Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

12/19 Links Pt1: Why Israel’s Allies Are Pretending To Be Impatient; Gaza hospital director admits Hamas uses hospitals for terror purposes; The Houthis attacks are a wakeup call

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Why Israel’s Allies Are Pretending To Be Impatient

Foreign policy is still subject to domestic politics, no matter how far away the theater of battle is.

That is a pretty reliable rule, and it explains much of what people are finding inexplicable: the insistence that the Biden administration is giving Israel “tough love” in private conversations while publicly supporting the IDF’s mission in Gaza. “Netanyahu’s war bluster exposes growing rift with Biden,” reports The Hill, putting a slightly more dramatic gloss on a version of the same story you can read today in the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trip to Israel yesterday, reports the Times, “was part of a full-court press by the Biden administration to urge Israeli officials to wrap up the ‘high-intensity’ phase of the war and begin carrying out more targeted, intelligence-driven missions to find and kill Hamas leaders, destroy the tunnels used by the militant group and rescue the people taken hostage on Oct. 7.”

Not to put too much into the metaphor here, but in my glory days of yeshiva league high-school basketball I never faced a full-court press with so much breathing room. The only evidence that there is pressure behind closed doors is the insistence by top officials that there is pressure behind closed doors.

How much time will Austin give the Israelis to get this done? “This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms,” he said. But rest assured, in private he told the Israelis to be, in the Times’ own wording, “as precise and disciplined as possible as they dismantle Hamas and its infrastructure.”

What is happening here? The answer is that it’s like a movie scene where the protagonist notices he’s being followed but doesn’t want to break his cover and run, so he walks more briskly, which only makes his pursuer walk faster, until the two of them seem to be locked in a powerwalking contest. President Biden is being pursued, but not quite chased, by fellow Democrats who don’t want to crack open a public fight with the president.

Multinational force in Gaza will fail if history is any guide, report says

The report also provides examples outside the Israel-Arab conflict. Particularly disturbing was the behavior of international peacekeepers during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. “As U.N. peacekeepers stood on the sidelines, more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans were killed in just three months,” the report notes.

As if telegraphing its own view of the likely success of a multinational mission in Gaza, the U.S. on Nov. 1 announced that no American troops would be put on the ground there as part of any peacekeeping force post-conflict, “now or in the future.”

Washington and Jerusalem are closer to agreement on civilian affairs in Gaza after the war. Both have floated the idea of a multinational group to manage non-security issues and help in reconstruction. (Although the U.S. initially envisioned an international coalition handling “interim security measures” as well, the White House has since conceded that Israel will need to keep security in hand for an initial period.)

However, Israel may face resistance in gaining help to rebuild the Strip. The United Arab Emirates, one of the countries whose support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will “harness” for reconstruction efforts, balked at stepping in without the agreed-upon end goal being a Palestinian state.

“The message is going to be very clear: We need to see a viable two-state solution plan, a road map that is serious before we talk about the next day and rebuilding the infrastructure of Gaza,” UAE Ambassador to the U.N. Lana Nusseibeh told The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 12.

“The road map is: the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority and a grouping of countries that have leverage on the both of them sitting around the table and saying, ‘That’s the endgame we’re going to work to. The work starts here. This is the timeline, and it starts now,’” she said.

That would be a “double whammy” against Israeli interests, in which a multinational force transitions to Palestinian Authority control, said Kontorovich. “All the P.A. needs to do is pressure the countries to leave early, which is very likely what they’ll do. If they can simply abscond, then the P.A. is left to fill in. And history shows these groups have very little perseverance under adversity.”

As the report says, “History, and especially Israel’s experience, shows that foreign troops or personnel, even with countries or institutions who have expertise in peacekeeping, cannot be trusted to provide security for Israel.

“This is true even in straightforward contexts like policing a demilitarized zone or guarding a jail, and would be all the more true for the daunting task of rebuilding Gaza without Iranian, Islamist or other hostile influence,” the report concludes.

Col Kemp: UK’s former defence secretary has played right into Hamas’s hands

Well intentioned though he may be, former defence secretary Ben Wallace, in an article in the Telegraph, gets much wrong about the Gaza conflict and risks stoking antisemitic hate. He supports the eradication of Hamas but says Israel is doing it all wrong. He doesn’t explain in any detail how they should do it differently. What he does offer are lessons from Northern Ireland. But Wallace doesn’t seem to recognise that Gaza is nothing like Northern Ireland. Not only that, he draws the wrong conclusions about how the IRA terrorist campaign ended. He seems to think it was because the Nationalist population “recognised that the IRA didn’t have its wellbeing and economic interests at heart”, which it was not. He seems to imply from this misunderstanding that Israel should be prioritising winning the hearts and minds of the civilian population over destroying Hamas.

The reality is that the vast majority of the Nationalist community never supported IRA violence but were largely powerless to do anything about it. On the other hand the people of Gaza, as well as the people of Judea and Samaria — the West Bank — are overwhelmingly behind Hamas’s violence. Nothing like the level of visceral hatred for Israel and the Jews that exists in these territories was ever present against the British in Northern Ireland. It is virtually bred into Palestinians almost from birth. Despite what Wallace suggests, nothing can change that, at least for generations.

The IRA was in fact beaten by British military and police action and almost total intelligence penetration of their terrorist networks, not by some kind of popular uprising against them. Likewise, Hamas can only be defeated by overwhelming force. It was never necessary to use the same level of violence against the IRA as it is against Hamas, because their very nature, and the environments of the two conflicts, were utterly different. Northern Ireland, where I did seven operational tours of duty, was and remains a part of the UK, with a constant level of policing and security. Gaza on the other hand is effectively a separate country, and has been totally controlled in all aspects by Hamas.

Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh spoke at his weekly cabinet meeting and reiterated the Palestinian Authority' attempt to leverage the Gaza war as a means to force Israel to accede to their own demands: all Jews out of Judea, Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as their capital, and the "return" of millions of "refugees" to Israel.

This is nothing new; that has been the official Palestinian Authority position since October 7.

But one of the side statements he made is interesting:

Israel wants a Palestinian Authority with a school curriculum that coexists with the occupation. We want our national curriculum that talks about Jerusalem, our capital, and it talks about the right of return, and it is consistent with international standards, and is based on science and learning, and reflects our history, civilization, and culture.

The official textbooks of the Palestinian Authority indeed reflects their culture - a culture that insists on a Middle East without Jews. One whose history books don't mention the Holocaust. One where children are urged to want to become "martyrs" as their highest calling.

The latest report on UNRWA textbooks from IMPACT-SE was released last month. In it we find examples of support for terror and blatant antisemitism. Examples:

Antisemitic grading instructions tell teachers to deduct grading points from students who fail to “tie the perpetration of Zionist massacres to Jewish religious thought.”

As part of suggested summary questions on a lesson about the 1948 War, teachers are instructed to ask students “Why do the Jews perpetrate massacres?”

Students are taught an antisemitic canard that Jews (Zionists) influence and control money, the media, and politics, and use it for their own benefit.

Teachers are instructed to teach Grade 6 students that “The Zionists are the terrorists of the modern age, and they are fated to disappear.”

Dalal al-Mughrabi, the perpetrator of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, is celebrated in a detailed 10-page Arabic reading comprehension which exalts her and the terror act as “heroism” while the massacre is referred to as “immortal” in the “hearts and minds” of Palestinians. Fifth-graders are invited to follow in her footsteps and view her as a role model

Reading comprehension is taught through a violent story promoting suicide bombings and exalting Palestinian militants in the battle of Karameh as their blades “fell on the necks of enemy soldiers” and “wore explosive belts, thus turning their bodies into fire burning the Zionist tank.”

Dying is described as better than living in a chapter glorifying Palestinian martyrs. Those who seek to live fruitful, peaceful lives instead of taking the path of martyrs are criticized. “Drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation.”

Jihad “for the liberation of Palestine” is presented as a “private obligation for every Muslim” in a subsection discussing practices and duties obligated by Sharia law. I

This is the "Palestinian culture" that Shtayyeh is extolling and saying that must be taught to children.

And he's portrayed as a moderate leader.

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!

Islamic University of Gaza shut down only 25 minutes after the Hamas attack began October 7. It's almost as if they knew....

One of the last tweets from Islamic University of Gaza:

It was sent at 6:55 AM on October 7 Gaza time - only 25 minutes after the initial rocket barrage and way before any Israeli response which began around 8:30 AM.

It could be because they anticipated a response that would target the university. But this announcement was particularly fast and early in the morning.

It's almost as if they knew ahead of time....or wanted their students to take part in the massacre.

The IUG has been a hotbed of terrorism for a long time. One of its founders was also a founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In 2006, Jameela El Shanty, a professor there, said that "Hamas built this institution. The university presents the philosophy of Hamas. If you want to know what Hamas is, you can know it from the university."

Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was held in captivity at the university for months.

Israel struck it early in the war because of its use as a Hamas stronghold.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The news on Saturday was shocking:

Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Communication Office
16/12/2023
Around noon today, December 16 2023, a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war. Nahida and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister's Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety. Seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside the church compound. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.

This accusation, that Israeli snipers murdered the women, was reported as fact across the world. For example, The Telegraph:

Christian mother and daughter shot dead by Israeli sniper in church grounds in Gaza City
Nahida and her daughter Samar [Antoun] were killed in 'cold blood' inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where Christian families have taken refuge

At first, an IDF spokesperson said that there was some activity at a completely different church in Gaza, as Fox News reported:

"When reviewing incidents that may have taken place in the vicinity of churches in Gaza, it was found that an incident took place during yesterday afternoon (Saturday) in another area in Gaza, near the Latin Church in the Shejayia area," an IDF spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement.

The statement continued, "An initial review suggests that IDF troops, who were operating against Hamas terrorists in the area, operated against a threat that they identified in the area of the church. The IDF is conducting a thorough review of the incident."

For some reason, the Christian Post read that statement as an admission of guilt by the IDF that they killed the mother and daughter:

The Israeli Defense Forces have confirmed that their soldiers shot and killed two Christian women on the grounds of Gaza City’s only Catholic church. An IDF spokesperson acknowledged the civilian casualties to the media, following revelations of the incident by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

The IDF spokesperson, in a statement to Fox News Digital, confirmed the incident which took place near the church in the Shejayia area of Gaza during an operation against Hamas terrorists.

This is certainly not true. Shejaiya is miles away from the Holy Family church. But church media ran with it, and the lie that Israel admitted the murders flew around the Vatican and the globe.

Possibly the confusion comes from the IDF statement saying that there were operations near the "Latin church in the Shejayia area." There is no Latin church there; Holy Family is the only parish under the Jerusalem Latin Patriarchate. Shejaiya is the location of the Church of Saint Porphyrius (Greek Orthodox) and St. Philip the Evangelist chapel (Episcopalian.) The IDF statement calling one of those the "Latin church" might have been the source of this mistake.

Unfortunately, the Vatican later added its own embellishments on the story:

The Holy See later republished [Latin Patriarch] Pizzaballa's report with further commentary through its official news agency, Vatican News.

"The Israeli military on Saturday entered the compound of the Holy Family Catholic Parish in Gaza, shooting at anyone leaving the church," the statement via Vatican News reads. "The victims are an elderly woman and her daughter who rushed out of the building to rescue her mother. Israel has justified the attack, claiming the presence of a missile launcher in the parish."

None of that is true! With all due respect to the Vatican, no one even made the accusation that there were IDF soldiers inside the church compound, at least not at first. This story gets more outrageous at each retelling.

Finally, the next day, the IDF announced the results of its investigation showing that it was not responsible for any deaths at the church, but it still wasn't as clear as it should have been:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has denied culpability over the deaths of two Christian Palestinian women who were reportedly killed at the Holy Family Parish complex in Gaza on Saturday morning.

In an emailed statement to CNA, the IDF said that it had received the letter “describing a tragic incident that took place in the Holy Family Parish.”

On Saturday, “representatives of the church contacted the IDF regarding explosions that were heard near the church,” the IDF said.

“During the dialogue between the IDF and representatives of the community, no reports of a hit on the church, nor civilians being injured or killed, were raised.”

“A review of the IDF’s operational findings support this,” the statement said.

The IDF did not respond to a follow-up query asking explicitly if the army was refuting or challenging the reports that an IDF sniper killed two women at the parish.

The Washington Post adds:

Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman from the Israeli prime minister’s office, also addressed the incident on Monday, asserting that “there was no fighting in the Rimal neighborhood on Saturday where this Catholic church was located.”

That is referring to the Holy Family church, which is in Rimal, not the church in Shejayia.

While the language could have been clearer, the IDF is saying that it did not do anything near the church where the Antouns were.

Which means that either the IDF is lying, or it was a Hamas or other Gaza sniper who murdered these two women.

Let's go back to the original report from the Latin Patriarchate. That memo gave no evidence that the sniper was IDF. No one saw the sniper. The Christians assumed that it must be the IDF - the Latin Patriarchate has a history of being viciously anti-Israel and of following the official Islamist line, and the churches in the region have all been quite antisemitic since before Zionism. Even when persecuted, they never publicly accuse Hamas of mistreating them. If the shooter was wearing a green headband and yelled :"Allahu Akbar" while shooting, Gaza Christians still would try to avoid blaming Hamas. We've seen plenty of stories about how frightened Christians are under Palestinian rule, and virtually all of them are anonymous testimony. They are very scared of their Muslim neighbors.

Now, which is more likely - that the IDF is sniping civilian Christian women, or that Islamists who hate Christians are using this war as an opportunity to not only murder Christians but to do it in an environment where everyone would blame Israel?

Israel has no reason to lie. The downside of being caught in a lie is far worse than admitting that they made a mistake, and the IDF has admitted to plenty of mistakes in this war and in previous actions. The IDF is very careful around churches. It makes no sense to think the IDF murdered the women, and the only evidence of that comes from "witnesses" who didn't see the sniper at all and whose testimony changes each time they speak.

Which means that Hamas, or another terror group in Gaza, murdered Nahida and Samar Antoun.

Is it really out of the question that Hamas fires at Gaza civilians? Just last week we saw video of armed Hamas members hijacking aid trucks and shooting towards their fellow Gazans.

When so much of Hamas' military strategy is based on making Israel look bad to the world which would then pressure Israel to stop fighting, why is it even strange to think that Hamas is capable and willing to sacrifice a couple of Christians if it helps them save their own skins?

In the end, there is no direct evidence we know of that shows which side killed the Antouns. Yet only one side gains from their being executed. That happens to be the side that has not a tiny vestige of morality. Either it was a horrible IDF mistake and the IDF is lying, or a deliberate Hamas murder where Hamas gains a great deal - newspapers around the world and the Vatican itself directly accusing Israel of the crime.

Which scenario makes more sense?

The women were murdered by Hamas or their allies. And Hamas wins because the world reflexively believes that every death in Gaza must be from Israel, without bothering to look at the facts critically and honestly.

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!

12/18 Links Pt2: How Hamas Turned Gazans’ Dreams Into a Nightmare; Peace Can Only Be Achieved by Destroying Hamas; Why DEI Must End For Good

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: How Hamas Turned Gazans’ Dreams Into a Nightmare

Hamas. The terror group’s takeover of the strip turned the intifada from a temporary murderous outburst into a governing strategy. We now see what resulted from the billions of dollars in aid that flowed into the strip since: the construction of a second Gaza underneath the first, this one open to the kleptocratic Iranian satraps only.

Second, Israel’s blockade of Gaza was Swiss cheese. It never stopped necessities from entering the strip and didn’t even prevent the importation and smuggling of non-essential goods. Hamas merely stopped anything and everything from reaching Palestinians. The blockade wasn’t useless, however: It slowed Hamas’s ability to construct a region-destroying terror infrastructure. The tunnel system revealed yesterday was clearly meant for a vehicle-dependent invasion resembling the Oct. 7 massacre. The only thing lifting the blockade would have accomplished is to enable more death and destruction in the same time frame.

Finally, the tunnels unquestionably vindicate the extent of the Israeli invasion post-Oct. 7. Any significant part of the tunnel network left operational increases the chances of all this happening again—the resource diversion, the war.

It needs to be destroyed or otherwise neutralized, and Gaza’s terrorists must know and so must the public. Israel has the opportunity now to close the book on Hamas’s generational theft of the Gaza Strip. Perhaps Hatem Abu Eltayef’s descendants will one day see the Gaza of their dreams, possible only once Hamas is out of their way.

Bassam Tawil: The Curious Case of the Biden Administration and Hamas

Hamas is currently fighting to keep on ruling Gaza and the opportunity to regroup, rearm and destroy Israel -- which is why it is pleading for a ceasefire. Hamas's eyes are now set on the Biden administration and the United Nations, which they hope will prevent Israel from stopping the Hamas reign of abuse.

Did anyone call for a ceasefire when the US was routing ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or demanded that the US end its military campaign by a certain date?

The Hamas official... is saying that Palestinian terrorism pays -- even the US administration is turning against Israel.

The grotesque irony, of course, is that -- no matter how careful Israel is to avoid civilian casualties -- the more the West blames Israel for civilian deaths, and the more Hamas will place civilians in the line of fire in order to keep the international community blaming Israel.

The Biden administration should be telling Hamas, not Israel, to minimize the number of civilian casualties. The real cause of these casualties, besides Hamas, is therefore actually the Biden administration, the United Nations and the international community: they incentivize Hamas to place their own people in harm's way to be killed -- the more the better -- so that everyone can then accuse Israel. The act of blaming Israel for the casualties that were orchestrated by Hamas is, in fact, what is causing them. Hamas can only be looking around and saying to themselves, "Hey, it's working! So let's keep on doing it!"

If Israel were engaged in "indiscriminate bombing," it would not have asked Palestinian civilians to move to safe zones. If this were a war against the Palestinian population, Israel would have bombed the Gaza Strip only from the air, without risking the lives of its soldiers.

The message Biden is sending to the terrorists is: Hold on, we are with you and we want to remove Netanyahu and his government from power.

[T]he mounting pressure by the Biden administration on Israel to end the war is a sign that the US does not want to see Hamas destroyed. Hamas is undoubtedly hoping to be rewarded for their October 7 carnage with an independent, Iran-backed Islamist Palestinian state right next to their "mark," Israel.

In Israel’s Time of Need, Jewish Hollywood Has Failed the Audition

I understand: publicists, many of whom are Jewish, are advising clients that supporting Israel may be perceived as racist. Taking a stand in defense of the Jewish state might result in forfeiting a backlot bungalow or jeopardizing a three-picture deal.

Maybe, but how can you live with yourself?

So, for anyone in the entertainment industry who still has a soul and maintains a massive social media following, instead of posting narcissistic inanities, consider this:

Now is the time to be proud of your Jewish nose. Now is the time to hang a mezuzah on your doorpost. Now is the time to interrupt conversations where a moronic social justice warrior libels Israel as an apartheid state. Now is the time to withhold checks to universities that see Jewish students as legitimate targets of the “resistance.”

Now is the time to do more reading about the Middle East and Israel’s place in it. Now is the time to determine whether your local elected officials are backing America’s ally rather than the enemies of liberalism, free speech, open inquiry, feminism, gay rights, the rule of law, and the very concept of western civilization, itself.

Now is the time to emulate Jewish celebrities like Bill Maher, a liberal Democrat who isn’t afraid to speak the truth about the barbarians at Israel’s gate.

Now is the time to let philosemites like Jon Voight and Paul McCartney know how much you appreciate them.

And Adam Sandler: It’s time for a new Hanukkah song.

We’re ready for your screen test, Hollywood. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, might be over, but don’t let it go dark.

Stephen Fry: I fought for Gay Pride - today we need to fight for Jewish Pride

Since October 7 there have been 50 separate reported incidents of antisemitism every single day in London alone, an increase of 1350% according to the Metropolitan Police. Shop windows smashed, Stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the Jewish neighbourhoods of Britain. Jewish people here are becoming fearful of showing themselves. In Britain, in 2023.

My Jewish grandparents loved Britain, believing that Jews were more welcome here than in most countries. I am glad they aren’t alive now to read newspaper stories that would have reminded them of the 1930s Europe that they left. They believed Britishness meant being fair and decent, but what can be more unfair or indecent than race hatred, whether antisemitism, Islamophobia or any kind?

So what is my message this Christmas? The simple truth that we are all brothers and sisters. It’s naive, but it’s as good a message as any other. At this time in the face of the greatest rise in anti-Jewish racism since records began, Jews should stand upright and proud in who they are. Standing upright means speaking up and calling out venomous slurs and hateful abuse wherever you encounter them.

Knowing and loving this country as I do, I don’t believe that most Britons are ok living in a society that judges hatreds of Jews to be the one acceptable form of racism. So speak up, stand with us, be proud to be Jewish or Jew-ish - or, if not Jewish at all, proud to have us as much a part of this great nation as any other minority.

And so this mad quintessential queer English Jew wishes you all peace, joy, and a very merry Xmas, formerly known as Twittermas. And now let’s all exhale that great sigh that Jews have sighed for thousands of years. Oy.

(This is an edited version of Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message, broadcast on Christmas Day)

Some more EoZ cartoons and memes

They just keep on coming....

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!

Here are ten of the basic facts about this war that the news media doesn't want to mention:

1. The conflict is older than Israel and older than Zionism. Arabs have held Jews in contempt since Mohammed.

The Quran includes the themes that Jews - as a whole - are "killers of prophets" and that they cannot be trusted to hold on to their side in agreements.

The Jews of Yemen wrote a letter to Maimonides in the 12th century asking for advice on how to deal with their persecution. His response included very pointed criticisms of how Arabs treat Jews throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The "kinot" - intricate poems chanted on Tisha B'Av, the Jewish fast day that recalls many historic tragedies - include oppression by Arabs of Jews. And some communities like the Tunisian and Moroccan Jewish communities wrote their own kinot about pogroms and attacks on their communities centuries ago.

19th century travelers throughout the Middle East often noted that the worst insult an Arab could hurl at another was to call him a "Jew."

All of these were before modern Zionism.

The Arabs don't hate Jews because of Israel. They hate Israel because of Jews. And all the talk about "Nakba" or "occupation" or "apartheid" are excuses for Arab hate created after the fact, not explanations of it.

2. You cannot assume the Palestinian side is rational. Their mindset is governed by an honor/shame mentality that is more important than what is best for Palestinians altogether.

The Honor/Shame psyche is a larger topic than I could do justice to in a tweet, but in short it means that some societies have a shame culture (much of the East) and some have a guilt culture (much of the West.) In a shame culture, one must do everything to avoid being dishonored (hence, "honor killings" of women who embarrass their fathers/husbands.) In a guilt culture, people take personal responsibility for their own actions, in a shame culture, the guilty party tries to hide their shameful actions.

Everyone likes to project their own feelings and attitudes onto others; after all, we are told to put ourselves into others' shoes before judging. But the two systems are utterly alien to each other, and both sides constantly attribute their own ways of thinking onto the other.

Israel's very existence is an intense source of shame. A small number of Jews, who were derided as weak and inferior, defeated Arabs in the one field they are most proud of: the battlefield. This is why 1948 was a "nakba," a catastrophe for the Arab world, and not just another of their many military defeats. They could handle being defeated by Christians since they were undoubtedly many and powerful, but Jews? The shame is unmeasurable. And the only solution is the complete destruction of Israel.

The good news is that this attitude can be changed. The UAE, Bahrain and to some extent Morocco have managed to look at Israel as a permanent fixture and a nation that they can cooperate with for mutual benefit - a corollary to shame/guilt is zero-sum/win-win thinking. But Palestinians have entrenched themselves in the failed shame culture, and to them, any Jew they kill helps restore their lost "honor."

The Palestinian sense of shame is twisted. One might think that the huge amount of aid that goes to Palestinians would be a source of shame - no one wants to be the permanent recipient of charity - but they reframe it as reparations that the world owes them for unjustly allowing Israel to exist.

Similarly, one might think that allowing so many Palestinians to remain stateless for 75 years would be a source of shame for the Arab world, but they again reframe it in their minds as "keeping the Palestinian cause alive." It causes untold suffering among millions of Palestinians, but it is presented as being for their own good.

And normal Palestinians cannot publicly complain about this mistreatment without showing public division and argument among themselves, which would itself be a source of shame. They need to pretend to be unified, and this is one reason the most extreme parties end up on top: anyone who is moderate is painted as a sell-out, a Zionist, a weakling, and that is a source of shame.

3. That same honor/shame mindset means that lying is acceptable - or even mandatory - when the truth is embarrassing.

Lying is a primary way to deal with shame when there is no other recourse. Admitting failure or defeat is the ultimate in shame so they must rewrite history, or even current events, to eliminate it.

Most Palestinians do not admit to wanting to murder Jewish women and children - so they make up stories that they were really murdered by Israel. Hamas doesn't want to admit that thousands of their fighters have died, so they call them all civilians and try to transfer that shame onto Israel, These lies are part and parcel of the Palestinian (and Egyptian/Jordanian/Syrian) world and I'm not even sure that the people who say these lies can even tell the difference between truth and lies anymore., it is such a part of their mindset.

4. According to surveys, Palestinians are the most antisemitic group on Earth. Not "anti-Zionist" - antisemitic.

See ADL Global 100 Survey (93%) and Pew 2010 (97%.)

5. Urban warfare is the most difficult warfare there is. The extensive tunnel system makes it perhaps the most difficult in history.

See Modern War Institute at West Point and Haaretz.

6. If Hamas survives the war, it is a major blow to the entire Western world's freedom.

Hamas' survival would be a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood, which would become more powerful in relatively moderate Arab states like Egypt and Gulf states. It could destabilize those states which would have major repercussions.

Iran is also invested in Hamas' survival, since from its perspective it has been steadily gaining influence (and surrounding Israel) with its "axis of resistance" including Hezbollah, Syria, and the Houthis.

Speaking of, the Houthi threats to the shipping lanes of the Red Sea is another threat that is directly related to Hamas' survival.

Hamas has already been caught in terror plots in Western countries.

The West (and moderate Arab states) simply cannot afford to allow Hamas to survive.

7. The only winner when Gaza civilians die is Hamas.

One of Hamas' major weapons in this war has been framing Israel as the aggressor and the immoral party. Hamas has been caught stealing aid, shooting at its own people, and purposefully placing its military targets with and under civilians. Its callous disregard for the lives of its own people is clear, but Western media downplays this, probably because it doesn't want to be accused of "Islamophobia" by nting how little Hamas cares about its own civilians.

Yet it is obvious. Palestinian textbooks and TV shows teach that "martyrdom" is their highest aspiration. They recruit children for fighting. Their summer camps are paramilitary training for even pre-teens. Dead civilians, specifically children, are major components of their public relations strategy.

8. Hamas' entire war strategy is based on Israel not wanting to kill civilians and willing to do anything to protect Israeli civilians. In short, Hamas views Israel's morality as its weakest attribute.

In previous wars, Israel has gone beyond international law to protect enemy civilians. Quote from two military war experts:

In the Authors’ opinion, use of lawfare by Israel’s enemies likewise shapes, whether consciously or not, Israel’s interpretation and application of the LOAC. In particular, Israel has adopted an inclusive approach to the entitlement to protected status, particularly civilian status. Examples include Israel’s positions on doubt, its treatment of involuntary shields as civilians who are not directly participating and its view that individuals who ignore warnings retain their civilian status. Although these positions might seem counterintuitive for a State that faces foes who exploit protected status for military and other gain, such positions are well suited to counter the enemy’s reliance on lawfare. In this regard, Israel’s LOAC interpretations actually enhance its operational and strategic level position despite any tactical loss. Along the same lines, in many cases, the IDF imposes policy restrictions that go above and beyond the requirements of LOAC.

Israel has spent billions on shelters, on missile defense systems. It has traded 1000 prisoners for one hostage. Arguably, it has hurt its own security by pulling its punches in previous wars.

In this war, Israel has still been adhering to international law but it has not gone as much beyond as in the past in its goal to destroy Hamas. But Hamas built its defense strategy around Israel's previous concern about public relations and reluctance to go after key Hamas positions inside civilian areas. That's why Hamas has deliberately built its key defenses behind civilians, inside hospitals (see Kamal Adwan hospital videos from the past couple of days showing armed terrorists dressed as civilians, and weapons hidden in a NICU.) And of course it took hostages to get Israel to release murderers and other terrorists. Hamas built its entire defense system to maximize civilian casualties if Israel goes after Hamas itself.

9. Palestinians - West Bank and Gaza, Fatah and Hamas - overwhelmingly support murdering Jews. A huge majority have supported the most heinous specific terror attacks. And they overwhelmingly do not support a two state solution, except as a stage to destroy Israel.

Support for terror in the abstract has always bounced between 45-60%; support for specific terror attacks have always been huge majorities of 3-1 or 4-1. ... 84% supported the Mercaz Harav massacre in 2008, 77% a 2008 suicide attack that killed a woman in Dimona, 80% supported the wave of stabbing attacks in 2014 including the murder of four rabbis in Har Nof.

All sources are in this post of mine:

10. The IDF is a professional army. It doesn't act out of revenge or fury. Every move it makes is for a specific military purpose and every attack has a specific military target in mind.

So many articles in the media claim Israel is acting out of "revenge." Armies don't work that way unless they are led by dictators.

The IDF, like any professional army, has layers of policies and procedures. It has more lawyers giving input into every operation than any other.

Yet major media falsely claim that Israel wastes resources on attacking cemeteries or civilian buildings that have no military purpose. It's absurd to think all those layers of bureaucracy would approve coordinated, expensive operations just to act like toddlers acting out.

See here and here for two examples of how the New York Times doesn't even understand the basics of how the military works.

And note that the vast majority of people with actual battlefield experience have nothing but praise for how Israel is prosecuting this war. The critics are people who know next to nothing about how an army works.

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12/18 Links Pt1: Standing up to the American colossus; Moshe Dayan and the Ghosts of Gaza; Jerry Seinfeld lands in Israel in show of solidarity

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Moshe Dayan and the Ghosts of Gaza

Funeral orations have a special place in the history of great speechwriting. Battlefield eulogies have an advantage within the genre because of the drama inherent in the story, so it’s no surprise that Pericles’s funeral address for the casualties of the Peloponnesian War is often invoked, despite being two millennia old.

Eight years after the founding of the modern state of Israel, its revered military figure Moshe Dayan gave what is still his country’s most famous battlefield eulogy—one of its most famous speeches of any kind, in fact—that over the decades has attained in Israel the mythic status of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. And it is a speech that a great many Israelis are rereading or rewatching these days, because it warned the courageous Jewish pioneers on the Gaza border that their living dream could only be sustained by an ice cold realism. It was delivered in Nahal Oz, the same Nahal Oz that was infiltrated by Hamas murderers on Oct. 7. And its occasion was a murderous infiltration from Gaza 67 years ago. Dayan’s speech could have been written after Oct. 7 but was in fact written to prevent an event like Oct. 7 from happening.

Roi Rotberg was 13 during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 when he volunteered as a messenger for the soldiers fighting for the Jewish homeland. He was 21 when he was killed by Arab gunmen from Gaza. As Nahal Oz’s security officer, he rode out to the fields regularly to chase away Arab thieves coming from across the border. When he did so on April 29, 1956, he rode right into a trap and was shot. Gazans dragged his body to their side of the border, badly mutilated it, and returned it to the Israeli side.

Dayan’s eulogy for Rotberg gets compared to the Gettysburg Address because it was brief yet powerful, a statement of national purpose and identity amid tragedy, and a searing indictment of complacency. Israelis must look at themselves through Gazan eyes, he told those gathered. In 1956, many of those in Gaza were refugees from the war. Not only did they fail to exterminate the Jews, but the Jews had clearly been accepted by the soil itself in their ancient homeland. And so, Dayan said, “Not from the Arabs of Gaza must we demand the blood of Roi, but from ourselves.” Jews have forgotten, he lamented, that the youth of Israel carry the burden of “the heavy gates of Gaza, beyond which hundreds of thousands of eyes and arms huddle together and pray for the onset of our weakness so that they may tear us to pieces.”

Without security and vigilance, the Jews of Nahal Oz could not plant a single tree because “beyond the furrow that marks the border, lies a surging sea of hatred and vengeance, yearning for the day that the tranquility blunts our alertness, for the day that we heed the ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call for us to lay down our arms.”

Caroline glick: Standing up to the American colossus

Insisting that this “diplomatic solution” is a viable alternative to war, the administration is demanding that Israel do nothing to physically secure its territory from Hezbollah terror forces and missiles.

As for Iran, the United States showed its continued subservience to the idea that Iran is a responsible regional power last week when it unfroze another $10 billion in Iranian revenue, which had been frozen under U.S. sanctions. Since Oct. 7, the United States has enabled the transfer of $16 billion to Iran.

Sullivan’s interview last Thursday with Channel 12’s Yonit Levi was a sterling example of how the administration obfuscates its hostile policies towards Israel. While speaking emotionally about how Hamas’s attack was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Sullivan gave no clear answers to any of Levi’s questions about U.S. support for Israel’s war goals. When she asked him whether the United States was demanding that Israel limit the timeline for its war against Hamas, Sullivan spoke of the need to target Hamas’s terror masters and limit bombing. When Levi asked whether the United States would reject an Israeli determination that it must militarily degrade Hezbollah’s military power on the border, Sullivan insisted that the United States believes there is a diplomatic solution to the Hezbollah threat. And when Levi asked whether Israelis should be concerned that the United States may refuse to provide Israel with sufficient ammunition to win the war, Sullivan said that he had just checked to see where congressional approval of Biden’s request for $14 billion in military assistance stood. He didn’t mention that it still hasn’t been approved.

As Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute wrote on his X account, the interview displayed “what the rhetorically-artful national security advisor openly admits, what he tries to dress up as more attractive than it is, and what he hides entirely.”

Why is the United States leveraging its position as Israel’s primary arms supplier and diplomatic shield at the United Nations—that is, its position as Israel’s ally—to compel an Israeli military defeat at the hands of Iran and its proxies, in a war that Israel rightly views as an existential conflict just as fateful as its 1948 War of Independence?

The answer is politics.

As the war in Gaza has progressed, President Biden’s political problems have multiplied. To win next November, Biden needs to secure the coalition of Democrats and Independents that elected him. But that coalition is split over the war. Most Independents support Israel. But according to a Wall Street Journal poll, 25% of Democrats support Hamas over Israel and only 17% of Democrats support Israel over Hamas. (Forty-eight percent of Democrats support Israel and Hamas equally). To win the election, Biden needs to rebuild his coalition and he can only do this by ending the war. And he can only end the war by forcing Israel to stand down, and so lose.

Israel doesn’t have to accept this state of affairs. According to a Harvard/Harris poll, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enjoys significantly more public support in the United States than Biden himself. Israel itself is supported broadly by 81% of Americans. The Harvard/Harris polling data has several internal contradictions, but the thrust of the data makes clear that Israel enjoys the support of a broad cross section of American society, including key Biden constituencies.

If Israel stands its ground and refuses to buckle to the administration’s bullying tactics, and if Netanyahu explains Israel’s position in a way the American public can understand, it will be able to maintain the support of the majority of Americans for its war effort and compel the Biden administration to stand with the Jewish state as we prosecute this life and death struggle to victory.

Hen Mazzig: Calling for a Ceasefire Is an Antisemitic Demand That Jews Endorse Our Own Genocide

One can criticize Israel without being antisemitic, the pro-Palestinian faction says. I agree with that statement. But calling for a ceasefire at this juncture is not criticism; it's a dogwhistle, a demand that Jews to lay down and accept the attacks against them.

Calls for ceasefire also conveniently ignore the connection between Israel and Jews. Zionism is a movement for the re-establishment of the Jewish nation of Israel following centuries of Jewish diaspora. Formally established in 1948, Israel became a beacon of hope for Jews worldwide experiencing persecution.

My own family exemplifies this reality. Concurrent with the Holocaust in Europe, Jews in the Middle East faced violent dispossession just for being Jewish. My Iraqi grandmother was just a child in 1941 when she experienced the Farhud, a two-day pogrom against the Jewish population of Baghdad. During these days of antisemitic violence, my grandmother witnessed her best friend being raped and murdered in the streets of Iraq, just for being Jewish. Meanwhile, Tunisian Jews like my paternal grandfather were conscripted to detention camps and forced labor in a gulag, where conditions were barbaric.

Even though we and the world have seen all this before, Israel nevertheless committed to a ceasefire on November 21, an agreement that included an exchange of all hostages taken on October 7 as well as Hamas putting a stop to all missiles launched into Israel. Predictably, Hamas began firing rockets into Israel fifteen minutes into that ceasefire. They also slaughtered four Israelis on Nov. 30 in Jerusalem, and continued attacking Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

To those with genuine hearts who just want the suffering and carnage to stop, know that I am with you. I understand the hurt you are feeling and pray every day for an end to this war so we can begin the difficult process of healing and peace.

As hopeful as I am, I am also realistic: Hamas started this war on Oct. 7, and the only thing that guarantees an end to all the pain and suffering for Israelis and Gazans is for Hamas to lay down its weapons and release the 135 hostages.

Pressuring Israel, which is on a rescue mission to release its citizens from captivity and bring a group of barbaric death agents to justice, will do nothing to bring peace of mind to humanity or peace to the region.

I am certain that this is clear to many of those calling for a ceasefire. But much like the chant "from the river to the sea," the calls for "a ceasefire" have turned into another thinly veiled euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish state that is meant to fool the American public.

The New York Times profiles the poor, innocent Al Astal family - who have been Hamas leaders for years

From the NYT:

A ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, said early last month that more than 100 people in the Astal family alone had been killed in Israeli attacks. Of 88 family members on the Oct. 26 list, 39 were identified as children and 25 as women.

After a detailed profile of the Astal family suffering, the Times manages to throw in:

A few of the family’s dead were linked to Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years and that led the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

One family member, Hamdan al-Astal, appears to have been among those who attacked Israel. He was not on the Oct. 26 list, but Palestinian news media in Gaza reported his death the day after the assault, saying he had participated.

Another family member who survived, Yunis al-Astal, is a longtime Hamas lawmaker and firebrand sheikh who has compared Jews to bacteria and apes and said it was justifiable to “wipe them out of existence.”

Ten days after Hamdan al-Astal’s death was reported, family members buried Ramzi al-Astal, also identified in Palestinian news media as a Hamas fighter.

The article makes it sound like the al-Astal family only had a few, peripheral Hamas members. But it isn't true.

The al-Astal family has been a leading Hamas family for decades.

I found a 2008 article I had translated that described the first Hamas tunnels being built, under schools and under Hamas member homes. Clearly, any Hamas member with a tunnel under his home is a major figure. Here's what the article said:

Hamas has been digging a tunnel under the house of one of their Qassam Brigades commanders named "Ismail Astal", leading to the ground under Khalid Hassan Secondary School for Boys in Khan Younis and a branch to a school for boys in Bani Suheila. Another branch leads o the house of a Qassam leader Omar Al-Astal, this tunnel will continue to the house of another named Abdel Hamid Al-Astal. All these tunnels under the ground connect with each other.

The Hamas militia dug a tunnel in the house of another person named Ashraf Fahmi Al-Astal, an executive officer of the Hamas, and branches go to the Farhana School for Girls near the police station in Khan Younis and then to Haifa prep school for girls will go to the house in charge of internal security of Hamas in the south

That is four major Hamas leaders in 2008 named al-Astal who were important enough to be among the first to have their own personal tunnels.

In 2014, at least two terrorist Al Astals were killed: Ashraf and Muhammad.

And if you do a search on mujahadeen "martyrs" from Gaza named al-Astal, you see plenty of people -not only Hamas but other terror groups as well.

Ahmed Muhammad Mahmoud Abdel Qader Al-Astal

Khaled Salim Al-Astal

Qassam Brigades Field Commander Ismail al-Astal

Ammar Farid Tawfiq Al-Astal (Fatah, died in a 2019 "work accident")

Muhammad Musa al-Astal, who apparently died in a tunnel accident.

Major Hamas leaders attended his funeral.

(I see a number of Islamic Jihad Al Astals as well but the website with their photos is down.)

The family originally comes from Iraq. They emigrated to Egypt in the 16th century and at one point the sultan wanted land they owned for a planned mosque in Cairo, and he compensated them with large land holdings in Gaza, "because Palestine at that time was almost an uninhabited desert," so the family owns a decent part of Khan Younis.

The al-Astal family was proudly in the forefront of the 1936 riots against the Jews and British, as well as in the 1948 war.

The family is well known in Khan Younis as being Hamas leaders today. The New York Times, pretending to be even handed by mentioning a couple of them as Hamas members, is hiding the real story - this is a family that has led Hamas for years.

And every al-Astal woman and child killed was a human shield for their terrorist relatives.

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Israel is fighting a completely different war since the ceasefire

The Economist published this map of structural damage in Gaza. Light pink is before the ceasefire, and darker red is since the ceasefire.

Even at a glance, one can see that Israel's targeting is much different now.

If you compare this with a satellite map of Gaza, you see that most of the damage since the ceasefire has been outside of crowded residential areas. Most seem to be aimed at industrial districts and what appears to be farmland. (I imagine tank damage might count as structural damage as well.)

The Economist maps seems to be slightly off when comparing their streets with the satellite, but this section near a curve in Wadi Gaza where there is heavy damage is illustrative.

Here's the satellite image of the area:

The apparent target north of the wadi is the Al Zahraa Chalet hotel and a structure next to it.

What appears to be happening is that as Israel gathers more and more intelligence, especially from captured terrorists, it is discovering many more specific targets that Hamas uses. As its intel improves, the need for heavy bombing to collapse tunnels decreases, since now the IDF can target specific tunnel entrances - very likely under a hotel - or weapons caches.

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An op-ed in Al Jazeera by Mahmoud Abdel Hadi tears off what little mask it might have ever had that it was only "anti-Zionist."

Regarding Biden’s statement which he repeats constantly and with determination, "If there was no Israel, we would have to create Israel," but in the course of the genocidal war led by the Zionist-American alliance against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is proven day after day; The truth is the opposite, and the most accurate sentence in expressing this relationship is (If there had not been a United States, the Jews would have had to create it), which is consistent with the facts of history regarding the birth of the United States of America, and its relationship with the Freemasonry movement, in which the Jews had the largest role establishing and leading it.....This is the truth that we always run away from, for fear of being accused of a conspiracy theory, or of calling for a defeatist tendency in front of the Jewish minority that controls the most powerful country in the world, and even many other Western and non-Western countries.

Hadi's evidence is, frankly, hilarious.

The rise of Jewish influence in the United States

The history of Jewish influence in the United States is very similar to its history in other ancient and modern Western countries. We can quickly go through the history of Jewish influence in the United States. The Jewish presence there was linked to the early colonial campaigns in North America in the 16th century AD, before the United States declared its independence, and it was not long before large numbers of Jews immigrated there. The Jews of Europe came in the middle of the 19th century AD, and their number reached about a quarter of a million by 1840 AD.. They were involved in trade, industry, banking, banking, cinema, media, literature, art, and others.

Yes, we cannot discount the Jewish movie moguls of the 1840s.

There's no pretense here of "anti-Zionism." The most popular Arab media outlet is unabashedly antisemitic, and half a billion Arabs consume pure Jew-hatred regularly.

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What you can learn from Gaza tunnel steel doors

The IDF released this video showing construction of Gaza tunnels (h/t Adam)

The video gives a small indication of how much Hamas has invested in building these huge, extensive tunnel networks.

One small part of that that struck me are the many steel doors that Hamas placed in strategic locations to make any Israeli attack much more difficult.

These are custom built doors that are effectively the same as bank vault doors.

Where does Hamas get them from?

I couldn't find any mention of steel doors in the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism site that monitors all legal imports into Gaza. And chances are even if a Gaza bank would request such an item, Israel would have rejected it as a banned dual-use item.

Which means that Hamas owns or pays major steel works industries in Gaza to build these doors.

The same goes for the steel tracks that the tunnels use for moving material.

The tunnel industry is not only underground. The support for the tunnels - ventilation, heavy digging machinery, furniture, lighting - are all set up aboveground and then brought down. It isn't only Hamas members doing this, but regular Gazans who need jobs being paid by Hamas for terror support.

To Hamas, all of Gazas' local industry is a support structure for their terror operations. Anything they do that is legitimate is simply a cover for their main goal of murdering Jews.

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