In October, I predicted "If polls come out about the Simchat Torah massacre, the results (from Palestinians) will almost certainly be overwhelmingly in support. 84% supported the Mercaz Harav massacre in 2008, 77% a 2008 suicide attack that killed a woman in Dimona, 80% supported the wave of stabbing attacks in 2014 including the murder of four rabbis in Har Nof."
I was right.
A new poll from AWRAD, Arab World for Research and Development, shows that the vast majority of Palestinians support the October 7 pogrom. 75% of all Palestinians supported the massacre while only 12.7% opposed it.
The Gazans polled were generally in temporary housing in southern Gaza, and "only" 63% supported the murder and raping spree. But in the "moderate" West Bank, an astonishing 83% supported the massacre.
This poll was taken after the details were publicized, after the videos were shared, after everyone know the death toll. That didn't dampen their enthusiasm for the attack - it may have increased it.
Palestinian women are just about as bloodthirsty as the men are with their enthusiasm for murdering Jews well within the margin of error for the poll.
When asked about their preference between a one-state solution for Jews and Arabs, a two state solution for two peoples, or a single Arab Palestinian state from the river to the sea, things were just as lopsided. 75% want to see a Judenrein Arab Palestinian state from the river to the sea - the question used those exact words. All the apologists for the term who claim it means a single state with equal rights are gaslighting everyone: only 5.4% of Palestinians support their utopian dream.
And the attack made Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades terror wing the most popular entity in the territories, with nearly 89% of all Palestinians feeling positive about that group, higher than every other political party, terror group or country.
The poll is crystal clear and cannot be spun: Palestinians overwhelmingly support the most heinous terrorism against Jews. Palestinians want to rid the Middle East of Jews.
As I've been emphasizing, the obstacle to peace isn't Israel. It is Palestinian Jew-hatred, hatred that predates the "occupation" and "siege" and "nakba." Unless there is a new Palestinian leadership and a generation of Palestinians who grow up learning about coexistence and tolerance, there is no chance for peace.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Inquiries into the Yom Kippur War failures led to major changes in Israel’s military structure and political leadership—including the end of Prime Minister Golda Meir’s storied career. And yet here we are, 50 years later, grappling with another catastrophic failure of sensemaking on the part of Israel’s political, intelligence, and military elites. And this could be the hardest lesson of the post–October 7 reckoning: Identifying and even punishing these failed leaders might be necessary, and indeed, cathartic. But it won’t be sufficient. The problems lie deeper than any group of individuals. “Locating blame in individuals perpetuates the problem,” Vaughan writes. The people thought to be at fault can be fired or even jailed, “but unless the organizational causes of the problems are fixed, the next person to occupy the same position will experience the same pressures and the harmful outcomes will repeat.”
It’s natural to be outraged at the leaders who failed to anticipate this horrific assault. But, unlike in a disaster, we should reserve our deepest anger for the people who ordered and carried out this exercise in primitive barbarity. Emily Harding, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes that intelligence collapses like 9/11 and October 7 “are often failures of imagination.” They occur when leaders and analysts “neglect to think as big and as ruthlessly as their enemy.” Maybe we shouldn’t be shocked that Israel’s military and intelligence leaders failed to imagine the depths of Hamas’s depravity. Perhaps—and I know this is asking a lot—we should try to summon a bit of empathy for officials whose notions of military threats didn’t include mass rape and babies in ovens.
No doubt all these questions will be hashed out in the coming years of inquiry and attempts at reform. But that will have to wait. As Israeli forces were still engaging the last Hamas terrorists, a reporter asked IDF military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, about the status of the investigation into military and intelligence failures. His response: “First, we fight, then we investigate.”
The academic theories that buttress anti-Semitism were made operational in 2019 in the effort to compel House Democratic leaders to back down from their effort to censure Representative Ilhan Omar for her flagrant anti-Semitism. The backlash from the left was wildly successful. Because she wanted the censure, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was dubbed by Linda Sarsour a “typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed. “No one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latinx + other communities,” she insisted. “We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry,” then senator Kamala Harris wrote. And yet, “the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk.”
A united front emerged, and Democratic leadership was convinced to subordinate its better instincts to the social justice solidarity movement that formed around Omar. In the end, the caucus produced not a censure of Omar’s prejudice but a watery statement of general opposition to bigotry in whatever form it takes. Sound familiar?
The least charitable interpretation of the Democratic establishment’s internal turmoil in the weeks that passed since the 10/7 attack is that its leading lights are inveighing against the scourge of Islamophobia to give cover to anti-Semitic elements within their coalition. And it is not without evidence—the evidence of years of cowardice, caviling, and making deals with the devil.
Progressives and liberals alike abetted decades of policy preferences, campaigns to coerce and cajole donors, indefensible tenure-track recommendations, efforts to debase humanities departments, and the creation of a media-academic industrial complex designed to house the products of this ill-considered education. They built an elaborate new lie—the threat of “Islamophobia”—that hijacked the enduring reality of the world’s oldest lie. It should be a source of profound unease to all people of good will, and to all people who fear the consequences of these apologia for anti-Semitism, that the White House’s first instinct when confronted with the rotten fruits of their coalition’s labors is to throw yet another lie on the pile.
On May 8, 1997, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia delivered what may have been the most important speech of his life. Strikingly, the address had nothing to do with jurisprudence; it made no mention of the Constitution or of the originalism that had marked his career. Delivered in the Capitol Rotunda, the justice’s remarks focused on the horrors of history, yet Scalia looked to not only the past but also the future. His words, now printed in the vital volume Scalia Speaks, have proved terrifyingly prescient.
The occasion of the address was a ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day. The justice reflected that, as honored as he was to participate, he found the invitation difficult to undertake as a non-Jew: “I am an outsider speaking to an ancient people about a tragedy of unimaginable proportions that is intensely personal to them.” Scalia further reflected, “I am not only not a Jew, I am a Christian,” and said he believed that the anti-Semitism in Christendom had “helped set the stage for the mad tragedy that the National Socialists produced.” He stressed, however, that for him, the ceremony of the day was personal: “When I was a young man in college, spending my junior year abroad, I saw Dachau. Later, in the year after I graduated from law school, I saw Auschwitz. I will of course never forget the impression they made upon me.”
These remarks were interesting enough, but the most important part of the speech was yet to come. Scalia stressed that it was not enough to remember the Holocaust. Rather, he said, one must mark the sort of society in which it occurred: “The one message I want to convey today is that you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that it happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.” The Germany of the early-20th century, he noted, “was a world leader in most fields of art, science, and intellect.” Its universities were some of the most celebrated on earth. Yet this did not prevent Nazism from suffusing society; in fact, German education and Nazism went hand in hand.
Then, suddenly, Scalia switched from past to present and focused on his own family: “This aspect of the matter is perhaps so prominent in my mind because I am undergoing, currently, the task of selecting a college for the youngest of my children—or perhaps more accurately, trying to help her select it.” American parents, Scalia reflected, place so much value today on what is taught in academic institutions, yet the opportunities afforded there, he argued, are “of only secondary importance—to our children, and to the society that their generation will create.” The Holocaust, Scalia argued, is a reminder of the importance of imparting moral wisdom above all else, and it is this, he was implicitly saying, that parents must bear in mind as they ponder the intellectual future of their progeny.
The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel.
It was around the time of the Oslo Accords. I had been hired by the Ford Foundation to create a marketing institute for their grantees in the country. Ford was funding the operations of both Jewish and Arab organizations within the Israeli green line, in an effort to help build a vibrant liberal civil society.
Ford put me in partnership with a young Israeli woman, Debra London. (Debra, now one of my closest friends, has just been selected to head up fundraising for the rebuilding of Kibbutz Be’eri.) She and I drew up a plan to interview each of the grantees, as well as Israeli ad agencies and media firms. While we wanted to learn about the grantees, we also planned to secure free marketing work and media to be an essential part of the institute.
When we interviewed the Jewish organizations, the atmosphere was almost giddy with hope, possibility and belief in Shimon Peres’s new Middle East. Each organization we interviewed talked excitedly about peace and co-existence, a flourishing economy among both the Jews and the Palestinians, collaborative projects and interchanges.
But when we interviewed the Arab organizations, the word “peace” never passed their lips. They spoke of independence, dignity, self-rule, a state. One person even told me she would never use the word “du-kiyum” (co-existence). “There is no such thing as co-existence,” she stressed. “We are just the tenants living on the property that the Jews now own. That’s not a balanced co-existence.”
I tried to explain to my fellow Jewish liberals that we — the Jews and the Arabs — were having two very separate conversations. We were talking “peace.” They were talking “independence.” But as the weeks of interviews progressed, I found the Arab organizations were talking about a whole lot more.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 are quite brilliant. They balance the rights of civilians with the needs of the armed forces. They protect the innocent but do not make an army's job impossible.
They were written with input from humanitarian and military experts after World War II. They are considered customary international law nowadays, even for those who did not sign them.
Israel is adhering to the Geneva Conventions in every aspect in this Gaza war. Waving your hands and saying "children are being killed!" is not an argument. Every single attack has a specific target and a specific goal. Every single attack is weighed between the expected military advantage and the expected casualties.
And Israel has attacked roughly 15,000 targets.
Even if Hamas' casualty numbers are accurate - and previous wars show that usually the ratio of terrorists killed to civilians is higher than in any conflicts in history in urban areas - - that's less than one death per for each attack. That is hardly evidence for a policy of wanton killing!
Not to sound trite, but if you do not know what Israeli intelligence says about a target, and you do not know the military value of the target, you cannot say the attack is disproportionate. You can say it is tragic, you can call it unfair, but you cannot say it violates either international law or morality unless you know what was being targeted. You need both sides of the equation before making an accusation.
In Gaza, most of the targets are hidden. They are underground. Israel relies on intelligence to know what to hit. It is not going to share that intel with the world, nor is it obligated to, for obvious reasons. But according to the laws of armed conflict, , IDF commanders have to weigh what a reasonable military commander would do with the information they have at the moment of attack - knowledge of both the value of the target and the expected civilian loss.
That is international law. And that is the only moral choice. Because allowing Hamas to continue to exist, and to have fighting capability, is profoundly immoral.
If you are assuming that the IDF, with the massive amounts of information it gathers about every square meter of Gaza from SIGINT, HUMINT, IMINT and OSINT collated and cross checked in huge databases, is purposefully targeting civilians, or that they are recklessly endangering civilians for no good reason, and shooting very expensive smart weapons at apartment buildings without warning just for fun or without knowing the target underneath - I'm sorry, but you are simply an antisemite. Because any sane observer would see that Israel is a professional army, with multiple layers of oversight (including multiple layers of legal experts) and a very sophisticated integrated system for finding and firing at targets. It is not a two year old baby throwing a temper tantrum.
But some people cannot conceive of that.
Yes, the optics of thousands of dead Gazans is terrible. Israel knows this better than anyone - because it is on the receiving end of the world's wrath. It has zero incentive to kill Gaza civilians. It doesn't help the war effort. On the contrary, civilian casualties makes thee IDF's job harder. It has every incentive to save civilians.
The only party with incentive to see Gaza civilians dead is Hamas. This is exactly why they choose to place their military centers and bunkers and tunnels in and under schools and hospitals and apartment buildings. Denying that is denying reality.
And we know that Hamas has attacked their own people many times over the years. Sometimes accidentally with errant rockets (which they blame on Israel) and sometimes on purpose . Just yesterday a former USAID leader in Gaza said he has first hand knowledge of Hamas shooting civilians trying to escape a war zone in 2014. And there have been several reports of Hamas shooting at civilians fleeing from the north of Gaza to safety. Hams warned the people not to go from the start. So who has incentive to shoot them if they decide to flee?
This is the reality. And Israel will do whatever it takes - within the law and its own moral code that goes way beyond the law - to accomplish its mission.
If you want to see Israel fail in its mission to destroy Hamas, especially after October 7, then you are the one with a defective moral code.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Like other days of infamy and horror, including December 7, 1941 and 9/11, October 7 should be remembered as a moment of illumination and clarity. Eighteen years after Israel unilaterally evacuated the Gaza Strip, Hamas sent its killing squads across the border to fight what the group believes is an “occupation.” For Hamas, though, the goal is to end the 75-year-old Zionist occupation of Tel Aviv and every other city and settlement in Israel today. Or, to put it more directly, the Jewish state is still fighting its war of independence.
Even the allegedly more moderate Palestinian Authority declares that the 1948 war is still ongoing every Nakba Day when it sends tens of thousands of violent demonstrators to the streets, chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The very same slogan is now also routinely chanted at college campuses and public squares all over the Unites States.
The mass-murder events of October 7 have understandably evoked memories of the Holocaust. In a phone call with President Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hamas committed acts “as in Babyn Yar where Jews where machine-gunned in killing pits.” Although morally correct, the comparison is not quite precise enough. Babyn Yar occurred a thousand miles away from the Middle East; Haj Amin al-Hussein and Hassan al-Banna worked for a Final Solution for the Jews of Palestine.
It’s more appropriate now for Israelis to focus on the strictly local political and religious antecedents of the October 7 massacres. The Hamas shahids of today are the spiritual children of al-Husseini and al-Banna, and of the alliance between Islamic Jew-hatred and Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism.
Hamas was created in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood. Its founding charter speaks of a sharia state similar to the Caliphate. Its religious slogan is “Islam is the solution.” But it is the legacy of al-Husseini and his embrace of Nazi Jew-hatred that drives Hamas’s political and military policies.
How dispiriting it is, then, to recall the many occasions over the past hundred years on which otherwise well-meaning British and Israeli officials fell into the trap of believing that this Islamist/Nazi ideological movement could be bribed into relative normalcy with political gifts and accommodations. Even the allegedly hardline Netanyahu governments of the past 15 years willfully ignored the lessons of history and complacently believed that Hamas had been deterred by bundles of cash.
The slogan “never again” has historically referred to the catastrophe in Europe where defenseless Jews were led to the slaughter. It must now take on a second meaning in the Jewish homeland. Self-defense is not the issue there. The people, the ordinary citizens of Israel, have shown over and over again that they can come together as one, rise to the occasion and defend their communities. It is rather that Israel’s governments and politicians must now pledge, “Never again.” Meaning, never again will we be lulled into complacency or forget the brutal lesson of the past 100 years. When avowed enemies steeped in Nazi and Islamic Jew-hatred announce they want to kill us, we should take them seriously and prepare to kill them first. Finally, never again will we believe that such enemies can be bribed into decent human behavior.
US President Joe Biden’s call that Israel take “less intrusive action” at hospitals across Gaza aside, Sullivan’s remarks and others he made on Monday, demonstrate that the US understood Israel was obliged to continue focusing on Gaza hospitals due to Hamas’s practices.
The Israeli army is facing “murderous terrorists who continue to say that their goal is the destruction of the State of Israel,” Sullivan stated. “You are dealing with a terrorist organization, Hamas, that takes civilians, hostages, including little children, that uses civilians as human shields, that uses civilian infrastructure – even hospitals, in the most cynical ways possible – as fighting positions, as military operation centers,” he said.
“Israel has to confront that while at the same time not wanting to go assaulting hospitals in firefights that could put innocent people who are getting life-saving medical care in the crossfire. This is the complexity, this is the burden that the Israel Defense Forces are facing as they conduct their operations,” he explained.
The other truth that has emerged during the war is the scope of what Hamas was planning to do to Israel on October 7, and the realization that this war must end the threat the terrorist group poses to Israel and its citizens once and for all.
According to The Washington Post report published this week, Hamas had hoped to push into large Israeli cities and even to the West Bank. Their aim was to provoke a huge Israeli response and launch a regional war.
Those elements, bolstered by Hamas statements made since October 7 that it will continue to launch more murderous strikes against Israel whenever it can, provide more than enough evidence that Israel must continue its morally just battle against the evil force that controls Gaza, and holds hostage not only the 240 people in captivity, but also all the innocent Palestinian residents of the enclave.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters on Monday, citing growing international calls for a ceasefire, that Israel has “two to three weeks” to complete its war against Hamas.
Israel has made the case that it is fighting this war not just for itself, but for the democracies of the West, as part of the battle against Iran’s influence across the globe.
The most productive move the leaders of the free world can take right now is to provide Israel with all the time it needs to finish the job and eradicate Hamas, now and forever.
Israel’s much anticipated raid on Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital produced far less drama than many expected, and it should reset many people’s prior assumptions about the IDF’s war conduct—and Hamas’s.
The troops deployed to the Gaza City compound last night have already left the hospital, according to those inside. So far, events have borne out Israel’s account of the war in three key ways.
First, that al-Shifa hospital and others are used by Hamas’s military. “I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters yesterday, adding that “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad—J.I.D.—members operate a command and control node from Al-Shifa in Gaza City. They have stored weapons there, and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.”
The U.S. confirmed this with its own intelligence assessment, he stressed. Dave Harden, the former West Bank and Gaza mission director for USAID, chimed in this morning to note that Hamas’s practice of using hospitals was widely understood in Palestinian circles as well. According to international law, he explained, the protection of a hospital from attack would be void “if a hospital is used as a base from which to launch an attack; as an observation post to transmit information of military value; as a weapons depot; as a center for liaison with fighting troops.”
That also helps explain why Kirby specifically said this morning that Hamas has violated the laws of war.
Second, Hamas was specifically using patients in the hospital as human shields. Israel’s demonstrated ability to transfer patients and medical equipment to and from al-Shifa backs up the fact that, as John Podhoretz noted over the weekend, “Every single patient, every single doctor, every single nurse, and every single piece of medical equipment in that building could have been moved, carefully and without molestation from Israel, over the course of the three weeks that Israel’s military task seemed to be to soften the battleground miles and miles north of al-Shifa.”
The IDF announced on Thursday evening that it had found the body of Yehudit Weiss, an Israeli civilian thought to have been taken hostage by Hamas on October 7.
The remains of Weiss, a resident of the southern kibbutz of Be'eri, were found near a structure adjacent to the Al-Shifa Hospital which serves as a military weapons cache, the IDF said.
Her body was found by the IDF's 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion operating in Gaza as part of Operation Swords of Iron.
Weiss was battling cancer before her death at the hands of Hamas.
On one side we have a mature, professional government and army in a democracy with a vigorous free press unafraid to call out abuses and lies.. One that has are checks and balances, a strong judicial system and an independent legal branch of the army to ensure that the law is upheld.
On the other side we have kidnappers, murderers, rapists - people who literally brag about targeting Jews. An internationally recognized terrorist group whose very charter says its goal is to eradicate all Jews. A group that has a record of jailing or murdering critics, and threatening anyone who says anything they don't like. Their military forces' major defensive objective is to cynically use and endanger their own people to protect themselves.
The track records of both sides telling the truth - and correcting mistakes - are not remotely comparable. Yet we have the media that treats the claims of both sides with exactly equal weight.
In a video taken at the hospital, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, displayed caches of guns, ammunition, protective vests and Hamas military uniforms, some of which, he said, had been hidden behind M.R.I. machines and others in nearby storage units.
The New York Times was unable to verify the provenance of the weapons and equipment in the images or assess the claim of the command center’s existence.
In other words, according to the NYT, the IDF may have faked the entire video. They may have planted AK-47s in the hospital. The entire operation of going into Shifa Hospital may have been an elaborate scam, just to smear Hamas' sterling reputation by accusing them of hiding militants in a hospital, which has been reported by independent sources for 15 years.
There is no problem with being skeptical - both sides realize this is an information war and try to get their narratives in the forefront. But only one side suffers consequences if they are found to be deceiving the media. The downside of Israeli statements like this one being found out to be untrue are huge, and the upside of lying is fairly minimal.
For Hamas, there is no downside of lying. Because the media still gives everything they say the same legitimacy as Israel's statement, no matter how many times they have been shown to maliciously and repeatedly lie.
Casting doubt on the veracity of IDF claims, especially in Gaza, is saying that Jews cannot be trusted. The Israelis spokespeople are just as reliable as those of genocidal Hamas, no more and no less. Context and history and motivation are all irrelevant.
In fact, to the New York Times, IDF claims are much less reliable. They have mounted multiple investigations questioning IDF claims during this war, but as far as I can tell they have not given serious resources to proving Hamas war crimes since the events of 10/7.
This is not even-handedness. This is slyly accusing Jews of subterfuge and lies while giving a terrorist group equal, or sometimes greater, legitimacy. I cannot recall the newspaper being this skeptical about official government statements from the UK or France. Only the Jewish state is given such treatment. Only for Jews is the audience told that their statements cannot be corroborated, and are therefore suspect.
Placing a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas is antisemitism hiding under the pretense of honest journalism. And it stinks just as bad as all other antisemitism does.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Friday, November 17, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
