Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

01/10 Links Pt1: South Africa is inverting reality by accusing Israel of genocide; Victory is more important than US support; Intimidating tactics are backfiring on hardcore protesters

From Ian:

Irwin Cotler: South Africa is inverting reality by accusing Israel of genocide

In asserting standing before the ICJ, South Africa has emphasized “its own obligations as a State party to the Genocide Convention to act to prevent genocide.” But by launching a baseless proceeding against Israel for the crimes of genocide and incitement to genocide, it provides protective cover to Hamas and its related Iranian terrorist proxies, who themselves are the ones guilty of those crimes. South Africa thereby inverts reality and subverts the rules-based international order. This subversion is dangerous, and deeply concerning, following the pattern set by Vladimir Putin’s Russia — with President Putin using false accusations of genocide in his “Nazification” libel as the pretext for launching his criminal aggression against Ukraine.

Indeed, South Africa’s cynical weaponization of international law was further demonstrated when, on Jan. 4, less than a week after launching the ICJ proceedings against Israel, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to his home in Pretoria. The RSF, complicit in the Darfur genocide 20 years ago, is once again perpetrating mass crimes against humanity in Sudan, including the massacre of innocent civilians and the systematic use of sexual violence. Recently, over 100 legal experts warned that Sudan sits on the precipice of another genocide.

Genocide, the “crime of crimes,” constitutes the most abhorrent of human acts. The 153 state parties to the Genocide Convention have both a moral and a legal imperative to take action to combat genocide — and incitement to genocide — wherever they may occur. But, rather than upholding this legal obligation, South Africa’s application at the ICJ undermines it, inverting both fact and law, and threatening the international rules-based order by doing so. As was most recently demonstrated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this inversion is most dangerous, and it is crucial that the community of democracies, including Canada, is steadfast in opposing it.

Alan Baker: South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel: Cynical abuse of the ICJ

South Africa's genocidal claim echoes Palestinian charters
IRONY IS not lacking from the specific terms of the South African application to the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention. This is especially in light of the deliberately distorted and misleading interpretation given by South Africa to the terms of the Genocide Convention.

The criminal component of the Genocide Convention is based entirely on one very central tenet requiring a distinct intention to commit genocide. South Africa is alleging that Israel’s acts are “intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group.”

If such a specific and distinct genocidal intention cannot be proved and does not exist, then the complaint by South Africa has no basis and the convention cannot be invoked.

A thorough perusal of the complaint reveals a curious tendency by South Africa to attribute to Israel a broad and clearly false 75-year genocidal intention to destroy the Palestinians. By so doing, South Africa basically is echoing the messages of the PLO and Hamas charters, and as such is utterly distorting the very nature of the present limited conflict against the terror activity of Hamas.

Clearly, rather than harboring a 75-year-old genocidal intention, Israel has, throughout its short history, consistently sought to achieve peaceful coexistence and bon voisinage with its neighbors, including the Palestinians.

This is borne out by the many agreements reached, including the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1991-1993 Madrid process that led to the 1995 Oslo Accords.

One may ask why would Israel have committed itself to such a declared and agreed peace negotiation process with the Palestinians, witnessed and endorsed by the leaders of the international community and the United Nations itself, if it harbored any basic intention to commit genocide against the Palestinian people?

South Africa's cynical use of the term genocide
Through quoting in its complaint a lengthy collection of irresponsible statements by minor Israeli politicians, and even through quoting Israeli pop songs, South Africa is in fact cynically ignoring the very central issue of the conflict between Israel and Hamas: Israel’s inherent and legally justified prerogative and international right to defend itself and its population against terror through removing Hamas’s terror capabilities, weaponry, fortifications, and ammunition.

To claim that Israel’s actions to combat terror constitute the crime of genocide is clearly absurd to the point of being a frivolous accusation. No logical and serious analysis of the conflict between Israel and Hamas could indicate any genocidal intention on the part of Israel.

To burden the International Court of Justice with such a false and misleading allegation undermines the very integrity of the Genocide Convention and is both an insult to the Court, to the countries whose judges serve on the Court’s bench, as well as to the United Nations as a whole.

Paywalled: The genocide case against Israel is an abuse of the postwar legal order

The International Court of Justice is about to hear arguments in a case, brought by South Africa – the country that in 2015 refused to send former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for his contribution to war crimes in Darfur, and instead facilitated his return to Sudan where he continued his crimes – that alleges that Israel has not complied with the Genocide Convention and calls on the Court to order Israel to stop committing acts of “genocide” in Gaza.

To me, this case represents an outrageous and cynical abuse of the principles underlying the international legal order that was set up after the Second World War.

Hamas’s explicit and unapologetic goal is to eliminate Jews. The elimination of Jews is genocide. That is why Hamas murdered, raped, beheaded, kidnapped and tortured Jews on Oct. 7, 2023: to eliminate them, because they were Jews. It is a legal absurdity to suggest that a country that is defending itself from genocide is thereby guilty of genocide.

The end of the Second World War prevented Hitler from fully implementing his genocidal plan to eliminate Jews. And the world signed the Genocide Convention 75 years ago to make sure it never happened to anyone else. Now, we find ourselves in the perverse situation where a genocidal organization such as Hamas is able to escape legal scrutiny or sanction for committing genocidal acts, while the country that is the intended target of its genocidal intentions is being called upon by the International Court of Justice to defend itself from allegations of genocide.

This is an insult to what genocide means, an insult to the perception of the ability of international courts to retain their legitimacy and transcend global politics, and an insult to the memory of all of those on whose behalf the Genocide Convention was created.

Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 2004 until her mandatory retirement in 2021.

UN Watch reports:

A Telegram group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza is replete with posts celebrating the Hamas massacre of October 7th minutes after it began, praising the murderers and rapists as “heroes,” glorifying the “education” the terrorists received, gleefully sharing photos of dead or captured Israelis and urging the execution of hostages.

“This is the motherlode of UNRWA teachers’ incitement to Jihadi terrorism,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, the Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the world body.

The Telegram chat group is meant to support UNRWA teachers, and contains dozens of files with UNRWA staff names, ID numbers, schedules and curriculum materials.

In addition, UNRWA teachers regularly share videos, photos and messages inciting to Jihadi terrorism, and openly celebrating the Hamas massacre and rape of civilians.

Read the whole thing - they list a lot of specific examples.

I looked at the group myself (UNRWA will probably take it down in the coming hours) and saw a number of celebratory posts.

'"Umm Youssef" wrote a number of pro-jihadist posts ("Yousif's Mother" above), including "I want a mother from the mothers of these heroes to teach me how to raise my children."

"Shams Al-Shamousa" praised the terrorists: "They were taught in mosques with the established faith.

They breastfed jihad and resistance with their mothers’ milk."

"FR Mohamed" added, "They were raised on the sound faith and the Qur’an...and that death for the sake of God is our highest wish."

"Ibrahim Ibrahim" wrote, "After these scenes, there is no worry that people will die. These are historic moments. It doesn't matter what comes after that."

"Israa Mahmoud Abu Rizq" also praised the terrorists: "Decorations and the best of the youth of the sector, no women, no drugs, no corruption, no Tik Tok dancing, most of them are well-off, between newlyweds and couriers, memorizers of the Book of God, attending mosques, hearts as white as snow, fasting and standing. They are better than all of us. May God accept them in Paradise.♥️"

There were also rumors the next day that Hebron youth would repeat the attack in Kiryat Arba, with much anticipation.

Only one person I found seemed irritated, saying that the purpose of the group was not war news but UNRWA jobs. Everyone ignored him.

These are the people teaching the youth of Gaza, paid by the West. Are they any better than Hamas teachers?

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The people who block bridges and highways and the Houthis have a lot in common

Tim Black wrote on Spiked:

The Houthis’ attacks might not have had a significant military impact so far, but they have severely disrupted global trade. More strikingly, they have slowly started to thrill some Western leftists. After news broke that the Houthis had seized an Israeli-linked ship in early December, socialist magazine Jacobin painted the Houthis as an honourable anti-imperialist resistance movement. ‘They felt obliged to act’, it opined, ‘because of the strong, historically rooted support for Palestinians among the Yemeni people’.

Since then, the Houthi cheerleading among the left has only become louder. Self-styled ‘progressives’ have taken to expressing pro-Houthi sentiments on social media (Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King even managed to have his X account taken down for doing so). And on New Year’s Eve, pro-Palestine protesters decided to fill the New York City air with a new pro-Houthi chant: ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud! Turn another ship around!’

"Yemen Yemen make us proud... turn another ship around"

A substantial protest in midtown Manhattan, expressing solidarity with Palestine and calling for a ceasefire in #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Vpbsq4EiNH
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) January 7, 2024

Isn't it wonderful that the socialists who support Hamas also support another woman-hating, gay-hating, Jew-hating Islamist group? A group that has, incidentally, been responsible for the deaths of some 150,000 people?

Sounds like genocide!

But the parallels between the far-Leftist antisemites and the Houthi antisemites don't end there. After all, they share the exact same methods.

The socialists disrupt normal travel in America and Europe, including an attempt to block all traffic to the city with the most Jews in the world. The Houthis disrupt normal commercial traffic in the southern Red Sea. As one news report says, "their targets have increasingly tenuous — or no — relationship with Israel and imperil one of the world's crucial trade routes linking Asia and the Middle East to Europe."

And both of them claim to do it "for Palestine."

We are reaching the point where anyone can do anything they want and they can expect to be supported by the significant number of Jew-haters as long as they claim to be doing it "for Palestine." There doesn't have to be any relationship whatsoever between their actions and helping Palestinians, but the claim is enough to warm the hearts of leftist antisemites.

We have reached a point where the socialists can explicitly support a group whose very slogan says "Curse the Jews."

We are not too far from this. As long as they say it is "for Palestine."

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Guardian really outdoes itself:

The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals.

The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US.

According to the study, which is based on only a handful of carbon-intensive activities and is therefore probably a significant underestimate, the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal.

The analysis, which is yet to be peer reviewed, includes CO2 from aircraft missions, tanks and fuel from other vehicles, as well as emissions generated by making and exploding the bombs, artillery and rockets. It does not include other planet-warming gases such as methane. Almost half the total CO2 emissions were down to US cargo planes flying military supplies to Israel.

Wait, what? Half of this supposedly huge amount comes from US cargo planes flying to Israel?

If that is true, then every airplane in the skies is putting out huge amounts of CO2 - which indeed they really do. A single transatlantic flight generates hundreds of metric tons of CO2.

So a little research shows that all aviation traffic worldwide puts out over 1 billion tons of CO2 every year. That comes out to about 2.8 million tons from aviation every day. According to these calculations, Israel is directly and indirectly responsible for less than 5000 metric tons of CO2 a day - which is about 0.17% of what is used by all airplanes every day. It is the equivalent of about 25 flights from London to New York. And aviation is responsible for about 2% of CO2 emissions worldwide, meaning the war in Gaza is adding roughly an additional 0.0034% of all CO2 emissions.

Looking at it another way, the world generates about 36.8 billion tons of CO2 a year, which is 100 million tons a day. If the Gaza war generates 5000 tons a day, that increases the amount of CO2 by 1/20,000th.

Does that sound like it has an "'immense' effect on climate catastrophe"?

This article is just manipulating numbers to make Israel look bad. And, let's face it, anyone who looks at a map of the world and thinks that anything happening in Gaza is having an "immense" effect on the CO2 worldwide is an idiot.

This is especially disgusting because Israel contributes more to helping the environment on a per capita basis than probably any other country in the world, with Israeli environmental innovations being used around the world.

Now, why would people spend so much time calculating Israel's, and only Israel's, carbon footprint - and vastly exaggerating it - during a war for its survival?

One doesn't have to wonder about that too hard.

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!

01/09 Links Pt2: Restoring the Zionist Iron Wall; Exposing the lie about Palestinian journalists; Rashida Tlaib Named ‘Antisemite of the Year’

From Ian:

Despotism Goes Global

Like the Covid shutdowns and the riots of 2020 before them, the Hamas atrocities of October 7 revealed the ongoing moral and political catastrophe of the West. Hamas initiated a war against Israel that immediately turned into a war against Jews everywhere. That much was clear when its opening salvo—an orgy of rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping—received fervent support among leftists worldwide. From London to Sydney and points in between, the intifada, as Lee Smith observes, has gone global.

But what does the global intifada stand for, besides the brutal hard core of Hamas? It’s hard to say, because Hamas stands purely for the violent annihilation of what it hates. And what it hates is anything that impedes worldwide Islamist domination—especially Western civilization.

The twin roots of the West are Athens and Jerusalem, where philosophy, science, politics, law, and the love of God emerged as pillars of civilization. Hamas’s reference points are totalitarian-era Moscow and Berlin, which, in the twentieth century’s darkest hours, gave us the Gulag, the Iron Curtain, and Auschwitz. From its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood—of which Hamas is an offshoot—embraced fascistic Jew-hatred. And Hamas’s international support is the bitter fruit of a Soviet campaign, launched more than 60 years ago, that used the Palestinians, left by their Arab neighbors to languish in refugee camps, as an ideological bludgeon against the West.

After October 7, Hamas’s war against the Jews enflamed the demoralized remains of a free world that is now tearing itself apart. No people in history has proved more vital and resilient than the Jews. The irrepressible Israelite spirit is announced in the first words of Exodus, where Pharaoh feels threatened by an explosion of Israelite births. Freed from the Egyptian yoke, the desert-and-God-formed Jews fought and conquered, remembered and reflected, and recorded what they’d learned in the Torah, a wellspring of wisdom and cultural creativity. They survived the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and built a new one after returning from a lifetime of captivity in Babylon.

When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and evicted them from Palestine, the Jews should by all odds have withered away. Instead they reconfigured their religion from the ground up. In the absence of the Temple, they found a new locus of contact with God in the Torah. Rabbis skilled in scriptural interpretation replaced the priests, and self-sacrifice substituted for the offering of animals. In subsequent centuries, the Jews produced the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, monumental works of intellectual imagination. A prodigious number of great thinkers followed, including 214 Nobel Prize winners. And after a third of the Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust, the survivors founded a new homeland, defended it with courage and conviction, and made the desert bloom.

Jewish success is an imperishable monument to the accomplishment of the West, the civilization they helped to birth and, as much as any other people, to build and sustain. The Jews reflect the best of the West: the promise of freedom, peace, prosperity, and creativity it holds for those willing to work for these things. And it is just this happiness and human flourishing that is intolerable to Islamists and their nihilistic allies.

BESA: Restoring the Zionist Iron Wall

A hundred years ago, in the article "The Iron Wall," Ze'ev Jabotinsky laid the cornerstone for the foundations of Israel's security perception. In 1923 he identified the motivations behind Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel and proposed a strategic approach to achieving Zionist goals.

First: Arab resistance and struggle against Zionism express a religious-nationalist struggle with enduring motivational roots. The idea that a positive, lasting solution to the conflict can be arrived at through suitable compensation and willing compromise has been repeatedly revealed as overly optimistic.

Second: The Arab struggle and adoption of terrorist methods and violence do not stem from economic hardship, poverty, and despair. Instead, it arises from the Arab hope that Zionist dominance can be consistently challenged and weakened until its ultimate demise. It is not despair that generates Arab terrorism but hope.

Third: In recognizing these two statements as true, the concept of the "Iron Wall" negates the Arab hope of achieving gains through incessant resistance to the Zionist Israeli presence. Jabotinsky wrote: "As long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us, they will not give up on this hope."

The goal of the current war should be to restore the Zionist Iron Wall and establish it with renewed strength for the next hundred years.

Jonathan Tobin: Don’t look away from primary cause of antisemitism epidemic

To put that into perspective, this outrage is taking place in a country in which truckers protesting COVID-19 policies by parking their vehicles paralyzing traffic in the capital of Ottawa in what they called a “freedom convoy” were treated as insurrectionists. Their bank accounts and those of their supporters were frozen, and their leaders are being tried now on a variety of charges that could land them in prison, even while pro-Hamas protestors were given kid-gloves treatment in the same city.

It’s all part of the same mindset that led to a private Jewish high school’s girl basketball team withdrawing from a game being played in Yonkers, N.Y., against Roosevelt High School—a college-prep magnet school—after they were repeatedly subjected to antisemitic taunts and rough play by their opponents. One Roosevelt High player screamed at the Lefell School players, “I support Hamas, you f**king Jew.” Roosevelt forfeited the game. One player was suspended a day later, and the coach was fired. But again, just imagine, if one of the Jewish girls or any non-minority had yelled, “I support the Klan” at an African-American player. It would have made the front page of the Times and become a national cause-célèbre. But as of this writing, the Times has yet to even acknowledge it in much the same manner that it was late to account for the antisemitic riot that took place in a Queens high school that targeted a pro-Israel teacher.

These incidents and the growing total of opinion surveys that point to a spike in antisemitic attitudes are not just a result of indoctrination in the intersectional lie about the Palestinian war to destroy Israel being analogous to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. It’s also a product of the mainstreaming of anti-Zionist invective and barely disguised prejudice against Jews in publications like the Times and the willingness of pop-culture outlets like the “Saturday Night Live” show to take the side of those justifying the advocacy of genocide of Jews rather than those calling it out.

The problem is that the people who are committing the growing list of antisemitic acts on the streets and on college campuses are not part of a tiny radical fringe like the tiki-torch-bearing neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville. These demonstrators are educated “progressives” who claim to support human rights and are often connected in one way or another to the elites who run the institutions of academia, the media, the arts and liberal politics. In other words, the new shock troops of antisemitism are people that liberal Jews are used to considering as allies. That’s why it is so hard for even groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be protecting the Jewish community, to stop defending DEI policies that are behind this rise in antisemitism.

Jews cannot afford to look away from the main cause of their current woes. Instead, they must focus on why it is that progressives think that Jews are the one minority group that can be discriminated against with impunity. The community needs to mobilize its resources and demand that political leaders start treating those who are carrying out these antisemitic hate crimes in the name of supposed sympathy for the Palestinians with the harshness they deserve. It must also insist that mainstream publications go back to treating anti-Zionism as a form of hatred against Jews. Only then can we hope to quell this dangerous surge of hate.

Al Jazeera lists the countries which have officially backed the South African case before the ICJ claiming Israel is engaged in "genocide."

It starts with the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). And then it lists three countries - Malaysia, Jordan and Turkey - which all happen to be members of the OIC themselves. (If those countries calling out their support separately is significant, then one must wonder why the other 54 members of the OIC have not.)

The only other country that publicly backs the case is Bolivia, which has a pretty poor human rights record itself.

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!

More Jews want to stay in Israel since October 7

One of the assumptions that Israel's enemies love to claim is that the Jewish attachment to Israel is fleeting; that a terror attack is enough to get Jews to flee Israel.

This is what Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech last week, saying that every Israeli Jew has another passport and their suitcases are packed and ready to go when they find out that Israel is not the land of milk and honey.

A survey from the Israel Democracy Institute last November proves the opposite.

The percentage of Jews who want to remain in Israel went up after the October 7 terror attacks by over 10 percentage points - 15% more Jews who want to stay compared to only a few months beforehand.

Terror attacks make Jews more Zionist, not less.

In the month after October 7, Israel's Aliyah and Integration Ministry reported a 149% increase in interest from Jewish French citizens and and an 81% increase from North American Jews in moving to Israel.

Despite some of them spending years studying the Jewish psyche, Israel's enemies remain clueless as to what makes Jews tick. And part of it is that sense of unity and belonging to the same family, especially when there is danger.

"Pro-Palestinian" sentiment is based on hate for Israeli Jews, not on love of Palestinians. Pro-Israel sentiment is based on love of Jews. And that's the way it has always been.

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!

01/09 Links Pt1: Israel’s Thankless, But Essential, Role in the World; Israeli lawmakers ponder UNRWA overhaul; Record number of Americans think Israel isn’t getting enough US support

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Thankless, But Essential, Role in the World

Hezbollah has signaled its reluctance to widen the war—but, crucially, it has not actually stopped attacking Israel. Which means it wants to continue its torment of Israeli civilians but without getting its clock properly cleaned for doing so. In addition, the most recent Hezbollah casualty was reportedly responsible for the missile attack that damaged Israel’s air traffic control base in Meron over the weekend. It was a retaliatory strike, it was “surgical,” it was successful. Yet it still gets a thumbs-down from the cheap seats.

It’s almost as if much of the criticism of Israel’s self-defense is pretextual.

Nobody argues that Hamas commanders involved in Oct. 7 are inappropriate targets. A surgical strike taking out such figures without causing “disproportionate” civilian harm (I put the word in quotes because the people using it generally don’t know what it means in relation to armed conflict) is basically Israel waiting tables for the spectators of the world, taking orders and fulfilling them. And the most common response is akin to “the food here is terrible and the portions are too small.”

There is also no ambiguity regarding Hezbollah’s culpability. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is extremely proud of every act of violence it can muster.

“Hezbollah stated on Tuesday that they sent an attack drone to target the IDF’s Northern Command base near Safed,” the Jerusalem Post reports. The piece goes on: “Sirens alerting residents to a possible unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intrusion sounded in the northern city of Safed and across northern Israel on Tuesday morning. UAV warnings were sounded in Dishon; Yiftah; Malkia; Mevuot Hermon Regional Council; Ramot Naftali; Avivim; Bar’am and Yir’on. Rocket sirens also sounded in northern Israel shortly afterward, including in Malkia and Ramot Naftali, communities that had just received aircraft intrusion alerts.”

If Iran and Hezbollah are trying to avoid a wider war, they have a funny way of showing it. What’s actually being tested here is not Iran’s restraint but Israel’s. And yet we never hear demands that Israel’s displaced northern residents be able to go back to their homes and live in peace. That would require pacifying the north, deterring drone incursions that seek to bomb Israeli territory, and scrambling Hamas’s ability to pull its Lebanese brothers-in-arms into a land war.

What the world wants from Israel is what it always wants from Israel: for the Jewish state to take risks nobody else will but from which everyone will benefit, and to do it all with the beneficiaries taunting the IDF from behind their MacBooks.

“You’re welcome” is all Israel should say to the hypocrites and ingrates that hold Jewish life to be so cheap. And even that is more polite than Israel’s critics deserve.

How Hamas Changed Israel's Security Doctrine

Few thought that Israel would still be on full war footing three months after Oct. 7, with no clear end in sight.

However, this is not a sign of failure. Instead, it is a sign of trying to defeat a well-entrenched enemy - one indifferent to the plight and well-being of their own people - while trying to spare the lives of the kidnapped hostages and IDF soldiers, minimize civilian casualties on the other side, and retain international legitimacy.

Few would have imagined that Israel would have been able to continue its war in Gaza at a very high level of intensity for three months without the world stepping in and imposing a ceasefire.

When the war began, there was much talk about how the diplomatic clock was ticking. Yet the savagery of the Hamas attacks, coupled with an understanding at least at the governmental level in the U.S., Britain, and Germany, has given Israel the time it needs to methodically dismantle Hamas' military capabilities inside Gaza.

In recent years, Israel's security doctrine has been a passive one based on deterrence, the idea being that Israel could live with ideologies on its borders preaching Israel's destruction out of a belief that these organizations would never act on their ideology, knowing full well that if they did, they would incur the substantial wrath of the Israeli army.

Hamas proved this assumption false, showing on Oct. 7 that it was in no way deterred by Israel. This has led to a change in Israel's security doctrine.

Israel is no longer willing to tolerate bloodthirsty terrorist organizations with significant military capabilities living within spitting distance of its civilian communities.

This is also clear in Israel's policy now toward Hizbullah.

Good terrorists versus bad terrorists

We are supposed to believe that overnight the PA has changed its spots. After all, Abbas wears a suit. Op-ed.

No more is it between good and bad. Now, for 2024 and beyond, it’s between bad and worse.

Take your pick. For instance, between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which is better, which is worse?

Which terrorists, in other words, should get to run Gaza, “the day after?” Biden and his people prefer the PA…the lesser of two evils.

In fact, according to their view, there is nothing evil about the PA, because? Because they say so. and they will decide what is best for Israel.

Biden and his people are on this in a big way. Every day they pressure Israel to give it up for Mahmood Abbas and his PA. After all, he is not quite as rotten as Yahya Sinwar.

Therefore, pronto, a two-state solution, with the understanding that these Arabs are peace-loving, just folks like the rest of us.

So goes the sales pitch, as concocted by the Biden Administration and leftists everywhere. As they sold Hamas before Oct 7…you know, good people, live and let live people, if just given the chance…which even conned numbers of Israelis… so too now the PA gets laundered and cleansed, and purified, and never mind Abbas’s five-year Second Intifada, 2000 to 2005,

Never mind the murdering of thousands of Israeli civilians, and the suicide bombings, the stone-throwing, the car-ramming, the incitements.

Israelis were and are safe nowhere. Certainly not under the Abbas/PA pay to slay system. In his schools, kids are being taught to become martyrs for Islam.

Egypt denies Israeli request for greater oversight on Gaza borders

Egypt has rejected a proposal by Israel for greater Israeli oversight over the buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border and is prioritizing efforts to broker a ceasefire before working on post-war arrangements, three Egyptian security sources said.

Egypt shares a 13km (8 mile) border with Gaza which is the only border of the Palestinian coastal enclave not directly controlled by Israel. Along with Qatar, Egypt has also played a leading role in talks to broker a new ceasefire in Gaza and secure a deal for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

The Egyptian sources said that during those talks Israel had approached Egypt about securing the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow buffer zone along the border, as part of Israeli plans to prevent future attacks.

The current conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched an incursion during which Israel said 1,200 people were killed and some 240 hostages captured.

Israel has retaliated with an offensive that has killed more than 23,000 people, according to Gaza officials, and driven most of the territory's 2.3 million people from their homes.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said joint monitoring Philadelphi Corridor with Egypt was among issues that have been discussed by the countries.

Asked if Egypt had refused, the Israeli official said: "I'm not aware of that."

Egypt's state-linked Al Qahera News cited an anonymous source on Monday as saying that recent reports of planned cooperation between Egypt and Israel on the corridor were false.

The head of Egypt's State Information Service did not respond to a request for comment.

The Egyptian sources said that Israeli officials did not discuss control of the corridor during the current ceasefire talks, but instead asked to participate in monitoring the area, including by sharing usage of new monitoring technology Israel would procure.

Egyptian negotiators rejected the idea, but Egypt has bolstered the physical barriers on its side of the border, the sources said.

Egypt is prioritizing reaching a new ceasefire agreement as the necessary foundation for discussions about post-war Gaza, including securing the corridor, the sources added.

The EU throws millions more at Area C to take it away from Israel

From the PA's official Wafa news agency:

The Palestinian government and the European Union signed, today, Tuesday, the European Joint Support Program Agreement for the benefit of local government for areas called “C”, worth 10 million euros, as part of an agreement worth 11.613 million euros to which it contributes alongside the European Union, Germany and Denmark .

The agreement, which was signed on the Palestinian side by Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, and on the European Union side by the European Neighborhood Policy Commission, aims to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians in areas called “C” by ensuring the protection of their property rights and their health, economic and social rights .

The Prime Minister said: “We do not recognize the divisions of the occupation, and for us, all the lands of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, are all an integral part of the lands of our Palestinian state, whose foundations the occupation is systematically working to destroy, whether through genocide in the Gaza Strip, its siege, and the return of Occupying the West Bank, isolating Jerusalem, or exploiting Area C for settlement expansion, and our priority is to support the steadfastness of our people, with the participation of our international partners, and a commitment to providing basic services in areas suffering from the repercussions of the occupation.”

It's interesting that the EU and the PA recognize the Oslo Accords when it gave rights to Palestinians but the parts that give rights to Israel - such as the exclusive governance of Area C - are roundly ignored.

In fact the EU claims that its illegal building in Area C is "is fully in line with international law." But it violates the Oslo Accords, and signed agreements are international law.

The EU-funded illegal settlements are haphazard, dangerous structures spread out over maximum areas whose only purpose is to be a land grab to take away areas from Jews. And this is prioritized over education and infrastructure in areas A and B where nearly all Palestinians live.

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So Very Israeli posts a story:

A true story from Jerusalem:

A few weeks ago, I was walking through a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

An Arab deliveryman had parked his motorbike on a busy street. He layed out a mat on the sidewalk and began his prayers.

What happened next was shocking.

People started walking past and noticing him. They kept walking. Nobody bothered him. Not one comment, not one glare.

This was in one of the most religious Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
This was during a war the media paint as a battle between Jews and Arabs.

And a Muslim man stops to practice his religion in public, completely confident in the knowledge that he's safe to do so.

Can you imagine a Jew in an Arab country? Would any Jew be safe to stop and put on tefillin in the middle of Turkey for example?

Jews are scared to show any signs of their religion even in cities like New York and London.

But Israel is different. Israel is one of the most tolerant countries in the world. A country where people of all religions feel safe.

Ship of Theseus follows up:

I was at the Shuk in Jerusalem on a Fri afternoon. Place is PACKED with people. Street is bumper to bumper with cars. Right on the sidewalk of Agrippa St an Arab guy laid out his prayer rug, prostrated himself and began praying. And the crowd just walked around him. No big deal.

These are nice stories, and they are perfect examples of Jewish tolerance in Israel that is not reported widely - but they are also stories about the arrogance of some Muslims.

Religious Jews in a city who are faced with having to pray before sundown never decide to pray in the middle of a busy sidewalk, There is always an alcove, a patch of grass, a corner of a public building, someplace that is unobtrusive. And there is almost always time to find such a spot.

Even when Jews put together an ad-hoc minyan in airports or sports events they will attempt to get out of the way of the crowds. It is basic courtesy not to bother the larger public and force them to walk around you.

And this applies to Islam as well.

IslamOnline says, "Basically, one can pray wherever it is clean. However, we should try to find a place that is relatively quiet and where people will not trip over us or be annoyed."

Egypt's Dar al Ifta says not to pray when "it is a public or personal walkway and holding prayers there obstructs the movements of pedestrians and harms public interest."

So when Muslims decide to make a public show of praying in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood, it is hard to escape the feeling that they are not humbly practicing Islam but arrogantly telling the Jews that they have no place on their own land and must accommodate the true Muslim owners.

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The official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency reports that the council of government ministers decided to act as if they are in a state of emergency, and to prepare budgets and government activities for 2024 accordingly.

What does that mean?

They will "manage the available financial resources in accordance with the emergency situation, to ensure that the government fulfills its obligations towards employees in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, as well as to prisoners and families of martyrs, according to available funds."

Yes, paying terrorists is a higher priority than providing basic governmental services.

The decision was announced at the end of the weekly Monday council meeting.

A couple of things to note. One is that the Council cannot actually declare a state of emergency - that is up to Mahmoud Abbas, like pretty much everything else.

Two is that, supposedly, the budget to pay "prisoners and families of martyrs" is supposed to be from the PLO, not the general government budget, and the PA has told the West that none of their aid dollars goes towards that fund. This announcement appears to contradict that assertion, and the ministers are saying that the PA is responsible for that budget.

Which means they were lying all along.

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Hezbollah MP tells EU delegation: "You expelled your Jews to protect your societies, we want to do the same!"

The head of Hezbollah's political party in Lebanon claims that he tried to appeal to European antisemitism for gaining sympathy for his party's positions.

Chief of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, MP Muhammad Raad, gave a threatening speech to Israel on Monday, saying that Hezbollah is not afraid of war, but then revealed what he has told European delegations to Lebanon.

“You expelled the Jews from your countries in order to protect your society, and we have the right to protect our society as well,” Raad says he told the delegations.

In case anyone was wondering whether Hezbollah adheres to a Nazi philosophy, this should clear that up.

This statement was widely reported in Arabic media.

Raad met with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Lebanon on Saturday, which is presumably when he made this statement.

If Borrell truly cared about peace, he would have publicized Raad's bigotry and said that this is unacceptable under any circumstances. The EU claims to care about antisemitism but when confronted with the Arab and Islamic flavors of Jew-hatred, too many European leaders close their eyes and ears and give it a pass.

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01/08 Links Pt2: Israel’s Righteous Response to the ‘Genocide’ Charge; Trust Me, You'd Rather Live in a Pro-Israel America; Fauda star Idan Amedi seriously wounded in Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Righteous Response to the ‘Genocide’ Charge

Still, the decision to send Barak to the ICJ as Israel’s judge was remarkably popular. Barak’s selection was proposed by Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the very embodiment of the country’s powerful legal elite. It was immediately approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the legal elite’s favorite target.

Netanyahu’s primary political rival and a current member of the unity war council, Benny Gantz, hailed the decision as “correct, right, and proper.” Ultra-Orthodox Interior Minister Moshe Arbel practically sang that Barak’s selection represented “another lesson to us all that in the moment of truth, what unifies is greater than what divides.”

Why would a controversial figure be such a consensus choice? The answer is that the UN court isn’t the Federalist Society. The UN could not possibly care less about constitutional balancing or limiting principles or theories of textual interpretation or the judiciary’s role in legislating. All it sees is a colleague who made sure Israeli law was explicitly, not just implicitly, organized toward maximizing minority rights.

Justice Kagan, and other judges and lawyers on the Western left, admire Barak for the results, not the process. (Kagan admitted during her confirmation hearing that “Justice Barak’s philosophy is so different from anything that we would use or would want to use in the United States.”)

In other words, it is precisely Barak’s status as a foil to the Israeli right wing that gives him unimpeachable legitimacy. For left-leaning judges, Barak is their living, breathing ideal. He is the Israel they want, and he is the Israel that they will see up on that bench.

For the right, this means that although Barak will not be arguing Israel’s case as its attorney, his participation as an Israeli delegate silences all questions about the government’s motives and intentions in the case.

There are two other things about Barak personally that must be said here. First, he is regarded by friend and foe alike as a patriot. The despicable allegation that Israel is committing genocide is not a partisan football. Israel is not a country of self-hating elites, and even his political opponents trust Barak to faithfully represent his country on the world stage.

Second, Aharon Barak lived in a Lithuanian ghetto under Nazi occupation. Anyone shameless enough to accuse Israel of genocide should have to look a Holocaust survivor in the eye while doing so, and now they will. Meanwhile, Aharon Barak’s last act will likely be his least controversial one.

The genocide libel against Israel

Nothing of the sort is happening in Gaza. Israel’s campaign is intended to destroy Hamas, not the Palestinian people. Unlike Hamas, which set out deliberately to kill civilians on Oct. 7, Israel tries to avoid killing civilians (as it attacks an enemy that hides itself among them). You can argue that it isn’t trying hard enough, that its campaign has been indiscriminate, reckless or, if you like, even brutal. The result – thousands of innocents killed – is unquestionably heartbreaking.

But intentions are everything when it comes to making moral judgments. With good reason, we judge premeditated killing much more harshly than the accidental kind. There is a world of difference between a democratic state defending itself against terrorism and a movement that storms a music festival and guns down throngs of people at close range.

Language matters, especially when it comes to the law. Genocide is one of those words that is thrown around so loosely now that it has lost much of its meaning. It has become a slogan, a term of propaganda, a weapon in the bitter cultural and ideological wars that are raging all around us.

What is worse, it is a weapon that is used selectively. Many of those who now accuse Israel of genocide stood on the sidelines when Syria’s dictatorship smashed Aleppo to rubble and yawned when Myanmar’s generals mowed down pro-democracy demonstrators or razed Rohingya villages. The same South African government that is so incensed at the purported genocidal behaviour of Israel’s army remains on cozy terms with Vladimir Putin’s Russia even as it sends rockets crashing into Ukrainian cities.

It is this double standard that rankles. Israel rightly complains that it is singled out for special scrutiny at bodies such as the United Nations, which has passed innumerable resolutions condemning its treatment of the Palestinians.

Canada has usually taken its side, standing apart from Israel-bashing at the UN. It should do so again in this case, saying with all the force it can muster that the charge of genocide is false.

Int’l Jewish lawyers group: ‘If everything is genocide, nothing is genocide’

Contrary to South Africa’s claims, the IJL notes that official Israeli and IDF spokespeople have declared “time and time again that the military effort is directed against Hamas and not against the people of Gaza.”

Next, IJL asserted that “This is clearly reflected in the actual conduct of the IDF…giving advance warnings to civilians of impending airstrikes and other military operations; urging the evacuation of civilians from pending combat zones; designation of a humanitarian zone within Gaza; and,” facilitating the transfer of humanitarian aid.

“South Africa further purports to prove ‘genocidal intent’ by presenting heated quotes from various Israeli politicians and other figures (made soon after the massacre of October 7th), none of which constitute official Israeli government statements or policy nor reflect the policies and practices of the IDF, said IJL.

More broadly, “by labeling Israel’s defensive war against Hamas an act of genocide, South Africa is effectively stripping the term of its meaning. If this is genocide, then many instances of the use of force in response to an armed attack could easily meet that definition.”

Coming full circle, the IJL noted that “the driving force behind the Genocide Convention was a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, whose work to codify the crime of genocide was motivated by his personal experience of an actual genocide - the efforts of the Nazis and their collaborators to exterminate the Jewish people.”

It added, “The attempt to harness the Genocide Convention to target the very people whose murder led to the Convention reflects a growing phenomenon of undermining the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own.”Concluding, the IJL called on “governments, international institutions, and the international legal community to denounce and reject the cynical and dangerous misuse of the Genocide Convention.”

ICJ Gaza genocide case: South Africa set to discover law of unintended consequences

What does this have to do with sparrows in China?

The answer is “unintended consequences.” The reality is that Israel has long struggled to be heard. The overwhelming support of Western media for the Palestinian cause and of academics and so-called progressives who align with the “oppressed,” has created a world of confusion. The repetition of “genocide,” of “apartheid,” of “ethnic cleansing” has worked to silence alternative voices, so indicated by the nebulous response to the rape of Israelis, to the taking of hostages, and to the relentless attack on Israeli cities.

By taking Israel to the ICJ, South Africa will finally provide Israel with a platform and an opportunity to be heard.

Algorithms that until recently would have ensured that haters of Israel are sheltered from a counter view, media who might have avoided presenting alternative facts, and academics who have been tripped up in an Orwellian world of their own making will hear it from Israel.

It will not all go Israel’s way. There will be sound bites too, that will reflect poorly on some Israeli ministers. There will be incidents of war that are ugly. And there will be the exposure of terrible Palestinian suffering.

And yet, by the conclusion and presentation of the facts, South Africa would have provided a platform that Israel has long sought. In doing so, the ANC will not only assist Israel but will expose itself as being the self-serving and hypocritical organization that many know it to be.

In essence, by taking Israel to the ICJ, the ANC will be killing two birds with one stone.

This morning an Israeli airstrike eliminated a major Hezbollah figure, Wissam al-Tawil, with another militant in southern Lebanon.

In Lebanon and Syria, terror groups do not try to hide when their members become "martyrs" from Israeli airstrikes.

So what is the tally of terrorists versus civilians killed since October 7 north of Israel's border?

Including today, 155 members of Lebanese armed groups have been killed, along with 23 civilians. That's 87% militants. This is despite that in Lebanon, as with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah hides rockets in civilian areas, using people as human shields.

In Syria, 80 militants have been killed, along with 5 civilians. That's 94% militants.

These numbers indicate Israel's care in avoiding civilian casualties. And when they are unavoidable, that is because the enemy is using the civilians to protect themselves.

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"97% Heaven:" A visit to Nir Oz (Forest Rain, photo-essay)

By Forest Rain

97% heaven

Beautiful rolling plains, clear blue sky, and low unobtrusive houses. Spots of greenery, a step away from the desert. Just enough civilization to not feel lonely with open spaces that give the feeling of air. Freedom.

Who wouldn’t imagine they had reached heaven?

Residents of “Otef” Gaza, the Israeli communities near the border with Gaza will tell you they have defined the region they call home as “97% heaven, 3% hell.”

The hell they were referring to was that of missiles suddenly raining down on them, with 15 seconds (if any) warning to get to a shelter. The hell of periodic rounds of military engagement with Gaza, the demonstrations on the borders where Gazans burned tires polluting their air and making it hard to breathe. The hell of fire balloons from Gaza, setting their fields on fire, burning the crops, and ruining their livelihood for the season. And after every session of hell, the residents of these communities pulled themselves together, rebuilt, and replanted, recreating their heaven.

Never in their wildest dreams did they picture the hell of October 7^th.

Nir Oz is one of these communities. (see more about the location and what happened in the kibbutz at: https://oct7map.com/).

Of all the communities, we wanted to see Nir Oz because, at the beginning of the war, our son, an elite combat soldier was there with his unit. In the Kibbutz, among other things, they were tasked with finding survivors and protecting them from terrorists remaining in the area.

They were there after the massacre after the hostages had already been taken to Gaza (among them, the Bibas family). It was days before the IDF was certain they had cleared the Otef of Hamas terrorists.

Having seen via the media, images of devastation and the stream of bodies being carried out of nearby Be’eri, I was worried about what he would experience at Nir Oz. Later he told us that although the same things were happening in Nir Oz, he was focused on the living people. Others were left to deal with the dead and the devastation. He was focused on the survivors. People who had just had their world shattered – family members murdered in front of them, others taken hostage, their homes burned.

What would we see in Nir Oz?

We’ve seen the images from various kibbutzim of burned homes, holes in the walls from bullets and grenades, homes turned upside down. What would it be like to walk through one of these communities, emptied of its residents? The only people there are soldiers, other rescue and rehabilitation professionals planning next steps, and those coming with groups to bear witness and teach about the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.

The first thing that struck me was the beauty of Nir Oz. 97% heaven. This was the place where kids played outside unattended, and no one locked their doors.

Sleek, healthy cats came rubbing on my ankles to say hello, used to friendly people. Perhaps they miss their people?

As we walked closer to the homes, I was hit by the horrific contrast between the beauty and the destruction, life and death, heaven and hell.

The frame of a Sukkah still standing, a seesaw for kids to play with, a professional BBQ grill and oven… signs of happy family life, amid destruction.

Homes burnt out. Nothing left.

And then, I began to notice the spray-painted instructions on the buildings. The buildings were checked over and over – for bodies that needed to be removed, for remaining terrorists hiding inside, for booby-traps terrorists might have left behind (in some cases they booby-trapped corpses, knowing that rescue workers would come to get them, hoping their explosives would injure more Jews). Structural engineers also checked the buildings to see if they were structurally sound or not. Coded instructions spray painted on the buildings – which unit checked and what they found. I am not familiar with most of the codes but I do understand the words “sound” or “unsound” and the dates written.

The massacre occurred on 7.10 (October 7^th). I was shocked to see buildings marked with dates that ranged from the beginning of the month towards the end of the month 22.10 and even 25.10. It took that long to complete all the necessary checks. That’s the extent of the devastation. So much to recover. So much to check.

What we saw told stories of things that happened to people who were not there. What elderly person was taken from this shelter? Were they killed or taken hostage?

Towards the end of our visit, we stood with soldiers in the vantage point towards Gaza. We could see the fence of the Kibbutz and the spot where the terrorists rounded up Jews and selected who to take back to Gaza and who to kill and not take.

Gaza is so close… From our vantage point, we could see the battle taking place in Chan-Younis. It is surreal to be in a quiet, peaceful place and watch the clouds created from explosions and armed cars maneuvering in the Gazan city and hear the gunfire of our soldiers battling Hamas.

Heaven and hell. The people of Nir Oz lived in their little patch of paradise, with monsters just a short walk away.

I left the Kibbutz with an unexpected image. Among many other artistic things people had in their gardens someone, had a sign taken from the Disengagement, when in 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza, forcibly removing the Jewish population that lived there, mainly in Gush Katif.