Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Human Rights Watch report on Lebanon incident proves, yet again, it is antisemitic

An unlawful Israeli strike on a family in a car on November 5, 2023, should be investigated as an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack killed three girls and their grandmother and wounded their mother.

The family had been traveling from south Lebanon to Beirut in the late afternoon, following heavy shelling by Israeli forces in the area earlier that day, Samir Ayoub, the girls’ uncle, said in a televised interview the night of the attack. Ayoub, a journalist, was traveling in a separate car in front of the car that was hit.

“This attack by Israeli military forces that struck a car carrying a family fleeing violence shows a reckless disregard for civilian life,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Three young girls and their grandmother have lost their lives, our investigations show, as a result of the Israeli military’s failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Their killing is a violation of the laws of war, and Israel’s allies, like the US, should respond to this apparent war crime by demanding accountability for this unlawful strike.”

That evening, the Israeli military admitted carrying out the strike, telling the Times of Israel it “struck a vehicle in Lebanese territory that was identified as a suspicious vehicle containing several terrorists […] The claim that there were several uninvolved civilians in the vehicle is being examined. The event is under review.” According to Human Rights Watch research, they have provided no further evidence to justify their claim.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity. But if there were one, targeting a car carrying civilians, along with the Israeli military’s admission of targeting the car while failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, makes the strike unlawful.

So where is the antisemitism? It is in what HRW is omitting from the story.

Clearly, the strike was tragic. But mistakes during war are not unlawful. And HRW brings exactly zero evidence that Israel knew or even suspected that the car was civilian.

HRW doesn't try to investigate any possible reasons why Israel would target a car. It say that it finds no evidence of a military target. But what they pointedly don't mention is this incident that happened immediately beforehand:

An Israeli civilian was killed in an anti-tank guided missile attack launched from Lebanon at an area near the northern community of Kibbutz Yiftah on Sunday, said the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee.

The Hezbollah terror group claimed responsibility for the missile fire, saying it attacked a group of soldiers.

The IDF said its forces responded by striking the source of the missile fire.

HRW knows about this incident: it links to this same story several paragraphs later, saying "one Israeli civilian was killed by Hezbollah rocket strikes in Kibbutz Yiftah in northern Israel on the same day. " But it doesn't link the two incidents, even though the article says Israel responded to the source of the fire.

Apparently, immediately after the Israeli was killed, the IDF identified a car rushing away from where it identified the missile location, and assumed it was the terrorists fleeing. This is a tragic error but it is not unlawful. Israel reacted with the best information it had at the moment; decisions must be made in seconds. A lone car rushing away from the vicinity of the missile launcher is, by definition, evidence. Israel doesn't have the luxury that HRW has to spend a week looking at CCTV images to see where the car came from an hour beforehand.

As always, the NGO assumes bad faith from the IDF. It assumes Israel either targets or recklessly shoots at civilians with no evidence - because it cannot be bothered to find the evidence. It doesn't appear that HRW even asked the IDF to respond to the charge, only relying on reports from places like Al Jazeera for its information.

Making the assumption that Israel is malicious, and that Israeli authorities are liars, is indeed evidence of antisemitism.

This becomes even starker when we notice that HRW also happens to mention this:"Rocket strikes and other attacks into Israel by Hezbollah and Palestinian groups have reportedly killed at least two civilians and six soldiers." It links to an article - from Al Jazeera, not an Israeli source - about an attack that Hezbollah bragged about.

Hezbollah published their own video of that incident the AJ article was about from November 12. It is obvious from Hezbollah's own cameras that the targets were not uniformed. They knew they were attacking civilians.

But there are no investigations from HRW on Hezbollah. They don't condemn them and they don't accuse them of war crimes. When it comes to Hezbollah, their language changes from direct accusations to generic, both-sidesism of "Parties to a conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law irrespective of the conduct of the other party." The word "unlawful" is used to refer to Israel four times and not once against Hezbollah.

This is even though they admit that Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has said, directly, on November 3, that his group will commit war crimes: that they will target Israeli civilians in retaliation of any Lebanese civilian casualties."

So we have one side that explicitly says they intend to target and murder civilians. One side that has video of them trying to do exactly that. But that isn't the side that HRW investigates and condemns. That isn't the side that they accuse of unlawfulness, that is not the side that they urge the international community to investigate potential war crimes.

The Jews are assumed to be liars when they say they don't intend to kill civilians. And Hezbollah is assumed to be spouting mere slogans when they say they do intend to murder civilians.

Yes, that is antisemitism.

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!

Today's insane Jew-hatred in Arabic media

Jordanian MP Tammam Al-Riyati started a rumor on her Facebook page (since deleted) saying, “Most of the international hotels we have in Aqaba are fully booked at the beginning of next week, so that Jews from Eilat can be transported there. The hotels refused, but the parent companies forced them" to accept the Jews.

Wassim El-Sisi, a researcher in Egyptology and ancient Egyptian civilization, claims that the Torah proves that the children of Israel and the Jews have no right to Palestine. Speaking on the Egyptian “DMC Evening” program, he said, “God says to Abraham in the Torah: I give you the land of your sojourn, thus confirming that our master Abraham - peace be upon him - is a stranger to the Holy Land...This invalidates the Jews’ argument of their right to the land of Palestine.”

No, I don't understand it either.

Palestinian news site Amad describes the "American-Zionist alliance to control the Middle East and the world." The article includes an admiring look at a Holocaust denier and mentions how Jews managed to censor a European book about the medieval blood libel.

A columnist in Al-Binaa laments, "We have reached a stage where most cinema films, even cartoons, and most Western television series praise everything related to the Jews and promote their plans. Even Western-produced school reading books contain texts in all grades praising the Jews. Jewish influence reached such an extent that some non-Jewish football celebrities visited occupied Palestine to seek blessings at the Buraq Wall. "

Dr. Mustafa Al-Feki , former information advisor to the Egyptian president, commented on "the deliberate silence of international human rights organizations as a result of the events taking place in Gaza." His conclusion for this alleged silence is that "this is due to the bloc of Jews in the world and their influence on politics, the economy, and the media."

A writer in El-Nabaa says "History says that the Jews were expelled from most countries because of their bad actions, because they betrayed and rebelled against their rulers."

The amount of explicit antisemitism in Arab media has exploded since October 7. Before that, I would see maybe one article like this every day. Now I see 10.

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!

11/15 Links Pt2: The Hate That Doesn’t Know Its Own Name; The American Multimillionaire Marxists Funding Pro-Palestinian Rage; #MrFAFO is Real

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: The Hate That Doesn’t Know Its Own Name

Why is so much of today’s antisemitism coming from well-educated people, the sort who would never be caught dead uttering other racist remarks? Lipstadt recalled that of the four Einsatzgruppen — the German death squads entrusted with the mass murder of Jews in World War II — three were led by officers with doctoral degrees. “You can be a Ph.D. and an S.O.B. at the same time,” she said.

She also pointed to academic fads of the past two decades, “narratives or ideologies that may not start out as antisemitic but end up painting the Jew as other, as a source of oppression instead of having been oppressed.” One of those narratives is that Jews are “more powerful, richer, smarter, maliciously so,” than others and must therefore be stopped by any means necessary.

The idea that opposing Jewish power can be a matter of punching up, rather than down, fits neatly into the narrative that justifies any form of opposition to those with power and privilege, both of them dirty words on today’s campuses. It’s how Hamas’s “resistance” — the mass murder and kidnapping of defenseless civilians — has become the new radical chic.

The challenge that Lipstadt confronts isn’t confined to campuses. It’s worldwide: the streets of London (which saw a 1,350 percent increase in antisemitic hate crimes in the early weeks of October from the previous year) and on Chinese state media (which hosts discussion pages about Jewish control of American wealth) and in Muslim immigrant communities throughout Europe (with Muslims handing out candy in one Berlin neighborhood to celebrate the Oct. 7 attacks).

Lipstadt was clear about where this leads: “Never has a society tolerated overt expressions of antisemitism and remained a democratic society.” What to do? Governments alone, she said, can’t solve the problem.

“I know it sounds ludicrous, but a lot comes down to what happens at the dinner table.” She told me of a friend whose fifth-grade daughter was taunted by antisemitic remarks by her classmates at a “fancy Washington school.”

“Where did they get that? Where did it come from? How did they learn it was OK?”

Elisha Wiesel: The Hatred that Begins with Antisemitism Threatens the Whole World

After bearing witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, my father demanded that the world fight evil. He warned that hatred which begins with antisemitism inevitably threatens the whole world. But my father's protests were ignored. The UN did nothing in 1948 when the Arab Middle East violently rejected Israel's existence. 17 years later, it equated Zionism with racism.

"This is not the first time the enemy has accused us of his own crimes," my father wrote of Israel's trial in the court of world opinion. "Our possessions were taken from us, and we were called misers; our children were massacred, and we were accused of ritual murder."

Last week, the UN adopted eight resolutions which condemned Israel. One of the resolutions was drafted and co-sponsored by Syria, whose dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has murdered 300,000 of his own citizens.

So many of us have woken up since Oct. 7 to a nightmare where we are told that we must accept terror attacks as the price for living in our ancient homeland. We are told that we may not destroy enemies that are trying to destroy us.

We will likely not convince the skeptics that we deserve the same rights as every other people: to secure our borders and defend our citizens. Neither Israel nor Gazan civilians can afford this to be anything other than the last battle. This war can only end with the complete destruction of Hamas.

Jonathan Spyer: Israel's Gaza Offensive Progresses, but Obstacles, Competing Timetables Remain

The stated goal of Israel's operation is the destruction of the Hamas governing authority in Gaza. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on 23 October that the achievement of this goal may take 'a month, two months, three.'

This is a plausible and achievable goal. De facto governing structures are amenable to destruction at the hands of an invading military force. The Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and the Iraqi Islamic State movement are two terror groups who have found their areas of control taken by superior conventional military force in recent years.

But alongside the military clock, the diplomatic clock is also ticking. Most of Israel's wars end not with a clear decision, but with an imposition of a ceasefire from without. The Lebanon War of 2006, for example, ended with the unsatisfactory UNSC resolution 1701, which entirely failed to address or settle the war's causes. The Yom Kippur War of 1973, too, was brought to an end in Sinai by international pressure before Israeli forces could seal their military victory.

Diplomatic pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire is growing. Israel has agreed to daily four-hour pauses in fighting to allow civilians to depart areas where clashes are taking place.

The US, now as ever Israel's sole barrier against international pressure for an immediate, open-ended ceasefire, supports a pause of at least three days. Rishi Sunak has jumped in, too: on Monday night he said that 'too many civilians are losing their lives'. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen this week estimated that Israel has two to three weeks until international pressure for a ceasefire becomes serious.

The third ticking clock to be considered is that of the 239 Israeli hostages held in Gaza since 7 October. Israeli officials have suggested that military pressure on Hamas and Qatar-mediated negotiations for the hostages work in tandem, with the pressure inducing Hamas to adopt a more flexible position.

This suggestion may well be to once again misunderstand the nature of Hamas. The movement is likely to seek to hold on to an appreciable number of hostages in order to use them as human shields against Israel's continued advance. The US administration is seeking to couch its support for longer periods of ceasefire in terms of the need to allow hostage negotiations to continue and bear fruit. But days long ceasefires will serve to slow the Israeli advance at a time when every moment is vital.

So, the diplomatic and hostage clocks are currently running in contradiction to that of Israel's military campaign. The result is that the IDF is set to soon find itself in a race against time to effectively collapse and obliterate the authority that perpetrated the 7 October massacre.

Even as the Gaza fighting continues, a sharp escalation is taking place on Israel's Lebanon border. Attacks on civilian targets by Hezbollah anti-tank missile fire are now a daily occurrence. In the largest single attack yet, 14 civilians were wounded on Sunday by an anti-tank missile which hit near the border community of Dovev. One of the injured later died of his wounds.

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

The United States has approved a whopping $14 billion military aid package for Israel and has also sent troops and aircraft carriers to the region. But the hand that giveth, also taketh away. A month before the savage Hamas attack of October 7, widely believed to be financed by Iran, Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. Now Biden has approved a sanctions waiver that will put $10b into Iran’s coffers. This leads to the question: If Biden frees up $16b for Iran, and gives Israel $14b, don’t these gifts kind of cancel each other out—or worse?

Biden freed up money for Iran in September, and in October we had Iranian proxy attacks in Israel. Now Biden gives aid to Israel to defend itself from the Iranian proxy, but frees up more money for Iran. The president gets away with this by swearing that the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes.

The president said the same thing about his aid to Gaza. It’s only for humanitarian aid. Neither of these assurances are worth a damn. Hamas literally runs humanitarian aid in Gaza. The money goes straight to Hamas. The unfrozen funds for Iran, will similarly not go to fund humanitarian aid, but will go straight to the terror machine.

It’s true that the Biden administration put a “pause” on unfreezing the original $6b ransom payment to Iran due to Republican criticism. But with this $10b coming in, as Hillary might say, What difference does it make? Iran is still getting way more than it was slated to receive in the first place, thanks to the generous hand of Joe Biden. The question is why? Why is Biden freeing up ever larger amounts of cash for Iran?

Speaking to the Washington Free Beacon, Richard Goldberg, a sanctions expert who previously served on the White House National Security Council, said, "The world is living in a post-Oct. 7 world, but the White House is still running an Oct. 6 policy toward Iran. Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran's hands."

It would make sense to freeze the funds only if protecting the Jews was chief among your aims. This lack of desire to secure the safety Israeli Jews was also evidenced by Biden agreeing to send weapons to protect Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, only so long as no guns went to the people who need them, Israeli civilians:

The guns are critical to Israel’s defense as it faces down the most significant threat in decades. With the military engaged in an assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Jewish civilians in dangerous areas like the West Bank are being trained and equipped to defend themselves against potential attacks.

On an emotional level, it feels as though Biden doesn’t want me, a dual Israeli American citizen, to have protection. He is not on my side. On the other hand, he does seem to like the terror-sponsoring, nuclear bomb-producing mullahs.

How do we know? He keeps giving them money in creative ways, such as lifting sanctions on Iranian revenues or putting stipulations on how the money is to be spent so as to forestall criticism. Biden knows that Iran doesn’t play by the rules, especially where money is concerned, and yet he frees up their funds even directly after they slaughter us.

Then, there is Biden’s insistence that Israel allow for “humanitarian pauses” which of course, allow Hamas to rearm and retrench, increasing the danger to Israel and to Israeli soldiers. Like a lot of Israeli Americans, my sons serve in the IDF. They are also American citizens and Biden is endangering them with these pauses. How is this at all humanitarian? Biden allows the “innocent people of Gaza” who voted for and overwhelmingly support Hamas, have time to flee, at the same time as he puts MY children in harm’s way? Biden giveth and he taketh away. And somehow it’s always the Jews who lose out.

So, we have billions of American aid flowing to Israel, but also to Iran. And we also have billions of American aid flowing to Hamas in Gaza. The $106 billion national security aid package that Biden presented to Congress in October includes $9b for humanitarian aid, and while some of that may go to Ukraine or Israel, the White House acknowledges that it’s largely for Gaza, and that means it will inevitably end up in Hamas’ hot little hands.

Sending aid to Gaza is, by the way, illegal, according to Prof. Avi Bell:

Any country providing aid to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip indirectly supports Hamas, thereby breaking United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, explained Prof. Avi Bell of Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law.

He said the resolution, which was adopted by the UN Security Council in 2001 and is therefore legally binding, includes several duties states have to fight terrorist organizations, one of which is to not provide any form of support – active or passive, direct or indirect.

"As long as we have a degree of certainty that some of the aid [entering from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah crossing] is being diverted to Hamas – and we do have that certainty – then all the states of the world must refrain from providing this indirect support to Hamas," Bell said.

We are, of course, certain that humanitarian aid is being diverted to Hamas. The IDF provided 300 liters of fuel to Shifa hospital and Hamas took it. Just swooped down and seized it to “fuel” its terror machine. Well, actually Hamas didn’t just swoop down and seize that fuel. First the Hamas terrorists blocked the hospital from receiving the fuel, and then the Hamas terrorists seized the fuel for their own “use.”

It is, by the way, also illegal for Israel to be giving aid to Gaza, knowing it goes to Hamas, and that’s been happening ever since there was a Hamas. But this is a different story. Israel is pressured by corrupt leaders like Joe Biden—Israel is fighting for its life and cannot say no to Biden’s demands. Also, Israel is held to a different moral standard. Because Jews.

Take what happened with Shifa Hospital. The White House let Israel know, in no uncertain terms that it did not want to see fighting there (emphasis added):

“The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire. And we’ve had active consultations with the Israel Defense Forces on this,” [said US National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan.

We know what happened with that one, don’t we?

The White House on Tuesday said it had its own intelligence that Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital Al Shifa to run its military operations, and probably to store weapons, saying those actions constituted a war crime.

"We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control mode" and probably to store weapons, national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One. "That is a war crime."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

That was Shifa Hospital. But we also know what happened at Rantisi Hospital.

Today, in response to bitter criticism of Biden by an American Israeli, I heard my Israeli-born neighbor gently chide him, saying “We have to say thank you to America.”

But do we? Really?

Biden gives Israel money, but he gives it to Iran as well. He gives aid to Israel, but also to Gaza, ergo Hamas. Should we say thank you to America for giving aid and succor to those who perpetrated the single worst massacre on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and who, even now, have Jews in their sights?

The October 7 Massacre was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and the deadliest terror attack in world history after 9/11.

Hamas declared war on Israel.
And Israel will win this war.

My interview with @mattfrei on @Channel4News. pic.twitter.com/jR0wIesEW6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 15, 2023

What in the name of God is happening here, and why aren’t the people in the rallies demanding accountability?

With one hand, the president of the United States facilitates Iranian and Hamas terror, while simultaneously tying Israel’s hands with the other. The Jews are expendable, he reasons. Give Iran a little nip to take the edge off. And it won’t hurt his creds with Rashida, et al.

But it all has to have a veneer of respectful support for and generosity toward Israel, to appease the other side, as well. It’s a balancing act, but Joe’s been doing this for half his life. He’s a career politician. A hack. The emperor in new clothes.

It’s all a political balancing act: Biden giveth and Biden taketh away. He’ll give us guns, but we can’t use them. He gives money to Iran to take Jewish lives.

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!

USAID official confirms Hamas used ambulances for transport, shot at Gaza civilians in 2014

Dave Harden is a former USAID West Bank/Gaza Mission Director.

He wrote a very interesting thread on X this morning, that began with:

A few observations regarding Israel’s operation at Al Shifa Hospital.

When I was in seat, it was broadly suspected/understood as far back as 2014 that Hamas used the Al Shifa Hospital complex as a command center and base for operations.

I didn’t have direct evidence, but it was recognized by both trusted Palestinians and Israelis in my network.

This is interesting, but all of that was widely known in 2014.

His next two statements are a lot more damning:

Further, Hamas used ambulances to move its people. This was based on my conversations with the then head of ICRC.
.
I also know from first hand experience that Hamas shot at innocent Gazan civilians trying to escape firefights.

None of my prior experiences can confirm what is actually happening, but I do know what did happen.

The IDF published video showing Hamas terrorists using ambulances in 2014, but NGOs like Amnesty said they couldn't confirm that (obviously, video wasn't enough.)

But now we learn that the ICRC knew all of this - and did not publicize it. They blamed Israel for allegedly firing on ambulances in 2014 but not once did they condemn Hamas for using ambulances as their own limousine services.

And Harden himself saw Hamas fire on Gaza civilians!

Even though the IDF has shown evidence that Hamas is shooting at civilians trying to flee northern Gaza, no one seems to believe them, at least publicly. Hamas claims that the IDF shot at fleeing civilians while they were using the very same humanitarian corridors the IDF set up were widely publicized. Yet it seems everyone knows that Hamas will shoot at their own civilians to keep them obedient to their dictates. Major NGOs working in Gaza know the truth, and don't say a word, allowing Israel to appear to be monsters and ignoring Hamas war crimes that directly endanger - or kill - innocent Gazans.

The media and NGOs know what is going on. They are actively working to keep the truth of how monstrous Hamas is out of public view. It is true that they might be protecting their family and friends who live in Gaza, but that doesn't mean the story cannot get out without anyone identifying the witnesses.

And that is the bigger scandal here.

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!

11/15 Links Pt1: 290,000-strong, ‘March for Israel’; Hamas Shattered a Fantasy; The excruciating dilemma of Gaza's hospitals; It is time for the world to stand up to Hezbollah

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The excruciating dilemma of Gaza's hospitals

Both the UK and US appear to be stepping up pressure on Israel over al Shifa. The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, urged Israel yesterday to “take all measures to protect innocent civilians, including at hospitals ... and allow more aid into Gaza”. At the same time US President Joe Biden said Gaza’s hospitals “must be protected” and that he hoped for “less intrusive action”.

Yet the White House subsequently walked those comments back. John Kirby, the National Security Council co-ordinator for strategic communications, later explained that Biden was not being critical of Israel but was rather discussing the difficulties that the IDF faces while operating in Gazan hospitals which are being used by Hamas as terror headquarters.

Whatever. The fact is that all such pressure on Israel by western governments gives Hamas and its backers every incentive to continue to fight, secure in the knowledge that the longer they hold out the greater the pressure on Israel from so-called allies such as the US, the UK and France to surrender. Every time the US or UK call upon Israel for “restraint” or for “humanitarian pauses” or “ceasefires,” they weaken Israel’s defence against genocidal barbarism and strengthen and incentivise the forces of evil arrayed against the Jewish state that’s fighting to prevent a second Holocaust.

There is no doubt that the laws of war permit Israel to attack the hospital if it is itself being used to mount attacks, provided Israel takes measures to avoid unnecessary loss of civilian life. There is also no doubt, however, that the Hamas-commandeered hospitals present an excruciating moral dilemma.

Israel doesn’t want to harm a single patient, doctor or nurse. At the same time, it cannot allow Hamas to use this infernal blackmail to enable it to continue its genocidal activities. Israel is clearly doing everything it can to avoid harming innocent patients and hospital staff. It is getting zero credit for doing so, and instead is being held to a totally different standard than its critics in the Biden administration, UK government and the rest of the west would ever apply to themselves in any wars.

Thus the scapegoating of the Jewish people, that has such an ancient and infernal history and is the signature motif of these morally degenerate times, steadily obliterates the horror and compassion that so briefly flickered in the west over the barbaric murder, torture, rape and beheadings of Israeli women, children and men, along with some foreign nationals, and leaves Israel once again to swing in the genocidal wind.

Let us hope, desperately, that the IDF is allowed to destroy Hamas at al Shifa, and that no more innocents are harmed.

Hamas Shattered a Fantasy

Should the concern that combating Hamas would lead to mass casualties among civilians stop Israel from fighting the organization? Until Oct. 7, my answer would have been a resolute "Yes." Today, my answer is a no less resolute "No."

Hamas shattered the fantasy I and many others had. We insisted on seeing Hamas as a Palestinian political movement with which Israel could reach understandings and agreements.

When 3,000 terrorists emerged from Gaza and slaughtered the surrounding civilian population, the death of the civilian population was not "collateral damage." It was the clear objective of this operation.

Hamas has positioned itself as an existential enemy of Israel. Its regime in Gaza cannot be allowed to continue to exist.

Israel has no choice but to fight this war until it utterly defeats Hamas in Gaza.

The American Assumption that the PA Are the "Good Guys" Does Not Tally with Reality

Over the last few weeks, alongside the unprecedented level of support and aid that the Americans have granted Israel in the current military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, they have also been sharing their plan for after Hamas has been defeated: the "good guys" from the Palestinian Authority (PA) will take over the reins of government in Gaza too.

This will occur in tandem with a concerted effort to implement the "Two-State Solution" and a far-reaching compromise that Israel will have to make in Judea and Samaria.

But the American theory suffers from a key, basic preliminary fault. Their underlying assumption that Judea and Samaria are home to the "good guys" or that Hamas does not represent the majority of the Palestinians simply does not tally with reality.

More than 1,000 terrorist attacks planned by both Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations have been thwarted by the IDF and the Israel Security Agency throughout Judea and Samaria in recent years, in those very areas where the "good guys" are.

Since the beginning of the war, manifestations of support and identification among the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria with the Oct. 7 massacre and the fighting led by Hamas in Gaza against Israel have been steadily growing.

The support for Hamas continues in those very areas where the Americans seek to establish a Palestinian state, even when rockets launched from Gaza fall on them by mistake. In the Aida refugee camp north of Bethlehem, children, youth, men and women celebrated with fragments and shrapnel from the rockets, dancing in joy and chanting cries of incitement against Israel and calls of support for Hamas.

Itamar Marcus, the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, noted that in Judea and Samaria after the massacre, "Initially there was tremendous joy there. The feeling was that Hamas had fulfilled a dream that the PA could only ever have fantasized about. You are repeatedly witness to the use of words such as 'joy,' 'pride' and 'heroic.'"

One of Israel's biggest weaknesses is Jews' historical anxiousness to please the non-Jews of the world.

Modern Zionism was supposed to eliminate this mindset - that Jews were either weak and forced to do whatever non-Jews demanded so they would be left alone, or that Jews must assimilate and abandon their uniqueness in order to succeed in the rules of the game devised by non-Jews.

But old habits die hard. Israel has always been sensitive to world opinion; it has tried to please at least the Western nations it desperately wants to be a part of. It is constantly on the defensive to justify its actions, to try to convince others that it was right in the face of intractable enemies. So many of Israel's messages to the world are - see, we are good, we have Nobel Prizes, we invent really neat stuff, we help out in natural disasters, we share liberal morality, we are democratic, please accept us as one of you!

Criticism of Israel hits hard, and many Israelis embrace and share in this criticism in their own quixotic attempts to be more accepted by the liberal and progressive world.

It never works, but Jews keep trying.

October 7 may have changed that.

Look at Egypt's response to the Gaza war: "We will not accept refugees." Period. End of story. It is not negotiable. And even the most progressive people, those who agitate for refugee rights, those who insist that Western nations accept millions of refugees, those who know that thousands of lives could be saved - they don't question Egypt's refusal to even discuss it. There are no Egyptian diplomats being grilled on the BBC or CNN. They said no, that's it, nothing anyone can do.

If that's the way it is, then it is time to pressure Israel to stop the war, either a "ceasefire" or a surrender.

But this time, Israel is saying no.

While it is still trying to be polite, underneath the public relations is a solid message: Hamas must be destroyed. Israel will follow international law, it will do what it can to avoid civilian casualties, but it will not be distracted and not deviate from its primary goal this time.

A million or billion protesters every week are meaningless. The UN is meaningless. Comments from "friends" pretending to be supportive but slyly implying that Israel is not doing everything it can to protect civilians are meaningless. Israel has a mission:: ensure Hamas is eradicated.

Israel needs to be much clearer in its messaging that the utter destruction of Hamas is non-negotiable. If anyone has a problem with it, tell Hamas to surrender and go into exile in Algeria or Qatar. But the days where Israel is craving world approval are over.

Israel's mission is for Israel alone. No one else cares if Hamas exists. Hamas is only an existential threat to Israel. This is why Israel has more strength to say no to the world this time: the rest of the world doesn't share the same interests, and that is fine. This is a job for Israel, and whether it is supported or not, Israel will do the job itself.

In previous Gaza wars, Israel's goals were much fuzzier: establish deterrence, buy some more time, create a new situation on the ground - but allow Hamas to exist. It was a deadly mistake. Israel now has a clarity of purpose, even if it takes months or years.

And the message Israel needs to give the world is that while it respects them, and adheres to international law, the world will not dictate or influence Israel's response if it detracts from that single-minded goal of getting rid of Hamas.

If the world cares so much about Gazan lives, they know Egypt's address.

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 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