Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

11/22 Links Pt2: Accusing Israel of genocide is despicable doublethink; Jew hatred is the glue that holds together the leftist-Islamic alliance

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Accusing Israel of genocide is despicable doublethink

Gary Lineker is taking the piss now, isn’t he? He’s had his knuckles rapped by the BBC numerous times for sharing his centrist-dad blather online. For using the public platform gifted to him by us licence-fee payers – on pain of criminal conviction – to advertise his milquetoast views that most people think are bollocks. And yet now, in studied defiance of his bosses, he’s given voice to his most ignorant political opinion yet. To a dinner-party prejudice that isn’t only irritating but will feel genuinely hurtful to many who are forced by law to make Lineker rich. He’s tweeted a link to a video in which Israel is accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Yes, as if Israel hadn’t suffered enough at the murderous hands of Hamas, now it must endure the indignity of a football pundit wondering out loud if it might be guilty of the worst war crime of all. What next, Wayne Rooney sitting in judgement on the Democratic Republic of Congo? ‘Worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’, said the Match of the Day presenter turned amateur Hague sleuth in his retweet of a conversation between the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Raz Segal, an associate professor of genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey. In that chat, Segal says that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a ‘textbook genocide’. Textbook. That is, it conforms precisely to the definition of genocide, which is the murder of a large number of people from an ethnic group with the aim of destroying that ethnic group. This is what Lineker is sharing to his 8.9million followers on X. The lie that the Jewish State has a bloodlust to vaporise all Palestinians.

This is serious, no? Mr Lineker is a representative of Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC. He is the face of BBC Sport. Did he not stop to think how the Jewish section of the public might feel about his sharing of a clip damning Israel as genocidal? Did it not cross his mind that our Jewish citizens who are compelled to pay his wages might now feel a lesser part of ‘the public’ that the Beeb is meant to embody? The vast majority of British Jews support Israel (if not the Netanyahu government). They consider it ‘the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people’. Call me a contrarian, but I think people paid by the public to provide a service to the public ought not to alienate any section of that public by sharing inflammatory ideological claims.

We can now see how stunningly lacking in virtue the virtue-signallers are. When Hamas fascists launched their pogrom against Israel on 7 October, Lineker said nothing. On the day itself, this bloke who loves to wring his hands over bad things said nowt about the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. He did find time to congratulate Spurs for getting to the top of the league, though. The next day, too, not a whisper. Finally, on 9 October, he said something. Kind of. He tweeted a link to a new episode of The Rest is Politics in which his mates, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, talked about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Given his keen interest in events that apparently echo the 1930s – he famously accused then home secretary Suella Braverman of using ‘language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’ – it was striking he had so little to say about an atrocity that really did echo the 1930s.

Stephen Pollard: I thought we had reached peak Gary Lineker. I was wrong Bad Medicine

On Oct. 7, Hamas unleashed a barbaric terrorist attack against Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, including more than 30 Americans. The event was unprecedented in its scale and cruelty in a country that is no stranger to terrorism. Still, it was not met with universal condemnation. Rather, a nontrivial number of Americans either justified or even celebrated the attacks. Such responses were especially prevalent within the elite universities that popular imagination historically upholds as a bulwark against religious and ethnic bigotry, and mostly occurred with impunity.

Medicine has eagerly adopted the same type of identity politics that have come to define the policies, sensibilities, and ideologies of Ivy League universities, where diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officials have essentially served as a political commissariat, articulating and enforcing identity politics orthodoxy. Indeed, medical training and practice is fertile ground for antisemitism to flourish. Looking at explicit acts of antisemitism from health care providers in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, we observe that doctors are among those who have engaged in some of the most egregious displays of antisemitism, and that they are not regularly punished for their conduct. Second, we examined the responses of professional medical associations and medical schools to Hamas’ attack against Israel compared to their response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Leading medical institutions treat the world’s only Jewish state differently from other U.S. allies even though Americans overall have warmer feelings toward Israel than Ukraine.

If we want to understand why medical professionals are drawn to acts of antisemitism despite their advanced levels of education, we need to look at what their medical associations and schools are teaching them. Those institutions not only advance an ideology that facilitates Jew hatred, they demonstrate by the example of their public statements that they hold Jews and the Jewish state to a different standard.

Assuredly, the great majority of medical practitioners have made no public statements or made benign remarks that did not warrant news coverage. Still, Stop Antisemitism, an organization that calls attention to public displays of antisemitism, has recorded many medical practitioners whose speech or conduct related to recent events clearly demonstrate untrammeled Jew hatred. The fact that some of those health professionals were subsequently disciplined by their employers is reassuring. But the fact that so many would feel the urge and freedom to engage in overt Jew hatred despite their advanced professional training is alarming.

David Collier: Verifying BBC (Hamas) propaganda – presenting exhibit A

This article published yesterday is a perfect example of how the BBC goes out of its way to demonise Israel – and the means through which it does so. If ever BBC executives are forced to stand before a panel at an inquiry – this should be one of the articles they need to explain.

It seems so benign. A human interest story about Gazan footballers who have been trapped by the conflict and could not play in the Palestine v Australia World Cup qualifier that took place yesterday (Australia won 1-0):

The BBC is not a local town newspaper. When looking at an article such as this – we need to analyse the motivation behind it warranting exposure to the BBC’s massive audience. Did the BBC put a team on this because it was such an important story that it needed to be reported – or is another dynamic at work; are they scrambling around for stories that demonise Israel – and this article got the green light only because it could potentially tick so many anti-Israel boxes?

Time to have a closer look.

Test 1 – is the pillar of the story true

We have no way of fully verifying the story. And importantly – nor did the BBC. But we can look at the evidence available:

Three Gazan footballers were named.
Ibrahim Abuimeir(FB)
Ahmed Kullab (FB)
Khaled Al-Nabris (FB)

The BBC tells us that these three footballers ‘should have been training for the World Cup Qualifiers’ and we are then told that Ibrahim is described by his trainers ‘as one of the star defenders of the Palestinian team’,

Well that is a fact we can check. This is the number of times those three players have played for the Palestine National Team: Ibrahim Abuimeir = zero (u23 appearances)
Ahmed Kullab = zero (u23 appearances)
Khaled Al-Nabris = zero (u23 appearances)

None of them have ever played for the national team at senior level before. It is true they have performed at the U-23 level – and are part of the set-up for next year’s olympics – but that is not the same thing. There is no evidence AT ALL – these players were all going to be called up for the world cup qualifiers. In fact – evidence was found to suggest they would NOT BE as Abuimeir only recently turned professional and remains part of the 2024 Olympic u23 plans.

There is more. The Palestinian team doesn’t play many youngsters. In the current squad only one player is under the age of 23 (naturally a forward). The squad has NO DEFENDERS under the age of 24 (also quite normal for anyone who understands football). Two of the trapped Gazan players are defenders. Abuimeir (just turned 21) and Kullab (Just turned 22).

The BBC argument is that these three extremely young players – all coincidentally trapped in Gaza – none of whom have ever played for the national team before – were due to be in the World Cup squad. This story is nonsense.

We can say certainly that the description of Abuimeir in the headline as one of Palestine’s star defenders is *blatantly untrue*.

One other point of note. The BBC also relies on the words of Ehab Abu Jazar – a coach of the Palestinian team. This is what Abu Jazar posted on the morning of the 7th October. In this post he suggests that if someone does not see the events of Oct 7 as a great thing- then they are not really Palestinian. Perhaps FIFA need to look closely at him:

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

--1--

If it were you, my child, husband, brother, sister, mother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, grandchild, friend. If it were you I would fight like hell to set you free, to bring you home and into my arms. Safe.

Then we would deal with the aftermath. The nightmares, the poisoned minds of the children raised to hate themselves and what they came from. The massive, multi-level trauma of it all, from beginning to the something that will never end.

Still, from a distance so far away that I don’t want to see it, I know that procuring your release has broader implications. You are a Hamas bargaining chip, or rather an Iran bargaining chip for use with Joe Biden, along with a cascade of other evil actors across the globe who will use human beings—use you—to get what they want. Hamas randomly keeps you alive—if you are alive—to get concessions; to retrench and regain strength to hurt the Jewish people; to score a victory; to wound Israel and live to kill, maim, and destroy more Jews another day.

--2--

Every day since October 7th, we have heard Israeli officials say, all the hostages or no ceasefire. It was clear from the start—Israel had been quite clear from the start. Or rather, the objective was clear until it wasn’t, and Israel began to speak of a “partial ceasefire,” when just to speak of this even in a fuzzy sort of way, already put Israel. at a distinct disadvantage. It must be said and taken into account, that while the hostage deal may save the lives of some of the hostages, it will put an untold number of other lives at risk, for example, just now, our dear Israeli soldiers. To breathe life into Hamas is to wreak havoc with the future. This Amalek must be stopped. Hamas must be obliterated, completely.

Ain breira. There is no choice. It's all or nothing. There is no other way. All the hostages or no ceasefire, partial or otherwise. Israel must hold firm, because a deal with Hamas is Obama’s deal, Biden’s deal, a deal with the devil, Iran. For Hamas, this deal translates to Jews ceding victory and paying the jizya, even unto releasing 300 felons back onto the streets of their natural hate-infested society.

We have certainly learned something here: the going rate for a handful of Jews is 300 felons for Hamas to parade as trophies. "How stupid is the Jew?” you might hear from the laughing crowd as they watch the 300 go by, and slap each other on the back. "They turn Gaza into rubble, then cry to us, 'You won!'"

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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

Part 1

Part 2

By Andrew Pessin

5. On “Decolonization” (and Other Lies)

The “no” answer to (Q) drove us to understand how so many might come to answer “yes,” as a result of years of propagation of a series of lies about Israel further amplified by CRT and DEI. The next logical step would be to debunk each of these lies and perhaps even that amplifying ideology, but while doing so is not actually very difficult it would require more space than is available here. But since those who’ve answered (Q) affirmatively are largely citing “decolonization” as the political aim or ideology that justifies Hamas’s massacre, we shall focus on that one. We’ve already noted both the hypocrisy and the falseness of the justificatory claim, but here we will dig a little deeper.

The main point is that even if one did somehow accept that “decolonization” justifies such slaughter in general, in fact it has no application to the Jews in the Land in the Israel. Applying “decolonization” here is based on the assumption that Israel, or Zionism, is a “settler-colonial” project, along with the affiliated claim that some or all of the State of Israel “occupies” Palestinian territory or the “State of Palestine.” But this entire narrative, on which the “yes” answer to (Q) is based, is actually false, a lie, a willful lie aimed (as we’ve seen) to dehumanize Jews in support of a long-term genocidal campaign against them.

(1) Technically and legally there is no “occupation” at all: Israel is a legally recognized U.N. member state with a legal basis (in the League of Nations and the subsequent U.N. charter) for controlling Judea and Samaria, and even the Palestinians acknowledged that the Oslo Accords ended the “occupation” of what they call the “West Bank.” (Gaza is discussed below.) Certainly the people massacred in the south of Israel were living within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and were by no legal measure “settlers.” And it literally doesn’t make sense to think of Israel as “occupied Palestine,” as there never previously existed an Arab state called Palestine. You may wish the land belonged to the Palestinians, but that doesn’t make it so.

(2) More generally, Jews are the original indigenous inhabitants of this land. Jews had sovereignty or autonomy in this land for 1300 years until the 1^st century Roman conquest, maintained their connection and claim to the land forever afterward, and in fact still lived there continuously for the subsequent 2000 years. Islam and the Arabs swept in in the 7^th century nearly 2000 years after Jews had established themselves there, colonizing the region. The establishment of the State of Israel was in fact the first and perhaps only case where an indigenous people reclaimed the homeland that others had colonized. Those promoting “decolonization” should be siding with the Jews.

(3) The masses of Jews who immigrated there from the late 19^th century onward were not colonists but refugees, fleeing both persecution and massive pogroms not just across Europe but also the Middle East and North Africa, including the pending, then actual, Holocaust. Jews were nearly entirely ethnically cleansed from the Middle East and North Africa and literally had nowhere else to go but to their indigenous homeland. There was no “mother country” sending Jews out to colonize the land to establish its presence and advance its own purposes. The war of 1948 was not between colonizer and colonized but between a people who had survived one genocide and were now defending themselves against another. Those seeking to aid refugees and victims of ethnic cleansing should be siding with the Jews.

Those who counter that these immigrants, even if refugees, should count as colonists anyway would have to grant both (1) that the large-scale immigration of Arabs into the region during the same period constituted continued Arab colonization of the land and (2) that contemporary Muslims are currently colonizing Europe due to their mass immigration there. Stating the latter on a campus today would have you instantly branded a racist—as you indeed would be if you held that Jewish refugees, and Jewish refugees alone, should not have been allowed to flee to their indigenous homeland.

(4) Jews didn’t arrive in Mandate Palestine with an army and conquer it. They bought the land they came to live on and develop, as even the Arab leadership acknowledged at the time to the 1937 Peel commission. If you believe that Jews and Jews alone should not have been permitted to purchase land then you are simply a racist.

(5) The Jews, and Zionism, displaced and occupied or colonized nobody. In fact just the opposite: as just noted there was large-scale Arab immigration into Palestine during the decades of modern political Zionism, as the Jewish economic development of Palestine drew them in. There was room enough for everyone. As of the 1947 U.N. partition vote there were zero Palestinian refugees. The Jews accepted the partition; had the Arabs accepted it there would have been two states and zero refugees. Instead the Arabs immediately commenced violence, beginning first the civil war followed by the invasion of multiple Arab armies in May of 1948. Those wars created refugees, as every single war on earth has created refugees. Had there been no war, instigated by the Arabs, then there would have been no refugees, and not a single person displaced.

To be sure there was much horrendous behavior during these wars, including massacres and expulsions—by both sides. But absent the war, Jews, and Zionism, themselves displaced nobody. It was not a colonial movement. After the war, as is well known, Israel offered repatriation of refugees in exchange for peace agreements and the drawing of permanent borders. The Arabs refused.

(6) Gaza isn’t occupied in any sense. Israel withdrew from there in 2005 at great financial and emotional expense, uprooting 8000 people, as part of an experiment to see if the Palestinians could create a peaceful state of their own beside Israel, a test of the two-state solution. Instead Hamas took it over, began firing rockets, started 5 wars, massacred 1200 mostly civilians, now forcing Israel to go back in there to protect its citizens from Hamas’s avowed genocidal aims. Israel did not occupy Gaza but gave it away, and doesn’t want it.

(7) The various measures Israel-haters object to are not mechanisms of occupation but of security, starting with the blockade on Gaza. As part of the global Islamist campaign (as we’ve seen) the Arabs of this region have been trying to murder the Jews here for over 100 years, and the Jews take various measures to defend themselves. Those who (for example) cite the blockade as if it’s a justification for the massacre are either misinformed or liars who support the mass murder of Jews. The blockade was instituted as a defensive measure only after Hamas, whose charter declares their war on all Jews, came to power and began acting on their goals. As we saw, it can’t retroactively be turned into the motivation for Hamas’s violence.

Or to put that differently: those justifying October 7 say things like, “Well it didn’t happen in a vacuum—the context is 56, or 75 years of occupation” (depending just how deep their hatred of Israel is). But they are very selective about the “context.” The “context” also includes literally 100 years of Arab violence toward Jews including the genocidal ideologies of Hamas and the P.A. Again, as with the blockade, most Israeli policies are a defensive response to the violence perpetrated by Arabs and cannot retroactively be turned into a justification of the violence. There is no “occupation”: there are only Jews defending themselves from genocidal violence.

(8) Finally, the entire narrative ignores the multiple peace offers Israel has made that would have established a Palestinian state and ended even any pretense of “occupation.” Israel didn’t merely withdraw from Gaza but withdrew from most of the West Bank and subsequently made massive concessions to the Palestinians to reach a final status two-state solution. The Palestinians rejected this every time because their goal is not two states but to destroy the Jewish state. Even if you think that “occupation” still remains, then its doing so is entirely due to the unwillingness not of Israel but of the Palestinians to end it.

Put all this together:

Jews have as much right to live in this land with sovereignty and with security as do the Palestinians. The narrative that attempts to portray them as “colonialist occupiers” who have no business being there and who kicked out the “indigenous” inhabitants is simply a malicious lie designed, as we’ve seen, to mark them for murder.

You don’t see this any more clearly than in the latest repulsive practice: activists not ripping down the hostage posters but instead replacing their headings of “Kidnapped” with the word “Occupier.” So you have a photo of a sweet little kidnapped 3-year-old girl labeled as an “Occupier.” A 3-year old who was born in this land, very probably to parents who were born in this land, very probably to parents who were born in this land, and so on, possibly even stretching back centuries.

In contrast consider how refugees and immigrants are considered in pretty much any other country in the world. Someone moves to Canada, and maybe in time becomes, feels, is a Canadian; but their children are largely raised as and feel Canadian, and certainly their grandchildren. Three of my own four grandparents immigrated from Russia to the United States, and already my parents, and I myself, feel as American as American can be.

Those who put the word “Occupier” on the photo of a 3-year old are saying that no matter how many generations her family has lived in this land, even if her family is one of those whose roots trace back two or three thousand years, then she can never belong there.

They may as well put a target right on her head.

Exactly as Hamas did.

6. Campus Responses

We turn to one last point that follows from answering “no” to (Q): we obtain some clarity on how administrators should respond to what’s happening on their campuses. It’s as simple as the yes-no question with which we started: to answer “no” is to acknowledge that October 7 was a terrorist atrocity, and to acknowledge that is to acknowledge that supporting it has no place on a university campus, no matter what one’s political orientation. Even a pro-Palestinian activist ought to be able to answer “no,” in my opinion.

To be sure, campuses are in principle dedicated to the ideal of “free speech.” If they were truly and consistently dedicated to that principle, then fine, people should be able to advocate for anything they want, including hate and violence. But (1) even free speech absolutists recognize that violence sets a limit to acceptable speech, and surely does on a campus: one may not openly advocate for, celebrate, or incite violence. And (2) in practice most campuses actually show quite limited commitment to free speech insofar as, over the past decade or more, they have become dedicated to opposing “hate speech.” Just try to bring a conservative thinker to most campuses, or someone critical of Black Lives Matter, or someone who has moral doubts about the LGBTQ+ movement, or someone opposed to liberal immigration policies or to abortion rights, and that often gets shut down quicker than someone falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

That the campus rallies concerning October 7 violate both (1) and (2) seems clear. With respect to (1), as we’ve seen, they found the violence “exhilarating” and “awesome,” they celebrated it, they justified it, and, in calling to “Globalize the Intifada!” and bring “the resistance” to campuses they called for more of it. With respect to (2), which is perhaps a bit more subtle, let me just ask some questions.

Again, is there any other identity group about which it would be acceptable to celebrate their mass slaughter? Is there any other identity group about which it would be acceptable even to respond to their mass slaughter by asking to “learn more,” by providing “context,” insisting on “nuance,” wanting to hear the “other side”?

When nine Black people were gunned down in South Carolina in 2015, did anyone say, “Wait until we get the gunman’s point of view”? Or ditto when 49 people were massacred at the Pulse gay nightclub in 2016? Or ditto again at the 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand in which 51 Muslims were murdered?

If this isn’t hate directed toward an identity group, then what is?

All the years of dehumanizing lies have blinded all too many to the fact that it is hate that drives the campaign against Israel and the Jews, and that hate now drives these rallies and these campus behaviors. If campuses are justified in condemning and curtailing hate speech and hate actions, then they should be condemning and curtailing what is now going on. Free speech is important, essential even to the traditional mission of the university (to pursue “truth”), but on today’s campuses hate rallies are not permissible: no campus would allow a Ku Klux Klan rally, an anti-LGBTQ+ rally, anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim rallies, and so no campus should allow these current rallies either. All the more so when they go beyond speech, as they almost consistently do, when the rallies turn physical: there have been disruptions, sit-ins and occupations of campus buildings, bullying, harassment, death threats and physical assaults targeting Jews, vandalism against Hillels and Chabad Houses and Jewish fraternities, and so on.

To answer “no” to (Q) is to understand that none of this is acceptable. No campus celebration of violence, no justification of violence, no support of terror, period, and it is the administrators’ obligation not to be silent about not merely October 7 but about the hate that has descended upon their campuses. What’s therefore necessary is to shut it down. To discipline the community members who perpetrate it. Suspend or expel them, if they are students and the infraction is serious enough or repeated. Suspend or fire them if they are staff members and the infractions are serious enough or repeated. Suspend them, even revoke their tenure, if they are faculty members.

It is simple. Administrators must enforce the Codes of Conducts they already have in place for all members of their community and for all other matters, and suspend, expel, fire, or terminate anyone who violates them. Jewish campus members have the right to pursue their education and profession, to advocate for Israel and or Zionism and for Jews if they wish, in the same safety and security as everyone else has for their identities and causes.

Perhaps the tide is turning slightly, one month into the affair; perhaps some administrators are coming around to fulfilling their actual responsibilities. At several institutions, faculty members who were filmed behaving badly have apparently been disciplined, for example here and here. At Harvard, a student filmed harassing a Jewish student is reportedly being evicted from his campus housing. There is some nascent pushback against the behavior of SJP and an affiliated group, Jewish Voice for Peace (which despite its name is a fringe group whose members include many non-Jews, and in fact isn’t for “peace” but for the elimination of Israel as its post-October 7 behavior clearly revealed). Several years ago Fordham University refused to allow an SJP chapter to form, citing the organization’s tendency to disrupt the rights of other groups (i.e. Jews and Zionists); that decision survived a journey through the courts. In the aftermath of October 7 Brandeis University deregistered its SJP chapter due to its open support of terrorist violence. Columbia University soon followed suit, suspending both SJP and JVP for violating numerous campus rules. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed that SJP, in declaring itself “part of” the “resistance” movement, had thus declared itself part of a terrorist movement, which put it in violation of various federal statutes including those against belonging to and providing material support to terrorist organizations. By the way, Hamas is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, which itself ought to be an important clue that supporting it or its agenda on campus is not acceptable—because what has been going on on all too many campuses is indeed open support of, the provision of material support to, a terrorist organization, exactly what the “no” answer to (Q) would proscribe.

To answer “no” to (Q), then, is to recognize that SJP and its affiliates have crossed the line from permissible free speech and political advocacy into support for terrorism.

Enough, then, of tolerating this madness. Enough of the flimsy administration statements that suddenly “refuse to take a position on political matters” (despite years of taking many political positions), that decry violence “on both sides” without recognizing the distinctions between cause and effect or between justification and lack thereof, that lament the “loss of life” in a generic way without distinguishing direct targeting from collateral damage. It is time for administrators to answer (Q) with a firm “no,” which entails openly identifying the perpetrators and the ideology of the October 7 massacre, i.e. Hamas and its Islamism, identifying that massacre as a mass terrorist attack and atrocity, and then committing themselves to everything that follows from the “no” answer: recognition of the genocidal nature of the Palestinian movement, support for Israel’s right to defend itself within the ordinary norms of international law, recognition of and then pushback against the campaign of lies that has served to dehumanize and delegitimize the Jew, support for those ready and willing to demonstrate the falseness of each of those lies, and, finally, the enforcement of their campus conduct codes and the actual discipline of those who, in their actions and their speech, openly support terror and undertake to attack Jews.

It's a simple yes or no question.

But everything follows upon how you answer it.

Answer it now.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

11/22 Links Pt1: The Silence From International Bodies Over Hamas' Mass Rapes Is a Betrayal of All Women; Hamas and its perversion of the UN and international law

From Ian:

Michal Herzog - First Lady of the State of Israel: The Silence From International Bodies Over Hamas' Mass Rapes Is a Betrayal of All Women

In the 1990s, international agencies and legal experts finally began to see violence against women as a particular category of war crime. Organizations like UN Women exist to protect women from such crimes, while Israeli experts and activists have been involved in these international efforts. Thus, our second shock: The inconceivable and unforgiveable silence of these organizations when faced with the rape and murder of Israeli women.

It is not that condemnations of gender-based violence by Hamas have been weak or insufficient – there have been none at all. Statement after statement by organizations like UN Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) have failed to condemn these crimes. They failed us, and all women, at this critical moment.

As a woman and a mother, my heart goes out to women and children in Gaza suffering the consequences of the war started by Hamas. I believe they deserve aid and support. But this does not mean the erasure of the atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists on October 7. The silence of international human rights organizations, and the unwillingness to believe Israeli women in the face of overwhelming evidence has been devastating.

For the Israelis who have always been on the forefront of the fight for women's rights worldwide, this was a moment of crushing disappointment. A disappointment shared with me by one of our most prominent women's rights advocates, Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a former CEDAW vice-chair.

"I knew it would be difficult to get them to issue a reasonable statement," she said of the UN committee in a Harvard Medical School video conference., "but never did I imagine that when faced with such undeniable atrocities – given the very purpose for which they have been established,– - that they would actually resort to not acknowledging it at all."

Ignoring the "unprecedented, premeditated and extreme cruelty of the sexual violence committed by Hamas," Prof. Halperin-Kaddari added, meant not only failing Israeli women but failing the entire international human rights system. "I still am a believer in this system. But this was a huge blow to this belief."

I agree with every word.

To mark this year's International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women, Israeli women – Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze – will gather at the President's Residence in Jerusalem. We will meet in the lingering shock of the violation of our rights, and with the profound sense that all of us who believe in those rights have been betrayed.

Yet we will persist in presenting the truth to the world and to every human rights organization. We owe it not only to our own victims, but to all women who will face these crimes in the future and must know that they are not alone.

Michal Herzog is First Lady of the State of Israel.

Melanie Phillips: The inconvenient truth about the Middle East conflict

There may well be Palestinians who want to live in peace alongside Israel. However, the evidence suggests that these are sadly in a minority. Opinion polling among Palestinians in the disputed territories and Gaza, conducted during the fourth week of the war by the Arab World for Research and Development, has revealed that 75 per cent support the Hamas atrocities of October 7 — with support among those living under rule by the supposedly moderate PA notably even higher, at 83 per cent, than in Gaza.

How indeed could these dismaying figures be otherwise, given that even the “moderate” PA unceasingly pumps out Nazi-style demonisation of the Jews, incitement to Islamic holy war to wipe them all out, and the brainwashing of Palestinian children to believe that their highest calling is to murder Jews and destroy Israel.

Who can be surprised therefore that, as PMW reports, videos of students in the disputed territories show their support for Hamas, the massacre of Israelis and slaughter of Jews, and the continuation of the war.

The dismal reality is that there is no Palestinian leader nor a majority of Palestinians who are prepared to live in peace with Israel.

Whatever PA leaders may say in English for naive western consumption, their real agenda — as has been stated by Palestinian activists themselves — is the “strategy of stages” in which a Palestinian state will be the means to destroy Israel altogether.

If only “two states” were indeed the solution. A Palestine state has been offered multiple times over the past century, most recently in 2008 when Israel offered a state on 93 per cent of the disputed territories.

On every occasion, the Palestinians have not only refused but stepped up their war of extermination against the Jewish homeland.

Yet not only is the Biden administration insisting that the PA rule Gaza once again but it is continuing to fund the PA — despite the fact that it handsomely rewards terrorists and their families.

The inconvenient truth is that the century-old Arab war against the Jewish state has been kept going by the west. Ever since the 1930s, when the UK tore up its legal obligation to settle the Jews throughout what is now Israel, the “West Bank” and Gaza to recreate their homeland and offered instead to divide the land between the Jews and the Arabs, the western powers have rewarded, sanitised and incentivised the Palestinian war against that homeland while pressurising Israel to compromise its security.

With the exception of Qatar, which created and heavily funds Hamas (but to which the west grovels on account of extensive Qatari holdings in western institutions) the Palestinians have virtually zero support among the leaders of the Arab world. The Palestinians’ principal weapon is the liberal west, which can be relied upon to disseminate their propaganda and demonisation of Israel.

The fact that this has become the cause of causes for progressives helps explain the shocking support for or indifference towards the genocidal chanting against Israel and the Jews on the streets of London and other western cities.

If the west were to wake up and tell Palestinian leaders that until they stop their incitement to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jews they will receive no funding, recognition or support of any kind, this terrible conflict would end.

And so too would the intellectual corruption that has knocked the west off its moral compass and brought it to the edge of the civilisational precipice.

Hamas and its perversion of the UN and international law

The floodgates of Jew-hatred have now opened, courtesy of the United Nations, the same body created in the wake of the Holocaust, which has still been unable to condemn Hamas even once. This perversion of international law has now become official policy of the UN.

What soon followed, when Israelis were burying their dead, the twisted minds of the UN Human Rights Commissions released an update to their Commission of Inquiry led by renowned anti-Israel figure, Navi Pillay. Israel, its allies, the Western and civilized world remained in shock at the gravity of the disaster of October 7, but the UN unashamedly released a report that mentions Israel 269 times and Hamas only 4 times, twisting every norm of international law to excuse Palestinian terror.

Taking hostages, seeking to wipe Jews off the map, eradicating the only Jewish state in the world, murder, rape, savagery, using their own civilians as shields, using mosques, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings as bases for attacks and munition storage, violating every single norm of IHL, are but a few of the crimes committed by Hamas against Israel and against its own citizens in Gaza. But has the UN made a single proclamation calling out Hamas as terrorists? Sadly, they have not.

Hamas and its depraved allies (Iran, Hezbollah, and others) pervert the concepts of international law, they speak the language and make declarations as though they adhere to the principles of law. They twist the words, their logic is inverted, they commit every crime imaginable, and they are not held accountable. Yet, those voices are being heard and worse, their utterances are used as ammunition against the State of Israel.

85 years ago, the world witnessed a sickening pogrom in Nazi Germany. Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Jews were demonized, and the world was indifferent. What followed was a war that saw millions of deaths and the near decimation of European Jews.

International Law grew from the depths of the horrors of WWII, but today, the weaponization of these laws has real-life consequences and manifests into violence against Jews and their institutions. Streets around the world are witnessing a surge in antisemitic attacks and reports are showing a surge in antisemitic incidents in the US.

If logic would prevail then the twisted manipulation of international law and the perversion of legal concepts would be eradicated from this conflict. When clear minds are willing to accept the evil that is Hamas and not allow the UN to succeed in enabling terrorist organizations and allied state actors to create a bully platform on the world stage, then perhaps we could free little Ariel Bibas and the hundreds of other hostages from the clutches of a vile terrorist group.

I am on a short vacation this week, in Canada. I happened to see this story on TV about a Canadian citizen who managed to get out of Gaza.

The editing is strange. At about 1:25 he says he took a taxi to Salah al Din Street, which is the main north-south corridor to walk south. Then there is an edit at 1:33, and he says that he had to hold his passport in the air, couldn't look right or left, and if he did "they" would shoot him.

Who? The implication is the IDF.

Most Gazans don't have passports, and certainly not most of those walking on Salah al-Din Street. We've seen video of Gazans fleeing south, while some had white flags none looked like this.

He must have been describing the line to get on buses to Egypt, which was only open to foreign passport holders. So if the story is true, it is either Hamas or Egyptians who were threatening to shoot him.

Of course, no one bothers to ask him to clarify why his allies are threatening to shoot him.

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!

CNN's absurd "rabbi"

CNN actually published this:

Yes, there are thousands of real rabbis who are not Hamas apologists, but CNN had to dig up this person who looks like a PT Barnum circus performer as their typical rabbi.

Rosenberg says their rabbinic ordination came from Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. That stream of Judaism is just as bizarre as the circus performers of years past, because their rabbis do not believe in God in any normal sense, which makes them fairly unusual people to be interviewed as real rabbis from mainstream media.

If you look at the courses RRC's rabbis have to take to get that label, you see a combination of things that Orthodox 13 year old boys know and new age ideas that have nothing to do with Judaism.

It takes them three years to learn how to...pray.

By the end of Year 3, all students are assessed for basic liturgical competence covering:
• Weekly services
• Shabbat services
• Life-cycle rituals
• Torah cantillation

Students are assessed for:
• Fluent reading with correct pronunciation
• Ability to apply appropriate nusach, as well as contemporary melodies
• Phrasing conveying basic comprehension

These materials and skills are covered in the Tefillah and Life Cycle courses. Hallel and Birkat Hamazon are assessed by the end of Year 3.

Even at the end of that time, they do not know how to lead prayers on holidays.

And then there are the social justice components:

Exploring a Jewish Theology of Liberation
(3 credits)
Fulfills Social Justice credit
In this course, students will explore creating a Jewish Theology of Liberation by looking at Jewish thinkers, and then Liberation Theology as it has been developed by Latin American, Black, Womanyst, Feminist and Eco-Feminist thinkers. Students will raise questions as to how applicable these ideas are to the Jewish communities they want to address.

Food Justice (3 credits)
Fulfills Social Justice credit
This course will examine the production, consumption and distribution of food and food’s connection to our physical, emotional and spiritual lives. The course will explore traditional Jewish and Christian teachings about food in relationship to eco-kashrut, and current food justice and sustainability issues. It will equip you to raise justice issues every time food is served.

Unravelling White Settler Jewishness (3 credits)
Fulfills social justice credit
Course Description: This course will utilize the writings of Jews who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color-(BIJOC) along with collaborative research and storytelling, and documentation of the histories of our families to examine Jewish assimilation into/exclusion from white settler society. This course will explore how participation in white settler Jewishness constrains the ability to form critical alliances and play an ethically, spiritually, and politically grounded role in the movement for climate justice.

Reconstructionist founder Mordechai Kaplan probably knew a thing or two about Judaism. But these graduates, based on their coursework, do not.

Treating people like Rosenberg as mainstream Jews is an insult to thousands of years of tradition.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The biggest problems with the hostage deal (expanded from a tweet.)

I really hate to second-guess Israeli government decisions, because they have access to far more information than I do, but I am afraid that this hostage deal will undo most of Israel's gains against Hamas in the past six weeks. In fact, while inmost deals each side is forced to give up something, in this deal Hamas only gains.

From Israel's perspective, the war has two aims, and they contradict each other. One is to defeat Hamas and the other is to free the hostages. Truly going after Hamas dooms the kidnapped victims or risks hundreds of soldiers' lives. But making a deal strengthens Hamas immeasurably.

Hamas' attack also had two aims. They want to terrorize Jews to feel insecure in their own country and they want to force a prisoner deal.Those goals are self-reinforcing.

During the course of the war, Hamas added a third goal: to make Israel look like an inhuman genocidal machine. Thanks to the modern antisemitic Left, that goal is well on its way.

Israel's evacuation of the towns in the Gaza envelope, while necessary, has already helped Hamas achieve the first goal.

And now they have succeeded in the second goal as well.

As always, we must look at the deal through the lens of the Arab honor/shame mentality. The only shame that Hamas fears is the shame of being destroyed. They certainly don't look at the destruction of Gaza as anything shameful; on the contrary, videos of rubble and dead Gazans is evidence of Israeli "genocide." Hamas, which pretends to love martyrdom, is not admitting to any casualties because that contradicts their goal of demonizing Israel in the international arena. They control all information leaving Gaza and therefore thousands of their own casualties are magically "civilian."

From the honor/shame perspective, this deal is a complete win for Hamas. And it is also a way to recruit more jihadis.

Hamas retains plenty of hostages, and even one remaining hostage has nearly the same value to Hamas as 240. The Gilad Shalit episode proved that.

Hamas getting rid of women and children hostages also allows them to get rid of their biggest headache in the public opinion war. They cannot justify the kidnapping of innocents, and now they won't have to. They want to divest themselves of the women, children and internationals - and now they not only get the benefits of eliminating Israel's main moral talking point, but also they gain the release of prisoners, one of their main goals. It is a win-win-win for Hamas: it also allows Hamas to pause and regroup, to re-establish the communications with its battalions that were lost and coordinate war strategy. Also it helps Hamas prestige in the Arab world and among the anti-Israel Left as well.

The deal helps Hamas position the deal as a "prisoner swap." This is a huge victory for Hamas as well, as they pretend that hostages are simply prisoners of war and that the abductions were not war crimes but simply following international law when an enemy fighter falls into your hands. It allows them to position themselves as a legitimate army.

For Hamas, there is no downside.

Finally, there is another crucial part of the deal that no one seems to talk about because it seems so trivial: Hamas' demand for fuel.

This fuel isn't for ordinary Gazans. They aren't asking for food or medicine. The fuel is for Hamas, and it will allow them to extend the war for many more months.

Hamas' main military advantage is the tunnels. Israel cannot attack them without huge losses. But Hamas cannot maintain that advantage without electricity. Without power, they lose two essentials: light and air. They need generators to bring in outside air and avoid suffocation. Without the generators, Hamas would be forced to go above ground mere hours after losing fuel. Blockading fuel is the single most important thing Israel can do to defeat Hamas, and it would probably be the best way to save the hostages as well. But that is now gone.

There has been speculation that Hamas has plenty of fuel for months of fighting. But that is all it is - speculation. I would argue that their prioritizing fuel in this deal means that their reserves that they can reach are smaller than people think.

Time is on Hamas' side because - especially after getting rid of the problematic civilian hostages - Hamas has a clear PR advantage over Israel that would only increase over time, forcing more pressure on Israel not to continue fighting and hurting Gaza civilians. Hamas has turned their use of Gaza civilians as human shields into a complete propaganda win.

The deal is a complete victory for Hamas in every sense. It encourages them or their Islamist successors to do more kidnappings, more massacres. It keeps them in power far longer than anyone thought.

In Jewish law, one is discouraged from paying too steep a price for captives. While this deal is not as bad as the Shalit deal yet, Hamas will be able to extort more and more for the remaining hostages.

As with the Shalit deal, in the long term, Israel may pay a far steeper price for this deal than it could possibly gain. That means more murdered Jews and more kidnapped Jews.

It sounds callous, but if given a choice, defeating today's Nazis is more important than saving the lives of the hostages - because we've already seen that capitulating causes far more deaths in the long run.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

11/21 Links Pt2: Troops in Gaza during ceasefire: Dangers, opportunities; Why can’t ‘intersectional feminists’ condemn Hamas’s misogyny?

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Troops in Gaza during ceasefire: Dangers, opportunities

A ceasefire in Gaza could provide both Israel and Hamas an opportunity to pause fighting and size up the situation. Israel has been fighting on the ground for three weeks. Israel’s soldiers have made major progress. They have degraded 10 Hamas battalions of terrorists.

Hamas cannot replace the terrorists it lost easily. It doesn’t have a pool to recruit from in northern Gaza, because most Palestinians have fled Gaza City to the south. Hamas is also surrounded in Gaza City. The IDF 36th division is pressing in from south of the city, moving into the Zaytun neighborhood.

IDF troops from the north are also pushing into Jabalya and moving in from the coast. Hamas has much less room to maneuver. A pause in fighting will give Hamas units a chance to regroup.

Hamas has short internal lines now, because it is surrounded. It can reposition its forces, move what weapons stocks it has to the front and prepare ambushes and also potentially try to exploit the calm to enter tunnels and try to infiltrate the IDF lines.

Hamas will also have time in the south to reposition forces. While it can’t bring forces north, it could move them toward staging areas such as Bureij or Nuseirat, near the frontline with the IDF controlling an area across Gaza north of these areas.

Hamas could also begin to restock its rocket arsenal and set up new rocket barrages. Over the last week its ability to fire rockets has been reduced. Hamas could also use the time to set up explosives along roads where the IDF might advance.

These types of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) might adopt Iranian practice, such as in making EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) a special type of shaped charge designed to penetrate armor.

Overall, Hamas appears to be running low on missiles. In addition, the IDF has overrun many rocket-firing positions.

Hamas also suffered losses in its anti-tank forces and air defense array. It has lost numerous battalion commanders. It can’t easily replace them, but it could try to recruit a few thousand more volunteers and use an extended ceasefire to train some recruits.

Live Updates: Israel-Hamas hostage deal nearly complete; Women, children to be released

The government was expected to approve late Tuesday night 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’ infiltration of southern Israel on October 7.

“We have a difficult decision before us tonight, but it is a correct decision,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting.

Opponents of the deal have warned that it will harm Israel’s ability to secure the release of all the hostages and complicate Israel’s military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza. They have also warned that it will be difficult to resume the war once it has been temporarily halted.

Netanyahu dismissed those charges explaining that the IDF planned to resume the war once the deal was executed.

“I want to clarify. We are at war and will continue to be at war until we obtain all our objectives, to destroy Hamas and to return all our captives and missing persons,” he said.

“We will also ensure that there won’t be any entity in Gaza that will threaten Israel,” Netanyahu stated.

He recalled how he and the war cabinet had met with the families of the hostages the previous night.

"I told them that the return of the hostages is a sacred and primary mission that I swore to complete,” Netanyahu said.

“This war has phases and so does the return of the hostages,” he said.

The entire security establishment fully backs this deal, he said. This agreement will allow the IDF to better prepare for the rest of the war, Netanyahu said, adding that neither the lives of the soldiers nor the intelligence gathering apparatus would be harmed in that period.

Netanyahu said he had spoken with US President Joe Biden. As a result of that talk, Biden had intervened and secured better terms for the deal, Netanyahu explained.

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.

Israel accepts clause of Hamas's Sinwar: No UAV intel gathering for hostages

Israel has agreed to a condition laid out by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to halt Israeli UAVs in the Gaza airspace for six hours on each day of the ceasefire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages under Hamas's captivity, according to a Tuesday report by Walla.

The condition's implementation was addressed by an Israeli official who cited statements made by the IDF and Shin Bet, stating that they have intelligence-gathering capabilities even during the ceasefire days. "We will not be blind and we'll know what's happening on the ground," the official said.

The deal for the hostages' release that will be submitted to the government for approval includes the release of 50 Israeli children and women during a four-day ceasefire and includes the possibility of it being extended if Hamas locates additional women and children, with ten freed for each additional day of the ceasefire. Total number of hostages freed may reach up to 80

It is estimated that the total of those freed may reach 70-80 women and children if Hamas does locate the hostages, as they claimed they do not know some of their locations.

"Hamas, as far as we are concerned, needs to bring the people back, including from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other elements," said the official, also saying that Hamas should also release additional hostages with foreign citizenship, but not as part of the outline for the release of Israeli women and children.

IDF Spokesperson gives briefing amid developments regarding a hostage deal

From Dr. Rabie Hassan Kouka writing in Al-Jamahir:

Perhaps someone who is familiar with the bloody history of the Jews will not be surprised by the Zionist brutality and invasion and the shedding of the blood of our great people in proud Gaza and holy Palestine, because they have historical depth in filth, treachery, killing, and bloodshed. They are the ones who tried to kill the Messenger of Mercy, our Master Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, several times, despite their knowledge that he was a prophet sent from God Almighty: ...

Before that, they attempted to assassinate our Master Jesus, the Messenger of Love, Christ, peace be upon him. ...

These are the Jews, a vile, murderous people. They only understand the language of blood and murder. Their crimes did not stop there, but the series of killing the prophets before that continues.
....

These are some of the pages of their black history and their criminal record, which extended to reach Palestine and where they committed the most horrific massacres that devastate humanity. What they are committing these days in Gaza is an extension of their history that hates all goodness, all virtue, and all humanity.

Sounds like it is merely "anti-Zionism," doesn't it?

The best part? This newspaper is a government newspaper in ....Syria.

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!