Media in Turkey accused the government of increasing its trade with Israel in recent months. This prompted a strong denial.
The Ministry of Commerce stated that the claims that exports to Israel have increased do not reflect the truth.
The statement pointed out that"trade with Israel is not limited to the Jewish region of Israel. It also includes trade with the 2.2 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, as well as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, which are under Israeli occupation There are 8 million Palestinian Arabs in Palestinian territory. There are 7.2 million Jews living in the territory of Israel. All goods going to the Palestinian region have to pass through Israeli customs and ports under the name of Israel."
According to the information provided in the statement, while Turkey's total trade with Israel was 2.32 billion dollars in the period of October 7 - December 31, 2022, this figure decreased by 45 percent in the same period of 2023 to 1.28 billion dollars.
Yes, there has been much less trade since October 7, but until then Turkey's exports to Israel have been consistently increasing.
It is probably past time for Israel to act like others act towards her: cut off all trade with Turkey as long as it hosts and supports Hamas terrorists.
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It’s hard to understand what Israel is going through without taking measure of the yawning chasm between Israel’s patriotic citizenry and its progressive elites. For most Israelis, a powerful instinct of self-preservation kicked in on Oct. 7, and they responded with the rage and determination one would expect from a healthy society. Israel’s progressive elites also responded as one would expect: Regaining their balance after the initial shock, they fell back on their usual wariness of patriotism. For them, the instinct of self-preservation itself is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
This chasm has vast political implications, though it’s not, itself, strictly political. This is why it can be elusive. But it was captured with force in a one-minute-and-47-second excerpt from a TV interview. The interview with Galit Valdman, the mother of IDF Major Ariel Ben-Moshe, who fell on Oct. 7, was conducted by journalist Ilana Dayan. A screenwriter could not have done a better job of conveying so much about Israel’s current state of mind with so little dialogue. It’s worth looking at closely, line by line.
Ilana Dayan is the unrivaled star of Israeli highbrow broadcast journalism. She’s the anchor of Israel’s most influential investigative journalism show, Uvda (Fact), roughly equivalent to CBS’ 60 Minutes. She embodies the spirit of Israel’s progressive elites not just in the views she expresses but also in her persona. She wears sparse makeup and rimless glasses, and she sports a crisp Ashkenazi, modern Israeli accent, which flows softly and effortlessly in well-formed sentences. But not so much this time.
Granted, it’s never easy to interview the close relatives of recently fallen soldiers. The media’s hunger for the sensational is at odds with ordinary decency, and it is a delicate act to straddle the contradiction. But Dayan is a true master of the genre. With her unassuming appearance and soft demeanor, she bestows a veneer of journalistic dignity on what is, in fact, media voyeurism. She therefore did not start this conversation as so many others may have, with a hushed “So how are you?” Rather, she signaled awareness of the danger of vulgarity. “Is there any point in asking you how you are?” she said.
Valdman, who seemed to sense where this was going, just said, “Yes.” So Dayan went ahead.
Ilana Dayan: How are you?
Galit Valdman: Very proud.
That answer was clearly unexpected. Dayan hoped to elicit a display of emotions. But she didn’t miss a beat, coming back with what sounded like a subtle reprimand:
‘Caliphators’ advocating for the global triumph of Islam see Western values as signs of weakness and decadence. A new book argues that too many Western thinkers, championing progressive liberalism, insist on proving them right.
When it’s all over, when Israel is gone, the Jews are gone, the world as we thought we knew it is gone, this is the book people will read in order to understand what happened. Landes is a medieval historian, an expert on millennial apocalyptic movements, which gives him a unique perspective on current affairs. This book attempts to bring you into that perspective and, to the degree that it is successful, suddenly everything might look different to you, like the gestalt switch in perceiving the ambiguous image, the beautiful young woman suddenly yielding to the crone. Once seen, however, you can’t unsee it, and you will now see so many current events through its lens, including the October 7 massacre by Hamas.
And it will terrify you.
Or at least that’s its aim.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book saw October 7 coming from a mile away. But since it is too deep and wide-ranging to do it justice in a short review, I will just highlight a few points, noting only that Landes supports everything with extensive documentation from a wide variety of sources, including Islamic texts historical and contemporary, public media across the Islamic world including sermons, and scholarly lectures and works. In short, it aims to turn everything you think you understand about the Jews, Islam, and the West upside-down—because it exposes how “lethal [activist] journalism” inverts reality in the ways it portrays these issues and conflicts, which in turn informs the left-leaning, progressive mindset largely in charge of Western policymaking. In so doing the book argues that we have been profoundly and dangerously misled by the Western mainstream media, which turns out, in the end, to be working in service to a globalist Islamist movement that in fact seeks to destroy not only the Jews but the West, including those same media.
So, can “the whole world be wrong” about Islam and its relation to the West in general, and about the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular that is at the heart of this book (or as I prefer to call it, to highlight its complexity, the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict)?
Landes writes:
As a result of a confluence of intellectual trends (postmodernism, postcolonialism, anti-Orientalism …) the role of honor-shame motivations in key [Arab] decision-making in this conflict since the Oslo Accords has been systematically ignored. Indeed the entire ‘Peace Process’ was predicated on the rational, positive-sum assumption that, offered the right deal, the Palestinians will say yes. As a result, scholars and policymakers alike have ignored abundant evidence of a limbic captivity to honor concerns among Arab patriarchal elites.
So begins not merely an ordinary strategic analysis of the conflict but something more like a theoretical exegesis. Landes takes the reader through the “premodern mindset” of “zero-sum honor,” which produces a contemporary “Caliphator” apocalyptic millennial movement, one which believes that “in our day, in this generation, Islam will triumph over all other religions and establish a global Caliphate.” He contrasts that with the modern Western enlightened “positive-sum” mindset that produces the familiar liberal values of individual autonomy, freedoms, and rights, mutual toleration and respect for differences, the embrace of self-criticism, democracy, egalitarianism, pluralism, negotiation, concession, and compromise, with peace as an ultimate value. In painstaking detail he shows how Western “cognitive egocentrism” (we assume Islamist non-Westerners share our own values) and Western postmodernism (with its affiliated intellectual trends such as critical race theory) produce a literally deadly combination of “premodern sadism” (the violent hostility of the premodern mindset toward the “other”, i.e. us) and “postmodern masochism” (the Western self-critical tendency to find its own Western culture to be the most evil culture of all), in which, in effect, Western thinkers and policymakers end up allying themselves with Islamist Caliphators—against themselves. And thus when Caliphators violently attack Western democracies—Landes documents numerous attacks, large and small, in the U.S., England, France, Spain and elsewhere in the past two decades, not to mention in Israel—the dominant response of these thought leaders is to blame the democracy.
The journalist John Pilger died last week. He became so notorious for skewing his reports to fit his preconceived agenda that his behaviour gave rise to a new word: to Pilger, which its originator, Auberon Waugh, defined as “presenting information in a sensationalist manner in support of a particular conclusion.” Now Pilger is no longer with us, the verb needs updating.
It’s obvious really, isn’t it? To BBC. There are so many examples of this that we could fill an entire issue, let alone this one column. But when it comes to BBCing stories, nothing beats the BBC’s attitude to Israel — and, indeed, to Jews.
Remember how it covered the attack on Jewish children in Oxford during Chanukah in 2021, when the BBC repeatedly and baselessly accused one of the victims of making an “anti-Muslim slur”, so it would seem he was somehow to blame? The coverage was entirely BBCed.
The very next month, in January 2022, the BBC’s reporting of the Beth Israel shul siege in Texas, when a rabbi and three other Jews were taken hostage, was also thoroughly BBCed. It refused to mention any notion of antisemitism being a factor in gunman Malik Faisal Akram’s actions, citing only his supposed mental health problems.
The reporter then carefully BBCed President Biden’s reaction, saying — correctly — that, “The US president has described what happened here as an act of terror” but omitting Biden going on to label it as an antisemitic attack. The omission was not merely striking; it was grotesque.
As for the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s military action against Hamas — it’s difficult to find a report that hasn’t been BBCed, such as when its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen reported that the Al-Ahli hospital had been flattened when it had not been touched.
Or when Jon Donnison said after an explosion at the same that, “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes”. Except it wasn’t an Israeli airstrike, it was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket — and it wasn’t in the hospital, it was in a car park.
Jordan's Al Ghad news site discusses the book, “Jerusalem: Hijacked History and Forged Antiquities,” written by Professor Dr. Issam Sakhnin. It looks like the book was actually published in 2020.
It is a publication of the Jordanian Royal Commission for Jerusalem Affairs.
The book goes through a history of how Jews have fabricated their history of the land, Jerusalem, and the Temple. Finally it purports to show how every major archaeological find that proves Jewish control of Jerusalem is a modern forgery.
Unfortunately, the reviews show no photos of these supposed forgeries.
Sakhnini concludes the book saying that no history has ever been subjected to Jewish theft that the ancient history of Palestine was subjected to, and thus Zionism actively sought to silence it, considering that a necessary condition for owning it, and thus owning the present and the future, and for monopolizing the land that is the geographical framework of that history. In these robberies, Zionism reaped a valuable spoil by granting it a right to present Palestine, based on an alleged history, and in recognition of its possession of the place on which a state was created.
Apparently, the entire Temple Mount itself must be a forgery. Looking at its walls, you can see how it was expanded at every stage of its being built in during the Davidic dynasty, during the time of Zerubbabel, in the Hasmonean period, and the Herodian period. This site describes and shows it all. And it all happened way before Mohammed.
This is an old claim, but it becomes no less outrageous over time.
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Kfar 'Aza, January 4 - Scientists have determined that the appropriate units of measurement until narcissistic visitors from abroad begin photographing themselves in flattering poses in front of the locations where two months ago, Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip perpetrated the deadliest and most brutal attack on Jews since the Holocaust, will be months, rather than years or decades.
Observers have noted the much-decried, mostly-teenage phenomenon in which tourists visiting the museum in Poland that marks the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex - where Nazis and their collaborators murdered 1.5 million people, mostly Jews - take selfies in irreverent or inappropriate fashion, as if the site were Disneyworld or the Grand Canyon, rather than hallowed ground. Experts now expect the distasteful practice to expand to other sites of mass murder, especially where the victims were mainly Jews.
"The Nazi death camps are established historical sites," noted social psychologist Husana Vabbitch. "The major sites in Poland are state-run museums, with organized programs and facilities and reputations going back decades. The 'Gaza Envelope' where the October 7 massacres took place will take some time to grow into destinations for commemorative visits. Still, it's become the hot thing among politicians, celebrities, and influencers to be seen traipsing around either the NOVA festival venue or one of the affected Envelope communities. Anybody who's anybody has to post images of themselves in helmet and flak jacket, looking concerned or resolved at the carnage Hamas wrought. It's a tiny conceptual and phenomenological leap from there to posing in some other demonstrative way, including duckface or a two-handed 'peace' gesture. I give it a month."
The only reason the narcissistic phenomenon has not already occurred, experts believe, is that the Gaza Envelope remains a closed military zone. Continued missile and mortar bombs threats from the Gaza Strip have emptied even the homes of many survivors of Hamas's murderous, rapacious rampage. Entry to the zone requires IDF approval, and experts assume that restricted access protocols to the area will continue to apply as long as the current IDF ground offensive in the Gaza Strip persists. Israel's official position is that operations will continue until the 130 remaining hostages return to Israel, and until Hamas surrenders its weapons and its control of the territory - which could, in theory, happen tomorrow, but more likely require at least several months to achieve.
Influencers have already begun seeking sponsorships and product promotion arrangements for visits to the Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip, with an eye toward exploiting the stories of carnage and brutality for online clout.
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We aren’t even three months after the attack that took more Jewish lives than any day since the Holocaust, and we’re already seeing the limits of the United States’ patience with the Jewish State’s war on those who were responsible. Unfortunately for Israel, the United States was one of the most patient countries in the world at the outset.
If Biden refuses to show moral leadership, we may witness the same backsliding in the US as was visible from the Spanish and Belgian governments in late Novemeber. Holding a press conference at the Rafah Crossing minutes before the appearance of thirteen hostages, Prime Ministers Alexander De Croo and Pedro Sánchez demanded a permanent ceasefire while drawing attention to the entry of aid trucks into Gaza.
Despite the fact that Belgium and Spain took no part in talks for the hostages’ release, they inserted themselves into the situation minutes before the exchange was about to take place, risking the entire transfer. Their contemptible bid for attention was more important to them than the safe return of over a dozen hostages. The wider world may have moved on from this stunt – but it’s one that Israelis will never forget.
The increasing impatience of the Biden administration, compounded by international hostility towards the Jewish State, is an important reminder of why exactly Israel exists in the first place. As international conflict sparks around the globe, it will be easy for those in the State Department and media to turn their attention elsewhere. But Israel, as always, has no choice but to continue their fight.
A decisive victory in the complex campaign against Iran and its proxies requires a clear outcome in Gaza. This war has been forced upon Israel, and it began under extremely difficult opening conditions. For that very reason, both Israel and the U.S. must end it in victory. This means Israeli control at the end of high-intensity fighting over the entire area, including Rafah and the Philadelphi Route on the border with Egypt.
Ending major combat operations before this goal is achieved will allow Hamas to claim that it forced Israel to effectively change its war goals and will encourage its supporters who set themselves the goal of ensuring Hamas' survival in Gaza. As long as Hamas is perceived by the population as a governing entity, it would be able to claim it had won.
It is also important to drive home the message in talks with the U.S. that defeating Hamas requires creating a reality that will not allow terrorists to rear their heads. Gaining control over the entire area will also give Israel the necessary leverage to release the captives. The Americans' stated desire to avoid getting dragged into a regional war and have Israel end major combat operations even before completing the takeover of the entire Strip encourages Iran and its proxies to continue to gradually escalate their use of force, in the hope that the U.S. administration will stop Israel.
Defeating Hamas and convincing the U.S. that this is also a war over the regional and global order are key in the effort to create a new security reality along the northern border that will give residents a sense of security and allow them to return home. This is the condition to secure shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait. And this is the condition to promote efforts to establish normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
What Israel’s critics continually fail to acknowledge is that it is surrounded by groups that have pledged to destroy it. It has faced overt genocidal threats not only from Hamas in Gaza, but also from Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Such threats are not empty words. Since the 7 October pogrom, Hamas has shelled Israel from inside Lebanon, no doubt in collusion with Hezbollah, and it has units operating in the West Bank. Hezbollah has also been firing across the Lebanese border into Israel for months, while the Houthis have launched missiles and drones from Yemen.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all part of what Iran calls its ‘axis of resistance’ in the Middle East. These are armed Islamist groups that are allied with, although not necessarily controlled by, the Iranian regime – a regime that has itself threatened genocide against Israel. This is why the media talk of Israel’s ‘escalation’ is absurd. Israel is already the target of concerted military attacks on multiple fronts.
From Israel’s perspective, the most imminent risk is that Hezbollah steps up its attacks and launches an all-out war across the Lebanese border. There probably will be some kind of Hezbollah retaliation for the al-Arouri assassination, given the attack was carried out in an area of Beirut that it controls. But Israel has apparently concluded that the risk of a much larger conflagration is limited at present. According to a study by a think-tank with close links to the Israeli security establishment: ‘Despite Nasrallah’s interest in continuing the fighting and confining the IDF to the north as long as the war in Gaza continues, he is still not interested in the situation deteriorating into a broad war with Israel at the current time.’
In any case, Israel probably felt it had little to lose from its aerial strike in Lebanon. Not least as Hezbollah has already pledged to carry out genocide against Israel. On 8 October last year, the day after the Hamas pogrom, Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, praised the mass killings. He went on to tell viewers of Al-Manar TV to: ‘Just imagine when these images repeat themselves one day, but on a scale dozens of times larger – from Lebanon and from all the areas bordering with occupied Palestine.’ This was a pledge to kill tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, regardless of what actions the Israeli government takes.
The skewed discussion of the al-Arouri assassination follows a pattern that has become all too familiar since 7 October. No matter what Israel’s enemies do, no matter how many times they pledge to murder Israeli civilians, Israel will always be condemned as the aggressor.
This graphic was released by Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, on October 23.
And he is right. Because his reaction to the crisis in the Middle East has destroyed what little credibility the EU may have ever had.
European Union foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday demanded the international community impose a “solution” to the conflict between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
“What we have learned over the last 30 years, and what we are learning now with the tragedy experienced in Gaza, is that the solution must be imposed from outside,” Borrell said.
“Peace will only be achieved in a lasting manner if the international community gets involved intensely to achieve it and imposes a solution,” he added, referring to the United States, Europe and Arab countries.
And Borrell has been very clear on what "solution" he wants to impose: creating a Palestinian state on land that Israel claims and that it necessary for Israeli security.
At a press conference yesterday, he made it pretty clear that he viewed October 7 as an opportunity, not a tragedy:
Europe has to invest all its political capital ...[to] seek peace in the Middle East through the only possible solution, which is the construction of two states. Something that we have been repeating for many years, but without fully committing ourselves to making it a reality.
The drama that began on October 7 and continues today forces us to seek a solution that allows the coexistence in peace and security of Israel and Palestine.
Yes, a massacre is now merely a "drama" according to Borrell.
Thousands of Palestinians joyfully slaughtering, raping, kidnapping and burning every Jew they could find means, to him, that Palestinians deserve a state of their own.
The entire Palestinian Arab population supporting the massacre by a 6-1 ratio does not cause Borrell to pause at all. On the contrary, it seems that the more they cheer the genocide of Jews, the more they should be rewarded with a state that they can freely attack with rockets from every direction.
One must wonder - is there anything that Palestinians could possibly do to make him think that perhaps they don't deserve a state of their own?
This would be a state where Palestinians would be expected to freely enter Israel for employment, but where Jews would no longer be allowed to visit their own holy places. A state where incitement to murder Jews would be openly taught in schools and mosques. A state where every single child is told that their neighboring state in "recognized borders" is illegitimate and must also be destroyed. A state where the national heroes are Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar and Sheikh Yassin.
So, yes, the way the EU deals with this "drama" indeed will define its credibility for years to come. And that credibility is less than zero.
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Last week, Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made an obvious but important point that the world is ignoring.
“We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts — Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran," he said. "We have already responded and acted on six of those fronts.”
A key component to propaganda is framing. Framing this as an Israel-Gaza war is false, and ultimately serves the interests of Israel's enemies.
When this war is framed as a war between Israel and Gaza, then the attacks by Yemen, Hezbollah, Iraqi groups and Syria become "support for Gaza," which a moment of reflection shows is ridiculous. They aren't helping Gazans in the least.They are using Gaza as an excuse for attacking Israel from all directions.
Whether or not Iran chose October 7 to attack Israel or whether it was Hamas' decision, right now the war is being directed by Iran and proxies doing Iran's bidding.
Israel's enemies want to frame this as a David vs. Goliath of huge Israel bombing helpless innocent Gazans, and the world is buying into this false framing. Every time an official says they do not want the Gaza war to "spread" to other theatres like Lebanon they are showing that Iran's framing is working. Nothing about Gaza compelled Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi groups and the Houthis to attack different parts of Israel.
Hezbollah actively attacked Israel on October 8th, claiming it was in "solidarity" with the "Palestinian people." This is not a war passively "spreading," attacking Israel is not compulsion but decisions that these groups make.
And all the groups happen to be part of Iran's "axis of resistance."
The media is happily going along with this false framework. Why are we not seeing maps in the news media similar to the one I created here? Because that is not the narrative that the media wants its readers to see.
They want to pretend it is "Gaza under attack," not "Israel under attack," even though the war started with an attack on Israel and it continues with multiple, multi-front and continuous attacks on Israel.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s two senior far-right partners endorsed the rebuilding of settlements in the Gaza Strip and the encouraging of “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians on Monday.
Speaking during their parties’ respective faction meetings in the Knesset, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich presented the migration of Palestinian civilians as a solution to the long-running conflict and as a prerequisite for securing the stability necessary to allow residents of southern Israel to return to their homes.
The war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” Ben Gvir told reporters and members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, calling such a policy “a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”
The “correct solution” to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “to encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees,” Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionism party
I'm no fan of Smotrich or Ben Gvir. But what on Earth is wrong with allowing Gazans who want to emigrate to do so?
Not involuntary "transfer." Not Meir Kahane's plan to ship Arabs out on trucks. This is simply to allow those who want to leave to do so.
We know that hundreds of Gazans have risked their lives to reach Europe by boat. Obviously there is a desire by many to leave the sector.
The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.
We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel. That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.
If nearly a third of Gazans want to move elsewhere, is that irresponsible? Obviously not. But somehow when far-Right lawmakers in Israel agree with them,it becomes irresponsible.
Gaza is crowded and poor. Without a drastic change, it has a dim future. Ambitious Palestinians have been emigrating around the world since 1948. Many have established themselves and become successful. What is wrong with that?
Obviously Smotrich and Ben Gvir would be happy if 100% of Gazans would move elsewhere. But for all their faults, they are not advocating throwing the Palestinians into the sea, as Arabs have been threatening the Jews for 75 years. And neither are any of the other Israelis who have floated the idea of voluntary resettlement of Gazans to elsewhere in the world.
No one would be too upset if Saudi Arabia offered Israeli Jews a million dollars to move elsewhere. Nearly one in three Gazans don't even need a monetary incentive - they'd move for free if only a country would let them in to become citizens.
Something that would be considered human rights in any other context is considered vaguely racist when Jews support it. And that is the real bigotry.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Yet — Biden/Harris, Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin, Senate/House Democrats publicly urge Israel to ramp down, even stop its military in Gaza. Imagine FDR in newspapers (read by the Nazis) — scolding Churchill — “Not victory, Winston, it’s stalemate, stupid!”
Consequently, as Israel modifies (the U.N. will condemn Israel anyway), IDF casualties mount, and the war is prolonged. IDF reservists include teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, musicians, chefs, store owners, and more. Should they die to placate the intellectual frauds who dominate our schools and universities? DEI ideology: its Jew-hating coalition discards reality; Iran and its proxy Hamas are hardly bastions of women’s rights, gay rights, the environment. (READ MORE from Arnold Steinberg: How Conservatives Can Start a Youth Revolution)
Palestinian genocide? Gaza’s population has grown exponentially. The Hamas playbook, not Israel, puts noncombatants in harm’s way. Note: The number of Arabs killed by Israel in all wars and conflicts since its founding in 1948 is dwarfed by the number of Arabs killed by Arabs. No outrage or demonstrations. Akin to BLM’s indifference to black-on-black murder. (Does anyone care, for example, about how many Christians have been killed by Islamists in Africa? The Vatican reported that 52,250 Christians have been murdered by Islamists over 14 years in Nigeria alone.)
Especially in the Middle East, Bad Guys respect strength. Biden, after the Afghanistan fiasco, is perceived as weak. His policies enrich Iran: higher oil prices, relaxed sanctions, billions released. Is Biden’s team of Obama holdovers arguably traitorous? (One outed so far). The good news is most are just stupid!
Biden’s patron Obama was obsessed with Muslim outreach; Obama’s deep proximity to his spiritual guru, America/white/Jew-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was not incidental. Anti-Zionists claim Jews used the Holocaust to justify stealing Arab land. Obama obliged, publicly basing Israel’s existence on the Holocaust, yet Zionism predated it. In effect, Obama deprecated the historic claim of Jews to their ancestral land.
“Some say that anti-Zionism isn’t tantamount to antisemitism,” Joshua Muravchik recently wrote. “If so, it’s worse … Anti-Zionism can only mean the destruction of Israel … some seven million Jews.”
Enabled by the UN, Hamas and the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority (PA) nurture children in hate to exterminate Jews. Thus, a “Palestinian state” was a nonstarter, a farce absent resolving the prerequisite as told by Golda Meir: “They say we must be dead. And we say we want to live. I don’t know of a compromise.”
The “compromise” — a “two-state solution of a Palestinian state living in peace” alongside Israel — remains oxymoronic, a fallacy because too many Palestinians addicted to genocide still want Israel off the map. You don’t reform a lying alcoholic who says he’ll quit drinking by giving him a liquor store.
That’s why for decades the unrealistic expectations for a Palestinian state foster disappointment. The “Palestinian leadership” continues to groom Jew-killers from childhood. The next generation is already poisoned. To undo their indoctrination, if possible, would take generations — before any Palestinian state can exist.
On December 4, Time magazine published the article “It’s time to scrap the Abraham Accords.” The author, Sarah Leah Whitson, a director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), argued that the Hamas attack of October 7 proved that the assumption on which the Abraham Accords were conceived – that the Palestinian issue was no longer important in Israel’s relationships in the region – was wrong.
She maintained that conditions for the Palestinian people had worsened since the accords were signed, and that the Gaza war has projected the Palestinian issue back to the forefront of global concerns. When signing the Accords, she claimed, the Arab leaders involved “hailed the agreement as a means to encourage and cajole Israel to take positive steps toward ending its occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory.”
Now, she wrote, “because continued Arab adherence to the accords signals continued support for Israel,” DAWN is calling on the Abraham Accords countries to withdraw from the agreement.
Whitson was wrong
Both her assumptions and her conclusions are incorrect. The Israel-Palestine dispute had no bearing on the negotiations leading to the Abraham Accords and is unrelated to them. The purpose of the accords is to advance regional security and stability; pursue regional economic opportunities; promote joint aid and development programs; and foster mutual understanding, respect, coexistence, and a culture of peace.
All the Arab leaders concerned have indicated that normalizing relations with Israel has not affected their support for Palestinian aspirations. There is a brief reference to this in the Bahrain agreement, while the Morocco document mentions “the unchanged position of the Kingdom of Morocco on the Palestinian question.”
Sheer logic dictates that none of the signatories perceive their support as involving the elimination of Israel. Since October 7 none of the four Abraham Accord signatory states has indicated any desire to withdraw from the accords.
Sudan is in the throes of a devastating civil war. Government forces are on the back foot, as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues its advance. On December 19 it captured Sudan’s second largest city, Wad Madani. The future of Sudan, and with it the future of its normalization with Israel, hangs in the balance.
In the other accord countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco – public opinion undoubtedly favors Hamas, deplores the high civilian death toll in Gaza, and calls for a ceasefire. As a result, all three states have been walking a tightrope regarding their official attitude toward the Israel-Hamas conflict. All the same, the accords are holding firm.
There was a time when liberal journalists said the New York Times was too nice to Israel. They can't make that mistake anymore.
Since Hamas attacked the Jewish state on October 7, the Times has committed to running false and demeaning coverage about Israel. Hours after terrorists began the siege that left 1,200 dead, the Times rushed to humanize the terrorists with a puff piece.
"Gaza Has Suffered Under 16-Year Blockade" aimed to educate readers about why some Gazans saw Hamas's rapes, murders, and kidnappings as a "justified response" against Israel: The Palestinian territory of Gaza has been under a suffocating Israeli blockade, backed by Egypt, since Hamas seized control of the coastal strip in 2007. The blockade restricts the import of goods, including electronic and computer equipment, that could be used to make weapons and prevents most people from leaving the territory.
More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza. The tiny, crowded coastal enclave has a nearly 50 percent unemployment rate, and Gaza's living conditions, health system and infrastructure have all deteriorated under the blockade.
Rather than feature pictures and stories about the innocents killed and taken hostage, the front pages of the Times on October 8 and 9 featured Hamas fighters bulldozing a border fence and firing rockets into Israel.
When a hospital explosion rocked Gaza City, the Times was one of several mainstream media outlets that rushed to blame Israel for the explosion. But the Gray Lady didn't just echo the false claim: It relied on Hamas as its primary source.
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of
the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
On October 7 at 6:30 a.m., Meir Adoni [died]. A minute
later, a new Meir was born. A Meir that repents his sin. A Meir who is ashamed
that he was part of the delusion of the delusional Left who don’t understand
that we are surrounded by extreme Islam monsters who have no interest in peace
and normalcy, and only want to burn us alive.
He ended by asking forgiveness from Israel and God for
having identified as left-wing. [1]
The kibbutzim where the slaughter occurred, by all accounts,
lean to the political left. Many or even most of the kibbutz survivors would
tell you they were happy when the settlers were expelled from Gush Katif. They
thought the expulsion would bring peace. That was their ideology.
And their belief was unshaken, even when there were sirens
and rockets and days and nights in safe rooms. They wouldn’t stop educating
their children in the ways of peace. They kept on helping to transport sick children
from Gaza into Israel for treatment in Israeli hospitals. The good farmers
believed that in the end, goodness would prevail and there would be war no
more.
Now in the aftermath of October 7, there is deep disillusionment.
“We are the peaceful people,” they had thought. “No one would harm us,” as if
pureness of heart were a kind of shield.
They couldn’t have imagined a people so cruel. No one could. Only what happened on October 7 could have broken the hope that peace would
yet win out with the people of Gaza. The survivors now understand that Gaza is
filled with monsters, and that there is no possibility of peace with the “Palestinian”
people. That about-face from left to right, is a common theme in the emerging survivor
testimonies.
Nir Shani of Kibbutz Be’eri, managed to hold the door of his
safe room shut, as terrorists shot up his Kibbutz Be’eri home and then set it
ablaze. His 16-year-old son Amit was taken to Gaza, and held hostage. Amit
Shani was released from Hamas captivity on November 29, as part of a temporary
ceasefire deal, 19 days after his father Nir, gave testimony on the October 7
attacks. Nir says that for the people of Be’eri, the peace movement was their
“second religion.” Now Nir knows that peace cannot be achieved at this time,
and that it is unrealistic to believe otherwise [emphasis added]:
We do need everybody, everybody to take responsibility of
their previous actions and those who led to this situation, because I think it
could be prevented and but yeah it—it's complicated now with the Palestinians,
and their education is to hate us so badly and the hope for peace I think, no
longer can exist after what they did.
We're Jewish, but we're not really religious in the kibbutz.
And you can say that our second religion was the peace movement. Like every
celebration we were singing a peace song and wishing for peace and oh, if we
just do another effort, it would come.
But we don't have any partners from the Palestinian side
to—to reach that point. They hate us so badly and [are] not willing. And there
is no peace movement [on] the Palestinian side. Not at all. They're just
saying, “Yeah, we want to kill them all. We want to send them away.”
So it would take another generation or two with great effort
in education to change that. If at all. I think after what they did, we can't
stay neighbors any longer. And there must be a certain solution to the problem.
. . . the western
world [sees] the Palestinian in a very romantic and maybe even childish way. I
think we really, really wanted to live by them . . . and have peace with them,
but they’re not cooperating about it. And the western world expects us to
behave by certain rules of engagement that are not [the way of] the Middle
East. It's like, based on the knight [battles] in [medieval] Europe.
But here it so different, as you could see in October 7th,
and we have to protect [ourselves]. We have no other choice, and I wish it
would be different, but for the time being, that is the situation. We have to
do whatever is necessary to protect [ourselves].
I mean, the—“the occupation,” “the occupation” all the
time. It's not something that we want to do, it's just something that you have
to do because otherwise they would be jumping to our throats and kill us.
So we have no other choice but to do that and in the most moral way that we
can, I think. I mean, we really wish [there was] another way to solve the
problem, but that's the situation. That's the reality we live in.
The world should understand that and demand the Palestinians
to change their ways and stop supporting [them], because they get a lot of
support and it's not helping to solve the problem.
Tali Enoshi-Arad, 37, huddled in the safe room of her home
in Kibbutz Holit for hours on that bloody day in October, along with her
husband and three-year-old daughter. The Enoshi-Arad family had left the big
city for a “quieter” life on this kibbutz situated close to the Gaza border.
Now Tali contemplated putting her hand over her little girl’s mouth to keep her
quiet so the terrorists wouldn’t hear and discover them, bringing to mind
tragic stories from the Holocaust, of mothers desperately trying to still a
baby’s cry, and smothering them in the process. The people on Holit were simple
farmers. All they wanted was to raise their children in peace. But now she
knows that will never be [emphasis added]:
People from Gaza [used] to come in to Israel daily and work
in our communities, and some people had very close connections with them um, and
just thinking about the fact that this was the result—obviously they are also
prisoners in their own city, because they're being uh, held [hostage] by their
own government, who doesn't have any care for their safety. They just want to
live up to their diabolic, diabolical uh, I guess goals, murdering Jews,
killing the—destroying the State of Israel. It's in their [Hamas Charter], but
these were not military installations. These were peaceful communities.
We had no form of retaliation, we had no form of attack, we
had no objectives, no . . . no um, offense—barely defense. We were just there to grow some potatoes
and raise our kids in peace and you could, you would think that would have been
enough, but what they did when they went in, was nothing short of deplorable
atrocities.
Hadas Eilon, lived on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a farming community,
from the age of five until the age of 30, when she deemed it time to leave the
nest and go out on her own. Her mother still lives there, along with her
siblings and their own families. She didn’t live there anymore, but on October
7, Hadas was there with one of her two daughters, for an extended family
gathering. Having grown up among the peace-seekers of a rural community, Hadas
truly believed that if only people spoke with and really listened to each other,
there could be peace. She still wants to believe that—or so it seems—but she is
having to adjust her perceptions.
Now she knows: not all, and perhaps many, or even most Gazans
want peace. The rest want death. It is hard for Hadas to come to terms with
this reality. It appears to help Hadas come to terms with this reality by
mentally separating Gazans and assigning them to one of either two groups:
terrorists and “Palestinians.” This approach does not appear to give her
complete satisfaction; it does seem to give her hope and a way to move forward
[emphasis added]:
I am a person who strongly believes in communication and
human relations.Hearing that drugs were found on them helped me
understand the animals that they were, and at the same time, it was always
so difficult for me to understand extreme people, psychopaths. I mean, it's
impossible to understand. Extreme people, psychopaths, people who want others
to die, that... that I can't understand.
But I also have a hard time generalizing. I also know that
there are people, there are Palestinians who want peace. I think that we have a
. . . completely impossible situation here. But in this completely impossible
situation, something terrible is happening. And again, I was never in favor of
occupation, and I always really have conversations and everything, but when
there is one side, and I'm not saying that we don't have extremists either, but
they don't rule. When there is one side . . . that has a job of destroying and
killing and abusing, and when I hear the phone call of the Palestinian who
called—a terrorist, I won't say Palestinian, because it's a terrorist—I don't
want to generalize Palestinians in any way. A terrorist who calls his parents
and boasts that he murdered ten Jews. It's not human, it's not human behavior,
as far as I'm concerned, they don't . . . do not deserve any forgiveness or any
respect as human beings, because they are not.
So I am ready to make peace with Palestinians and humans
who have a heart and family and children. But with terrorists and human
animals, I'm not ready to make peace. And if someone wants to kill me, I will
kill them first.
Natali Yohanan is a 38-year-old mother of two boys. What
happened to her family on October 7, in their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz, and what
happened to their neighbors, relatives, and friends, killed her faith in
humanity. She no longer believes that peace is possible.
Not in a world where a mother of children can treat another
as she, Natali, was treated by a Gazan mother of children, a civilian who
infiltrated her home on that terrible day. Natali was shocked into reality by
this monster’s cruel behavior toward her and her two sons. The Washington
Free Beacon featured Natali’s story in “Netflix
and Kill: How a Palestinian Woman Took Over an Israeli Family's Home on Oct. 7,”
[emphasis added]:
We had people in the kibbutz who are very involved with the
Palestinian, um people. We had one person he's in Gaza right now, he’s
kidnapped, that he drove sick kids from Gaza to the hospitals in Israel. We're
a very peace-loving community. Like, the country, they always make fun of us
that we're very, like, people-loving and we want peace, and in Israel not
everyone feels the same, but we don't feel the same, anymore.
I always told my son, “There are kids just like you in Gaza.
They just want to go to school, and just want to live, and just want to be
happy and be free,” and that's what I thought before. It's very hard for me as
a mother to think about a woman who came to my home and saw the pictures of my
kids and still came to, to steal and to terrify my kids, and the first thing
she did is to open my [electric box] and [turn] off the electricity. Just in
the safe room.
So she sat and watched TV, and my kids—we had no water, no
food, no air conditioning. It's the middle of the summer. It was so hot.
Like she saw my kids’ pictures on the walls. She knew
there's a family inside—like terrified kids. I think that she's a mother as
well, because she took my kids’ clothes, and she took my clothes, and she took,
um, she took my credit card, and then she went back to Gaza, and she, she went
to the supermarket and she bought . . . I got a list of the things she bought.
It broke my faith that people are good. It’s . . . I
never thought that a woman would do that. Like men? Yes. Soldiers? Yes. Hamas
terrorists? Yes. I knew they were very cruel and very driven, but I never
thought a common people—kids and women—would participate in things like that
and it broke my faith in the goodness of people, but especially people from
Gaza, because I really—I really believed that the women and children were just—they
were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.
I really believed that Hamas kidnapped Gaza, and um, I don't
anymore. I think they are participating. I think in that morning [Hamas] told
them, “We are going to do this, who wants to come in?” or they invited people
they trust and they told them, “You can take whatever you want. You can take. You
can plunder. You can steal, and we'll keep you safe,” and they told themselves,
“Why not?”
Why not? Like I'm a woman. I'm a mother. I'm a teacher. I
work with kids. I believe that all kids are good. All kids are good, good. No
one is born bad. No one is born a terrorist and I feel very guilty that I
raised my kids in a place that [wasn’t] safe.
I believed that I'm safe. I believed my kids are safe. I
really believed it.
Like, we have this sense of, we want revenge, which is a
horrible, horrible feeling, but I find myself showing my son videos of
houses being bombed in Gaza, because I want to show him that Israel is still
strong. I want to show him that the army is strong—that someone is
protecting us, because he doesn't feel it anymore, and something in his faith
was broken.
It is broken. We don't believe in anyone, anymore. We don't
believe in the country. We don't believe in the army. We don't believe in
ourselves. We don't believe in in Gaza. We don't believe in the world. We don't
believe in anyone who will come to help us, and it's, um, like everything we
believed was shattered in that moment.
I don't want Hamas to exist anymore. I want the . . . the normal, the, the, the good people in Gaza
to rule. I want someone who my country can talk to and uh, right now it, it sounds
like it will never happen . . .
. . . I try to concentrate
on not falling to the revenge—that we feel like we want to [take] revenge. I'm
trying not to focus on that, ‘cuz it's not healthy. It's not going to help my
kids. Nowhere is safe in the world like Israel. Israel is the safest place
for Jews. That's what I believe.
Her daughter was to depart for a class trip to Poland in a
few days. Now, says her mother, Ola
Metzger, the 17-year-old girl won’t need to visit Auschwitz, a rite of
passage for Israeli students. She won’t need an experiential history lesson on
the Holocaust—the girl won’t need it, because she just went through one, a true
Holocaust, right in her home on Kibbutz Nir Oz, so perilously close to Gaza. Ola,
45, used to believe that if we would only alleviate the suffering of the common
people of Gaza, peace would reign.
What Ola learned on October 7, was that peace is not a value
for them. Material wealth is also not so important to them. What is important
to them is their hate. For her, the eye-opener was the destruction, burning
cars, homes, people. They already, had already looted and taken what they wanted,
money, everything, and still it did not satisfy the lust, because the lust is
not for things. The lust is for torturing and murdering Jews [emphasis added].
I told her to hide under the bed because bad guys were out
there shooting all, all over, all around, and all I was thinking [was], “What
happens if they get in?”
I can't believe that these actions are real actions to aim
to free Palestine from someone. I always felt that these people are being
hostages you know, of their own regime, and uh, we always felt that if they
will be okay, if these people will have something to lose, you know, I mean
something to lose, I mean if they have a regular, or more or less regular life
and homes and work and you know, money coming in, and uh, food for their kids .
. . if they will be okay we will be okay, too.
It's very hard to say that I hate someone, but I don't trust
any, anyone now. I, I don't trust them. I can't. We lost so many people, you
know, one out of four in our kibbutz . . .
Um, it was [scary]. I was scared. I was scared and then
sad you know, later on, because how much hate do you have to have? Okay. So you,
okay . . . you came in, you took all the jewelry and you know, and the money,
and the computers and TVs, and whatever, and then you just, you just have to
like ruin everything?
Irit Lahav,
a 57-year-old peace activist from Kibbutz Nir Oz, sustained a serious shock on
October 7. It was then that Lahav realized that the people of Gaza were not
like her, not like normal human beings. Their behavior, well, they do things
Lahav would never dream of doing to anyone, even her most mortal enemy. The
smaller deeds of October 7, even, would be beyond her. She could not have
stolen a wallet, a bike, or a person’s shoes, let alone perpetrate such brutal
acts of violence.
On that day, a border was crossed, all boundaries and norms
of behavior breached. Now the ardent peacenik is no more. Now it is us and “them”
[emphasis added]:
In 2005, when Israel moved out of Gaza, I was very happy.
I thought this, this, is the right thing to do, and I was shocked that 2 months
later, they threw bombs, missiles, at us. What, what the heck is going on? They
just received what they wanted. Why, why is this going on?
Generally speaking, everybody from the kibbutz is very left-minded.
I would say even 100% of the people would really respect the Palestinians
and wish really good things for them and never want to hurt them or do anything
bad toward them. I always saw that they have an equal right like we do, to
have their own country—to be happy, to live peaceful, to be prosperous.
I also volunteered. I would drive the Palestinians who are
very sick, from the border to get treated in Israeli hospitals. Am I thinking
about myself being foolish until now? Maybe. Maybe. But more is that I'm
disappointed at them that they are so cruel, have no values—really lost their
human values.
There is no “Hamas” anymore for me. There is the
Palestinian nation. They are responsible for that, and I think Israel should [let
go] this concept of Hamas being the important people. No. The whole community has
invaded and were brutal and violent.
I think about myself. Would I go to somebody’s house and rob
it and steal their shoes and bicycles and wallets? And no. I wouldn't. Even if
he is my enemy. Even if it's someone that I don't agree with I would not do
that, and if this is not clear to them or to the world that's very sad, really.
What else can we do? What else can we do? I fight for the
peace. We step out from their land. We respect them, you know, and this is what
is going on. Slaughter. Slaughter back.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech on Wednesday night where he discussed Israel's apparent airstrike against Hamas leader Saleh Arouri in Beirut's southrn suburbs.
He showed his disdain for the Lebanese people whom his party has hijacked..
“Those who think of war with us will, God willing, regret it, and war with us will be costly. So far we have been taking Lebanese interests into consideration, but should war be waged on Lebanon, the Lebanese interests require that we go with the war to the end,” Nasrallah said.
Did he hold a referendum on what Lebanon wants? Is anyone in the Lebanese government outside Hezbollah controlled parties calling for war?
Nope. Iran decides when Lebanese people are disposable and Hezbollah, like Hamas, is digging tunnels underneath them.
“Until now, we have been fighting on the front with controlled calculations and that’s why we are paying a hefty price from the souls of our young men, but if the enemy thinks of waging a war on Lebanon, we will fight without restraint, without rules, without limits and without restrictions,. We do not fear war,” Nasrallah added, from is own heavily fortified bunker deep underneath Lebanon.
Another trope that Nasrallah pushed was that every Israeli has another passport and their suitcase is packed for when things get rough. Which is what all anti-Israel terrorism is based on - the myth that when the going gets tough, most Israelis would flee. It hasn't worked for the past 100 years of terrorism, but this theme is entrenched in Arabic media - every story of a slowdown in immigration, for example, is a headline.
One other point: Just like in Gaza, the Hamas office that as attacked was in "an overcrowded residential area packed with civilians, shops and restaurants." And the airstrike didn't even break the windows of the building next door.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
This brings us to the law of war. The only requirement of proportionality under international law is that when combatants are targeted in areas where civilians are present, the value of the military target must be proportional to the number of anticipated civilian deaths. This highly subjective judgment can’t be the basis of a war-crime prosecution, unless the judgment is utterly unreasonable. The 2-to-1 ratio is not only reasonable, but far better than that achieved by other armed forces facing comparable situations. Thus, were Israel to be prosecuted for violating the principle of proportionality, that would necessarily involve the application of a double standard against the Jewish state.
The charge of genocide made by South Africa is even less persuasive. Real genocides have taken place in the world today, especially in Africa. South Africa has been silent about these neighboring genocides. And it is weakening the term itself by selectively politicizing it against Israel. Gaza has grown in population during the period in which genocide is charged. Israel has provided health care to Gazans in need of Israeli hospitals. It provided high-paying jobs in Israel to thousands of Gazans. These aren’t the actions of a nation engaged in genocide.
Genocide is directed against an entire people, not just criminals and terrorists among them. To accuse Israel of genocide is to fail to distinguish between the legitimate military goal of ending a terrorist organization, such as Hamas, and the illegitimate goal of ending the existence of an entire ethnic or religious group.
The term genocide was coined to describe the Nazi effort to rid the world of all Jews. Accusing Israel of genocide is a form of Holocaust denial, since no one even suggests that Israel has extermination camps, gas chambers, or other mechanisms that exemplified the Holocaust. If Israel were to be found guilty of genocide, the very meaning of that horrible crime would be diluted beyond recognition. It would then apply to the US bombing of Hiroshima, the British bombing of Dresden, and the killing of civilians during the Afghan, Iraqi, and Syrian military actions.
Every civilian death in wartime is a tragedy, and Hamas knew it was signing the death warrants of many civilians when it attacked Israel and then hid its war machinery among Gaza’s civilian population. The death of a human shield is the legal and moral responsibility of those who deliberately placed civilians in harm’s way. Consider the following example: A bank robber starts shooting at customers. When the police arrive, the robber grabs one of the customers and uses her as a human shield. A policeman, in an effort to save the lives of customers, tries to shoot the robber. But the hostage suddenly makes a move, and then the policeman’s bullet hits and kills her. Under the law of every nation, it is the hostage taker, not the policeman who is guilty of killing the hostage, even though the bullet that killed her came from the policeman’s gun.
It is Hamas and its Iranian patrons that should be on trial, not the victims of Hamas barbarism.
US spy agencies verified Israeli claims that Hamas and another Palestinian terrorist group used Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a command center and to hold hostages, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In late November, the Israel Defense Forces released extensive video evidence of terror tunnels under Shifa Hospital—the Gaza Strip's largest medical facility—saying it “unequivocally" proves the modus operandi of Hamas, "which systematically operates from hospitals.”
The terrorist group held at least three of the estimated 240 hostages it kidnapped on October 7 at Shifa, the IDF said.
Nevertheless, critics continued to claim that the IDF had little evidence Hamas used the hospital as a command post.
"In the weeks since the operation, news organizations have continued to raise questions about Hamas’s presence at the hospital. And health and humanitarian organizations have criticized the Israeli operation. A humanitarian team led by the World Health Organization, which visited Al-Shifa immediately after Israeli forces stormed the hospital, called it a 'death zone,'" the Times reported.
But a senior US intelligence official said Tuesday that the American government was convinced that Hamas used the hospital complex to direct terrorist forces, store weapons and hold “at least a few hostages.”
The official also said US spy agencies had information that Hamas destroyed evidence before the IDF operation at the hospital got underway.
Hamas terrorists took measures to prepare for the IDF's November raid of Shifa Hospital in Gaza by destroying documents and transferring hostages to an alternate location, according to intelligence documents obtained by The New York Times.
The report said that US intelligence found that Hamas destroyed technology and documents crucial to the organization's operation, with Shifa hospital as a home base.
US intelligence sources emphasized that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used the hospital as a command center for terrorists in the field fighting against Israeli forces. This intelligence assessment was conducted after Israel insisted that Hamas had built a huge military compound under the hospital – which, according to the report, had become a "legitimate military target for Israel."
Hostages not located, but remains found nearby
While inside the hospital complex, the IDF did not find hostages but did find an arsenal of weapons behind medical equipment. The bodies of two murdered hostages were found surrounding the complex.
The IDF's findings at the Shifa hospital grounds indicated use of the space as a military compound, uncovering meters of tunnels complete with living rooms, kitchenettes, toilets, and other infrastructure.
The route of the tunnel, revealed after the shaft seen in the photographs published by the IDF spokesperson, passes under the building of the Qatari hospital located in the Shifa complex and is lined with electricity and communication infrastructure throughout.
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Friday, January 05, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
