Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Human Rights Watch makes up another new (and impossible) international law - just for Israel

The Times of London reports on the IDF's entrance to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. It says:

Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, told the international development committee in Westminster that even if Israel’s claim that Hamas was using civilians in hospitals and schools as human shields was true, the burden was on the “attacking party” to evacuate them.

That is absurd. International law does not say this anywhere.

The ICRC IHL Rule 28 says:

Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.

State practice establishes the exception under customary international law that the protection of medical units ceases when they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. This exception is provided for in the First and Fourth Geneva Conventions and in both Additional Protocols.[37] It is contained in numerous military manuals and military orders.[38] It is also supported by other practice.[39]...

...It is further specified in State practice that prior to an attack against a medical unit which is being used to commit acts harmful to the enemy, a warning has to be issued setting, whenever appropriate, a reasonable time-limit and that an attack can only take place after such warning has remained unheeded.[42] These procedural requirements are also laid down in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols.[43]

Logic dictates that it is obviously the responsibility of the party that violated IHL to remediate it.

In fact, according to IHL, a hospital is either a medical unit or it is a military target. As soon as it loses its protection as a medical unit it can be attacked. Patients must be protected as much as possible under the principle of proportionality as with any other human shields, but the hospital itself loses its status as a protected site. Israel is going way above and beyond this law, by saying that it is only targeting specific parts of the hospital and allowing most of it to remain functioning. Israel is even providing medical equipment.

This is probably unprecedented in military history.

Yet "human rights groups" have a much higher principle of international law they adhere to, an unwritten Rule 162: whatever Israel does is illegal by definition, and if they cannot find what Israel is doing wrong, they will fabricate something.

Here is yet another example of "international law" that has been made up out of thin air just for Israel.

Ahmed cemented her own status as a liar when she added:

“We know all roads out of Shifa are blocked,” she said. “There is no way for people to leave.”

Yet thousands of people who were sheltering at Shifa did leave over the past couple of days using evacuation corridors set up by Israel, after more than adequate Israeli warnings for weeks.

HRW lies about Israel. Consistently, knowingly and maliciously.

(h/t Adam Levick)

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!

I've been seeing a bunch of articles in Arabic about how the Quran predicted the defeat of the Jews and are trying to shoehorn it into what is happening in Gaza today.

They all seem to quote Quran chapter 17, verses 4-8:

4. And We conveyed to the Children of Israel in the Scripture: You will commit evil on earth twice, and you will rise to a great height.

5. When the first of the two promises came true, We sent against you servants of Ours, possessing great might, and they ransacked your homes. It was a promise fulfilled.

6. Then We gave you back your turn against them, and supplied you with wealth and children, and made you more numerous.

7. If you work righteousness, you work righteousness for yourselves; and if you commit evil, you do so against yourselves. Then, when the second promise comes true, they will make your faces filled with sorrow, and enter the Temple as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy all that falls into their power.

8. Perhaps your Lord will have mercy on you. But if you revert, We will revert. We have made Hell a prison for the disbelievers.

As this article on Gulf365 says:

Most scholars believed that the first corruption of the Children of Israel passed and ended a long time ago, and that the second corruption is what we are experiencing now with the Zionist occupation of the lands of Palestine and the corruption and destruction of the crops and offspring associated with it, and that the Muslims are the ones who will disgrace the faces of the Jews, and will enter Al-Aqsa Mosque as they entered it the first time.

Most scholars held that the second corruption of the Children of Israel is the Jews’ current occupation of the land of Palestine and their corruption therein, and Sheikh Metwally Al-Shaarawi followed this opinion in his interpretation, as he affirmed that the second corruption of the Children of Israel is “what we are dealing with now, where the Jews will gather in one homeland to fulfill the promise so Allah may eliminate them... This is what is meant by the Almighty’s saying: “When the promise of the Hereafter comes, We will bring you in a group” [Al-Isra: 104], meaning: gathering some of you together from various countries, and this is what is happening now on the land of Palestine.

I don't pretend to be a Quranic scholar, but the verse clearly refers to the Temple - even though the Arabic word is Masjid, it clearly refers to the Jewish Temple because that symbolized the Jewish people's first defeat. And this is the chapter of the Quran that refers to Mohammed's "night journey" allegedly to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, so both the Quran and the modern scholars quoted clearly consider the mosque on the Temple Mount to be the same as the Jewish Temple - which Palestinians strenuously deny.

Nice to know that they know the truth about who really was in Jerusalem first.

(It may be worth researching further the apparent use of plural to refer to Allah in these verses. Maybe Islam isn't as monotheistic as is claimed. But that is a separate issue.)

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!

11/14 Links Pt2: The Moral Clarity of a Just War; Greta and Gen Z’s irrational hatred for Israel; Levin: The New York Times has blood on its hands

From Ian:

The Moral Clarity of a Just War

We are at one of those defining moments in Jewish history when we find ourselves at a moral disconnect with much of the international community.

A mere month later, the memory of Oct. 7 has faded, absorbed into the "cycle of violence."

No, we patiently explain, the massacre was not in response to anything Israel does but to what Israel is.

And yes, the suffering of innocent Gazans deserves the world's urgent humanitarian attention, but not at the expense of moral clarity about the justness of this war.

But increasingly, we sense that we are talking to ourselves. The West doesn't understand the language we are speaking.

We watch the mass marches against Israel with astonishment. What may well be the most horrific massacre of our time has resulted in the unprecedented popularity of the Palestinian cause.

But with the Hamas massacre, we agree that those who did that to the Jewish people must not be allowed to claim victory.

To leave a genocidal regime on our border would be a betrayal of the founding ethos of Israel as a safe refuge for the Jewish people.

We know that the longer the fighting in Gaza lasts, even our friends will begin to pressure us to relent. We must resist that pressure and not fear the consequences.

What if Palestinians don't want peace?

A thought has been worming its way uncomfortably through my mind since Oct. 7. What if peace is impossible? What if there is literally no way to reach a lasting accord? What if one side will settle for nothing less than the destruction of the other?

My doubts began in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity as I watched the reaction of some Palestinians and some of their sympathizers, not least in the West. On that dreadful Saturday evening, there had as yet been no Israeli response. Protesters did not have the (perfectly reasonable) argument that the participants in later demonstrations had, namely that they were defending human rights in Gaza. No, this was exultation in the murder of Israelis, pure and simple.

C.S. Lewis remarked that when the lights are flicked on suddenly, we see where the rats are hiding, and we saw them on Oct. 7. The Hamas volunteers boasting about rape and murder. The leftist academics queuing up to tell us that decolonization was not a metaphor. The delirious crowds celebrating the “resistance.”

These people were not demanding a two-state solution or calling for a different line on the map (the kibbutzim where the horrors took place were not settlements). They must have known, on some level, that the attacks would ensure a terrible retaliation. Yet they did not care as long as a blow had been struck against Israel. As one British-Arab TV reporter put it: “Nothing will ever be able to take back this moment, this moment of triumph, this moment of resistance, this moment of surprise, this moment of humiliation on behalf of the Zionist entity — nothing ever.”

Israelis have heard such talk before. Indeed, in one sense, the history of their country has been a series of struggles against neighbors who would rather fight than share. Since the 1937 Peel Commission, various plans have been put forward providing for partition. All of them have been rejected by Palestinians, who were happier to risk losing everything in a war than to accept the existence of a Jewish state.

In 1948 and again in 1967, coalitions of Arab armies attacked Israel with the declared purpose of annihilating it. “Our basic objective will be to destroy Israel,” Col. Nasser told a cheering crowd just before the Six-Day War started.

The calamities that have befallen the Palestinians stem from defeat in those two wars. Occupation, humiliation, hunger, emigration, and the failure, unique in the story of refugees, to be allowed to become citizens of many of their new lands (in marked contrast to 700,000-odd Jews who fled from Arab nations and who immediately became Israelis).

As the decades passed, and Israel’s existence no longer looked contingent, there was a hope that Palestinians might accept what their grandfathers had rejected, namely a division of the land. From 1993, the Palestinian territories began to acquire the attributes of statehood: a president, a parliament, a passport, postal stamps, police officers. Full sovereignty was due to follow, with land swaps giving the Palestinian Authority control over roughly the same territory as pre-1967, East Jerusalem as a capital, and the evacuation of many Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Instead, in 2000, Palestinian leaders rejected the deal and declared the second intifada (uprising).

Jonathan Schachter: Antisemitism on the left demands of Biden another Charlottesville moment

The first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism opens with a letter from President Biden. In its first paragraph, he explains that the 2017 antisemitic rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, spurred him to run. He points to the torch-bearing marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and the rest of their hateful ideas, as a threat to American democracy.

Now, in cities and on campuses across the United States — and even at the gates of the White House — different marchers are chanting impassioned, if sometimes encoded, calls for the mass murder of Jews. Biden’s moral stance on Hamas’ crimes and Israel’s obligation to defend itself has been forthright, unambiguous and deeply appreciated. But he has yet to speak out against Hamas’ unrepentant supporters here in America.

The protestors demand “intifada,” the most recent iteration of which was a campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings that left over 1,000 Israelis dead and another 8,500 injured. They cry, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a core principle of Hamas’ antisemitic, genocidal doctrine that mirrors Charlottesville with an unmistakably ominous message: We will replace Jews.

Biden’s silence about these fanatical domestic demonstrators (always described as pro-Palestinian) appears to reflect a disturbingly persistent blind spot in the administration’s understanding of antisemitism.

In the president’s introductory letter to the antisemitism strategy, he argues that antisemites “also target other communities,” and lists several examples of minorities hated by white supremacists. But meanwhile, social media platforms are teeming with documented antisemitic acts carried out by members of those very same groups.

It is impossible to understand the current moment through a lens that sees antisemitism as an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. About the antisemitism of Americans primarily motivated by left-wing, Islamist or Palestinian nationalist ideologies, Biden’s strategy and his administration have little to say.

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 Race Card: Don't Leave Home Without It! (Daled Amos)

Last week, the Washington Post published Michael Ramirez's cartoon in its newspaper:

Ramirez succinctly captured the fact that Hamas exploits human shields, protecting terrorists and their weapons while putting Gazan civilians at risk. The cartoon was well done, but it did not reveal anything new to people paying attention to the news.

But the fact that Ramirez was accurate and on-target offended some people. A typical reaction from readers was:

The caricatures employ racial stereotypes that were offensive and disturbing. Depicting Arabs with exaggerated features and portraying women in derogatory, stereotypical roles perpetuates racism and gender bias, which is wholly unacceptable.

Racist? Was Ramirez's point to make fun of Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad's physical appearance?

In fact, Ramirez provided Fox News Digital with examples of other renderings he's done for his cartoons:

Is that reader unaware that a caricature's "exaggerated features" are a cartoonist's bread and butter? And what "stereotypical" and "derogatory" role is the reader accusing Ramirez of pigeonholing women into -- human shield? Seems Hamas beat him to it.

Another reader, a self-described scholar of religion and media, claimed to recognize "a deeply racist depiction of the ‘heathen’ and his barbarous cruelty toward women and children" in the cartoon. But that was the whole idea: to point out the barbarity and cruelty of Hamas. Is this reader denying that Hamas uses human shields or that it massacred over 1,400 men, women and children and took over 240 civilians as hostage?

In the rush to play the race card, basic logic and common sense were abandoned, all in defense of personal agendas.

In response, the Washington Post dutifully removed the cartoon -- even though the Washington Post opinion editor David Shipley himself handpicked it out of the multiple choices that Ramirez gave him. His cartoons are published simultaneously in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which kept the cartoon.

Ramirez was not pleased with Shipley's decision:

“He knew that I wasn’t happy with it [the cartoon being yanked]… And he begged me not to quit,” Ramirez said. “And honestly, I thought about the consequences of that. If I quit, then the cancel culture people win because they basically exorcise the Washington Post of my cartoon, and I didn’t want to give them that luxury.” [emphasis added]

He indicated that he would respond to the incident, and he did:

Ramirez added a note, "When the intellectually indolent cannot defend the indefensible they pull out the race card."

But this is not the first time a newspaper has bowed to external pressure. Three years ago, The New York Post reported: New York Times changes headline following pressure from Democrats. When then-President Trump said he was considering deploying the military to put an end to riots in response to the death of George Floyd, the story's headline was posted to Twitter: “As Chaos Spreads, Trump Vows to ‘End It Now.'” There was an uproar on Twitter because the headline was not negative. They preferred the online version of the headline, "Police Clear Protesters With Tear Gas So Trump Can Pose by Church." When the late edition came out, it carried the headline, “Trump Threatens to Send Troops into States.” The mob dictated to the editor what kind of headline he could use.

These days, we are seeing another kind of disruption of speech. People are tearing down posters featuring the faces of the 240 Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas terrorists and dragged into Gaza. Some people find these posters offensive. They are "triggered" by them. When they were in college, they may have protested against speakers they did not like and tried to prevent them from speaking. Now, they tear down posters.

The "defense" offered by one such person below makes no more sense than the comments above by readers in defense of demanding the removal of a political cartoon that does not represent their opinion:

It is all about personal and group agendas and the need to disrupt the free speech of others with opposing views. After decades of seeing this on university campuses, we witness it now pouring out onto streets around the world.

But this is not based on logic or rights or free speech for all. It is all part of perpetuating one's own agenda. That explains the inconsistency we are seeing. As Jonah Goldberg puts it:

the idea that hurting someone’s feelings or not ratifying their grievances is a form of violence or bigotry. But now, according to their heads-we-win-tails-you-lose worldview, speech that they don’t like is literal violence, and literal violence that they do like is speech.

The rules of the game are not set in stone. They are being set by those who have the numbers online and in the streets. You do not necessarily have to be articulate. All you need is to repeat some chants and accuse anyone who stands in your way of being a racist.

Vandalizing property and tearing down posters get you extra points.

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!

11/14 Links Pt1: Hillary Clinton: Hamas Must Go; Nikki Haley: The West now faces a moral test; Violent Antisemitism Is the Language of the Privileged

From Ian:

Nikki Haley: DC March for Israel flags key truth The West now faces a moral test

For generations, when we in the West talked about the Holocaust, we boldly declared: “Never again.”

Now we must prove we meant it by helping Israel defeat those who would do it again.

America, Europe and every civilized nation must give Israel everything it needs to eliminate Hamas, which has promised to never rest in the slaughter of Jews.

There can be no cease-fire. Letting terrorists go guarantees they’ll perpetrate another Oct. 7 — or worse.

But victory on the battlefield is only part of the solution.

We must root out the moral cancer that has crept into our own society.

In its place, we must regain the strength that comes with clarity — specifically, we need clarity on the truth of our principles and the nature of the enemies who threaten us.

The future of Western civilization depends on us recognizing evil and confronting it with good.

This is why the United States must stand with Israel.

But Israel is not the only place in which civilization is challenged today.

In Iran, Russia and Communist China, we face an unholy alliance that gladly sacrifices innocent civilians for the sake of domination.

These regimes seek to destroy freedom and spread tyranny.

Their ultimate goal is to destroy America.

If we lack the courage to defend freedom or distinguish between good and evil, our enemies will win. First in their own backyard and eventually in ours.

We in the West face a great moral test. Whether we pass it will determine our civilization’s survival.

We can either unite once again around the timeless principles of human dignity and freedom or we can reject them in favor of passing fads and the pursuit of power, which paradoxically weakens us.

A look at college campuses suggests we are closer to making the wrong choice than at any point in the past century, yet there’s still time to remember who we are and what we stand for.

It will be on full display in Tuesday’s March for Israel.

For the United States, as the leader of the free world, must always stand for civilization over barbarism.

Israel will not bow to international pressure

The laws of war acknowledge that collateral damage is unavoidable in armed conflict. Indeed, according to UN statistics, the global average ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is a disturbing 9:1. In Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in May this year, the IDF achieved a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 0.6:1. Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields consistently seeks to undermine Israel’s unparalleled efforts in this regard.

The IDF goes further than any army in the history of warfare to protect civilian lives. By giving advance notice of its military targets, the IDF provides civilians (and, of course, the terrorists) with opportunities to evacuate, often at the expense of achieving military objectives. By contrast, Hamas has used roadblocks to prevent civilians from evacuating, cynically increasing casualties in an effort to pile international pressure on the nation to cease its self-defence. Awful footage from Gaza shows Hamas gunning down its own people as they evacuate southwards.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a lawful response to Hamas’s well-documented use of Humanitarian supplies to support its terrorist activities. Water pipes are used to build rockets, ambulances to transport terrorists, and fuel stolen from hospitals and UNRWA compounds supplies 300 miles of Hamas terror tunnels.

There is no requirement in international law for any state to supply its enemies with electricity. Hamas has claimed for three weeks that hospitals in Gaza are running out of fuel. Since the October 7 attacks, 10,000 rockets have been fired on Israeli civilians, powered by resources intended for Gaza’s civilians.

In accordance with international humanitarian law, Israel distinguishes between Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians. This is a distinction that, unsurprisingly, the Hamas-run Gaza “Health Ministry” does not make when it announces casualty figures. Their figures – if they are to be believed at all – likely include many legitimate military targets. They also include civilians killed by the hundreds of Palestinian rockets that have fallen short in Gaza, such as the one that hit the Al-Ahli hospital car park, which was initially, without any evidential basis, blamed on Israel.

Distinguishing between civilians and legitimate military targets in Gaza is no easy task. Some of the 18,000 Gazan “civilians” with permits to work in Israel collected valuable intelligence for the Hamas attack on October 7, down to whether or not families had dogs, and how many children were in each household. CCTV footage and eye-witness accounts indicate that, after the initial wave of terrorists, ordinary Gazan “civilians” descended on the ruined southern Israeli communities to kill, kidnap, loot, and vandalise.

International humanitarian law was developed after the Second World War to prevent Nazi atrocities from being committed ever again. These same laws are now being abused in an attempt to discredit Israel’s legitimate response and prevent the only Jewish state from ensuring “never again”.

We are seeing the same “lawfare” conducted against Israel that we have seen in every conflict it has endured with Gaza. But this time, there is a crucial difference –this time, Israel will not succumb to international pressure. This time, it will eliminate Hamas.

Richard Goldberg: Hamas commits war crimes in hospitals and mosques, but world says nothing

The Hamas supporters in the street blame Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza. But for those paying any attention, Hamas demonstrates every day that those civilians are dead because of Hamas, not Israel.

Rather than condemn Hamas for violating the laws of war, the World Health Organization’s director-general accused Israel of targeting hospitals in Gaza and called for an immediate cease-fire.

WHO has not condemned Hamas for using hospitals as human shields, basing its headquarters under Shifa or denying a hospital access to fuel. No outrage can be found over Hamas using ambulances to transport terrorists and weapons.

Like the rest of the United Nations, WHO does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization.

This is nothing new from WHO, a China-influenced agency that castigates Israel on an annual basis at its World Health Assembly. Now, with Syria and North Korea on its executive board, it is nothing more than a Hamas mouthpiece — albeit a mouthpiece funded generously by the United States taxpayer.

The IDF late Monday released video footage from inside a Hamas terror tunnel that ended in the basement of Gaza’s Rantisi hospital. Israel reportedly found diapers in the basement alongside rope used to hold Israeli hostages.

A baby bottle found on top of a box bearing the WHO logo completed the indictment of a United Nations that is actively working against its founding promise: Never again.

Hamas’ daily war crimes extend beyond the health-care sector. On Sunday, the IDF released footage of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices found inside a kindergarten in northern Gaza.

Israel is also finding major terror infrastructure in and under mosques. Weapons were seized from the Abu Bakr mosque while four IDF soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped tunnel under another mosque in Beit Hanoun.

Sadly, as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques hosted a summit of Arab governments in Riyadh to discuss the crisis in Gaza, not one leader condemned Hamas for desecrating mosques or using Muslims as human shields. Honored guests at this summit included Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

But there was no condemnation for Assad’s mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Syria — or Raisi’s mass murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims in Iran. Only the Jewish state — the one party actively evacuating Muslim civilians from Hamas’ evil clutch — was singled out for condemnation.

During his remarks, Raisi unveiled a new final solution for the Jews: “From the river to the sea,” the very same chant American and British citizens heard this weekend from pro-Hamas demonstrators.

Hearing it from Hamas’ chief terror sponsor should remove any doubt what that phrase means — and why it’s imperative Israel succeed in destroying the Tehran-backed cancer on its borders.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Hamas Must Go

In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A cease-fire now that restored the pre–October 7 status quo ante would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.

Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right. Bosnia in the 1990s saw 34 failed cease-fires before the Clinton administration’s military intervention prompted all sides to stop fighting and finally negotiate a peace agreement. It is possible that if Israel dismantles Hamas’s infrastructure and military capacity and demonstrates that terrorism is a dead end, a new peace process could begin in the Middle East. But a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power and eager to strike Israel will make this harder, if not impossible. For decades, Hamas has undermined every serious attempt at peace by launching new attacks, including the October 7 massacre that seems to have been designed, at least in part, to disrupt progress toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Those negotiations also aimed to bring important benefits for Palestinians.)

By contrast, the humanitarian pauses advocated by the Biden administration and tentatively accepted by the Israelis can save lives without rewarding Hamas. There is precedent: During previous wars in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a number of pauses so that relief could get into the area. Recent conflicts in Yemen and Sudan have also undergone brief humanitarian pauses. Whether for hours or days, breaks in the fighting can provide safety to aid workers and refugees. They could also help facilitate hostage negotiations, which is an urgent priority right now.

Rejecting a premature cease-fire does not mean defending all of Israel’s tactics, nor does it lessen Israel’s responsibility to comply with the laws of war. Minimizing civilian casualties is legally and morally necessary. It is also a strategic imperative. Israel’s long-term security depends on its achieving peaceful coexistence with neighbors who are prepared to accept its existence and its need for security. The disaster of October 7 has discredited the theory that Israel can contain Hamas, ignore the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and freeze Israeli control over Palestinians forever.

Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.

For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.

MUST WATCH: Bill Clinton on Israel & Hamas

"Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel, they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools, in the highly populous areas."

“I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that… pic.twitter.com/jkaLuUnib6
— Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) November 13, 2023

"This is a moment for moral clarity."

Speaking at the the Lord Mayor's Banquet, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reflects on the attack on Israel on October 7 and the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, saying "never again is now".https://t.co/S06WTarVBG

📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/B2YEv3AsEl
— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 13, 2023

Jewish children from Portugal were slaves in Africa

In 2004, The New York Times reviewed an exhibition at the New York Public Library that mentions this amazing detail:

Jews entering Portugal after being expelled from Spain in 1492 were heavily taxed. If Jews could not pay, their sons, ages 2 to 10, were enslaved and sent to São Tomé, a Portuguese outpost, where they were raised as Roman Catholics while having to fend off crocodiles and work in the sugar trade. Within a year only 600 children remained alive out of the 2,000 exiled. Additional slaves were brought from the African mainland. In a generation, the island became the world's biggest sugar exporter. (Relics of Jewish ritual survived there for centuries.)

São Tomé is an island that is off of what is now Gabon.

A master's thesis by Arinze D. Amanfo, Florida International University, explains further:

The majority of the Jews from Spain fleeing the Inquisition and expulsion emigrated to Portugal. They choose Portugal with the hopes for a better life and perhaps toleration. It is important to note that there were Jews already living in Portugal. However, the Jews of Portugal fared a lot better than their counterparts in Spain did. Although they were also relegated to their quarters and made to wear stipulated apparel, they were allowed to conduct their religious affairs themselves. Unfortunately, they soon suffered a similar fate, when the Jews of Spain joined them upon their expulsion from Spain.

Before this expulsion, King John II had allowed the Jewish refugees to remain in Portugal. The arrangement for their stay was negotiated with the Monarchy. This involved the payment of a head tax or ‘coima' by the Jews. By 1493, many of these refugees could not pay this ransom. Perhaps this was due to the short ultimatum given to them by the Spanish Monarchy, which impoverished many of them. Gerber narrates that alongside the payment of an expensive tax, the King gave an eight-month-long reprieve period to allow the Jews to stay. Upon the expiration of this period, the King accused them of non-fulfillment of their part of the negotiation.

According to Garcia de Resende, the official chronicler of King John II, in 1493, those who refused to convert and could not pay the stipulated fee, had their children taken away from them, baptized by force, and deported to São Tomé. They were forcefully baptized so they could be raised as Christians and help populate the island that the King had just leased to Alvaro de Caminha at an annual rent of 100,000 reis.61The island of São Tomé was uninhabited at the time of its purchase in 1470 by the Portuguese crown. However, it was a fertile land, which needed cultivation. The expulsion and subsequent enslavement of these children were likely orchestrated to meet what appeared to be an opportunity for the crown to populate and exploit the fertile land to benefit Portugal.

Before the expulsion of the Sephardic children, Caminha had been empowered to populate the land by other means. He had sent condemned criminals, who were called ‘degredados’, prostitutes and other laborers to help populate and cultivate the land. However, he needed more hands. According to Garfield, this was not the real reason the King ordered the abduction of the Sephardic children. The supposed enforcement of religious purity was what drove his hand to make such a decision.

Samuel Usque, a Portuguese Jewish chronicler, described the scene of the Jewish children being stolen from their mothers:

The island of São Tomé had recently been discovered. It was inhabited by lizards, snakes, and other venomous reptiles, and was devoid of rational beings. Here the king exiled condemned criminals, and he decided to include among them the innocent children of these Jews. Their parents had seemingly been condemned by God’s sentence. --When the luckless hour arrived for this barbarity to be inflicted, mothers scratched their faces in grief as their babes, less than three years old, were taken from their arms. Honored elders tore their beards when the fruit of their bodies was snatched, before their eyes. The fated children raised their piercing cries to heaven as they were mercilessly torn from their beloved parents—Several women threw themselves at the king’s feet, begging for permission to accompany their children, but not even this moved the king’s pity. One mother, distraught by this horrible unexplained cruelty, lifted her baby in her arms, and paying no heed to its cries, threw herself from the ship into the heaving sea, and drowned embracing her only child.

Apparently the children eventually disappeared as a separate group, they maintained some semblance of Jewish ritual for several centuries. Other Sephardic Jews did move to the island and prospered for a while as well.

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 "genocide" slander against Israel is meant to justify an eventual real genocide against Jews

Time magazine asks, "Is What’s Happening in Gaza a Genocide? Experts Weigh-In."

The very question is antisemitic.

Genocide requires intent to wipe out an entire people. The question pre-supposed the possibility that Israel has that intent.

Israel is at war. There are wars happening today in the Ukraine, the Maghreb, Myanmar, Sudan, and still thousands of people being killed this year alone in never-ending wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen and many other places. All of them have death tolls far higher than all Israel-Arab wars combined.

But no one asks whether those conflicts are "genocide."

Only one country is accused of genocide - a libel that predates this current war - and it just so happens to be the national home of the people who have been the main victims of genocide.

Charging Israel of genocide is not merely antisemitic. The only people who make that claim are the people who themselves have the intent to dehumanize and demonize Israeli Jews.

The ultimate aim of accusing Israel of genocide is to justify the eventual real genocide of Jews. Those who mainstream the accusation know what they are doing.

The current wave of antisemitism is a direct result of this dehumanization and slander against Israel. That isn't an unfortunate consequence - it is the entire point.

The main proof of malicious intent is that the people who make this accusation never use the same term against Hamas itself. Hamas doesn't even try to hide its genocidal intent, from its founding covenant to today. October 7 proved that this was not just rhetoric but an actual policy of genocide - just as the suicide bombings of the 1990s and 2000s had proven and been forgotten.

Yet where are the "genocide experts"? It isn't as if they don't know that Hamas is genocidal - Hamas fits the definition perfectly - but there are no reporters lining up outside their doors to even ask the question.

The author of the Time article, Solcyre “Sol” Burga, is a recent college graduate who was the leader of a diversity club in high school meant to expand awareness of prejudice.

Well, she just did her part to increase attacks on Jews.

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!

Wikipedia says:

Taha Abderrahman, (born on 28 May 1944) is a Moroccan philosopher, and one of the leading philosophers and thinkers in the Arab and Islamic worlds. His work centers on logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of morality and contractarian ethics. He believes in multiple modernities and seeks to establish an ethical and humanitarian modernity based on the values and principles of Islam and the Arab tradition.

A leading Arab and Islamic philosopher of morality must be pretty moral, right?

Moroccan news site Febrayer.com reports:

Dr. Taha Abdelrahman sees the "Al-Aqsa Flood" as a new beginning for civilization, a new rise for the nation, and a new birth for humanity. It involves discovering new values where individuals delve into their depths, connecting the apparent with the hidden, the immediate with the future.

The Moroccan thinker Taha Abdelrahman adds in an interview published on the Center for Civilization Studies and Research website: "Today, Palestinian resistance is writing the history of the nation and leading humanity towards enlightenment through the brilliance of its self-reviews, both individual and collective. It is truly a mature resumption of continuous giving, a creative inheritance of renewable energy in the paths of Islamic and human history.

As the "philosopher of ethics" adds, though few in number, it is significant in its trustworthiness and noble in its will because it re-establishes values based on divine qualities, re-establishes Islam on a sacred tint, and re-establishes the spirit on divine proximity. The nation's survival today and in the future is contingent on the resistance's survival, and God forbid, its defeat signals the demise of the nation.

Taha Abdelrahman says: I witnessed this battle through the jihadists' excellent preparation and planning, the innovation of means for attack and defense despite limited resources and tremendous challenges.

The Moroccan thinker believes that resistance is the act that contributes to building Islamic civilization and constructing human civilizations. He adds: The way our nation can contribute today to civilizational construction and human renewal is through "jihad" and no other path.

According to the philosopher, the vigilant Palestinian resistor has risen to carry this trust with skill, bearing this responsibility virtuously. He has undertaken it as the best burden and performed it as the best performance. Indeed, he is unique in this time.

Resistance, in the philosopher's perspective, is not a partial act but a holistic one. He says: I looked at resistance from an existential standpoint, meaning that existence has no meaning without resistance, and life is meaningless without jihad. Existence and life gain meaning from the act of resistance itself.

Resistance and jihad are the elixir of life bestowed by God upon the resistors. Without it, there is nothing but death and perdition.

He believes that the greatest manifestation of the Arab and Islamic mind in the modern era is embodied in the Al-Aqsa flood. It showcased the potential of the Islamic mind, revealing its breadth and strength while exposing the limitations and fragility of the Zionist mind. The practical responsibility towards these realities was shouldered, and significant achievements were realized with the support of God.

The philosopher sees the secret behind the success achieved on October 7th as the mind supported by God. He adds: This mind is filled with pure faith, surpassing all material and worldly limits. It ascends like a king, with no sin remaining with it – "Light upon light."

These fighters have been and still are beacons shining in all of humanity with values that contemporary humans have lost. In these values, they discover their nature, witnessed by God on their lordship, manifesting in its purest form and most magnificent images.

These fighters are kingdomly; their dominion knows no temporal or spatial bounds, suspended at the throne under divine shadow. They gather for God and disperse for Him, with angels fighting alongside them.

What they achieved in three hours is proof that they are examples of the supported mind, as I have always spoken about in my books and lectures. Blessed are they.

Clearly Abdelrahman knows about the massacres, the rapes, the burning of babies. And this expert on philosophy and morality is ecstatic about them.

He is not a minor figure. There are plenty of papers written about his philosophy. Yet he is clearly a fundamentally immoral person. Perhaps this is the first time he has stated his enthusiasm about murdering Jews publicly, but I am doubtful that this will tarnish his reputation in philosophical circles.

Which is a very scary commentary on the state of academia today.

I am always reluctant to compare anything contemporary to Nazi Germany, but this is really Nazi-level thinking - justifying the most heinous crimes as not only acceptable but exemplary, using a philosophical framework.

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!

11/13 Links Pt2: The March for Palestine was a far-right march; Hamas's Useful Idiots in the U.S., Europe; IDF reveals Hamas hostage, explosives center under Rantisi Hospital

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The March for Palestine was a far-right march

Yes, there was a far-right march in London on Saturday which we should be hugely concerned about. It was called the March for Palestine. One has to marvel at the gall of middle-class virtue-signallers who look aghast at the right-wing blokes around the Cenotaph while marching shoulder to shoulder with literal racists. Who reach for their smelling salts at the sight of rowdy working-class men in tracksuits while turning a blind eye to radical Muslims singing the praises of mass violence against Jewish people. Who wring their hands over the ‘return of fascism’ while marching with people who taunt Jews by comparing them to the Nazis who vapourised their forebears. Going by all the available reporting, there was only one demo on which outright racism was widely expressed and violence against minorities was celebrated – and it wasn’t the one at the Cenotaph.

What was most sickening about Twist’s premature insistence of ‘no issues’ on the Palestine march is that he unwittingly gave moral cover to this hate gathering. Journalists like Owen Jones cited Twist’s comments as proof that the Palestine march was good. And thus was the truth of this march – its flashes of violent-minded anti-Semitism – hidden away. Did Twist stop to think what impact his statement might have on London’s Jews, who could already see, via social media, that anti-Jewish hate was being expressed on the march? Perhaps he decided that accruing likes from his fellow woke ideologues was more important than letting Jews know we have their back.

It’s just as well Twist said ‘at the moment there are no issues’, for the Met have since had to admit that there appear to have been numerous instances of hate on the good demo. The Met’s rush to praise it was staggeringly ill-advised, a cynical move that will have horrified Jewish citizens.

How do we explain this extraordinary spectacle where middle-class leftists can mingle with extremists cosplaying as Hamas’s anti-Semitic murderers while looking down their noses at a bunch of right-wing agitators? How can they rage against home secretary Suella Braverman for stirring up a ‘far-right mob’ with her criticisms of the Palestine marches and the politicised police while they give cover, weekend after weekend, to people literally celebrating anti-Jewish massacres?

Partly, it’s because they are so blinded by visions of their own virtue that they cannot countenance ever doing wrong. Even the cardinal sin of associating with racists becomes a virtue when they do it. But it also tells us a larger story about polite society’s own racism, and its classism too. Their snobbery means they think only ‘gammon’, like the riff-raff at the Cenotaph, are capable of racial hatred, not nice people like them. And yet the truth is that their conversion to the cult of identity means they are helping to rehabilitate racism. It is identitarianism’s organisation of every social and ethnic group into boxes marked ‘privileged’ (bad) or ‘oppressed’ (good) that explains polite society’s blindspot on anti-Semitism. They think Jews are privileged, and thus not convincing victims of hate. They must be lying when they claim to experience bigotry.

The dishonesty and hypocrisy of the chattering class’s ‘anti-racism’ has never been clearer. ‘Anti-racism’, to them, is little more than a means of lording their moral superiority over the oiks, the supposedly racist throng. A new anti-racism is urgently needed. A real one. And one that starts by standing up to the wave of anti-Semitism that has swept through our society under the watch of institutions and influencers who lied about being anti-racist.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Misguided global support for Hamas reveals alarming reality

This is a remarkable phenomenon, alarming and unsettling. Social media and television channels repeatedly showcase short video clips of students tearing down pictures of Israeli hostages. The act has become a trend, not limited to Palestinian students or students of Middle Eastern origin. Students from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities are participating in this trend with open enjoyment. A young girl smiles knowingly, seeking international support for her liberation, while they mockingly tear down images.

It's not about siding with Hamas; 90% of them have no idea who or what Hamas is. It's the woke obsession where the "weak" is always right, even if they are a ruthless murderer, and the "strong" is always an evil villain. It doesn't matter that Hamas calls for the annihilation of Jews, Christians, and world domination. To them, Hamas represents "the Palestinians," who have become the ultimate oppressed, and Israel, after years of brainwashing, is now labeled as a "colonialist apartheid state."

In recent weeks, even Israeli leftists have found themselves dismayed by the celebration of hatred. Many of them are sharing articles bidding farewell to the global left, which ignores atrocities and sometimes justifies them. They deserve applause.

In Jewish tradition, not only the wicked stand accused; even righteous individuals are not exempt. They understand that something has gone awry in the thought process within progressive leftist circles, some of whom persist in supporting Hamas with well-known and deceptive excuses like "their right to retaliate," "Gaza is the largest prison in the world," "it's the fault of oppression and occupation," and other slogans from the same playbook. Just days ago, these new dissenters signed a statement distancing themselves from the global left.

They not only deserve applause but also introspection. Why now? For decades, they have portrayed Israel as a monster, spreading lies about the country. For decades, they labeled the "Nakba" as one of the gravest crimes in history, despite millions experiencing displacement, a consequence of the establishment of nation-states.

For decades, they have ignored the Jewish Nakba, which was no less severe than the Palestinian one. For decades, they have turned a blind eye to Arab rejection of any partition proposals and the invasion of Israel aimed at its destruction. For decades, they have disregarded Palestinian refusal to agree to any two-state solution. For decades, they have ignored statements by Hamas leaders about the destruction of Jews. For decades, they have provided justifications for Palestinian terrorism. And now they are surprised? The normal response to this brainwashing is the tearing down of posters featuring captives. After all, the Palestinians are the victims.

"Many Jewish intellectuals are marked with the stain of antisemitic sin. Peter Beinart, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Sand" complained Professor Eva Illouz exactly 11 years ago. She was a whistleblower from within. She didn't stop for a moment. She conducted an amazing campaign, part of which appeared on the pages of the French Le Monde, exposing Israel's alleged injustices. In one of her articles, "47 Years a Slave," Illouz explained that the approach needed to be changed. She no longer settled for the accusation of "apartheid." It's slavery. No less. The article she wrote then was full of embarrassing distortions, and even the left-wing outlet Haaretz had to publish a correction.

Bassam Tawil: Hamas's Useful Idiots in the U.S., Europe

These demonstrators, who appear to feel so virtuous, send a message to the terrorist groups that people in the West happily support violence, terrorism and the Jihad (holy war) not only against Israel and Jews, but also against Christians, all "infidels," Europe, the United States and the West.

Although many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip support Hamas and its genocide, many others deeply oppose Hamas. In recent years, thousands have fled the Gaza Strip for Europe, where they hope for a better life -- like the one the demonstrators enjoy -- where they will not have to fear a knock on the door at two in the morning or have their government lodge rocket launchers next to their playgrounds and homes. A recent video shows a Gazan woman saying, "Those bastards at Hamas," before a man clamps his hand over her mouth.

Countries and groups that commit terrorist attacks view the anti-Israel demonstrations as an extension of their war against the West.

Meanwhile, the "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators masquerade as peace-seekers. In fact, they celebrate terrorism and imperialism -- Islamic imperialism -- that seeks forcibly to expand Iran's territorial gains not only throughout Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Iraq, but through Yemen, Saudi Arabia and South America on its way to the "Big Satan," the United States. The Iranians have already infiltrated Venezuela and met in Cuba...

Apparently not realizing how destructive these peace-loving demonstrators are to themselves and their free way of life... they do not even... bother to think for a minute what life would actually be like for them if they lived in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus or Tehran. It is easy to be a demonstrator in London, Washington DC or New York.

Despite all the claims to the contrary, these are not pro-Palestinian rallies. These are hate marches of people seeking the destruction of Israel and the West. Make no mistake: those who are now protesting against Israel are advocating for a totalitarian way of life, for poverty -- except for the leaders, of course -- and for the same sort of utopia now being relished by the citizens of Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela... and Gaza.

By Forest Rain

When “How are you?” becomes a difficult question

“So how are you?”

It shouldn’t be frightening to ask such a banal question. In this case, I really wanted to know the answer, but I was also afraid to hear it.

We were in kibbutz Nir David, in northern Israel, talking to two lovely teenage girls we met by chance. They were 12, maybe 13 years old. Best friends, one gorgeous Ethiopian girl, the other a bright-eyed, talkative girl of Yemenite-Ashkenazi descent (we met her father and grandfather later on).

They told us they were being hosted by the kibbutz. 240 families evacuated from the Gaza envelope were staying in this paradise on earth – after they had survived the Hamas-made hell on earth.

Pulling myself together, I looked into their eyes and asked: “So how are you?”

As if a dam opened up, these smiling girls began to earnestly describe everything that happened to them on October 7^th and how they felt about it.

They were from Kibbutz Gvaram.

On October 6^th the kids of Gvaram were having a “kids day”, with fun activities and camping outside in tents.

Outside. My heart skipped a beat, waiting to hear what happened next.

By chance, the girls woke up a few minutes before the Red Alert sirens went off. They had to wake up all the other kids and race them to shelter. There was one shelter close enough to reach in time, another, better shelter just a little too far away.

They shoved as many kids as possible into the shelter. The rest had to lie on the ground with their hands over their heads and pray the missiles wouldn’t hit them.

The moment they could, the fathers of the kids came running to pull their children back to the safety of their homes. They already knew that this wasn’t a “standard” missile bombardment, that terrorists were swarming into the country, slaughtering Jews.

The two friends went to the home that was closest (that of the Yemenite girl). They spent seven hours barricaded in the safe room of the house. They could hear the missiles and because the house was close to the perimeter of the community, they could also hear the firefight taking place outside.

The community guard, along with the IDF battled the Hamas terrorists, preventing them from infiltrating the kibbutz and committing the atrocities that occurred elsewhere.

The girls didn’t know the extent of the horror that was happening in the country. What they did know is what classmates living in other communities updated in their WhatsApp group:

“I’ve been hiding in the closet for 14 hours”

“They are in my house!”

“They killed my father!”

Kids, telling their friends about things no kid should ever even imagine. Kids, saying goodbye to their friends because the terrorists might kill them next.

One of the girls said: “I left the group. I couldn’t take it.”

Then they told us that Koren Tasa is a classmate and friend of theirs. Koren is one of the boys whose story you will find in descriptions of people who saw the footage of Hamas atrocities:

We see, from Hamas body cams and overhead kibbutz surveillance, a father gather his two young sons, clad only in underwear, and rushes them out of the house into a tiny outbuilding.

A terrorist tosses a grenade inside their hiding place. The father comes into frame and slumps to the ground, dead.

The boys are yanked into their kitchen, the floor splattered with blood. The younger sits at the small kitchen table, the older boy nearby on a sofa, crying.

'DADDY! DADDY! DADDY'S DEAD!'

One of the terrorists observes their hysteria with boredom. He opens their refrigerator, looks around, selects a bottle of water.

'Daddy's dead!' the older boy tells his brother. 'It's not really a prank!'

The younger boy has gone still, his head in his hands. 'I know,' he says. 'I saw.'

The terrorist holds up the water bottle, reconsiders, then puts it back and pulls out a near-empty two-liter plastic Coke bottle.

'I want my mom!'

The terrorist swigs the soda as he strolls out the door.

The older brother goes to the younger. He sees that one eye is bruised and bloodied.

'Can you see with this eye?

'No.'

'You're not joking?'

'No.'

There is even more blood on the floor now. A TV flickers out of frame.

The older boy collapses and begins keening.

'WHY AM I ALIVE?' he howls. 'WHY?'

Koren, his younger brother, and mother survived the attack. Their older brother was murdered on the beach in Zikim, along with numerous other kids from their school. The video of their murder can be easily found online – I hope to God these girls haven’t and won’t see it.

They told us about Gil Tasa, Koren’s father: “He was an extraordinary man.”

Lenny asked the girls if what happened changed the way they thought about life.

They answered: “I used to think they [Gazans] were people. Human beings. Now I see that they aren’t.”

Lenny told them about how when he was young parents used to tell their kids: “When you grow up, you won’t have to go to the army. There will be peace.”

To my surprise, one of the girls said: “My parents said that too. Now I know they were wrong.”

While their words flowed out of them, these girls were both solid at their core. Sad but not broken. I wanted to give them something to hold on to, so I explained:

“Peace is not possible, but safety is. We need to be very very strong to keep them from attacking us and you will be able to go home and be safe.”

They sighed and nodded with acceptance. They instinctively felt this to be true.

They know that this is what our army is striving to achieve.

I wanted to hug them and keep them safe and happy. I can’t so instead I told them a little of what I know about grief and trauma: “Your friends who went through horrible things don’t need you to tell them the right things. There is nothing right to say. What they do need is for you to be with them. It’s ok to smile and laugh with them. They need you to smile and laugh. Everything will be all mixed up together but if you are with them, they will be ok.”

They promised: “We will.”

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!