Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

12/13 Links Pt1: After Hamas is destroyed, here are the five things that must not happen in Gaza; Will killing Yahya Sinwar end the war in Gaza?

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg: After Hamas is destroyed, here are the five things that must not happen in Gaza

Israel is resolved to remove Hamas and its terrorist infrastructure from the Gaza Strip permanently, and for much of the world, its determination raises one question more than any other: What comes next in Gaza? For those who disapprove of Israel’s actions in the war or those who either passively or actively support the role of Hamas as the Strip’s governing authority, the lack of answers provides a pretext not only to demand a permanent cease-fire but to suggest (often quietly and with a furrowed brow indicating supposed realpolitik wisdom) that the path Israel seems to be making for itself is a dead end from which it needs to be saved.

For the Arab world, the vacuum creates a jockeying for power and influence, albeit behind the scenes to avoid accountability for anything that goes wrong.

For the Biden administration, this has invited fantasies of a renewed path to an ever-elusive two-state solution—a Palestinian Authority governing a unified West Bank and Gaza, and supposedly representing the views of all Palestinians in negotiations with Israel. Big ideas for Gaza’s future are being cooked up behind closed doors in Washington. Task forces and blue-ribbon commissions are sure to follow. But allowing the Washington establishment to paint a foreign policy on a blank canvas, mapping the relations between Israel and the Arabs surrounding it, is a risky proposition that will, as it always has in the past, fail.

If Washington and Jerusalem share an end-state objective of a Gaza that can never again pose a terror threat to Israel, and the president himself has said repeatedly that we do share this objective, the question about the future needs to be reframed. Instead of asking what comes next, leaders in both capitals should be asking: What cannot come next? Answering that question is the only way to establish the parameters for a viable path forward that precludes the known ingredients for policy failure.

Let us lay out some of those parameters.

First, Gaza has no future with Hamas or other terrorist groups involved. Perhaps obvious to some but not to all, Hamas and other terrorist organizations cannot be part of Gaza’s future. Demands for a cease-fire in Gaza before Hamas is dismantled would guarantee that the territory remains a base of terror operations indefinitely. Relenting to international pressure or Hamas psychological-warfare tactics to extend the cease-fire to a permanent condition would doom the future of Gaza (and Israel).

Unimaginative naysayers and Hamas apologists alike will try to persuade us there is no military solution to Hamas, only a political one. That is a lie that Israel’s military can expose if given the opportunity to finish the job.

Failing to halt Israel’s military objectives, Hamas supporters in the West and those who oppose Israel’s self-assertions more generally will grow more desperate. They will move beyond urging Congress and the White House to “condition” aid to Israel as a method of halting the Jewish state’s campaign to destroy Hamas and prevent another October 7 massacre, which is the line taken up by Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy and members of the “squad” in the House of Representative. Adding conditions to American security assistance to Israel—a fellow democracy that upholds the rule of law and is now fighting for its survival—should not be deemed a “worthwhile thought,” as President Biden claimed over the Thanksgiving weekend. Rather, it is a proposal aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to defend itself that would lead, logically, to the eventual annihilation of the Jewish state.

Pro-Israel Democrats in Congress have already publicly rejected the idea. And with a Republican-controlled House, there’s no path for Hamas to achieve this objective in Washington legislatively. President Biden might have the executive power to withhold critical military support from Israel when Jerusalem calls for resupply, but with a recent NBC News survey showing independent voters favoring military assistance to Israel, and Democrats evenly split, Biden would pay a steep political price for doing so. (Republicans overwhelmingly favor Israel.)

Assuming Israel stays the course (with U.S. backing), Hamas will lose control of Gaza in the weeks and months ahead. Its tunnels will be destroyed, its leadership eliminated. But Jerusalem and Washington will still need to prevent its supporters from finding a path back to power through Western-supported mechanisms.

Those who pushed Israel in 2006 into accepting Palestinian elections that included Hamas should not repeat their mistakes. We should expect attempts by Hamas’s ideological supporters to sponsor a new group with a new name to regain a foothold in Gaza’s governance and ultimately participate in any future Palestinian election—the vehicle Hamas first used to gain control 17 years ago.

Anyone who claims to champion the cause of Palestinian freedom and independence should focus on establishing the rule of law and protecting basic rights within Palestinian territories before proposing elections. And any future elections should prohibit political parties that refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, let alone those that advocate its destruction.

Nearly 75% of Palestinians say Hamas was right to attack on Oct. 7

Nearly three in four Palestinians believe that Hamas was right in launching its Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in which terrorists savagely murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and wounded thousands, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

The Ramallah-based institute polled 1,231 Palestinian adults in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2. (The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points, the PSR said.)

The authoritative survey—the second of its kind since Oct. 7—found that 72% of respondents think Hamas was “correct” in carrying out its mass slaughter, while 22% characterized the terrorist group’s decision to attack as “incorrect.”

A whopping 89% of the respondents denied that Palestinian terrorists committed war crimes on Oct. 7, while 95% claimed that Israel breached international law during its defensive operation against Hamas in Gaza.

Will killing Yahya Sinwar end the war in Gaza?

During a press conference with Britain’s new foreign secretary, former prime minister David Cameron, in Washington last Thursday evening, Blinken was asked how much longer the war could go on. “We strongly support Israel’s efforts to ensure that it can effectively defend itself,” he said.

“In conversations with the Israelis we talk about how long this campaign will take and also how it will be prosecuted. These are decisions for Israel.”

But senior Israeli Defense Forces officials are said to privately admit that the latest stage of the conflict, the attack on the city of Khan Yunis, the largest in southern Gaza, will probably be the war’s final wide-scale ground offensive.

Of course, this does not mean Israel will afterwards agree to a ceasefire, but it may allow for a scaling-down of operations. The Israeli army could then transition to a strategy of smaller raids on Hamas strongholds using targeted mobile forces, rather than the current use of entire armoured divisions occupying parts of the Gaza Strip for weeks.

The IDF estimates that they have killed somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 terrorists — or a fifth of the number that Hamas claimed it had under arms. That means 25,000 terrorists remain signed up to Israel’s destruction.

But the damage wrought on Hamas’s capability to wage future terrorist attacks should not be underestimated. Many lower-level commanders will have been killed or injured, the group’s command and control structure will be in tatters and much of its weaponry will have been destroyed. Many of the terrorist foot soldiers may also now be more worried about the security of their own families than waging a war which will only end with their own messy death. It is also easy to imagine that while many Palestinians will blame Israel for their suffering now and in the future, others will rightly blame Hamas.

So, Sinwar’s death, when it inevitably comes, will represent a notable win and will offer Israel a way out of the conflict with an achievable end game.

‘Call Sinwar for ceasefire’: Israeli envoy shows Hamas chief's number at UN

Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan held a sign showing the phone number of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s Hamas office, at a UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday.

“You want a real ceasefire?” Erdan declared, admonishing UNGA members to ask him directly as he held up a sign depicting Sinwar’s office phone number, since the terrorist mastermind and Hamas bear the real responsibility for the current conflict, not Israel.

“Call… and ask for Yahya Sinwar. Tell Hamas to put down their arms, turn themselves in, and return our hostages. This will bring a complete ceasefire that will last forever,” Erdan said.

UN resolution calls for Gaza ceasefire
The United Nations General Assembly called for a Gaza ceasefire in a 153-10 vote, with 23 countries abstaining hours after US President Joe Biden warned Israel it was losing support for its campaign to oust Hamas.

The resolution, the second of its kind since the war began on October 7, was greeted with applause.

The United States and Israel opposed the measure, as did Austria, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and Paraguay.

During today’s meeting at the @UN, I told the ambassadors in the General Assembly that everyone in the room knows what Moscow, Beijing, or Istanbul would do if they were in Israel's shoes. Hamas committed terrible crimes and those who support a ceasefire allow Hamas to continue… pic.twitter.com/IPi7NwJTK1
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) December 12, 2023

Seth Mandel writes at Commentary about how Joe Biden, unlike Barack Obama, passes the "kishkes" test for his deep affinity with Israel, by proudly calling himself a Zionist and defending Israel.

Which may be one reason why we have not heard much criticism about this outrageous accusation Biden made yesterday.

Speaking to Democratic donors in Washington, Biden voiced criticism of Israel’s hardline government and said Netanyahu needed to alter his approach.

“I think he has to change, and with this government, this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move,” Biden said, calling Netanyahu’s government the “most conservative government in Israel’s history.”

He warned support for the country’s military campaign is waning amid heavy bombardment of Gaza and added that the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”

Biden said right now Israel “has most of the world supporting it,” but said “they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”

Maybe it was a slip of the tongue. Maybe it is senility. But the President of the United States just falsely accused Israel a war crimes.

Indiscriminate bombing is what Hamas does. Rockets targeting civilian areas without precise aiming are indiscriminate. That is war crime, violating the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets. (Placing military targets in the midst of civilian objects i also a violation of that principle.)

Israel does not bomb indiscriminately. It spends a great deal of time choosing its targets and calibrating the attacks based on the military value of the targets. Just because the casual observer cannot see that there is a Hamas commander or a Hamas command and control center or a Hamas weapons cache inside or beneath the building does not make the airstrikes indiscriminate.

The widespread damage in Gaza is a direct result of Hamas using civilians as their primary defensive shield. The IDF is finding weapons literally everywhere they search and they have found tunnel entrances in schools, in many houses and beneath old cars planted there to hide them. Hamas turned all of Gaza into a military target, not Israel, and it is enormously difficult to make that distinction - but the IDF still attacks based on intelligence information. It is not random and it is not indiscriminate.

Israel is apparently sweeping this under the rug to preserve the relationship, but that doesn't make the lie any less vile.

Friends don't falsely accuse friends of war crimes.

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!

Biden's "Jews wouldn't be safe if there were no Israel" Is he right?

At the White House Chanukah party on Sunday night, President Biden said something fairly stunning:

As I said after the attack, my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist is independent Jew- — as an independent Jewish state is un- — just unshakeable.

Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe — were there no Israel. (Applause.)

It might have played to the room, but it is an astonishing statement for the President of the United States to make. He is saying that Jews aren't even safe in the nation he leads without Israel.

Arguably, the USA has been the friendliest nation towards Jews since the Kingdom of Judah. But let's do a thought experiment: how would things be for Jews in America without an Israel?

The most straightforward wat to begin to answer this is to compare antisemitism in America before and after 1948.

1947 want ad

Antisemitism in America was quite prevalent before World War II. But more surprisingly, it kept getting worse during and after the war. There was no additional sympathy for Jews who had suffered the Holocaust - on the contrary, it seemed to accelerate Jew-hatred in the US.

Here are the percentage of Americans who answered "yes" to the question "Do you think Jews have too much power in America" from 1938-1946:

March, 1938 41%

April, 1940 43%

February, 1941 45%

October, 1941 48%

May, 1944 56%

June, 1945 58%

February, 1946 55%

Far more than half of Americans held classic antisemitic attitudes even when the scope of the genocide became clear.

From 1940-1946, including the years that the US was at war, Jews were seen as a greater threat to the

welfare of the United States than any other national, religious, or racial group.

Not the Nazis. Not the Japanese. Jews.

Things started changing in 1948. The B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League started their annual antisemitism survey only a couple of years beforehand, but 1947-1948 were the years where things started to turn around.

That doesn't prove that Zionism had anything to do with it. It was during those years that the US started tackling all kinds of discrimination, and returning soldiers tended to have fewer prejudices. However, Zionism does seem to have been one indirect reason for the turnaround.

As the horrors of World War II were becoming apparent, nearly every major American Jewish organization joined a unified umbrella organization called the American Jewish Conference to work for a national Jewish state in Palestine. This was perhaps the first time that so many American Jewish organizations united.

This new political clout prompted them to then attack the second major topic of concern to American Jews - antisemitism. And for that, even the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism joined the new Community Relations Advisory Council created to fight antisemitism in America.

They were well organized, and went after what they saw as the biggest three targets: discrimination against Jews in employment, in immigration, and in education. They framed the fight against antisemitism as one component of the fight against all prejudice, and they convinced local, state and eventually national political groups to pass anti-discrimination laws. They monitored compliance and held organizations responsible for upholding the new laws.

It was a very successful program. Jews became far more integrated into American society, and other minorities also benefited from the same laws. We cannot know what would have happened without this Jewish unity, but chances are the civil rights movement would have been delayed.

But we cannot discount the psychological effect on American Jews that Israel had. For the first time, they had something to be proud of - a nation founded on the same ideals as America itself. we cannot measure it, but Jewish pride in Israel helped non-Jews have more respect for Jews as well.

Without Israel, without that pride, without that Jewish unity, there would have been nothing to counter the trend of an America that was increasingly antipathetical to Jews.

Today's antisemites spend a great deal of time trying to divide American Jewry and to denigrate Zionism.. They know that a unified Jewish community is powerful while a divided one is ineffective. They know that Jewish pride is their enemy, so they try to destroy it or minimize it.

The story of American Jews in the 1940s shows what a united Jewish community can do. The story of modern antisemitism shows that this is exactly the haters are trying to undo.

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!

Al Jazeera broadcast a six minute video of an Islamic Jihad military training exercise that was performed right by the border fence with Israel on October 4.

It looks like it was a dry run for the attack to happen only three days later.

The network reported "The Al-Quds Brigades explained, in a statement via Telegram, that the offensive maneuver simulates 'realistic details of the field and raids on Zionist military sites and fortifications with a high intensity of fire, controlling them and avoiding losses among its fighters.'

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!

12/12 Links Pt2: Holding Jewish History Hostage; The Irony of Iron Dome; Palestinian flags flutter from the fallen cities of Eurabia; Anti-Semitism Goes to School

From Ian:

Walter Russell Mead: Hamas' Oct. 7 Attack Made Israel Stronger

Israel is more united, its citizens are more determined to fight for their state, and Jews around the world have renewed their commitment to the Zionist cause. That's my conclusion after a week in Israel.

Israeli military experts, including critics of the government, think the war is going reasonably well. Casualties are significant, and there is hard slogging ahead, but Israel is on course to inflict defeat on the deranged and misguided Hamas movement. Arab leaders appreciate as never before the value of a strong Israel to their own security and prosperity. Iran and its proxies have a vote in what happens next. But for now, Israel has rallied from the shock of Oct. 7 and is on track to re-establish deterrence.

In perhaps the greatest instance of Jew-haters shooting themselves in the foot, in the aftermath of Israel's War of Independence, Middle Eastern mobs and governments forced 850,000 Jews to flee to Israel. Those immigrants and their descendants feel no guilt for Palestinian dispossession and are skeptical of Arab intentions. They are a plurality of Israeli Jews today, and without them Israel could never have grown into the powerful state it is.

For Israel, bad Palestinian strategy is the gift that keeps on giving. Over the decades, the constant threat of Palestinian resistance movements led Israelis to develop the first-class defense and technology capabilities that make it an indispensable partner for countries all over the world.

The unspeakable barbarity of the Hamas attacks has again united and strengthened Israel while accomplishing nothing for the Palestinian people. The Jew-haters who overshadowed more peaceful and responsible demonstrators across U.S. streets and campuses have deeply damaged the Palestinian cause with centrist opinion. Such displays remind Americans that anti-Jewish bigotry and the ignorance it fosters threaten the foundations of American life.

Seth Mandel: Holding Jewish History Hostage

One of the double standards to which Israel is routinely subjected is that it is forced to defend its right to exist, not merely its existence. As part of this insult, Israel’s story is confiscated from it. Israel is not Israel; in times of peace it is apartheid South Africa and in times of war it is the German state under the direction of the Nazis.

Israel is currently at war, so the latter canard is having its time in the sun. One reason that Western writers and journalists and academics falsely accuse Israel of Nazi tactics is that doing so represents the ultimate universalizing of the Holocaust. People who don’t like Israel believe that Israel only exists because of the Holocaust; therefore, if the Holocaust didn’t really “exist” in the way we are made to understand it, Israel is null and void.

The campaign to universalize Jewish suffering is relentless, and it is made stronger by the fact that Holocaust museums and education centers tend to enable this behavior out of a misguided belief that their moral authority depends on their relevance. That relevance is guaranteed by the presence of a Holocaust happening somewhere. And if that Holocaust-like event is happening to the Jews, well that’s superfluous to the mission, isn’t it? This helps explain the current silence of Holocaust museums and education centers in the wake of the brutal Hamas assault that has as its nearest historical parallel the Nazi atrocities.

What happens when a network of Holocaust centers bucks the trend and actually insists on getting the story right? That is the fascinating case of Germany, which is coming under fire for not universalizing Jewish suffering.

In the New Yorker, Masha Gessen rejects Berlin’s culture of Holocaust memorializing. At first, Gessen says, “It was exhilarating to watch memory culture take shape. Here was a country, or at least a city, that was doing what most cultures cannot: looking at its own crimes, its own worst self. But, at some point, the effort began to feel static, glassed in, as though it were an effort not only to remember history but also to insure that only this particular history is remembered—and only in this way.”

Berlin finds Abbas’s 2022 Holocaust remarks incite hatred, but can’t pursue charges

Berlin prosecutors said Monday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments on the Holocaust during a visit last year amounted to inciting racial hatred, but they won’t pursue a criminal case due to his diplomatic immunity — even though Germany does not recognize the Palestinian Authority as a state.

Police in Berlin launched a probe “on suspicion of inciting hatred” in August 2022 on the basis of two complaints accusing Abbas of “relativizing the Holocaust” during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The Berlin prosecutor’s office said in a statement it had reached the conclusion that “Abbas had committed the crime of inciting racial hatred” but enjoyed “immunity so that there is an obstacle to him being tried.”

At the press conference with Scholz last year, Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians since 1947.

Scholz did not immediately challenge Abbas on his comments but, following widespread criticism, tweeted the next day that he was “disgusted by the outrageous remarks” made by the Palestinian leader.

Maura Moynihan: Cowardly City College, which refuses to denounce antisemitism, should take my dad’s name off its Moynihan Center

My mother, Liz Moynihan, passed away Nov. 7 in Manhattan, aged 94.

Fittingly, it was Election Day — Liz was campaign manager for her husband Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s four New York Senate campaigns, winning landslide victories on shoestring budgets.

After her husband’s death in 2003, Liz settled in New York City, where she championed the completion of Moynihan Train Hall and our city’s museums, performing arts and higher education.

When Moynihan served as US ambassador to the United Nations, Liz was seated in the visitor’s gallery during the Nov. 10, 1975, passage of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution.

“A great evil has been loosed upon the world,” Moynihan declared after he strode to the lectern.

“The abomination of antisemitism,” he continued, “has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the 6 million European Jews.”

And he warned: “The terrible lie told here today will have terrible consequences.”

Moynihan was prophetic indeed: 48 years hence, New York synagogues and delis are smeared with Nazi slogans, Hanukkah celebrations are canceled, Jewish citizens are beaten and threatened daily.

Before her death, Liz watched these events in horror; she had many friends in Israel and deep ties to New York’s Jewish community.

She was especially shocked and repulsed by teachers and students at our once-prestigious universities hoisting signs that read “Gas the Jews,” “Hitler Was Right” and “Zionism Is Racism.”

This pernicious antisemitism is deeply entrenched in our taxpayer-funded state universities.

Chanukah Music Video night 6: The LeeVees: Tiny Desk Concert (plus bonus from ShirSoul)

I don't think these songs are new, but they are new to me.

Plus an acapella short of Mi Yemalel by Shir Soul:

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Arabs and the Left have been absurdly accusing Israel of "genocide" since the 1950s

It turns out that Arabs, and the global Left, have been accusing Israel of "genocide" for nearly as long as the term has existed. The accusations from then are just as absurd as they are today.

The earliest I could find was a Jordanian reaction to the 1956 war, accusing Israel of inflicting "genocide" on Egypt.

The Soviet Union accused Israel of "genocide" for winning the Six Day War.

Yasir Arafat couldn't do any less. This is from 1968:

The irony, of course, is that very threat to attack Israeli civilians indeed would be a standard case of genocide under international law, since Fatah at the time was quite clear in its desire of "uprooting the Zionist existence."

In 1977, Moscow again accused Israel of "genocide" - because it was building houses in Judea and Samaria.

In 1982, Christians in Lebanon slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian Muslims. So, naturally, tthe Jewish state was accused of "genocide" (and a "holocaust," to boot.)

From the start, the slander was meant to tar Israel with the worst crime possible, the crime named after the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews. It was always a purely antisemitic slur, and it remains so today.

But notice how much the leftists of today are parroting the language used by the Soviet Union. Every baeless accusation against Israel - "apartheid" and "genocide" and "illegal occupation" - originated with the Soviet Union.

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!

12/12 Links Pt1: Hamas Has No Place in the Civilized World; Article 51 and Israel’s inherent right to self-defence; Why the images of Hamas prisoners sparked outrage

From Ian:

Scott Walker: Hamas Has No Place in the Civilized World

Oct. 7 was the people of Israel's Pearl Harbor day. They must continue to fight back until the existential threat from Hamas no longer exists. They must eliminate this terrorist organization. Period.

Israelis have every right to do as President Roosevelt said after Dec. 7, 1941, and defend themselves to "the uttermost" and "make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."

The U.S. was never involved in a ceasefire after the attacks. Our military did not stop until the total defeat of our collective enemies was realized. Israel should now do the same.

Those who believe that the innocent people of Israel had it coming are fundamentally wrong.

The evil thugs of Hamas are coldblooded killers who violated every sense of decency with their actions.

We must never appease evildoers. There can be no stopping until this evil is eradicated from the earth. Hamas has no place in the civilized world.

Article 51 and Israel’s inherent right to self-defence

Occupation
There is no precise definition of “occupation” under IHL, and thus no way to definitively state whether an occupation has begun or ended. However, no reasonable definition would apply to Israel’s relationship with Gaza.

Israel forcibly removed its citizens and withdrew all military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The designated genocidal terrorist organisation Hamas has ruled over Gaza since 2007 after violently wresting control of it from the Palestinian Authority, after which Israel rightfully declared it “hostile territory”. The idea that nearly 20 years later, Israel is still occupying Gaza is, on its face, nonsense.

To make the argument that Gaza is still occupied by Israel, the UN abuses the vague concept of “effective control” – an undefined notion not found in treaty law but still used as the basis for defining “occupation” – warping it beyond any legal or factual basis.

Those who baselessly argue, based on blatant misrepresentation of the concept, that Israel has “effective control” of Gaza for the purposes of IHL would have to explain how the actual governing authority of Gaza, Hamas, managed to plan and launch a full-scale invasion involving thousands of combatants and a massive bombardment of Israel from that territory without Israel’s knowledge. Whatever control Israel is alleged to have, it clearly is not “effective” by any possible legal definition of the term.

A moot point
IHL has evolved since the 19th century not to create reality, but to manage it. The reality is that there are just wars, and that these wars require rules to protect civilians to the greatest extent possible. The “inherent right” codified under Article 51 is a long-standing principle of self-preservation without caveats beyond other IHL rules under customary international law. To remain fit for purpose, IHL and the interpretation of Article 51 would by definition have to cover any “armed attack”, including terrorism, regardless of its source. Otherwise, as noted by Sir Greenwood above, it would and should be considered mad. No relevant version of international law would allow terrorist groups to attack states while prohibiting those states from defending themselves.

Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, ending the occupation and rendering the already questionable 2004 Advisory Opinion irrelevant to the current situation. Even Hamas admits Gaza is no longer occupied.

Even more importantly, In 2015, the non-existent “state of Palestine” – which includes Gaza – was farcically allowed by the UN to ratify the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements. It thus became a state-like entity under IHL, which renders this entire argument moot.

Johnathan Tobin: Why the images of Hamas prisoners sparked outrage

That so many people who cared nothing about the slaughter of Jews by Hamas two months ago, and ignored the widely distributed photo and video evidence (largely compiled by the terrorists themselves on GoPro cameras to publicize the humiliation of their victims) of those crimes, remains deeply shocking to Jews. So, too, is the hypocrisy of feminist leaders and organizations that seemed uninterested in the Palestinians’ deliberate use of rape—against women, children, and, as new reports come out, even men—as a weapon of war.

These crimes against Jews were ignored or quickly forgotten in the rush to deprive Israel of the right to defend itself. It soon became clear even to many Jews who had always been critical of Israeli policies or who sympathized with the suffering of Palestinians that the protests showed that something deeply troubling was behind the outrage about the fighting in Gaza.

Those chanting for a “free Palestine” from “the river to the sea” weren’t advocating for peace or a two-state solution. Their position was that Israeli suffering was unimportant because the Jewish state had no right to exist and should be “decolonized.” If that meant more Oct. 7-style atrocities, then so much the worse for Jews, who were supposedly guilty of possessing “white privilege” and oppressing “people of color.” The fact that this conflict has nothing to do with race—and that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and that the majority are “people of color” who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East and North Africa—counts for little among those who buy into intersectional myths and think the Jewish state should be erased and its people subjected to genocide.

Jews are no longer‘dhimmi’
But the pictures of Palestinian prisoners do touch a nerve throughout the world, and the reason for that goes far to explain why Palestinian Arabs—with the support of much of the Islamic world—persist in their century-old war against Zionism.

It is hardly surprising that images of Jewish suffering do not move the not-insubstantial percentage of the world’s population that thinks the Jews are not entitled to sovereignty or the right of self-defense in their ancient homeland. But what they really can’t stand is the idea that Jews are no longer homeless or at the mercy of a hostile world, as they were before the establishment of modern-day Israel in 1948. The notion that a despised minority, against whom the virus of antisemitism continues to incite unthinking hatred and demonization, are now powerful enough to defeat their foes is difficult for them to swallow.

This goes beyond sympathy for the Palestinians. They are trapped in an irredentist mindset that not only prevents them from accepting the multiple offers of statehood and peace Israel has made over the years but causes them to see a refusal to accept the Jewish state’s legitimacy and permanence as inextricably linked with their national identity.

The photos of Hamas prisoners are, by the standards of war photography, nothing particularly unusual or outrageous, and certainly not evidence of abuse. The documentation of their detention is certainly preferable to the silence that Hamas continues to adhere to about the fate of the hostages they have not yet released of whom no proof of life in any form has been forthcoming.

Yet the photos do seem outrageous to those who, whether Muslims or not, see Jews as what the Islamic world traditionally referred to as dhimmi. In Islamic societies, the dhimmi were “protected” residents of a country but treated as inferior to Muslims. Indeed, the photos provoke anger because they show that Hamas, which rightly anticipated that their atrocities would spark a surge in antisemitism rather than a backlash against them, is losing the war they started against the Jews. Their humiliation is evidence that their understanding of the world has been turned upside-down with the Jews no longer relegated to the status of a despised and powerless minority.

The anger about the images of Palestinian prisoners is not a reaction to evidence of Israeli crimes. Instead, it is more proof that the anti-Israel protests that have proliferated in the United States and elsewhere are motivated largely by antisemitic motives, whether rooted in modern leftist theories or historic religious hatred. Rather than a sidebar to the debate about the war, the anger about the photos shows us just how deep intolerance for Israel and Jews runs.

New Yorker magazine dismisses US antisemitism

The Intelligencer column at The New Yorker, written by Eric Levitz, downplays the dangers of antisemitism in America - especially that from the Left.

While I agree that the US is an exceptionally safe place for Jews, all indications are that things are getting worse, rapidly. And Levitz seems to be more interested in promoting his own political agenda than to discuss the real problems.

His first argument is flat-out wrong:

There are 7.3 million Jews in America. Only an infinitesimal fraction of American Jews suffer acts of prejudicial violence, vandalism, or harassment in a given year.

He's comparing the number of antisemitic hate crimes the FBI counts every year against Jews, and decides that it is minuscule next to the number of Jews in America.

But most antisemitism does not reach the level of criminal. The ADL survey of 2020 showed that a majority of US Jews experienced or witnessed antisemitism, 25% were personally targeted, and nearly one in ten had been victims of antisemitic assault!

Sweeping that under the rug is not analysis. It is propaganda. The number of crimes is an indication, not the sum total, of antisemitism.

And this survey was in 2020. Imagine what these responses would be today!

Levitz relishes going after antisemitism on the Right, and asserts that most philosemitism on the Right is really hidden antisemitism. But he simply pretends that there is none on the Left, by flatly saying that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, when in fact it is just a masquerade for antisemitism. Yes, even when the anti-Zionism is from Neturei Karta, or socialists who are opposed to all nationalism but seem to spend all their time on Jewish nationalism, or Arabs who were antisemitic before Zionism existed.

Levitz is equally wrong when he says "calling for the establishment of a binational, secular democracy “from the river to the sea” is not anti-Jewish." Such a call was not anti-Jewish in 1935 but when there is already a Jewish state, calling for it to be dismantled and replaced with one where Jews would be a minority, where they will not have a Law of Return - which is the entire point - is indeed anti-Jewish.

He then tries to disprove the "horseshoe" theory that the far-Left as as antisemitic as the far-Right, based on a 2022 survey that had severe methodological flaws.

Levitz further says that "the existence of antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement tells us nothing about the merits of the Palestinian cause." This is true in theory. But if antisemitism is baked into Palestinian nationalism from the start, then the story is a bit different. And not only were the Arabs in Palestine antisemitic long before modern Zionism, and not only was the first Palestinian nationalist leader the Mufti of Jerusalem an unrepentant Jew-hater, but some 97% of Palestinians today hold classic antisemitic attitudes according to the ADL global survey of antisemitism. Separating the two is willful deception.

Later, Levitz states as fact that Israel is guilty of apartheid, which is also an antisemitic argument - besides that fact that it is false, but the entire charge was created in order to demonize Israel with the worst possible charge of racism. The lie preceded the ridiculous footnotes and bogus arguments from Amnesty and HRW. So, yes, that is antisemitism too, and minimizing it is to deny the reality of what modern antisemitism looks like.

Sure, Levitz admits there is some antisemitism, and it is bad. But the thrust of the article is to downplay it while demonizing Israel himself. Which, in the end, justifies it.

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

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Practically no Jew-haters admit they are Jew-haters.

The entire term "anti-semitism" was coined to hide the fact that the Jew-haters of 19th century Europe hated Jews, claiming that they were only against the racial inferiority of "Semites" - it was objective science, not irrational hate against a religious group.

Even in the early days of Nazi rule, officials strenuously denied persecuting Jews and pretended they were only defending Germans from outsiders threatening their way of life.

The deceptions and the attempts to hide Jew-hatred behind respectable sounding arguments are no less prevalent today. No one wants to be called an antisemite. But antisemitism is the only consistent explanation for the unhinged hate towards Israel we have seen every day since it was founded.

The problem is when the mainstream media reports the smokescreen as if it is the truth.

From the New York Times:

For weeks, Americans in a host of Democratic-led cities have packed their government chambers for marathon sessions, all to demand immediate action from local leaders on a matter nowhere near home: the Israel-Hamas war.

More than a dozen U.S. city councils have now passed resolutions urging Israel to stop shelling Gaza, including several in Michigan, which has a sizable Muslim population, and several in California. Among the biggest cities to do so are Atlanta and Detroit.

Local resolutions on international affairs largely amount to symbolic gestures that play no direct role in foreign policymaking. But they can send a signal to allies abroad over the domestic political temperature and provide a vehicle for some of the most opinionated voters to say their piece.

Those calling for cease-fire resolutions believe that this time, a critical mass of local gestures may ultimately convey to the White House that it has lost support for backing Israel’s military campaign. Especially if the resolutions come from Democratic strongholds that serve as President Biden’s base.

“You can see the momentum,” said Eduardo Martinez, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., which was the first city to pass a cease-fire resolution, deploying some of the strongest criticism of Israel and accusing it of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.”

These people aren't crowding city council meetings to demand a ceasefire. They are there to publicly slander Israel.

The public council meetings allow any crackpot to make any public statement, for the record, televised, and unopposed. It is an ideal way to normalize hate. And that is exactly what is being done.

Demands for a "ceasefire" are a smokescreen. Because the same people had previously demanded resolutions to declare Israel an "apartheid state." And before that to call for boycotting Israel and only Israel. A boycott resolution was proposed at Berkeley as far back as 2002 during the height of the second intifada. The contents of the resolutions don't matter - as long as the public discussion is centered on demonizing Israel. If they win, great; if they lose, they can have the circus again next year.

The BDS Movement even has a guide on how to hijack local city councils and unions for anti-Israel purposes. They give a "menu" of excuses to use, "depending on your context" - for some, "divestment" might be the hook to use, for others, "ceasefire," and for others, "anti-apartheid." These resolutions are an update of the many anti-Israel resolutions that were all over campuses during the 2010s, just with a more public venue.

Some of the resolutions even add language against antisemitism (and Islamophobia) in order to inoculate themselves against those exact charges. But no one passed resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Syria; one would be hard pressed to find resolutions in support of the Uyghurs in China or the Rohingya in Myanmar.

It is always Israel. And that is antisemitism.

Antisemitism is fun. It is pleasurable. It gives one the opportunity to publicly attack Jews while pretending to be moral and "on the right side of history." And when it is done in an official venue like a city council debate, the hate becomes normalized.

That is the entire point.

When the New York Times calls these modern antisemites "cease-fire activists," they are also normalizing antisemitism.

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

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Constantine 1934: A mini-October 7, Arabs slaughtering Jews and being proud of it today

From JTA, August 8, 1934:

A scene of utter desolation and horror, of Jewish girls with their breasts cut off, of little children with numerous knife wounds and of whole families locked in their homes and burned to death, was described by a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent, who succeeded in reaching this city today.

“It will take days before the world will obtain a true picture of all the atrocities committed by the Arabs during the pogrom on the Jewish quarter,” the correspondent wired.

“The only comparison I can think of is the Palestine riots of 1929. I found Jewish girls with their breasts cut off, greybearded Jews stabbed to death, little Jewish children dead of numerous knife wounds and whole families locked in their homes and burned to death by the rioters.

A more extensive report added these details:

Women attacked and breasts cut off. Families locking themselves in rooms and either being burned to death or forced to escape when their houses are burned down, where they are slaughtered.

This sounds chillingly familiar.

The people who say "history didn't start on October 7" are entirely right. Arabs have mercilessly attacked Jews on any or no pretense for centuries beforehand - and, just like today, they look at these massacres as honorable battles.

In the end, 25 Jews were murdered, and over a thousand were forced to leave their homes.

An Algerian newspaper interviewed historian,Dr. Ammar Talebi, about the event, and he painted the massacre in heroic terms, saying that the Jews insulted Mohammed and killed Muslim children, and were then confronted. [Algerian media often rewrite the episode to make themselves look heroic.] The historian himself draws a comparison between Constantine and October 7, saying, "This is [the Jews'] policy from the battle of Constantine to the battle of Gaza. History repeated itself. Their state will be annihilated."

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12/11 Links Pt2: Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals; The Things I Never Thought Possible—Until October 7; What Hamas can learn from Hanukkah

From Ian:

Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals

The lesson of German history for American academia should by now be clear. In Germany, to use the legalistic language of 2023, “speech crossed into conduct.” The “final solution of the Jewish question” began as speech—to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles. It began in the songs of student fraternities. With extraordinary speed after 1933, however, it crossed into conduct: first, systematic pseudo-legal discrimination and ultimately, a program of technocratic genocide.

The Holocaust remains an exceptional historical crime—distinct from other acts of organized lethal violence directed against other minorities—precisely because it was perpetrated by a highly sophisticated nation-state that had within its borders the world’s finest universities. That is why American universities cannot regard antisemitism as just another expression of “hate,” no different from, say, Islamophobia—a neologism that should not be mentioned in the same breath. That is why Claudine Gay’s double standards—with their implication that African Americans are somehow more deserving of protection than Jews—are so indefensible.

That is why rational minds recoil from her argument that antisemitism on the Harvard campus is tolerable so long as genocide is not being perpetrated.

Well, the backlash against our contemporary treason of the intellectuals has finally arrived.

Donors such as the chief executive of Apollo, Marc Rowan (a Penn graduate), Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman (Harvard), and Stone Ridge founder Ross Stevens (Penn) have each made clear that their support will no longer be forthcoming for institutions run in this fashion.

On Saturday, Penn president Liz Magill stepped down, along with the chair of the Penn board of trustees, Scott Bok. Perhaps others will follow.

Yet it will take a lot more than a few high-profile resignations to reform the culture of America’s elite universities. It is much too entrenched in multiple departments, all dominated by a tenured faculty, to say nothing of the armies of DEI and Title IX officers who seem, at some colleges, now to outnumber the undergraduates.

In La trahison des clercs, Julien Benda accused the intellectuals of his time of dabbling in “the racial passions, class passions, and national passions. . . owing to which men rise up against other men.” Today’s academic leaders would never recognize themselves as the heirs of those Benda condemned, insisting that they are on the left, whereas Benda’s targets were on the right. And yet, as Victor Klemperer came to understand after 1945, totalitarianism comes in two flavors, though the ingredients are the same.

Only if the once-great American universities can reestablish—throughout their fabric—the separation of Wissenschaft from Politik can they be sure of avoiding the fate of Marburg and Königsberg.

The Things I Never Thought Possible—Until October 7

I witnessed antisemitism for the very first time at school in Germany, when classmates taunted a Jewish girl I was friends with just for being Jewish. I saw pictures from Auschwitz for the very first time when the television series Holocaust showed images of the mass murder and the dead bodies piled up there.

On my first trip to Israel, I wept while talking to German Holocaust survivors who, despite their concentration camp tattoos, still felt homesick when speaking of the country they were born in. Then I went to Auschwitz for the first time because I wanted to gain a better understanding of how people could do such inhumane things to their fellow humans, and because I wanted to see the ruins of the gas chambers, a place that symbolizes the collapse of civilization.

From then on, I felt certain—or wanted to feel certain—of one thing: that antisemitism would be fought against successfully in Germany if it ever again raised its ugly head beyond the criminally fanatical right-wing extreme.

I also thought Israel’s right to exist in the democratic world was nonnegotiable and nobody—except for the extremist mortal enemies of Israel—would ever think otherwise. And that if worst came to worst, we could always rely on America, with its love of freedom, to stand at Israel’s side.

The last few weeks have shown every one of my assumptions to have been sadly mistaken. Since October 7, anything is possible.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that, immediately following the terror attacks on Israel—after a pogrom, a genocidal offensive in which more than a thousand Israelis, among them women, elderly men, children, and babies, were shot, stabbed, raped, burned, and beheaded by Palestinian terrorists, and recordings of these horrors were disseminated with triumphant words—that Salafists would be handing out candy on the streets of Berlin and celebrating this successful antisemitic attack without anyone stepping in to stop them from doing so.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that the reaction to this war in Europe and in the U.S. would be so ambiguous, and that there would be no unequivocal gesture of solidarity with the victims. Seldom has the reason for a war—namely, to prevent the threat of peace in the region—been so clear. Seldom was the question of who began it all—namely, Hamas—been so easy to answer. Seldom was it more obvious who the perpetrators were and who the victims were—namely, Hamas as the attacker and Israel as the defender.

Seldom has the cynical propaganda of a warring party been as easy to see through as Hamas’s. The organization uses its own population as human shields, hides its cache of arms below hospitals, and misuses its own children to kill Jews or to be hit by Israeli bombs at strategic points to generate images for use in the propaganda battle on social media.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that so-called quality media outlets like CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and AP would use photos from “journalists” who were most likely informed of Hamas’s murderous plans beforehand and who “just happened” to be standing at the exact right spot on the border to Israel on October 7, meaning the photographers were not there to shed light on the situation, but as accessories to terror.

Jeff Jacoby: What Hamas can learn from Hanukkah

A FEW years ago, with good intentions but woeful misjudgment, the Catholic News Service tweeted out a greeting for the Jewish festival of lights.

"Hanukkah began at sundown," it read. "Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate!" Accompanying the tweet was a photograph of the Arch of Titus in Rome, which celebrates the defeat of Judea and the sack of the Temple in Jerusalem by Roman legions in 70 CE. A relief on the arch shows soldiers triumphantly holding aloft artifacts plundered from the Temple, most prominently its great golden menorah.

The news service quickly realized its blunder. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple during a much earlier conflict — the Maccabean revolt against the religious tyranny of the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE — so an image of the Temple's later devastation was wholly inappropriate. The tweet was deleted and the news service apologized.

Yet in retrospect the Arch of Titus does symbolize a key message of Hanukkah, one intensely relevant amid today's rising tide of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel: However genocidal and powerful their enemies, the Jews and the Jewish faith have endured. Under Antiochus IV, the Seleucids (also called Syrian-Greeks) were determined to replace Judaism with the pagan culture of Hellenism; under the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus, Jewish ties to the Jewish homeland were to be crushed forever. Two millennia later, those emperors are dust and their grandeur lies in ruins. But the Jews and their religion still live, and their bond with the land of Israel is as indissoluble as ever.

Hanukkah arrives this year amid a terrible eruption of Jew-hatred. The horrific pogrom of Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered, tortured, raped, and kidnapped some 1,400 residents of southern Israel, was the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust. The reaction in much of the world, and especially in many bastions of elite culture and higher education, has been an unprecedented wave of antisemitic vituperation, intimidation, menace, and glee. The director of the FBI testified on Oct. 31 that antisemitism in the United States was reaching "historic levels," and the crisis has only worsened since then. In many US communities, on college campuses, and overseas, Jews feel threatened to a degree unprecedented in generations.

In a Capitol Hill hearing room Tuesday, there was a particularly chilling indication of how normalized antisemitism is becoming.

Chanukah Music Video Night 5: It's for Hanukah! | Boys Town Jerusalem Choir (plus bonus tune from Yechiel Schron)

Plus an original Al Hanissim that just dropped within the past hour:

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Palestinians told yet again that it is better for them to die than for them to abandon imaginary principles

In 2013, an event happened that is perfectly symbolic of the entire short history of Palestinian Arabs.

AP reported:

The Palestinian president said he has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, charging it would compromise their claims to return to lost homes in Israel.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban [Ki-Moon] contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group.

About 4,000 Palestinians were killed in Syria. They died because of a principle they never signed off on. They weren't given a choice. Their "leaders" chose for them.

In 1948, when Palestinian Arabs tried to flee the war zone with their families, neighboring Arab countries were angry at them too. How dare they abandon their homeland! They should stay and fight! Egypt, and perhaps others, forced the men to go back into Palestine and do exactly that.

Again, the Palestinians weren't given a choice. Arab leaders told them what was best for them, saying they must adhere to a principle they didn't agree with. I'm sure that some of them never made it home.

It is happening now.

The Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II, said today, Monday, that “Jordan has warned from the first day that we consider any displacement process a red line because, for us, this is the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
He added, during his meeting at Al-Husseiniya Palace, today, Monday, with the Chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a number of retired security services directors, that there will be no solution to the Palestinian issue at Jordan’s expense, stressing that Jordan is confident in itself and is strong with the awareness of its people and the strength of its army and security services.
The Jordanian King reiterated that Jordan's strength politically, economically and security-wise is a strength for the Palestinian brothers, stressing that this country was built with the determination of its people, and it is the responsibility of all of us to give priority to its highest interest and protect it.
The Jordanian King praised the cohesion of the internal front, calling for not paying attention to the voices that try to keep us away from serving and defending our brothers, and stressing that the Kingdom stands with the Palestinian people in their steadfastness on their land.
He expressed his pride in the Jordanian Armed Forces - the Arab Army, and the security services in defending the homeland, stressing his confidence in their ability and readiness.

Abdulah is saying that letting Palestinians die in Gaza is preferable to saving their lives - because of a very important principle of not letting them leave their land. Moreover, he adds another principle: Jordan's strength is something that helps the Palestinians, and Jordan is their best friend.

Oh, and by the way, if any Palestinians don't adhere to these wonderful principles and manage to try to enter Jordan, there's an army that is ready to shoot them.

Did you get all that? Abdullah is saying that Palestinians must die because that way Jordan will remain strong enough to remain a good ally of Palestinians.

Jordan took in some 1.3 million Syrian refugees during that war, and they didn't refuse them because of worries about how a weaker Jordan might not be able to help Palestinians. They weren't concerned that by going to Jordan they would lose their Syrian identity. In fact, the 2 million Palestinian citizens of Jordan also are reminded that they are not really Jordanians but Palestinian. They still get many services from UNRWA rather than the kingdom.

Palestinians have been given the same message, loud and clear, for 75 years: they cannot inconvenience other Arab nations, or even their own leaders. But the reason is always the same: it is for their own good.

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12/11 Links Pt1: Jerusalem: ‘No UN chief has done more to secure the survival of a terrorist organization’; Spielberg to document Hamas massacre survivors’ stories

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The UN and Israel have never gotten along

There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a soccer team. “But who would they play?” it goes. “Why, Israel of course.”

There may not be much humor in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since the country won wars of self-defense in 1967 and 1973.

Perhaps the most notorious moment was the “Zionism is racism” resolution in 1975, when the foundations of the Jewish state were suddenly under assault. On that occasion the late great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former Democratic senator from New York, gave one of the best counter-blast speeches ever given on the floor of the UN. As did Chaim Herzog, the father of Israel’s current president. But at that point, as at so many other times, Israel’s enemies were greater in number than its friends by a significant margin. The victorious majority was led by that great campaigner for social justice Idi Amin. A party for the anti-Israel delegates was thrown by Kurt Waldheim of Austria, who turned out to have spent his war years serving in a Nazi unit.

In any case, ever since then Israel has been the main source of international ire at the UN, from non-aligned countries as well as much of the Muslim world. The farcical UN Human Rights Council in Geneva does little else but knock Israel around. I’ve known some people who spent their lives in that Alice in Wonderland world in Geneva and noticed it isn’t good for their long-term health. How can you sit there day after day and listen to, for instance, the representative from North Korea claiming human rights abuses in western democracies? Only last month Iran was given the chairmanship of a UN human rights forum. And although it is true that the regime managed to refrain from bludgeoning any woman to death for not wearing a headscarf during the meeting itself, there was again that sense that something might not be right.

A month earlier, the United Nations General Assembly in New York had an opportunity to vote to condemn the Hamas massacre of October 7 and demand the release of all Israeli hostages. But even that simple assertion of decency was too much for the UN. The proposition was voted down and when that was announced the General Assembly broke out into applause.

Amb. Tzipi Hotovely: The UN's Anti-Israel Bias Must Be Addressed

This year, the UN General Assembly has adopted 15 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism. All other countries in the world combined have had six resolutions passed against them, with just one resolution each condemning Iran, North Korea and Syria.

The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter to call for a ceasefire at a time when Hamas still has significant military capabilities. Making any such call is like saying to Israelis that you do not mind if Oct. 7 happens again. Israel has no other choice than to take this threat seriously. Indeed, we are obligated to, under international law, in order to protect our citizens.

The current war between Israel and Hamas is tragic. It is a war that we did not want, and a war we did not start. Hamas made the choice to murder, rape, behead, torture and mutilate over 1,200 innocent people on Oct. 7. We are fighting a war of self-defense.

Yet on Oct. 27, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that did not even mention the atrocities committed by Hamas nor the legal right that Israel has to defend itself. Widespread torture and abuse of Israelis continues in Gaza. There are still 137 hostages - men, women, children, and pensioners - being held illegally inside Gaza, each constituting a war crime committed by Hamas. The thought of what they are going through should frighten us all. Every second counts while our 137 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

UN-funded schools, meanwhile, have allowed anti-Semitism to flourish. Their textbooks teach Palestinians to hate Jews, glorifying jihad and martyrdom. These same buildings are also used by Hamas terrorists for military purposes.

Sadly, the UN long ago abandoned its commitment to the universal application of human rights, evidenced by its glaring double standards applied to Israel.

Qanta A. Ahmed: Hamas Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Be Allowed to Fade

Hamas committed crimes against humanity in Israel on Oct. 7. That much should be obvious from the terrorists' own mass-murder video recordings, but it is indisputable for anyone who has visited the ravaged sites of their attack, as I have.

At Israel's National Center of Forensic Medicine, I inspected the body of an older man. His decaying body was now a quilt of stab wounds and gunshot entries and exits. His wrists remained encircled in plastic zip ties. A CT scanner was required to reveal that a charred mass was actually two humans. Cables bound the bodies together. The orientation of two spinal columns showed one adult and one child had died while locked in an embrace.

Now, two months later, much of the discussion has moved on to considering how to achieve peace between Israel and Palestinians. But what happened on Oct. 7 meets the internationally recognized definition of genocide. The world has an obligation to recognize what was done - and to punish the perpetrators.

Spielberg to document Hamas massacre survivors’ stories

The Shoah Foundation of the University of Southern California, founded by Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg, has begun collecting the testimonies of Israeli survivors of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

The foundation is best known for its work documenting the stories of more than 56,000 Holocaust survivors since its founding in 1994.

“I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime,” Spielberg said in an announcement issued by the foundation on Friday.

“Both initiatives—recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony—seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind. We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts,” said Spielberg.

The foundation has already posted on its site videos of 68 Oct. 7 survivors sharing their stories. Videos range in length from nine minutes to just over one hour. Many of the videos were in Hebrew with English subtitles.

At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on Oct. 7. Hamas currently holds 135 men, women and children captive in Gaza. Some people remain unaccounted for as Israeli authorities continue to identify bodies and search for human remains.

Koen Metsu (Belgian MP): Why Did the Hamas Murderers Shout "Allahu Akbar" - "God Is Great"?

In 1980, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini began planting the seeds of a genocidal movement to destroy Israel. Iran's goal is to bring the entire Middle East under Islamist control, and Hamas is only one part of this strategy. Iran is helped by the fact that Hamas and the people of Gaza have never supported a "two-state solution." They believe that Muslims must control all the land "from the river to the sea." It must be purged of Jews and any semblance of democratic governance.

On my trip to Israel in November, I made myself watch a 46-minute film of the horrors of Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre. I would rather not have seen it, but I felt it was my duty to do so. I will never be able to erase the images from my mind. I sincerely did not think any human could commit such atrocities. Most hideous of all, perhaps, was that throughout those 46 minutes, terrorists were shouting "Allahu Akbar" - "God is great" - again and again. What God, one wonders, would condone such violence?

During my visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, I met Yula and her son. Yula survived by hiding with her children in a drawer under the bed while Hamas terrorists entered her home and set it on fire. Yula's family tried to flee the fire, only to be met with terrorists outside their home, so they instinctively ran back into the inferno to escape via a back room. For seven hours they hid in a warehouse until the IDF rescued them.

I am in the peace camp. I support democracy and coexistence. But anyone who disparages Israel after Oct. 7 opens the door for another Oct. 7 anywhere in the world.