are juxtaposed which cannot be “balanced” … Therefore, considering the particular pressure at the moment when the decision had to be taken, an infringement is only to be assumed in cases of obvious excess where the commander ignored any considerations of proportionality and refrained from acting “honestly”, “reasonably” and “competently” … This would apply to the destruction of an entire village with hundreds of civilian inhabitants in order to hit a single enemy fighter, but not if the objective was to destroy artillery positions in the village … There is no such obvious disproportionality in the present case. Both the destruction of the fuel tankers and the destruction of high-level Taliban had a military importance which is not to be underestimated, not least because of the thereby considerably reduced risk of attacks by the Taliban against own troops and civilians. There is thus no excess.

The German Federal Court of Justice here makes two rulings:

1. Killing several dozen civilians in order to stop two tanker trucks from possibly being used either as truck bombs or even to fuel enemy equipment would not be disproportionate.

2. Destroying an entire village with hundreds of civilian inhabitants would not be disproportionate if the objective is to destroy artillery positions. (There is a separate issue of the obligation to give warning to civilians if it would not impact the targeting of the military objective.)

Israel's objective in Jabaliya was not only a top Hamas commander - whose death would already be enough to provide a definite military advantage - but also dozens of other terrorists and all the military matériel they had hidden beneath the ground.

Once again, specific legal rulings show what Israelis all know: the IDF follows international law scrupulously. It usually goes beyond it, even putting soldiers at risk to avoid killing civilians, which is not a requirement under international law and indeed is arguably foolhardy.

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!

11/01 Links Pt2: Pessin: When the anti-racists are racists; Amnesty International’s Propaganda on Gaza; Frantz Fanon, Oracle of Decolonization

From Ian:

Andrew Pessin: When the anti-racists are racists

What exactly do you think could possibly justify such barbaric cruelty? To babies, children, disabled people, grandmothers?

When the Nazis showed up at Polish towns and forced all the Jews to strip and walk miles into the woods and dig their own graves and then shot them, mothers holding their babies, would you stop and say, “Wait a minute, I need to hear the Nazis’ perspective on this before I reach a judgment?”

Who watches little girls raped and then dismembered alive (yes) and says, “Well, I need to learn more before making a judgment”?

Who watches a mother and a father and their three small children tied up together and then burned alive (yes) and says, “Well I need to hear the other side before I make up my mind”?

When nine black people were gunned down in South Carolina in 2015, did anyone say, “Wait until we get the gunman’s point of view”? Or in regard to the 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand in which 51 Muslims died?

Is there any other identity group whose massive slaughter is met with the search for justification, with the “need to learn more”?

Closer to home, when talking about your activism for important causes, you also said, “The George Floyd affair was about the daily police brutality black Americans have faced for centuries and the continued oppression of folks of African descent across the diaspora.”

Imagine someone responded to you and said, “Well, you know, that situation is actually extremely complicated. After all, black people do commit a lot of crime and have a lot of police interactions. And anyway, let’s hear from David Duke and the Proud Boys before we reach any conclusions.”

Do I need to go on to imagine how you would feel, and how pretty much everyone we know in academia would erupt against such a response, which would instantly be branded racist?

1,400 mostly unarmed Jews—babies, children, teenagers, pregnant women, grandmothers—were just slaughtered in the most sadistic manner possible by the members of an openly genocidal group. Their founding charter literally endorses the murder of all Jews on earth. They literally posted footage of the atrocities so everyone could celebrate it. And you need to “learn more”?

But you didn’t stop there.

Given the “complexity” of the conflict, you then endorsed the (otherwise surely laudatory) view that we needn’t play the “Oppression Olympics,” that “we must oppose all oppression, have empathy for every suffering person, etc.”

Of course. But when certain people responded to the Black Lives Matter campaign so dear to you by pointing out that, in fact, “all lives matter” and “unarmed white people are also shot by police,” well we know how that was received, not least as evidence of their racism. Yet when 1,400 Jews were slaughtered in the most cold-blooded manner possible, you responded, “Well, all lives matter.”

You literally just “all lives mattered” every Jewish person on earth.

WSJ Editorial The Global War on the Jews

Jews are under attack not only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the world over, including in the U.S. and Europe.

The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with Israel.

This weekend hundreds of rioters in Dagestan, Russia, stormed an airport in search of Jewish travelers. Germany has witnessed a spate of anti-Semitic incidents. Two Jewish schools in London closed for a period over safety concerns. A crowd in Sydney, Australia, chanted "gas the Jews" after the Hamas attack.

Americans like to believe such things couldn't happen in the U.S. They have. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 388% increase in anti-Semitic incidents from Oct. 7-23 compared with the same period a year ago. The ADL tally counts 109 anti-Israel rallies that featured support for Hamas or violence against Jews in Israel.

The West spent the decades after the civilizational catastrophe of the Holocaust vowing never again to allow itself to slide into such barbarism. What we see now in the attacks on Jews is how that slide began.

Before there was a Chancellor Hitler in 1933, there were roving bands of Brownshirts inflicting political and anti-Semitic violence on the streets of Germany. They too often went unchecked by police, prosecutors and politicians who didn't understand the menace.

A Western society that can't or won't muster the will to defend its Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens won't be able to defend itself.

Are We Tipping into a New World War?

A “world spinning out of control.” Those were the words Wall Street Journal Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead used to describe the latest geopolitical developments when Bari interviewed him on the latest episode of Honestly this week. And it’s not hard to see why.

In the past 48 hours alone:
Houthi fighters fired at Israel from Yemen.
An Israeli air strike hit Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, killing a senior Hamas commander as well as Palestinian civilians.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray warned senators that the Israel-Hamas war has increased the chances of a terrorist attack against Americans in the United States to “a whole other level.”
Israel vanished overnight from maps on the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly said Egypt was “prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” dismissing requests for the settlement of Palestinian refugees in Egypt.

On the podcast, Walter explains why the “pre-war era” we’ve been in for a while is “moving quickly and at an unpredictable pace” toward “something big and something bad.”

Let Walter give you the lay of the land. I can’t promise that it will be reassuring. But it will be clarifying.