The One Simple Question That Determines Everything: "Is it acceptable to slaughter, rape, behead and burn people in pursuit of a political aim?" (Part 2) (Andrew Pessin)

(By Andrew Pessin, Continued from  part 1). 

3. How Would You Respond To An Openly Genocidal Terror Group That Doesn’t Care About Its Own Civilians?

So far I’ve argued that every decent human being must answer (Q) with an unqualified, full-stop “no,” and that the “no” answer reveals the true nature of the Palestinian movement as a genocidal Islamist movement seeking to murder all Jews and destroy the West. Once you understand this then everything about the “conflict” looks different including, now, how one might think about Israel’s response to October 7.

If you can’t answer “no” to (Q) then you cannot understand the actual threat that Israel faces, and thus cannot understand (and ought not to criticize) Israel’s response.

It’s common for anti-Israelists to insist that people have the right to “resist” their oppression, adding “by any means necessary” as a sanitized way to answer “yes” to (Q), thus justifying violence against Israel and Israelis. But now if people have the right to “resist” their oppression, people surely have the right to “resist” their extermination, and “by any means necessary.” On this view there would literally be no moral limits to what Israel can do in response to Hamas. The only people who deny that right to the Jews have already dehumanized them to the point where Jews no longer enjoy the “human rights” all other humans have, as we’ll explore below.

That the threat Hamas poses is precisely that of extermination is indisputable. From its founding charter to nearly every action and statement in the 35 years since, as we’ve seen, its goal has been clear. Hamas murdered and wounded many thousands of Israelis throughout the 1990s and 2000s in suicide bombings and other attacks. Israel then withdrew from Gaza in 2005 at great financial and emotional cost to itself partly as a gesture toward peaceful coexistence. In response Hamas took over the enclave by a violent coup in 2007 and immediately began firing rockets at Israel, each one a double war-crime (fired from within a civilian population toward a civilian population). In the past 16 years Hamas has launched tens of thousands of rockets and started five full-fledged wars in addition to many smaller skirmishes, in addition to perpetrating many individual terrorist attacks. Each war ended the same way, as a stalemate, with Hamas still in power—after which Hamas then took the intervening time to rearm and get militarily stronger. October 7 escalated their program to a whole new, barbaric level, and they have promised to do it again and again until every Jew is eliminated.

It is indisputable that Hamas will never accept any peaceful “solution,” beyond the elimination of all Jews. They say that openly and every behavior confirms it. If Israel is to defend itself from this genocidal program, then, it can only be by the elimination of Hamas. And since Hamas gets stronger with each interval, there is no longer any reasonable option but to eliminate Hamas—now, because next time they might even have nuclear weapons, supplied by Iran.

If the State of Israel is to protect its citizens, then, it has the moral obligation of eliminating Hamas.

The question is how.

Well, how would you fight a genocidal enemy that has no concern for its own civilians, and would even be happy to sacrifice them as long as it destroyed you? By conceding to them? Empowering them? Giving them a state?

Or would you fight them “by any means necessary”?

Of course most anti-Israelists condemn any measure that Israel takes to contain Hamas’s genocidal threat, including the non-violent ones. These include the blockade Israel imposed after Hamas took power and began firing rockets, which, in an inversion of reality, anti-Israelists now claim is a justified cause of the violence Hamas perpetrates against Jews rather than its justified effect. These also include many of the policies and actions that anti-Israelists attribute to “the occupation,” such as the separation fence, checkpoints, even some of the settlement activity in Judea and Samaria (which they refer to by the Jordanian colonial name of “West Bank”). When you answer “no” to (Q) and thus recognize the actual threat Israeli Jews are up against, these measures are more accurately seen not as “the mechanism of occupation” but as necessary measures of self-defense.

Still, these non-violent measures obviously don’t test the limits of the phrase “by any means necessary,” so it’s Israel’s military responses that draw their special ire, for example due to the civilian casualties that result. And indeed, in each of the five wars and other skirmishes started by Hamas, Israel’s military responses have caused civilian casualties.

That topic requires its own substantive essay, but here just a couple of brief points.

First, again, those who answer “yes” to (Q) are not in much position to complain of the other side killing civilians. If they endorse civilian casualties when these are the direct target of the attack—as they were in the October 7 slaughter—they can hardly object to civilian casualties as collateral damage from the targeting of military threats. Or if they may resist oppression “by any means necessary” they can hardly object when Israel resists its extermination “by any means necessary.”

More importantly, if anyone can figure out how to eliminate Hamas without any civilian casualties at all then Israel would be all ears. That is obviously impossible both by all the general norms of warfare—has there ever been a war, in all history, that didn’t involve civilian casualties?—and all the more so by the fact that Hamas embeds itself among civilians, uses them as human shields, blocks their efforts to evacuate, has rockets that misfire and kills them itself, and more. These multiple war crimes in fact make Hamas morally and legal responsible for any civilian casualties that result from strikes targeting Hamas.

Does that then license the unlimited slaughter of civilians, the utter destruction of Gaza?

Of course not, at least to those who answer “no” to (Q).

In fact Israel, unlike Hamas, makes extensive efforts to follow the international “laws of war,” which allow civilian casualties in the relevant proportions and under the relevant conditions. This is not the place to defend that claim, except to note (1) how remarkable is the degree to which Israel conforms to international law in a conflict with an enemy who flouts it entirely—the October 7 massacre of civilians including children being just one example of thousands—at the same time as (2) the international community relentlessly charges Israel with flouting those laws while ignoring Hamas’s actual blatant violations. It actually isn’t difficult to show that Israel takes more care to protect Gazan civilians than does Hamas, the enclave’s ruling authority.

The “no” answer also gives one more important result.

Already in the first days of Israel’s response to October 7 the calls for “de-escalation,” and “ceasefire,” began. Anti-Israelists called for these increasingly vociferously as the days then weeks of the campaign went on, condemning alleged Israeli “genocide” in the form of civilian casualties. But wasn’t Hamas’s mass sadistic slaughter of some 1200 mostly civilians itself an escalation? And part of an explicit campaign of, literally, genocide? How does one come out for “de-escalation” only after the Jew-slaughterers have finished their slaughter, without even acknowledging that slaughter? How does one come out against “genocide” only after the openly genocidal group has finished its round of genocidal activity, and do so without acknowledging that genocidal activity? Think about what that behavior reveals: they have no objection when Jews are attacked, but they condemn Jews when they respond. Or maybe: genocide is dreadful, except when it’s perpetrated against Jews.

Further, to call for ceasefire now simply means that Hamas wins, and can just use the interim once more to increase its military might for the next round of conflict. That’s not a genuine ceasefire; that is in the long term to prolong the fighting with almost surely a much greater civilian toll overall. Empirical experience, after five wars in 16 years, clearly demonstrates that to be true. Nor is such a call respecting the power of the “no” answer to (Q): as Hamas openly declared, that atrocity is exactly what is going to happen again and again, unless Hamas is eliminated.

Moreover, there is a whole other mode of de-escalation, and genocide prevention, that these anti-Israel activists are presumably intentionally ignoring. They could be demanding that Hamas return all the hostages immediately and surrender, and then the war is over, instantly. You don’t get more de-escalating and anti-genocidal than that. It is extraordinarily telling that this is not the mode they are calling for.

Their calls for ceasefire are, then, calls for the victory of Hamas.

If you answer “no” to (Q), and condemn the Hamas slaughter full stop, then you recognize the absolute unacceptability of the continued existence of Hamas, which in turn justifies a massive Israeli response to Hamas even despite tragically significant civilian casualties—which are in any case entirely Hamas’s responsibility.

And if you answer “yes”?

Then by your own reckoning the Jewish people may “resist” their own extermination “by any means necessary,” and you have no standing to object.

4. Delegitimization and Dehumanization

We turn now to the next result from a full stop “no” answer to (Q): we are compelled to examine exactly how it has come to pass that so many on our campuses can find themselves answering “yes” instead.

Let’s begin with this observation from Vassar College professor of Russian history Michaela Pohl from 2016:

The atmosphere at Vassar … is troubled. I am not Jewish, but even I have experienced an increase in hostility and strained silences among students and colleagues … I have been called a “f--king fascist,” “Zionist” and “idiot” for speaking out against Vassar’s BDS resolution and speaking up for Israel and for US policy. I have seen Jewish students profiled and singled out at a BDS meeting. I have felt the icy silence that reigns in some departments … Academics who suggest that Israel is harvesting organs … earn [approving] tweets and clicks—and deal in hate speech … It is speech that angers and mobilizes and that relishes its effects but denies that the effect was ever the intention.

As for the long-term effects of such an environment, Pohl noted that “students look down at their desks when I say things about Jewish emancipation [in Russia] … [there are] embarrassed silences in class while discussing Jewish history.”

This may be America in 2023, but what we’re seeing is an old story, dressed up fresh for the 21^st century Western world.

Years of lies, fertilizing the soil, all deliberately designed to delegitimize and dehumanize the Jew, to label the Jew as inhuman, demonic, pure evil. Once you are convinced that the Jew represents evil, then persecuting Jews, even killing Jews, becomes not only acceptable but even obligatory. If the Jew is evil, then you in turn must be a very good person in persecuting and killing him. The ancient and medieval Christians did this for centuries, portraying the Jew as the fleshly embodiment of evil for their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus. The Germans and the Nazis did this for decades in racial terms, inspired and justifying their actions by the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, even developing a whole academic discipline to demonstrate the evils of the Jews and thus inspiring the book title, as apt today as ever, Hitler’s Professors. After some decades of this program, killing actual living Jews isn’t merely easier but becomes an act of virtue.

The newer lies, now also several decades old, are merely superficial variations on the older lies, aiming to better reflect the specific evils of today. The charges of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “settler colonialism,” “apartheid,” and more recently, right out of Goebbels’ playbook, “Jewish supremacy”—not to mention probably every single thing most people believe about Gaza—all of these are lies, in fact easily documentable and demonstrable lies for anyone who takes a few minutes to honestly evaluate them. (Many people for example don’t know that rather unlike most “open air prisons” or “concentration camps” Gaza has four-star hotels and restaurants, luxury cars, ritzy malls, affluent neighborhoods, fancy beach resorts, and an obesity problem, not to mention a massive military infrastructure.) These charges don’t have to be true, they just have to be widely circulated, widely repeated, and widely believed, so that the Jew becomes the embodiment of whatever is considered most evil today.

And this is what the Palestinian movement, along with its many “progressive” allies, has successfully accomplished.

After almost twenty years of the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) movement against Israel, orchestrated on campus by the more than 200 chapters of SJP, their short-term goal, that of damaging Israel economically, was a bust; but the long-term goal, the real goal, has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Whether or not a particular BDS resolution passes or fails on a given campus, the campaign itself soaks the campus in all the lies above for weeks on end, year after year. Most students don’t really follow the details, but come away thinking, man, those Jews with their genocide, apartheid, and supremacy, must really be pretty evil.

And now in 2023 no one blinks when SJP asserts boldly, baldly, as if factually, on their recent social media celebrating the slaughter of 1200 mostly Jews, that every single Israeli Jew is a "settler"—even the ones who live within the internationally recognized borders of the U.N. member State of Israel, even the ones whose lineage in that land might well trace back to Biblical times. In today’s campus vernacular the label “settler” is a slur rivalling in evilness the slur “Nazi” (which they also repeatedly sling against Israelis). If every Israeli Jew is a settler, then every Israeli Jew is evil, and therefore legitimately murdered. That includes the babies, and the grandmothers, and the unarmed dancing teenagers, and by the way it also justifies torturing them and raping them before you murder them.

Nor is an eye blinked when George Washington University’s SJP, for example, goes even further and openly declares that “We reject the distinction between 'civilian' and 'militant' … Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.” The assault on language and intelligence here is almost as bad as the physical assault on Jewish civilians that it justifies. It is so shocking that it must be repeated: “Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor even if lounging on the beach.” That adorable four-year-old boy, born in that land to parents who were born in that land to parents who were born in that land (and beyond), splashing in the waves as his loving mother looks on: that small boy is an aggressor, a soldier, an occupier, a—settler.

Every Israeli Jew is guilty. And if every Israeli Jew is guilty, is evil, then so is every other Jew who supports them and may even be related to them. Since approximately half the world’s Jews live in Israel and the significant majority of the other half supports Israel, feels connected to it, has relatives and acquaintances who live there, and so on, then the result is clear:

There are no innocent Jews.

The actual Nazis couldn’t have orchestrated it better.

But even this is only part of the story.

To this now two-decade-old propaganda campaign was added, in the past decade or so, another ideological movement. Going by various names—Wokeness, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)—this ideology has taken campuses (and many other institutions) by storm, thoroughly exploding after the infamous George Floyd affair in 2020. The antagonism this movement shows not merely toward Israel but towards Jews in general is well documented, but the simple summary is this. Members of Western societies, including America, divide into two basic classes, they say, the oppressor and the oppressed, with one’s membership determined primarily by one’s race. As such, “white supremacy” is understood as the fundamental evil responsible for all sorts of disparities between white people and all people of color. Where there are such disparities (in wealth and income, in health, in education, in admission to Ivy League universities, in police interactions, etc.) these are due to white privilege affording benefits unavailable to people of color. Ideas such as “merit,” “equal opportunity,” and “color-blindness” are derided as either illusions or mechanisms by which to enforce white supremacy.

What does this have to do with the Jews?

Since Jews, on average, “do well”—never mind that many Jews are poor, unhealthy, not prosperous, and have long been disproportionately targeted for discrimination and violence etc.—then Jews are in the class of “white supremacist oppressors of people of color.” (Never mind too that actual white supremacists, going back to the Nazis and earlier, persecuted Jews for not being white, and that many, many Jews are racially indistinguishable from other people of color.) In fact since Jews “do well” on average compared to other “white” groups, Jews are sometimes considered uber-white: the worst of the oppressors. If the SJPers and BDSers label Jews with the defamatory slur of being settlers, the CRTers and DEIers label them with the equally defamatory slur of being uber-white.

Between these two sets of ideologies so dominant on campuses then, Israeli Jews, American Jews, European Jews, Jews simpliciter—are simply evil, full stop, the same full stop that should accompany the “no” answer to (Q).

There are no innocent Jews, not in Israel, not elsewhere.

Those “decent” administrators, faculty members, who say nothing while 1200 Jews are slaughtered—and livestreamed, with the most horrific recordings circulating the globe getting millions of views and shares and likes and celebratory comments—do they remain silent because they too believe these Jews actually—deserve this?

One liberated kibbutz included the bodies of 40 babies.

Babies.

Some beheaded.

Are there no innocent Jews, who don’t deserve this fate?

If you can’t condemn this with a full stop “no” to (Q)—if you remain silent—then you must believe these Jews deserve it. I can draw no other conclusion. Is it possible that my academic colleagues, sophisticated, educated, refined, “experts” in values—for do they not daily proclaim their expertise in values, in their anti-racism, their anti-hate, their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion?—is it possible that the people we work with, share offices with, who teach our children, share the belief and value system of the ancient and medieval Christians, the modern Nazis?

And of Hamas, as we have already discussed?

“We are all Hamas!” the young woman in North Carolina screamed—speaking, perhaps, for all these administrators, faculty members, students who remained silent.

Is there any other identity group about which it would be acceptable to celebrate their mass slaughter, and campaign to bring that slaughter to your campus? What exactly are all those diversity and inclusion administrators paid to do, if not to prevent this?

Or at least condemn it?

But silence is what we got on my campus, and on many campuses—like the silence in Prof. Pohl’s class whenever the topic of Jews come up.

Silence is complicity—and equivalent to a “yes” answer to (Q), at least when the victims are Jews.

 (Part 3/conclusion)

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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!

 

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11/21 Links Pt1: Israeli government to convene tonight to weigh partial hostage deal; Media, lies and videotape; When Has War Ever Been ‘Proportional?’

From Ian:

Israeli government to convene tonight to weigh partial hostage deal

The government is debating a partial hostage deal that could include a pause in the Gaza war in exchange for a release of up to 80 out of over 239 people seized by terrorists during Hamas’s infiltration of southern Israel on October 7. “I hope there will be good news soon.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said hours before the meeting as he met on Tuesday with soldiers of the 8101 Reserve Battalion.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a “truce agreement” was close in a statement sent to Reuters by his aide.

The deal was debated first by the war cabinet and then by the security cabinet, before it headed to the government.

The deal, mediated by Qatar, would create the first long-term pause in the fighting since Israel embarked on its military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza. It comes amid increased international pressure for a ceasefire.

Under the broad contours of the deal, 50 hostages would be released, within the first four days in exchange for a pause in the fighting during those 96 hours.

Some 40 children and 13 mothers are held hostage. It’s expected that some, but not all, would be part of that first batch of hostages.

The 50 hostages would be freed in smaller groups during those days and not all at once.

Israel would in exchange release some 150 Palestinian women and minors held in its jails on security related offenses, but none of them would those directly involved in terror attacks with fatalities.

There is a possibility for the release of an additional 30 hostages held in Gaza should the pause in the fighting be extended for up to another four days.

All those slated for release are alive and have Israeli citizenship.

What will happen to hostages after they return? Here is how it works

As the release of hostages seems to be closer than ever, the bureau in charge of the hostages, captives, and missing people has created an order of operations to be followed once the hostage deal takes place.

The first order of the procedure calls for the IDF to receive the hostages and have them brought to Israel, where immediate medical treatment will be provided for them.

The hostages will receive an initial assessment of their condition by medical authorities and will then be transferred to the following leading hospitals across the country: Sheba Medical Center, Sourasky Medical Center, Schneider Children’s Medical Center, Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Hospital, and Soroka Medical Center.

Once the hostages reach the hospitals they will be met by their families who have anxiously been waiting for their return.

"Right now, how we are living is hard to describe to you", said Rachel Goldberg, mother of 23-year-old hostage Hersh Polin Goldberg, at a DC rally held last Tuesday for the return of the hostages.

"We hostage families have lived the last 39 days in slow-motion torment. For 38 nights none of us have slept the real sleep of 'the before.' We have third-degree burns on our souls. Our hearts are bruised and seeping with misery."

The condition of the hostages is currently unknown. However, Goldberg continued that "the real souls suffering are those of the hostages."

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Hostage Anxiety

Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz & Matthew Continetti

Today’s podcast takes up the purported deal to free hostages from Gaza—why it’s happening, what has impelled a deal that doesn’t look rational on paper, and what might come of it. Also, why did the White House release a birthday-cake picture with Joe Biden in it that looked like the White House was going to be set on fire? Give a listen.

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Debunking Francesca Albanese's Defense of Hamas Terrorists (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Last year, I wrote about Francesca Albanese, who bears the weighty title "UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967." In that article, I focused on her declaration of objectivity and impartiality. I contrasted that with her accusations about the influence of the "Jewish Lobby," in addition to other issues that called her moral authority and credibility into question. 

Those questions are still pertinent today, following the Hamas Massacre and Israel's retaliation. Back in 2014, Albanese made her feelings about Hamas clear:

Last year, she made clear that applying the "resistance" label sanitized whatever Palestinian terrorists did:

As Hillel Neuer pointed out at the time, since the Palestinian call for "resistance" is a call for violence, this UN human rights expert was deliberately inciting violence.

Let's take a look at this human rights and international law expert in action.

On November 15, The Project interviewed Francesca Albanese and asked her what would have been the right and legal way for Israel to have responded to the Hamas massacre of 1,400 men, women, and children and the kidnapping of 240 others.

Israel has been widely condemned for its heavy retaliation on Hamas after the attack on October 7. @FranceskAlbs what an appropriate response would have looked like. pic.twitter.com/dZLwXy2k4F

— The Project (@theprojecttv) November 15, 2023

Here is the transcript:

Interviewer: So, Israel was always going to respond to the attacks of October 7. In your view, what would the correct response have looked like?

Albanese: The response was to be given in terms of law enforcement because Gaza is occupied, and it's under belligerent occupation. So Israel has powers to enforce the law and to pursue all security measures that are deemed necessary, considering that this is occupied territory. It could have relied on the United Nations to demilitarize Hamas, if this was the target. Instead, he does wage the war claiming the right of self-defense under Article 51, which is the right to wage a war, the right to use military force against another state. But again, we are talking of the people that Israel occupies and it has occupied for 56 years now.

Albanese is making 3 basic claims:

o  Israel should have responded to the Hamas terrorist attack by sending in the police

o  Gaza is under belligerent occupation by Israel and is not allowed to reply militarily
o  Israel could have relied on the UN to demilitarize Hamas

Let's take the second claim first.

Is Gaza Really Occupied?

There are certainly people who believe that. There are experts in international law who claim it too. But that is not a unanimous opinion. Take for example the European Court of Human Rights.

The European Court of Human Rights is an international court established by the European Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty that defends human rights. In 2015, the court made a decision relating to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and it touched on the issue of what constitutes "occupation."

94. Article 42 of the Regulations annexed to Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907 (“the 1907 Hague Regulations”) defines belligerent occupation as follows.

“Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.

The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

Accordingly, occupation within the meaning of the 1907 Hague Regulations exists when a State exercises actual authority over the territory, or part of the territory, of an enemy State. The requirement of actual authority is widely considered to be synonymous to that of effective control.

Military occupation is considered to exist in a territory, or part of a territory, if the following elements can be demonstrated: the presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign. According to widespread expert opinion physical presence of foreign troops is a sine qua non requirement of occupation, that is, occupation is not conceivable without “boots on the ground”, therefore forces exercising naval or air control through a naval or air blockade do not suffice. [emphasis added]

According to the European Court of Human Rights, occupation requires the actual, physical presence of foreign troops, i.e. boots on the ground. A blockade does not qualify as the kind of control required to constitute occupation.

Once Israel withdrew from Gaza, there was no occupation.

Of course, there are still those who insist that Gaza is occupied, and the decision by the European Court has obviously not settled the issue. However, international law is determined in part by treaties and by precedence, and this decision is a strong a valid basis for saying that Gaza is not occupied. 

Albanese is of course free to stand before the media and declare her opinion that Gaza is occupied, but to claim her opinion as if the issue is one-sided and to ignore the validity of the other side, is less than honest.

She does in fact take to Twitter to support her view, quoting a decision by the International Court of Justice:

Some problems with the ICJ decision:

o  This opinion of the ICJ was an advisory opinion. While it may carry some legal weight, the opinion is not binding

o  The court was not asked for an opinion on occupation. Instead, the issue was the security barrier.
o  Not only was the court not asked to offer an opinion on occupation, the question itself to the court presupposed the existence of occupation:

“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary-General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?”

The court did not make a legal decision about occupation, it merely parroted back the language of the question it was asked.

Also, note that parts of the ICJ's conclusion are disputed by one of the judges, Judge Buergenthal. While he was in the minority, Buergenthal's critique of the ICJ's decision is instructive:

5. Whether Israel’s right of self‑defence is in play in the instant case depends, in my opinion, on an examination of the nature and scope of the deadly terrorist attacks to which Israel proper is being subjected from across the Green Line and the extent to which the construction of the wall, in whole or in part, is a necessary and proportionate response to these attacks. As a matter of law, it is not inconceivable to me that some segments of the wall being constructed on Palestinian territory meet that test and that others do not. But to reach a conclusion either way, one has to examine the facts bearing on that issue with regard to the specific segments of the wall, their defensive needs and related topographical considerations.

Since these facts are not before the Court, it is compelled to adopt the to me legally dubious conclusion that the right of legitimate or inherent self‑defence is not applicable in the present case. The Court puts the matter as follows:

“Article 51 of the Charter . . . recognizes the existence of an inherent right of self‑defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State. However, Israel does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign State."

The Court also notes that Israel exercises control in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and that, as Israel itself states, the threat which it regards as justifying the construction of the wall originates within, and not outside, that territory. The situation is thus different from that contemplated by Security Council resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001), and therefore Israel could not in any event invoke those resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self‑defence.

Consequently, the Court concludes that Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case.” (Para. 139.)

6. There are two principal problems with this conclusion. The first is that the United Nations Charter, in affirming the inherent right of self‑defence, does not make its exercise dependent upon an armed attack by another State, leaving aside for the moment the question whether Palestine, for purposes of this case, should not be and is not in fact being assimilated by the Court to a State. Article 51 of the Charter provides that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self‑defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations . . .” Moreover, in the resolutions cited by the Court, the Security Council has made clear that “international terrorism constitutes a threat to international peace and security” while “reaffirming the inherent right of individual or collective self‑defence as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations as reiterated in resolution 1368 (2001)” (Security Council resolution 1373 (2001)). In its resolution 1368 (2001), adopted only one day after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Security Council invokes the right of self‑defence in calling on the international community to combat terrorism. In neither of these resolutions did the Security Council limit their application to terrorist attacks by State actors only, nor was an assumption to that effect implicit in these resolutions. In fact, the contrary appears to have been the case. (See Thomas Franck, “Terrorism and the Right of Self‑Defense”, American Journal of International Law, Vol. 95, 2001, pp. 839-840.)

The ICJ belittles the terrorist threat Israel faces and its legal right and obligation to fight it. Apparently, Albanese takes her cue from their non-binding, advisory opinion.

Call The Cops on Hamas?

She is nothing if not consistent. Last year Albanese denied Israel's right to defend itself from terrorist attacks:

“Israel cannot claim self-defense while illegally occupying and while directing an act of aggression against another country,” she said. “Those who have the right to self-defense are the Palestinians.”

Last week at the National Press Club in Australia, she doubled down:

"What Israel was allowed to do was to act to establish law and order, to repel the attack, neutralize whomever was carrying out the attacks and then proceed with law and order measures ... not waging a war," she added.

So what can Israel do in the face of terrorism? Call the cops! And if that sounds absurd, Albanese goes one better.

The UN To The Rescue!

If it is difficult to imagine policemen going into Gaza to arrest Yahya Sinwar, try to imagine the UN demilitarizing Hamas. But in order to pull that off, you have to forget about the historical failures of the UN to keep the peace.

But Eugene Kontorovich has a reminder of the UN's disastrous failings:

The idea of international forces in Gaza repeats decades of mistakes.

In every single case, UN forces and agencies failed to provide Israel any security and were coopted and used by its enemies.

For example:

o  The UN Security Council created the United Nations Emergency Force after the 1956 Suez War to keep the peace on the border between Israel and Egypt. But when Nasser demanded they leave in 1967, the UN just left.

o  Similarly, the UN Truce Supervision Organization in Jerusalem fled when Jordan attacked Israel during the war in 1967.

o  After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the UN Disengagement Observer Force was created on the border between Israel and Syria. But during the Syrian Civil War, they pulled out when Islamist militias moved in.

o  The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon did nothing to prevent the PLO from attacking Israel.

o  After the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the Security Council required UNIFIL to disarm Hezbollah in south Lebanon. But Hezbollah has on grown stronger in that area since and act with impunity, firing rockets on Israeli homes despite the "presence" on the largest peacekeeping force outside of Africa.

Yet in the face of the obvious failures of the UN as a peacekeeping force, Albanese absurdly insists that Israel "could have relied on the United Nations to demilitarize Hamas."

Her farcical claim that Israel has no right to defend itself after the Hamas Massacre only leads her to the foolish, and deadly, claims that Israel should send the police into Gaza or have the UN stroll into Gaza to disarm Hamas.

This is what happens when a law degree is used as a tool to pursue a personal, biased agenda. But this is what we have come to expect from the UN.

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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!

 

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A new 1000 boat "flotilla" from Turkey? Fake news.

Times of Israel reports:

Approximately 1,000 boats will gather in Turkey on Wednesday before heading toward Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade and disrupt maritime trade coming into Israel during the war with Hamas, in an apparent repeat of similar attempts from over a decade ago.

In an interview with Turkish news website Haber7, Volkan Okçu, one of the organizers of the protest, indicated the boats will carry 4,500 people from 40 countries, “including anti-Zionist Jews.”

Among the 1,000 vessels would be 313 boats filled with Russian activists, and 104 filled with Spanish activists, he said. Only 12 Turkish vessels will join the flotilla, he told Haber7.

However, Okçu said in a later tweet that he expected the number of Turkish vessels to be much higher, at least 1,000, and insisted that the initiative is not associated with the Turkish government. He did not explain the discrepancy in numbers.

This is all the crazed fantasy of one guy.

Volkan Okçu's Twitter account indicates that he is not the leader of anything, everything he talks about is disorganized and this is all wishful thinking:

Friends, many people call and ask, God bless me, I am organizing an event quietly on my own, there is no special situation...

The idea has already been formed from abroad, so I am not a leader or anything, I am just someone in my own way...

I can't spare time here because I'm busy...

There are a lot of people asking for a boat to rent, but I don't know if I can arrange a captain or a boat and stuff. If there is a company that does this job professionally, I would appreciate it if they could contact me. After all, I'm going with my own vehicle, I don't know the rental methods...

Apart from that, there are more than 70,000 sea vessels registered in our country, even if 10,000 of them were only suitable, frankly, I would expect many more people who want to participate...

Our country's capacity alone should have been at least 1,000 boats...

So far, there have been many boats coming and going in parts, we are all organizing individual events. I wish a completely reliable NGO had taken over and organized this work, it would have been a much more systematic work...

 My only request from all of you is that this should not turn into a personal show while there are babies being killed by bombs there, it's a shame... If anyone wants to organize it, I'm willing to help out, no problem...  

In Turkish media, Okçu portrays himself as the mastermind who has thought of everything. The "plan" is to create a blockade in international waters with private boats to stop all shipping to Ashdod and cripple Israel's economy. 

It sounds like Okçu had the idea, floated it past some people, they said, sure, sounds great dude, he interpreted that to mean that everyone will join in, and suddenly a fantasy 1000 strong flotilla appeared out of nowhere. Then when  people started asking him logistical questions, he quickly backtracked as he realized he has no clue of how to organize something like this. 

His own map of the planned journey is an improbable straight line that goes overland a bit in Cyprus:

No one is organizing this fictional flotilla. 

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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!

 

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A "hudna" or a "tahdiya": Hamas setting itself up for future terror

Times of Israel reports:

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday a truce agreement with Israel was in sight, raising hopes that dozens of the hundreds of people taken hostage in the terror group’s devastating October 7 attacks could be released.

Palestinian sources said a ceasefire of five days would be accompanied by the exchange of some hostages for prisoners held in Israeli jails.

There are two Arabic words that are commonly translated to English as "truce," "hudna" and "tahdiya."  Haniyeh apparently used the world "hudna."

But for Hamas,  both words mean a regrouping to get ready for more violence.

In June 2008, Hamas and Israel agreed to a truce, which Hamas called a tahdiya. At the time, Hamas leaders described its meaning:

Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ leader, and his deputy in leadership, Musa Abu Marzouq, elaborated in recent months their interpretation of a tahdiya. In an interview with Al-Jazeera (April 26, 2008), Mashaal clarified that for Hamas, a tahdiya is “a tactic in conflict management and a phase in the framework of the resistance [meaning all forms of struggle].” He added that it “is not unusual for the resistance…to escalate sometimes and to retreat a bit sometimes as the tide does….The tahdiya creates a formulation that will force Israel…to remove the siege…and if it happens it will be a remarkable achievement….We are speaking of a tactical tahdiya….As long as there is occupation, there is no other way but resistance.”2

When asked about Mashaal’s “tactical tahdiya,” Musa Abu Marzouq explained that “the tahdiya is not a strategy or a goal itself, but it is a tactical step in this conflict….Our goal is to liberate our land and to bring about the return of our people. The resistance is a tool to reach this end.”

As it was, the tahdiya helped cement Hamas as the legitimate leader of Gaza, in the months after its coup. Those six months of the tahdiya encouraged Hamas to arm itself and prepare for the next war, which is exactly what it did almost to the day after the six months were over: it started a new volley of rocket attacks against Israel and declared a war, "Operation Oil Slick," which Israel later called Cast Lead. 

Hamas' previous use of "hudna" with Israel has been similarly tactical. It was famously used in 2004, when then-Hamas leader Abdel Azizi al Rantisi supposedly offered a long term truce where Hamas would get permanent benefits without any permanent concessions:

Top Hamas official Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi told Reuters late on Sunday Hamas had come to the conclusion that it was "difficult to liberate all our land at this stage, so we accept a phased liberation".

"We accept a state in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. We propose a 10-year truce in return for (Israeli) withdrawal and the establishment of a state," he said in a telephone interview from hiding in the Gaza Strip.

Rantissi said it would not mean that Hamas recognised Israel or spell the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Hamas, the only framework for dealing with Israel is jihad. Its founding covenant refers to itself  when it says "Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." And also, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Neither of the words for "truce" that Hamas uses contradicts Hamas' charter in the least. It will not agree to anything that does not strengthen it. And in its previous use of the terms tahdiyah and hudna, it became more violent on the other side of the truce, not less. 

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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!

 

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11/20 Links Pt2: Israeli women and girls were raped during Hamas attack. Where’s the outcry?; The Red Cross’s Gaza Scandal; Jihadi Journalism- an exposé

From Ian:

Israeli women and girls were raped during Hamas attack. Where’s the outcry?

Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy took a deep breath after warning the audience about the graphic horrors she was about to relate. Then she described just some of the overwhelming visual evidence that has emerged of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel: a young concert-goer, stripped from the waist down, frozen by rigor mortis into a spread-eagle position, her body partially burned. A young woman, similarly exposed in death, torn underwear hanging off one naked leg. Rape victims paraded through the streets of Gaza, blood gushing from between their legs.

The list went on. And on. Compiled from various sources — Hamas footage, first responders, workers who handle corpses, survivor accounts — these testimonials formed the basis of a webinar this week entitled, “The Unspeakable Terror: Gender-Based Violence on Oct. 7.” Organized by Jewish students at Harvard Medical, Dental, Law, and Business schools, it accrued more than 4,500 registrants and, in the days after, more than 20,000 viewers.

Why such great interest in the horrors perpetrated by Hamas against women and girls on Oct. 7? We believe it reflects the relative lack of attention until now to the brutal sexual and gender-based violence that took place as part of Hamas’s assaults.

Despite the circulation of the evidence Dr. Elkayam-Levy shared, worldwide organizations dedicated to women’s and human rights have stayed largely silent.

“The evidence is undeniable, yet we find ourselves fighting a dual battle,” said Elkayam-Levy, chair of the Israeli Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children. “One against these atrocities and another against global silence. And we see the same mechanism of denial that we recognize from individual rape.”

Others share her concern, and a petition calling on UN Women to address the crimes against Israeli women is taking on momentum, with more than 180,000 signatures; the hashtag #MeToo_UNless_UR_a_Jew has been trending on X.

As a Harvard School of Dental Medicine student who helped organize the event, and a Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine and psychiatry who moderated that panel, we found hope in some of the experts’ reports: The act of rape, once widely accepted as part of the “spoils of war,” is now recognized as a prosecutable war crime, even a crime against humanity when it is perpetrated systematically.

But other statements were heartbreaking, including that most or all of Oct. 7 rape victims were either killed or abducted, and are thus not able to tell their stories to the world. Webinar participants said that the forensic evidence shows extreme sexual violence, including genital mutilation and assaults brutal enough to break pelvic bones. Some accounts describe abject sadism like cutting off a woman’s breast and tossing it as a plaything.

Seth Mandel: The Red Cross’s Gaza Scandal

Meanwhile, the ICRC had no qualms about portraying Israeli troops as a constant threat to medical personnel or would-be butchers, or going on Al Jazeera to remind the IDF of its obligations to the hospitals that Hamas was already misusing.

Indeed, the ICRC’s partnership with Shifa is a point of pride for the organization. In July, as Hamas was planning its Oct. 7 massacre, officials boasted of improvements to the hospital “implemented by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in partnership with the Ministry of Health in Gaza,” i.e. Hamas. “Hospitals stand at the heart of communities, and Al-Shifa Medical Complex Emergency Department is now beating strong and steady for Gaza,” crowed William Schomburg, a top ICRC Gaza official.

Back in that 2015 speech, Maurer faulted his organization for not balancing its private efforts with public pronunciations. But one difference between the Red Cross’s work in World War II and the current Gaza conflict is that in WWII, the ICRC’s record was mixed. Yes, it failed Jewish prisoners repeatedly. But it also facilitated communication to and from those prisoners, provided medical care to some of them, and was involved in prisoner exchanges—all actions for which it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1944. The Nobel committee acknowledges now that the ICRC knew more about Nazi atrocities than it let on at the time, suggesting that the Red Cross’s full wartime record might not be deserving of such an award.

This time, it has let down the hostages in every way imaginable. At the end of its note on the 1944 Nobel Peace Prize, the committee writes: “The Red Cross has since expressed regret for this suppression of the facts.”

How long will it take them to come clean this time, and what will it require to ensure there is no repeat of the ICRC’s Gaza disaster?

Brendan O'Neill: Al-Shifa Hospital and the pathological distrust of Israel

Where did these crimes take place? Al-Shifa. Hamas used the hospital, ‘including the outpatients’ clinic area’, to ‘detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical centre’, said Amnesty. Got that? The exact thing Israel accuses Hamas of doing was already discovered by Amnesty years ago. A former Fatah official who was ‘seriously assaulted’ in his home by Hamas’s henchmen told Amnesty he refused to go to al-Shifa for treatment because ‘any member of Fatah or the [Palestinian Authority] going there would end up with worse injuries’. We know our woke elites won’t listen to Israelis, but maybe they’ll listen to Palestinians, many of whom have known for years that al-Shifa isn’t safe.

Or maybe they’ll believe PBS, the esteemed broadcaster in the US. In 2009, PBS spoke with a senior doctor at al-Shifa who said Hamas terrorists are ‘hiding either in the basement or in a separate underground area underneath the hospital’, and they are ‘aware that they are putting civilians in harm’s way’. Or perhaps they’ll believe the huge numbers of al-Shifa’s doctors who went on strike for a month in 2007 to protest against Hamas’s grotesque persecution of Fatah-aligned medics. The striking doctors were calling on Hamas to ‘leave politics out of the health system’ and to ‘stop using its armed forces against medical personnel’. Does that sound like a movement that respects the sanctity of medical spaces?

The proof of Hamas’s criminal misuse of al-Shifa as a base for torture, murder and warmongering is abundant. Palestinian dissidents have pointed to it. Amnesty has documented the Room 101-style horrors committed by Hamas’s ‘Internal Security officers’ there. Israel has shown us weapons, trucks, tunnels, hostages. Anyone still saying ‘Hmm’ following almost two decades’ worth of proof that Hamas exploits al-Shifa has clearly left the realm of reason and entered the hell of dogma. This is not scepticism, it’s denialism. It is not a noble hunt for ‘the truth’ of war – it’s the sickness of post-truth thinking, where nothing as trifling as evidence can ever be allowed to interfere with one’s ideological bias. Which in this case is that Israel is evil and always lies.

It isn’t hard to work out why so many in the woke elites, from CNN to the influencer left, are clinging for dear life to the lie that al-Shifa was a normal hospital. It’s because they have staked so much on this battle in the Israel-Hamas war. Israel’s conquering of al-Shifa is, in their eyes, the ‘war crime’ that proves beyond doubt that Israel is uniquely malevolent among the nations of Earth, and that they, in contrast, are righteous for opposing it. Every piece of evidence that points to the true war crime being Hamas’s, this fascistic movement that is even willing to hide lethal weaponry among the sick and the newborn and elderly, is a blow not just to their infantile narrative about Israel-Palestine, but also to their own moral prestige, their own cultural authority to determine what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. They experience Israel’s assault on Hamas’s base at al-Shifa as an assault on their own reputations – and they are right to.

Scepticism? Please. In instantly disbelieving everything Israel says, these people implicitly buy everything Hamas says. Their Israelophobia translates into a tangible, objective acceptance of Hamas’s own lies about Hamas’s own horrors. The woke love to call themselves anti-fascists, but it’s a strange anti-fascist that gives moral succour to fascists.

LT. COL. Richard Hecht: We Tried to Tell Them About Shifa Hospital

What We’ve Discovered (So Far)
On November 14th, the first IDF soldiers entered the Shifa hospital complex. We went in slowly and methodically, not wanting to disturb ongoing medical care, as I mentioned in my Saturday newsletter. These first forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers, who had specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment.

The mission was in keeping with our goals in this war - dismantling Hamas’ capabilities and bringing our hostages home.

But the cost was high.

It meant giving up on the element of surprise. It meant giving up some serious military edges, like our aerial superiority. Most importantly - and perhaps most misunderstood - is that we never thought there would be a smoking gun as soon as we entered the hospital complex.

Hamas had weeks to bury the evidence.

We are - carefully - unearthing the evidence of Hamas’ abuse. Finding the closed-circuit video cameras proving that hostages were brought to the hospital by men wielding guns and machetes. Exploring the underground tunnel - over 50 meters (164 feet) and counting, fortified with explosion proof doors. Finding proof that CPL Noa Marciano was taken to the hospital…and murdered.

But this takes time.

We’ve revealed a lot of information but unearthing two decades of buildup and three weeks of coverups takes time. As we reveal more and more, I’m increasingly asking a question that I remember Adam Grant asking:
A sign of intellect is the ability to change your mind in the face of new facts. A mark of wisdom is refusing to let the fear of admitting you were wrong stop you from getting it right.

How’s this for changing opinion?

The Lesson Going Forward
Honestly, this is an easy one.

It’s increasingly clear that our assertion that Hamas uses hospitals as civilians shields - not just Shifa - is true. As more countries around the world face terrorists that don’t share our values, don’t share the sacredness with which we hold hospitals, and are willing to exploit those values, we must remember a few things:

1. Same-sideness doesn’t always work. Israel is a liberal democracy. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization. Giving equal weight to claims from both sides - one with a functional check and balance systems and another that knowingly butchers children in a surprise attack - is just plain wrong.

2, Evidence takes time. Court cases drag on for months or years because the burden of evidence is exactly that - a burden. Terrorist organizations flatly deny news in seconds; militaries with integrity take time. The media must adapt to this new reality. Otherwise the terrorists will win every single time, laughing at our values as they do.

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River, Sea Quite Comfortable Under Israeli Control, Thank You (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

 Jordan River, November 20 - The two geographical features that "pro-Palestine" activists most frequently invoke in proclaiming their aim to displace the Jewish State disclosed today that they actually prefer to remain the boundaries of that sovereign Jewish entity, and expressed indignation at the presumptuousness of those who speak for them to advocate for removal of that sovereignty from the features.

The Jordan River and The Mediterranean Sea held a joint press conference today to set the record straight on their own desires, for too long drowned out by cries of "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!"

"That's not what we're about at all," the River stressed, nodding to the Sea, who returned the gesture. "Under Israeli control we enjoy conservation, care, and responsible stewardship. That would not be the case were we to fall under the control of a 'Palestinian' entity. Just look at the way they treat the natural resources in areas they do control: over-draining of aquifers, sewage dumped untreated right into the sea, arson everywhere... we will continue to flourish under Israeli control, thank you."

"It's more than a little offensive when 'Palestinians' speak for us," added the Sea. "They didn't ask us. It never occurred to them, in their narcissistic, childish Weltanschauung, that our sensibilities might differ from their genocidal ambitions. Fat chance getting us on their side now."

The Mediterranean lauded Israeli restrictions on Gaza fishing boats. "If I had the necessary precision, I'd crush the Gaza Strip with a single rogue wave," she stated. "As it is, the place floods every time any significant rain falls, because the 'government' there prioritizes violence and rejectionism over the welfare of its constituents, and refuses to invest in basic drainage and runoff infrastructure like normal, moral human beings in positions of national leadership. And I have to deal with their crap, literal and figurative. You think I relish the idea of Palestinians controlling even more territory near me? The Turks, Greeks and French are bad enough."

She acknowledged a soft spot for Israel's use of marine life to conduct espionage and other operations against Gaza. "Those spy-dolphins and coastal-defense shark squadrons are just adorable," the Mediterranean gushed. "The way the Hamas frogmen cower from them! The octopodes are also a sweet bunch, and they have the advantage of natural camouflage and signaling their handlers, or other marine life, what they've seen and heard. So. Cute."

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The One Simple Question That Determines Everything: "Is it acceptable to slaughter, rape, behead and burn people in pursuit of a political aim?" (Part 1) (Andrew Pessin)

(Guest post by Andrew Pessin,  professor of philosophy at Connecticut College.)

The One Simple Question That Determines Everything

Andrew Pessin

apessin@conncoll.edu

1. Yes or No

It’s a simple yes or no question. Much follows from how one answers the question, but we’ll start with just the question.

(Q) “Is it acceptable to slit babies’ throats, rape little girls, chop off of the hands and feet of teenagers, gouge out eyes, murder children in front of their parents, murder parents in front of their children then kidnap the children, bind entire families together then burn them alive, and livestream all the above including posting videos of their murders to the victims’ own social media accounts—and worse—on a mass scale—in the pursuit of some political aim?”

I’ve been asking question (Q) of various faculty members at my institution and elsewhere, people whom I previously thought to be quite decent with serious commitments to ideals such as diversity, inclusion, toleration, and anti-racism, in the form of asking them to publicly name the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre and condemn the atrocities, full stop.

They have overwhelmingly refused to respond.

Based on what I have seen, out of some 200+ faculty members at my institution only four are willing to publicly condemn the brutal, sadistic, barbaric slaughter by Hamas of some 1200 mostly Jewish civilians, including many babies, children, teenagers, disabled people, and grandmothers, full stop.

If any other identity group had experienced a mass slaughter like this, or even a far smaller one, or even an abstract harm of some sort, does anyone doubt these faculty members would erupt, loudly and for days? Not a hypothetical, at least here: not only was there much outraged chatter after (for example) the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016 or the George Floyd matter in 2020, but this past spring our now former President scheduled an event at a venue that had had discriminatory policies fifty years ago, and the faculty here exploded in weeks of outrage, departmental statements of solidarity with harmed students, with cancelled classes and then a cancelled President.

But when it’s Jewish babies and children, raped, tortured, dismembered, decapitated, there is silence.

And these are the decent people.

Many others across many campuses clearly think the answer to (Q) is “yes.” Cornell professor Russell Rickford found the October 7 bloodshed positively “exhilarating”; Columbia professor Joseph Massad was filled with “jubilation and awe,” finding the massacre “astounding.” And Marc Lamont Hill of CUNY answered (Q) more or less explicitly when he wrote, “So many university academics who insist upon doing performative, virtue signaling ‘land acknowledgements’ at every public event are eerily silent as real liberation struggles are happening. Guess decolonization really is a metaphor for some folk…” He clearly derides those who are all talk and no action, so for him, at least, the answer appears to be “yes,” at least in the pursuit of “decolonization.”

Nor are these professors alone in their sentiments. Lamont Hill’s remark also came after ten days of massive campus rallies openly celebrating the “resistance,” the sanitized word for the mass torture and slaughter of Jewish civilians. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the leading campus group with some 200 chapters, immediately endorsed and defended the massacre by openly proclaiming that “decolonization is a call to … actions that go beyond … rhetoric,” including “resistance … in all forms,” including “armed struggle,” and illustrated their social media with images of homicidal hang gliders in case we missed the point. Most tellingly, they declared that they “are PART of this movement, not [merely] in solidarity”—the movement, that is, that guns down unarmed dancing teenagers.

So Rickford, Massad, and Lamont Hill have a lot of fellow travelers in the affirmative camp, faculty and students, people for whom all that gore is apparently fine if it’s for “decolonization,” at least when the victims are Jews.

I have many thoughts about how academics (and then their students) become so gripped by ideology that they lose sight of basic moral truths, to the point where they see the mass sadistic murder of children as the moral high ground. The people just above are at least open about who they are so you know who you are dealing with, but, frankly, the “decent” ones, the silent ones, are ultimately no different. October 7 at least brings the benefit of clarity and sharp lines into matters often featuring obscurity and nuance. In my view any academic who cannot simply answer “no” to question (Q) above is literally in the same ideological position as the Nazis, for whom there were no moral limits to their extermination campaign, just possessed of some marginally different ideology, as we’ll see below.

For now maybe a few simple thoughts will do.

Speaking of land acknowledgements: In the lobby of a central building on my campus there is an enormous posterboard proclaiming that “You are on Pequot and Mohegan homeland,” noting that the college “celebrates Indigenous People’s Day.”

By the decolonization rationale above, our local Native Americans would be within their rights to invade our campus and mercilessly slaughter every single one of us. Indeed those who support indigenous rights and decolonization ought to be the first to offer their throats to avoid that vapid virtue signaling that Lamont Hill derides and actually live (and die) by what they believe.

Do our professors really support the Mohegans’ right to come in and gouge our eyes out, cut off our hands and feet, tie us up and burn us alive, and rape us while they are at it?

Or do they only support such when the alleged colonizers are Jews? (One suspects that when they learn that it’s the Jews who are actually the original indigenous inhabitants of the land and the Arabs the colonialist conquerors, they will be less enthusiastic about the slaughter of babies and children. More on this below.)

In fact in the very same tract declaring themselves “part of” the “armed struggle” movement for decolonization, SJP acknowledges that their chapters are on “occupied Turtle Island,” and further admit that they are themselves Palestinians “in exile,” i.e. not indigenous here. So by their own logic they should be the first to offer their throats to their local Native Americans; or since they’re keen to be a “part of” the violent decolonization movement, they probably should just eliminate themselves.

Note too that these same folk see themselves in “exile” and demand the “right of return” to their homeland in literally the same breath as they reject the Jews’ right to return from their own exile to their own homeland. And when Jews in fact did just that, these people endorse slaughtering them en masse; so again by parity of reasoning they should be offering their throats to the local Native Americans in the name of “decolonization”—not to mention slaughtering all non-indigenous people everywhere, which would include all immigrants and refugees in every country around the world.

Of course all this is absurd, outrageously so.

There’s actually a word for violence targeting civilians for political aims: it’s terrorism. And anyone incapable of identifying and condemning October 7 as such is pro-terror, pure and simple, no matter what the alleged grievances are that allegedly led to the violence. If you can’t answer “no” to (Q) above, full stop, then you are pro-terror, period.

This actually isn’t difficult. You don’t need to know anything about the conflict to know that that mass terror attack was abominable. Who watches babies having their throats slit and little girls raped and then dismembered alive (yes) and says, “Well, I need to learn more before making a judgment”? Who watches a mother and a father and their three small children tied up together and then burned alive (yes) and says, “Well I need to hear the other side before I make up my mind”? It simply doesn’t matter what preceded these events. By my lights, all decent people everywhere should recognize that there are moral limits to what people can do even in response to their alleged “oppression,” and that it is never, under any circumstances, acceptable to target civilians, particularly in that sadistic, barbaric, inhuman way—even if they are Jews.

This is not about politics. It doesn’t require you to be “pro-Israel.”

This is about humanity.

It’s either yes or an unqualified, full-stop “no”—because the second you add a “but” or “it’s complicated” or “look at the context,” you are turning your alleged “no” into a “yes.”

If your ideology endorses the mass extermination of a people, it’s time to rethink your ideology.

And, perhaps, to be removed from campus.

 

2. The True Nature Of Palestinianism

Let’s now see what follows from the “no” answer—from acknowledging that October 7 was a mass terror attack.

First and foremost, the “no” answer reveals something that was actually never hidden, except to those who have long chosen not to see it. Since such atrocities are never justifiable by any recognizable moral norms, the “no” answer reveals that the people perpetrating them do not respect those norms. And that in turn means that the movement in question is not what its Western progressive allies like to pretend it is.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its acronym Hamas, has never made any secret of its views. From its 1988 founding charter—which literally endorses the murder of every Jew on earth, and quotes repeatedly, and “factually,” from the antisemitic Nazi-worshipped forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion in order to support its genocidal program—to nearly every action and every statement in the 35 years since, it has been telling us exactly what it thinks. A week after the massacre their leaders did so again, calling on every Muslim on earth to bring the Jihad against Jews to everywhere on earth. Another week after that they declared their intention to repeat the October 7 massacre time and again, until all the Jews are gone.

Hamas, in other words, is not a liberation movement, not a decolonization movement, not about peace, negotiation, Palestinian self-determination much less “two states,” not concerned about “justice” as Westerners understand it nor even about the welfare, well-being, or betterment of the lives of its Palestinian civilians or subjects, all the things that should rightly matter to genuine campus progressives. It is not responding or objecting to any particular Israeli policy or practice, or alleged offense, such as an “occupation.”

It is the very existence of a Jewish state to which Hamas objects—because Hamas is an openly anti-Jewish genocidal movement that aims to establish its version of Islam over the entire globe, including murdering every single Jew on earth, starting with those in Israel. (They also are interested in destroying the United States and global Christianity, but the Jews are the first priority.)

That the animus is not restricted to Israeli Jews is also clear by the global reaction. Mass rallies in major cities around the globe celebrated the October 7 slaughter, called to “Globalize the Intifada!,”  and attacked local Jews and Jewish institutions. Within days of October 7 antisemitic incidents had skyrocketed across the world, and by early November there had been hundreds of incidents of harassment of Jews including many incidents of physical assaults, including at least one murder in Los Angeles and possibly another in Detroit, and with uncountable incidents of vandalism against synagogues, Hillel and Chabad Houses, Jewish stores and the like. And on our campuses: as noted above, SJP openly declared its support for Hamas with social media celebrating the mass slaughter of Jews (which they call “resistance”), then launched a campaign to “bring the resistance” to every campus in order to “dismantle” Zionism everywhere. Lovely words—except when “resistance” openly means “slaughter Jews,” when “dismantling Zionism” means removing, “by any means necessary,” anyone on campus who believes that Jews have human rights too, and when they illustrate their campaign with a celebratory image of the homicidal hang glider about to gun down every unarmed dancing teenager in his sight.

This is open endorsement of, and incitement to, mass homicidal violence—occurring on, and directed towards, not only Israel and Israelis but every Jew everywhere, including on our campuses.

“We are all Hamas!” one excited young woman at the University of North Carolina screamed exuberantly, part of a massive crowd of evidently like-minded individuals.

Nor are Hamas and its campus supporters alone in this platform. Hamas’s main internal rival, the Palestinian Authority, led by “moderate” dictator Mahmoud Abbas, is entirely on the same page, as seen from its long-running “pay-to-slay” policy incentivizing murdering Israeli Jews to its recent proclamation requiring all its mosques to preach that exterminating Jews is a Muslim imperative, to openly just announcing that its main party, Fatah, actually took part in the massacre. The mosque sermons weren’t about “Israeli” Jews, mind you, but “Jews,” full stop—like the full stop that should accompany the “no” answer to question (Q) above.

And it’s not just the Palestinians. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been actively involved in firing on Israel from the start, as have the Houthis in Yemen, as have some Syrian groups, all of whom are backed and directed by Iran. The Algerian parliament declared war on Israel. The most prestigious Islamic university in the world issued a fatwa declaring that no Israeli Jews are civilians, including babies and grandmothers, thus legitimizing violence against them. (This is the same university that previously issued special fatwas sanctioning suicide bombing against Jews, despite the general Islamic prohibition on suicide.) Another Muslim body issued a fatwa calling on all Arab states to join the war against Israel. Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS have called on their followers to strike Israeli, U.S., and Jewish targets around the world. Based on the massive rallies in Arab and Muslim countries around the globe celebrating October 7, it appears that what we are seeing is, in fact, a global Islamist war against the Jews.

This is what the “no” answer to (Q) reveals to us.

What Israel, and world Jewry, have been dealing with for years is in fact a war of global Islam against every Jew on the planet (and ultimately against Christianity and the West too). Those piles of mutilated Jewish bodies strewn all over the ground and the internet—that is the Palestinian movement, now understood as merely the leading front in the Islamist war against the Jews and the West.

That is what is being celebrated and supported around the world, including on our campuses.

Once you understand this then nearly everything about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” looks different. First, that name is oversimplified and misleading: it should be called at least the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim-Iran Conflict. More importantly, it’s not in fact about Israelis allegedly oppressing disenfranchised Palestinians but about Jews defending their lives from a global genocidal Islamist movement. So understood, you’ll need to reorient yourself about who, exactly, is the oppressor, and who is the underdog. Opponents of Israel like to show maps of “big” strong Israel dominating little, fractured, vulnerable “Palestine.” But a more accurate perspective is given by something like this map, with that tiny sliver of Israel, 32 of which would fit inside the state of Texas, dwarfed by the surrounding Arab and Muslim nations who openly seek to destroy it. Look at that map and sincerely ask yourself: who exactly is the oppressor and who is the oppressed here? Who in fact is the colonialist, the imperialist, and who is the one resisting that colonial imperialism? Ask yourself seriously, which party actually seeks coexistence and which one seeks the extermination of the other?

The answer to that last one might be given by answering another question: Where in the Middle East and North Africa do Jews and Arabs in fact coexist, and where in that same region are there essentially no Jews?

October 7 reveals the true nature of the Palestinian movement, now impossible not to see even for those who have long chosen not to see it. (Q) is a yes or no question; and if “progressives” truly are opposed to oppression, on the side of the oppressed, against colonialism, and for coexistence and peace, then the “no” answer to (Q) dictates which side they should be on here.

Part 2

Part 3

 

 

 

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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!

 

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11/20 Links Pt1: Why Hamas can rightly be compared to Nazis; Putting the UN in charge of Gaza would be a sick joke; On World Children’s Day call to free kids held in Gaza

From Ian:

Why Hamas can rightly be compared to Nazis: The similarities are undeniable

Scholars emphasize the role of “eliminationist” antisemitic ideology, the kind of genocidal thinking prevalent in the media and schools of Nazi Germany — and in the media and schools run by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in our own time.

Dehumanizing Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as rats, spiders or lice.

The only solution to this “Jewish problem,” according to the Nazis, was the “final solution”: death. The Palestinian Authority’s ruling faction, Fatah, celebrated the Oct. 7 pogrom by posting a video showing a boot with the colors of the Palestinian flag squashing a rat on an Israeli flag.

Portrayals of Jews as rodents, insects, and various predatory creatures in need of eradication are staples of Palestinian Arab popular culture.

The Hamas killers echoed the Nazis in another significant way: By photographing their atrocities.

Nazi storm troopers amused themselves by posing for photos as they slashed the beards of their Jewish captives or forced them to grovel.

Death camp commandants delighted in assembling photo albums that included scenes of Jewish men, women and children being selected for the gas chambers.

The album belonging to Treblinka commandant Kurt Franz bore the title “The Good Old Days.”

Today’s technology is new, but the mindset isn’t.

Hamas pogromists used social media platforms to broadcast themselves kidnapping, torturing, and sexually assaulting their Israeli victims.

Some uploaded their gruesome “trophy videos” to social media in order to torment their distraught families. Such content was even livestreamed on Facebook.

The use of sexual violence as a weapon on Oct. 7 had its antecedents both in earlier Arab pogroms and during the Holocaust.

Rape and mutilation were a notorious part of Palestinian Arab atrocities against Jews in Hebron in 1929, according to survivors’ accounts.

Arab soldiers and Palestinian Arab terrorist forces decapitated and sexually mutilated Jews during the 1948 Arab war against the newborn state of Israel, according to numerous mainstream historians.

Likewise in the Kristallnacht rampage in Germany in 1938 — and throughout the Holocaust years that followed— there were numerous instances of Nazis raping Jewish women.

The Shoah Foundation’s oral history archive contains more than 1,700 testimonies by survivors detailing sexual violence.

In other ways, too, one can detect similarities between then and now.

Again, not identical—but worth noting.

Consider the prevailing attitudes at many American colleges.

In the 1930s, universities such as Harvard and Columbia built friendly relationships with Nazi Germany, invited Nazi representatives to their campuses, and organized student exchanges with Nazi-controlled German schools.

Today, many universities are looking the other way as Hamas supporters intimidate Jewish students; US schools such as Bard College, George Washington University, and William Paterson University have even participated in joint programs with Palestinian Arab universities where student branches of Hamas operate freely.

Or consider the phenomenon of Holocaust-denial.

Today’s equivalent, Oct. 7 denial, is already emerging.

Queen Rania of Jordan recently told CNN that “It hasn’t been independently verified . . . that Israeli children [were] found butchered in an Israeli kibbutz.” Officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading Muslim advocacy group, have claimed that the reports of beheadings are “unverified” and “war propaganda.”

Fortunately, the Jewish people today are not in the same position of powerlessness and vulnerability as European Jews in the 1940s.

Today there is a sovereign Jewish state and a powerful Jewish army.

But when it comes to the behavior of the enemies of the Jews, have either the mindset or the tactics changed very much?

The discovery of an Arabic-language copy of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in a Gaza apartment last week helps provide the answer.

The children’s room, where the book was found,had been taken over by Hamas as a base for their operations.

The copy’s margins held notes written by the terrorist who had been studying it.

Nearly a century after its release, Hitler’s manifesto of antisemitism and violence, is still being used to kill Jews as effectively as ever.

When Neutrality is Immoral: Israel, Hamas, and the Problem of Moral Equivalence

While many the world over had the integrity to condemn "the hideous crime, naming its perpetrators and acknowledging Israel's basic right to defend itself against the atrocity," the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches were unable to muster up such moral clarity.

While the IDF goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups do their utmost to maximize them — not only by indiscriminately murdering Israelis, but also by hiding among their own civilian population and using them as human shields, resulting in disproportionately high numbers of Palestinian casualties, caused -- deliberately -- by Hamas.

If there is an "occupation" problem in Gaza, the occupier is Hamas, not Israel.

In this war, Christians — and all of us — have a moral responsibility to support a civilized nation's fight against barbarism. Israel must eradicate a terrorist group, Hamas, just as we confronted ISIS. Then all of us need to contain the real mastermind behind such groups, the genocidal regime of Iran. Unfortunately, there is no other viable solution if we wish to preserve the West.

Eugene Kontorovich: No go, Joe: Putting the UN in charge of Gaza would be a sick joke

The Biden administration is pressuring Israel to define its plan for “the day after.”

This is a bit like demanding America have a plan for postwar Japan weeks after Pearl Harbor.

But worse, Washington insists the end goal of Israel’s war be the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Understanding how unlikely Israel is to accept this suicidal proposal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggests it turn Gaza over to a United Nations peacekeeping force or other multinational presence.

President Biden just called for the “international community” to provide “interim security measures.”

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon literally has “interim” in its name and has been failing at its job since 1978.

The idea of international forces in Gaza repeats decades of mistakes.

In every single case, UN forces and agencies failed to provide Israel any security and were coopted and used by its enemies.

After 1956’s Suez War, the Security Council created the United Nations Emergency Force to keep the peace on Israel’s border with Egypt.

Right before the Six-Day War a decade later, Egypt demanded the peacekeepers leave — and they obliged.

The UN Truce Supervision Organization, a Jerusalem-based force, fled when the Jordanians attacked Israel during that war, but the mission remains today, publishing reports critical of Israel and using its diplomatic plates to gum up parking in Jerusalem.

The UN Disengagement Observer Force was created after 1973’s Yom Kippur War to keep the Syrian front quiet.

When Islamist militias moved into the demilitarized zone during the Syrian Civil War, the international forces predictably responded by pulling their troops out.

Then there’s that United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which did nothing to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization’s and then Hezbollah’s innumerable attacks on Israel, leading to two wars.

After 2006’s Second Lebanon War, it was used again as diplomatic fig leaf to bring about an Israeli withdrawal.

Netanyahu: Israel Did Not Enter Gaza to Hand It Over to the Palestinian Authority

Israel has no intention of handing Gaza over to the PA once the war is over, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night as he rebuffed U.S. pressure to do so. "The Palestinian Authority in its current form is not able to take responsibility for Gaza," Netanyahu said. "After we fought and did all this, how could we hand it over to them?"

He noted that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has yet to condemn the Oct. 7 massacre, which sparked the Gaza war, adding that there are Palestinian ministers who are celebrating the event. Moreover, the PA has a policy of paying monthly stipends to terrorists and their families, Netanyahu said, adding that it also educates its children to hate Jews.

Netanyahu recalled that after the IDF withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it handed it over to the PA, which was then ousted by Hamas in a violent coup in 2007. "They [the PA] were already there, they were given Gaza and what happened? They were destroyed and chased out of there in less than a year....It is impossible to put in Gaza an authority that supports terror, abets terror, and pays terrorists."

"There is another condition that I set for the day after: the IDF will have complete freedom of action in Gaza against any threat. Only in this way will we guarantee the demilitarization of Gaza." He added that Israel would only agree to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the return of all the hostages.

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