Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 10, 2023

Kuwaiti newspapers keep making up stories

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hosted Wednesday evening a secret meeting of the leaders of the pro-Tehran factions in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen, during which he stressed the need to close ranks and defended the strategy avoiding engagement in an all-out war, which has been “clearly endorsed” by Tehran and Hezbollah in dealing with the Gaza war, a source in Khamenei’s office said.

The source told Kuwait’s al-Jarida newspaper that Hezbollah was represented in the meeting by the head of its executive council, Sayyed Hashem Saffieddine.

“Khamenei stressed in the meeting with the leaders of the factions that the strategy is based on focusing on Gaza -- where Israel was dealt a major blow on October 7 -- and avoiding being dragged into any side battles that would deviate attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian strip,” the source said.

“Despite the cost and losses that are being incurred by the Palestinian people, the current international circumstances are in their favor and in favor of the Palestinian cause, after Israel lost its credibility and the international community is no longer fully on its side,” the source quoted Khamenei as saying.

“Khamenei also defended the speech of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, which did not contain any declaration that the southern front against Israel will be escalated,” the source added.

The supreme leader told those who criticized Nasrallah’s remarks that the speech “was coordinated with Quds Brigade chief Esmail Qaani and the relevant officials in the resistance front” and that “the main message was highlighting support for the front in Gaza without opening any other fronts that would deviate attention and waste the Palestinian achievements.”

Sounds pretty authoritative! Names, dates, analysis....that's some scoop!

Except for one thing: Kuwait's Al Jarida is the Weekly World News of the Middle East. And that's saying something.

Most of the Arab media lies are based at least somewhat on a real fact. Al Jarida has a history of complete fabrications. I listed a number of them previously.

I've looked at al-Jarida over the years, and not one of its spectacular scoops that have been picked up by mainstream media has been verified.

In 2012, a foiled assassination plot against Ehud Barak in Singapore.
In 2015, it reported that the US threatened to shoot down Israeli planes en route to bomb Iran.
It reported Gilad Shalit about to be released in 2009, two years before it happened.
It claimed Israel was about to bomb Iran in 2009.
It reported other Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas figures back in 2008.
It claimed to have had the first interview with Egyptian president Sisi- ahead of any Egyptian media! (The interview was fiction and Egypt denied any such interview.)

Besides, if the strategy is to stay out of it, why are Hezbollah and Yemen still attacking?

Al Jarida - which has been quoted over the years as a source in mainstream media - is proof positive that the media itself has little interest in the truth.

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!

The @WashingtonPost @IshaanTharoor again tries to smear Israel based on lazy journalism

Ishaan Tharoor, of the Washington Post's "Today's Worldview" column, has been using every opportunity to attack Israel under the guise of journalism.

Earlier this week we showed how he tried to mainstream the utterly malicious and false charge that Israel was committing "genocide" in Gaza. (Petra Marquardt-Bigman demolished a piece of his in 2017 as well.)

Now, he is spreading the lie that Israel is purposefully damaging Gaza civilian targets for no military reason:

A few days after Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, a top Israeli military official was blunt about his nation’s military response. Israeli security officials repeatedly stress the steps they take to minimize civilian harm and claim they are only striking legitimate military targets. In recent days, Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces, accused Hamas of “cynically” deploying its assets in civilian areas and near critical infrastructure, like hospitals. But when speaking in the offensive’s early stage, Hagari revealed that the “emphasis” of the IDF’s reprisal was “on damage and not on accuracy.”

Tharoor then builds this article around the theory that Israel is implementing the so-called "Dahiya doctrine:"

There are reams of commentary on what Israel’s strategy and endgame may be as it seeks to nullify the long-standing threat posed by Hamas and purge the Islamist militant faction from its Gaza redoubts. But looming behind it — and implicit in Hagari’s “emphasis” on damage over accuracy — is a long-standing Israeli military doctrine that appears to be in play now.

The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummeled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The onslaught then took Hezbollah by surprise, whose senior leadership had not expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had planned for such a relentless bombardment. “I said that we shouldn’t exaggerate, that Israel will just retaliate a bit, bomb a couple of targets and that would be the end of it,” a Hezbollah operative told former Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in 2006.

Tharoor is implying that Israel is no longer attacking military targets but instead is just trying to cause widespread damage for the sake of deterrence in future wars.

Of course, instead of looking at what Hagari actually said that day, he only links to a Guardian article that gave no context. Because it is too good to check.

Hagari was specifically speaking about causing massive damage to Hamas targets, not to civilian targets. He added, "We are taking a toll on every Hamas position and structure, dozens from every pilot in every Air Force strike. Among other things, the IDF attacked a weapons warehouse located in a mosque, and homes of activists (Hamas members)."

Later that day, Hagari clarified this further:

The IDF has shifted to a different counterattack method and is striking in waves. Tens of IAF aircraft have struck aerially every 4 hours over the past 36 hours. The IAF has all its reserve personnel manning aircraft both in the headquarters and the squadrons on a wide scale. These strikes on thousands of terrorist targets using thousands of munitions. We are using every piece of intelligence to maximize damage to meeting spots for terrorists planning to invade Israel, houses belonging to senior Hamas commanders, terrorist operational centers and headquarters and terrorist infrastructure.

The main strike conducted last night targeted the Rimal area in Gaza. The area is a symbol of luxury in the center of Gaza and has very significant meaning to senior Hamas leaders and operatives. Afterwards, we struck further targets in Khan Yunis, including terrorist intelligence infrastructure, apartments used for operational purposes and a spot where terrorists have been gathering before attacking Israeli territory. Hundreds of Hamas terrorist organization operatives have been neutralized during these strikes.

In other words, the IDF didn't only target official command and control centers but also places where Hamas leaders were known to meet in civilian areas like luxury hotels, with the intent to make it difficult for them to meet and plan. Targets are chosen strictly based on intel.

The targets were always Hamas. All of them are considered military targets under the laws of war.

As we have reported before, there are multiple layers of legal review before Israel does targeting. Nobody is even hinting that those procedures aren't in place now.

As far as generalizing the "Dahiya doctrine" to Gaza, the Lebanese strategy was to dissuade Hezbollah from considering future attacks. Israel has used this strategy since the 1950s, because it makes more sense in a small country to proactively deter attacks than to be on a constant defensive posture where mistakes could be catastrophic.

The Gaza strategy is to destroy Hamas. That goal requires a radically different strategy, and "Dahiya" - (where Israel also only attacked military targets) is not relevant here. The purpose isn't deterrence but total destruction of Hamas capabilities.

Once again, Tharoor - pretending to be some sort of brilliant analyst - reveals that he is no journalist to begin with. He doesn't check sources. He has a predetermined notion of the truth and tries to fit the facts to his theories. He assumes malice from Israel.

He is an anti-Israel propagandist, nothing more.

(h/t Jim W)

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!

New poll shows US Jews are nervous

The Jewish Federations of North America commissioned a survey of Jews and non-Jews about the situation in Israel.

The Jews are very nervous.

97% of American Jews are following the war in Gaza closely.

94% say there is discrimination against Jews in the US today, and 66% say there is "a lot."

71% of Jews are at least somewhat worried about their personal safety.

74% of Jews thought there was "a lot" of antisemitism in the country as a whole, and 86% said there was more antisemitism today than five years ago. 72% of U.S. Jews said they thought antisemitism in their local community was rising as well.

58% think antisemitism will get worse in their community. 75% expect that the war in Gaza will spill over into safety issues in their own communities.

This is remarkably pessimistic from a group that has been pretty happy in America, and that hasn't had to worry much about antisemitism in recent decades.

Interestingly, only a small number of Jewish respondents - 9% - consider themselves Orthodox. That means that the vast majority of American Jews who dress and largely look like their non-Jewish counterparts are still very concerned about their personal safety.

I was surprised that some 95% of the Jews surveyed had visited Israel at least one; 52% more than once and 10% had lived there. 82% of Jews have passports.

We might be seeing aliyah numbers from North America go up in the next year.

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!

11/09 Links Pt2: How Jews Became the Last Minority It’s Acceptable to Hate; Israel agrees to 4 hours daily pause as hostage video aired

From Ian:

How Jews Became the Last Minority It’s Acceptable to Hate

The wave of anti-Semitism is not confined to America. In Sydney, Australia, a Jewish man was recently assaulted by a mob of what Sky News calls “Palestine supporters” and severely beaten; he is now recovering in a hospital. In the same city, a mass protest occurred on October 9 where demonstrators chanted “gas the Jews.” Nor has Great Britain been spared. Stephen Daisley, writing from that country, comments on why so many young people seem to be drawn to anti-Semitism:

It’s not that the world is particularly woke to anti-black or any other form of racism, but that it is particularly unwoke to anti-Jewish racism. There is an empathy gap when it comes to Jews, a mental or emotional distance from their suffering that is either not present with other groups or not as respectable to let slip. This may be a generational phenomenon. In the world the baby boomers grew up in, the Holocaust was the recent past. The war loomed over the culture and, in the liberal West at least, the death camps became the ultimate symbol of evil.

The TikTok generation are coming of age in a world where Israel is no longer seen as the miracle in the desert, the return of a nation to its homeland in the shadow of its near extinction, but the racist oppressor of the indigenous Palestinians. They have no frame for understanding anti-Semitism because they have been taught that the world is divided into white victimizers and black and brown victims. Jews don’t fit into that formula, Israeli Jews certainly don’t, and nor do the Palestinians, but as the formula is all they know, it must be made to fit.

Jews are the last minority it’s acceptable to hate, and not just acceptable but progressive.

Biden Admin Isn't Sanctioning Hamas for Use of Human Shields, Drawing Bipartisan Ire

The Biden administration is not enforcing U.S. sanctions on Hamas’s use of human shields, drawing bipartisan concerns in Congress as the Iran-backed terror group uses civilians to shield itself from Israeli military attacks.

As Israel’s war on Hamas enters its second month, it has become increasingly clear the terror group is placing civilians in harm’s way in order to maximize casualties, in violation of a U.S. law barring the use of human shields.

"There still have been no sanctions imposed pursuant to this law" by the Biden administration, according to a bipartisan group of 22 congressmen. The group urges the administration to "prioritize the swift imposition and enforcement of all appropriate sanctions" on Hamas for its ongoing use of human shields in a letter sent to the State and Treasury Departments on Wednesday and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter comes on the heels of a bipartisan bill meant to strengthen and expand U.S. sanctions on any terror group that employs human shields in combat. That legislative effort, first reported by the Free Beacon in October, days after Hamas butchered more than 1,400 Israeli citizens, is aimed at increasing pressure on the Biden administration to fully enforce sanctions on Hamas and its Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. More than a month later, the Biden administration still has not sanctioned the terror groups, even with mounting evidence that Hamas’s use of human shields is a key pillar of its terrorism strategy.

"While the U.S. government has taken measures to combat Hamas and Hezbollah in recent years, it has yet to sanction Hamas and Hezbollah leaders for their use of human shields," the lawmakers wrote in a letter led by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) and Brad Sherman (D., Calif.). "Imposing such sanctions would make clear that the U.S. government does not tolerate the use of human shields and would encourage like-minded countries to take similar measures against this war crime."

The Biden administration, including the president himself, has repeatedly condemned Hamas for intentionally placing civilians in harm’s way by using hospitals and schools as bases for their terrorism operations.

This Is the Future Liberals Want: Pro-Hamas Mob Attacks Jews Outside Museum of Tolerance in LA

What happened: A mob of pro-Hamas hooligans attacked peacefully protesting Jews on Wednesday outside the Museum of Tolerance-Beit HaShoah in Los Angeles.

• The venue, dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, was hosting a screening of "Bearing Witness," a short film comprising "extremely graphic and violent" footage of the murderous rampage Hamas terrorists perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7.

• Israeli actress Gal Gadot reportedly helped organize the screening but did not attend.

Why it matters: The attack took place amid a dramatic surge in anti-Semitic violence across the country and throughout the world following the Hamas attack on Israel, which took the lives of more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians.

• An elderly Jewish man died this week after being "struck in the head by a megaphone wielded by a pro-Palestinian protestor" in Ventura County outside Los Angeles. Police are investigating his death as a homicide.

• Two weeks earlier, Los Angeles police arrested a man who allegedly broke into a Jewish family's home and threatened to kill them. The suspect, Daniel Garcia, was filmed yelling "Free Palestine" as police took him into custody.

Crucial context: The pro-terrorist goons were enraged by a film that provides irrefutable evidence of Hamas atrocities that many of the group's supporters have dismissed as Israeli propaganda.

• Journalist Jotam Confino, who viewed the footage last month, recalled the "indescribable" scenes of children running for their lives as Hamas terrorists chase after them with a hand grenade, terrorists executing civilians in their cars while yelling "Allahu Akbar," and another terrorist screaming "Allahu Akbar" as he "frantically tries to behead a dead man with a shovel."

• "If anyone has any doubt about what happened, I truly don’t know what to say anymore," Confino wrote.

Bottom line: This is the future liberals want.

Natan Sharansky Blames Harvard and Yale for Decline of the Free World

Natan Sharansky warned that elite American universities are driving an increase in anti-Semitism and cultural division by spreading "neo-Marxist philosophy in the heart of the free world."

Sharansky, an Israeli human rights activist who spent years in a Soviet gulag, said schools such as Harvard and Yale have become bastions of support for terrorism—a big difference from World War II, when the vast majority of the Western world opposed the Nazi regime.

"All the world was against the Nazi regime, and nobody was sorry with [it] being destroyed," said Sharansky during a discussion with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America on Wednesday. "Today, the legitimacy for the regimes like Hamas is coming from Oxford, from Harvard, from Yale, from Penn, from all these centers."

"This neo-Marxist philosophy in the heart of the free world, that's why this division between the free world and not-free world is not so clear," he said.

Sharansky's comments come as universities have faced backlash over their tepid responses to Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and as many student groups defended the mass slaughter.

Sharansky slammed the colleges for responding with "cheers" to the "most awful, unbelievable pogrom in modern history."

"These are enablers, those who give [terrorists] legitimacy. And that's [the] intellectuals of the free world," he said.

Sharansky said the "Critical Theories" taught at universities "divide the world into the oppressed and oppressors" and compared them to the Marxist-Leninist politics that he and his peers were taught growing up in the Soviet Union. He warned that the "Critical Theories" pit "all the white against black, all the men against women, all the straight against gays, all the Israelis against Palestinians."

"When it becomes the base for social activity, for political activity, it's very dangerous," he said, noting that this was how the Soviet Union "killed tens of millions of people."

The Central Committee of Fatah met on Thursday evening , and issued a statement that read in part:

The Central Committee of the “Fatah” movement held a meeting, this evening, Thursday, at the mobilization and organization headquarters of the “Fatah” movement.

The Fatah Central Committee affirmed, in a statement, that the occupation’s expansion of its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem and its holy sites, will only make us more committed to our legitimate national rights and more determined to defeat this criminal occupation .

No matter what crimes and massacres the occupation commits, our people will remain steadfast and stationed on the land of their homeland and will not leave, and just as our people in Gaza were steadfast and thwarted the displacement plan, our people in the West Bank will continue their steadfastness on the land of their homeland and their struggle until the occupation is defeated and the independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital .

Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said almost identical words about the Gazan and west Bankers' "steadfastness."

OK, so Gazans ae steadfast in not leaving their land, and West Bankers are steadfast in not leaving their land. Fine.

But aren't they both "Palestine?"

They say that the Gazans cannot go to Egypt because, somehow, it would be a new nakba. (Their being in an intense war zone is far better, it seems.) But why can't the West Bankers take in thousands of the Gazans for the duration? They would still be in their homeland, right? No nakba! No ethnic cleansing! Steadfastness on their land!

What's the downside?

Once again, we see how the zero-sum mentality works - and how much Palestinian leaders treat their own citizens with contempt.

With this example, we can calculate a formula to see exactly how little Palestinian lives are worth to their leaders.

Their calculus is, if something helps Israel at all, it must be resisted at all cost. Includiing sacrificing their own people.

When a Gaza civilian (or someone they claim is a civilian) dies, that hurts Israel's standing in the world a minuscule amount. Hamas, Fatah and the PA are saying that this PR value is worth more than their lives.

Israel is trying to minimize innocent casualties. Hamas wants to maximize them. And the "moderate" Palestinian Authority fully agrees with Hamas.

Now, let's say that the Gaza health ministry claims that Israel killed 246 people today. How much worse does Israel suffer, in public relations terms, compared to if they claimed Israel killed 245 people?

What is the PR value of person #246?

Everyone can see that it is practically nothing. No one will be angrier, no additional resolutions will be passed, no extra letters to the editor or outraged tweets. Person #246's life is worth exactly nothing in terms of PR.

Even though the propaganda value difference between the claiming that 245 and 246 innocent people were killed in one day is practically nil, to the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, their lives are worth even less than that.

Person #246, whose death accomplished exactly nothing, is more valuable dead than alive to his or her "leaders."

Mahmoud Abbas could save the lives of hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands. He would prefer them dead.

And these are the people the Biden White House wants to control Gaza.

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!

Interview With Pierre Rehov: "Hamas Made A Big Mistake" (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Pierre Rehov is a French-Israeli filmmaker known for his movies about the Arab–Israeli conflict, Israel in the media, and Palestinian terrorism. I had the opportunity to speak with him about his thoughts about the latest brutal attack by Hamas.

Pierre Rehov

(This interview was edited for clarity and brevity)

In your interviews of members of Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and Hamas, what did you find motivates these terrorists?

There are many answers to that and 2 levels of answers.

One level is political: they are brainwashed. These terrorists actually believe Islam must prevail and conquer the world. But I was more interested in their personal stories. Most of them were suicide bombers who were unsuccessful in their mission. But there was one who succeeded, but his life was saved in an Israeli hospital. I wanted to know what motivated them to want to kill themselves like that.

Also, I sent a team to Japan to interview former kamikazes and see what they thought about Muslim "kamikazes." The Japanese kamikazes were ashamed because they acted out of honor and would only target military personnel. They were not like the Palestinian terrorists, whose main goal was to terrorize, to target women and children. The terrorists would avoid the army and the police; they just wanted to target as many women and children as possible.

Below:

In a promotional excerpt of Rehov's Path To Darkness on YouTube a former kamikaze relates
(at 1:43):
I was angry that terrorists used our tactic to carry out such dirty acts. Then people started calling them "kamikaze." I could not stand it.

I asked the Hamas prisoners why they did that -- what would it do for them? They described their actions as nationalistic and in terms of duty. I realized that I was talking to people with a high level of frustration, living in an oppressive society where they would have no real chance of going out with girls and getting married. Without this outlet, these kids were prime targets for the local imam or leader who encouraged them to kill themselves, a few Jews -- and end up in heaven.

And if they fail in their mission and end up in prison, they will receive a stipend from the Palestinian Authority and their families will be honored as a family of heroes. It is a whole society built around a hatred of Jews. It is not by accident that they become terrorists.

Have you seen any differences in the motivation among different terrorist groups?

No. Hamas made a big mistake. Most of the massacres on October 7th were committed not by Hamas people but by Gazan civilians they allowed to follow them in. Hamas had orders to commit a certain number of crimes, tortures, and kidnappings, but they were followed by over a thousand civilians from Gaza who were more than happy to torture, set people on fire, kill them, and call their families. Hamas did not expect them to then film themselves because they were so proud of themselves. Those videos are now all over social media.

In the past, Hamas always had the same strategy. They would attack Israel, Israel would retaliate, and then Hamas would hide behind civilians and use them as human shields. When Israel would then bomb Gaza, Hamas would show pictures that the media, especially the left-wing media, would be only too happy to publish. They would call the Israelis "murderers" and everyone would be on Hamas's side.

This time, the Hamas atrocities can be found all around the Internet, and they cannot lie about it anymore. They thought things would turn out the same way as in 2014, that Israel would retaliate, followed by another ceasefire and demands that Israel stop.

This time it is not going to work. Also, they thought with Israel's anti-government protests, left-wing vs right-wing, people protesting in the streets against judicial reform, religious vs non-religious, and everyone fighting against each other -- that Israel was divided and weak. But on October 8th, Israel woke up. It is not going to give up on getting back the hostages and it is not going to give up on getting rid of Hamas. No matter the cost.

Why is it that this time around, with all the brutal murders, there are still sympathizers with the Palestinian terrorists?

Lenin had a phrase for people like this: useful idiots. Those brainwashed kids know nothing about history, like the kids in the 1970s who followed Che Guevera and Castro because it was so cool to be against capitalism. Today, the new hero is the Hamas terrorist who continues to attack Israel after all the Arab armies were unable to defeat it, so Palestine became a big symbol. You also have the communists, whose goal is to destroy capitalism and the West. Remember, the Palestinian cause was invented by Yasir Arafat in 1964 with the help of the KGB. Arafat wanted to pull the Arab countries together against Israel. The Soviet Union allied with the Arab countries because they opposed the US. Another factor in the creation of the Palestinian people is that between WWI and WWII you had the Grand Mufti who tried to inspire the Arabs with a sense of nationalism against a Jewish state.

The history of pre-Israel Palestine, especially the developments between WWI and WWII is complicated. How can you explain that to a kid 20 years old, when you can just give him a Palestinian flag and tell him to go with his friends in the street and sing "Palestine Will Be Free!"

Meanwhile, antisemitism is back big time. I would say we are back to where we were in 1938, having another Chamberlain trying to make peace with Hitler, the same way that Obama tried to make peace with Iran. Iran was aware of what Hamas was going to do. In fact, Hamas was originally supposed to attack on Passover. Iran asked them to hold on and wait because they were in the middle of a deal with Biden who was going to give them six billion dollars. Iran wanted to get the money first, and then Hamas could go ahead and attack Israel. Not all of the details are clear.

Iran and Hamas did not anticipate that Biden would send the USS Gerald Ford and USS Eisenhower to the Middle East to protect Israel. If the Gazan civilians had not been filming all those atrocities, maybe Biden would not have felt forced to act so strongly on the side of Israel. Any human being, whether you are on the left or the right, Democrat or Republican, would have to be a soulless person to not be shocked or disgusted by what happened.

Besides being known for their terrorism, Hamas is also known for its propaganda. Do you think that Hamas has been as successful in its propaganda as it has been in the past?

No. A lot of people woke up, especially the Jewish community in general and the Jewish community in America in particular. Even someone like Bernie Sanders said there should not be a ceasefire. How shocked must he have been to realize at a certain point that this was not the Palestine he was dreaming of, to realize that here was a Nazi type of organization, with the goal to conquer the Western world -- but with Israel in the way, they cannot go ahead with the rest of the plan.

As far as the pogroms of the Jews are concerned, in the Muslim world you had Morocco in 1907 when sixty-five Jews were murdered in the same way. There was Hebron in 1929, when the Grand Mufti Hussein claimed Jews wanted to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. There was the Farhud in Iraq in 1941. But it was not just Jews. Look at Yasir Arafat, the PLO and Fatah. When they were in Lebanon, they completely destroyed the Christian city of Damour in 1976, a few weeks before Sabra and Shatila.

You have said that to interview Hamas terrorists in Israeli prisons, you need the permission of Hamas as well as of Israel. Why would Hamas give permission to speak to Hamas terrorists in prison?

First, there is the propaganda value of the interview. Also, for the terrorists, having a reporter with a movie team, a translator, a soundtaker, and a cameraman -- it's kind of fun in the middle of the boredom.

Remember, they think differently than a Westerner. They took pictures of themselves committing massacres. Even the Nazis did not do that; they tried to hide everything they did. These terrorists did not try to hide; they posted what they did on social networks. They are proud of what they did and believe they are right. They want to convince me. My only goal was to expose them and try to understand them on a personal level.

Do you think this time Hamas will again get a ceasefire?

This time will be totally different. If the government of Israel stops or allows a ceasefire without getting rid of Hamas and getting back the hostages, the people of Israel will hang Bibi. Nobody in Israel wants a ceasefire. Everyone in Israel wants to go all the way. The leader of Israel has to do what the people want. It is a trauma beyond anything that anyone in the world can fathom at this point. It is a repetition of the Shoah. It is in our DNA. We will not forget what happened in the Holocaust. We will not forget the pogroms in Russia and Poland. We will not forget the Inquisition, the Crusades and the Warsaw Ghetto. This time it is one time too much. There is a big difference.

This time our enemies are dealing with a country with a very powerful army.

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!

11/09 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The truth is Israel’s narrative; Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes; How Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas

From Ian:

The Dogs of War

This is what spoiled Westerners, comfortable in their liberal redoubts, don’t understand. At the violent fringes of the liberal order, showy social justice crusades and appeals to universalist notions of democracy aren’t a priority: Survival and the maintenance of civilization are. A society in which statements like “words are violence” are taken seriously is no longer capable of comprehending a blood-soaked child’s bed, much less the mentality of the man who shouldered a rifle, pointed it at the face of a terrorized child, and smiled as he pulled the trigger.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, recently announced it was organizing a team to assassinate every Hamas terrorist involved with the Black Saturday attacks. Given Hamas’ penchant for livestreaming their atrocities, they’ll have lots of information to go on. “As your sword has bereaved women, So shall your mother be bereaved among women,” said Samuel to the king of the Amalekites before slaying him. And there will be many bereaved mothers of Hamas terrorists soon.

This is a repeat of the legendary Operation Wrath of God, when the Mossad systematically assassinated nearly all the terrorists involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, a process which took years. The Hollywood version of the Wrath of God story, the very watchable Munich from Steven Spielberg, ends with an interesting Socratic dialogue between the leader of the assassination team, Avner (played by a moody Eric Bana), and his Mossad handler (played by a phlegmatic Geoffrey Rush). With a computer-generated 1970s-era World Trade Center as symbolic backdrop (the movie is from 2005), the two men debate whether the violent saga of their operation was worth it.

The disillusioned Avner: “Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed will be replaced by worse.”

To which the Mossad man drily replies: “Why cut my finger nails? They’ll grow back.”

That world-weary acceptance of the endless nail-cutting required to keep the Zionist project going was the tone I heard from most Israelis when I asked how this would all end. Nobody had any idea, but right now the only goal was the elimination of Hamas. “The Lord will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” says Exodus, and every Israeli generation has had to make war against some existential threat or another.

A Gaza whose biggest export is violence now faces off against an Israel which made the desert bloom into an economy as prosperous as Germany’s. A military that uses civilians to shield its soldiers will now fight against one that deploys its military to protect its civilians. All the men ululating “Allahu akbar!” in those videos, who thought themselves so brave and heroic for their butchery of unarmed Jewish women and children (Father be proud of me!) will now confront in violent combat the well-armed fathers, husbands, and sons of those same victims.

In a rousing speech to the Israeli army amassed on Gaza’s northern fringe, General Yaron Finkelman addressed the troops about to battle Hamas:

“My brothers in arms, the residents of Be’eri, Sderot, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, and the West Negev Communities, and alongside them all the people of Israel, are all looking at us now … we have one goal: Victory.”

Let the Americans and Europeans project their neuroses and have their Twitter fights over posters. For them, this conflict is little different than a football match: something two sides witness on the sidelines with signs and slogans, shouting pointless abuse at each other. In Israel, the war is very real, and its goal is best expressed by another Jewish military commander, this time Moses in Deuteronomy:

“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Richard Goldberg: Stop the UN from enabling Hamas war crimes

UNRWA today is a welfare agency that brands its Palestinian population as "refugees" for political purposes. First of all, it keeps the donations flowing in from Western governments. The more pernicious effect of this delusion is it nourishes Palestinian hopes that one day the state of Israel will be destroyed, and millions of people will take over Jewish homes.

In Gaza, UNRWA subsidizes Hamas by delivering basic services instead of the government – enabling Hamas to spend more money on terrorism instead. Meanwhile, UNRWA schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with virulent antisemitism – the kind of hatred that fueled the Oct. 7 massacre.

UNRWA staff, contractors and beneficiaries are, by design, not subject to U.S. counterterrorism vetting – because to conduct such vetting would reveal the extent to which U.N. money flows into Hamas coffers.

That Hamas would establish a base of terror operations inside one of UNRWA's so-called refugee camps is nothing new.

In Gaza, Hamas has used UNRWA schools to launch rockets and build tunnels. In the West Bank, UNRWA's Jenin "refugee camp" has been a hotbed of terrorism. In Lebanon, UNRWA's Ain al Hilweh "refugee camp" is the center of a months-long battle between competing terrorist groups.

Put simply, UNRWA is an institutionalized international welfare system for terrorism. In 2021, UNRWA’s Gaza chief dared to confirm that the Israeli military acted ethically and responsibly. He was removed from his post shortly after due to Hamas protests.

Where does that leave U.S. policy as the Hamas-UNRWA propaganda machine provides cover for military assets and educates children to commit genocide while accusing Israel of war crimes?

President Biden unconditionally resumed funding UNRWA after President Trump cut it in 2018. Congress can defend the integrity of taxpayer dollars and avoid subsidizing Hamas war crimes by halting aid to UNRWA until it complies with three basic requirements.

First, UNRWA employees, contractors and beneficiaries must be subject to terror checks. Members of Hamas – a U.S. designated terror organization – should be precluded from employment by a U.S. funded agency.

Second, UNRWA must complete an immediate overhaul of its educational material to remove antisemitism and incitement against Israel and instead include a U.S.-supervised curriculum that promotes tolerance.

Finally, and most importantly, UNRWA must cease its policy of attributing the word "refugee" to Palestinians born after 1949. While those individuals may still be entitled to receive goods and services from a welfare agency, it must not continue to raise children with a quest to destroy Israel.

If UNRWA fails to make these critical reforms it will continue to fuel the bloody conflict though cultivating new generations of Hamas terrorists and sympathizers, sponsored by U.S. tax dollars.

Int'l law expert: Why is the UN anti-Israel? Antisemitism, it's always been antisemitism

When asked where this anti-Israel bias at the UN comes from, Bayefsky declared that "it's simply antisemitism. It's always been antisemitism."

"Since 1947-48, it's been a single-handed effort to eradicate the Jewish State. And the question is, really for Israelis and for Americans and for others, to what extent are we going to continue to allow the UN to be the leverage, the political hammer to destroy the State of Israel and the Jewish State? I worry, honestly, that the United States is making a very dangerous calculation. The UN General Assembly adopted an incredible resolution, an emergency special session. Everybody is there. And what do they do? They don't condemn Hamas and they don't say Israel has the right of self-defense. And what happened to that resolution? The Germans abstained, the French voted for it with Iran."

"The UN has become a terror enabler," she declared, saying that the US "is trying to figure out, just how much are we going to allow Israel to try to win this war? At what point are we going to say, 'well the UN Security Council made me do it,' as President Obama did at the end of his term in office? I worry that without a very considerable unified, or if not unified, a vast majority of Americans need to stand up and to reject the obscene moral equivalence and the use of the United Nations to somehow carry on with its 75-year war to destroy the State of Israel."

Bayefsky dismissed the attitude expressed by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who famously declared "Um-Shmum" in dismissal of the UN's constant condemnations of Israel as meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

"It's been a terrible mistake for decades. I still get "Um-Shmum," I still get, 'well, ok, but you know how much of it is really antisemitism. There's a larger war, there's a context.' That's the UN game. 'There's a context.' The context is the effort, not even the effort, the actual killing of Jews in the here and now, the refusal to recognize what antisemitism looks like. And antisemitism is the global effort by people like Navi Pillay and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to put atrocities against Jews, the effort to have a one-state solution - which i genocide against the Jewish people - and to put it into some kind of fake 'context,' to deny the reality of what we see on the ground, to lie about what international law entails.

"For us to somehow diminish the extraordinary ramifications and ability of the UN to pervert our moral compass, is a terrible mistake. And all you have to do is look at the Germans abstaining on a UN resolution which didn't say Israel has a right of self-defense or condemn Hamas and the French voting for Iran, and the United States now playing around at the Security Council to see how far they can push it to try to impose a so-called 'humanitarian pause.'

"Where's the humanity in pausing for one second the effort to release every single hostage," she asked.

Despite the antisemitism at the UN, Prof. Bayefsky said that she is not ready to "give up" on Western nations who have abstained or voted in favor of recent anti-Israel resolutions that failed to condemn Hamas, including the UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

"The center of the ability of Israel to fight back is happening in Washington and New York. The Americans have to make it very crystal clear to this government that the UN has no moral compass, that it doesn't speak for the majority of Americans, that it is an obscenity for it to be paid for largely by Americans, and that we have to hold out against this global progrom, which is what it is. It's on the ground, and it's at the United Nations," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.

Seriously @washingtonpost?

You had it right the first time.

But taking it down is just an act of utter cowardice and acquiescence to these Hamas jihadist terrorists! pic.twitter.com/w6K7ing1t7
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2023

Intelligent.com did a survey of 609 current college students across the US about the Gaza war.

Taken at the end of October, the survey found that 22% of students sympathize with Hamas.

Not Gazans, not Palestinian civilians - Hamas.

More than one in five college students sympathize with an explicitly genocidal terror group that openly slaughtered, raped, burned, kidnapped and injured thousands of Jews.

We have a big problem on American campuses. Supporting Hamas is as morally reprehensible as supporting Nazis. Both have openly genocidal agendas for all Jews. This is a massive failure of our educational system, of parents, and of the media.

Speaking of, a vast majority of these students - 86% - get their news about the conflict from social media, far more than from news articles (68%). While about 75% consider themselves as least somewhat knowledgeable about the conflict, only 6% have ever read a book about it.

This is part of the problem. They are learning about the conflict from TikTok..

The poll also indicated that a huge majority of Jewish college students feel less safe on campus since the October 7 massacre, while nearly all Muslim college students felt just as safe as beforehand. While the sample sizes were small, 14 out of 18 Jewish students surveyed felt less safe on campus, while only one out of 14 Muslim students felt that way.

Perhaps the Jews feel less safe because they know that in any random classroom of 30 students, an average of 6 of their classmates have sympathy for a group that wants to see every Jew worldwide murdered.

-------

The survey was conducted by Pollfish using an interesting methodology that should be very accurate for college students (I don't think it would be accurate for older people.)

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!

Hamas pretends it is destroying tanks - but is really showing Israel's TROPHY repelling their anti-tank missiles

Hamas has published lots of dramatic videos showing them shoot at Israeli tanks and dramatic explosions that result, which they then claim destroyed the tanks and killed the soldiers inside.

Here's a Hamas video gleefully published by Al Jazeera earlier this week claiming to prove they have destroyed six tanks.

Here are two frames from that video that show a dramatic explosion seemingly on the tank:

The blast is not the missile hitting the tank, but the TROPHY system, built by Rafael, which shoots projectiles that exploding the anti-tank missile shortly before it can hit the tank itself, dissipating the explosion so it cannot penetrate the tanks' hull.

Here's how it works:

TROPHY is deployed on Israeli Abrams, Leopard, Challenger, Merkava and Namer.tanks and armored vehicles:

The IDF has confirmed that the TROPHY system has been effective. "We encountered dozens of anti-tank missiles launched at our forces, and in each case, we managed to avoid damage due to the good systems we have," Lt. Col. Itzik Cohen, commander of the 162nd division, told a press briefing.

And how do we know Hamas and Al Jazeera are lying?

They never show the "destroyed" or damaged tanks after the explosion. Because the tanks keep going, without any problems.

And in some cases, they fire back within seconds to the source of the missile.

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 publishes lots of their classic antisemitic fairy tales

Today I am seeing the most prevalent daily antisemitism I've ever seen in Arab media.

Examples from the past 24 hours:

Asil TV (Shiite): "The Zionist Temple does not exist in the Jewish holy books"

Masr Times (Egypt:) "Details of Israel's plan to control the Middle East"

Arabic Post: a romanticizing of the deadly 1929 pogroms (the closest analogy to October 7) as the "Buraq Revolution," claiming Jews planned to destroy the Kotel and Temple Mount

Al Shorouk (Algeria): The bogus "Franklin Prophecy" where Benjamin Franklin is claimed to wan to rid America of Jews

Al Masdar Online (Yemen): All Biden's advisers are either Jewish or Zionist.

El Aosboa (Egypt) quotes academic fraud Shlomo Sand that the concept of the "Jewish people" was invented in the late 19th century. (For fun, I did a search for the term; here it is in a book from 1650. Also there were Psalms-based church songs using the term from at least 1677.)

There were at least two more articles about how Israelis are supposedly planting gharqad trees to protect themselves from Muslims, since those trees will not join the othe rtrees and stones directing Muslims to where Jews are hiding so they can be slaughtered.

One Palestinian site has an article calling for a "Palestinian Holocaust Museum" - meaning, a museum about how Jews are Nazis. Enough said.

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!

11/08 Links Pt2: Hamas Defenders Wield Words as Weapons; Make Qatar choose; Hamas uses ambulances to transfer weapons and terrorists; End DEI

From Ian:

Hamas Defenders Wield Words as Weapons

From the streets of American and European cities, television studios, newspaper columns and legislatures, we are being bombarded with rhetoric that seeks to persuade us not to believe what we see, to convince us that right is wrong, justice is tyranny, terrorism is heroism. All kinds of cunning efforts have been used to get us to see that the country whose citizens were wantonly slaughtered on Oct. 7 by an enemy that has sworn to wipe it from the planet is in fact the wicked oppressor.

"Cease-fire" sounds straightforwardly decent. But we know it would mean victory for Hamas. It would mean that the terrorist group should be allowed to continue to run a statelet only a few weeks after it has made good on its commitment to attack its neighbor and done so with complete disregard for international law or common decency.

There is something especially malignant about the term "genocide" to describe Israel's operation in Gaza - and those propagating it know that full well. They use it deliberately to equate what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis with a military action today that is justified in self-defense. If you can suggest that what Israel is doing in Gaza is equivalent to what happened in the gas chambers, then you are explicitly reducing the Holocaust to the level of a regrettable byproduct of a legitimate military campaign.

"Decolonization." The idea that Israel is a colonist settlement on Arab soil is such ahistorical nonsense that we can understand why it could be tolerated only on the campuses of our most prestigious universities.

Clifford D. May: Make Qatar choose

The war launched by Hamas has put the lives of Gazans in jeopardy. Israelis have dropped more than a million pamphlets and made more than 6 million phone calls advising Gazans uninterested in killing or dying to head south, away from Hama' "center of gravity" in the northern section of the coastal enclave.

Hamas prefers they stay and die. We are "proud to sacrifice martyrs," Mr. Hamad told the Lebanese TV interviewer. The use of human shields is a serious crime under international law (a Western concept). The Biden administration, which has steadfastly supported Israel's right to self-defense, has begun pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare temporary ceasefires. Mr. Netanyahu has said there will be no cessation of military operations "that does not include the release of our hostages."

Among the hostages surviving (we hope) in Hamas' tunnels are infants and toddlers. And how exactly would a "humanitarian pause" work? Would Israeli troops in Gaza do crossword puzzles while keeping an eye out for terrorists popping out of holes to shoot them?

To further assist Gazan non-combatants' exodus from the north, Israeli forces last Saturday opened a humanitarian corridor. Hamas attacked the Israelis with mortars and anti-tank missiles and shot Gazans attempting to utilize the corridor. They then, of course, blamed the carnage on the Israelis.

The more Gazan ground Israelis manage to clear, the more safe spaces there will be for noncombatants, and the more aid that can be supplied. Already, about 100 truckloads are arriving daily. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Israelis have been displaced from communities near the Gaza and Lebanon borders – the biggest internal displacement in Israel's history.

Northern Israel has been under sporadic attack from Lebanese Hezbollah, Tehran's foreign legion. For now, at least, Hezbollah appears reluctant to open a full-fledged second front. I have a modest suggestion. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh lives, quite comfortably, in Qatar. American officials should ask Qatar's leaders to choose: Are you with us or against us?

If they are with us, they need to give Mr. Haniyah, an ultimatum: You have one week to get the hostages back from your Hamas friends.

Should that not happen, the US would revoke Qatar's status as a "major non-NATO ally" and designate Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism. For Mr. Haniyeh, too, there must be consequences. Of course, Hamas' surrender would save more lives more quickly. But I'm reminded of an old aphorism: "If you teach a cannibal to eat with a knife and fork, that's progress."

And Western civ could use a little progress right now.

Bari Weiss: End DEI

We have been seeing for several years now the damage this ideology has done: DEI, and its cadres of enforcers, undermine the central missions of the institutions that adopt it. But nothing has made the dangers of DEI more clear than what’s happening these days on our college campuses—the places where our future leaders are nurtured.

It is there that professors are compelled to pledge fidelity to DEI in order to get hired, promoted, or tenured. (For more on this, please read John Sailer’s Free Press piece: "How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities.”) And it is there that the hideousness of this worldview has been on full display over the past few weeks: We see students and professors, immersed not in facts, knowledge, and history, but in a dehumanizing ideology that has led them to celebrate or justify terrorism.

Jews, who understand that being made in the image of God bestows inviolate sanctity on every human life, must not stand by as that principle, so central to the promise of this country and its hard won freedoms, is erased.

For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity.

What we must do is reverse this.

The answer is not for the Jewish community to plead its cause before the intersectional coalition, or beg for a higher ranking in the new ladder of victimhood. That is a losing strategy—not just for Jewish dignity, but for the values we hold as Jews and as Americans.

The Jewish commitment to justice—and the American Jewish community’s powerful and historic opposition to racism—is a source of tremendous pride. That should never waver. Nor should our commitment to stand by our friends, especially when they need our support as we now need theirs.

But “DEI” is not about the words it uses as camouflage. DEI is about arrogating power.

And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism. It does not believe that America is a good country—at least no better than China or Iran. It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress; it is explicitly anti-growth. It claims to promote “equity,” but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.

An ideology that pathologizes these fundamental human virtues is one that seeks to undermine what makes America exceptional.

It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.

The Jewish people have outlived every single regime and ideology that has sought our elimination. We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands—including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.

Aviva Klompas: Things We Would Like to See Palestine Free From

We want to see Palestinians free from their other Arab "allies" as well. Allies like Egypt who have barely opened their border with Gaza for aid, let alone commerce. Allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan have no interest in taking in Palestinian refugees and close their borders to them. Allies like Turkey and Qatar who empower Hamas' reign of terror in Gaza by harboring their leaders. With allies like these, who needs enemies?

We want to see Palestinians free from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the most dysfunctional relief organization in the world. A slouching, bloated bureaucracy, UNRWA's senior leadership has been mired in scandal for years, including charges of nepotism, corruption, and sexual misconduct. They have a billion-dollar budget and yet Palestinians remain trapped in an endless cycle of destitution. UNRWA does not work, and it does not serve the Palestinian people.

Finally, we'd like to see Palestinians free from Western academic orthodoxy, the adherents of which naively chant, "from the river to the sea," but who have no meaningful understanding of the history, politics or culture of the middle east. Their virtue signaling is an act of violence because it legitimates those who wield authoritarian violence over Gaza. Their patronizing ideology requires Palestinians to remain forever impoverished, forever victims without agency — rather than a people with a future.

We are unapologetically Zionist, believing that the state of Israel embodies the promise of a homeland free from persecution for the Jewish people. We also want to see Palestinians prosper as a people. This requires Palestinian leadership that is willing to compromise and recognize a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Arab intransigence is not a starting point. Neither is Palestinian terrorism.

And that means ensuring that a future state of Palestine is free of Hamas, free from the corruption of Fatah, from the dysfunction of UNRWA, from the cynical exploitation of so-called allies, and from the idiocy of academia.

From there, we can do more than hope and pray for peace: we can realize it. From the river to the sea.

From the River to the Sea? Arab Citizens of Israel Say, No Thanks to ‘Liberation’

Palestinians and their allies have justified and even celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel as a blow against Jewish oppression. But the 2 million Arab citizens of Israel have overwhelmingly responded by drawing closer to the Jewish state.

Among Arab Israelis, prominent media personalities have helped lead an unprecedented surge in support for their country and opposition to their self-proclaimed liberator Hamas. Pro-Israel arguments that were previously almost unspeakable in the Arab mainstream have in recent weeks gotten a respectful hearing.

Yoseph Haddad, a 38-year-old Christian Arab influencer, has skyrocketed to fame in Israel with his outspoken advocacy for the country in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Haddad told CNN on Oct. 22 that Hamas’s attack was a wakeup call for the Arabs who constitute about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

"We literally felt that Hamas could have conquered the south and then the center and also the north of Israel, where the majority of Arab Israelis are staying, and we had a very bad feeling about it," said Haddad, who has more than 1.5 million followers across social media. "Immediately my friends and colleagues here said, ‘That’s the last thing that we want. We don’t want to live under a terrorist organization. We want to live in a democracy, and that’s what the state of Israel is.’"

In this way, at least, Hamas’ barbarity on Oct. 7—killing and abducting hundreds of civilians, including dozens of Arab Israelis—has strengthened Israel and weakened those who accuse the country of apartheid or genocide.

"It’s astonishing that around the world, some prominent Jews have condemned Israel for its self-defensive reaction to terrorism," Nimrod Nir, a social scientist and pollster at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Washington Free Beacon. "But here in Israel, the vast majority of Arab citizens legitimize the country’s response."

Haddad noted that a number of Bedouin Israelis heroically saved Jews on Oct. 7. He said many Arabs agree with his advocacy for social integration but have been silenced by the types of extremists who constantly threaten him and his family. However, the "silent voice" of Arab society has grown louder since Hamas’s attack, he said.

Lucy Aharish, 42, Israel’s first Arab mainstream news anchor, endorsed the country’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in an Oct. 13 "message to the world."

"Our beloved country is under attack … [from] a brutal, barbaric, inhumane terror organization," Aharish said in English from her seat on Reshet 13 news. "Don’t be mistaken. We experience difficulties, disagreements, and major disputes, like any other country on this globe. But it does not mean that we will not protect ourselves and our children, our homeland."

"As a Muslim, this is not Islam—what Hamas is doing in the name of religion—this is not being a Muslim," she told CNN days later. "This is being a monster."