Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 06, 2023

What Effect Are The Massive Anti-Israel and Antisemitic Protests Having In The US? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Never take anything for granted.

That also goes for opinion polls on the attitude of Americans when it comes to Israel. For a very long time, the vast majority of Americans favored Israel over the Palestinian Arabs.

And that support for Israel was bipartisan, shared by both Republicans and Democrats.

In January, the Pew Research Center reported that was changing: Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Further Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians:

Currently, 79% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats.

While 27% of Democrats sided with Israel, 25% sided with the Palestinian Arabs.

It was easy to ignore the warning signs when the overall general attitude toward the conflict remained in favor of Israel, with 46% of Americans sympathizing more with Israelis and 16% saying they sympathize more with Palestinian Arabs.

But just two months later, Gallup reported Democrats' Sympathies in Middle East Shift to Palestinians:

After a decade in which Democrats have shown increasing affinity toward the Palestinians, their sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.

So much for bipartisan support for Israel in the US Congress.

That question of support for Israel became even more important following the Hamas massacre of over 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children on October 7th. In order to properly deal with the Hamas threat, Israel needed US support, both military and moral. But how much could Israel depend on US support, especially with a Democratic president in office and just over a year till the presidential elections?

Thus far, Biden has been supportive overall, even taking in account criticisms of US pressure on Israel as it seeks to rid itself of the Hamas threat once and for all.

But at the same time, members of the "Squad," especially Tlaib, have been pushing to deny aid to Israel and to implement a ceasefire, which would allow Hamas terrorists to live to attack another day.

A month after the 10/7 massacre, social media has been bombarding users with news, at times inaccurate if not outright fake. Arguments have been made and videos and images have been posted. Hamas and its allies are known for their propaganda prowess. Israel is known for its weakness in advocating its position. The preponderance of anti-Israel protests in the US, as well as around the world, make Jews even more wary.

What do the most recent polls say now?

Yesterday, Laura Adkins of The Forward, posted the following survey on Twitter, from the NPR/PBS Newshour Marist poll from October 11.

Here is an enlarged view:

The polling data behind the poll is available online.

This is not bad, especially after being bombarded with online images of massive protests against Israel. But that was just 4 days after the massacre happened.

What are attitudes now?

Adkins tries to address this too:

On November 2nd, Shibley Telhamy posted the results of this other poll: Is the Israel-Gaza war changing US public attitudes?

To probe the issue, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll with Ipsos asked several questions focused on the role of the United States and the perception of the Biden administration. The poll did not directly ask about attitudes toward the war itself but probed any shifts in public attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian issue broadly. It was fielded October 20-22 among 1,021 respondents using Ipsos’ probability-based KnowledgePanel with a margin of error of 3.3%. [Methodology of the survey is available here.]

Shibley points out that the poll itself was taken only 2 weeks after the massacre, with criticism of Israel increasing, especially now that Israel is taking the war directly to Hamas in Gaza. We know that opinion of Israel is not static under such circumstances and more polls are forthcoming.

Among the points he makes:

Public opinion on U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue remains divided along partisan lines. The opinion of younger Americans is always concerning. Currently, 14% vs 16.2% of young Democrats are leaning toward Israel. Overall, 54.5% of young Americans want the US not to lean toward either side.

Most of those who responded to the survey say that Biden is “too pro-Israeli” as opposed to “too pro-Palestinian.” Forty percent of respondents say they are not sure.

Even those who want Biden to take Israel's side, not all are happy with the approach he is taking:

[T]hose who say that the president favors one side or the other sometimes include those who want the United States to take that side — but that they think the president is doing it more so than they prefer. For example, among Democrats who say Biden is too pro-Israeli, 14.8% also say they want the United States to lean toward Israel. [emphasis added]

An important conclusion of the poll addresses whether efforts by Tlaib and others to apply political pressure on Biden to stop supporting Israel are having the desired effect:

Third, more respondents say that Biden’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue makes them “less likely” (30.9%) than “more likely” (14.2%) to vote for Biden if the presidential elections were held today.

But here is the odd part. These are the results overall of all respondents. Even Shipley understands that Republicans are unlikely to vote for Biden just because he supports Israel, so the key is how Democrats responded.

Now take a look at the breakdown:

According to these numbers, Democrats at this point are more likely to vote for Biden based on his position on Israel: 28.4% vs 10.8%. That is surprising and noteworthy. Independents are a different story.

Obviously, as the reports of casualties in Gaza continue to come out, we will see changes in these polling numbers.

Nevertheless, overall the numbers seem to indicate that negativity and threats generated by the anti-Israel and antisemitic protests we are seeing are not having the massive effect that many fear.

All the more reason for the Jewish community to get its act together.

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!

11/06 Links Pt1: We’re Not All Complicit—But Obama Sure Is; Israel is more committed to protecting civilians in Gaza than Hamas is; Satellite companies are restricting Gaza images

From Ian:

Abe Greenwald: We’re Not All Complicit—But Obama Sure Is

Barack Obama hasn’t commented on many serious matters since he left the White House. So when he interrupts his showbiz and cocktail duties to speak up, it’s a sign that he actually cares about something going on in the world. He didn’t have much newsworthy to say about the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the crisis at our Southern border, or the state of our economy. But he’s now got a message that he needs to get out. Obama is concerned that we don’t forget about supposed Israeli cruelty to Palestinians just because Hamas massacred nearly 1,500 innocents in Israel.

In a recent appearance on the Pod Save America podcast, Obama said that in order to resolve the conflict, “it will require an admission of complexity.” We must face, he says, “what may seem contradictory ideas.” Namely, “what Hamas did was horrific, and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.”

Ignorance as “complexity.” Vintage Obama. Ideological banality delivered as omniscient revelation of the true nuanced path. And the applause came roaring through—once he mentioned the “occupation.” Never mind that Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza and pulled out in 2005.

Obama speaks in stentorian generalities because details expose truth. And in this case, the truth is simple: It’s Hamas’s fault. All of it, the terrorism, the Palestinian trauma, the current war, and the deaths to come.

There’s nothing contradictory about the slaughter of Jews and the suffering of Palestinians. Hamas is responsible for both, keeping their own people in generational misery to justify an exterminationist war on Jews. Palestinian oppression hasn’t been “unbearable” to decades of Palestinian leaders (including Hamas); it’s the goal they’ve fought for every time Israel has tried to give Palestinians their own state.

Why? Because they’d rather kill Jews than be free. How’s that for nuance?

'This was lethal extermination driven by a fanatical ideology'

The war in Gaza and the barbaric terrorist attacks on the border communities have managed to clearly and forcefully shift the discourse in the world to Israel and Hamas, almost positioning the entire Muslim world alongside the Palestinians in demanding an end to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

Worse still, antisemitic sentiment has been clearly on the side of Hamas more than ever and it has managed to deeply infiltrate social media channels in the Western world and from there to the streets.

However, within this turmoil, it is important to remember that even within the Muslim world, there are those who have been horrified by the barbarism of Hamas terrorists and the murderous ideology behind their actions. In fact, there are many around the world who have been fighting against this worldview for decades and have faced hatred and criticism as a result.

One of these individuals is Dr. Qanta Ahmed, a physician, a Muslim, and a social activist who is among the leading and prominent figures in the global fight against radical Islam, which has hit the world from Orlando to Karachi and from Moscow to Mozambique.

"I'm American and British. I was raised in England. I am Muslim by birth, and I observe Islam. I have spent close to the last 20 years, let's say since 9/11, combating radical Islam, and trying to distinguish radical Islam from true Islam," she told Israel Hayom in a recent visit to Israel aimed at understanding the scope of the atrocities committed by Hamas.

"I work as a physician, I'm an academic physician, at New York University. And in the course of the last couple of decades, I've been to places that were deeply affected by terrorism. In my everyday medical practice, I look after people who are survivors of 9/11, they were first responders that day," she says, explaining how the al-Qaida attack in 2001 on the US was a turning point for her. "I saw September 11 from Saudi Arabia, where I was a physician, and saw that event happening live in Riyadh, at a time when Saudi Arabia was under the grip of reactionary puritanism."

Dr. Ahmed traveled the world in the wake of the immense damage caused by Islamist terrorist organizations. She met survivors of the Taliban's terror; in Iraq, she met Yazidis who had escaped the massacre by ISIS in Sinjar; and in Mosul, she encountered children who had been recruited as fighters for the terrorist organization ISIS. These face-to-face meetings with the victims strengthened and sharpened her perception of the distinction between Islam as a religion and its use for murderous terrorism.

"I have been able to see the impact of terrorism from the moment that I witnessed it in Saudi Arabia, to the effects on the lives minds, and bodies of my patients that I've been treating for getting towards two decades, to the impacts on Muslim societies, the impacts on Muslim children, the impacts on the Yazidi people and their enslavement, almost every aspect that I can, I've been able to see with that, with that background," she says.

Israel is more committed to protecting civilians in Gaza than Hamas is

In the realm of international law, the laws of war represent a critical framework for regulating armed conflicts and minimizing harm to civilians. They are designed to strike a delicate balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns, emphasizing the protection of innocent civilians who find themselves caught in the crossfire. While straightforward on paper, their application in the complex and fraught environment of conflict is challenging.

The existing conflict between Israel and Hamas has come under scrutiny in the context of these principles. Despite the complex nature of modern warfare, Israel has been making substantial pains (despite Hamas’s best attempts) to ensure the safety of civilians in Gaza while also maintaining its right to self-defense.

Under the legal definition of the laws of war, two key principles stand out: the principle of distinction and the principle of proportionality. The principle of distinction requires that parties to a conflict must distinguish between combatants and civilians, targeting only the former. Concurrently, the principle of proportionality obliges parties to ensure that the anticipated military advantage gained from an attack is not outweighed by the expected harm to civilians or civilian property.

One of the remarkable aspects of Israel’s efforts during this operation has been its restraint in the use of force. In the face of an unprecedented attack against its civilians, and while still under rocket attacks from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, Israel has shown great care in selecting its targets, prioritizing military assets, and minimizing civilian casualties.

Israel has taken measures to notify civilians in Gaza about impending strikes, urging them to leave targeted areas for their safety. This is a proactive measure aimed at preventing civilian casualties and fulfilling Israel’s legal and moral obligation to minimize harm to civilians.

In stark contrast to Israel’s efforts to protect Palestinian civilians, Hamas shows a complete disregard for the safety of its own population. Hamas has forced its citizens to remain in areas that are likely to be targeted, which undermines the fundamental principles that seek to safeguard the lives of non-combatants and places innocent lives in grave danger. Even though Israel is giving civilians time to try and leave, Hamas continues to disseminate its propaganda and lies in order to manipulate its citizens into being human shields.

There have been a number of articles about how to fill the vacuum that ill be left in Gaza after Israel destroys Hamas. It is a significant question: no one wants another Islamist group to take over.

The US is pushing for the Palestinian Authority to reassert control, but the PA is trying to extort a state out of it, saying it doesn't want to gain power based on Israeli actions.

But the PA is a corrupt, weak entity. Nobody likes them, least of all its citizens. It lost Gaza once and it would likely lose it again.

Egypt doesn't want Gaza. Egyptians hate everything about it. After all, it was Egypt that turned it into a virtual prison for Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war.

Israel doesn't want Gaza back. It doesn't want to govern two million hostile Arabs, not to mention take over day to day governance. Imagine the suicide bombings at every governmental office. And, of course, it would be "occupation."

So who should run Gaza the day after Hamas is eradicated?

When Israel left Gaza in 2005, optimists thought it could become a new Singapore. Palestinian incompetence and Hamas ended that fantasy. Hate for Israel was far more important than helping Palestinians live their lives.

But there is one country that could turn Gaza into a wonderful place: the UAE. Gaza should become the fifth United Arab Emirate.

The UAE is at peace with Israel. it could pour massive amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza into a paradise. It wouldn't allow Islamists to gain a toehold.

Gazans would suddenly live in a place that has a future. The UAE and Israel could work on joint business ventures and economic zones to help employment and bring Gaza up to modern standards. One could imagine luxury hotels and high tech skyscrapers being built on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Gazans would become citizens of an Arab country and could still call themselves Palestinians. The emirate itself could be called "the Emirate of Palestine." Why not? And Gaza citizens of the UAE could move to the other emirates to seek other opportunities if they prefer.

Why would the UAE be interested? Well, a port on the Mediterranean is a pretty big carrot. Shipping lanes from and to Europe would be a huge economic boost. Working with Israel, the proposed train line from the Gulf to Israel could be extended a bit to Gaza to tie the Gulf countries closer to the sea as well.

(UPDATE): Beyond that, there are some significant gas deposits off the coast of Gaza. No one wants to risk drilling there now, but the UAE would solve that problem.

Also, Palestinians are among the best educated Arabs. There is a competent workforce already there.

Moreover, Gaza could become a money-making tourism destination. Wealthy Europeans could rub shoulders with wealthy Arabs and make deals.

Gazans would have huge opportunities to work and thrive. There would be no more "refugees."

Egypt would be thrilled to have such a neighbor.The entire Sinai could benefit from increased trade.

This idea is a win for literally everyone - except those people whose entire lives are dedicated to destroying Israel.

People who truly want peace in the region would love to see this idea work. People who only want to get rid of Israel would hate this idea.

But can anyone think of any better future for Gaza than this?

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

It's been a month, and still @WHO and @MSF have not condemned Hamas murders of Israeli medics, attacks on Israeli medical facilities and military use of Gaza hospitals and ambulances

The World Health Organization condemned Israeli airstrikes at terrorists who were using hospitals and ambulances for cover.

WHO condemns the attacks on 3 November near Al-Shifa Hospital, Al-Quds Hospital, and the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City and North Gaza governorates.

Two further attacks were reported on the same day at Al-Quds Hospital, resulting in at least 21 injuries. An additional attack was reported near the Indonesian Hospital.

Attacks on health care, including the targeting of hospitals and restricting the delivery of essential aid such as medical supplies, fuel, and water, may amount to violations of International Humanitarian Law.

They have not said a negative word about Hamas' use of hospitals and ambulances for military purposes nor about Hamas using medical staff and patients as human shields.

What about Hamas' attacks on medical facilities in Israel on October 7?

Ten Magen Dovid Adom workers were murdered, including at least two who were slaughtered while trying to save others' lives - Aharon Chaimov, who was murdered in his ambulance while trying to help the injured in Ofakim, and Amit Mann, who spent her final six hours treating the injured at the clinic in Kibbutz Be'eri before the clinic itself was attacked and she was murdered.

Several ambulances were attacked, some deliberately to ensure that they could not be used to save lives. Hamas even published its own video of an attack on an ambulance with a drone.

And the World Health Organization has not said a word of condemnation of Hamas for directly and proudly attacking medical workers, ambulances and facilities.

And it isn't only WHO. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have also been completely silent about Hamas' attacks on Israeli medical personnel and facilities, and have also not said a word about Hamas' use of hospitals and ambulances for military purposes.

While both WHO and MSF have issued brief condemnations of the October 7 attacks, they have not condemned Hamas for its deliberate attacks on medics and medical facilities.

Bias isn't only obvious from what people and organizations say. Sometimes their silence is what proves their bigotry.

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 symposium titled “The Palestinian Issue from the Balfour Declaration... to the Al-Aqsa Flood,” was held in Istanbul, Saturday, November 4. It praised Hamas for its "resistance" and specifically for its October 7 pogrom.

Citing this as a victory, the speakers said that the war " stopped the path of normalization once and for all."

It appeared to be very much supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, praising former Egyptian President Morsi for his support of Gaza during his short term in office, and including Brotherhood speakers.

Support for terror groups didn't end there. The speakers said that "the fall of the Islamic State and the disappearance of the feeling of brotherhood is the reason for preventing the emergence of a strong Islamic state that confronts the practices of the Zionist entity." This sounds like a pretty strong endorsement for ISIS.

The President of the World Forum for Thought and Culture, Dr. Mona Sobhi, gave the welcoming speech, during which she saluted "the heroes of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip." She added, "Your effort and struggle, O heroes of Palestine, and your creation of this historical epic since October 7, is God’s blessing upon you that began decades ago, and you have been guided to good work, and raising generations of balanced education, in which the doctrinal, moral, intellectual and physical formation of young people, these Young people sold their souls to God Almighty, and for the sake of God they rose, and we are now witnessing this fruit of this good and blessed planting, which bears fruit in patience and victory, determination and will, awareness and maturity.”

"October 7 was a watershed that history will write in letters of light," she said.

Hamas leader Fawzi Barhoum said, "We in Hamas will expel the Zionists from Palestine humiliated and submissive." But he also said, "There is a media battle due to the export of a misleading narrative from the Israeli media about the Hamas movement that it is an ISIS terrorist movement, and that narrative must be confronted in our media and we fight with pen and image until we convey our narrative to the world."

Rania Nasr, a member of the Coalition of Women Scholars and Preachers and the Palestine Scholars Association, said that the attack "renewed the blood of the nation and sent educational messages from the heart of the trench confirming the Muslim faith. "

Secretary of the Jerusalem Department of the Palestine Scholars Association and a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Shajarawi, said, "the date of the battle came on the 20th day of the Zionist holiday season, and it also came on Saturday, which is a Jewish religious holiday, which is the night of complete forgiveness, a time of joy for the Jews, so the Al-Aqsa Flood was a tragedy for the Zionists.": He also claimed that Israel allows animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount.

The media spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Hamad, said "the Palestinian issue is a right that can be seized by any and all means - our struggle with the enemy is not over a piece of land, but rather a struggle between truth and falsehood and between the Qur’an and the Talmud."

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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A fatwa from Qatar for all Arab nations to attack Israel as PA police say they will start their own war in the West Bank tomorrow (UPDATE)

The International Union of Muslim Scholars, a Qatar-based organization originally founded by jihadist cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, announced a fatwa urging all Arab states to join the fight against Israel.

The Ijtihad and Fatwa Committee of the IUMS issued a significant fatwa delivering a powerful message about the duty of Islamic governments to counter this egregious assault. The session, hosted at the Union's global headquarters in Doha, highlighted the critical need for immediate action and full support to prevent the annihilation and wholesale destruction of Gaza.

The fatwa underscores the duty to support Palestine on religious, political, legal, and ethical grounds, calling for rapid and effective action by Islamic governments and their official military forces to halt the Zionist aggression. The fatwa also underlines the necessity of collaboration and coordination among Arab and Islamic nations, particularly the four neighboring states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon), to establish global equilibrium and guard against oppression.

Notice that this jihadist cleric group makes its home in Qatar, which presents itself as a fair player yet always seems to support the worst mass murderers in the Arab world.

At the same time, another statement was issued, this one in the West Bank, where members of the Palestinian Authority security services gave a 24 hour deadline to Mahmoud Abbas to start a war with Israel or else they will do it themselves.

We are the children of this people. We are the sons of the security services... We are the sons of Fatah and we do not compromise with anyone on our belonging and our history. We are also, above all, the sons of Palestine, which is now being slaughtered from vein to vein.
We declare from today that the Palestinian leadership faces a historic responsibility to declare confrontation with the occupation within 24 hours. If Brother Abu Mazen does not issue a clear position declaring open confrontation with the occupation by all means and disavowing himself from the statements of the criminal Blinken, there is no obedience to anyone, no instructions to be implemented, and no loyalty to any apparatus.

Freedom for Palestine and victory is an hour's patience

The sons of Commander Abu Jandal...the sons of Al-Fatah...the sons of the security services
Sunday, 11/05/2023

UPDATE: The story about the threat to Mahmoud Abbas is apparently fake. (h/t Ibn Boutros and Abu Ali Express)

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!

11/05 Links: Netanyahu: ‘No ceasefire without return of the hostages’; Obama likens ‘what Hamas did’ to ‘unbearable occupation’; Hamas planned for massacre during Passover

From Ian:

Netanyahu: ‘No ceasefire without return of the hostages’

Israel will not agree to any ceasefire with Hamas unless the terrorist group releases the more than 200 hostages it kidnapped during its Oct. 7 attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday following a tour of Ramon Air Force Base in the Negev Desert.

“There will be no ceasefire without the return of the hostages. This should be completely removed from the lexicon. We say this to our friends and to our enemies: We will continue until we defeat them. We have no alternative,” Netanyahu told air force personnel.

“Our enemies misjudged us. They thought that on the crucial day, we would not report for duty. We reported together and now we are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder,” added the prime minister, in an apparent reference to the judicial reform controversy.

Netanyahu concluded by saying, “The entire nation is united and relies on you, appreciates what you are doing and believes in you. We will continue together until victory.”

At least 1,400 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise attacks on southern Israeli communities. The number of confirmed hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip stands at 240, including an unknown number of U.S. citizens.

Hamas planned for massacre during Passover, Iran forced delay - report

Hamas's mass infiltration and massacre of Israelis on October 7 was originally intended to take place during last Passover's Seder meal, Israeli journalist Ben Caspit reported on Sunday evening.

As per the report, Iran decided to delay the organized assault on civilians to Simchat Torah due to reasons that are unclear. However, Caspit speculated, it could have been delayed due to informal negotiations with the United States which led to $6 billion being freed up for Iran in September.

The report noted that the information was uncovered during the interrogation of Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre. Israeli report: October 7 was chosen due to Yom Kippur war anniversary

Further, Caspit reported that the October 7 date was chosen partly due to its proximity to the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

Caspit did note that the information "might not have reached decision-makers or passed a validity test.

"But it did reach the ears of interrogators," Caspit said.

President of Israel Isaac Herzog: This Is Not a Battle Just between Israel and Hamas

I write these lines after spending time with the families of some of the 240 people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. The hostages now held in Gaza include Jewish Israelis, Muslim Israelis and foreign citizens of different ethnicities. In all my years of public life, the meetings with these families were the most difficult I've ever held.

I've also spoken with families of some of the more than 1,400 of my people who were killed that day, many of them murdered in their living rooms and kitchens or dancing at a music festival. When I returned from one kibbutz devastated in the attack, I had to wash the blood off my shoes. Tragedy is part of Israeli life, but none of us imagined a tragedy like this.

Against our will, we in Israel find ourselves at a tipping point for the Middle East and for the world. This is not a battle between Jews and Muslims. It is between those who adhere to norms of humanity and those practicing a barbarism that has no place in the modern world.

Almost as disturbing for me is the realization that many in the world, including in the West, are willing to rationalize these actions or even support them outright. In the capitals of Europe, we've seen rallies supporting the total destruction of Israel. Professors and students at American colleges make speeches and sign statements justifying terrorism, even glorifying it. It would have been unthinkable to hear such moral confusion uttered after the Sept. 11 attacks or after bombings in London, Barcelona and Baghdad.

The terrorist ideology threatens all decent people, not only Jews. History has taught us that foul ideologies often find the Jewish people first - but tend not to stop there. We find ourselves on the front lines of this battle, but all nations face this threat, and they must understand that they could be next.

Palestinian civilian casualties are encouraged by Hamas in order to draw global sympathy and blunt Israel's response. But anyone who thinks the cynical exploitation of civilian suffering will tie our hands and save Hamas this time is wrong. For us and for the Palestinians, the suffering will end only with the removal of Hamas. Anyone trying to tie our hands is, intentionally or not, undermining not only Israel's defense but also any hope for a world where these atrocities cannot happen.

Herzog launches campaign to honor Israel’s fallen

Israeli President Isaac Herzog invited people around the world to light a candle on Sunday evening in memory of the 1,400 people murdered by Hamas during the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of the Jewish state.

The initiative, marking 30 days since the massacre, began on Sunday at 6 p.m. Israel Standard Time.

The campaign calls to light a candle, take a picture and post it online accompanied by #The_Light_Will_Overcome.

“Today, we light a candle and remember the victims, the women and men, babies and the elderly, soldiers and commanders. We remember them all,” said Herzog as he lit the first candle at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.

“We all kindle a flame, we light a candle, and stand for the simple, basic truth: together, the light will overcome,” he added. Israeli President Isaac Herzog and first lady Michal Herzog light a memorial candle at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Nov. 5, 2023. Photo by Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO.

Last week, Herzog gave a televised address in which he hailed the nation’s “resilience, spirit and soul.”

“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,” he said.

“I would like to speak of [a] source of great hope at this time, even now—in the fog, especially now. The Israeli spirit. An unbreakable spirit. The spirit of a storm which rose from ashes and destruction and is already blowing with all its might. This spirit has revealed itself mightily, in thousands of heroic stories from the frontline and the home front.

“It blows through each outreached hand, in the exemplary Israeli volunteerism and mutual responsibility, seeking to strengthen, to embrace, to support.

“It blows in every corner of our remarkable country—every corner. It is an eternal spirit, passed on to us from the generations before us, a spirit which will continue to guide us, generation to generation.

“This spirit is you—my sisters and brothers—the people of Israel. Israeli society is our true secret weapon. You are my greatest hope, our greatest hope. Am Yisrael Chai [‘The People of Israel lives’],” added the president.

The Chanukah miracle of the last drops of Gaza fuel lasting three weeks

The World Health Organization warned that Gaza hospitals are at a breaking point.

That was October 12.

UNICEF warned that incubators were hours away from being shut down due to lack of fuel in Gaza:

That was October 22.

Now, let's look at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City last night, where Hamas held a rally, complete with huge video screen:

Notice all the lights, inside and outside the hospital.

Looks like they had plenty of fuel there, three weeks after supplies were supposed to run dry. It's a miracle!

UNICEF and WHO are useful idiots, willing to believe the lies that are told by Hamas and their partners.

And notice that none of the attendees seem at all concerned to go out in the open, publicly, when they accuse Israel of "genocide." If they really thought that Israel was hellbent on murdering all Gazans, why would they go out in the open?

They are all voluntary human shields for Hamas, whose headquarters is directly underneath them.

Notice also that all the attendees are young men of military age.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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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.