Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Haaretz accuses Israel of violating the laws of war based on wrong data, wrong assumptions, wrong history and wrong understanding of the laws

Yagil Levy in Haaretz writes that Israel is no longer adhering to the principles of distinction and proportionality in international law in Gaza.

He bases this conclusion on wrong assumptions, wrong data and a complete ignorance of history and international law.

What follows is a comparison between Swords of Iron, as Israel has dubbed the current war, and previous Israeli operations. For the comparative basis to be valid, we will analyze only operations in which Israel attacked Gaza from the air without a land assault, and will compare them to the aerial attacks undertaken during the first three weeks of the 2023 war. Accordingly, we will examine the proportion of Gazan civilians ("noncombatants") killed to the total number of Gazan fatalities.

That ratio reflects the degree to which the attacking side adheres to the principle of "discrimination," which is a key tenet of international humanitarian law. The principle holds that the attacking force is obligated to distinguish and differentiate between enemy combatants and civilians, and that it must avoid harming civilians, certainly deliberately. The law recognizes situations in which an attack is permitted against a military target that is situated in a civilian environment, but for these the law introduces another principle: that of proportionality. It holds that such an attack is lawful if the incidental loss of civilian life ("collateral damage") it may incur is not excessive, in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
It follows that with a high proportion of noncombatants among the total number of those killed, we can conclude that the principle of discrimination was not adhered to, and an unusually high rate will reflect either a departure from the principle of proportionality or a highly flexible interpretation of it.

Wrong.

Israel has gone beyond the requirements of distinction and proportionality in previous wars. It does not follow that a higher percentage means Israel is violating those principles when the percentage is higher.

Levy bases his statistics on the Gaza health ministry numbers when they issued a report of the names, ages and genders of those killed in the first few weeks of the war, saying that "That report has not been refuted to date." However, the ministry has been shown to lie about the number of women and children killed, so the report itself is highly suspect.

Nevertheless, Israel admits a 2:1 civilian to combatant ratio in this war. So we can accept that ratio - but that does not mean that Israel has abandoned the key principles of the laws of armed conflict.

Because every war is different.

The baseline should be other similar wars, not other Israeli wars. Levy seems to admit this, in this passage:

From an international comparative perspective, too, this is a high figure, considering that in wars fought during the 20th century, up until the 1990s, about half of those killed were civilians ...In light of such a high proportion of noncombatants among those killed in Swords of Iron, we may suspect that the principle of discrimination was not upheld or perhaps that the principle of proportionality was subject to a highly flexible interpretation. Thus, rather than this being a case of "collateral damage," it was the reverse: Because most of those harmed are civilians, what was produced is "collateral benefit," in the form of a low number of Gazan combatants killed.

I found the "half of casualties were civilians"statistic in this 1989 article. It is very misleading though.

Historically, wars were between armies. Over 1.7 million were killed in the American Civil War, but only about 130,000 were civilian. Relatively few civilians were killed in the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War.

Because, historically, civilians were neither the targets nor the major defensive weapons.

There is no comparison between traditional war and wars against terrorists or insurgents, and there is certainly no comparison between traditional wars and wars where a key defensive weapon used by the terrorists is their civilian population themselves. To Hamas, Gaza civilians only exist to deter attacks on Hamas itself: it is not defending its civilian population but using them as literal human shields.

The UN estimates a 9:1 civilian to combatant death ratio in wars since World War II.

If you want so compare Israel's wars in Gaza with anything, it must be against US and allied wars in the Gulf, against Al Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban. On that score, even a 2:1 ratio of civilian to combatant is extremely low. According to Colonel Richard Kemp, that 2:1 ratio is significantly better than that of similar wars involving the US Army - 3:1 in Iraq, between 3-5:1 in Afghanistan.

But we still have the question: why is Israel's ratio this time so much higher than its previous Gaza wars?

Because this war is different. In the previous wars, Israel sought to deter Hamas for a few years. It didn't try to destroy Hamas.

And Hamas has now embedded itself into the civilian population to a degree that is seemingly unprecedented.

As one soldier on the ground told Times of Israel:

“There isn’t a single house here without weapons, there isn’t a house without [tunnel] infrastructure. It’s unbelievable. In dozens of yards of homes we found dozens of rocket launchers,” he said. “We found Kalashnikovs under mattresses, inside clothes closets. It wasn’t thrown there suddenly, they were hidden in the homes.”

He said Hamas’s placement of weapons and infrastructure within civilian sites was an attempt to “take advantage of the sensitivity we once had.”

“Schools, a cemetery near us, in a clinic… these are the places where they concentrated most of their tunnel shafts. They thought we wouldn’t strike there, and that’s where we found the enemy’s significant infrastructure,” Yisrael said.

Gaza is more embedded with civilians than ever. They are more dependent on tunnels than ever. They are relying more on deception than ever, including civilian casualty rates.

The goal to eradicate Hamas means the IDF has to be more aggressive than in previous wars - but it does not at all imply that the IDF is not adhering to the principles of distinction and proportionality. The bar for proportionate civilian deaths is significantly higher than what Israel is doing today. Moreover, Hamas members hiding beneath civilian schools, mosques and hospitals or with their own families does not make them immune to attack. This is basic Geneva Conventions 101.

Yigal Levy is basing his argument on false assumptions, faulty data, ignorance of international law, and a complete misunderstanding of the difference between different wars in history and different Israeli wars, even in Gaza.

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12/09 Links: The Woman in the Hamas Video Is My Daughter; The Palestinians Chose to Self-Immolate on the Altar of Destroying Israel; The NYT is wrong about Israeli intelligence

From Ian:

The Palestinians Chose to Self-Immolate on the Altar of Destroying Israel

The story of Israel is the tale of a Jewish state that views its rebirth as restitution and justice.

It is also the tale of an Arab (Muslim) state that never was, that chose to self-immolate on the altar of preventing Israel's emergence, and that views the Jewish state in its midst as an aberration and disruption of God's justice, the personification of injustice.

Justice from a Jewish perspective is "Israel reborn," while injustice in Arab (Muslim) eyes is this same "Israel reborn."

How does one resolve such a dilemma when Israel, having achieved "justice," seeks "recognition," when Arabs seek its correction?

For fans of "context" - from Hamas apologists, to honest human rights activists genuinely concerned for civilian lives, to infantilized pedestrians gorged on social media fallacies devoid of reflection, discernment, or critical analysis, to outright antisemites to whom Israel can't seem to do anything right and has no right to self-defense - that is the context of October 7, 2023.

Arabs won't "recognize," and Israel won't oblige by offering its "demise."

The NYT is wrong about Israeli intelligence

The latest is a carefully contrived misrepresentation of the reason that Israel was caught by surprise on October 7. Headlined “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago”, it was based on a fundamental misconception — that the Israeli army is an active-duty force, as most armies indeed are. But the Israel Defence Forces is radically different: it is a reserves-centered force, one of only three in the world, along with the Finnish and Swiss armies.

Instead of consisting of active-duty forces that are up and running around the clock, the IDF mostly consists of reserve units. When mobilised for refresher training or to fight a war, the reservists go to their specific depots scattered around the country to collect their uniforms, kit and weapons — everything from pistols to battle tanks — before moving out as combat units ready for action.

That is how a country of some 7 million has more than 635,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors when fully mobilised, compared with the 2 million in all US armed forces, out of a population of some 330 million: that is, a ratio that is more than tenfold. Invented in 1948, the reserve system is the key to Israel’s military strength. Aside from allowing Israelis to work and raise their families while still being ready to fight, it also allows the Israeli troops who are on duty to train properly in unit exercises and larger manoeuvres, instead of being tied down to watch frontiers and hold outposts.

But there is a major catch: advance warning is needed to mobilise the reserves in time, and even with the best possible intelligence analysts, and all the best satellites, sensors and computers, the problem is not just hard… it is impossible. Had Israeli intelligence analysis, or the arrival of a complete war plan sold by an enterprising operative revealed Hamas’s plan for an attack on October 7, the Israelis would have sent much stronger forces to guard the Gaza perimeter. Instead of the lone Merkava tank whose capture by dozens of Hamas fighters was shown again and again in news videos, there would have been a company of 10 tanks in that position, which would have massacred the attackers with their machine-gun fire. As for the single mechanised infantry company with fewer than 100 solders that guarded a critical hinge position, there would have been a battalion or even two that would have crushed the attackers.

But then, of course, Hamas spotters would have seen Israeli troops ready to defeat them — and they would have called off the attack altogether. There is worse: once an attack warning is received and reinforcements are deployed so that the enemy calls off its planned attack, the intelligence indicators that got it right will be discredited as false alarms, while the intelligence officers who failed to heed the signs will be the ones everyone listens to the next time around.

Jeffrey Herf: An Exchange on Holocaust Memory

An Open Letter on Hamas, Antisemitism, and Holocaust Memory
The undersigned are scholars of Nazi Germany, of the Holocaust, of Israel, and of antisemitism. We express our disagreement with the statement by some of our fellow scholars in their “Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory” of November 20, 2023, in The New York Review of Books. In the letter they express “dismay and disappointment at political leaders and notable public figures invoking Holocaust memory to explain the current crisis in Gaza and Israel.” The use of Holocaust memory in this way, they suggest, amounts to distortion of the present moment to advance political agendas.

On October 7 Hamas carried out in Israel a deliberate campaign of mass murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. This was not the Holocaust, but it was the most important mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Finding commonalities and differences between historical events has always been essential to understanding the past and the present.

In terms of ideas, there is a Nazi connection to Hamas. A substantial body of research examines the distinctive form of Islamist Jew-hatred that emerged in the 1930s with the Muslim Brotherhood. This scholarship also examines the ways in which Nazi Germany exported European antisemitic conspiracy theories to the Middle East before and during World War II and the Holocaust, and the collaboration of Islamists in that endeavor. A mélange of Jew-hatred resulted, informed by religious fanaticism on the one hand and Nazi theories of Jewish global control on the other. The body of scholarship also examines the use and misuse of Holocaust memory in Arab political life. The signers of the November 20 letter overlook this scholarship.

This mix of Islamist and European Jew-hatred, while not shared by the entire Arab/Muslim world, has maintained a shadow over the Middle East as regards the existence of a Jewish state. It began with the Muslim Brotherhood and Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, and it continues with Hamas, which itself is an offshoot of the Brotherhood. In its call to destroy the Jewish state, Hamas’s Charter of 1988 is replete with the Brotherhood’s vicious Jew-hatred on the one hand, and Nazi conspiracy theories on the other. Hamas’s revised statement of 2017 expresses the same determination, albeit in slightly more secular terminology.

The authors of the November 20 letter point to geopolitical differences between October 7 and the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide, they say, began with “a state—and its willing civil society—attacking a tiny minority.” But Hamas has had a state in Gaza for seventeen years, five years longer than the Nazis controlled Germany. Like all dictatorships, Hamas holds a monopoly on lawmaking, communication, and the use of force. Gaza is also a civil society, terrorized by Hamas but also with willing Hamas supporters. In Hamas’s core documents, Israel represents an intolerable minority embedded in the Muslim world. The signatories of November 20 do not mention these realities.

Chanukah Music Video night 3: Layla Frankel – Hanukkah Honey

A little different from the usual....

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12/08 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: An infernal alliance; David Mamet: The self-delusion of secular Jews; Israeli President Herzog SLAMS Left-Wing Academics Over Antisemitism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: An infernal alliance

At the core of this perverse reaction to the Hamas atrocities lies the fundamental progressive mantra of moral relativism, the abolition of objective truth and the dismissal of the need to distinguish between types of behaviour. But without such distinctions, morality doesn’t exist.

Liberals thus ignore the distinction between the deliberate slaughter of civilians and the unintentional killing of civilians in a justified war. They ignore the fact that Hamas tries to maximise the number of Israelis they kill (as well as deliberately using Palestinians as cannon fodder), while Israel goes to lengths unknown in any other country’s military to spare civilian lives as far as possible.

Liberals ignore the fact that among the Palestinians being killed are thousands of Hamas terrorists, and conversely present Israel falsely and venomously as deliberate child-killers. They call the Palestinian attempt at the genocide of the Jews “resistance” and Israel’s resistance to being annihilated “genocide”.

Refusing to distinguish between the Hamas aggressors and their Israeli victims, they scream for a ceasefire by Israel. None of them is calling for Hamas to surrender, which would stop all the killing immediately. A ceasefire by Israel, by contrast, would sentence yet more Israeli civilians to be murdered, tortured and raped.

Those who want Israel to “stop the killing” therefore aren’t gentle pacifists devoted to the ideal of the brotherhood of mankind. They are moral cretins. Alas, there are now a very large number of them in the west.

Now we can see why the genocidal incitement on campus is studiously ignored by university administrators; why those screaming to “globalise the intifada” are demonstrating alongside liberals who say they merely want the killing to stop; and why feminists have been silent about the barbaric rape, murder and sexual mutilation of Israeli women by the Palestinians of Gaza.

Liberal dogma has produced a society of moral depravity that is marching shoulder to shoulder with the savages of Islamic holy war.

The Hamas pogrom and the war in Gaza are acting as a kind of barium meal in the body of the west, illuminating from the inside a profound sickness in this poisoned civilisation that may prove terminal.

I reported on Hamas in Gaza for over a decade. Here are the questions I’m asking myself now

The Oslo process for dividing the land with Israel to create a zone of Palestinian autonomy — and possibly statehood — had been embraced, at least tepidly, by the late Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But Hamas, the PLO’s most significant Palestinian rival, was fundamentally opposed to peace with Israel, insisting the only path forward was “armed resistance” aimed at eradicating Israel. Throughout the 1990s, when the peace process was moving forward, Hamas sought to derail it by blowing up Israeli buses and cafes. By the early 2000s, when peacemaking ground to a halt, they had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in this manner, leading to further separation of Israeli and Palestinian societies.

The Hamas leaders and spokesmen who agreed to our interviews were rarely what you would expect of representatives of a terrorist organization. They were men who were fluent in English, logical-sounding about their grievances and highly educated to boot, usually in engineering or medicine. They portrayed themselves as part of a “political wing” of Hamas, one that was unaware of what was being planned by the more secretive military wing. Often, these spokesman insisted, they had no idea that an attack was imminent.

By and large, we reporters ate it up. Our editors wanted us to have access to this shadowy group and to explain its lure for average Palestinians — and in particular, the strategic challenge it presented to Arafat. By claiming that the organization’s left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, Hamas made it easy for themselves to evade tough questions — like, why target civilians rather than military targets? — and convenient for so many of us to feel like we were putting our fingers on the Palestinian pulse rather than sitting down for tea with terrorists.

So we sipped their bitter brews, and they talked a good game. “Look, we take no joy in seeing Israeli civilians get blown up,” one spokesman told me — back in the day when Hamas’ worst weapon was a suicide bomber in an urban area — before going on to insist that these attacks were the only rational answer to what they saw as the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. When I asked why Hamas wouldn’t take a crack at negotiations instead, they responded that there was no point in talking to Israel — and Israel wasn’t exactly jumping to talk to Hamas either. The spokesman insisted I not use his name with that almost-empathetic quote about not taking joy in killing Israelis. In retrospect, I wonder if he said it because he knew it sounded good to the Western ear.

Hamas played other games with language, presenting themselves as reasonable by saying that its leaders would in theory agree to a long-term hudna, or truce, with Israel. Their words sound nice — who wouldn’t chose a lasting truce over the horrific killing and destruction we are now witnessing? — but the reality was that Hamas would never ink a permanent deal with Israel because, their leaders told me, Islam forbade it.

And then there were the outright distortions. Ahead of October 7, Hamas duped Israel into thinking that the organization was uninterested in inflaming the situation and wanted Gazans’ lives to improve. With that in mind, Israel actually relaxed the Gaza border crossings in late September — a week before the attack — to let more Palestinian laborers into Israel. Sadly, the opening to thousands of additional workers from Gaza turned Israel into an information sieve from which Hamas reportedly gathered intelligence for its attack in October.

David Mamet: The self-delusion of secular Jews

Western Jews have traditionally voted for liberalism, which is to say for inclusion in some imaginary coalition of the right-thinking. We support the United Nations, a Potemkin village of remittance men hired to denounce Israel, and we elect politicians who kowtow to murderous antisemites. We send our children to elite universities, which teach antisemitism and support anti-Jewish demonstrations, and then advise them to “stay safe”. Can you name another group which behaves similarly?

After the liberation of Dachau, citizens of Munich were marched through the camp and forced to look. The 45-minute Hamas-filmed montage of bestiality should be aired continuously on all media, so that no one can say: “I didn’t realise.” Shelby Steele said that his beloved fellow black citizens have been confused by 400 years of slavery. As have my fellow Jews, since the eradication of the Temple, by life on sufferance.

Slavery creates a slave mentality — to survive or die. Black Americans survived the Middle Passage, chattel slavery and segregation through reliance on the family and religion; the Diaspora Jews had our cultural contiguity and The Torah. But that necessary and inescapable cohesion was shattered by the bright promises of acceptance; and our reference to religion as a guide broken by the Enlightenment (the Haskalah) in the 19th century.

Afterwards, the re-establishment of the Jewish State in the Levant offered a home to the tortured remnant of European Jewry, but their return exacerbated the antisemitism of the Arab world, and did nothing to expunge the seed of slave-thinking in the diaspora. The seed also flourished in a largely secular Israeli Jewish Left, still concerned with a curious inversion of reason called “fairness”. The utter fatuity of this view was seen on October 7.

Mike Tyson remarked that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose. Diaspora Leftist Jews have tried to escape punishment by staying out of the ring — and acknowledging our enemies’ right to an opinion, and our responsibility as Jews to defend that right at whatever cost to our interests. The American Civil Liberties Union stands up for the right of protestors to demonstrate — that is, to “act out” — in favour of genocide, much as their co-religionary Aaron explained to Moses: “What could I do? They took the gold and threw it in the pot and this calf came out, and we worshipped it.”

Jews were not instructed to worship fairness (a human concept, incapable of absolute determination), but to worship God and keep his ordinances. Indeed, a devotion to God and the Word of God is the sole protection we poor weak humans have against doing evil. Our devotion will not protect us from the evil others do, however — and that’s why we have armies.

Chanukah Music Video Night 2: You Can Light With Me (Y-Studs Version) - A Taylor Swift Hanukkah

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NGO leader tweets Israel warned Refaat Alareer they would kill him - and tens of thousands of idiots believe it!

Ramy Abdu is chairman of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which we have seen in the past just makes stuff up.

This tweet is a doozy:

Some 14,000 people so far have retweeted this, and fully believe that Israel calls up people they are about to assassinate.

Why? Because this makes it a better sport before killing them, like some cheesy supervillain who says "the human is the toughest prey" before giving him a head start in some B-movie?

But let's go with it. Let's say that Israel really called up Refaat Alareer and warned him that he would be killed. What would he do?

He would plaster the threat all over social media. He would call every news outlet and tell them that he was just warned about his own assassination. He would frantically call friends in Hamas and ask to hide in a tunnel. Failing that, he would hide himself, alone, in some basement.

But what does he do instead, according to his admirers who are retweeting this story?

He goes to his family, where they can be killed along with him!

So if you believe this risible lie, then you also believe that this Palestinian icon, poet, human rights activist, saint, demi-god, or whatever they are calling him now, chose to doom his sister and her children to certain death.

What a guy!

Now look who "liked" this tweet - Ali Abunimah! The editor of Electronic Intifada, a site quoted often by the likes of Ken Roth, believes this obvious lie without even a question.

This one tweet tells us a great deal about how easily anti-Zionists lie, how easily they spread obvious lies, and how gullible they are.

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

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12/08 Links Pt1: Red Cross reprimanded hostage families: 'Think about the Palestinians'; White House removes CAIR from national strategy on antisemitism

From Ian:

UN postpones vote on demand for humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza

A UN Security Council vote on a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was delayed by several hours on Friday until after a planned meeting between Arab ministers and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The United States - a veto-wielding power on the council - has said it does not currently support further action by the 15-member body on the conflict between its ally Israel and terrorist militant group Hamas in Gaza, a Palestinian enclave. The council last month called for pauses in fighting to allow aid access.

The United States and Israel oppose a ceasefire because they believe it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and allow the release of hostages taken by Hamas in a deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

"While the United States strongly supports a durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire," Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told the council.

"This would only plant the seeds for the next war because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace," he said.

The council was now due to vote on a resolution drafted by the United Arab Emirates at 5.30 p.m. (2230 GMT) - just after Blinken meets in Washington with ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

"Today this council will vote, it will have an opportunity to respond to the deafening calls across the world to bring this violence to an end," Deputy UAE Ambassador to the UN Mohamed Abushahab told the council.

To be adopted, a Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the five permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, France or Britain.

Speaking to the UN Security Council, Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood said:

"While the United States strongly supports the durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire.

This would… pic.twitter.com/CopvIGICOp
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) December 8, 2023

Daniel Greenfield: This is Why America Forgot How to Win

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stopped by the Reagan National Defense Forum to deliver an address titled, ‘A Time for American Leadership’. What leadership lessons did he have to offer?

“I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS,” he told his audience. “Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles. So the lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.”

He then went on to lecture that “we will continue to press Israel to protect civilians” and” that “protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.”

Gen. Austin headed Central Command from 2013 to 2016. Obama officials blamed Austin for telling Obama that ISIS was “a flash in the pan” (while Austin’s people denied he said that.) Central Command’s intelligence failures against ISIS were so bad that they resulted in an investigation into whether intelligence had been falsified to make it look like we were winning.

By the fall of 2016, after 3 years of fighting, ISIS had only lost a third of its territory in Iraq and Syria. That was in large part because the Obama administration refused to allow the military to properly hammer ISIS. Under Trump, our hands were no longer tied and we hit ISIS hard.

Despite Austin’s claims that victory against ISIS came from protecting civilians allied with the Islamic terror group, the reality was just the opposite. Fussiness over civilian casualties during the Obama administration translated neither to victory nor civilian lives saved. On Austin’s watch, airstrikes against ISIS killed civilians, but that was always inevitable.

It’s impossible to take out Islamic terrorists whose entire operating model is to fight from behind and around civilians without civilian casualties. The choice is between a long grueling war, which Obama and Austin gave us, or a short devastating campaign, which Trump gave us.

PA envisions ruling Gaza with Hamas as a partner

The Palestinian Authority’s preferred outcome of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip would be for the terrorist organization to join a P.A.-led governing body as a junior partner, Bloomberg quoted P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh as saying on Friday.

“Hamas before Oct. 7 is one thing, and after is another. … What is needed really is a situation in which Palestinian unity should be allowed to function on very clear bonds and agenda,” Shtayyeh told the outlet.

“Therefore, I think, if they are ready to come to an agreement, and really accept the political platform of the PLO, accept the tools of struggle … there will be room for talks,” he said, adding that “Palestinians should not be divided.

“For Israel to say that they are going to eradicate or eliminate Hamas, I don’t think that’s a possible goal to achieve, simply because Hamas is not in Gaza only. Hamas is in Lebanon, everybody knows Hamas leadership is in Qatar and they are here in the West Bank,” said Shtayyeh.

When asked by Bloomberg to condemn Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter of more than 1,200 people in Israel, Shtayyeh refused, claiming the conflict didn’t begin on that date and Israeli officials have failed to speak out against “things done by their citizens to Palestinians.”

On Oct. 21, Shtayyeh likewise refused to condemn Hamas’s crimes against humanity, telling CNN‘s Becky Anderson that “what has happened yesterday is yesterday.”

According to Shtayyeh, U.S. officials visited Ramallah earlier this week to discuss a plan for the day after the war in Gaza. He claimed both sides agreed that Israel shouldn’t occupy the coastal enclave, reduce its territory for a security zone, or resettle its residents.

Terrorism is not resistance (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

A new book, A Brief and Visual History of Antisemitism, was published last year. The over 500 pages of text are thorough and filled with photos, illustrations, cartoons, and maps. It is designed in a way that makes it easy to find information.

Like debunking antisemitic and anti-Israel myths.

Chapter Eight deals with The Current Landscape, and includes a section on Debunking the Myths. One of those myths is very prevalent now and is being used as an excuse by the terrorist apologists who defend the Hamas massacre --

Claim: "Terrorism (an indiscriminate attack on innocent civilians) is a legitimate response to Israel's [insert excuse here]"

Israel Bitton, the author of A Brief and Visual History of Antisemitism and executive director of Americans Against Antisemitism, points out:

Intifada, jihad, "resistance" Khaybar, "from the river to the sea," and "free Palestine," are all euphemisms for the erasure of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish state, including the Jews within. [p. 516]

He exposes the excuses.

The following is based on what he writes.

Unlike the apologists, Hamas leaders emerge from behind the euphemisms when making their case. In 2006, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal candidly said, "Our enemies don't understand that a suicide operation is a natural right." On October 7, we saw just how far Hamas goes in its pursuit of these "natural rights" -- and how far their allies are willing to go to defend and excuse those attacks.

But back in 2003, Olara A. Otunnu, undersecretary-general and UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict said in a statement before the Security Council: "The use of suicide bombing is entirely unacceptable. Nothing can justify this."

And to prove the point, all you have to do is look at international law -- not read the self-serving statements by Francesca Albanese, but read the actual documents. Bitton points out:

Revenge isn't a right granted per international law, nor is it tolerated and justified in any human society, so murdering innocent people can never be equated with legitimately "resisting" oppression. [p. 517]

He supports that by quoting what international humanitarian law actually says as explained by the International Red Cross:

There is no "right of resistance."

Contrary to what we are seeing presented as international humanitarian law, "by all means necessary" is an anti-Israel agenda dressed up as international law.

Protocol I, Article 51 clearly states, "Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited."

The first two examples are:

(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective;

The Geneva Convention recognizes the difference between deliberately targeting civilians and targeting terrorists who exploit civilians as human shields.

This touches on another point that is particularly relevant in light of the intimidation, vandalism, and attacks on Jews and Jewish establishments by Hamas apologists and supporters. According to Article 33 of the Geneva Convention:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.
Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Bitton suggests a novel angle:

That means that Palestinian calls to violence, such as "globalize the intifada," which render all Jews around the world legitimate targets of reprisal are an incitement to war crimes and ought to be treated as such. [p. 518; emphasis added]

Today, these public calls for the collective punishment of Jews around the world are not only being made by Palestinian terrorists -- their apologists make these calls during their "protests" -- protests that often deteriorate into riots and attacks on both Jews and their property.

A Brief History, published a year ago, describes examples of war crimes we actually witnessed on October 7:

Taking Israelis (and Jews) hostage is a war crime and one with which Israel is, sadly, too experienced. Mutilating corpses is a war crime, but it's also the height of depravity and the essence of a crime against one's humanity to which Israelis have been repeated subjected. Finally, Hamas, for the most part, doesn't use willing human shields for protection but has been shown to force residents of Gaza to remain in their places even after Israel calls in advance for civilians to evacuate--to those who dare flee, Hamas eventually catches up. [p. 519]

The book explains further on the context of the Geneva Conventions and international law:

o International law is not written with the intent that it can be suspended when committing war crimes is the only option for reaching a political end

o The fact that Hamas is limited to rockets that can only be fired in the direction of population centers in Israel and that Israel has the Iron Dome does not justify Palestinian terrorism

o The fact that more Palestinian Arabs are killed in response to its terrorist attacks reveals nothing about the circumstances under which those deaths occurred. [p. 521]

The "experts" on international law, both individuals and organizations, seem to either be ignorant of the facts or use their positions to pursue their agenda instead of pursuing the facts.

Yet, sometimes the truth manages to stick its head out, even if only temporarily. In 2002, Amnesty International published its report: Without Distinction – Attacks on Civilians by Palestinian Armed Groups. While the report, true to form, accuses Israel of various violations, it also condemned Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and made clear those attacks had no basis under international law:

o "The attacks against civilians by Palestinian armed groups are widespread, systematic and in pursuit of an explicit policy to attack civilians. They therefore constitute crimes against humanity under international law."

o "Amnesty International condemns unreservedly direct attacks on civilians as well as indiscriminate attacks, whatever the cause for which the perpetrators are fighting, whatever justification they give for their actions."

o "Targeting civilians and being reckless as to their fate are contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which should apply in all circumstances at all times."

This was during the Second Intifada.

But these days, twenty years later, there is an attempt to legitimize October's Hamas massacre, whitewash the rapes and kidnappings, and push for a ceasefire that will enable Hamas to survive and terrorize another day -- which is exactly what they have sworn to do.

International humanitarian law is easily misunderstood and distorted by the mobs blindly chanting slogans that hide their ignorance of the Middle East. The reality is very different.

Terrorism is not resistance

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The media refuses to report what everyone knows: Egypt really, really hates Palestinians

Axios reports, "Egypt warned the U.S. and Israel that if Palestinian refugees flee into the Sinai as a result of the Israeli military operation in southern Gaza, it could create 'a rupture' in relations between Egypt and Israel, according to four U.S. and Israeli officials."

The media has been reporting, non-judgmentally, about Egypt's 'refusal to accept any Palestinians attempting to flee from Gaza since the war began. But they refuse to say the simple truth: Egypt hates Palestinians and has treated them harshly since 1948.

From the beginning, Egypt opposed taking in Palestinian refugees. In September 1948 It created the laughable "All Palestine Government" in Gaza as a pretend Palestinian state with no power. It used that as an excuse to forcibly transfer nearly all Palestinians who managed to get into Egypt into Gaza. 5,000 Palestinians who made it to a former British POW camp in Qantara were moved to Gaza.

Egypt was the only Arab country that had a policy to close its borders to Palestinians in 1948. And even then it claimed that the decision was "principled" for the Palestinians' own good. It refused to allow UNRWA to operate in its borders in 1950, relegating it to Gaza.

Gaza was turned into an open-air prison, not by Israel but by Egypt.

Then, as now, Egypt was in the forefront of wanting international aid to the Palestinians in Gaza - but the reason is not because they love Palestinians but because they want to keep them out of Egypt.

Interestingly, one small group of Palestinians remained in Egypt, forgotten by everyone until a few years ago. The village of Gezirat Fadel. has no official status, no infrastructure, and its residents have no refugee or citizenship status in Egypt even after living there for 75 years. They are the exception that proves the rule: Egypt has always been anti-Palestinian.

That hate, usually framed as concern, has been a constant feature of Egyptian attitudes towards Palestinian Arabs for over seven decades. In the 1950s, UNRWA tried to create a way for Palestinians to become self-sufficient in the Sinai, and Egypt (together with self-appointed Palestinian "leaders") scuttled those plans. In the 1970s, Egypt officially classified the Palestinians who were given limited rights by Nasser as "foreigners" and took away basic rights for the few Palestinians who were in Egypt, barring them from universities and other benefits.

The main exception was during the one year that Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt in 2012-2013, when he often opened the border to Hamas-run Gaza. As soon as he was deposed, Egypt went back to its anti-Gaza policy with a vengeance, clearing out large sections of Egyptian Rafah to get rid of smuggling tunnels and blaming Gaza for the ISIS insurgency in the Sinai. Anti-Palestinian rhetoric was all over Egyptian media.

Even today, Gazans who want to travel abroad from Egypt are not allowed to stay overnight, making their travel plans difficult.

It isn't that Egypt has a policy against all refugees. There are plenty of non-Palestinian refugees in Egypt. UNHCR says:

Egypt hosts around 430,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers from 59 nationalities. As of October 2023, the Sudanese nationality has become the top nationality, followed by Syrians. Other relevant countries of origin include South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq.

Following the outbreak of armed conflict in Sudan in April 2023, large numbers of civilians have been forced to flee to Egypt and other neighboring countries in search of safety. ...UNHCR also supports Syrian refugees who fled their war-torn land and started seeking asylum in Egypt in 2012. The number of Syrians registered with UNHCR Egypt rose dramatically from 12,800 at the end of 2012 to more than 145,000 people at the end of 2022. As a result of the Sudanese and Syrian crises, Egypt now hosts the largest number of registered refugees and asylum-seekers in its history.

At the same time, renewed conflicts and political instability in East Africa, and the Horn of Africa as well as the unrest in Iraq and Yemen, have driven thousands of South Sudanese, Ethiopian, Iraqi, and Yemeni individuals to seek refuge in Egypt. As of 19 November 2023, the refugee population registered with UNHCR comprised 169,000 Sudanese, 152,545 Syrians, 35,917 South Sudanese, 30,713 Eritreans, 17,277 Ethiopians, 8,034 Yemenis, 7,163 Somalis, 5,541 Iraqis, and refugees of more than 50 other nationalities.

Those are just the registered refugees.It is clear that Egypt does not have an anti-refugee policy - it only has an anti-Palestinian policy.

In fact, while Egypt was welcoming Syrian refugees, there was an exception: Syrian Palestinians. Hundreds of them were placed not in refugee camps but in jail.

Given this context, Egypt's treatment of Gazans may be principled - but the principle is that Egypt hates Palestinians, and always has.

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Arab media: Chanukah the holiday for provoking Palestinian feelings

Egypt's El Watan News describes Chanukah:

The headline says it all:

How do Jews celebrate Chanukah?..The "Festival of Lights" is the season of provoking the feelings of Palestinians..

The article continues:

Tomorrow, Friday, Jews will celebrate the season of Hanukkah or “Festival of Lights,” the last Jewish holiday of this year, which coincides annually with great restrictions on the entry of Palestinians into Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to practicing Talmudic prayers inside the Al-Aqsa campus, and holding provocative dances in the alleys of the Old City of the holy city.

Every dance is a provocative dance. So we might as well dance.

Here's a Chanukah dance video in Jerusalem from 2009, a flash mob by Nefesh B'Nefesh.

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Chanukah Music Video night 1: The Maccabeats - We're Still Here (Am Yisrael Chai) - Hanukkah 2023 - עם ישראל חי

Continuing my tradition of posting new Chanukah videos every year....

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12/07 Links Pt2: The Ivory Tower's Day of Reckoning; DEI Drives Campus Antisemitism; NASA Astronaut to Celebrate Hanukkah in Space

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Battlefield Is Now Set in Gaza

Every gesture of moderation, every period of calm, was simply part of Hamas’s war plan. It was all in the service of the most violent attack the terror group would ever pull off. And it only succeeded because Israeli officials took signs of peace at face value.

Those days are long gone. There will be no more periods in which Israel is lulled into a false sense of security. As long as Hamas is in Gaza, such a thing cannot possibly exist. The belief that its longtime enemy wanted anything less than the complete destruction of Israel cost the country dearly. Hamas has revealed that there is no constructive role it can or will play.

Such a status quo translates essentially into a freezing of any progress toward peace far beyond the Gaza border. The United States will be forced to build the last part of its intended regional peace agreement with Saudi Arabia on quicksand unless Hamas is crushed. The two-state solution is farther away today than it has been since the Second Intifada. Hamas’s pogrom disproportionately—and likely intentionally—murdered those in Israel most amenable to peaceful coexistence. And America’s deterrence of Iran will continue to be hampered by Hamas’s multifront troublemaking.

The Biden agenda is itself one of Hamas’s remaining hostages. Israel is in Khan Younis to set it free. There is no acceptable alternative to victory.

Bethany Mandel: Hamas tortured hostages. But the Pro-Palestine left won't admit it

In Gaza, as the first hostage releases of Israeli civilians began over a week ago, online comments rolled in about how happy they were with their captors; how well-treated they were by the militants that murdered their families and kidnapped them. Some even joked that over the course of their captivity, hostages fell in love with their captors, giving them looks of affection as they left their custody.

The reason why the hostages looked so sanguine has since emerged: they were drugged by Hamas before their release, and were explicitly told to smile and wave, all the while as other members of their families still held hostage were used to guarantee their cooperation.

There is a PR operation at work within the terrorist organisation, and western apologists are happy to pick up everything they are throwing down. That willingness, and in some corners, eagerness, to grant terrorists good press isn’t just what blurs to Holocaust revisionism, it also endangers Jews still trapped within Gaza. This indifference to, whitewashing and even cheerleading of the events of October 7 is a reflection of longstanding international hostility towards not just the Jewish state, but the Jewish people.

As further information about the events of October 7 emerges, the full picture of horrors becomes clear. On Monday the New York Times reported, “Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles. But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.”

Also on Monday, at the United Nations headquarters former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg hosted an event to spotlight the sexual crimes perpetrated on October 7. That meeting was necessary because it’s not just Hamas denying there were sexual crimes committed, but Western apologists, as well.

I am a Zionist because I am a leftist, not in spite of that commitment

What should the leftist make of all this? To be on the left means, in sophomoric terms but no less true for it, to be on the side of the underdog. I am thus a Zionist because I am a leftist, not in spite of it. In its affirmation of a viable Jewish peoplehood, and its sober and rational recipe for Jewish survival, Zionism demands leftist support for European civilisation’s ultimate underdog.

I am a pragmatist. I know how deep the rot goes on the left. At the exalted level of the academy, we have lost for the time being. What the German radical Rudi Dutschke called the ‘long march through the institutions’ of a certain type of leftism is largely complete.

No, the hope, as ever, and as Orwell so presciently noted, lies with the proles – in this context, ordinary, well-meaning leftists. I think much of the anti-Zionism amongst this group is, to use an American political formulation, a mile wide and an inch deep. It is reflexive and axiomatic, a kind of default anti-Zionism. It is not, I think, deeply held. Therefore, it is open to persuasion.

We know we will not eradicate anti-Zionist antisemitism: as writers from Jean Paul Sartre to Fathom’s Eve Garrard have shown, antisemitism is simply too pleasurable to too many people for that. We know too how protean, adaptable, and immune to its internal contradictions it is. It is what Albert Memmi described as ‘a living thing of multiple heads that speaks with a thousand grimacing faces.’

We know, too, that many of the newer movements of the left whose vibrancy and urgent questioning of racial injustice are understandably attractive to young people, have serious problems with antisemitism and are perpetrators of lazy, binary approaches to Israel-Palestine. But we cannot abandon these young people.

About the enemies of the state of Israel, the Jewish homeland, it says much about the moral degradation to which much of the left has sunk that we cannot recognise their reactionary and eliminationist character. My own damascene conversion, if I can identify one specific moment, came with Judith Butler’s notorious proclamation that Hamas and Hezbollah must be considered ‘part of the global left’.

We must encourage in young leftists the virtue of questioning orthodoxy, avoiding the left’s set menu and deciding their positions à la carte.

Fetterman says if we want peace, Israel needs to be able to destroy Hamas

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has emerged as one of the most reliable supporters of the Jewish community in his hometown, which is located a handful of miles from where the deadliest massacre of Jews happened in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh five years ago. This support is changing how many in the state see him.

David Knoll, a Pittsburgh-based businessman and Democrat who launched a last-minute quixotic challenge to local county councilwoman Bethany Hallam over her social media posts supporting antisemitism, said, “Fetterman has been better than anyone could have hoped, and honestly did not see that coming, but we welcome his support whole-heartedly."

Knoll, who lives in Squirrel Hill, said what he especially loves is Fetterman’s refusal to cower to either the members of the media or members of their own party who are at odds with his staunch support of Israel.

Fetterman, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, said he is not concerned about falling in or out of some sort of political categorization. “I am not worried about labels or what people want to label me, I am about being clear where I stand, and I always have been,” he said in an emailed interview.

“I am on what I believe is the right side of this issue, I'm not concerned about a label. Israel is our key, closest ally, and we need to support them in this fight,” he said, adding, “if we want peace and we want a two state solution, then Israel needs to be able to destroy Hamas.”

Fetterman said he fundamentally believes destroying Hamas is the only pathway to a real solution to this conflict, “And it’s not at all at odds with my other beliefs. Hamas has systematically used rape and murder as part of its war, brutalizing Israeli women. It’s horrifying. We cannot pretend that Hamas is a rational entity.”

Only a few excerpts from an article in the Palestinian Amad news site:

The criminal Jews range from the killers of prophets and messengers to the killers of children and women in Palestine

Since creation began on the face of the earth with our master Adam, our mother Eve, and their descendants after them, the verses of the Wise Remembrance sent down from the Lord of the Worlds were written in letters from the light of all that will be in the universe, and they clearly stated without ambiguity the truth about the Jews.

A divine miracle comes from one who knows what is secret, and what is hidden, to make clear to everyone who has insight the criminal, brutal reality of the Jews, and that they ignite discord among the people, and strive to spread corruption on earth. They are the killers of the prophets and messengers.

God Almighty made it clear that the Jews, and those who support them, are the most hostile of people to the believers.....Therefore, it is not strange for them to be the killers of prophets, messengers, women and children in the Gaza Strip in Palestine. How could they not, when they did worse than that and insulted the great Creator, God Almighty!

And the verse is clear and does not need explanation or interpretation, and because of their disbelief, their oppression, treachery, betrayal, breaking of covenants, and their repulsion about the path of God, and their corruption on earth, and their slander against the Lord of the worlds, and their claim that God Almighty has a son! Imitating the words of those who disbelieved before, God will kill them.

How will they be defeated? So they incurred the wrath of the Lord of the Worlds upon them, and He made of them monkeys and pigs, and God Almighty said: "Say, “Shall I inform you of any evil other than that as a reward from God whom God has cursed and become angry with and made of them apes and swine? They are evil.”

They tried to kill our Master Muhammad, the best of prayers and peace be upon him, more than once, and they broke their covenant with him. The Almighty said: "And because they broke their covenant, We cursed them, and made their hearts hard; they distorted words from their proper places

Among the natures of the criminal, murderous Jews are envy, spreading corruption on earth, spreading immorality in it, and eagerness for life.

Among the characteristics of the criminal Jews are miserliness, miserliness, and humiliation.

They crucified our master Jesus, peace be upon him, and tried to kill him!;

We are in our present conflict with the pig Zionist criminals, and with the immoral and infidel West that supports them

This has been their nature and their teaching since ancient times. They live in separate ghettoes and consider themselves above people and the nations, and they falsely say that people were created only to be slaves and servants of the Jews!!

Therefore, the impure Zionists, the earthly pigs, are deviant, and their hostility to humanity in general, and to the believers in particular,

The Jews’ hostility to Islam is not born today, and is not only because of the Palestine issue, but rather it is a doctrinal hostility throughout history. The enmity of the Jews towards Muslims is very old, since the time of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, as well as the days of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and this Zionist hostility towards the Arabs, Islam, and Muslims still continues.

But I thought that they had nothing against Jews!

Interestingly, in the current wave of antisemitic articles in Palestinian and other news sites, only about 10% make the claim that Jews are really Khazars and therefore today's Jews aren't Jews. Instead, they embrace the idea that Israelis really are Jews, and Jews are incomparably evil people, as this article does.

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Israel Better Not Violate The Next Ceasefire By Returning Hamas Fire, by Joseph R. Biden (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Israel Better Not Violate The Next Ceasefire By Returning Hamas Fire

by Joseph R. Biden, President, United States of America

Washington, December 7 - The next precious, fragile pause in hostilities in Gaza to facilitate the release of hostages must continue. My administration will persist in its determined efforts to ensure that the calm prevails, when the time comes and that if Hamas does shoot, Israel does not shatter the ceasefire by retaliating.

Many lives are still at stake, and not just those of the hostages. Humanity cannot simply shrug at any resumption in hostilities. We must impress upon the parties to the conflict the critical need to resolve the difficult situation through non-violent means; we must encourage them to maintain the fragile calm, and, when Hamas or allied factions fire at Israel, not to violate that calm by firing back.

The innocent people of Gaza have suffered as well. I am proud to say that with American leadership, the international community has rallied to work toward their protection via the eventual implementation of a broader ceasefire arrangement, which must be inviolate even if Hamas violates it.

None of us are naïve about the mechanisms and inducements necessary to preserve a ceasefire. A ceasefire was in place until Israel fired back on October 7. Even the preemptive calls on Israel for a ceasefire before their retaliation began failed to stop it. A more lasting arrangement will have to better account for the factors that previous efforts failed to weigh properly. Only then can we prevent violations of that ceasefire when Israel fires back. Otherwise we simply repeat all the previous mistakes.

The parties to the proceedings, including our allies in the region, all understand that one of the keys to preventing the collapse of a ceasefire when Israel returns fire lies in identifying and implementing measures to keep Hamas from firing in the first place. That imposing challenge has long loomed over previous efforts to secure quiet on the Gaza front. The United States will continue to work with its partners in the region and beyond to find solutions, with whatever creativity becomes necessary, to induce Hamas not to fire when a ceasefire is in place, so that Israel is not prompted to break the ceasefire in retaliation.

Together, all the parties to this process can arrive at a workable, even durable, solution, provided we develop realistic, holistic incentive and oversight mechanisms, which our allies and I believe not just desirable, but possible. It may yet take some time, but I promise to work hard to ensure that the next time Hamas fires rockets at Israel or shoots at Israeli soldiers during a ceasefire, Israel will refrain from shooting back and thus violating the ceasefire.

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12/07 Links Pt1: Israel: UN chief’s tenure ‘danger to world peace’; CAIR executive director ‘happy to see’ Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack; Terrorists fire rockets from humanitarian zone in Gaza

From Ian:

UN chief ‘endorsing Hamas terror’ by invoking Article 99 - Israel

Diplomats said the UAE aims to put the text to a vote on Friday when the council is due to be briefed by Guterres on Gaza. To be adopted, a resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the five permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, France, or Britain.

Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Wood, said the United States does not support any further action by the Security Council.

"However, we remain focused on the difficult and sensitive diplomacy geared to getting more hostages released, more aid flowing into Gaza, and better protection of civilians," Wood told Reuters.

Guterres in his letter to the UNSC warned, “I expect public order to completely break down soon [in Gaza] due to the desperate conditions, rendering even limited humanitarian assistance impossible” as a result of the war.

“We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs,” he wrote.

In his letter, Guterres condemned Hamas’ October 7 infiltration of southern Israel, in which the terror group killed over 1,200 people and seized some 250 hostages.

Some 110 of those hostages have been freed and Guterres in his letter called for the release of the remaining captives.

“Accounts of sexual violence during the attacks are appalling,” he added.

Guterres in his letter spoke of the at least 15,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza due to war-related violence, in a way that implied that all of them were civilians. Israel has said that some 5,000 of those are Hamas terrorists.

The Security Council has passed only one resolution since the start of the war, in which it has called for a pause in the fighting and it has yet to condemn Hamas.

Israel has argued that a sustained military campaign led to the release of 105 hostages last month, 81 Israelis and 24 foreign nationals. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that its military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza was the only step that would ensure a second hostage deal.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said that Guterres had fallen to a “new moral low” through the use of Article 99 against Israel, charged that it was yet one more proof of his “distorted bias” against Israel.

His call for a “ceasefire is a call to keep Hamas's reign of terror in Gaza” when he should have been insisting that Hamas lay down its arms and return to the captives to end the war, Erdan stated.

Instead, he is “continue playing into Hamas' hands” by calling for a measure that would only prolong the fighting by giving Hamas hope that if it holds out long enough the international community would force an end to the war.

The United States and its ally Israel oppose a ceasefire because they believe it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses to protect civilians and allow for the release of hostages taken by Hamas in a deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said Arab ministers would discuss the draft Security Council resolution with US officials during a visit to Washington this week.

"On top of the agenda is this war has to stop," he told reporters as Arab UN ambassadors stood with him. "A ceasefire has to take place and it has to take place immediately.”

Israel: UN chief’s tenure ‘danger to world peace’

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Wednesday accused U.N. chief Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas and called his tenure a global threat.

“Guterres’ tenure is a danger to world peace. His request to activate Article 99 and the call for a ceasefire in Gaza constitutes support of the Hamas terrorist organization and an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women,” said Cohen.

“Anyone who supports world peace must support the liberation of Gaza from Hamas,” he added.

The comments came after Guterres, who has repeatedly called for an end to the war against Hamas, wrote a letter to the Security Council on Wednesday under Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the secretary-general to bring to the council’s attention issues that he perceives as a threat to international security.

It was the first time he had invoked the clause since assuming his position in 2017, and the first time any U.N. chief has done so since 1989.

Calling for a “humanitarian cease fire,” Guterres wrote that conditions in Gaza were “fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole.”

He added: “The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.”

In late October, Guterres told the U.N. Security Council that “it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” adding that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

He went on to say that “they have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced; and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Arsen Ostrovsky: The Red Cross Has Become a Glorified Uber Driver

The fact that the Red Cross is dealing with a ruthless enemy that does not abide by any rules or norms of international law is not an excuse and does absolve them of their mandate to provide “humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict.” Nor is it enough to merely politely ‘call’ for their release.

The Red Cross still has nothing to show as Hamas have been cruelly holding the bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, taken captive during a humanitarian ceasefire in the 2014 war with Israel.

It has nothing to show as Avner Mengistu, a 37-year-old Israeli civilian with mental health issues, has been held hostage by Hamas also since 2014, or Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli, who is seriously ill and has been held hostage in Gaza since 2015.

And the Red Cross had nothing to show the entire time IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, was held captive in Gaza for almost 6 years, until finally his release in 2011.

The reality is, when it comes to Israeli lives, the Red Cross has embarrasingly little to show, full stop.

Of the 240 hostages Hamas took captive, following the October 7th massacre, at least ten are believed to have been also American nationals.

The United States is by far the single largest state donor to the Red Cross, in 2022, contributing almost $700 million.

Perhaps Congress ought to be asking where that tax money is going, why the Red Cross been unable to see even a single hostage, or, for that matter, why they ignored the irrefutable evidence right under their noses that Hamas was using Shifa hospital in Gaza as their terrorist headquarters.

Almost eight weeks after the October atrocity, they are unable to even provide proof of life of the youngest of the hostages, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas.

The Red Cross prides itself on being unwaveringly neutral, but when it comes to Israeli lives, the Red Cross are unwaveringly absent.