Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Arabs, untethered from reality, keep looking for magical solutions to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel

Dahi Khalfan is the deputy chief of police in Dubai. His bizarre pronouncements over the years have gained him 3 million followers on X/Twitter, so whatever he says gets treated as news.

Over the weekend, he offered what Arab media is unironically calling "the final solution" to the Israel-Palestinian conflict - force the Jews to all leave.

I like this new term, “The two-return solution,” not the “two-state solution.” No matter how short or long the time is, there will never be a final, just, legitimate, and permanent solution to the Palestinian issue other than the two-return solution, not the two-state solution. Many Jews realize this, many of whose thinkers have agreed after the flood victory of the Palestinians on October 7, .... emphasized that the gathering of the Jews in Palestine was a grave mistake that led them to destruction, and a major deception that deprived them of the safety that they were promised and that they originally enjoyed in their countries. They saw that there was no effective and eternal solution to the Palestinian issue that was compatible with international law, except the two-return solution, not the two-state solution, which is represented by the return of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons to their homes and compensation according to resolutions. The United Nations, and the return of the Jews to their original countries from which they came as invaders of Palestine, and they still retain their nationalities, where there is safety, prosperity, and comfortable living.
_____\\\\\\\______
The term two-return solution should be generalized
Because it is logical and realistic
And cancel the use of the two-state solution

One humorous response was a musical description of how Jews have been ethnically cleansed from every Arab country:

Ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands - the song!: pic.twitter.com/kZLAZFym4B
— Yishai Fleisher يشاي ישי פליישר 🕎 (@YishaiFleisher) December 25, 2023

But this is hardly unusual. The magical thinking that Jews will just disappear is common.

After all, that is the entire purpose of the terrorism - to frighten Jews into leaving. And every story that comes out of Israel that indicates a slowdown of aliyah makes headlines in Arabic media.

Similarly, every few weeks, Arab media will feature a story about the Jewish autonomous oblast of Birobidzhan in eastern Russia as an ideal place for all Israeli Jews to go. Poof! Problem solved!

One of the most important messages of the Abraham Accords was the Arab acknowledgment that Jews are indigenous to the region and aren't going anywhere.

Recognizing that the Arab and Jewish peoples are descendants of a common ancestor, Abraham, and inspired, in that spirit, to foster in the Middle East a reality in which Muslims, Jews, Christians and peoples of all faiths, denominations, beliefs and nationalities live in, and are committed to, a spirit of coexistence, mutual understanding and mutual respect;

That message needs to be re-emphasized and solidified, not orphaned as a one time only declaration. Because as long as the Arab world looks at Israel as a temporary aberration that can be wiped out by a terror attack, there will never be peace.

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!

"Gaza media office" claims get more ludicrous - because the media won't call them liars

As we've shown many times before, Hamas' media strategy is based on its ability to lie with impunity, since there are no alternative sources of information in Gaza that is willing to contradict it.

And because the media has either reported Hamas claims with a straight face, or ignored the ones that are clearly ludicrous such as their claims of major military victories, Hamas has no disincentive from making up bigger and bigger lies.

Here's the latest claim as reported by Turkey's TRTWorld:

The Israeli army has looted approximately $25 million in money and artefacts from Gaza since October 7.

The Gaza Media Office said on Saturday it received dozens of testimonies by residents of Gaza reporting the theft of money, gold, and artefacts "estimated at 90 million shekels over the past 92 days by the Israeli occupation army."

It said theft operations occurred in various ways, such as those at Israeli checkpoints.

For example at Salah al Din Street, Israeli troops stole bags containing valuable possessions such as money, gold and artefacts from the displaced people who had moved from northern Gaza to the south.

The IDF didn't set up any checkpoints on Salah al-Din Road. They didn't stop people from moving and they didn't inspect bags. This is all fiction.

Some IDF soldiers did make videos showing jewelry or perfume they found in houses in Gaza. Anyone who took anything should be prosecuted; it violated the laws of war as well as IDF regulations. In every war there are some idiots. But the $25 million figure is simply made up; the "checkpoint" accusation is simply made up.

The original charge of massive theft came from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor which has a long track record of fabricating charges against Israel, and no media has bothered to expose it as a pro-Hamas propaganda outlet pretending to be a respected NGO. (Euro-Med also claimed that they had a video of IDF soldiers selling gold jewelry they had stolen in Gaza to a Palestinian shop in the West Bank, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.)

There is no disincentive for lying, because the media simply parrots even the most ludicrous claims. And the reason is that there is an underlying layer of antisemitism that makes even the most obvious lies seem truthful when the reporters believe that Jews are thieving liars.

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!

Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi said on Saturday “The Zionist entity will soon cease to exist, despite the great support it receives from the forces of global arrogance.”

Why does this sound familiar?

Because previous Iranian presidents said the exact same thing! From 2007:

Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat.

"With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

"By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said. He did not elaborate.

Ahmadinejad also said the same thing in 2005.

Iran's Supreme Leader said this in 2010, 2015, 2017....

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!

01/06 Links: WH defends UNRWA: 'They do great work in Gaza'; Released Gaza hostage tells of trauma, Hamas's sexual violence; South Africa blames the victim of genocide

From Ian:

The UNRWA are ensuring the 'day after' includes more wars

Pompeo confirmed that of the 5 million identified as "Palestinian refugees" by UNRWA, fewer than 200,000 meet the international criteria for refugee status. Apparently, the number of Palestinians living today who meet the criteria for refugee status is less than 30,000. For the first time a senior American official revealed the numbers, before that administration after administration, both Democratic and Republican, allowed UNRWA to perpetuate the lie.

Lying not only leads to waste and corruption, it is also a significant obstacle to peace. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for all other refugees, has a mandate to pursue sustainable solutions for the refugees under its responsibility, through voluntary return, integration into the host country, or resettlement in a third country. UNRWA, on the other hand, has no such mandate. The agency admits that it does not have the authority to pursue long-term and sustainable solutions for refugees, Including resettlement in third countries.

UNRWA has encouraged generations of Palestinians to wallow in the hell of refugees, stuck between a possible new life and the "right of return" promised to them by radical factions committed to eternal war with Israel. It is clear to the Palestinians, who admit this in private conversations, that the "right of return" is not realistic, but it was and remains one of the main stumbling blocks in future peace negotiations. Instead of helping solve the problem, UNRWA is exacerbating it.

However, in April 2021, president Biden decided to renew funding for the agency, without explanation. The president has not explained why America is willing to support more than 5 million people through a refugee agency, when perhaps only 30,000 of them qualify to be called refugees.

The FDD has been calling for years to shake up the organization. Until the current war, the call to Congress and the Senate was not to cut aid entirely, but to work with the relevant regional actors to find bilateral solutions. It is time to call for the closure of this unnecessary and harmful organization.During the 2021 conflict, Matthias Schmala, UNRWA's operational director in Gaza, said in an interview that the IDF's operations during the war were carried out "with sophistication and precision." In doing so, he was seen as confirming that Israel acted within the boundaries of international law.

Shamala also noted, "During the 11 days of fighting, we did not run out of food, water or supplies, and from my point of view, there is no severe or acute shortage of medical equipment. Food or water." Finally, Shamala admitted that UNRWA "cannot work in a place like Gaza without coordination with local authorities and Hamas, this is true of any authoritarian regime of this kind."

Cooperating with Hamas terrorists
The interview was nothing short of amazing. He acknowledged that Israel had made an effort to avoid collateral damage, that it had helped ensure the flow of aid to Gaza even as rockets were being fired at Israeli civilians, and that UNRWA was coordinating with Hamas, an organization designated as a terrorist organization under existing law in most Western countries that support its agency.

Already in 2021, during an examination of the possibilities of shielding the UNRWA building, a hole and a tunnel were discovered in the location where missiles were launched. The depth of the hole, which was about 7.5 meters below the floor of the school, actually revealed the existence of a tunnel under the UNRWA building. UNRWA strongly condemned (only verbally and externally, of course) the fact that such tunnels may exist, and the use made by Palestinian armed organizations under its schools. UNRWA argued that it was inconceivable that students and staff would be put in danger in this way. UNRWA also "demanded" that all sides cease any activity or conduct that endangers the organization and its staff and impairs UNRWA's ability to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees in security and safety, but of course THEY did nothing to remove Hamas from its facilities.

The revelations during the "Iron Swords" War proved beyond any doubt that UNRWA schools serve as a human shield for Hamas tunnels, that Hamas fires from them and that it uses the aid given to UNRWA for its needs. Some UNRWA personnel have simply become Hamas.

Until the current war, a question hovered in the air about the real number of refugees in the Gaza Strip, but after the war, the refugee problem in Gaza will be real and painful. Gaza residents are entitled to a refugee aid agency aimed at providing real assistance to those in need. UNRWA has lost all rights to be this agency, because of its support for terrorism and corruption. Apparently, the time has come for the main donors to UNRWA: the United States and Germany, to divert their donations and support from UNRWA to another aid organization that will engrave on its banner a real desire to help Gazan refugees truly rehabilitate, under close supervision of the UN and donor countries.

White House forcefully defends UNRWA amid alleged terrorism ties: 'They do great work in Gaza'

The White House defended the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Thursday as Republican lawmakers are demanding investigations into reports that the aid body's staff has embedded with Hamas and aiding the terror organization in Gaza and throughout the Middle East.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby defended the agency, however, when asked if Republicans' calls to investigate the agency have shifted the administration's "strategy" regarding the organization. Former President Donald Trump forcibly cut ties with UNRWA in 2018, but the group again began receiving money from the U.S. after President Joe Biden entered office in 2021. Since that time, the U.S. has sent UNRWA more than $700 million.

"The U.N. relief agency does important work. In fact, they're doing a lot of heavy lifting right now in terms of trying to get food, water, medicine to the people of Gaza all up and down the strip. They're doing a lot of work, and they're doing it in harm's way," Kirby told reporters. "You can't hold them accountable for the depredations of Hamas and the way Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, for command and control or storage of weapons for the holding of hostages.

"I'll let the U.N. speak to their agency and what alarms they want to raise or not," he continued. "They do great work in Gaza, and they are important to helping get the humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. And we're grateful for that work that they're doing very much in harm's way. I will let them speak to whatever concerns they have over Hamas' activities and the degree to which that they feel obligated to speak out or not."

Kirby reiterated that "it is not some state secret here that Hamas hides itself in hospitals and schools and digs tunnels under residential complexes and neighborhoods, and this is what the Israelis are up against, a group that absolutely doesn't abide by the laws of war and has no compunction about putting civilian lives in greater danger."

Longstanding concerns about UNRWA’s tolerance for terrorism escalated after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, and it took on a greater role in distributing the massive influx of humanitarian aid that is arriving in Gaza.

"For decades, funding UNRWA has been a form of automatic virtue signaling and support for the myths of Palestinian victimhood," Gerald Steinberg, president of the Israeli watchdog group NGO Monitor and emeritus political studies professor at Bar Ilan University, recently told the Washington Examiner. "UNRWA should have been closed years ago to transform the Palestinian economy from total dependence to jobs and growth.”

Evidence of the terrorist organizations’ use of civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip

Hamas, Hezbollah and many other terrorist organizations use civilian facilities and populations as shields to hide their military-terrorist activities. The use of civilian facilities and the civilian population was exposed and documented many times during the Second Lebanon War and in various IDF operations against the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, and in a very extensive way during the most recent war in the Gaza Strip.

Firing rockets and mortar shells from within population centers and public institutions such as hospitals and schools, and placing military facilities in or near them, are a well-known modus operandi used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Its objective is to protect Hamas operatives from IDF responses and increase their chances of survival. Claims and documentation of the use of Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Hamas, against the civilian population were raised as early as 2006. According to an article[2] by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Hamas has been using the civilian population as human shields in conflicts with Israel since 2007.

The extensive use of civilian facilities, and of citizens as a “human shields” has many expressions, including the locations of headquarters and military bases, and hiding terrorists, in the heart of residential neighborhoods, in private homes or public institutions, launching rockets and mortar shells from populated areas, shooting from houses, mosques, schools and other public facilities, stockpiling weapons inside civilian homes, and using ambulances and rescue vehicles for operational needs. Obviously, the cynical and deliberate exploitation of a civilian population is a war crime, a crime against humanity and a flagrant violation of the basic principles of international law of armed conflict, which require a distinction between civilians and combatants.

Since the beginning of the war (October 7, 2023), the IDF has exposed the full extent of Hamas’ use of civilian facilities for military-terrorist purposes[3] after finding that Hamas had set up a significant part of its command network in the extensive tunnel system it constructed under civilian facilities especially the hospitals. It also became evident that Hamas used school buildings to store weapons, such as rockets, anti-tank missiles, launchers and automatic rifles. The military warehouses were found in close proximity to functioning classrooms or to a civilian population that found shelter in the schools. Mosques and private homes were used to store weapons and as hiding places for shafts that led to tunnels and as factories for the production of weapons.

Hamas’ use of civilian institutions and facilities for military-terrorist purposes is a deliberate strategy with several objectives. Its primary objective is to reduce damage to the military-terrorist assets of Hamas and other terrorist organizations and to grant them a kind of immunity from IDF activity, exploiting the knowledge that the IDF will avoid harming civilians as much as possible and therefore avoids attacking institutions such as hospitals and schools or non-combatant population concentrations. It is also intended to allow Hamas and other terrorist organizations to gain political-propaganda advantages in the battle for hearts and minds by representing Israel as attacking innocent civilians.

01/05 Links Pt2: Every Conspiracy Everywhere All At Once; UNRWA Must be Defunded & Exposed as the World’s Leading Anti-Israel Propaganda Machine

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Every Conspiracy Everywhere All At Once

Jews have often noted that conspiracy theories about us openly contradict each other: at one moment, we’ll be accused of being communists; in another, they’ll hate us for being capitalists. But social media today means we live in the era of what I’d call Kitchen Sink Anti-Semitism: Like the movie that cleaned up at the 2022 Oscars, it’s everything everywhere all at once.

A month I ago I wrote about how Israel’s haters love to accuse the Jewish state of genocide because it’s the ultimate way to universalize the Holocaust and deny the particular destructive animus toward the Jews. Since then, such discourse has become ubiquitous: just yesterday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had to field a question about it at a White House briefing, and there’s even been a lawsuit filed against President Biden for his supposed complicity in the “genocide.”

But then there’s the fact that Princeton University just concluded a semester in which a Near Eastern history course assigned the book by Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar featuring the classic blood libel of Israeli organ-harvesting. As Jonathan Marks noted in COMMENTARY in 2016, Puar herself rejected the “genocide” accusation, saying: “The Jewish Israeli population cannot afford to hand over genocide to another population. They need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”

And so it is that the Jews are simultaneously guilty of genocide and of perpetuating a multi-generational campaign of evil that precludes genocide. Both of these allegations coexist within the same cohort—academic anti-Semites—in psychopathic harmony.

Jonathan Tobin: There’s no middle ground in the fight against DEI antisemitism

Yet too many moderates and liberals are still trying to argue that outrage about the mobs chanting for the destruction of Israel can be separated from the genocide of Jews. It is this warped view that has sent such “progressives” into the streets and onto campuses to vent their rage.

You don’t have to like Stefanik or Rufo, or plan to vote for the Republicans, to understand that so long as woke commissars like Claudine Gay—and her counterparts elsewhere—are dominating America’s college campuses, the virus of antisemitism will continue to grow. Democrats must understand that unless DEI rules are thrown out of academia, the corporate world, the media and the government (where an executive order by President Joe Biden put them in place throughout the federal apparatus), their party will be completely taken over by leftists who hate Israel and are indifferent at best to the spread of antisemitism.

The aftermath of Oct. 7 and the fall of Claudine Gay ought to be a turning point in this debate. But it won’t be if those who acknowledge that antisemitism is on the rise don’t draw the appropriate conclusions about why this has happened.

Gay’s fate or that of any other college administrator is secondary to whether their toxic ideas will be allowed to continue to be the official new secular religion of American civic life. On this question, there is no middle ground. There’s no way to make DEI less antisemitic since it is designed to divide and target some for opprobrium in this manner. Treating the impact of woke ideas as nothing more than a conservative culture war controversy won’t work anymore.

Americans have to choose and traditional political loyalties are no longer relevant. They can either join those seeking to roll back the woke tide and restore basic American values of equality and fairness, or they can stand by and watch as a neo-Marxist faith destroys American liberty piece by piece with the Jews just being the first victims.

Douglas Murray: Harvard tarnished itself with the Claudine Gay debacle

What must you do to fail at Harvard?

It used to be pretty clear.

You had to be caught cheating.

Or doing something so outrageous that it’d get you thrown off campus.

Not anymore.

Today Harvard is an institution that thinks that antisemitism is OK and believes that plagiarism is fine.

Not long ago, a student would have been kicked out for either of these sins.

Today the president has been caught at both.

And the board of the university stuck by her.

Even when she decided to step down this week, both she and her supporters went into full-on “victimhood mode.”

Nothing was her fault.

In a bitter farewell piece, Claudine Gay said she was the victim of “demagogues” who had “weaponized” her presidency to “undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence and truth.”

If those are the animating ideals of Harvard, then they are ones that Gay herself trampled all over. With her lack of academic distinction, her total lack of scholarship, her plagiarism and self-pity.

Gay has published no books, written only 11 articles (most of which turn out to have been plagiarized), but still she was appointed president of Harvard.

As the Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me in an interview this week, “My grandmother wouldn’t have trusted Claudine Gay to herd her goats.”

Unlike Hirsi Ali, Gay comes from a privileged background, and she will continue her privileged lifestyle.

It emerged this week that although Gay has left the presidency, she is going to stay on at Harvard as a lecturer.

At a salary of an extraordinary $900,000 a year.

Seth Mandel: Mutiny at the Anti-Defamation League

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, for years has spent the organization’s political capital on accruing acceptance in progressive spaces. The ADL has become home to a great many AsAJews. After Oct. 7, the bill came due: The AsAJews and their political mentors decided it was time for the ADL to throw off the yoke of its pretensions and defect from Jewish organizational life to officially join the ranks of those marching on Jewish neighborhoods chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Greenblatt balked, and his creation has apparently risen from the table and walked out of the lab. According to Jewish Currents, the house organ of the AsAJews, several employees have left the ADL unit dedicated to countering online hate, including the Obama administration alum who led that unit, because of Greenblatt’s attempts to get social-media services to crack down on anti-Semitism:

“Former staffers told Jewish Currents that in the past months, Greenblatt has redirected the ADL’s day-to-day work to target pro-Palestine activism rather than focusing on antisemitism in American life, a shift they say seriously undermines the organization’s credibility.”

To translate that from doublespeak: The Anti-Defamation League’s public opposition to those calling for the mass murder of the Jewish people is not what these staffers signed up for. Perhaps this clash was inevitable: Greenblatt’s support for censorship in the public square was a weapon his progressive allies were never going to accept being turned on them.

And there is much anger at the realization that the activists who thought they had fully captured this particular institution still have work to do. Greenblatt’s conscience has awoken in the wake of Oct. 7, and now he won’t just take orders from his subordinates, which apparently was the state of play prior to the massacre.

“There’s a pattern of Jonathan going rogue—belittling in-house experts and ignoring talking points prepared for him,” one former ADL staffer told Jewish Currents, with no apparent self-awareness.

Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech today where he explained his mindset on a number of issues.

On the one hand, he claimed that Hezbollah doesn't target civilians - but then he said they do, in retaliation to any civilian deaths in Lebanon.

He claimed that Israel is lying about casualties in the north, and many more are dying. I guess they are hiding those funerals.

He said, "To those asking about the benefit from opening the southern front we say that there are two objectives -- pressing the enemy to halt its aggression against Gaza and alleviating the military pressure against Gaza. There are 120,000 Israeli troops on the border with Lebanon and they have been prevented from being on Gaza's border."

Nasrallah seems to see this battle as an opportunity for Israel to concede more land to them.

On his side, he told the families of the Hezbollah "martyrs" that “What I wish and hope for, were it not for my security circumstances, is to stand by your side and kiss your hands and foreheads.” So ghis message to them is that his life is a lot more valuable than the ones he sends out to die.

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!

01/05 Links Pt1: Your Aid Dollars for Palestinian Terrorists; Col Kemp: The morality of IDF maneuvers in Gaza; Al-Arouri Had "American Blood on His Hands"

From Ian:

My Father Is an Imam in Gaza. Hamas Kidnapped Him for Refusing to Be Their Puppet

On Saturday, December 30, our front door was busted down, and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza.

One dragged him by his head, and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

I know that if Hamas kills my father, they’ll say that the Israeli army did it. But my father was very keen that even if he died, we should make known the despicable demands they made of him. It was his last request to us, literally as he was being carried out of the door, that should he die, we should publicize the real reason for his death, and it is this:

He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance, and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.

This story starts before October 7, and even before 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza.

Our family has lived in Gaza for generations. Before 2007, my father worked for the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. After Hamas took over, they forced him out of his position. This was a hard time for my family; my father was the sole breadwinner. Finally, after three long years, he came back to work first as a mosque servant, then a mosque guard, then an employee of the ministry and finally, he was appointed as a mosque imam. (My father is known throughout the Gaza Strip. He has a doctorate in sharia from Cairo’s storied Al-Azhar University, and is well-respected by his peers.)

For Hamas, being Muslim means supporting Hamas, and people who do not support Hamas aren’t Muslims. If you don’t abide by what Hamas tells you, you’ll lose your job or worse. To keep my father in line, ensuring that he would deliver only Hamas-approved Friday sermons and allow Hamas to use his mosque as a clandestine weapons depot, they arrested my brother and me at least ten times between 2016 and 2019. Sometimes they would speak politely, sometimes they would ask us to comply “for the sake of your sisters,” but always the threat of violence loomed in the background. And several times we were beaten and humiliated in front of our father. They beat him, too, once nearly blinding him.

He was forced to do things for Hamas; move money around, store things, keep their secrets.

As an imam, my father keeps the keys to the mosque and is responsible for safeguarding large sums of money that Muslims give as zakat, the mandatory almsgiving of our faith. Hamas members would take advantage of his duties and use the mosque to stash money, weapons, and equipment.

Sometimes they’d bring a large, wrapped-up prayer rug, which they said had been donated—except my father wasn’t allowed to open the rugs; only special volunteers were allowed to open them or transport the rugs in and out. My father had to open and close the doors and allow the sacred space to be used as a warehouse for Hamas. What choice did he have? It’s a bitter truth that Hamas thinks of mosques as the property of their regime and that they store weapons there.

WSJ Editorial: Your Aid Dollars for Palestinian Terrorists

The terrorists who started a war on Oct. 7, according to Palestinian Authority law, will be compensated financially for a massacre well done. The same PA that President Biden wants to run postwar Gaza will reward the murderers’ families with grants followed by monthly stipends for life. That means taxpayers from the U.S. and Europe will help pick up the tab.

The Palestinian postal service said at the end of the year that “martyrs, wounded and prisoners”—Palestinian terrorists or their families, in other words—will receive their November stipends starting this past Saturday via the Palestine Post Bank. The PA is in a fiscal crunch, so this time payments will be at a reduced rate of 65%, plus 14% of the money that the martyrs & co. are owed from past deductions.

The money is paid out in the PA-run West Bank as well as Hamas-run Gaza, often with a lag. Before the Oct. 7 terrorists can be rewarded, their families must submit paperwork for proof of martyrdom and power of attorney to open a bank account. But unless something changes, a salary will be sent to reward the family of the terrorist who was recorded calling home on Oct. 7 to tell his mother, “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands!”

So we have that to look forward to. For now, the PA keeps paying the established terrorists, unmoved by Mr. Biden’s combination of U.S. pressure and endorsement. According to Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, “martyr families” typically receive 1,400 shekels (almost $400) a month for life. Salaries for terrorist prisoners rise over time from 1,400 shekels to 12,000 shekels ($3,300) a month.

This “pay-for-slay” program costs more than $300 million a year, about 8% of the PA budget. Mr. Marcus also shows that 65% is the same rate at which the PA is paying civil servants. Apparently, compensating terrorists is no less a priority than staffing the government. The PA may judge both essential in keeping the streets at bay as President Mahmoud Abbas begins the 20th year of his four-year term in office.

US Posts $10 Million Bounty for Hamas Financiers

The U.S. government is offering $10 million for information about the Hamas terror group's chief financiers, according to a Friday morning notice from the State Department.

In the wake of the Iran-backed terror group's Oct. 7 slaughter of more than 1,200 Israelis, the State Department is prioritizing efforts aimed at disrupting Hamas's financial channels, which stretch across the region, including into Sudan, Iran, and Turkey.

The department will provide the award to anyone who can offer information about "any source of revenue for Hamas or its key financial facilitation mechanisms," including "major Hamas donors or financial facilitators" and any banking institutions that are funneling cash to the terror group. The U.S. government also seeks information about businesses controlled by Hamas and front companies used to launder money into the terror group's coffers.

The $10 million bounty is part of a new U.S. push to crack down on Hamas's revenue streams as the terror group wages war on Israel. The American government is seeking information on several top Hamas officials who have ties to Iran and other Arab countries known to support terrorism against the Jewish state.

One of the financiers named in the bounty notice, Muhammad Ahmad 'Abd Al-Dayim Nasrallah, is "a longtime Hamas operative with close ties to Iranian entities," according to the State Department. He is responsible for transferring "tens of millions of dollars to Hamas," including to the group's military wing.

The State Department is also seeking information on three Turkey-based Hamas financiers who run the organization's investment portfolios.

It's interesting @StateDept's Rewards for Justice announcement for up to $10 million today targeting #Hamas financiers including Muhammad Ahmad ‘Abd Al-Dayim Nasrallah doesn't mention him residing in #Qatar, but it mentions the locations of others.https://t.co/f9Yr08YZgE
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) January 5, 2024

Linda Sarsour just sent out an email from her MPower Change organization where she writes, "I’m just back from preparing aid convoys headed to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. I went to Egypt to volunteer and support the efforts of Baitulmaal....Donate to Baitulmaal, an organization that has been on the ground in Gaza delivering aid since October."

And what is Baitulmaal? Why, it is linked to Hamas, of course!

From Middle East Forum:

Baitulmaal, also known as AHED, was officially established in 2004 by a Palestinian-Jordanian named Hasan Hajmohammad. However, Baitulmaal claims to have actually been around since 1991, at one point operating under a group named the Islamic Trust of North Texas (which employed Hajmohammad as an imam and sponsored his visa).
During the 2000s, Baitulmaal claimed to be building mosques and "sponsoring Quranic schools in Palestine."
When asked, Baitulmaal did not disclose a list of its partners. In the Palestinian territories, however, grant recipients seem to be a little more open about their benefactors. The Unlimited Friends Association for Social Development (UFA) is a Gaza-based charity that claims to "provide relief, emergency and developmental services to marginalized areas and people in need." However, UFA openly works with senior Hamas officials.
In Gaza, UFA helps Baitulmaal hand out cash to the "families of martyrs of the Palestinian people," whom UFA has described as those killed resisting "the ongoing slaughter against the Palestinian people."
UFA has never been shy about its affiliations. It advertises in the prominent Hamas daily newspaper, Felesteen, in which it mentions its support from Baitulmaal. And on UFA's Facebook page, its officials have written: "We ask God to drive away the anguish of the heroic prisoners in the Nazi Zionist jails and to free Al-Aqsa Al-Sharif [the Noble Al-Aqsa] from the filth of the most dirty Jews."
To some extent, UFA appears to operate as a Palestinian affiliate of Baitulmaal. UFA's chief employees, in fact, have also identified themselves as Baitulmaal employees. And the clear majority of UFA's overseas donations come from the Texas charity.

A more recent article adds more detail to UFA and its links to Baitulmaal:

Collaboration with Hamas appears to continue today. In 2022, multiple Hamas-aligned media outlets, including the terrorist group's own daily newspaper, Felesteen News, published details of job vacancies at UFA; not as advertisements, but as news stories.

Hatred for Jews permeates UFA's efforts. In 2013, the charity published a social media post stating: "We ask God to drive away the anguish of the heroic prisoners in the Nazi Zionist jails and to free Al-Aqsa Al-Sharif from the filth of the most dirty Jews."

UFA officials continue to promote such rhetoric. In April 2021, UFA director Jomaa Khadoura called on his own Facebook page for God to "cleanse Al-Aqsa from the impurity of the Jews."

UFA appears not just to be an occasional partner of American Islamism, but an important outpost. UFA director Khadoura himself claims to have served as an employee of Baitulmaal USA, a wealthy Islamist 501c, and one of UFA's major partners.

Any aid sent by Baitulmaal goes to Hamas first.

More information is here, including antisemitic statements made by people linked to Baitulmaal.

Rashida Tlaib had previously urged donations to this terror-linked charity as well.

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The West cannot still conceive how Hamas controls EVERYTHING in Gaza - including all humanitarian aid

In October, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said:

Don’t believe fake news regarding our aid to the Palestinian people! Regarding more generally our aid to the Palestinian people, it has been said sometime that it is being used to finance Hamas. It is simply not true. We are monitoring very precisely where our funds go and they go to cover the basic needs of the Palestinian population. We are ready to review it one more time, and the Commission will do this review. But Europeans should not tolerate false accusations nor disseminate fake news that undermine our difficult work on the ground.

There is no doubt that every other major Western donor to Gaza truly believes that this is the case.

Yet somehow Hamas has been able to build a tunnel network that is more than double the length of the New York subway system tunnels.

This requires millions of tons of concrete. That concrete requires hundreds of thousands of tons of cement. And cement is all imported into Gaza.

The cement arrives through the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, an elaborate method that Israel agreed to in 2014 where all dual-use building materials and items imported into Gaza are vetted and only given to approved Gaza contractors for specific Gaza projects, like water waste treatment plants. The webpage for the GRM attempts to be as transparent as possible to show where all the materials go.

Clearly, everyone - including Israel - underestimated the iron-clad level of control Hamas has over every aspect of Gaza.

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades is estimated to have 30,000 members, and associated terror groups probably about 10,000 more. That means that about one in every 15 adult males in Gaza is a terrorist - they are in every building, every school, every mosque, every hospital, every factory, every NGO, and of course every building contractor. And there are at least that many employed in the Hamas government itself, which means perhaps one in seven adult males can be considered to be an informant, at least.

Hamas can get the hundreds of thousands of tons of cement it needs is by skimming off perhaps 10% of every single ton imported into Gaza, forcing the contractors to overestimate the amount of cement needed for valid projects so the accountants in the EU and elsewhere cannot find any discrepancies.

The Free Press published a story yesterday that is seemingly unrelated but it has everything to do with this:

RAFAH—On Saturday, December 30, our front door was busted down, and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza.

One dragged him by his head, and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

I know that if Hamas kills my father, they’ll say that the Israeli army did it. But my father was very keen that even if he died, we should make known the despicable demands they made of him. It was his last request to us, literally as he was being carried out of the door, that should he die, we should publicize the real reason for his death, and it is this:

He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance, and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.

This gives a small idea of how Hamas controls every aspect of Gazans' lives, no matter how trivial. And it maintains much of this power even today.

Every single person in Gaza is either Hamas, a supporter of Hamas, an informant for Hamas or deathly afraid of Hamas. Every reporter, every doctor, every factory worker, every farmer, every mother, every child. They have been conditioned to only tell reporters, NGOs and Westerners what Hamas allows them to say - or else.

Not one scrap of information that comes out of Gaza from a person who lives there or whose family lives there can be trusted. It is no coincidence that over the years, the only scraps of anti-Hamas information that comes out of Gaza is anonymously sourced. We've seen lots of cases of "eyewitnesses" and medical workers blaming Israel for things that were later proven to have never happened. We've known for many years that Hamas directly threatens journalists to only write what Hamas wants them to write.

As the story of the imam shows, Hamas tortures, imprisons and kills Gazans who do not toe the line. In the past Hamas has used the fog of war to kill its political enemies and blame their deaths on Israel. Every single story that comes out of Gaza of civilians being shot by IDF troops is not just suspect but must be assumed to be lies. Obviously many civilians are dying in airstrikes aimed at terror targets, but the numbers and circumstances are not to be believed.

The Western world cannot even conceive of the level of control Hamas has over Gaza. But if they trust the information that comes out of Gaza, how do they explain where all that cement came from?

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Turkey's Ministry of Commerce assures critics, "Our trade with Israel is for Arabs, not Jews!"

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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01/04 Links Pt2: Do You Have Any Other Place to Live?; The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away; Sharansky: A Dictator Can't Bring Peace to Gaza

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: Do You Have Any Other Place to Live?

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:

Andrew Pessin: The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away

Richard Landes's "Can the Whole World be Wrong?"

‘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.

Stephen Pollard: Pilger gave us the word to describe how the BBC distorts its coverage of Jews

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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Only Matter of Time Before Tourists Start Taking Duckface Selfies At 10/7 Massacre Sites (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

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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01/04 Links Pt1: Biden is abandoning Israel; The Tunnels: An Existential Threat; Israel defending itself is not ‘escalation’; ISIS claims Soleimani Bomb

From Ian:

Bethany Mandel: Biden is abandoning Israel

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.

Israel Must Send a Clear Message to the U.S.

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.

Israel defending itself is not ‘escalation’

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.