Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Where Will Your Children Go to School? (Judean Rose)

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

--1--

As an American-born Israeli, I have worried about antisemitism on American college campuses for decades. For me, it’s personal. My friends and family are there. I worry about the physical safety of their children, but am actually more concerned that the rhetoric will damage their psyches and souls. When we text or speak I always want to ask, and sometimes do, especially if the kids are seniors in high school, “Where will they be going to school?”

My question is no different after October 7^th, but now I voice it to the collective: Where will your Jewish children go to school, now that all of us know they are unsafe? And where will they go to college?

Will they attend Hillcrest High, where a Jewish teacher hid in a locked office for two hours? Will they go to Citizens of the World Charter School-East Valley where teachers spoke to first graders about the “genocide in Gaza”?

Portland-area teacher Hailey DeMarre launched a harassment campaign against Beaverton School District after they told her to remove a Palestinian flag students had painted on the classroom wallshttps://t.co/QgI1CXX0pw https://t.co/QgI1CXX0pw
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 19, 2023

Sometimes I imagine what you are thinking now: How long until it reaches the playground, the grocery store, the synagogue, now that it has been proven without a doubt, that Jew-hatred can rise up, as it did on October 7^th, and sweep across a kibbutz, dance festival, or campus like a tidal wave.

It’s not about October 7^th, but about the nature of antisemitism. Too many of us don’t want to learn the lesson that yes, it can happen again. And it did. Because it’s not enough to say a slogan.

--2--

I knew what this column would be called, but I didn’t know what form it would take. All I knew was that I wanted to talk about the fears that Jewish parents must be experiencing right now. Did I want to focus on the individual schools? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure what I’d need, but I did want to get an idea of the scale. So I went online and boom, boom, boom. The internet started blowing up. Within the hour I had found dope—antisemitic dope, so to speak—on the following 33 schools, the majority of them institutes of “higher” learning.

1. University of Michigan in Ann Arbor

2. MIT

3. Yale

4. Columbia

5. University of Pennsylvania

6. UC Berkeley

7. Harvard

8. NYU

9. University of Southern California

10. University of North Carolina

11. Hillcrest High School

12. University of Maryland

13. Brown

14. UCLA

15. Princeton

16. University of Minnesota

17. Montclair State University

18. Brandeis

19. Bard College

20. CUNY

21. University of Cincinnati

22. Oberlin

23. George Washington University

24. Wellesley

25. Murray State University

26. Cooper Union

27. UC San Diego

28. Stanford

29. University of Arizona

30. University of Massachusetts

31. University of Florida

32. Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh

33. Citizens of the World Charter School-East Valley

An hour’s worth of research cannot claim to be exhaustive or authoritative. It is only disappointing that I found so much of this stuff in such a short time, just surfing the internet. It’s not surprising; it’s unsettling. I worry about Jewish children and what the hatred and violence is doing to them. Antisemitism is a kind of crucible. Will they merely wrestle with fear, despair, and faith, or are we looking at a Norman Finkelstein or Max Blumenthal situation?

It’s hard for kids and adults of any age to go through this, to experience antisemitism, no matter how jaded we think we are. It hurts—especially when it comes from a teacher and the university does nothing, or when it happens where you least expect it.

This was discovered today at @BaruchCollege pic.twitter.com/JE4AlLGrM6
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) November 28, 2023

You know what I will say, because I must. I believe that the answer of where your children should go to school is, “in Israel.” There is no remedy for antisemitism, but there’s treatment: come to Israel and strengthen your people. Take your children and move there—move to Israel. Make Aliyah. I wish you would.

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 media fell all over themselves last week claiming that a 1,000 boat flotilla was about to sail from Turkey to blockade Israel. The event was to take place last Wednesday.

I was the only one who called it a hoax.

And I was right.

It was all fake news, based on the crazy claims of one guy, Volkan Okçu.

Not one news outlet checked for a shred of corroboration. They didn't ask him who else was involved, the names of any boats, who is organizing it, how they planned the logistics for such a large project. The media simply didn't do its most basic job, to check sources.

I looked at Volkan Okçu's tweets and saw that he had no idea what he was doing and then denied he was the organizer altogether.

And since then, not one media outlet admitted that they were fooled. They just let the story disappear.

Just because "everyone" reports something doesn't mean it is true.

The media is failing; they'd rather report (or, more often, repeat) what sounds juicy than make a phone call to check it out themselves.

I'm not saying this to brag. I spent no more than ten minutes researching this. But I am pointing out that this is a pattern we have seen a great deal during the Gaza war alone.

A large percentage of the news surrounding this Gaza war is as fake as this flotilla, and has just as little corroborating evidence. The sources for much of Gaza news are just as unreliable as Volkan Okçu is. The news comes from one doctor, one "witness," And the news media just runs with it.

They do it with casualty numbers. They did it with the Al Ahli hospital event. They did it with the Salah al-Din Road explosion.

Consistently, the media reports what it wants to be true, and if the editors like the story, they don't bother to fact-check it.

Just because "everyone says" something doesn't make it a fact. Very often, everyone jumping to repeat a story that sounds really good is the best evidence that it isn't real.

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!

11/29 Links Pt1: The Red Cross has Jewish blood on its hands- and it couldn't care less; Hamas claims Bibas family killed in Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Yes, Hamas Can Be Destroyed

The other idea put forth as a reason for Hamas’s unbeatability is Palestinian nationalism. “I understand the desire to destroy the Hamas apparatus, but I just don’t think it’s doable,” Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the realist think tank Defense Priorities, told the Christian Science Monitor. “If you envision any degree of Palestinian self-rule, then I think some version of Hamas 2.0 remains in power.”

Except Hamas’s belief system isn’t a Palestinian nationalism compatible with Palestinian self-rule, as counterintuitive as that may seem. That’s because Hamas self-rule requires Israel’s destruction.

The terror group made a big show in 2017 of revising its founding charter. The resulting document moved the group’s ideology away from an obsession with jihad and Jews to one that only referred to those topics euphemistically. The entire point, it seems, was actually to give Western apologists an excuse to pretend Hamas endorsed the two-state solution, thereby making it a legitimate representative of Palestinian nationalism.

That passage reads: “without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

As is clearly stated, Hamas will accept (or claims that it will) a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines and with right of return of all descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel, merely as a step toward reclaiming all the land—most of which is intended to be accomplished with the influx of millions of Palestinians claiming a right to kick Jews out of their homes.

It is an explicitly genocidal doctrine, repeating its intention to erase “Zionism” “from the river to the sea.” Now, genocide is, I suppose, an idea. It may even be a powerful one. But the Allies didn’t rationalize away the need to defeat those who embraced that same idea in World War II and to liberate Europe from the Nazis by fretting that fascist thought could never be fully eradicated.

Yes, Hamas can be defeated. Yes, Israel and the West possess the capabilities to do this. And yes, it has been done before. The final ingredient is national will—and that part is up to Israel and Israel alone.

Ricahrd Hanania: Israel Must Crush Palestinian Hopes

The problem with hampering the Israeli war effort through appeals to human rights norms is that it simply ensures that the conflict continues indefinitely into the future. Are Palestinians being well served right now? Would living under occupation for another 75 years do them good? The way I see it, for Israel to survive there will have to be separation between the two sides at some point, and it would be better for it to happen now than later.

During and after the Second World War, Japan and Germany saw their governments destroyed, and the political ideology that the previous regime had relied on in each country extinguished. Both peoples were better off for it in the end. I think the next generation of Uyghurs will be some of the most loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party. This is a less hopeful example since Chinese totalitarianism is bad, unlike liberal democracy. But it shows that when people are given no other options they adjust to their new reality.

Right now, it’s hard to imagine Palestinians giving up their political dreams. But the idea that Japan would become a pacifist society content to manufacture electronics and watch anime while renouncing all geopolitical ambitions must have seemed just as improbable in early 1945. What ended World War II wasn’t the two atomic bombs that the US dropped, as Japan still had the capability to go on fighting. It was knowledge that there would be a third, a fourth, and a fifth if it didn’t surrender. If there was a way Israel could guarantee with 100% certainty that it wouldn’t stop until Hamas was destroyed, I think Palestinian resistance would decline. As things stand, there’s still a good deal of hope out there that Western pressure will eventually force Israel to stop short of regime change in Gaza. In which case, we would simply find ourselves in the same situation as before October 7.

Unlike the Palestinians, Japan already had a state, so in this case moving on means trying to make Gazans into refugees, in many cases not for the first time of course. This will be tough for one or two generations, but eventually lead to a more humane outcome for all involved. Right now, even Westerners seem outraged by the idea of population transfer. One might ask why in every other conflict in the world, we consider it a self-evidently good thing to get civilians out of war zones. What’s special about this particular conflict is the attachment that Arabs and Westerners feel to the cause of Palestine. But it’s an evil cause, which clearly emphasizes hating Jews more than making its own people better off.

As long as hope for a two-state solution exists, the idea of reducing the Palestinian population in the region conflicts with larger political goals. Gazans themselves, living off of international charity and romanticized as warriors, feel no urgency to call for their leaders to let them leave or demand that the rest of the world welcome them in. The end of the Palestinian cause would reduce the terrorist threat inherent in accepting people from Gaza as refugees and make other countries potentially more welcoming.

Eventually, I think that we can get to a place where emptying Gaza becomes seen as a realistic option both within and outside the region. But it will require Israel to extinguish all hopes of Palestinian statehood first. The US can be useful here by continuing to provide support to Israel, refraining from putting pressure on it on humanitarian grounds, and trying to incentivize other nations to accept Palestinians as refugees.

The Red Cross has Jewish blood on its hands- and it couldn't care less

In the second movie of the hugely popular Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is told that a moment will come when he has the chance to do the right thing. Sparrow’s response? “I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.”

That is apparently how the Red Cross feels about the opportunity to do anything to help innocent Jewish children and old women, let alone the other hostages.

Under the hostage deal between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, the Red Cross was supposed to be able to visit the Israeli hostages who have been held in Gaza for nearly two months. The original date for the end of the ceasefire has passed and it has been extended, and still not a single visit to a hostage has occurred.

The Red Cross did not even try. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his government that the agreement allowed the Red Cross to visit the hostages, the organization did not spring into action. It did not demand that Hamas fulfill its obligations under the deal, let alone under international law. It did not put any pressure on Hamas. Instead it equivocated, questioning whether the deal really allowed for the organization to do the job it was supposedly created to do.

When the family of Elma Avraham, one of the hostages released this week, attempted to give the Red Cross the medication she needed so she could receive proper medical care while in Hamas captivity, the Red Cross refused them outright.

Elma, who is 84, had to be hospitalized in serious condition when she was returned. According to her daughter Tal Amano, she had a body temperature of just 82 degrees Fahrenheit and a heartrate of just 40 beats per minute.

The Avraham family’s pleas were repeatedly rejected, with one Red Cross official asking: “Again you came with her package of medications?”

It looks like this letter was written within a week or two after October 7. I randomly looked up several of the 300 signatories and all of them are real legal experts, at major law schools.

Public Statement by International Law Experts
On October 7th, 2023, over a thousand terrorists, members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, infiltrated and captured civilian villages and towns in Israel, as well as a number of military bases. The terrorists massacred over 1300 people, including women, children, elderly people and young adults who were celebrating at an outdoor party. Thousands of people were severely wounded. The numbers of those slaughtered are still not final, and details about the magnitude of the atrocities are still unfolding. These acts constitute gross violation of international law, and, in particular, of international criminal law. As these widespread, horrendous acts appear to have been carried out with an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a national group – Israelis – a goal explicitly declared by Hamas, they most probably constitute an international crime of genocide, proscribed by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
In addition to those murdered and wounded, it is estimated that over 150 people were kidnapped and taken hostage. The majority of the hostages are civilians, and they include Israeli as well as non-Israeli citizens. Among those abducted there are women, children, infants, elderly people in need of medical care and people with disabilities. According to media reports, some kidnapped persons were murdered following their abduction. Videos, released mostly by Hamas, posted on social media, document acts of torture, sexual violence, violence towards children and molestation of bodies. Hamas leader Salah Al-Arouri and Abu Obeida, spokesman of Izz ad-Din al-Kassam confirmed that they were holding Israeli abductees. No information has been provided regarding the current location, status and condition of hostages. They are being held without any communication with the outside world, and the ICRC has not had access to them. There is every reason to believe that their lives and basic rights are under immediate threat of the gravest nature.
War Crimes
International law prohibits the taking of hostages, defined in the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages as seizing or detaining and threatening to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person “in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage”. The customary international law prohibition on the taking of hostages applies both to international armed conflicts and to non-international armed conflicts. It thus applies to the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The taking of hostages is defined as a war crime, including by article 8 (2) (c) (iii)of the Rome Statue, reflecting customary international law. The laws pertaining to the holding of prisoners of war do not apply to terrorist organizations. Thus, holding both civilian and soldier hostages constitutes a war crime. The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of all hostages, civilian and soldiers, reveals that they were taken with the purpose of holding them hostage. Hamas must release all hostages immediately.
In addition to taking hostages, according to information posted on social media and testimonials of survivors, members of Hamas deliberately targeted their attacks against large numbers of civilians, committing murder, torture, rape, mutilation and molestation of bodies. Each of these acts constitutes a war crime, for which perpetrators must bear full accountability.
Crimes Against Humanity
Crimes against humanity refers to acts conducted as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population”. The acts that may constitute crimes against humanity include, among others, enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence and persecution. The abduction of people without provision of information regarding their whereabouts constitutes the crime of enforced disappearances. Furthermore, available information indicates that many abductees were tortured by their captors. These acts were multiply committed by Hamas towards the hostages in execution of its policy to attack civilians, and thus constitute crimes against humanity, for which perpetrators must bear full accountability.
Pending the release of hostages, Hamas must provide under international law information regarding the hostages, including their medical condition, and provide them with the necessary medical care. International law imposes additional particular duties of care towards women and children.
It is the legal and moral duty of all states to act swiftly to halt these crimes.
The international community, including all states and relevant international organizations, must take all measures necessary to ensure immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas. Any delay in action will result in more loss of human life and aggravated human suffering.
Pending release of the abductees, all states must demand Hamas to immediately provide clear information as to the actual whereabouts and condition of all abductees.
Pending release, humanitarian organizations, including the ICRC and all relevant UN agencies should demand from Hamas to provide them with access to the abductees. These organizations must also do their utmost to ensure that essential foodstuff and appropriate medical treatment are provided.
Pending release, all states should use all available means to support Israel, the ICRC and all other relevant organizations and states to gain access to the abductees and to receive information about their fate and whereabouts. Such assistance should include, at the least, providing all possible logistical assistance and available intelligence and supporting relevant diplomatic efforts.
Without derogating from the duty to demand the immediate and unconditional release of all abductees, all states and international organization have a duty to use all available means at their disposal in order to pressure Hamas to give precedence to the immediate release of those abductees who belong to specially protected groups: children, women, older persons, people with disabilities and those in need of medical treatment.

Isn't it interesting that the media has so few articles that mention these self-evident points?

And isn't it equally interesting that open letters that accuse Israel of "genocide" or other crimes get far more publicity than letters like this one?

No legal expert can seriously contest anything written here. Which is a large reason why we have never heard anything about it.

(h/t JW)

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!

Palestinian antisemites "cancel Christmas" - and blame Jews

Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem, and Jews are to blame.

That's the message from the Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor:

In Bethlehem, Christmas is canceled. Palestinian Christian leaders across denominations in the West Bank city decided last week that they will forgo all festivities this year as a mark of solidarity with their brethren in Gaza. There will be no public celebrations, no twinkling Christmas lights and no decorated tree in Manger Square — not as long, they say, as a state of war reigns over the embattled Gaza Strip, and the majority of its residents cope with Israeli bombardments, the devastation of their homes and a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

“This is madness,” Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, told me. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.”

But what about Hamas? Oh, they're pretty cool, according to Isaac:

The delegation’s members condemned Hamas’s actions and deplored its killing of innocent civilians and abduction of hostages. But they questioned Israel’s declared intention to wipe out an organization that is part of the fabric of Palestinian society and seen as a standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli military occupation and domination. “As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there,” Isaac said. “And you cannot just begin the story from there and as such, give a green light for Israel to do what it’s doing right now, which goes way beyond, which is a revenge campaign.”

In other words, empty words of condemnation for generic violence on both sides is the worst that Hamas can expect from these Palestinian Christian leaders.

Why? Because Palestinian Christian leaders are antisemitic on a theological as well as deeply emotional level.

The churches in Jerusalem issued a statement on October 7 that didn't condemn Hamas, but instead implied that Israel was responsible for all violence, using the standard keywords of "justice and respect for human rights" which are only applied to Israel.

They didn't even hint at the pogrom before first blaming Israel for violating the "status quo" in Jerusalem - another dog-whistle for Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

Compare this wishy-washy, passive-voiced, both-sides call for ending hostilities with their sharply phrased condemnation of the "criminal attack" on the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital, which is obviously worded to blame Israel ("Military Forces") even though it was actually done by Islamic Jihad:

While the churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Gaza pretend to care about all human lives, Jewish lives really don't matter to them.

And that is because they are doctrinally antisemitic.

The churches in the region still espouse replacement theology, saying that all the Biblical promises to the Jews really apply to Christians (although the curses still apply only to the Jews.) The existence of Jews and Israel itself is a huge challenge to these churches. They still adhere to the worst forms of historic Christian Jew-hatred. The "Kairos Document" that they wrote concretizes this antisemitism as official Palestinian church policy that promotes supersessionism and denies any Jewish connection to the land.

This is the background that needs to be understood before examining why the churches in the region decide to "cancel Christmas" and send representatives to lobby America. Antisemitism in the region has always been at least as prevalent among Christians as it has been among Muslims. Nothing has changed theologically for those churches in their approach to Jews - we are still guilty of deicide and we are still a challenge to their very existence.

In 1864, way before modern Zionism, an observer described how much Jerusalem's Christians hated Jews:

On Good Friday the Jews cannot quit their own quarters, as the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians would insult and otherwise illtreat them. On some occasions the pasha has been obliged to guard the entrances of their streets with bodies of soldiers and police to protect them from the fanatical Christians, who would have made an attack upon them. No Jew, who lives at Jerusalem, dares to pass in front of the court of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for he well knows how great a risk he runs of suffering for his curiosity. If, on an occasion like this, he were murdered, the malefactors would not be severely punished; for all the native population unfortunately hold the opinion that to injure a Jew is a work well pleasing in the sight of God. This is due to the fact that the Jews, although numerous, do not know how to make themselves respected; and to the sermons constantly delivered by the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, in which the most opprobrious and unseemly epithets are heaped upon them, even in the churches themselves, and of course still more in less sacred places. These are all believed by the faithful, who are thus excited by their priests to insult all whom they meet. Again, the poorer Jews when going or returning from pilgrimages between Jerusalem and Hebron, avoid passing through Bethlehem to escape the insults which the "good Christians" of that place, excited by their monks, always inflict upon them.

And that is the problem with all coverage of Israel. Antisemitism, both Christian and Muslim, has permeated the region for hundreds of years before modern Zionism. The worst insult an Arab could call another has always been "Jew."

Nothing has changed for Palestinian Christians since then. They are taught the exact same hate, lately refined by specifically anti-Israel "liberation theology." . They have not accepted the 1965 Nostra Aetate of the Vatican that re-evaluated the relationship between the church and Jews. Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, rank among the most antisemitic people on Earth.

It may not be politically correct to call all Palestinians antisemitic, but every survey shows that the overwhelming majority indeed are. Ignoring that is ignoring the very foundation of the conflict. And covering, say, a visit by Palestinian Christians to the US without acknowledging this hatred is simply another dimension of antisemitism itself - because to deny the long history of Palestinian antisemitism is to excuse it.

Munther Isaac is entirely correct when he says, "As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there." They started long before October 7, with historic Arab prejudice against Jews that remains a constant through today.

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!

Arabs boycott e-commerce site for "supporting the Jews"

Noon is a Saudi-based e-commerce site, much like Amazon, that markets and sells a wide variety of items.

Over the past couple of days, Arabic media have been asking the question: does Noon support the Jews or not?

The answer given is yes, Noon does support "Jews" and therefore must be anti-Palestinian.

This may sound surprising, especially since its website homepage says solicits funds for Gaza and offers multiple ways it will donate to Gaza charities.

So what's going on?

It turns out that the founder and owner of much of Noon, Mohamed Alabbar, is a billionaire business tycoon. His company also owns the Burj al-Khalifa Tower in the UAE.

In 2021, it was revealed that he, together with four other mega-rich people, donated $170 million to feed poor people in Israel between 2003 and 2021. Alabbar himself only started donating in 2018 so his share was significantly less.

Donating to the "hungry in Israel" means that probably half of the funds would go to the Arab community there.

This charity towards Arabs and Jews in Israel is now being spun as "supporting the Jews" or "funding Israel's war" or being "anti-Palestinian."

It is pretty clear that Arabs who boycott a company because its owner gives charity to poor Jews and Muslims in Israel are all antisemitic.

Levels of antisemitism have been rising steeply over the past seven weeks, and Arabs are in for forefront of that bigotry.

There is a cottage industry in Arabic media trying to determine which multinational companies support Israel, by their own bizarre standards. Cinnabon does not but Dunkin Donuts does - because someone took a photo of a donut with a blue Star of David on it. Dominos Pizza does but Nike does not. (Actually, Nike has a store in Tel Aviv. Sorry, boycotters.)

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!

11/28 Links Pt2: 10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages released; We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity; IDF names three soldiers killed in Hamas captivity

From Ian:

10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages arrive back in Israel after 53 days in Gaza captivity

Nine Israeli women and a 17-year-old girl were released by Hamas on Tuesday night after 53 days in captivity in Gaza, amid an extended truce deal with the Palestinian terror group that is expected to last at least until Wednesday, when another group of about 10 hostages is expected to be freed.

Hamas on Tuesday also released two foreign nationals from Thailand as part of a separate agreement.

The release of eight Israeli women, six of them elderly, and one mother and her teen daughter on Tuesday came hours after an apparent violation of the temporary halt in fighting, now in its fifth day, when Israeli troops were targeted in northern Gaza by Hamas explosives and gunfire. A number of soldiers sustained light injuries.

All the hostages were handed over by Hamas and terror ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Red Cross in Gaza Tuesday night, then arrived in Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing — sidestepping a transfer in Egypt — in a process that was also observed for the past two days of hostage transfers.

They were being brought to hospitals in Israel for further treatment and monitoring, before being reunited with their families.

Hamas released footage of the handover in which the women can be seen walking, flanked by armed, masked terrorists. One of the hostages, Ditza Heiman, 84, was in a wheelchair and was helped into the Red Cross ambulance by medical staff. The handover, brightly lit and filmed by multiple cameras, was stage-managed by the terrorists in front of a large crowd.

Teen hostage Mia Leimberg, 17, was seen in initial clips of the release from inside the Gaza Strip holding her dog Bella, which was thought to have been killed in the October 7 onslaught. That day, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took some 240 hostages including about 40 children.

The youngest among the nine remaining child hostages is Kfir Bibas, who was just nine months old when he was captured along with his parents and four-year-old brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The baby’s aunt Ofri Bibas pleaded Tuesday for the family’s release as soon as possible.

The IDF said Monday that the Bibas family had been transferred by Hamas to another Palestinian terror group in Gaza, dampening hopes of their release during the current truce.

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light

Dr. Hagai Levine worries about four-year-old Abigail Edan, who saw her parents murdered by Hamas terrorists before she was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 and released on November 26.

He worries about 84-year-old Alma Avraham, deprived of essential medication for the seven weeks she was captive in Gaza.

He worries about each of the remaining approximately 160 hostages, from the youngest baby to the oldest octogenarian.

But Levine isn’t just sitting around fretting.

While national leaders are working out the difficult details of getting hostages released back to Israel, Levine is working out the difficult details of their medical care.

Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, volunteered to head the medical team of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum established by the families of the approximately 240 abductees less than 24 hours after the deadly Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.

“This is an unprecedented event,” says Levine.

“Hostages ranging from a nine-month-old baby to an 85-year-old woman with dementia and Parkinson’s were taken and held underground in inhumane conditions. Hamas did not allow them access to the Red Cross or connection with their families,” he says.

“Very early on, we established a medical and resilience team with the aim of bringing them home now, safely, and protecting the health of the hostages and their families.”

The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light
Hostage Eitan Yahalomi is reunited with his mother on his return on Nov. 27, at the Kerem Shalom meeting point. Photo courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson.

Levine and the forum worked with the Health Ministry to innovate new guidelines for treating released hostages.

“We are writing a textbook that wasn’t written before because nothing like this has ever happened before,” adds Orna Dotan, head of the forum’s resilience team comprising hundreds of mental-health professionals.

We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity

The Jewish homeland has been a constant throughout our history. In exile we yearned to return. Then, as the state was granted independence, a partnership across the diaspora brought those dreams to life. When Jews needed to flee persecution, Israel wasn’t just ready and waiting, it orchestrated their escape. It has been a relationship of existential necessity.

And then, October 7, in an instant, Israel stopped feeling like a safe haven. Worse, it felt like its existence was under threat. Those of us too young to remember 1948, 1967 or 1973 had taken Israel for granted. Even with every lesson from our history, we still took Israel for granted.

As it evolved, as the skyscrapers rose and the military grew in power, Israel became an insurance policy to cash in, as and when needed. Israel was there for us. Yet, as a result of our complacency, we could not always say the same.

The immediate response to October 7 has been everything you would expect and more. People who have not given for years have dug deep. The insurance premium is being paid in full — for now. But what happens next? The relationship between Israel and the diaspora had stagnated. As we come out of this trauma we need to press the reset button and, together, re-establish what it means to be the Jewish homeland and to be a Jew outside its borders. The starting point must be a focus on that which brings us together as opposed to the things that drive us apart.

On peoplehood, on a shared history and a desire for a better Israel without demanding a perfect Israel. Too many had made their support for and relationship with Israel conditional. We looked over our shoulder to determine when, how and even if we should state our Zionist credentials, as we sought to avoid the political or social wrath of those who would hold Israel to a higher standard.

Israel is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Never has this been more apparent than when it is seemingly at its most vulnerable.

As people take to the UK’s streets in their hundreds of thousands, some calling for the dismantling of Israel, others for jihad and a number even glorifying the murder of babies, it would be naive not to ask, again, “What if?” What if the baying mob gets its wish? What if it becomes too dangerous to send our kids to Jewish schools?

What if university campuses become no-go areas for Jewish students? Just pick up the suitcase and get on the next flight to Israel? What if there were no Israel to turn to? What if that insurance policy suddenly got cancelled when we needed it most?

And as I look at Britain and look to Israel, struggling to work out how any of this has happened I ask myself, where do we go from here?

Jake Wallis Simons: The Jewish State Is Determined to Defeat the Enemy, Whatever the Price

On Oct. 7, in the sleepy kibbutz of Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, Aviv and Livnat Kutz were hoping to spend the afternoon with their three teenage children and other likeminded locals flying kites near the fence as a gesture of peace towards their Palestinian neighbors. The corpses of the murdered Kutz family were later found huddled together in the same bed.

Looking back, the complacency that prevailed in Israel regarding the threat from Gaza was not only remarkable but agonizingly naive. In the conventional Israeli security picture, the Gazan militias were dwarfed by the threat of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Iran, which was on the threshold of nuclearization. Indeed, as one defense source told me: "If Iran had directed the attacks, Mossad would have known about it."

What Hamas has always missed is the fact that Israel is not a colonial power like France in Algeria. The Israelis have no other country to which to withdraw. And such is the alchemy of Israeli society, whose conscription culture creates deep bonds of social responsibility and national pride, that turning up the volume of agony on its public produces an equal and opposite reaction of solidarity and grit. The Jewish state is determined to defeat the enemy, whatever the price.

On the Israeli side, everything changed on Oct. 7. In butchering the innocent with such savagery, Hamas had changed the security calculation. Israel's policy of containment was torn up.

By way of spectacular success, Hamas had signed its own death warrant. If an effective deterrent is to be re-established, Hamas must be dispatched unequivocally, as costly as this will prove in terms of blood, treasure and international standing.

Last week, an old Palestinian colleague called me from the grounds of the hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Hamas was facing a groundswell of repressed rage from its own people, he confided in hushed tones.

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!

Firebombs bullets, graffiti, death threats: Jews in Canada are being attacked every day

A Jewish community centre in Montreal was firebombed early Monday morning. The firebomb was thrown into the building through glass window on the front door and it exploded in the hallway, causing some damage.

This is only the latest incident of many in Montreal.

Earlier this month, shots were fired at a synagogue and two Jewish schools, and another synagogue was firebombed.

At Concordia University in Montreal, a class-action lawsuit is being filed against the school and the student association, saying that they have fostered a safe space for antisemitism over the years, causing emotional harm to Jewish students and faculty.

And it is not only Montreal.

In Toronto's Forest Hill neighborhood, home to the largest Jewish community in Canada, pro-Nazi graffiti was sprayed on a branch of the Starbucks coffee chain. Michael Levitt, CEO of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, published photos of the event on social media. "In case you're struggling to read the hate graffiti,” it says, “a cup of coffee, you mean a cup of blood" "stop killing babies” and “blood on your hands.” This is the daily reality for Jews in Canada," he wrote.

...The community also reported the tearing down of mezuzahs, the spraying of blood-soaked Stars of David on Jewish homes and a school, as well as protest events held outside community centers.

Someone wrote "Hitler" on a Toronto bus stop.

This antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on an underpass in Winnipeg.

An Ontario family saw "Jews Die" sprayed on their garage, and received this death threat note:

It might not be Nazi Germany, but things are feeling a lot like 1932.

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!

11/28 Links Pt1: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948; Ten Israeli hostages freed as Hamas breaks ceasefire in Gaza; Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Heartbreak in Tel Aviv

I’m in Tel Aviv and have only been here for about 24 hours, so my impressions are just that—impressions. But walking the streets on Monday night and Tuesday morning and afternoon, the overwhelming feeling is one of heartbreak. Not mine—no, it’s as though the emotion of heartbreak is somehow present in the air of this usually vibrant, often chaotic-seeming city. And that seems to be the case even though Israelis, as far as I can tell, are finding a measure of relief in the release of the hostages that began a few days ago, which they have not experienced since October 7.

Ask people here how things have been since that day and they say the feeling is unlike any they’ve ever known. What does that mean exactly? I think it means very different things to different people, but the common thread seems to be that everyone is experiencing what might be called a personal crisis of national confidence.

The story of Israel, despite the wars and the strife, is a story of building and creation. A hundred years ago, Tel Aviv was a town of 15,000 people. That town is now home to 435,000, and sits in the midst of a metropolitan area 4 million strong. Through decades rife with political maelstroms and economic reversals and ideological spats, Israel has simply gotten bigger and more competent and stronger and become a more desirable and prosperous place to live. My sense is Israelis, no matter how slightingly they have spoken of the economy’s inequalities and the disgracefulness of its politicians, nonetheless swell with pride at their own place as a living and breathing element inside one of the world’s most purposeful countries—a place they hold in part because so many of them serve in the military as their first acts of adulthood.

Because security is a paramount concern, and because security is so much a part of Israel’s national identity, the collapse of that sense of security on October 7—and the collapse of the security itself—has been devastating. Blame it on whomever you choose. There’s Bibi, because he’s been the person in charge since January (and was in charge from 2009 to 2021). There are the political leaders that preceded him in government in 2021 and 2022, who also failed to pick up the signals that Hamas was planning something very big and very clever. There’s the active military, which apparently thought a chain-link fence would suffice as a border. There are the officials in the chain of command who dismissed the eyewitness warnings literally sent to them from the soldiers—women, mostly—who served in the watchtowers overseeing Gaza over the course of 2023 that there was mischief afoot. There are the once-vaunted and legendary intelligence services, which almost certainly were being fed false info by fake spies that lulled the government into a false sense of complacency.

Seth Mandel: Israel, Hamas, and the Spirit of 1948

On Oct. 6, Eilat was a town of 50,000 residents. Less than two months later it is currently at about 110,000, unofficially. The resort town in Israel’s south has become an absorption center for Israelis all over the country whose own towns were evacuated in the wake of the attacks.

Some of those were “routine” evacuations—towns in the north in range of Hezbollah rockets. (As strange as it is to consider such an evacuation “routine.”) But others are as far from normal as Israelis have ever dealt with. Sderot, a community of 30,000 near Gaza that has become synonymous with living under the threat of rocket fire, is a ghost town. Because the threat isn’t “just” rockets anymore.

Nir Oz, the kibbutz that lost nearly a quarter of its residents to Hamas’s bloodlust on Oct. 7, has existed in one form or another for almost as long as the state of Israel has. Kfar Azza is even older than Nir Oz. Be’eri was founded in 1946 to enable Israelis to repel an Egyptian invasion. These places represent the ideal of the chalutzim—Jews, often fleeing nearby Arab states, willing to move to Israel’s sentry towns.

And now they are empty.

This occurred in the state’s early years too. Occasionally a community would be forced to relocate temporarily for its own safety. But soon that stopped happening.

Until it happened again on Oct. 7, 2023.

This is crucial to understanding Israel’s stated resolve to fight this war until it is won. The current conflict isn’t just a more-intense version of, say, the 2014 outbreak of violence in and around Gaza. The difference isn’t one of degree; it is one of kind.

This is obvious to Israelis, even as Westerners are largely oblivious to it. “It was a shocking moment because it felt like it was a scene from 1948,” Einat Barzilai, a writer, told the Times of Israel two days after the attack.

JPost Editorial: Finish the job

While there are questions about how many hostages Hamas can actually produce – dozens, if not more, are reportedly being held by other terrorist groups and perhaps even private individuals in Gaza – so long as the group is indeed able to hand over hostages, Israel should keep this arrangement going, provided it does not impair the IDF’s ability to continue the military campaign once the pause ends.

Israel launched this campaign with two stated goals: toppling Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Military leaders had been supportive of the initial four-day pause in hostilities, saying that not only would it not undermine the army’s ability to continue its efforts against Hamas – it would actually facilitate them. This appears to hold true for the additional two days, as well.

Israel must finish the job
In Israel’s understanding, its two goals are mutually reinforcing: it is the military campaign against Hamas that applied the pressure necessary to force the group to start freeing the hostages – and it is the release of the hostages and the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza in the context of the deal that will enable the campaign against Hamas to continue once the pause concludes.

Our message is simple: Israel should finish the job: Both jobs.

Israel should continue to do whatever is necessary – and within the bounds of what its military leaders determine is bearable – to free the hostages so long as the pause continues, and it should be prepared to immediately relaunch its military effort to eradicate Hamas’s capacity to carry out a massacre like October 7 ever again.

In so doing, Israel’s leaders will fulfill their commitment to the people of the Jewish state and bring this painful episode to its natural conclusion.

At the end of the Gaza War’s first half, Israel’s position is strong

Israel negotiated from strength
While all Israelis want the hostages back, not all support the dangerous trade. Yet the War Cabinet, the full Cabinet and the Knesset all backed the deal. While opponents of the deal claim that Israel negotiated from a position of weakness, the exact opposite is true. Israel negotiated the hostage deal from a position of great strength.

First, the IDF is one of the world’s strongest militaries. It is absolutely destroying Hamas, with only a portion of its military might. Israel and Hamas both understand well that a four-day pause does little to change Israel’s overall strategic advantage on the battlefield, even if Hamas manages to regroup and rearm.

Israel’s moral superiority
Second, in placing such a high value on retrieving its hostages, Israel has once again demonstrated its moral superiority. While Hamas values martyrdom and a culture of death, Israel values life, and will risk life and limb to save one of its own. That is a message being heard loud and clear inside Gaza, where civilians recognize that Hamas has invited death and destruction into the Strip, and does little to protect its residents.

It is a message that is reverberating around the world as well. The return of Israeli hostages to the headlines reminds the international community that Israel was severely victimized on Oct. 7 by a brutal terror organization.

That Hamas has been essentially forced to give up 50-70 of its bargaining chips for only 4-6 days of pause in the fighting demonstrates how desperate a situation Hamas is actually in.

Netanyahu shames Hamas in Gaza
Adding insult to injury for Hamas was a surprise visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the strip on Sunday, where he held situational assessments and met with IDF soldiers that continue to hold their positions.

Netanyahu’s visit sent clear messages both in Israel and Gaza. First, Netanyahu has not-so-subtly signaled that as the head of the strongest military force in Gaza, he is now the Strip’s sovereign leader. From this point forward, it is Netanyahu who will determine the fate of Gaza, not Hamas.

The visit is a terrible embarrassment to Hamas, and this is the reason they have not openly commented on it. The visit would have gone viral globally and been more difficult to ignore had Netanyahu opted to record statements in English, in addition to the statements he made in Hebrew while with the Israeli soldiers.

IDF pressure campaign to resume
Second, as Netanyahu repeatedly told the soldiers, as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Gaza the day before, the military campaign will resume as soon as Hamas is no longer able to deliver hostages. Gallant has repeatedly insisted that it was IDF pressure that forced Hamas to negotiate the return of hostages, and he continues to insist that further IDF pressure will lead to the release of additional hostages in the days and weeks to come. The defense minister has stated that fighting in Gaza is expected to continue for months yet. Netanyahu and Gallant have no choice but to beat Hamas at its own game.

Understanding Hamas’s strategy
On Oct. 7, Hamas intentionally launched an attack so heinous that Israel would have no choice but to retaliate on an unprecedented scale. And it is obvious that the IDF, as one of the world’s strongest and battle-ready militaries, has enough might to defeat a terror entity with fewer soldiers and inferior weapons.

Hamas understood from the outset that it could never defeat Israel on the physical battlefield. Instead, it sought to use the physical war to defeat Israel on the psychological battlefield, and in the realm of public opinion.