Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 11, 2023

Don't apply bizarre, theoretical Christian ethics to Jews

An op-ed in the New York Times by ordained pastor Esau McCaulley discusses how important it is for clerics to tackle theological questions around war, specifically the current Gaza war.

Let's examine one throwaway line in the article, a phrase considered so self-evident as to not need a link: I show the context and place the line in bold.

A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect. We are not alone in this belief. Other religious and secular traditions have articulated a similar idea. This provides an opportunity for cooperation. The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.

There is no more crucial time to press this basic truth than in times of war, when the humanity of one’s opponents gets tossed to the side. Contending for the dignity of Palestinian and Israeli civilians is a theological act when the goals of victory and of the protection of the innocent struggle with each other for supremacy. Giving equal value to human beings on both sides of the conflict does not entail making moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas. It requires considering the lives of noncombatants in Israel and Gaza as equally sacred.

I have no reason to doubt that this is an accurate representation of Christian ethics, that all human life is equally precious..

But do all armies really ignore the humanity of their opponents?

The IDF most emphatically does not. And, I would argue, the IDF Code of Ethics is more ethical than the ethics described by this pastor.

The IDF "Ruach Tzahal" lists three fundamental values. Two of them are:

1. The purpose of the IDF is to protect the existence of the state of Israel, its independence, and the security of its citizens and residents.
3. The IDF and its soldiers are obligated to preserve human dignity. All humans are to be valued, regardless of race, creed, nationality, gender, status or role

Among the ten additional values that come from the fundamental values are:

(1) Human Life

The IDF serviceman will, above all, preserve human life, in the recognition of its supreme value and will place himself or others at risk solely to the extent required to carry out his mission.

The sanctity of life in the eyes of the IDF servicemen will find expression in all of their actions, in deliberate and meticulous planning, in safe and intelligent training and in proper execution of their mission. In evaluating the risk to self and others, they will use the appropriate standards and will exercise constant care to limit injury to life to the extent required to accomplish the mission.

(2) Purity of Arms

The IDF serviceman will use force of arms only for the purpose of subduing the enemy to the necessary extent and will limit his use of force so as to prevent unnecessary harm to human life and limb, dignity and property.

The IDF servicemen's purity of arms is their self-control in use of armed force. They will use their arms only for the purpose of achieving their mission, without inflicting unnecessary injury to human life or limb; dignity or property, of both soldiers and civilians, with special consideration for the defenseless, whether in wartime, or during routine security operations, or in the absence of combat, or times of peace.

All human life is sacred. But everyone prioritizes the value of some lives over others: themselves, their families, their tribe, and - for a soldier - their comrades, their nation and their own citizens above all.

Claiming that all human life is of equal value might be a nice slogan but no one adheres to that standard in reality. And if someone wants to live by that ethical standard, they are free to abandon their families to save the lives of the most vulnerable people in the world, since that is what such a standard would not just allow but seemingly demand.

But they do not have the right to insist that others live to their own impossible, impractical and ultimately immoral standards.

The IDF Code of Ethics is supremely ethical. It does not "toss the humanity" of Palestinians to the side, no matter what the media is claiming. But soldiers prioritize defense of their own comrades and people, and in this war that means ensuring that Hamas cannot fulfill its own "ethical" standard of genocide against Jews.

The ethical imperative to destroy Hamas before they could mount another October 7 is far higher than letting them survive to attack again. Which means that the civilians whom Hamas uses as human shields are killed not because their lives are worthless, but because the IDF ascribes supreme value on its own citizens. They die because Hamas uses them as their main line of defense, and their lives are Hamas' responsibility.

Knowing that the media will blame Israel for the deaths of those Hamas cynically uses is Hamas' secondary line of defense. In a sense, articles like this that implicitly describe the IDF as unfeeling monsters are doing Hamas' bidding as well, and can ultimately help Hamas accomplish its own genocidal goals.

How ethical!

The IDF indeed faces difficult ethical issues. Experts who have studied the IDF methods all come to the same conclusion - it places very high value on civilians on the enemy side, higher than most or all armies in history. Hamas knows this and has taken advantage of this morality in order to accomplish its own goals of self-preservation and murdering Jews.

If you need proof, read the story of how Gaza terror groups recruited a Gaza burn patient to infiltrate into Israel and attempt to blow herself up at a hospital in 2005.

It is ironic that Israel is considered guilty for the exact opposite of reality.

Israel has given far more thought to these very issues than a New York Times columnist ever will. It is an insult to all Israelis to be lectured about morality by those whose idea of morality would set the stage for the truly evil to win. And any moral code that allows a truly evil side to keep trying to wipe out all Jews until they get it right is not a moral code at all.

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!

New York Times politics writer Jonathan Weisman wrote an interesting piece, "A Fraught Question for the Moment: Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?"

It is worth looking at the arguments against that proposition in more detail, since the arguments themselves reveal the deceptiveness of anti-Zionists.

First, he brings the argument saying the two are essentially the same. That argument is straightforward:

Zionism as a concept was once clearly understood: the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors. The word still evokes joyful pride among many Jews in the state of Israel, which was established 75 years ago and repeatedly defended itself against attacks from Arab neighbors that aimed to annihilate it.

If anti-Zionism a century ago meant opposing the international effort to set up a Jewish state in what was then a British-controlled territory called Palestine, it now suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews. That, many Jews in Israel and the diaspora say, is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.

[F]or some Jews, the answer to the question is obvious. Of course anti-Zionism is antisemitism, they say: Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time and again.
“There is no debate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been defining and monitoring antisemitism since 1913. “Anti-Zionism is predicated on one concept, the denial of rights to one people.”

The arguments against, on the other hand, all play word games.

Yet some critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of expanding the Jewish state. That effort animates an Israeli government bent on settling ever more parts of the West Bank that some Israelis, as well as the United States and other Western powers, had proposed as a separate state for the Palestinian people. Expanding those settlements, to Israel’s critics, conjures images of “settler colonialists” and apartheid-style oppressors.

Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author, called it “a chilling attempt to punish and silence voices critical of Israeli policies.”

Opposing the so-called "occupation" is not anti-Zionist to begin with. Plenty of Zionists hold that position. That is indeed valid criticism of Israeli policies. Laila al-Haddad is purposefully conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism, which is calling for the destruction of Israel. She then innocently claims that it is the former position that is being classified as antisemitic.

Jonathan Jacoby, the director of the Nexus Task Force, a group of academics and Jewish activists affiliated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, said the group had wrestled with the issue for several years now, seeking a definition of antisemitism that captures when anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry. He warned that shouting down any political action directed against Israel as antisemitic made it harder for Jews to call out actual antisemitism, while stifling honest conversation about Israel’s government and U.S. policy toward it.

Again, this is a straw man argument. Just because some Jews say that some valid criticism of Israel is antisemitic doesn't mean that anti-Zionism - the opposition to Zionism itself, and the desire to see Israel destroyed as a Jewish state - is not antisemitic.

Ms. Omar said the Republican resolution that she opposed “conflates criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism” and “paints critics of the Israeli government as antisemites.”

That's the third time that the same invalid argument is used, and it is no more valid this time. Ilhan Omar opposes Israel as a Jewish state. That is not "criticism of the Israeli government." And given that she herself has a pattern of engaging in antisemitic tropes, she is actually Exhibit A that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are indistinguishable.

Eva Borgwardt, the 27-year-old political director of IfNotNow, said she graduated high school wanting to be a rabbi. Now she speaks of a renaissance of Jewish identity in the United States, a “diasporic” chicken farm, queer Talmudic studies and a Judaism based on good works — including the securing of equal rights and protections for Palestinians.

“For Jews questioning Zionism, the issue is protecting the rights of a minority from a state determined to eliminate them,” she said. “What could be more Jewish than that?”

This argument says that if someone is proud to be Jewish, they cannot be antisemitic. But the problem here is that she is not proud to be Jewish at all: her "Judaism" is that of a "diasporic chicken farm" and "queer Talmudic studies." Instead of redefining anti-Zionism, she chooses to redefine Judaism, and then uses that as an argument that she cannot be antisemitic.

In reality, her contempt for Judaism is as clear as her contempt of Israel.

And that's it. Those are all the arguments provided that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Every one of them depends on redefining either what anti-Zionism means or what Jewishness mean.

If you cannot argue based on the plain definition of the words, then you have lost the argument.

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!

A new survey by The Economist/YouGov of Americans confirms, and goes beyond, other recent polls that point to a frightening future for American Jews.

The big news from this poll is that a large number of Americans aged 18-29 are ignorant, anti-Zionist and antisemitic.

Less than half of Americans under 30 - 46% - feel that denying the Holocaust is antisemitic. The rest said either it wasn't (17%) or they weren't sure (37%.)

That's incredible ignorance. And that ignorance follows throughout the poll.

Only 38% felt that it was antisemitic to say that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US.

20% of young Americans themselves say the Holocaust was a myth, the highest percentage of all demographic groups surveyed (liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, male/female). One in five Americans under 30 say it was a myth! What will the percentage be in the next generation?

For all the following results, young Americans had the highest poll results across all demographics:

23% of them felt that the Holocaust was "exaggerated."

28% say Jews have too much influence in America.

36% say Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes.

33% support boycotting Israeli products.

31% say Israel has too much control over global affairs.

30% say the interests of Israelis are at odds with the interests of the rest of the world.

19% say Israel has no right to exist.

32% say Israel is an apartheid state, behind only liberals (36%)

40% say Israel is deliberately trying to wipe out the Palestinian population, behind only liberals (48%.)

That is a truly astonishing and troubling percentage of young Americans who cannot distinguish reality from lies. And in general, the younger people are, the more unmoored they are from basic facts.

The problem goes beyond believing lies about Israel and Jews. It is a generation that cannot distinguish between the veracity of their textbooks and TikTok.

But there are a lot of other factors in play. There has been a concerted effort by "progressives" to take over the US educational system over recent decades. They teach that there is no such thing as objective reality. They teach that the underdog is automatically right. They teach that the world is divided into oppressors and the oppressed, and everyone fits only one category. Antisemitism is a natural result of this mindset.

Things are not looking good for Jews in the United States. A quarter of young Americans are actual antisemites. The numbers get worse with each passing year. If anything, October 7 has accelerated antisemitism.

There is no indication that this trend will be reversed anytime soon.

How can this be countered?

Something that took decades to accomplish cannot be fixed overnight. The entire US education system is at fault and it will take a complete restructuring to fix it. The atrocious performances from the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Penn last week is waking people up to a world where the most prestigious schools cannot describe the difference between right and wrong. But it will take a long time for any significant change, and there is no assurance that such a turnaround is even possible.

In the medium term, we need to teach kids - and adults, for that matter - how to do their own fact checking. How to tell when they are being manipulated. How facts matter. How to d their own research. How to check whether footnotes actually say what they claim to say. How captions can lie. How to tell an AI image, a deepfake video, a manipulated video. How to understand double standards.How statistics can be manipulated.

But in the meanwhile, American Jews are watching the nation that has been the most welcoming for Jews outside Israel itself become a place where we live in fear.

Things are not looking up.

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!

Chanukah Music Video Night 4:"Epic Chanukah Rap"

Not quite sure what to make of this one..

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!

(Guest post by Josh Namm)

Every year article after article (after article) appears telling the world that Chanukah is the Jewish holiday of “religious freedom” or “religious tolerance.” Neither is even close to true. In fact, both of those ideas, related, but not identical, are both as far away from what Chanukah is as is possible.

Another thing Chanukah is not, is a “minor holiday.”

And more than anything else, Chanukah is not some kind of Jewish Christmas. At all. Proximity on the calendar does not make one thing identical to another thing. It doesn’t even make it related to that other thing.

This year, possibly more than any other in our lifetimes, the message of Chanukah resonates in powerful ways.

The basics of Chanukah are easy to understand. The word itself means “dedication.” The reason for that is that, at its most basic level, the holiday celebrates the re-dedication of the “Beit HaMikdash” (The Holy Temple). Why did it need to be re-dedicated? Because at the time, the second century BCE, Syrian Greeks called the “Seleucids” tried to force us, the Jews, to assimilate and adopt Greek culture. Meaning: they tried to force us to become pagans, turn away from Torah based observance and Judaism’s foundational belief in one G-d.

For that reason, a small band of religious Jews, starting with Judah Maccabee (son of Mattathias the High Priest), defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks out of Judea (Israel), and reclaimed the Temple. Because it had been defiled by the idol worshipers, Jewish law required that it be re-dedicated. Part of that purification process was the lighting of its famous, seven branched, menorah with untainted oil. The Jews only had enough pure oil for one day, to get more would take seven days and, miraculously, the one day of oil lasted for eight days.

Pretty cool.

But - what does all that mean beyond latkes, sufganiyot, and (possibly) gifts for the kids?

So much more than most people realize.

The first lesson is of this important holiday is: NEVER be afraid to be Jewish. Be a proud Jew, be unapologetically Jewish, and always do what’s right as a Jew. We light the menorah publicly, or place it in a window facing the outside, precisely for that reason. It is an expression of defiance, and pride in our Jewishness. Judah fought a massive army, and defeated it, because he, and the Jews of that time, did not compromise. At all. Their faith in Hashem and their unity as Jews made them undefeatable.

On a deeper level, we light the candles at night not for the drama of it, but because it demonstrates that even a little bit of light can penetrate the darkness. We add a candle each night to remind us that more mitzvot, increased Jewish observance, brings more light into the darkness.

Also very cool.

The confrontation between our Jewish ancestors and the pagan Greeks set up a confrontation between our fundamental belief in one G-d, and His mitzvot (commandments) on one side, and Greek paganism on the other. Which meant the choice between the world of Torah, of the elevated vision of mankind it represents, and the pagan view of humanity in which aesthetics and self-indulgence were the primary goals, absent any higher, refining, elements.

The Greeks had their own philosophy, but it was an empty vision, one in which there was no ultimate obligation to G-d. Pleasing the self was, in their view, the pinnacle of existence. That view was, and is, diametrically opposed to Judaism because it placed man, and not G-d, at the center of the universe.

And we all know what man is capable of without any limiting principles, or a framework for spirituality.

We saw that very clearly on October 7^th.

So why isn’t Chanukah a holiday celebrating religious tolerance? After all, the Greeks were trying to force us to live as they did, and we fought back to worship as we please.

Isn’t that a quest for freedom?

Every Jewish holiday has its own associated mitzvah (commandment). Passover has matzah, Rosh Hashanah has the shofar, and Chanukah has the lighting of the menorah, etc. Each of these has a unique “extra” component in the Jewish prayer service for that holiday.

During Chanukah that component is called “Al Hanissim.”

In it we thank G-d for the “miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our ancestors in those days, at this time.” It also describes how “In the days of Matityahu, the son of Yochanan the High Priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the wicked Hellenic government rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will…You waged their battles, defended their rights, and avenged the wrong done to them. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah.”

It seems to me that is not a declaration of religious tolerance, but a statement of total dedication to Jewish values, a complete repudiation of a foreign culture’s influence on our own, and a call to return to Torah. Far from “tolerance,” or “freedom,” the “many” were “delivered into the hands of the few.” Those few lived very Jewish lives, and their actions led to the entire nation’s return to Torah observance.

Today those who invoke “tolerance,” and the equally “woke” ideas of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” do so very selectively. As we’ve seen every single day since October 7, those ideas never include Jews. While I absolutely abhor their hypocrisy, and find it repugnant, we should be totally okay not being included in their formulation of “inclusion,” or anything else they advocate.

Chanukah teaches us that are under no obligation to “fit in,” to “please the world,” or to be anything but proudly Jewish. While they are telling us to take off our kippahs, our Magen Dovids, our tzitzit, our mezuzahs, and anything else that makes us identifiably Jewish (G-d forbid), Chanukah comes along and teaches us to be proud. To look and behave as Jews.

In fact, they would love it if we stopped identifying as Jews, because they don’t want to be reminded of what being Jewish means. Our very presence is a threat to their, Hellenized, way of life. We remind them that pleasing the self is not the ultimate goal.

Outward, and inward, Jewishness represents a defiance in which we tell the world that we will not back down just because we make those who wish to destroy us uncomfortable.

Israel is at war right now for that exact reason. And like Judah and the Maccabees, today’s Jewish army will also defeat our enemies and in a massive victory. The Greeks also poked the Lion of Judah a few too many times and found out that we never back down, ever, when we’re threatened and have the means to fight back. Especially in our own land.

In the end, confidence in who we are, and what we represent, always brings ultimate Jewish unity. When we have that: we are undefeatable.

So is this holiday mainly about latkes, dreidels, sufganiyot, and gifts? No, it is about publicly and proudly living as Jews, no matter the odds, no matter what the rest of the world would have us do. It is about being Jewish with unwavering confidence, with the understanding that Hashem is always with us, and that our Jewishness is, literally, embedded in our souls. Chanukah reminds us to bring the light of Torah into the world, and when that world is at its darkest, that light shines its brightest.

This is NOT a “minor” holiday.

Happy Chanukah, a freilichen Chanukah, and Chanukah samayach.

Never back down. Never give up.

Am Yisrael chai.

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!

12/10 Links: The tomb of Palestinian liberation; Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions; The problem is bigger than three college presidents

From Ian:

Recognizing the truth about Israel and Jewish connections to the land

Zionism was the opposite of a colonial movement. Jews are the true indigenous people of the land of Israel. While many ancient and far gone nations have lived and ruled the land, there are no people around today that have an older claim on the land of Israel than the Jewish people.

The Jews have lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. No one sent the Zionists to colonize the land of Israel, the Zionists came to liberate the land from non-native people who had no rights or connections to the land.

Lastly, the Israelis have made it a priority to treat all people under their rule in accordance with international law and grant all people their human rights. They’ve dramatically improved the lives of all peoples, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and Circassians that live in Israel.

Israelis have made sure to give equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion or nationality. While it won’t grant citizen rights to non-citizens, like Palestinians, it does make sure to grant them full human rights. This doesn’t stop Israel’s opponents from slandering Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but their accusations never match reality.

As Israeli soldiers fight on behalf of their nation to secure it against foreign enemies in Gaza, Israel’s advocates speak on its behalf on social and mainstream media. The two can’t be compared in the importance of their mission, but the latter group ensures that the truth about Israel is spread throughout the world.

Israel deserves to rule its historic homeland, it seeks peace, is the indigenous people of its land, and treats its citizens and residents properly. In challenging times the truth will eventually rise and become the final world.

Ben Judah: The tomb of Palestinian liberation

And yet, there is a strand of continuity in the politics of Abbas, stretching back to the heady days of the PLO in Lebanon. From the mid-Seventies, Palestinian politics were divided between rationalists, who saw the future involving some kind of accommodation with Israel, and radicals, who would accept none. Arafat flitted and played with the two. But Abbas was squarely rationalist.

This remains true to this day. Rationally, he knows he never had the power to lead a successful intifada against Israel. Rationally, he knows he has never had the legitimacy to sign a peace accord, whose compromises vast swathes of the nation would see as a betrayal. And rationally, ever since he lost Gaza to Hamas in 2007, he has decided that the best course of action is to simply hold on.

This logic has turned the Mukataa from what was once a symbol of revolution into a symbol of an authoritarian Arab regime in miniature: a system tied together by corruption, where no elections have been held since 2005. Fatah, in turn, is now widely derided as an empty card-carrying shell — like the Ba’ath party in Syria or the old Eastern bloc. Across the West Bank, the system is largely outright despised.

Abbas, in his twilight, has never been weaker but also never more central. At night in Ramallah, there are protests, but things are still quiet. At night in Gaza, there is the thunder of bombs. Never in Palestinian history has the contrast between violence and negotiation been so stark. No longer between Abbas and Arafat, the contrast is between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This appears hard to see from a distance, but October 7 was the start of a new war for Jerusalem, launched “in defence of the Al-Aqsa mosque”. Named “Operation Al Aqsa Floods”, Hamas’s massacre was only the latest offensive in what they see as an unending one, to stop the Jews “erecting their alleged temple on the ruins of the shrine of our Prophet Mohammed”.

Hamas sought, on October 7, not only to start a war with Israel but to detonate the West Bank. Their leaders dreamed that with mass hostage-taking they could bring Israeli society to its knees and force the release of all Palestinian prisoners — grabbing in one jubilant swoop the ownership of the Palestinian cause from the PLO. Opinion is divided among Palestinian analysts over their successes. All agree Hamas’s popularity is soaring in the West Bank, with crowds chanting its slogans even in the heart of Ramallah. But opinions differ over whether or not tensions in the West Bank actually threaten the Mukataa.

Abbas’s response has mostly been silent. Rationally, he believes the best strategy is to avoid tempting a possible intifada or Israeli action against him. But behind this muted response to the bloodshed, the Mukataa believe that Hamas has led the Palestinian people — with the destruction of Gaza City and now Khan Younis — into the greatest disaster of their history since 1948. Massacres are not new to the land, but never before has a city been levelled in the entire conflict. “Hamas entered a battle and the result was the complete destruction of Gaza. To blindly follow slogans to satisfy an illusion and the result is the destruction of the Palestinian people.” These were the words of Abbas a decade ago, but they could have been said yesterday. “I am responsible for the people and I will not allow their destruction to happen again.”

This is the crux of Palestinian politics. Hamas believes only violence can force the liberation of Al-Aqsa. Abbas believes only negotiations and the international community can. Hamas sees him as a corrupt collaborator. Abbas sees himself as protecting his people from what Gazans call the Israeli “monster” and guarding the mechanism that will eventually deliver a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, Western and Arab diplomats have come to see him as an intransigent obstacle to any progress towards a “two-state solution”. The tragedy, however, is that with the Palestinian people now so divided, the only man who could have made peace on behalf of all of them is buried in the Mukataa.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions

This brings us to President Joe Biden. Biden reinstated and expanded Obama’s policies. He decided that the best way to “stabilize” Lebanon—that is, empower Hezbollah—is by providing it with steady income. So last year, Hochstein exploited Israel’s political instability to achieve that end. He compelled Israel’s interim government led by Yair Lapid to accept a deal to delineate Israel’s maritime border with Lebanon that was based entirely on Hezbollah’s legally unsupported claims to sovereign Israeli territorial waters and Israeli economic waters.

Which brings us to Hochstein’s plan for demarcating Israel’s land border with Hezbollah. When Israel withdrew from its security zone in south Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations determined that Israel had fully withdrawn to its border. Hezbollah, keen to maintain a casus belli, rejected the U.N. determination and presented claims to 14 points within sovereign Israeli territory. Hochstein’s offer means that the U.S. position is that Israel’s sovereign territory can be negotiated away, and indeed, the U.S. supports Israel being denied its sovereign territory.

As Lebanon’s Al Akhbar reported last week, Hochstein’s offer includes Israel “vacating all contested points in Lebanon’s favor, including withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar and key posts in the occupied Shebaa Farms, on condition that the matter be implemented in two stages: declaring the Lebanese identity of these territories and agreeing that the UN oversee them militarily and security and social-wise until the emergence of another political situation.”

“Shebaa Farms” are the Lebanese term for Mount Dov, a strategic location along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over Mount Dov in 2020.

In exchange for transferring its sovereign lands to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hochstein’s plan would involve Hezbollah proclaiming that it is abiding by UNSC Resolution 1701, which it of course will never abide by.

Israel is not eager to open a front with Lebanon, at least not until it has largely defeated Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip. Such a war will require the bulk of IDF forces to be moved from the south to the north, reversing the current balance in forces between the two fronts. But it is obvious that Israel cannot end the war without doing so. This places U.S.-Israel relations on a collision course that can only be averted if the United States abandons its delusions about Lebanon.

Over the past month, Turkish media has been reporting on the "silent occupation of Northern Cyprus by Jews.

About a month ago, the Cyprus Foundation published an announcement warning the public in Northern Cyprus and Turkey against the threat of the occupying Israel. In the statement, it was stated that 'Israel's occupation plan is not limited to Palestine' and that the Island of Cyprus, like Palestine, was included in the "Promised Land" drawn by the Zionists. It added that this situation poses a threat to Turkey's national security, and it called on the Turkish people to stop the "silent occupation" of northern Cyprus.

This is as ironic as it gets, since of course it is Turkey that is occupying northern Cyprus. Practically no nation recognizes Northern Cyprus as independent.

Because of the uproar over this accusation, the Turkish government issued a list of the nationalities that have bought land in Turkish-occupied Cyprus. They said that there have been 15,000 applications for purchasing real estate in the territory over the last five years, and Israeli citizens ranked 12th among foreigners who bought property there, way behind the British, Iranians, Ukrainians and Russians.

But that wasn't enough to end the antisemitic rumors of a plan to "occupy" Turkish Cyprus. You see, Turkish pundits explained, the people buying the land from the UK, Ukraine, Iran and Russia were mostly - Jews! And Jews are becoming Turkish citizens in order to buy the land! And Jews are using other evil means to secretly control the land and Turkish Cyprus' economy!

It is true that Israelis have been investing in Turkish Cyprus; there are websites about the pros and cons of such an investment and right now the real estate there is much cheaper than in Greek Cyprus. It looks gorgeous - as long as you are aware of the many risks. And Israelis like to take risks.

But the rumors of a coordinated Jewish takeover of the land, and a supposed Jewish claim to northern Cyprus as part of the "promised land," is Turkish antisemitism - and it is getting a receptive audience.

The puppet prime minister of Turkish Cyprus is now looking at passing laws to restrict Jewish land purchases and other investments.

This episode is yet another example of how anti-Zionism is simply a subset of antisemitism. A crazed accusation of "Israelis" buying up the land, when disproven, turned into "Jews." Israeis who are legitimately looking at the region as an investment opportunity are turned into monsters - but Iranians who are doing the same are ignored.

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!

Today's antisemites love "context" - except when it damns them

We're hearing a lot about "context" nowadays.

The president of Harvard invoked "context" when asked if antisemitism would be tolerated on her campus. So did now-former president of the University of Pennsylvania.

Israel haters love to invoke "context" to exonerate terror acts. They love saying that "history didn't begin on October 7." No matter how heinous the acts of Palestinian terrorists, they say, it is always a response to something that Israel did that was worse. Never mind that the IDF never engaged in mass rape, in gleeful burning of bodies, in suicide bombings of pizza shops, in putting powerful explosives on city buses, intentionally targeting civilians.

Jews are given no such luxury. If the IDF unfortunately kills civilians while trying to destroy Hamas, there is no "context" allowed, neither to October 7 nor to other wars nor to Israel's history and certainly not to Jewish history or the Holocaust or mentioning Arab antisemitism that preceded "Jewish colonialism."

At an American Muslims for Palestine convention over Thanksgiving weekend, there was an entire session - Session 3 - meant to invoke "context." It was called "Gaza in Context: The Genocide and Signs of Major Transformations in the Region."

Nihad Awad, the co-founder and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was one of the speakers at the convention. MEMRI captured what he said:

The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.

Gaza became the liberation source, the inspiration for people.

Gaza transformed many minds around the world, including people who are not Muslim. What kind of faith do these people have? They are thankful, they are not afraid.

Israel did not scare them, because they knew their heaven is in Gaza, and if they would like to die, they will go to another heaven. That is the faith of the people of Gaza. That is why Gaza and the people of Gaza were able to transform everyone who is watching – they have learned from these people. Those who felt bad for Gaza – they don't understand the equation. Those who thought that Gazans are less than those who can help them, they are mistaken. They are mistaken. The Gazans were victorious.

The media took notice of the head of the major American Islamic organization saying he was "happy" to see the mass murders, the rapes, the burnings of people alive and the kidnappings - all of which were quite well known by the time of this speech.

In a statement Thursday, Awad said that he condemned violence against all civilians and all forms of bigotry and claimed his comments were taken out of context.

“What I actually said while discussing international law: Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so, which is why I have again and again condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7th,” he said.

The only tweet that I can find where Nihad Awad even hints at condemning the October 7 attacks is where he whines that in his interviews everyone asks him if he condemns them. National CAIR never issued a statement condemning Hamas, for these or any other crimes, ever.

But was his speech at AMP was taken out of context? Was he really discussing international law and Ukrainians and other "occupied people"? Was his "happiness" divorced from what Hamas actually did?

I'd love to hear the context!

Unfortunately, the video of Session 3 has been taken down from the AMP YouTube channel. We have the introductory session, sessions 1-2, sessions 4-15, but no session 3!

If Awad's words were taken out of context, he should be eager to allow everyone to hear the context for themselves!

I guess this is a case where "context" is not on their side. The actual video is probably worse. And the only context we have for this is that Awad is an unrepentant Jew-hater who founded an organization that has had links to Hamas from its start, and is one of the most antisemitic organizations in the United States today.

There's the missing context - the context that Nihad Awad, CAIR and today's Israel haters do not want you to think about.

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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.

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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.