Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Even If (Most Of) What Detractors Say About The Founding Of Israel Were True …(Andrew Pessin) (Part 1 of 2)

Guest post by Andrew Pessin: (Subscribe to his free substack)

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“I was forced to leave my study group because my group members told me that the people at the Nova music festival deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.”

--M.I.T. student Talia Kahn on her campus environment

1. 2023 and 1948

It may be 2023 but campus responses to October 7 show that, for many, it’s still 1948.

Many campuses exploded in outright celebration of the barbaric violence, the enthusiasts typically invoking, by way of justification, the massacre’s “context” or “root causes” (in Israel’s “occupation,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” etc.) and the legitimacy of “resistance” to those evils “by any means necessary.” Even many who didn’t quite “celebrate” the violence invoked the same by way of explanation quickly bleeding into justification. And many of those who remained silent about October 7, too, were no doubt thinking the same when they said things such as “I need to learn more about this complex situation before rendering judgment.” Now normally after watching armed men tie up a mother and father and three small children and burn them alive you don’t need to “learn more” to determine who the bad guys are, but hey, it’s “complex.” I’ve argued elsewhere that that silence amounts to complicity, to borrow the popular expression many progressives apply everywhere except to themselves: you’re in favor of October 7 or you’re against, in other words, and silence entails the former.

But now this shocking campus response itself has its own “context” and “root causes.” In my view the twenty-year-long campus Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) campaign of lies against Israel combined with the more recent expansion of progressivism (aka Critical Race Theory, DEI, Wokeism, etc.) has amounted to a campaign to delegitimize and dehumanize not just Israeli Jews but all Jews; and the clear success of that campaign explains why so many are somehow unable to see that the torture, mutilation, rape, and murder of babies, children, women, pregnant women, the disabled, and the elderly is a straightforward moral atrocity constituting a mass terror attack. If every Jew is fundamentally guilty, then their torture and murder is not merely permissible but even obligatory; if every Jew is guilty, then nothing you do to the Jew can make the Jew a victim.

So what does this have to do with 1948?

The dehumanization campaign above in fact ultimately rests on the premise that the 1948 establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the State of Israel was a massive injustice. For consider: if that establishment were perfectly just, then the efforts to prevent it then and the 75 years of nearly continuous “resistance” to it since, whether military, terrorist, diplomatic, cognitive, or other, would be unjust. In turn, many of the measures that Israel has taken over the years that detractors cite as “root causes” above—as Israel’s “oppression” of Palestinians, as mechanisms subserving its “occupation” and “apartheid,” etc.—would be seen not as illegitimate aggressive measures of domination but as legitimate reactive measures of self-defense. Take just two examples, the security barrier along western Judea and Samaria and the blockade on Gaza instituted after Hamas took power there by an illegal violent coup. Detractors call the former an “Apartheid Wall” and say of the latter that it makes Gaza an “open air prison.” But to those who see the establishment of Israel as just these are legitimate defensive measures justified by the unremittent preexisting violence directed toward Israelis by Palestinians.

If Jewish sovereignty there is legitimate, in other words, then Jews are ordinary human beings with ordinary human rights including the right to defend themselves, by walls or blockades as need be. But if Jewish sovereignty is not legitimate then Jews are simply evildoers who, per campus dehumanization, lack even the basic human right to defend themselves, and all such measures become aggressive mechanisms of an unjust occupation. On this view every Jew is guilty and therefore worthy even of the atrocious harms of October 7, including the babies, and Hamas is not a genocidal Jew-hating terrorist group but “freedom fighters” fighting for “decolonization.”

If 1948 is just, in short, then 2023 is a terrorist atrocity; if 1948 is unjust then 2023 is political liberation.

So 2023 really still is about 1948.

This point has actually been clear for some time. Those who follow the campus scene know that the anti-Israel movement long ago gave up on the demand merely for a Palestinian state alongside Israel in favor of undoing Israel entirely. The popular chant, “We don’t want two states, we want 1948!,” states that about as clearly as can be. But it took October 7 to see how profound and visceral that demand is, as it manifested itself in the celebration of the slaughter. For them, the massive injustice of 1948 means that the Israeli Jews of today have it coming to them, as the M.I.T. student above quoted her antagonists.

Clearly Israel advocates need to double down on disseminating their “narrative,” the one grounded in the long Jewish history in this land, and on finding ways to do it that will break through the ideological fortress that BDS and progressivism have established on our campuses.

But here I sketch an alternative, complementary strategy.

2. Grant Them (Most of) What They (Falsely) Claim

Let’s for the moment (falsely) grant the detractors what they claim, or most of it, namely that the establishment of Israel was an injustice: per their narrative, that Jews were “settler-colonists,” outsiders who, via “ethnic cleansing,” took over the land that became the State of Israel.

Even if so, I suggest, the campus anti-Israel movement of 2023 is morally objectionable. And once we see that this movement—that aims to undo the Jewish state “by any means necessary,” to “dismantle Zionism,” to remove its supporters from campuses, with events, talks, panels, conferences such as this one numbering in the thousands across hundreds of campuses in recent years—in fact is morally objectionable, then we can begin to see it for what it actually is: a campaign of dehumanizing hate that grotesquely leads its proponents to see the mutilation and mass murder of Jewish children as the moral high ground.

3. The Child As a Metaphysical and Ethical Fresh Start

Let’s start with a repulsive practice that occurred for a while soon after October 7: activists not ripping down the posters of Israeli hostages but instead replacing their “Kidnapped” headings with the word “Occupier.” There was a photo of a sweet little kidnapped three-year-old girl, for example, labeled as an “Occupier.” A three-year old who was born in this land, very probably to parents who were born in this land, very probably to parents who were born in this land, and so on, possibly stretching way back.

In contrast consider how refugees and immigrants are considered in pretty much any other country in the world. Someone moves to Canada, and maybe in time becomes, feels, is a Canadian; but their children are largely raised as and feel Canadian, and certainly their grandchildren. Three of my own four grandparents immigrated as refugees from Russia to the United States, and my parents, and certainly I myself, feel as American as can be. One or two generations is more than enough, generally, for assimilation and ultimately legitimation. Anyone who claims otherwise—who tells the children or grandchildren of an immigrant that they don’t belong here—would instantly and correctly be branded a racist.

Well, those who put the word “Occupier” on the photo of a three-year old are saying that no matter how many generations her family may have lived in this land, even if her family is one of those whose roots trace back two or three thousand years, then she can never belong there.

They may as well put a target right on her head—as Hamas in fact did.

Now what, exactly, is so repulsive about this practice, beyond its obvious racism? It’s that that little girl is entirely innocent, she cannot be blamed, for anything that may have preceded her in this world. She is simply not responsible for the alleged sins of her parents, or of her grandparents, or great-grandparents, any more than the small child of a Hamas member is responsible for his parent’s terrorist activities. Nobody is responsible for what anybody did prior to their own birth. Nor is it her fault or responsibility that she was born when and where she was.

A child, a new generation, is fresh start, a “do-over” in the most profound metaphysical and ethical ways.

Keep this child in mind as we next consider the question of how to rectify large-scale historical injustices.

4. On Rectifying Large-Scale Historical Injustice

Take your pick for an example; there is no shortage of historical injustices. Obviously, unfortunately, we have no time machine, no way to literally undo the event or retroactively prevent it. Uncountably many innocent lives have been lost and shattered in every terrorist act or war, but there’s just no way now to make Sept 11 not have happened, or the Vietnam War, or World Wars II or I, or the American Civil War, or the French Revolution, or the 30 Years War—or the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (which, curiously, is pretty much the only major historical event that large numbers of people around the world ever even express interest in undoing).

So that’s off the table.

The next best thing would be to compensate those individuals who actually suffered the injustice. But if the injustice involved their death that’s also impossible; and unfortunately for those who survive the injustice, they die off too as the event gradually sinks into history. If there are ways to identify and compensate any remaining survivors of specific concrete injustices, by all means have at it.

The most plausible mode of rectification for some large-scale historical injustice, then, is to compensate not the individuals who suffered the injustices but their descendants. And that’s where things immediately get tricky.

First, from whom, exactly, should they get their compensation? Presumably from descendants of those who perpetrated the original injustice. But a child, we just saw, is a fresh start, a “do-over,” who cannot be held responsible for the sins of her forebears. It seems very unjust to demand recompense from someone who is in no way responsible for the injustice in question.

Nor, though it’s more complex, is it obvious that the descendant of the original victim should actually be entitled to anything, period, especially as the generations go on. If a new child is not responsible for the sins of her ancestors, neither is she deserving of any of the merits or blessings of the ancestor; nor is she automatically entitled, by virtue of being born, to restitution of something that may have once belonged to them or compensation for something that may have happened to them. Obviously where there is some concrete property in question and a relevant enduring legal system in place there may be laws governing inheritance and restitution, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. The fact that something unjust happened to my grandparents or they were unjustly deprived of something does not automatically mean that I am owed anything. I didn’t suffer the loss, after all, and nothing was taken from me; I was born long after, into the new reality created subsequent to the loss—a fresh start.

Of course an objector might imagine here a counterfactual such as, “Well, if the loss hadn’t occurred then I would have been born into a better situation, so I did after all suffer the loss myself.” If so, then she might be entitled to restitution or compensation.

Perhaps, but this objection opens up a whole set of problems. Once you open the counterfactuals then almost anything goes. If the loss hadn’t occurred then many things would have been different, a whole other course of life would have ensued, and who can know what that may have included? Perhaps in this new course of life your grandfather would have been hit by a truck or died of a heart attack and never sired your parent, so you would never have been born—but if you owe your very existence to the loss you can hardly claim that the loss harmed you! Or perhaps if the loss hadn’t occurred you would have ended up far worse than you in fact are, so the loss actually improved your condition. Millions of people have become refugees and ended up resettling elsewhere, where their children, or grandchildren, eventually end up with much better lives than they would have had had the ancestors stayed put. Even if we grant that the historical loss resulted in a negative outcome for you, it’s not clear that that outcome can be blamed entirely or even maximally on the loss itself. In the case of the Palestinian refugees, for example, even where we grant that their contemporary conditions are poor, should we blame those conditions on the 1948 war—or on the 75 years of their mistreatment and mismanagement since, at the hands (for example) of the refugee agency UNRWA and the many Arab states who resisted their rehabilitation and resettlement?

Moreover, why isolate and emphasize only that single counterfactual concerning your grandfather? What if your grandfather himself had acquired the thing in question by some unjust means? Or inherited it from people higher up the ancestral ladder who had done so? As you go up the ladder there are surely many injustices to be found, perhaps in great quantities, particularly given the long history of human warfare across the globe. If you insist that the descendant of the person who stole it from your grandfather doesn’t have rightful claim to it, then what happens to your grandfather’s claim to it if he only had it because one of his ancestors had stolen it from another? Shall we go all the way back to the 7^th-century Muslim Arab conquest of the Land of Israel, which took the land ultimately from (say) the descendants of the 1^st-century Roman conquest of the Land of Israel, which took it from the Jews? Shouldn’t we in that case give it all back to the Jews, or the descendants thereof? If we insist on “root causes,” shouldn’t we go all the way back to the roots?

So, yes, maybe you would have been born into a better situation had one particular injustice not occurred—but you equally might have been born into a worse situation had all sorts of other older injustices not occurred. If you are contemplating counterfactuals and thus undoing history, justice requires undoing them all.

If your grandparents did something unjust to my grandparents, then, that does not automatically give me a claim against you: you didn’t do anything, and I didn’t suffer anything. More broadly, the fact that one community did something unjust toward another community does not entail that all future generations of the latter have any legitimate claims against all future generations of the former. In fact if we go quantitative and acknowledge the enormous growth in the relevant populations over time, then it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that demanding compensation from later descendants of the original injustice-doers would end up perpetrating against them an even greater injustice than the original one their ancestors perpetrated. And it could hardly be just to demand the rectification of some historical injustice by means of some even greater contemporary injustice.

Let us repeat that point:

It is not just to demand the rectification of some historical injustice by means of some even greater contemporary injustice.

5. Still Not Convinced?

Even if you still have some intuition that later descendants of injustice-victims should have such claims, trying to accommodate those claims would literally be both impossible to do and a formula for disaster. If we inherit both the sins and the claims of our ancestors then we will live in a perpetual Hatfields v McCoys world in which everyone ultimately has a claim against everyone else. World history both distant and recent features massive injustices on inconceivable scales; as Arab intellectual Hussain Abdul-Hussain has put it on social media, everybody’s grandfather lost something, so everybody will have various, multiple claims to compensation. Even restricting ourselves to the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict (IPJAMC), even where we’re (counterfactually) granting that the Jews came from outside and took over via ethnic cleansing, who exactly were these perpetrator Jews? In the standard anti-Israel narrative these Jews came from Europe—whence they fled overwhelmingly as refugees escaping the massive injustice of persecution and pogroms. A simple glance at 19^th century European antisemitism, culminating in mass-murderous pogroms of 1881 and 1903 among others (not to mention in 1930s Germany and the Holocaust), will easily demonstrate that. In addition to these Jews of course were the hundreds of thousands who fled Arab and Islamic persecution and pogroms across the Middle East and North Africa, leaving many lives and much property behind. These Jews were all victims of injustice, even if, on the anti-Israel narrative, they then victimized the innocent Palestinian Arabs. How can one demand today’s Israelis compensate today’s Palestinian Arabs without also demanding that most Middle East and North African countries compensate the Israelis? Throw in the fact that many Arabs themselves emigrated from those countries to Palestine in the 20^th century and they, and/or their immediate relatives, may well even have participated in the persecution of the Jews who fled those countries. So today’s Palestinians also owe something to today’s Israeli Jews!

Everybody’s grandfather lost something. To look backward, to maintain and pursue all those claims, is only a formula for propagating violence and instability.

All the more so when we step a bit closer to reality, acknowledging the actual long history of Jews in the Land of Israel and remembering that at the time of the U.N. Partition proposal’s passing in November of 1947 there were zero Palestinian refugees. Zionism itself, in other words, displaced no one. There was, in fact, room enough for everyone in Palestine, until the Arabs launched the civil war and then the multi-Arab-army international war. In the process one percent of the Jewish population lost their lives, tens of thousands were injured, Jews were ethnically cleansed from those parts of the land that Egypt and Jordan conquered, and so on. So even if the Jewish immigration into the land (which displaced no one) were itself an injustice, consider the disproportionate injustice then perpetrated against them in the murderous military and terrorist activity that followed. If the Arab descendants of 1948 have a legitimate claim against the Jews of 2023, again, then surely the Jews of 2023 have similarly legitimate claims against their contemporary Arabs.

So there may well have been some massive injustice in the past. But it’s literally impossible to undo that injustice, and any efforts to compensate for the injustice will only perpetrate further, almost surely greater injustices, if not directly sink the region into the pre-modern Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all, in which everybody loses.

Everybody’s grandfather lost something. And so unless we accept the idea that every new child is a fresh start, then everybody has a claim against everybody and all is lost.

(part 2)

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!

12/20 Links Pt1: Benny Morris: The Road to Israeli Victory Runs Through Tehran; Noa’s Fate and Israel’s Survival; The Shame of the Anti-Israel Cowards

From Ian:

Benny Morris: The Road to Israeli Victory Runs Through Tehran

Yesterday and the day before, the IDF conducted multiple air and artillery strikes on Hizballah forces in Lebanon, as the Iran-backed group continued to attack northern communities with missiles and explosive-bearing drones. The Houthis, Hizballah’s Yemeni counterparts, have meanwhile continued their blockade of the Red Sea, with exceptions liberally made for tankers carrying Iranian oil. While Washington has spoken of its commitment to keeping the sea lanes open, and dispatched naval forces to the area, it has not yet taken the sort of decisive military action that will be necessary to solve the problem.

Surveying the threats the Jewish state faces, Benny Morris paints a grim picture of its strategic situation. He is nonetheless convinced that there is “a way out.”

For decades, Iran’s fundamentalist regime has used its militias to undermine Israeli and American interests in the Middle East. So far, Tehran has gotten away with it. Fearing a wider and more apocalyptic confrontation, both Washington and Jerusalem have largely refrained from retaliating against Iran proper, generally confining their attacks to its proxies.

It is high time that this changed. And recent events may well inspire President Biden, and even the routinely hesitant and fearful Prime Minster Netanyahu, to strike at the heart of the problem, Iran itself. The facilities operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the organization responsible for the projection of Iranian power in the region, are known targets; as are Iran’s naval and air bases and underground nuclear installations, which, thankfully, have not (yet) yielded an Iranian nuclear weapon. Attacks on these assets would be morally justified and long overdue. By the time Iran finally does have the bomb, it will be too late.

Such action against Iran would not bog America down in a ground war—a prospect that, thanks to the U.S. experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, has little appeal in Washington. Instead, the aim would be to have the superiority of American and Israeli air power—backstopped by their anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense capabilities, as a means to inhibit retaliation—serve to persuade Tehran to stop promoting murder and mayhem in the Middle East.

This may be the only way to bring true peace to Israel. When seen on a map, the threats facing the Jewish state appear to come from all points of the compass. But trace them back to their source, and each leads back to the same address.

New force movements suggest US and UK strikes against Houthis increasingly likely

Alongside a U.S.-led naval task force that includes British, French, and Spanish warships, the Washington Examiner can report that the United States and the United Kingdom have moved other sensitive air and naval assets near Yemen. These movements indicate preparation for possible strikes against Houthi forces in that country.

Closely aligned with and supported by Iran, the Yemen-based Houthis have in recent weeks launched several attacks on civilian shipping vessels in the Red Sea. These attacks have led numerous shipping and energy companies to divert their vessels around the southern tip of Africa, adding significant time and cost to their operations. Amid mass disruption to international shipping flowing through the Red Sea, London and Washington may have concluded that limited use of military force is required to target Houthi positions.

The Washington Examiner is not disclosing the identity of the military forces now positioned closer to Yemen, but they include both strike and supporting platforms the deployment of which has not publicly been disclosed. It is public knowledge that the Eisenhower carrier strike group is operating off the Yemeni coast. Its embarked carrier air wing includes four F/A-18 fighter squadrons and an electronic warfare squadron. Other U.S. Air Force combat aircraft are also close by. It is also public knowledge that Britain's Royal Air Force also has several Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets stationed out of a base in Cyprus. It is unclear whether France would join in any strikes against the Houthis, but it also has limited forces positioned to do so.

Top line: It is increasingly likely that the U.S. and U.K. will carry out strikes against Houthi targets inside Yemen in the coming days.

Richard Kemp: Israel’s Existential Campaign to Destroy Hamas

“Hamas wants to maximize the death of its civilian population. The purpose is to get the international community, the United Nations, the United States, other governments around the world, to condemn Israel, to vilify Israel, to delegitimize Israel, and undermine the Jewish state in that way.”

On December 8th, Colonel Richard Kemp, a highly decorated veteran of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns throughout the world, joined Merion West contributing editor Jonathan Church for an in-depth discussion about the war in Gaza. Colonel Kemp is a retired officer in the British Army. He has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, and Northern Ireland. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his work in cultivating intelligence in Northern Ireland. He is the author of Attack State Red, a 2009 book about his experience as a soldier in Afghanistan and described as an “unputdownable account of a British battle group on the offensive.” He currently spends his time as a writer, commentator, consultant, and speaker on topics such as leadership, security, counterterrorism, defense, and intelligence. In their discussion, Colonel Kemp and Mr. Church discuss the November 24th to November 30th Israel-Hamas ceasefire, the hostage deal and its aftermath, the Jericho Wall document, strategic and tactical aspects of the ongoing war, and the humanitarian crisis.

A video version of this conversation can be found at the bottom of this page. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Since Israel has resumed its [military] operations [on December 1st], does Israel confront a strengthened or refreshed Hamas? How much damage has Hamas sustained in the war so far, in terms of infrastructure, weapons, planning ability, manpower, and all of that?

I think Hamas has not gained a great deal from the truce that occurred for a short period of time. Obviously, it wouldn’t have hurt them. They were very enthusiastic to have this ceasefire, to give themselves time. I think their expectation, their hope, was that sufficient pressure internationally would be applied against Israel so that the fighting would not resume. I think that was their plan. That obviously hasn’t worked.

The IDF is now back in action and doing severe damage to Hamas. I think we’re beginning now to see the signs of the collapse of Hamas. Yesterday [on December 7th], there were a large number of prisoners captured. People surrendered to the IDF. At least a battalion-sized group of Hamas terrorists surrendered to the IDF. We’re hearing reports also of ordinary citizens in Gaza turning on Hamas.

Now, that doesn’t ordinarily happen. I don’t know how accurate the reports are. But, if it’s true, then it does indicate that Hamas has been severely weakened to the extent that citizens can be emboldened to attack a group that has basically oppressed and intimidated them for many, many years. So, I think a lot of damage has been done.

I would suggest 7,000 or so Hamas terrorists have probably been killed, but the figures have not been released yet. But it’s going to be something of that order—I would think—during the conflict, possibly more, possibly a few less, but clearly a great deal of damage.

Former British Army officer Colonel Kemp, says Ben Wallace has been "badly misrepresenting and slandering" Israeli Defence Forces.

"By alleging IDF war crimes like this without any basis, he encourages the Jew hate that's been gripping London."@JakeBerry | @COLRICHARDKEMP pic.twitter.com/UXdTNQ9O1X
— TalkTV (@TalkTV) December 20, 2023

The Hamas ministry of health released a statement this morning in response to the video of Kamal Adwan Hospital director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot admitting that Hamas militants control the hospital, uses their ambulances and offices for military activity.

They claim that Kahlot's statement was given after he was tortured, writing on Facebook:

In the face of a new chapter of ongoing crimes targeting the health sector, the occupation forces destroyed large parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrested the hospital director, intimidating and coercing him to give the story of the occupation under the force of beating and torture, we would like to clarify the following:

Their explanation pretty much admits a great deal that Kahlot said!

1. Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot works within the cadres of the Military Medical Services, which is an official body affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and within the approved components of the Palestinian National Authority.

So the hospital is run by the Hamas military.

2. The rank of brigadier general is a job rank in the medical services apparatus affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, and it is a known and applicable rank throughout the world.

They admit giving Al-Kahlot a military rank within Hamas.

3. The presence of official components and bodies inside the hospital, such as medical investigations and official agencies affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, came as a result of the destruction of the infrastructure of these agencies and the search for a place that provides the necessary work requirements, and they are approved agencies within the structure of the Ministry of Interior.

So the Hamas Ministry of Interior - which is responsible for police and other security services - really did have offices in the hospital. (They don't say what everyone knows: the Hamas police are also largely members of the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.)

4. What was stated by Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot was under the force of oppression, torture and intimidation, and we call on all human rights institutions to denounce this criminal behavior practiced by the occupation against our people in general and against health work crews in particular to extract a story consistent with the occupation’s demand, and to extract this testimony under threat. Publishing it in audio and video is a war crime in itself.

There you have it. Using hospitals as military sites isn't the war crime - posting video of the hospital director admitting it is the real war crime!

We call on human rights institutions to open an urgent investigation into the Kamal Adwan Hospital massacre, where children were besieged without water, without food, without electricity, and without water for extended days, which ended with the bombing of the hospital, the killing of two women and two children among the patients, and the injury of dozens. This was followed by storming the hospital and arresting dozens. Of the displaced, the sick, the health personnel, the brutal assault against them, the digging up of graves, the demolition of the hospital, the crushing of bodies under the tracks of tanks, and other horrific details.

Translation: We have to get the narrative back!

The problem is, they probably will. The media is always willing to give Hamas the benefit of the doubt while casting aspersions on everything the IDF says. Which is, really, a form of antisemitism, to say that Jews are suspected of lying with everything they say, even when compared to terrorists who celebrate murdering women and children.

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!

Times of Israel reports:

The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabaliya has revealed in a Shin Bet interrogation that his northern Gaza hospital was turned into a military facility under Hamas’s control and that at one point, it had housed a kidnapped soldier.

In footage published on Tuesday by the Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces, hospital director Ahmed Kahlot could be seen telling an Israeli interrogator that Hamas had offices inside the hospital and used it as a base for operational activity.

According to Kahlot, who said he has been a lieutenant colonel in Hamas since 2010, some 16 members of the hospital’s staff — including doctors, nurses and paramedics — were Hamas operatives serving in the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the terror organization.

He added that several members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also employed in the hospital.

Here is his statement:

Kahlout was widely quoted by the media for two months. Now that we know he is Hamas, we can assume that a large percentage of his statements that helped shape world opinion were propaganda.

So what has the media quoted a Hamas official as if he was a dedicated medical professional?

AP quoted him November 7 defending how casualty numbers from Hamas' health ministry are trustworthy.

“Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent,” said Ahmed al-Kahlot, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. “More than anything, we are medical professionals.”

The Guardian, November 12:

The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.
“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.
More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.

The Guardian, November 22, quoted him again:

The hospital had received more than 60 bodies with over 200 injured since last night, he added. “The medical teams are very tired. We don’t have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights,” he said
In another message distributed by the health ministry, Kahlout said the hospital was using cooking oil rather than diesel to run the hospital’s generators, and an ambulance targeting the wounded had been struck near the hospital grounds.

CNN, December 11, quoted him as saying that the maternity ward was hit by tank shelling, killing two women and leaving two more so badly wounded their legs required amputation.

Pravda, December 12:

"Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital. ...The IOF targeted the hospital's water system, and we had to rely on groundwater. No electricity, water, or food in the hospital. The IOF shelled the maternity ward. Three children in the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen. "

Every quote from every medical professional in Gaza since October 7 is as suspect as Al-Kahlout's. But there was no skepticism about his accusations - until now.

Now that he is telling everyone that Hamas controls the hospitals and ambulances, the Times of London has lots of reservations about his statements:

Israel has sought to justify arresting scores of medical staff in Gaza by posting a video that purports to show a hospital manager confessing to working for Hamas.
Ahmed Kahlot, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained last week along with 70 other medical staff.
The release of the video was condemned by pro-Palestinian groups, who said there was no justification for publishing interrogation evidence obtained under unclear conditions without the presence of a lawyer.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks earlier in the conflict working in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, said the Israelis were taking these actions because their attempts to show al-Shifa had been used as a command centre had failed.
“The Israelis plan to have show trials to justify the attacks on hospitals, because the whole narrative on al-Shifa was so ludicrous,” he said.

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!

IDF footage taken inside a Hamas tunnel

Times of Israel reports:

The IDF releases footage of troops of the Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit operating inside a Hamas tunnel in Gaza City.

The Shaldag soldiers operated inside the tunnel to scan it and obtain intelligence.

The IDF says it has discovered some 1,500 tunnel shafts in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, and is working to demolish them.

It says that the vast majority of the tunnels have been found in civilian sites, including schools, mosques, hospitals, UN buildings and residential homes.

Here's the video the IDF released:

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari expanded on this Tuesday:

We are deepening the fight against Hamas's strongholds. Our forces are fighting above and below ground. Since the beginning of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, IDF forces have discovered approximately 1,500 terrorist tunnel shafts and tunnel routes of Hamas. It's important to explain that this underground infrastructure is one of the main elements in Hamas's terror operations. Dismantling Hamas's underground strongholds in the north, center, and south is a significant step in dismantling Hamas, and it takes time, and our forces are working to carry this out.

Today, we released special footage of special forces from the "Shaldag" Unit of the Air Force fighting inside a Hamas tunnel in the heart of Gaza City. These new breakthrough capabilities allow us to achieve significant accomplishments, including killing terrorists underground. These are networks of terrorist infrastructure, above and below ground, located within hospitals, residential apartments, and schools.

The forces are deepening their operation in the area – destroying weapons, terror tunnels, and killing terrorists. A thorough operation to dismantle Hamas from its capabilities.

In southern Gaza, in the Khan Yunis area, we are intensifying and deepening our operation; we added a whole brigade and additional engineering forces to the operation in the area – engineering forces to improve our engineering operations in the area. We are intensifying forces in the Khan Yunis Hamas’ strongholds to dismantle Hamas and will continue to do so with determination wherever required.

This is significant. Up until now, the IDF had avoided actually going into tunnels to fight - for good reason. They would be at a tremendous disadvantage.

However, to dismantle Hamas which can hide in tunnels indefinitely as long as they can steal food and fuel, something has to be done. The IDF is obviously not going into detail on what these "breakthrough capabilities" are but apparently they came up with effective means to fight Hamas on its own home turf.

Robots? Drones? Dogs? Digging their own tunnels that can bypass Hamas' reinforced doors? Imaging that can penetrate the earth? I don't know what the IDF has up its sleeve, but given that it is trying to kill Hamas while rescuing hostages, let's hope that this works.

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12/19 Links Pt2: How U.S. Public Schools Teach Antisemitism; Hamas Sees Peace as Weakness; Jerry Seinfeld meets with freed hostages, families of abductees

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Our False Partners

In the early decades of the 20th century, a number of social democrats who were committed to liberal values thought that Soviet communism shared their basic goals. Some believed this so fervently that, when they traveled in the USSR during the darkest moments of Stalin’s terror, they came back full of glowing reports. They were so desperate to believe in the communist utopia that they failed to see its millions of victims.

Today, the ideological blinders of many progressives make them as insensible to Hamas’ atrocities as those naive liberals were to Stalin’s.

It is time for liberal Jews to accept that neo-Marxist social movements only appear to be our allies. They speak of equality but perpetuate discrimination. They speak of freedom but seek to subjugate the “privileged.” They speak of justice but will use any means necessary to promote their warped ends.

Some people believe that as we fight against antisemitism, our goal should be to prove to progressives that Jews belong in the ranks of the oppressed, that not all of us are white and privileged. But why should we accept the premises of a corrupt and corrupting ideology that stands against the most basic liberal values?

We need not push ourselves into organizations whose ideology denies our equal rights and moral worth. And we must not abandon our Zionism or deny our identity in order to fight for a better future, because this so-called better future will then be rotten from the core.

Instead, we should carry on our own traditions with pride. Jews have a noble history of fighting against racism and injustice. In continuing to do so, without compromising who we are, we will find our true allies.

Now more than ever, Jews must both embrace our unique mission and reaffirm core liberal values. Without the former, we have lost our compass, our reason to carry on as a people. Without the latter, no one—not only Jews, but all individuals and minority groups—will be safe from the destructive effects of totalizing ideologies and the wishful thinkers who support them.

Jewish Voices for Hate

However, the rabbis and Jewish organizations who at best stood silent and at worst gave a platform for people calling for the destruction of Israel also bear partial responsibility for today’s explosion of vile antisemitism. The same holds true for Jewish institutions that refused to recognize anti-Zionism as antisemitism.

Numerous Jewish organizations partnered with groups such as Black Lives Matter, which from its earliest days perpetuated the falsehood that Israel is an apartheid state. Others, like J Street, consistently hosted anti-Zionist speakers who advocated for boycotting Israel; last week, the organization “demanded” that Israel change its conduct in the war against Hamas.

If all Jewish organizations, rabbis, and community leaders had taken a stronger stand against the delegitimization of Israel—by condemning groups like JVP, IfNotNow, Bend the Arc, and other organizations that claim to be “Jewish” yet ignore history and promote anti-Israel vitriol—then perhaps such lies and disinformation would not have spread among some in our community, let alone in our country.

Today, the chickens have come home to roost. Young people are aligning with Hamas, and even Jewish students are comparing Hamas’ murderous attacks to the Jewish freedom fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Holocaust survivors, whose tormentors I helped to track down, have tragically lived to see young people, including their own descendants, tweeting—from the safety of some coffee shop in Brooklyn—Hamas propaganda against Israel. These young people didn’t simply absorb these dangerous ideas from the ether. In addition to hearing it at their universities and in the general interest media, some heard it in their synagogues and in their Jewish community centers and from Jewish organizations—so eager to appear fashionable and progressive that they legitimized people calling for their own destruction.

To reverse the growing movement to destroy the one and only Jewish state, the rabbis and Jewish leaders who allowed BDS and anti-Israelism into the “Jewish tent” must take responsibility for this misjudgment, and change course—with conviction and principle. We could not afford to make this mistake last time. We certainly cannot afford to do it again.

How U.S. Public Schools Teach Antisemitism

Ever since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, pro-Palestinian protests have swept U.S. colleges, leading to charges of Jew-hatred and a disastrous congressional hearing where three college presidents failed to offer a clear moral condemnation of rising antisemitism.

But the ideology fueling these demonstrations isn’t limited to the college campus. It now begins in public high schools and even elementary schools as early as pre-K, according to more than 30 public school teachers, administrators, and parents across four states who spoke to The Free Press.

American youths aren’t just encountering the views on TikTok; they’re learning them from teachers and, in some cases, from the mandatory public school curriculum itself. Take California, where a 10th grade history course, approved by the Santa Ana Unified School District, includes readings that call Israel an “extremist illegal Jewish settler population” and accuses the country of “ethnic cleansing.” Or the Jefferson Union High School District near San Francisco, which teaches about the “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.”

The root of these lessons stems from California’s new “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” (ESMC), which passed in 2021 and mandates lessons on the marginalization of black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American peoples, emphasizing how they are oppressed by a white oppressor, says Brandy Shufutinsky, the director of education and community engagement for the Jewish Institute of Liberal Values.

“It’s a Trojan horse to institutionalize antisemitism in California schools,” Shufutinsky said.

Meanwhile, more than one million secondary school students in all 50 states are learning about history and the Middle East from the Brown University Choices Program, which openly accepts funding from Qatar, the wealthy Arab state now harboring leaders of Hamas. A strong pro-Palestinian bias shines through in Brown’s teaching materials. Israel, according to multiple lessons, is a “Zionist enterprise in Palestine,” an “apartheid state,” a “settler colony,” and “a military occupier.”

These ideas have profound consequences. A Harvard Harris poll from this month found that 67 percent of people aged 18 to 24 believe that “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors,” compared to 44 percent of people aged 25 to 34; 24 percent of those aged 45 to 54; 15 percent of those 55 to 64; and 9 percent over 65 years who say the same.

In the New York City public school system, which educates more than one million students, the indoctrination began as far back as 2018, when it was codified in a new curriculum called the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework (CRSE), sources said. The CRSE seeks to mold students into citizens who “have a critical lens through which they challenge inequitable systems of access, power, and privilege.”

While New York City’s CRSE does not explicitly refer to Jews or antisemitism, its teachings have led to a belief that “Jews have to be categorized as white and oppressors,” said Shufutinsky.

According to the oppressor vs. oppressed narrative, “the only reason Jews as a minority could be overrepresented in positions of prestige is because they must have oppressed somebody,” Shufutinsky said. “And if you accept that people who’ve achieved success only got it through ill gain, then of course, it’s going to fuel Jew-hatred.”

That hatred was on full display in the hallways of Hillcrest High School in Queens on the morning of November 20.

Israel Hayom (Hebrew only as of this writing) reports that on Monday, a member of the Belgian parliament, Nadia El Youssef, said rabbis call for the rape of Palestinian women.

She made the accusation to the Israeli ambassador in Brussels, Idit Rosenzweig-Abo.

The ambassador was astonished, saying, "Rabbis call for the rape of Palestinian women? This is the first time I have heard such a thing, unless there is a problem with the translation."

El Youssef said " I think it is important that we have all the facts, so that we can be as objective as possible and we can think about what we can do from here."

It sounds a lot like other antisemitic accusations through the years, like Israeli rescue workers stealing organs, and then the antisemites say they are just calling for an "investigation" which would make people think that where there's smoke, there's fire.

There is really no lie too outrageous for today's antisemites to hurl. But cumulatively, they work, and cause people to hate Jews - which is the entire point.

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A @NYTimes op-ed misleads about Palestinian polls

I follow Palestinian public opinions polls about as closely as anyone, so when I read something that is out of whack with what I've seen, it requires investigation.

The New York Times published an op-ed by R. David Harden and Larry Garber titled, "The U.S. Must Embrace Palestinian Statehood Now."

My immediate reaction when seeing that title was "Why reward Palestinians for overwhelmingly supporting the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?" But the article pretends to give an answer:

Opponents may raise the moral hazard argument: Why should Washington reward Palestinians for bad behavior? By recognizing Palestine, however, the administration would demonstrate that it does not view all Palestinians as Hamas sympathizers. In fact, according to pre-Oct. 7 public opinion surveys, a majority of Palestinians said they preferred to live in an independent country at peace with Israel. A U.S. policy in support of that desire, including commitments to help rebuild Gaza and to improve the quality of life there, would give the population an incentive to choose new leaders who would work toward achieving the long-deferred Palestinian dream of independence.

The link they give for public opinion surveys goes to a paywalled article in Foreign Affairs, which makes the same claim: "Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side."

There is no link to the actual survey. They say this about it: "Arab Barometer’s survey of the West Bank and Gaza, conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy, provides a snapshot of the views of ordinary citizens on the eve of the latest conflict. " It is not published on the Arab Barometer website.

Based on previous Arab Barometer surveys, it appears that the question asked was, "What solution do you prefer for ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?" In 2022, 52% said a two state solution.

But the same pollsters PCPSR asked Palestinians in September 2023, "Do you support or oppose a two-state solution?" and the answers were only 32% supported and 67% opposed.

The difference is that in the Arab Barometer survey, the people were given only four choices: two state, one state for Jews and Arabs together (8%), a confederation between Israel and a Palestinian state (6%) and "other" (28%) The bulk of the "other" responses were for a single Arab state without Israel.

However, we know from other polls that when given that choice of a single Palestinian Arab state and no Israel, compared to two states, the vast majority (75% in November) prefer the single Palestinian Arab state from the river to the sea. In other words, this Arab Barometer poll was rigged against asking Palestinians what their favored solution is, and made them choose between things they didn't want.

And the pre-October PCPSR poll shows with its other questions that Palestinians do not want to live in peace with Israel. Even when asked for the best way to achieve a two state solution, the majority said "armed struggle."

But the problem with the article, by pointing to the older polls, is more fundamental. A plurality of Palestinians today indeed support Hamas - by a huge margin. And a large majority hates Fatah with a passion, looking at the group as corrupt and incompetent. It is the height of stupidity, and actually a bit derogatory, to think that the US recognizing a corrupt government would give it more legitimacy for Palestinians.

In short, this article was written to shoehorn half-facts and nonsense into the authors' predefined wishes. Every single time anyone says "if you do this action, the Palestinians will respond with goodwill" they have been wrong. .

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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.

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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.

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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)