Wednesday, November 08, 2023



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Rallies have figured large in the wake of October 7th. Not in Israel, mind you. In Israel, we are too busy to hold rallies. We prefer to rally around each other.

Outside of Israel, things are different. There, the rally has become an important vehicle for expressing solidarity; for taking sides, and in some cases, for whipping up the masses to kill Jews. 

The rally is many things, but what, in fact, does the rally really achieve for those of us on the side of Israel? It’s all a numbers game, and their numbers will always be larger: There are more of them than us.

Does it matter? Of course it does. The rally is a kind of test; a chance to choose good or evil, though it’s not always cut and dried. There are the sheeple who passively allow themselves to be swayed by the crowd; they just want to fit in. On the other hand, there is true evil, the thugs, and the academics who say they are exhilarated by what happened to the Jews—and the people who tear down posters of Jewish babies held hostage in Gaza.

Evil takes other forms, sometimes in the guise of a Jew who will tell you that as Jew, they say it’s okay to commit atrocities as long as you know the context—as long as you know the history. . .

 . . . or the woman who shouts “I’m a rabbi and I demand a ceasefire!” These Jews are sick, sicker, sickest and the very definition of the banality of evil.  

It must be said that sometimes, and here there is only one phrase, crude as it is, to describe the phenomenon: the rally is a pissing contest. Sometimes the participants scuffle or worse. 


Sometimes someone hits an elderly Jew over the head with a megaphone and kills him, and the police can’t decide if it’s murder.

It’s not all bad, though. There are Jews, pure of heart, who flock to rallies to express anguish and cry out for justice, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

That’s very nice. But as I told my relatives on the eve of October 11, “From experience, all of you should stay close to home. I wouldn't go to shul or to rallies. It's not worth the risk, even with beefed up security. Personal safety is more important, and it's bad to be in crowded places. . . Don't be lulled into thinking you're far away and safe. I mean it. Please just stay safe. The rallies don't help us anyway, IMHO.”

The response? “This was an attack on all of us.”

That’s true. I’m glad their eyes are open. But it doesn’t help us in the aftermath. There’s a war, and it is those of us in Israel who must fight it.

What would help us would be unceasing rallies at the White House, protesting Biden’s aid to Iran and Hamas, and his demands for a ceasefire. Short of that, rallies are pretty useless. They may make you feel good, and give you a feeling of communal bonding, but that’s not a good enough reason to get together when it isn’t safe out there for Jews and lovers of justice and light.

***
Our IDF soldiers need ceramic vests to keep them safe as they fight Hamas. We have started a crowdfunding campaign to purchase these vests for my son's platoon:  Ceramic Vests for IDF Soldiers.

Even a small donation would be greatly appreciated--each vest costs approximately $520.



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!

 

 

  • Wednesday, November 08, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon
No one is talking about it, but Hamas' destruction is nearly as important to most Sunni Arab states as it is too Israel.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood - as is Al Qaeda. Most Arab states passionately hate the "Ikhwan," whose slogan is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." 

The Muslim Brotherhood goal, which Hamas shares, is to unify all Muslim countries into a single entity ruled by Sharia law.

This is a direct threat to most Arab governments. Yet Muslim Brotherhood-based political parties have significant support in many so-called moderate Arab states, like Jordan or Bahrain where their parties have about 10% of seats.

The biggest blow to the Muslim Brotherhood's political power in recent years was Egypt's crackdown on the group after President Sis deposed the MB's Morsi. It has been in disarray since throughout the Middle East. 

If Hamas ends up with any pretense of victory - meaning if it survives in any form - all that could be reversed. It could cause an "Arab winter" where the Muslim Brotherhood would gain hundreds of thousands of followers. 

Iran would take advantage of the changed dynamics, and fund the Brotherhood parties and potential allied armed groups.  Regimes may topple. 

The entire region could be destabilized if the Gaza Islamists remain in power. 

They don't say it out loud, but Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Tunisia and Morocco, to name a few, are silently counting on Israel to utterly destroy Hamas. 

As always, Israel is forced to act alone because many of the countries that will benefit from the destruction of Hamas have populations that are 90% antisemitic.

Let me emphasize what defeating Hamas means. If they survive in Gaza, they will be regarded as victors. If Israel does a prisoner swap, Hamas will be regarded as heroes. If they are sent into exile, they will be regarded as victors. If they survive for two months, pro-Hamas media will paint that as victory as well. A ceasefire or "humanitarian pause" would help Hamas' optics tremendously in the Arab world. 

Like it or not, Israel is now fighting on behalf of the moderate Arab world, and in some ways for the entire free world. 

When Israel wins, the Arab world will condemn them loudly and applaud them in silence. The world will only see the condemnations. 



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!

 

 

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Israel celebrates breaching ground Hamas didn’t foresee as war enters second month
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to members of Israel’s elite Egoz unit on Tuesday, exactly one month after Hamas’ surprise attack on the country flipped the world upside down. The Egoz unit specializes in guerilla-style warfare and is part of Israel’s commando brigade. It uses special weapons and tactics. “I would like to tell you that what we see on the ground, from the reports the War Cabinet and I receive, and the conversations with commanders and soldiers, it is an extraordinary success. I tell you, the Americans were here. They explained to us what was in Fallujah and what was here and there, and they are amazed at what we have achieved,” Netanyahu told the soldiers at a base in the Negev desert.

The Prime Minister admitted there are challenges. “There are UAVs, IEDs and anti-tank fire. That is true. Sometimes there are very painful losses but all in all, the success is phenomenal because we went in there and hit the enemy – this is a great success. We do not intend to stop; we intend to continue to the end,” he said, according to a statement from Israel’s Government Press Office.

Netanyahu also gave an address to the country on Tuesday. He reiterated that there would be no ceasefire in Gaza without the return of the 240 hostages being held by Hamas and other terror groups.

Israel’s former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz spoke to the country as well in a separate statement. He joined the War Cabinet from the opposition early in the war. He stressed that there would be a time for protests or criticism, but that the country should remain united during the war and support the soldiers. He also referenced the multi-front threats Israel is facing.

That all came as Hezbollah tried to target Israel with an anti-tank missile and fired more than 20 rockets toward northern Israel. The IDF also intercepted “a suspicious aerial target” that flew from Lebanon, likely another Hezbollah drone. Hezbollah has used drones, rockets and anti-tank missile threats often against Israel over the last month. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, gave an interview to NBC in which he threatened escalation if Israel continues its war in Gaza.

The challenges for Israel and the U.S. continue to grow in the region. Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh flew to Turkey on Tuesday. Haniyeh, who lives in Doha, has already visited Iran and consulted with the Iranian foreign minister in Qatar several times. This week’s meetings in Turkey began as pro-regime Tasnim News media in Iran published an article suggesting that Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq and Syria were working as a “single front” to target U.S. forces in the region and also Israel. There have been 40 attacks so far on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Israeli leaders hinted that Hamas will no longer run Gaza when the war is over, but Gantz was light on details on who might run the area after the war. Netanyahu told ABC that Israel would control Gaza for an indefinite period and have security responsibility in the future. Meanwhile, CIA director William J. Burns met with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi on Tuesday as well.
Melanie Phillips: How Israel tries to protect Gaza's civilians
The BBC’s story reveals the remarkably precise and detailed intelligence that Israel possesses on what’s going on in Gaza. It also illustrates the extraordinary lengths to which the Israeli Defence Forces go to spare the lives of Gaza’s civilians. As any dispassionate person who has followed Israel’s wars knows very well, the IDF try everything they can to get enemy civilians out of harm’s way — by leafleting, “knock on the roof” warning shots, phone calls and other means of communication.

No other army in the world has ever done this. When coalition forces bombed Afghanistan or when US forces flattened Mosul, no-one even bothered to mention the civilians who must have been killed there. Yet Israel’s wars repeatedly engulf it in international outrage with accusations that it kills enemy civilians wantonly or deliberately. This is not just a malevolent lie; it could not be a more grotesque inversion of the truth.

The lie is nevertheless perpetrated day in, day out by western media. While the Israelis say they have killed “thousands of Hamas terrorists” in this current war, western media outlets publish Hamas claims that 10,000 “civilians” have been killed — with no attempt whatever to acknowledge that any of these were Hamas operatives and referring only to women and children among the dead.

Sadly, many civilians will unavoidably be killed in Gaza, as in any war. But the wicked distortion that turns the Israelis from scrupulous adherents to the international law requirement to try to avoid civilian deaths into war criminals turns these media outlets into Hamas accomplices.

While the BBC is a principal and habitual offender, it is to its credit that it has published the story related by Mahmoud Shaheen. It says it contacted him after many al-Zahra residents identified him as the man who had received the warning call.

Elsewhere, further evidence of Israel’s concern for Gaza’s civilians has been venomously distorted.

Yesterday, a remarkable video surfaced showing a long line of people streaming from the north of Gaza to the south. The Israelis have repeatedly warned that residents of the north should move to the south for their own safety since the north was about to become Israel’s principal focus for attack.

Some 800,000 Gazans did so, but Hamas tried to stop more joining them by firing on them, in order to keep them in place as human shields. The reason for yesterday’s large line moving south was that, with the IDF now having moved into Gaza City, its tanks could protect the evacuating civilians from Hamas attack. The video, which you can see here, shows this clearly. Yet this is how the Guardian chose to report it:
Waving white flags and holding their hands above their heads, Palestinian families fled past tanks waiting to storm Gaza City in the next stage of the war that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said will give Israel “indefinite” control over the besieged territory.

Israel’s military gave civilians inside the encircled city a four-hour window to leave on Tuesday, as its forces prepared to retake the biggest city in the strip. Men, women and children, some carrying their belongings on donkeys, fled their homes past Israeli troops out of the city.

Posting online, one resident, Adam Fayez Zeyara, said the walk on Tuesday was the most dangerous of his life. “We saw the tanks from point blank. We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death.”


In other words, the Guardian portrayed the Gazans who were being protected by Israeli troops as fleeing from Israeli troops.

By such malevolent misrepresentation, of the kind that the media has habitually promulgated against Israel for decades, the western mind has been poisoned and fatally subverted to endorse evil against its victims.
The memory-holed massacre
This memory-holing takes many forms. Some Hamas spokespeople and their useful idiots continue to actively deny the atrocities. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas figure, told the BBC this week that ‘women, children and civilians were exempt’ from the 7 October violence, even though civilians were Hamas’s primary targets. Then there are the legions of online cranks, Islamists and anti-Semites who say the worst of 7 October, from the butchering of babies to the rapes of young women, did not actually happen – despite the vast documentary evidence of these crimes, most of it filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves. It’s a kind of ‘Holocaust denial in real time’, as journalist Bari Weiss has described it.

Then there are those who seek to violently erase the memory of the attacks. In New York and London, posters of Israeli hostages have been defaced and torn down. One man scrawled the word ‘coloniser’ over the faces of kidnapped children. So intense is these people’s loathing of Israel, so unhinged is their anti-Semitism, that they cannot bear to be confronted with Jewish suffering, even that endured by children. What happened on 7 October must be forgotten and suppressed, it seems, so that these activists might once again feel at home on the ‘right side of history’.

Others try to reframe the slaughter as a righteous act of resistance. 7 October was ‘a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human-rights worldwide’, according to one pseudo-radical journalist. It has been celebrated as a blow for ‘decolonisation’ by academics the world over. Before the bodies were even cold, a joint statement was issued by 31 social-justice campaign groups at Harvard University, insisting that Israel’s ‘apartheid regime’ be held ‘entirely responsible’ for the unfolding violence. In other words, forget Hamas’s decision to wage a genocidal campaign against Israel’s Jews – Israel is the aggressor here. Massacres like that on 7 October apparently cannot be allowed to intrude on this simplistic identitarian worldview, of colonised against coloniser. And so the grotesque anti-Semitic savagery of Hamas is, at best, excused. At worst, it is rebranded and transformed into a progressive struggle for justice.

Finally, there are those who were unmoved by 7 October, but have leapt at the chance to condemn Israel’s response. Artists for Palestine UK, a group including Tilda Swinton, Steve Coogan and Maxine Peake, has produced an open letter denouncing Western governments for supporting Israel. It makes no mention of Hamas, 7 October or the deaths of 1,400 Israelis. The likes of Swinton or Coogan are far from alone. Centrist dads, woke celebs and leftish politicians are all keen to lecture Israel to lay down its weapons. To render itself defenceless against its tormentors. To surrender its civilian hostages to the enemy. To give free rein to Hamas’s genocidal hostility.

We must not let Hamas’s evil be forgotten, obfuscated or downplayed. The forces of irrationalism and racism that drove this pogrom are arguably even more potent today than they were just one month ago. If we memory-hole this massacre, then we are in serious danger of greenlighting the next one. Those who have excused or denied this evil ought to be ashamed.
Photographers Without Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions
On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?
Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

Masoud, who also works for The New York Times, was there as well — just in time to set foot in Israeli territory and take more tank pictures.

Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali were positioned to get pictures of the horrific abductions of Israelis into Gaza.

Mahmud captured the pickup truck carrying the body of German-Israeli Shani Louk and Ali got several shots of abductees being kidnapped into the Strip.

Interestingly, the names of the photographers, which appear on other sources, have been removed from some of the photos on AP’s database. Perhaps someone at the agency realized it posed serious questions regarding their journalistic ethics.

Reuters: Lynching as “Image of the Day”
Reuters has published pictures from two photojournalists who also happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration: Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih.

They both took pictures of a burning Israeli tank on the Israeli side of the border, but Abu Mustafa went further: He took photos of a lynch mob brutalizing the body of an Israeli soldier who was dragged out of the tank.

Reuters was kind enough to add a graphic warning to the photo caption, but it didn’t prevent editors from shamelessly labeling it as one of the “Images of the Day” on their editorial database.

Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple.
  • Wednesday, November 08, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon
Kita Anne Frank, Tangerhütte,

Guest post by Josh Namm

When I was growing up, two to three decades after the Shoah, it was assumed that you would read The Diary of Anne Frank, and you understood that, in a way, she represented every victim of the Holocaust. Just invoking her name engendered each emotion every Jew feels when thinking about what had happened to our people. In fact, coming from a secular leaning family in the Los Angeles of the 70s and 80s, there were very few things that connected me, and those like me, to our Jewishness.


This is before Chabad had a shul in every single Jewish (or Jewishy) neighborhood in L.A. (and the rest of the planet).

The list was fairly short: Fiddler on the Roof, whatever deli our family went to on Sundays, Hebrew school, the observance of some Jewish holidays, but always Chanukah, my father’s unshakeable Jewish pride, Jewishy books like My Name Is Asher Lev, Jewish humor, some Yiddish, the occasional playing of “Hava Nagila,” and The Diary of Anne Frank.

That last one was the bedrock of my initial understanding of the Holocaust. That was true of almost everyone in my age group. I knew Holocaust survivors, and the book is what gave me my first real insight into what they had gone through. That was also the case for almost every other kid I knew. It was synonymous with the entire concept of “Never Again” and Holocaust education.

We all assumed that the memory of Anne Frank was inviolable. The depth and emotional resonance of her short life was something that any human, at any time, would find deeply moving. Her story would always be cautionary shorthand for the pure evil that is antisemitism. As Jews, her story is our story and, we thought, would always be the best way to communicate the horror of the Shoah to the rest of the world.

Right?

This Monday (November 7), I woke up to the news that a place called the Anne Frank Daycare Center, in Tangerhütte, Germany, was being renamed. Why? (The Orwellian Newspeak ahead appears in quotes) According to the school, it caved to the demands of “migrant” parents, because the name “Anne Frank” caused a “controversy,” in which those parents felt “uncertain” about the school’s name.

Not to be outdone in the grotesque display of woke absurdity, the city’s mayor said: “The renaming is part of a broader concept that aims to celebrate the diversity of the children attending the daycare center.”

Once again we see that leftism is poison and is a favorite tool of antisemites. We also see that the West, and especially Europe, is intent on committing societal suicide. Apparently, with as much alacrity as it can muster.

Obviously “diversity” doesn’t include Jews. Which should surprise exactly zero Jews because we have never been included in the Left’s diversity calculus.

So, what is really happening here?

A few things, chief among them is that this is yet another avenue for Holocaust denial. Jew-haters hate to be reminded of the Shoah because they hate to be reminded of anything that causes the world to be sympathetic toward us. That is why it has become trendy among the pink haired, but physically puny, hordes of wokesters across the United States to tear down posters of missing Jewish children.

In fact, the favorite pastime of people who hate us is to inflict everything on us they can think of, so that they can then claim to be the victims of that very behavior. They murdered 1,500 innocent Israelis, and then claimed victimhood. That was even before Israel did what every other nation would do in the same situation. Now that Israel is taking care of business, and their business is keeping Jews safe at all costs: the whining has expanded exponentially.

But you can’t “tear down” Anne Frank like the hostage posters. Her face, her story, and in a weird way, even her voice, are embedded in the Western psyche. She can’t just be wished away. So instead, they are attempting to erase her name.

The school’s new name is to be “World Explorers.” That’s as catchy as tangling with the IRS. It reminds me of when a certain Washington DC football team was renamed the “Commanders,” and a certain Cleveland baseball team was renamed the “Guardians.” The fact that the previous names were rooted in both teams’ history, and related to the warrior quality valuable to the psyche of competitive sports, or that the new names were related to…nothing…was meaningless. The point was that the few had deemed the thing loved by the many to be “offensive.”

The trend is to rename anything that is deemed “distasteful” (or inconvenient) to some non-descript, non-threatening, generic name. Doing so allows the re-namers to pretend that they vanquished some imaginary evil.  They feel virtuous, while the rest of us lose a piece of our shared culture.

Which is the entire point. They diminish, demonize, and destroy, while the replacement is ALWAYS something deemed “acceptable,” i.e. generic and boring. Because generic is always boring and boring is harmless. Boring doesn’t cause people to think, feel, or to be curious. Boring is non-threatening.

The memory of the Shoah is threatening. Or, let me put it this way, if you  are threatened by the memory of the Shoah, you are an antisemite.

I am NOT comparing the names of sports teams to Anne Frank. But what we can learn from those incidents is that Arab Islamists, Jew haters, have learned the language and tactics of Western leftists to become more effective at marginalizing Jewish communities. Part of that strategy is to always play the victim. No longer content with committing heinous acts of terror, they have internalized the lessons of these Orwellian tactics, lessons which have taught them that language controls not just thought, but feelings. And when you control thoughts and feelings, the inversion of reality become possible. So, the Jews become evil colonizers, while Hamas terrorists are their righteous victims.

Stripping the Anne Frank Daycare Center of the name of the most famous Jewish girl in history, is then shifted from a heinous act of despicable Holocaust revisionism, to a “sensitive” act of “inclusion,” designed to satisfy the needs of “migrant” parents.

That this is allowed to happen in Germany should be like a sudden hard punch to the face. But it is not. We have been watching the West travel down this road, with intent, for decades. But it’s hard to imagine that a few decades ago this would have been possible. Not because antisemitism had been eliminated in Germany (I almost fell over laughing just typing that), but because the West, particularly Germany, still felt enough shame about the Shoah to at least PRETEND to still try to be atoning for it.

(Spoiler alert Germany: there is no atoning for it).

In a final note of woke idiocy, also relayed in Orwell’s Newspeak, the town newspaper said this:

“Ultimately, the parents and employees wanted a name that was more 'child-friendly' and 'better suited to their concept.' Their needs are more important than the global political situation.”

Which, of course, makes no sense. Anne Frank is one of the most famous children ever to have lived. Their true “concept” is for the facility to be judenrein. And it can only be “in concept” because there are so few Jewish children in Germany today, I doubt that there are any Jewish kinderlach within 50 miles of the place. The daycare center must be free of actual Jewish children, and free of anything that humanizes the Jewish people.

The reason for why there are so few of us in Germany, the Holocaust, and why Jews, an obvious minority, don’t matter in the “diversity” calculation is exactly why erasing Anne Frank’s name should be seen as a major cultural capitulation by a weak, pathetic, and feckless West.

As for their mention of the “global political situation,” that just proves again that what is happening in Israel was never about land, imaginary occupations, or any other fake grievance: it is about us, the Jews.

All of us.

This definitely has all of the ingredients of 1933 part deux.

Or should I say “part zwei”?

No. What I am going to say is: WAKE UP. The West can’t afford to remain complacent once more while evil is allowed to grow unchecked. Never again is now.

Never give up. Never give in.

Am Yisrael Chai.







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!

 

 

  • Wednesday, November 08, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon
On Sunday, the IDF published evidence that Hamas tunnels were built during the construction of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza.

Indonesia strongly denied the accusation.

In a rare example of real journalism, The Telegraph (paywalled) reports:

Hamas terrorists were making a “last stand” in a hospital in northern Gaza on Tuesday night in a showdown witnessed by a Telegraph reporter. 

Israeli warplanes, tanks and infantry cornered the last remains of a 1,000 strong battalion of the terrorist group’s forces holed up in the Indonesian Hospital and a nearby school...in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

“They talk the talk, but they don’t walk so good,” said Lieutenant Colonel Blick of the Israeli 551 Reserve Paratroop Battalion, which escorted The Telegraph to the front line on Tuesday.

Pointing to the plumes of dust rising about 2km to the south, Lt Col Blick said fewer than 100 Hamas fighters were taking shelter in the Indonesian Hospital, the last survivors of a thousand-strong unit.

“They fought when we came in but folded after a day. Their command lines were cut. Now, where you can see the dust rising, in the hospital, they are making their last stand,” he said.

One of the soldiers took reporters to see a Hamas rocket launcher, dug into the garden of a house just a few yards from a pool where children would have played. The launcher was so hidden that it would have been close to impossible to spot by drone.



Most agree that the Indonesian Hospital is empty now of patients and is simply being used by Hamas to wage war. Taking it down with an air strike to finish the fighting must surely be tempting, but the IDF knows that would hand its enemy a propaganda coup.

At one point on The Telegraph’s embed, the tempo of gun and mortar fire coming from the Indonesian Hospital increased and was answered with a massive blast from a nearby tank.

None of the soldiers flinched. They’re inured to it. “We’re making tapes so we have them to fall asleep with after the war,” joked one.

Lt Col Ido pressed home the asymmetric nature of the war, saying: “They are hiding inside schools. Just 10 minutes ago, we had a serious battle with a group of Hamas inside the school that they built tunnels in. They fill it with the IEDs. Now the leadership of this battalion is hiding inside the hospital”.

The hospital is empty, something Israeli forces have verified with drones and other “tactical measures”, he said, adding: “They are firing on us from this hospital. So I think the world should understand what we are dealing with… they are terrorists. Can you imagine the Israeli state or England or Germany putting rockets inside their cities, in the City of London?”

In this accompanying video, the reporter says that there was fire from a UNRWA school (the subtitles took out the word "UNRWA.")





Clearly, Hamas chooses schools and hospitals as covers for their tunnels - we showed evidence of a large tunnel directly underneath an UNRWA school yesterday. 

Yet hardly any reporters even consider that the tunnels are the targets as they report on Israel apparently targeting civilian buildings.

This is not just bad journalism but irresponsible journalism. If reporters did their jobs, Israel could flatten the Indonesian Hospital and newspapers would describe how Hamas cynically turned it into a military target. But because the media tries to be even-handed between a terror group and a democracy, soldiers' lives are endangered by having to exchange fire with terrorists hiding in hospitals and schools. 

The only reason Israel bombing the terror stronghold hat formerly acted as a hospital would be a "propaganda coup" is because most media aren't doing their jobs.  





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!

 

 

(Disclaimer: This is a wonky legal post, and I'm not a lawyer. But, as always, I show my work. I'll correct any mistakes.)




Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Demonizing Israel, tweeted:

ON ISRAEL's #SelfDefense 

Under Int'l Law Israel's actions in Gaza cannot qualify as self-defense 

 In int'l law, Self-Defense is a term of art, with a narrower meaning than in common language. 

Under Article 51 of UN Charter, self-defense means :
(1) legitimate use of force 
(2) by a state to protect itself against an attack 
(3) from another state.

 Under Article 51, use of force in self-defense is permissible solely to repel an armed attack by another State. Threats from armed groups from within occupied territory give state the RIGHT TO PROTECT ITSELF, but not to wage war against the state from which the armed group emanates.

In line with established ICJ jurisprudence, in the case of the oPt: Israel cannot invoke the right to Self Defense under the UN Charter against threats emanating from the territory it occupies, and against the protected [Palestinian] population (ICJ, 2004).

Indeed, the ICJ ruled (in the advisory opinion on the defensive wall in Judea and Samaria) that Article 51 of the UN Charter doesn't apply because of the technical reason that the Article is only concerned with actions between two states.

But that doesn't mean Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself.

Firstly and most importantly, Israel does not occupy Gaza by any reasonable definition of the term. But even without Gaza being occupied, Albanese and many other antisemites argue that since Gaza is not a UN recognized state, Israel still has no right to self defense. 

How bizarre!

It is fascinating that they invoke the non-state status of "Palestine" when it suits their needs. Because by the same criterion, there is no occupation altogether, even in the West Bank, since occupation by definition (which  is only defined in the Hague Conventions of 1907) is only of territory belonging to a "High Contracting Party" - meaning a state! 

At any rate, while the ICJ decision says that the narrow definition of self defense does not apply to Israel in the West Bank, it states clearly in paragraph 141:
The fact remains that Israel has to face numerous indiscriminate and deadly acts of violence against its civilian population.  It has the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens.
The Israeli High Court also discussed the ICJ ruling and stated that it was not only problematic legally, but ultimately irrelevant:

Israel's duty to defend its citizens and residents, even if they are in the area, is anchored in internal Israeli law. The legality of the implementation of this duty is anchored in public international law, as discussed, in the provisions of regulation 43of The Hague Regulations. In The Beit Sourik Case, this Court did not anchor the military commander's authority to erect the separation fence upon the law of self defense. The Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice at the Hague determined that the authority to erect the fence is not to be based upon the law of self defense. The reason for this is that §51 of the Charter of the United Nations recognizes the natural right of self defense, when one state militarily attacks another state. Since Israel is not claiming that the source of the attack upon her is a foreign state, there is no application of this provision regarding the erection of the wall (paragraph 138 of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice at the Hague). Nor does the right of a state to self defense against international terrorism authorize Israel to employ the law of self defense against terrorism coming from the area, as such terrorism is not international, rather originates in territory controlled by Israel by belligerent occupation. This approach of the International Court of Justice at the Hague is not indubitable (many sources given - EoZ). It stirred criticism both from the dissenting judge, Judge Buergenthal (paragraph 6) and in the separate opinion of Judge Higgins (paragraphs 33 and 34). .... We find this approach of the International Court of Justice hard to come to terms with. It is not called for by the language of §51 of the Charter of the United Nations (see the difference between the English and French versions, S. Rosenne 291 General Course on Public International Law 149 (2001)). It is doubtful whether it fits the needs of democracy in its struggle against terrorism. From the point of view of a state's right to self defense, what difference does it make if a terrorist attack against it comes from another country or from territory external to it which is under belligerent occupation? And what shall be the status of international terrorism which penetrates into territory under belligerent occupation, while being launched from that territory by international terrorism's local agents? As mentioned, we have no need to thoroughly examine this issue, as we have found that regulation 43 of The Hague Regulations authorizes the military commander to take all necessary action to preserve security. The acts which self defense permits are surely included within such action. We shall, therefore, leave the examination of self defense for a future opportunity. 
Of course, the court is correct. The idea that a state can defend itself from another state but not from non-state terrorism is absurd.

But to an extent, the entire discussion is moot - because (as implied here)  Israel has not based its legal arguments for Gaza wars primarily on the UN Charter paragraph 51 anyway!

Israel wrote, concerning Operation Cast Lead in 2009, "Israel’s right to use force against Hamas was triggered years ago, when Palestinian terrorist organisations, including Hamas, initiated the armed conflict which is still ongoing."

For Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel also said it was part of a continuous war against armed groups, and only mentioned self-defense (without invoking Article 51) as a secondary reason:
The confrontation between Israel and these terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip satisfies the definition of armed conflict under international law. The 2014 Gaza Conflict was simply the latest in a series of armed confrontations, precipitated by the continuing attacks perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist organisations against Israel. After previous periods of intense fighting (including in 2009 and 2012), Hamas agreed to ceasefires, each of which it later breached, leading to Israel’s resumption of responsive military action to defend its population from attacks. Hamas’s attacks leading up to the 2014 Gaza Conflict were thus part of a larger, ongoing armed conflict. But even if one were not to consider the 2014 Gaza Conflict part of a continuous armed conflict justifying Israel’s use of force both previously and during this time, Hamas’s armed attacks against Israel in 2014 would independently qualify as an armed attack triggering Israel’s inherent right of self-defence.
In short, the right to self-defense is inherent for everyone, not based on Article 51. This is quite obvious. Which just proves that those who obsess over Article 51 to give the impression that Israel cannot defend itself are simply being malicious and antisemitic by claiming that Israel uniquely is not legally allowed to defend itself.




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!

 

 

Tuesday, November 07, 2023

From Ian:

Praising the Slaughter of Babies, the Rape of Women and the Beheading of Civilians Is a Stain on Humanity
There is an inescapable moral chasm between those who publicly rejoice in the purposeful massacre of innocent civilians and those who seek to avoid harming them. There is a moral chasm between those who use non-combatants as human shields and those who are deterred by their use. There is a moral chasm between those who proudly broadcast their desecration of life for all the world to see, and those who unequivocally lament the inadvertent loss of any innocent life as a tragedy.

There is a moral chasm between those who positively celebrate the inhuman war crimes of rape, torture, mutilation, burning alive and child-killing, and those who would immediately prosecute any person found to have committed such heinous crimes. The contrasting world views are presented nowhere more starkly than in the rallying call of Hamas leaders themselves: "We love death as our enemies love life."

It is a stain on our common humanity that so many seem to have lost sight of the moral distance between Hamas and Israel. Advocating for the welfare of innocent Palestinians must go hand in hand with a clear-eyed condemnation of the barbarity of Hamas.
Jonathan Tobin: Obama’s moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel encourages hate
In times of crisis, the public looks to its most revered leaders for insight and wisdom. But in the case of Barack Obama, the man who is, although nearly seven years into retirement, still America’s most popular living public figure, politician and Democrat, what passes for wisdom is not only unwise but amoral.

After weeks without saying much of anything about the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, the 44th president has weighed in on the subject while appearing on a podcast hosted by former staffers Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vieter. In the wake of the greatest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the most brazen example of terrorism on the international stage since 9/11 and amid a shocking spike in antisemitism, it’s likely that many among the nearly two-thirds of American Jewry who were faithful supporters of Obama were hoping that he would say something to bring them comfort or at least take a strong stand in support of the Jewish state.

If you were looking to Obama for moral clarity, however, you came to the wrong shop. According to the former president, the main takeaway from Oct. 7 is that as bad as Hamas is, Israel is just as bad. “You have to admit that nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree,” he declared. That means acknowledging, he continued, “that what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”

In Obama’s moral universe, Israel’s alleged sins are as grievous as those of Palestinian terrorists who were cheered by their own people and their foreign enablers for depraved acts, including rape, torture, the murder of entire families and the kidnapping of as many as 240 men, women and children who were dragged back to Gaza. No stern judgments about terrorism or its backers from Obama. He thinks what’s needed is “an admission of complexity.”

Fueling pressure on Biden
While the comments of former presidents can often be dismissed as irrelevant to present-day discussions, the same cannot be said for anything uttered by Obama. He remains enormously influential among Democrats, especially among the large number of his former staffers who hold positions of influence in the government of President Joe Biden. Whether or not that amounts to Obama pulling the strings in his former vice president’s administration, there can be no doubt that when he speaks, everyone in the White House listens.

What’s more, it comes at a time when Biden’s stance in support of Israel and its goal of eliminating Hamas is under fire from his party’s base, causing both the president and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to try to balance that with demands for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting that would benefit Hamas. Polls show Biden losing to former President Donald Trump in key battleground states largely due to his losing support from minority and young voters who are more likely to be hostile to Israel. In that context, Obama’s proclamation of neutrality in the war between Israel and Hamas sends a message to the White House that if Biden wants another term—and withdrawing from the 2024 race is anathema to the president, even if many Democrats are hoping for it—then he will have to start distancing himself from the Jewish state.

Seen in that light, Obama’s podcast comments should be viewed with trepidation by supporters of Israel. Should Biden heed Obama and choose to use the leverage of U.S. military aid to put the brakes on the Israel Defense Forces’ operations in Gaza, it would allow those who perpetrated the crimes of Oct. 7 to both escape justice and maintain their despotic rule over the Strip.


National Review Editorial: Yes, Obama Is Complicit
Obama entered office in 2009 as one of the most hostile presidents to Israel in the history of American relations with the Jewish state. Meeting with the leaders of major Jewish organizations, he said he would intentionally attempt to create more distance between the U.S. and Israel. “When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states,” he said, the Washington Post reported. All his policy of “daylight” accomplished was to convince Palestinians to demand more concessions before negotiating a peace deal, and to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more suspicious of signing a deal based on security guarantees from Obama. Even as Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly rebuffed Obama on peace talks, his administration consistently pointed the finger at Israel as the primary barrier to getting a deal. This, even after the PA signed a unification agreement with Hamas, which ruled Gaza but was splintered from the government.

In Obama’s second term, his foreign policy was focused primarily on securing a nuclear deal with Iran. Much of the criticism of the deal has focused on what was in it — i.e., that it delivered billions in sanctions relief while allowing Iran to bolster its conventional military and preserve a glide path toward a nuclear weapon. What is more overlooked is the fact that in its desperate pursuit of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration turned a blind eye toward Iran’s malign behavior around the globe, despite its being the leading state sponsor of terrorism. This included funding, training, and transferring weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, a 2017 investigative report by Politico revealed, “In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.” Money raised by the drug trafficking helped fund Hezbollah’s terrorism against Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.

This should have been no surprise given that one of the key players in crafting Iran policy was Robert Malley, who had been sidelined from the 2008 Obama campaign after it was revealed that he met with Hamas. (Malley served as President Biden’s special envoy for Iran and was trying to revive the nuclear deal before he was suspended by the State Department over an investigation into his security clearance.)

At the end of the Obama administration, Hamas was much richer, stronger, and more accepted than at the start of his administration.

Obama may have had more subtlety than Representative Ilhan “It’s all about the Benjamins” Omar, but the antisemitic rhetoric we’re hearing today was mainstreamed during his administration. He appointed Chuck Hagel as secretary of Defense; Hagel had once lamented that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here” and repeatedly slammed “lobbyists” and “money” for working against the Iran deal rather than considering American interests.

Obama was indeed complicit in the troubling events of our times. But if he’s going to reflect on his own failed legacy, he should leave the rest of us out of it.
Obama's comments on Israel-Hamas war 'nothing short of disgusting': Josh Hammer
Newsweek's Senior Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer has branded former US president Barack Obama's comment that “nobody’s hands are clean” in relation to the ongoing Israel -Hamas war as “disgusting”.

“This is a former president of the United States while there are 15, 20 American hostages currently being held in the worst American hostage crisis since, as you alluded to, the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis,” he told Sky News host Rita Panahi.

“To have a former president get up there and try to both sides this thing, you know, it’s nothing short of disgusting.”

The former president weighed in on the conflict during a recent interview with Pod Save America.

The conflict that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 has divided opinions across the world.


Videos From Pro-Hamas Rally Where Paul Kessler Was Killed Show Just How Vile His Attackers Are
A 69-year-old Jewish man, Paul Kessler, was murdered Sunday when a pro-Hamas agitator attacked him during a demonstration in Thousand Oaks, California. According to an eyewitness who spoke to RedState on condition of anonymity due to fears for their family's safety, it appeared that Kessler was targeted by members of the pro-Hamas group who had protested at the same corner the Sunday prior, possibly because police were called at that time after one of the pro-Hamas agitators brandished a gun.

The man holding the flag in the photo above allegedly lifted up his shirt to show that he had a pistol in his waistband during the October 29 protest at the same corner (Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Westlake Boulevard, just north of the 101 Freeway). Police were called to the scene, but the man left before they arrived.

This Instagram video, which was published October 30, shows the tone of that event, which carried over to the day Kessler was attacked and killed.

During the November 5 protest, eyewitnesses say that this man led an older gentleman over to the corner with the Shell station (across from where the bulk of the pro-Hamas faction were located), to where Mr. Kessler was, as if he was pointing Kessler out to the older gentleman.

The pro-Hamas faction were located on the southwest corner of the intersection, in front of Paul Martin's American Grill.

Eyewitnesses, who have shared this information and their photos and videos, say the attack happened within five minutes of the time the agitators went to the corner where Kessler was. The eyewitness doesn't have video of the moment the attack occurred, but says that the gray-haired, bearded man in khaki pants is the man who confronted Kessler then hit him in the head with the bullhorn.

In this video, a different witness tells law enforcement that Kessler was "decked" but a Hamas supporter tells officers that Kessler "slipped."
  • Tuesday, November 07, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon
UNRWA tweeted photos showing damage to their schools in Gaza.

Two of them show clear sinkholes - indicating pretty strongly that there are Hamas tunnels directly underneath the schools.

This picture is very clear - the pavement doesn't even appear to have been damaged (much?)  by an airstrike, it looks like it simply caved in:

Something destroyed a tunnel underneath.

Let's look a little closer:



Here's another that shows an obvious sinkhole that would not look like that if there wasn't an empty space underneath,.




UNRWA has, in the past, condemned Hamas for placing weapons in its schools. But it only does that when the violation is undeniable. It seems unlikely that they will say anything negative to Hamas about this - because, in the end, they are on Hamas' side.




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!

 

 

  • Tuesday, November 07, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon

The Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a report summarizing the first three weeks of the war.

As far as I can tell,this "human rights" organization has never condemned the murder of any Jews, and this report continues that tradition. 

In fact, it denies it.

Here is its only mention of the October 7 events:
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have continued to launch a massive and unprecedented military aggression across the air, land and sea against the Gaza Strip, in which they violated civilians and civilian objects, killed and injured thousands, including horrific mass killings in hospitals, churches, centers and shelters, and destroyed thousands of housing units, and 70% of the population was displaced from their homes, with an announced Israeli decision to stop supplies of electricity, food, water, and fuel.

This widespread aggression came as an act of revenge hours after a military attack carried out by the Palestinian factions on the same Saturday morning, declaring that it came in response to the escalation of Israeli violations against the Palestinian people...
This absurd characterization of the events of October 7 prove that Al Mezan is not at all interested in telling the truth, but rather parroting terrorist propaganda. There is no daylight between their report and what Hamas claims. In fact, Al Mezan claims that the Hamas Ministry of Health is undercounting civilian victims of the war. 

Which is not surprising, because members of the NGO have links to both the PFLP and Hamas terror groups. 

Even so, Al Mezan is funded by the European Union, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UN-OCHA.



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!

 

 

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: We Will Defend Ourselves
What Hamas has now done has not just buried the two-state solution and killed all hopes for peace in our lifetime, or in our children’s lifetime. It has also tripped the wire that triggers the deepest of Jewish fears, the fears that run so deep that they precede reflection or even verbalization. That is why you hear from most of the left what you would normally hear only from the right: calls to see this all the way through to the complete destruction of Hamas as a functioning organization.

Modern antisemitism has learned to hide in its moral opposite: the language of human rights. Old blood libels claimed Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for the baking of matzot, the Passover bread. Contemporary blood libels claim the IDF is uniquely murderous and deliberately kills Palestinian children to satisfy its bloodlust. The form is new, but the content is not.

The contemporary versions are peddled by organizations claiming to uphold human rights, while undermining the universality of that principle, which is its very essence. They do this by applying one standard to the Jewish state, and another to all others, especially those belonging to groups with a postmodern moral badge of official victimhood, which supposedly grants them a waiver from moral imperatives.

This corruption of morality relies on marginalizing the evidence of the actual behavior of such groups toward their own members (especially gays, women and nonbelievers), toward minorities in their midst (such as Jews and Christians) as well the outside world.

This application of double standards has caused Israel to voluntarily impose on its army a stricter code than any other army does, a task made all the more difficult by the increasing sophistication of its enemies in manipulating these very vulnerabilities. As Benjamin Netanyahu succinctly put it: We use rockets to protect our women and children. They use women and children to protect their rockets.

Israel should be done with this game. It is an immoral one, and it has enabled our murderous enemies to escape responsibility. It has led to the sacrifice of our own men to save the lives of those who would turn their own children into cannon fodder. Israel should insist that those who have tied together Jewish children with rope then burned them alive, will not manipulate us in the name of human rights. It should insist that only those who put their own children in harm’s way to protect the weapons they use against our innocent civilians, are responsible for their safety. It should insist that Hamas has committed crimes against humanity and we will not sustain its rule under the guise of “humanitarian aid.” International law prescribes that if the enemy does not separate civilians from combatants it alone bears responsibility for the lives of the innocent. Israel should insist on that rule and not flinch.

This is a chance to begin restoring moral clarity, and the gore from this attack, much of which was recorded by Hamas’ sadistic antisemitic terrorists, should serve to remind us of this.

Those who have not lost their conscience to the auto-immune disease of wokeism, to conformity and cowardice, would do well to leverage the horror that befell Israel to clean their own house, too. It is, perhaps, not yet too late to save the Judeo-Christian tradition from the self-inflicted destruction of postmodern pseudomorality.
I watched Hamas hack innocents to death. The worst part was their glee
Over the span of 43 minutes, I watched 138 humans be murdered or witnessed their corpses, many brutalized beyond recognition and others clearly tortured, in the direct aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.

That’s 3.2 bodies per minute— and less than 10 per cent of the more than 1,400 people killed that day.

The Consulate of Israel in Toronto screened the footage, taken from a mix of body cameras, dashboard cams, CCTV tapes, and victims’ cell phones, some used by Hamas to record and livestream their sadism, for a small group of media on Monday. Not everyone made it through the full 43 minutes, with others moved to tears and outbursts of emotion.

There were babies. Toddlers. So many children of all ages. Young men and women dressed for a music festival, not the wanton slaughter that saw their bloodied bodies piled atop one another in scenes reminiscent of some of the Holocaust’s worst images.

Parents. The elderly. A dad who, attempting to hide from Hamas attackers with his sons, all three of them still in their underwear, was blown up by a grenade in front of his children. The two young boys, covered in blood, crying, throwing themselves on the ground in grief, as a Hamas gunman raids the family’s fridge and takes a swig of soda. One of the sons’ panicked voice as he realizes he can no longer see out of one eye.

The man’s wife as kibbutz security bring her to identify her husband’s remains. The moment she literally collapses and has to be dragged away from the scene, thrashing wildly, her legs folding under her like every bone had simply vanished from her body.

A family attempting to decipher whether the burned remains in front of them, skirt hiked up above bare genitals, is the loved one they’re looking for.

The literal streams of blood, the hacked off arms and legs, the infant missing part of its skull, brain leaking out. The dog shot over and over again as its limbs splay in every direction until they don’t anymore. Mickey mouse pyjamas on a young corpse, skull fragments on floors, victims shot point blank. So much blood.

But none of what I’ve detailed so far was the worst part of those 43 minutes. The worst part was the glee.

The pure jubilation of Hamas terrorists as they filmed themselves killing and torturing; their excited voices bragging about their atrocities. The videos of them playing with victims’ heads with their feet, and excitedly shooting out the tires of a kibbutz’s ambulance before massacring its residents.

I’ll never forget the gore, but it’s the look of euphoria and pride in the terrorists’ eyes, cheering for the cameras as if they were the ones partying at a music festival that day, that will haunt me.
  • Tuesday, November 07, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon

Days after Amnesty International issued its absurd report accusing Israel of "apartheid," I wrote that the exact same playbook could be used to falsely accuse Israel of genocide as well.

The "apartheid" slander really started to gain steam at the infamously antisemitic 2001 UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance NGO Forum, which launched an NGO strategy of isolating Israel through boycotts, legal attacks and accusations of apartheid. First there were annual "apartheid week" events on colleges, where modern antisemites linked the words "Israel" and "apartheid" in the minds of a generation of college students. Once that took hold, first fringe and the mainstream NGOs like HRW and Amnesty pretended that where there's smoke, there must be fire, so they twisted the definition of "apartheid" just to fit Israel and issued large reports filled with false examples and lies to "prove" their pre-determined conclusion. 

Even the most articulate Israel-haters cannot defend the definition when challenged by someone outside their bubble of hate.  Their strategy is to repeat the lie often enough that everyone assumes it must be true, because the average person doesn't want to believe that prestigious human rights defenders are obsessed antisemitic liars.

My prediction that the same thing would happen with "genocide" is coming true. But this time, it has accelerated from 20 years to two months. 

"Genocide" has been the theme of countless anti-Israel demonstrations so far, and now Ishaan Tharoor is doing his job by making the antisemitic slander  part of everyday conversation, using classic propaganda methods, in his "Today's worldview" column in the Washington Post.

Let's take this apart:
In protests around the world, in the corridors of the United Nations and in the angry chambers of social media, one word is getting louder and louder: genocide. That’s what critics of Israel’s offensive against the Islamist group Hamas say the Jewish state is doing in its ravaging of the Gaza Strip, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians. Over the weekend, demonstrators slathered a White House gate in red paint, in a message to the Biden administration about the perceived blood on its hands for its staunch support for Israel. In condemning Israel’s actions, governments in Brazil, South Africa and Colombia, among others, have all explicitly invoked “genocide” to explain their outrage.
Just because professional Israel haters use the word does not give it validity. But Tharoor wants to, by suggesting that "genocide" is Israeli policy by quoting angry (and sometimes profoundly stupid)  Israeli officials livid about the October 7 massacre - and purposefully lying about President Herzog's statement: "The Israeli president suggested that civilians in the Hamas-controlled territory are not 'innocent'," Tharoor says, yet in the very event where Herzog said that Gazans were partially responsible for Hamas being in power - an undoubtedly true statement - he explicitly said “Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians."

However, the ill-considered statements of some Israeli officials are not government policy, and they are not IDF policy. Pretending that the idiotic Amichai Eliyahu statement that Israel could drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza has any relationship with Israeli policy is rhetoric but has no basis in reality - yet that is Tharoor's main argument.

Because he never defines "genocide" he never gives the reader the opportunity to judge whether the definition fits. As with apartheid, genocide has a legal definition: specific "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." 

There is no Israeli intent, and no evidence of any such intent, to destroy Palestinians as a people. And Tharoor knows this.

So he  plays loose and fast by hinting that Israel's seeming loosening of its rules of engagement compared to previous Gaza wars indicates intent:

Israel contends that it takes steps to limit civilian casualties and targets only militant positions, though that claim is difficult to square against a catalogue of Israeli strikes on crowded civilian neighborhoods, hospitals and U.N. facilities. “Although Israeli officials insist that each strike is subject to legal approval, experts say the rules of engagement, which are classified, appear to include a higher threshold for civilian casualties than in previous rounds of fighting,” my colleagues reported.  
Indeed, there is a difference between this war and previous wars. Previously, the goal was to deter Hamas. Now, the goal is to destroy Hamas. That is a valid and legal military goal.

Hamas is hiding its entire organization - weapons, command and control, communications, leadership -  in hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Gaza apartments, schools and hospitals.  To achieve the legal military objective of destroying Hamas involves attacking those tunnels. No army is legally obligated to engage in hand to hand fighting on the enemy's turf, risking thousands of its own soldiers, in order to avoid civilian casualties. The only thing Israel can do is warn residents to get out of the way so it could attack Hamas' infrastructure. 

If you recall, Israel did exactly that. For three weeks. Even though there are Hamas strongholds in the south of Gaza, Israel has largely avoided attacking there so Gaza civilians can be saved. 

Once all the residents are warned, and given enough time to evacuate, the proportionality calculation changes. This is also international law. Otherwise, civilian human shields become a valid defense, which is nonsensical.

Israel is adhering to every aspect of international law to minimize civilian casualties while pursuing its primary military objective. No one has suggested a better way to destroy Hamas. Every civilian casualty from is Hamas' responsibility under international law. 

The charge of genocide against Israel is doubly grotesque. 

The subtext of Israel's critics is that Israel should not really destroy Hamas  - even though Hamas' own goals are explicitly genocidal in its intent. Their  slanders of "genocide" are meant to allow a truly genocidal group to keep trying forever.  

And, of course, using the term "genocide" against Jews who were the victims of the Holocaust that spawned that term is pure antisemitism. Comparing the deaths in Gaza  during a just and legal war with the purposeful destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis cannot be regarded as anything but Jew-hatred. 

Ishaan Tharoor is knowingly playing his part - acting as a bridge between the fanatic anti-Israel protesters and the eventual 200 page reports by Amnesty and HRW that will declare Israel to be "genocidal." He is laying the groundwork so that people will associate Israel with genocide the way the antisemites of a decade ago did the same with "apartheid." 

Both of those programs are aimed only at the Jewish state. And we all know why. 




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!

 

 

  • Tuesday, November 07, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon


The incomparable Imshin found this video on TikTok posted yesterday:


The children are on a rooftop in Gaza.

"Are you afraid of the bombings and planes?"
"NO!"
"Do you want to die as martyrs?"
"YES!"   
The hashtags on the TikTok post were
🔴Here_are_the_children_of_Gaza
🔴They_do_not_fear_death
Their slogan is
🔴We_are_not_afraid_of_death
🔴We_are_all_martyrs☝️✌️
This is not just child abuse. 

This is child abuse that a significant number of Palestinians are proud of.





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!

 

 

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive