Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 05, 2023

It is insulting (and possibly antisemitic) to keep reminding Israel about "international law" when Israel is following it perfectly.

All over the media, and with virtually all statements from politicians who claim that Israel has a right to defend itself, we hear - over and over - the caveat: "Israel must respect international law." (I'm not even discussin gthose who say Israel is violating international law.)

This is a blatant insult. Not only that, it is (mostly subconsciously) invoking antisemitic tropes.

The IDF has more layers of legal oversight than perhaps any nation on Earth. They are summarized here in a recent article (worth reading in full) by Colonel John Merriam, a U.S. Army Judge Advocate:

[T]he IDF’s MAG Corps is an exceptionally competent group of advisors on the law of armed conflict that is organized to ensure IDF commanders have access to high-caliber legal advice in real time. Once planners identify and propose targets based on anticipated or actual missions and operational goals, lawyers from the International Law Department (ILD) review each. When hostilities break out, a group of additional LOAC experts, including both active duty and reserve officers, augments the ILD; this combined task-organized entity is known as the Operational Law Apparatus (OLA). The head of the ILD commands it. Members of the OLA determine whether the proposed target qualifies as a “military objective,” identify possible proportionality concerns, and provide input on other LOAC prohibitions, restrictions, and obligations.

... I am confident that the IDF has mainstream legal positions and is equipped with first-rate legal advisors.

He's not the only US military law expert who has said this. Israel has not, and will not, violate the laws of armed conflict. Hell, Israelis are in the forefront of refining those very laws because of Israel's unique circumstances of having to fight terror groups who pretend to be civilians, use civilian vehicles, commandeer civilian ambulances and hide behind civilian objects. International law journals have lots of articles written by Israelis, and some of the top scholars of the laws of armed conflict are Israeli.

If the top US military experts say that Israel's legal position is largely in line with that of the US itself, why do so many keep reminding Israel that it must adhere to international law standards? It's like telling your friend that she has to brush her teeth every day - the very request is insulting because it implies you don't think she does.

But the repeated insistence that Israel adhere to international law also recalls antisemitic tropes - that Jews are slyly always looking to skirt the law themselves.

An early example comes from the 19th century, when Jews were routinely accused of setting fires to their own property in order to collect insurance.Some insurance companies mid-century refused to insure Jews altogether because of the perceived additional risk. But the upshot is that Jews were assumed, as a group, to be underhanded, clannish, untrustworthy and criminal. Jewish characteristics were described as "cunning, avaricious, pitiless."

This repeated demand that Israel does something that is not explicitly and continually requested from any other in any other war sounds uncomfortably like no one really trusts the Jews to be law-abiding.

The other antisemitic corollary to the repeated demands of adherence to international law is that Jews are not trustworthy. Israel has insisted from the beginning that it always follows the laws of armed conflict, but no other country seems to really believe it. It is just another Jewish trick, it seems. In order to violate the principle of distinction, and to a large extent proportionality, means one must have the intent to hurt civilians. Without intent or gross negligence, there is no war crime. Israel cannot reveal its sources of intelligence and reporters cannot understand why so many civilians have to die in any attack, but they assume that Israel has no valid reason - meaning either Israeli intent to kill civilians or basic disregard for their lives.

That means that they are assuming Israelis are liars. Which is definitely antisemitic. And when you compare this to the media's eagerness to accept Hamas information about the war, it indicates a deep-seated prejudice, not "even-handedness."

Yes, alarming numbers of civilians are dying in Gaza. But Israel is doing everything humanly possible to minimize their deaths given the imperative to destroy Hamas - sending out millions of warnings, opening up humanitarian corridors, working to use the least lethal weapons possible. Outside the US, I'm not aware of any country that has worked harder in wartime to minimize civilian casualties, and Israel's historical record of civilian to combatant death ratio is lower than in any conflict in history in urban areas.

Instead of assuming Israel is acting in good faith, the world chides Israel of not doing enough, out of malice or vengeance. This is a despicable lie, it is antisemitic, and it is an insult.

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!

Arab media doesn't even pretend to be "anti-Zionist" anymore - it is antisemitic, period

Like Western Leftist antisemitism, Arab antisemitism has generally tried to disguise itself as "anti-Zionism" for the past couple of decades, ever since MEMRI reports of explicit antisemitism in Arabic language media started making it into mainstream media.

This is all changing, very quickly.

There are multiple, blatant antisemitic articles in Arabic language media every day, and the number has been skyrocketing since October 7.

The worst I saw so far this weekend was from Egyptian Major General Muhammad Al-Ghobari, former director of the National Defense College, who said on Egyptian TV that "“The ancient kingdom of David is the beginning of the formation of the kingdom that the Jews dream of, and the beginning after that of the scorched earth policy and control of the earth’s wealth. One of the customs of the Jews is killing, as an entire city with 10,000 people was killed, and the Jews were dancing with charred corpses next to them, and treachery and blood are among their characteristics."

He also said that Freemasonry is a Zionist tool for dismantling societies in the world.

There were a number of articles quoting the hadith that rocks and trees will identify Jews so Muslims will kill them, as well as assurances that Israel is planting lots of "gharqad" trees that Muslims say would protect them.

Dr. Ali Gomaa, the former Mufti of Egypt and a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, quoted the nonexistent "verse 111 of the Talmud" that supposedly says that Jews are not allowed to return to Israel and if anyone does "you will be slaughtered like deer." He also quoted the "stone and tree" hadith.

Muslims have also been circulating an old clip of Imam Sheikh Muhammad Metwally Al-Shaarawi, saying that the Muslim obligation to kill all the Jews couldn't be fulfilled until they returned to Israel and were all in one place. Now they are ripe for genocide.

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!

11/04 Links: Howard Jacobson: We ask ourselves how ordinary Germans could stand idly. Today, we must ask: How can so many stand idly by and applaud?

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: We ask ourselves how ordinary Germans could stand idly. Today, we must ask: How can so many stand idly by and applaud?

The question frequently asked of German civilians in the 1940s — how could you stand idly by and do nothing? — seems barely more than a casual enquiry compared to what we must ask today: how can you stand idly by and applaud?

Not that the academic community that led the cheering for the October 7 massacre has been exactly idle when it comes to fomenting anti-Zionist propaganda. At the forefront of every march and every motion to boycott and divest, tireless in its propagation of lies and half-truths, tolerant only of those who tell the tale they tell, British and American universities have, for the past 20 years or more, been making a mockery of the cherished belief that they exist to question and argue.

That a perfect storm of anti-Semitism has been brewing on university campuses is no secret. Many British Jewish school-leavers choose the best university to go to not by academic reputation but how much anti-Zionist abuse they are likely to encounter.

Ask why the Palestinian case has been taken up with such zest by our universities and the answer will be partly economic — almost as many Muslims pay to study at British universities as there are Jews in the entire population of the United Kingdom — and partly ideological.

It should matter to all of us, and not just Jews, that our tertiary institutions have grown so obsessed with 'colonisers' and the 'colonised' that empire has become the template against which almost every historical event is measured.

As evidenced by Jeremy Corbyn's monosyllabic remarks about Zionism, one needs to know nothing about history to be sure that the founding of Israel was a colonial enterprise.

Question that and you will be accused, as happened to Jewish students at the University of Bristol recently, of being in the pay of the Israeli government.

In fact, nothing could be more laughable than the idea that the first desperate Jews who came limping from the pogroms of Europe, after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave its support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, were colonisers or empire builders. Jews had been returning to their homeland for centuries, looking for nothing but a place of peace, spiritual renewal and safety.

Yes, things changed in the succeeding years, but Palestinian intransigence in the matter of sharing the country played a part in hardening Israel's resolve.

This, however, you will not be taught in whichever course preaching the evils of white supremacy you enrol.

And so — despite the academic cheers for Hamas — the bombs fall on Gaza and our hearts break. Is it anti-Semitic to wish Israel could find some other, more subtle and humane way of destroying Hamas?

No. But it is anti-Semitic to rush to false judgments about Israel's actions and intentions, to blame them for what they do not do and to refuse to understand the existential fears that drive their actions. And it most decidedly is anti-Semitic to say: 'There you are — didn't we tell you that Jews love killing babies.'

This might be the most diabolic anti-Semitic trick of all — reactivating the blood libel that has killed millions of Jews so far, and still counting.

Who Are We Now?

Israel’s post-October 7th identity crisis

In the first days, we were overwhelmed with grief. Inconsolable, refusing to believe and already lamenting the death of so many. We hear the stories and mourn bitterly for people we did not know. We stand in long lines and give blood. We donate our money to soldiers, evacuees, the wounded, giving and giving like there is no tomorrow. Our nights are sleepless. Anxious about the fate of the hostages, more and more faces, more and more names, dozens of them babies and kindergarten children. With each passing day, the grip tightens, crushing us more and more.

And from the funeral processions and the visits of condolence, we move on to the collection and volunteer stations, offering to help, otherwise we will go mad with helplessness (this blanket, who will be covered by it? Who will keep warm with this coat?), and a strange feeling of closeness also arises there, in the huge makeshift kitchens and the civic initiatives that help wherever they can, shoulder to shoulder, we harness ourselves and cooperate, efficient, energetic, as one, as if we had been doing this forever.

And in the middle of it all, autumn arrives. The air is sweet and the light soft and milky, as if European. And our city, Tel Aviv, which in the last two years has become unbearable with its endless construction sites, drilling and digging everywhere, long, agitated traffic jams, is suddenly different. Beautiful and paralyzed. Its streets are empty and its roads are quiet, and in the few places that are open the people are hunched over and dazed, careful with their words. Such a small country, and everyone knew someone, and at the edge of every breath a sob quivers.

It has been 24 days since the catastrophe hit, and those first 24 hours repeat themselves over and over again, as if in a loop. Like the sugar-stricken children running in the hotel, we all go round and round in circles, round the sorrow and the rage and the worry about what’s to come, round the regret. 24 days of screaming and crying, how oblivious we were, how stupid.

We are crushed. Our sun shines, but a terrible sense of forsakenness hangs in the air. The concepts of time, the race of life, duties, habits and pleasures, everything is broken. For we are now at war. Our enemy has revealed itself to be indescribably cruel and brutal, and he has also set a contemptible trap for us: above all those innocent Palestinians Hamas uses as its human shield, now in Gaza there are over two hundred Israelis (among them dozens of young kids and babies, for crying out loud!) - what will become of them?

Everything here is pale and silent, and we are gripped by a fear of this war, and at the same time convinced that it is just, inconsolable and resolute, every last one. And in this, too, we are strangers to ourselves: we Israelis, who almost never agree on anything, are suddenly so united. Woe to us, for this has happened to us.

Robert Satloff and Dennis Ross: The Battle for Public Opinion

Under pressure from massive street protests, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have already slid back from the staunch support they promised Israel in the immediate aftermath of the carnage of Oct. 7. In just three weeks, that spirit of solidarity has increasingly given way to calls for a ceasefire. Israel will resist such calls, since a ceasefire would leave Hamas in control of Gaza, certain to rebuild and rearm, readying itself to launch future attacks.

To be sure, much of this reflects the double-standard to which Israel has long been subjected. When thousands of Afghan or Iraqi civilians died in America's legitimate campaigns against al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, it was called an unfortunate consequence of war. Yet Israel is accused of genocide.

As this war unfolds, we urge Israel to focus on three themes that, if repeated every day, would improve Israel's information campaign. First, Israel should remind the world what this war is not about. Israel should declare it has no plan, desire or goal to occupy Gaza or to evict Palestinians from Gaza.

Second, Israel should make clearer the distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. Yes, Hamas earned a plurality of votes in a legislative election 17 years ago when it ran on an anticorruption, good governance platform. But it came to power in Gaza the following year through a bloody, violent coup, not by the democratic choice of local Palestinians. Hamas commands the loyalty of a small minority of Gaza's population.

Third, Israel should continually emphasize that it is committed to fighting Hamas with the minimum possible civilian casualties, while trying to meet the humanitarian needs of the civilians it has urged to move out of harm's way to southern Gaza. For the antisemites of this world, none of this will matter. But the goal is to win the hearts and minds of millions who need a reason to give Israel the benefit of the doubt.

11/03 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The war against the Jewish people and the west; Stop blaming the West for the Arab world’s racism; American Media Sides With the Monsters of 10-7

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The war against the Jewish people and the west

I gave some talks in America over the past weekend. What follows is a composite of what I said in them.

In Israel, the population is traumatised, shocked and grieving. During the Hamas pogrom on October 7, Israelis were slaughtered with a level of barbarism and depravity not seen since the Shoah.

In such a small country, there’s hardly a family that’s not personally touched by what’s unfolded. They have relatives who were murdered in the pogrom, or who were kidnapped and taken hostage. Their children and grandchildren have been called up to military service and are now in harm’s way on the front. Hundreds of these conscripts have already been killed. Israelis are going to funeral after funeral. The rocket barrages keep coming. The anxiety levels are off the scale.

The agenda of Hamas and its puppet-master Iran is very clear. Destroy Israel, genocide against the Jews, and then wipe out the Christian west and all unbelievers. We know this is their agenda because they say so. Repeatedly.

The greater shock, however, has been the reaction to this of an enormous number of people in the west.

Western depravity
There have been shocking scenes in British, American and Australian cities of massive and mostly Muslim mobs celebrating the mass murder of Jews and calling for more. Among the non-Jewish population, this genocidal hysteria is being viewed by millions more with indifference or even support, especially among the young.

Polling has shown that among 18-24 year-old Americans, nearly half — 48 per cent — say they side more with Hamas. More than half — 51 per cent — think the Hamas pogrom in which 1400 Israelis were slaughtered can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.

In Britain and America, young people have been tearing down posters bearing pictures of some of the kidnapped Israeli children.

Thousands of demonstrators have been chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — the demand for the destruction of Israel. In London, mobs have been chanting “Khybar, Khybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return” — the reference to the seventh century slaughter of the Jews of Khybar by Islam’s founder Mohammed, which acts as a jubilant glorification and incitement of the slaughter of Jews today.

The western media have been pumping out Hamas propaganda. The BBC and other outlets headline civilian casualty figures put out by Hamas — regardless of the fact that these are always hugely exaggerated, and with no acknowledgment of the fact that terrorists are presumably included in these figures and may constitute the majority.

While berating Israel for causing a humanitarian “catastrophe,” they make no mention of the thefts of fuel and electricity to service the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the miles of underground tunnels. They make no mention of the rocket attacks which continue without remission against Israeli civilians. Instead they demand of Israeli spokesmen: “Why are you killing babies in Gaza?”

Even though Hamas is committing war crimes by using Gazan civilians as human shields, western “progressives” are accusing Israel of war crimes. Even though Israel has been warning Gazan civilians to flee for their own safety as required by international law while Hamas is forcing them under gunfire to stay in place, Israel is being accused of breaking international law.

Melanie Phillips: The fracturing of the ‘progressive’ West

To the left, however, those Israeli victims have been to blame for the attacks they have suffered because they are “illegal settlers.” To quote Rabbi Brous, the left said that “these Israeli victims somehow deserved this terrible fate” because they were people of whom the left disapproved and were thus airbrushed out of the scope of human sympathy altogether.

Now these leftists are crying because suddenly, they feel the hot breath of the Jew-haters on their own necks. For such “progressives,” it’s all about them. It always was all about them.

These people have supported Muslims against all adverse comment, denouncing any critics instead as “Islamophobic.” As a result, the profound and lethal Jew-hatred that is rampant throughout the Muslim world is ignored or denied.

Britain’s Muslim community said it was “deeply upset” by Starmer’s Gaza ceasefire remark. Yet its leaders have failed to denounce Hamas or express horror at the pogrom or sympathy for the Israeli victims.

For Starmer, Muslim support is critical to his electoral prospects. There are 14 times as many Muslims in Britain as there are Jews. In the 2019 general election, nearly 80% of Muslims voted Labour.

Just 0.5% of the British public is Jewish, and only about one-fifth of them vote Labour. There are just five parliamentary constituencies where Jews make up more than 10% of the population. In contrast, there are 108 constituencies which are at least 10% Muslim. Labour won 83% of those seats at the last election.

Starmer’s support for Israel is now jeopardizing that support. A survey by the research group Muslim Census which received 30,000 responses found a 66% drop in Labour support among Muslims because they are furious at Starmer’s position.

Yet Starmer knows that if he is seen to be abandoning Israel to attackers bent upon a second Holocaust, then he will destroy Labour’s claim to be a moral project. And if it is not a moral project, it is nothing.

It’s not just the Jewish community that’s so horrified by the mass support for barbarism displayed by the Muslim-led demonstrations and the “progressive” world. Thousands of other decent people are shocked and aghast at this evidence of a cultural monster that’s arisen in their midst.

Hundreds of thousands of British demonstrators have been chanting for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews with the police seemingly unable or unwilling to enforce public order laws.

When Starmer left the London think tank where he had made his speech, the police were forced to usher him into his car as dozens of demonstrators ran at the vehicle and drummed on the window shouting “war criminal” and “shame.”

Britain has sleep-walked into this. The core reason is that it has lost sight of what the nation stands for, and is no longer prepared even to define its core precepts and traditions, let alone defend them.

Israel is now fighting for its life and the lives of its people. It is doing so with ferocity because it understands the priceless value of the nation and the people that it is so painfully defending.

This is the crucial weapon in its armory that Britain no longer possesses—and that too many Jews and other “progressives” in America also appear to be determined to throw away.

Stop blaming the West for the Arab world’s racism

Youssef’s historical sketch conforms to the prevailing narrative of our time. Namely, that the conflicts that have beset the Middle East since the end of the Second World War are the product of decisions made by white Europeans, and imposed on a world filled with passive, innocent ‘indigenous people’. This means that the rampant anti-Semitism in the Middle East is effectively cast as a Western, European creation.

As an Arab and a Muslim, I recognise this story only too well. It is one that I inherited and told myself for a very long time. That was until I could no longer ignore the dishonesty of this account of Arab and Muslim history.

After all, if this tale is close to the truth, why have pro-Hamas protesters around the world been shouting ‘Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud’ – a reference to the seventh-century murder and expulsion of Jewish tribes from the Khaybar oasis in the Arabian Peninsula – rather than something that relates to Deir Yassin? If a massacre and the formation of Israel in 1948 was the catalyst for Muslim anti-Semitism, why did Izz ad-Din al-Qassam – the cleric after whom Hamas names its rockets and murder-brigades – form the anti-Semitic Islamist group, the Black Hand, as early as the 1930s? And why was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, (considered by both the British and Nazi Germany to be the leader of the Arab world at the time) so keen to bring the Nazi Holocaust to the Middle East?

If you had asked me those questions when I was younger, I would have reeled off a list of grievances about Jewish refugees from Europe infringing on native Arab populations in the 1920s and 1930s. But in recent years, I changed my mind. I looked around at my home city of London, which has been utterly transformed by immigrants like me, and saw the arrogance and hypocrisy of my position.

I was casting Jewish refugees from Europe as villains, while regarding myself as a worthy victim. I was justifying the actions of those who violently rejected Jewish migration into Mandate Palestine during the Holocaust, while considering myself unquestionably entitled to refuge in the West.

This same hypocrisy runs through the ‘pro-Palestine’ demonstrations that have erupted across Europe. These protests, shot through with pro-Hamas sentiments, have made Jewish communities fear for their safety in countries that promised they would never have to again.

The recent protests in the UK consist largely of recent migrants, the descendants of recent migrants and identitarian leftists, all of whom no doubt insist that there should be no restriction on migration from anywhere, for any reason, regardless of the impact on British society. And yet these are the same people who accept, without question, Youseff’s tale of how Jewish migration to the Middle East caused Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism. I wonder if the next time Youseff faces prejudice in his adopted country of the United States, will he be as understanding as he appears to be towards Arab and Muslim racism against Jews?

There is another glaring blindspot in Youseff’s story – namely, the near disappearance of Jewish life everywhere in the Middle East, except in Israel. Indeed, more than half the Jewish population of Israel has arrived there over the past 75 years from the rest of the Middle East. In my own country of birth, Libya, a Jewish presence dating back thousands of years has been utterly erased by anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust forced Europeans to face up to their dark history of anti-Semitism. But the Arab and Muslim world has never had to do the same, despite the uncomfortably close connection between Nazi Germany and the leaders of what later became modern Islamism.

The truth is that Arab and Muslim societies have their own anti-Semitism problem and it is one that they have nurtured and generated themselves. It is undeniable that the hatred of Jews by non-Jews in the Middle East, rooted in a theology and a history that deems Jews inferior to Arabs, long predates the establishment of the Jewish State. And that hatred has only become more intense the more that Jews have survived and thrived, despite their persecution.

Now more than ever, it is imperative that we do not fall for modern, Westernised justifications for the oldest hatred.

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!

Latest blood libel: Hamas slaughters fleeing Gazans, Israel blamed

Al Jazeera writes:

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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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