Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 14, 2024

The candle against Hamas' darkness (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

I stood where he stood, trying to imagine what it was like. How he made the decisions he made. How he felt.

I couldn’t.

Aner Shapira deliberately placed himself between the murderous terrorists outside and some 30 people, friends, and strangers. Knowingly, mindfully, he chose to be their shield against death.

How do you make a choice like that?

Aner Shapira, along with his friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin, attended the Nova Music Festival. A fighter in the Nahal reconnaissance unit on leave, Aner loved music and simply wanted to enjoy himself – like so many others.

The Hamas invasion began under the cover of a missile bombardment. The Nova festival was a rave, outside and with no place to take cover from missiles, let alone a hoard of blood thirsty murderers. Aner, Hersh and others left the festival site and took cover in a “migunit,” a mini-shelter set up in places where it’s not possible to reach a bomb shelter in the 15 seconds between when missiles are launched from Gaza and they slam into Israeli border communities.

The tiny shelter, not much larger than the bus stop next to it, wasn’t designed to protect people from terrorists with machine guns, RPGs, and grenades.

When he understood what was happening Aner placed himself at the entrance of the shelter, pushing everyone else behind him. Those that survived reported that he told them what he was going to do and how to continue if he would be killed.

One of the people huddled behind him took a photo in case no one would survive to tell the story.

This is what heroism looks like.

A car camera on a vehicle stopped outside the shelter continued to record, giving a full picture of what happened.

A terrorist throws a grenade into the shelter. He expects it to or at least wound everyone inside.

Aner, with his bare hands, threw it back.

Seven times.

The terrorist threw another grenade. Aner picked it up with his bare hands in the few seconds before it exploded – and threw it back at the terrorists.

Seven times.

One the eighth, it was too late.

Aner was killed. Hersh’s arm was blown off and he was taken hostage along with a few others the terrorists saw were still alive.

Most of the others inside exploded. Literally. Those who survived did so lying under pieces of other people’s bodies for hours, themselves wounded, not knowing if the noises they heard outside were the terrorists coming back to finish them off or Israelis coming to rescue them.

It took five hours before rescue came. Everyone who was more than lightly injured bled to death.

Zaka volunteers, trying to bring every Jew to proper burial removed the human remains, cleaned up the blood and other fluids (I’ve seen the video of people entering the shelter after the attack which I will not share here). The shelter has been whitewashed but the bullet holes and signs of the grenades remain.

Note the date on the sticker Zaka put on the outside of the shelter, notifying that it is clear and clean - November 19^th.

It is very difficult to step into a space where so many people lay in utter terror, wounded and dying.

The shelter is empty yet full. Sanctified by blood and heroism. Horror and awe. The ability to love others more than you love yourself.

Many of the family and friends of those murdered here have come, lit candles and written things on the walls – letters to those they loved who are no longer here, messages of strength and support for the nation and an extraordinary poem honoring Aner.

Written in red, in small letters near the floor, this poem tells the breathtaking story of Aner’s heroism. Something so huge, so moving should perhaps be someplace less modest – and yet, perhaps it’s in the most appropriate place, next to the signs of the shrapnel, by the door where he stood.

The Hebrew poem is more layered and rich in meaning than my translation can convey but everything about this story is deeper than words. Like Aner himself.

Aner is an unusual name. It sounds like the Hebrew word for “the candle”, ha-ner. It turns out that Aner is a name from the bible of someone who was an ally of Abraham. The name is associated with being connected to our historic roots, true friendship and aspiring for justice.

How fitting.

The Candle by Tzur Erlich:

Next to the door,
In the public domain,
Which belonged to the guns,
Which belonged to the Arabs,
Stood the candle. Alone. Secure.
Behind him, like a human flock, treasure [also = hidden]

And facing him, with a voice not a bell,
They were hidden from the crowd,
Grenade after grenade, grenade after grenade.

And he was catching the raw [live] grenade,
And threw it while alive,
Throwing his life in response.

One after another he counted,
Like the branches of the [Chanukah) holiday candles. One... seven... eight.

He counted, one after another, he withheld the plague.
And thus he gave life. And thus he counted.
One... three... five... until eight.
And on the eighth, the candle was extinguished.
Aner was extinguished

הנר (צור ארליך)

סָמוּךְ אֵצֶל הַפֶּתַח,

אֵצֶל רְשׁוּת הָרַבִּים

שֶׁהָיְתָה לִרְשׁוּת הָרוֹבִים,

שֶׁהָיְתָה לִרְשׁוּת עֲרָבִים,

עָמַד הַנֵּר. לְבַד. לָבֶטַח.

מֵאֲחוֹרָיו כְּצֹאן אָדָם. מַטְמוֹן.

וְאֶל פָּנָיו בְּקוֹל לֹא-פַּעֲמוֹן

נִתְּכוּ בַּנֶּחְבָּאִים מִן הֶהָמוֹן

רִמּוֹן וְרִמּוֹן, רִמּוֹן וְרִמּוֹן.

וְרִמּוֹן וְרִמּוֹן, וְרִמּוֹן וְרִמּוֹן.

וְהוּא הָיָה תּוֹפֵס אֶת הָרִמּוֹן הַנָּא,

וּמַשְׁלִיכוֹ בְּעוֹדוֹ חַי,

מַשְׁלִיךְ חַיָּיו מִנֶּגֶד.

אֶחָד אַחַר אֶחָד מָנָה

כִּקְנֵי נֵרוֹת הַחַג. אֶחָד… שִׁבְעָה… שְׁמוֹנָה.

מָנָה אַחַר מָנָה מָנַע הַנֶּגֶף.

וְכָךְ הָיָה מַחֲיֶה. וְכָךְ הָיָה מוֹנֶה.

אַחַת… שָׁלוֹשׁ… חָמֵשׁ… וְעַד שְׁמוֹנֶה.

וּבַשְּׁמִינִי כָּבָה הַנֵּר.

כָּבָה עָנֵר

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!

Calling to murder Jews at London rally

Harry's Place posted a flyer being handed out at the pro-Hamas London rally on Saturday:

This is as explicit a call of support for murdering Jews as "progressives" will say out loud.

Mohammed El Kurd also explicitly called for massacres.

Mohammed El Kurd at the pro-terror rally in London today:

“We must normalize massacres as the status quo” pic.twitter.com/J0SclN88IE
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) January 13, 2024

He now claims he meant to say "not normalize massacres."

But right before that he said that "to stand on the right side of history, you must engage with tangible actions, not mere words." What kind of actions is he calling for, if not violence?

He also claimed that "Zionism is a death cult." Well, no Zionists are saying that "we love death like you love life." Those would be the "anti-Zionists."

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 South African accusation of Israel defending itself being genocidal is stupid enough.

But there is no limit to stupidity.

From Russian News Agency Tass:

UN, January 13. /TASS/. The flooding of tunnels in the Gaza Strip can be considered genocide, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya said on Friday.

"Such actions [as flooding of tunnels in Gaza] can be qualified as one of the elements of genocide, according to <...> the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," he said at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

What next? Maybe a Jew taking a walk on a spring day is genocide - he may be stepping on ants and upsetting the entire fragile ecosystem.

But murdering Ukrainians? Nah, couldn't be.

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!

01/13 Links: Hamas sacrifices Gaza children, and UNRWA is complicit; A Lesson on Human Suffering from a Kibbutz; Why South Africa’s New Elite Hates Israel

From Ian:

Hamas sacrifices Gaza children, and UNRWA is complicit

The Israel-Hamas war has revealed many instances of Hamas’ misconduct toward Gaza’s children. On several occasions during its ground operation in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has found Hamas’ military equipment hidden in schools, entrance hatches to Hamas tunnels under baby cribs, and rocket launchers placed in areas that children frequent. Various reports have also been published addressing the anti-Israel and antisemitic indoctrination and hate taught to Gaza’s children in their education system. For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, oversees a big part of Gaza’s education system, and its teaching curriculum and the behavior of its staff since Oct. 7 have shown that incitement against Jews and Israel is a large part of their activities.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization that monitors the UN, published a report on Wednesday exposing how Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities were extensively celebrated in a 3000-member Telegram group composed of UNRWA’s staff. In November, an Israeli organization called IMPACT-SE also published an extensive report detailing the connection between education received in UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip and the Oct. 7 massacres carried out by Hamas.

Dina Rovner, Legal Advisor at UN Watch, told The Media Line that this is a long-standing issue. She explained that since 2015, UN Watch has exposed more than 150 UNRWA staff Facebook pages that incite antisemitism and jihadi terrorism. “We have always maintained that the Facebook posts are just a symptom of a much more systemic problem—the fact that UNRWA hires antisemitic and terror-supporting staff in the first place,” said Rovner.

“These are not just a few bad apples as UNRWA likes to claim,” she continued, noting that the Telegram group “shows that when UNRWA teachers think nobody is watching them, they openly promote Hamas terrorism, glorify the terrorists as ‘martyrs’ and ‘heroes,’ and believe this is a wonderful path for Palestinian children to follow,” she added.

Education system gave Hamas a 'golden opportunity' to indoctrinate kids
Dr. Michael Barak, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya, said that the indoctrination of children is a core tactic used by Hamas. “When Hamas got to power in 2007, it got a golden chance to have open access to also funding and to the school system to indoctrinate those kids from a young age,” he told The Media Line.

In addition to the curriculum of the UNRWA schools and the ones operated by Hamas, Barak noted that there are many other techniques used by the terror organization for this end.

Barak cited the case of a magazine used by Hamas called Al-Fateh. “There is an interesting section in this magazine, called ‘Wills of the Martyr.’ In this section are published the stories of Hamas martyrs to glorify the image of martyrs and stress why it is so important for the children to follow the Palestinian martyrs who sacrifice their own lives for the liberation of Palestine,” he added.

Furthermore, Hamas also has special summer schools where it trains children to use rifles and to do physical exercises and simulations to kill Israeli soldiers. Video games simulating killing soldiers are also part of this indoctrination system, according to Barak.

However, Hamas’ child abuse is not only limited to incorporating hate into the children’s education. Kids are also used as human shields by terror organizations as weapons are stored in institutions that children attend and frequent, including the rocket launchers used to attack Israeli towns.

John Spencer: A Lesson on Human Suffering from a Kibbutz

Kfar Aza was the site of a pre-planned, pre-meditated slaughter of an entire village. It was not, as I had seen in the dumpsters of social media, civilians accidentally caught in Hamas’ crossfire, as they attacked military sites.

Bullet holes are seen in a window where militants attacked during the October 7th massacre on January 04, 2024 in Kfar Aza, Israel. Noam Galai-Getty Images

At the U.S. Army’s elite Ranger School, I taught soldiers how to conduct sophisticated raids and pull off ambushes with clock-like precision. What I saw at Kfar Aza was a highly planned and executed attack.

The first Hamas terrorists arrived by paraglider. A few dozen at first, then more, quickly moved to seal the village’s perimeter. Snipers moved to support by fire positions on key high ground to cut the armory in the village off from the men in the village.

Another platoon of Hamas fighters edged their way deeper into Israel to establish ambushes along key roads to Kfar Aza where any outside military support would come.

They acted methodically and with a level of care that would make any commander envious. They planted anti-tank and anti-personnel mines to established a deliberate defense of the village’s perimeter. They brought pint-size medical kits to care for their wounded, including morphine. They packed their own food—dates and figs, mostly.

Once isolated, they went house to house, methodically killing, mutilating, and kidnapping. Their tools were the familiar stuff of asymmetric warzones: AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a variety of grenades, kidnapping kits of plastic flex cuffs. They even had specially designed incendiary grenades (to burn houses).Less familiar to modern warzones was the large butcher knives they left behind.

Many of the terrorists were reportedly high on the drug captagon, an amphetamine like speed with hallucinogenic features. Each of the death squads had its own guidebook including instructions like —take the tires from the Israelis’ vehicles, light the tires on fire and throw them into the houses, it will kill and burn them at the same time. There was little thought given on which house to burn first. The randomness of evil is part of its sickness.

As I walked through the village, I saw scene after scene of this evil sickness—children’s rooms riddled with bullets, blood splattered LEGOs. Entire families slaughter and their bodies burned clutching each other. The most awful were the safe rooms.

Every house in the kibbutz has what, in effect, resembles a bomb shelter. Many turned into nurseries or kids rooms. They had windows and thin doors that could not lock. When the alarms sounded, most civilians entered these underground bunkers thinking they were safe. Yet they became the scenes of some of the most horrific acts.

I heard stories of parents clutching the door shut by hand, as bullets strayed by. A terrorist appeared suddenly at the window—like something out of a bad horror film. A father or mother full of bullet holes holding the door closed with their last breaths as the terrorist yanked it open.

They sprayed the bunkers with bullets or tossed in a grenade, smoke from burning tires filled the room. All life was soon exterminated.

The killing continued for hours. Over time what appeared to be non-Hamas Gazans arrived and scavenged the houses for loot, stepping over dead women, children, elderly. Some spirited Israelis back into Gaza.

The last house I entered was a house of a slain young couple that were due to be married very soon. Instead, flies, a splattering of blood, and the smell of death. The celling was riddled with holes from a terrorist grenade.

When I left the house, I was confronted by the parents of a young man who died in the house. I was not ready for that. As a parent, what do you say to a parent who’s lost a piece of themselves in this way? I froze up.

Seth Mandel: Why the Houthis Matter

The Houthis are what you get when you combine slavery and colonialism, two things we are routinely told progressives are against. Their supporters are possibly the most morally blinkered humans on this or any other planet.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who makes no secret of his desire to be secretary of state (still holding out hope for a Bernie Sanders presidency, apparently), has led the effort in Congress to protect the Houthis from being added back to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The Houthis were removed from the list by President Biden in a decision that has aged like milk. The move was rewarded with Houthi attacks on Americans. Re-listing them is a no-brainer, though it does not appear to be under consideration.

This is the third front in the region where Iranian troops have attacked Americans or American allies The other two are Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in south Lebanon. In each case, the response from progressive lawmakers has been to criticize the American coalition. On Tuesday, a U.S. ship and its naval escorts were attacked. Of course the U.S. returned fire.

What does all this tell us? That the U.S. coalition is up against two specific ideological currents among Americans and that these ideologies are etched in stone thanks to negative partisanship. The first is among the “progressive street,” as I referred to them yesterday. This cohort is in perpetual protest mode, with violence and vandalism as its twin dialects. Its adherents have shown us that they will rally the crowds for the very worst people in the world, so long as those evil regimes hate America or the Jews. They are like windup toys: When some foreign autocrat wants to rev them up, he will do so, and on they’ll march.

The second ideological group consists of the members of Congress who took Iran’s side against Saudi Arabia and seem to have superglued their hands in place. The Saudis and Tehran took major steps toward easing tensions and negotiating over a possible truce in Yemen thanks to Chinese intervention. This is to say nothing of the fact that the Saudis have facilitated historic breakthroughs between the Arab states and Israel that have massively strengthened the U.S.-led alliance and its position on the global stage. Yet these lawmakers’ instinctive backing of Iran has become impervious to any external factors. Which means there is no foreseeable development in Yemen that will change their posture toward the Houthis.

So there is an entrenched, not-insignificant part of the president’s own party sitting in permanent objection to specific U.S. foreign-policy goals, and there is a protest movement that can be set to destabilize domestic politics at almost any time.

The Houthis are, in some ways, the least of our problems. But they are key to understanding most of the others.

01/12 Links Pt2: The Hypocrisy of Critics of Aid to Israel; Hamas deception is killing journalism; File a suit against UNRWA at the Hague

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Hypocrisy of Critics of Aid to Israel

Tim Kaine, Virginia senator and Hillary Clinton’s former vice presidential nominee, is very upset about the process through which the Biden administration is transferring arms to Israel. Curiously, he and others lodging this complaint aren’t bothered by that same process when it is used to arm Ukraine.

Which suggests that their problem isn’t actually with the process. It’s with Israel.

At the end of December, the State Department conducted an emergency arms transfer to Israel. Kaine protested: “Just as Congress has a crucial role to play in all matters of war and peace, Congress should have full visibility over the weapons we transfer to any other nation. Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark.”

Then this week, the Biden administration moved toward having Congress renew that emergency-transfer authority as part of its request for funds for U.S. allies. Kaine is against it, and will be joined by a dozen fellow Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, and Dick Durbin, in attempting to block the provision. Kaine said: “I have strongly supported U.S. aid necessary for Israel’s defense, but all nations should be subject to the same standard.”

Kaine’s single-standard argument sounds reasonable, but first he’ll have to convince Tim Kaine.

In April 2022, the State Department used the same funding bypass for Ukraine aid. On April 21, Kaine tweeted: “We must keep linking arms with our allies to support Ukraine and hold Putin accountable.” Three days later, Congress was notified about the congressional bypass. It was announced on April 25. On May 1, Kaine went on MSNBC not to complain about lack of oversight but to enthuse over Biden’s willingness to arm Ukraine:
“When a war criminal engages in an illegal invasion, the world’s got to stand up to it—not just the U.S. but our allies. And they are. And that’s what we need to keep doing. And not just for Russia’s sake: Other authoritarians around the globe have to see that democracies will unite to defeat war criminals who want to wage illegal wars.”

No statements on process were forthcoming, though Kaine did soon move to document Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Seth Mandel: The Prog Spring

Pro-Hamas protesters have been busy blocking everything from JFK airport to the Rose Bowl parade, while occasionally stopping to smash the glass storefronts of Jewish or Israeli businesses. Kids have been chased with smoke bombs, elderly passersby bloodied up—all in support of a sadistic terrorist army that subjects anything it finds to rape and sexual torture.

But for whom does the progressive street speak? Obviously it’s a minority of the overall Democratic Party—Joe Biden is the president because he had the support of far more Democrats than his intraparty rivals who are less bothered by genocidal anti-Semitism. But with Bernie Sanders and the AOC-led squad scaring the wits out of supposed “moderates” like Elissa Slotkin and Tim Kaine, to say nothing of obedient progressives like Chris Murphy and Jamie Raskin, plus the hundreds of Biden staffers in open revolt over his Israel policy and a vice president and designated successor publicly signaling her sympathy for that group over her boss, the problem is not negligible either.

That is perhaps why the progressive street treats Biden like he’s Hosni Mubarak on the eve of the Arab Spring: apres Biden, they believe, le deluge. There’s only one John Fetterman standing athwart the flood, after all.

On the other hand, unlike the Arab street, the progressive street exists in a democracy. And Fetterman’s approval rating among Pennsylvania Democrats is a shiny 76 percent.

The question is why so many Democrats bend to the will of the progressive street if Biden and Fetterman’s examples show that there’s a way to be anti-Hamas and still survive politically. If the answer is that they’re inclined to agree with the progressive street on the merits, then the Holland Tunnel commuters are far from the only Americans in trouble here.

Phyllis Chesler: We underestimated the hatred and it is blowing up in our faces

Several weeks ago, Matti Friedman published a very astute piece about Hamas' understanding about global Jew hatred--and the failure of Israeli and American Jewish organizations to do so. Just as the Israeli government did not anticipate the kind of attack that Hamas launched on 10/7, so too, did Jews and Israelis underestimate the profound effect that the anti-Jewish narrative, coupled with a half-century of funding intersectionality,critical race and ANTI-ISRAEL theories, etc. would have on the coming generations of students, professors, journalists, human rights activists, and public intellectuals in America.

We now see what their underestimation has led us to--a globalized Intifada, peopled by activists who have learned their public performance "tricks" from Act Up, Blacks Lives Matter, anarchists, anti-capitalist Marxists, and Democratic Socialists.

The Jewish, Israeli, AND NON-JEWISH world absolutely refused to understand the importance of the cognitive war against the Jews AND AGAINST THE WEST. For more than fifty years, they totally underestimated the rise in anti-Zionism/antisemitism worldwide and refused to support those cognitive warriors who had been consistently documenting this long-range danger for more than five decades.

Now is not the time to blame the Jews--at least, I cannot bear to do so. And yet. Wealthy Jewish funders put their money into other areas--health care, medical AND SCIENTIFIC research, Torah study (all valuable, all worthy)--even as George Soros, the Rockerfeller Brothers, the Kaphan Foundation, etc. funded anti-Zionist groups such as JVP and J Street--AND even as numerous Arab countries funded anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic professors, journalists, books, propaganda, and the curriculum at American universities.

South Africa denies supporting Hamas - but they do

Al Jazeera reports:

Zane Dangor, director general of South Africa’s Ministry of International Relations, strongly denied the allegation made by Israel’s foreign ministry yesterday that South Africa is “functioning as the legal arm” of Hamas.

“South Africa’s legal team represents the people of South Africa,” Dangor said after the ICJ hearing, adding his country is pursuing the genocide case at the ICJ “because we want to stop more harm to Palestinians and it is in the interest of justice.”

Dangor also denied Israeli claims that South African officials praised Hamas following its October 7 attack, saying, “It is something we reject with contempt.”

The statements from South Africa in the immediate aftermath of October 7 shows a consistent pattern of blaming Israel and exonerating Hamas for the slaughter of Jews.

Their official statement only blamed Israel:

“SA expresses its grave concern over the recent devastating escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new conflagration has arisen from the continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”

If you cannot condemn mass murder, kidnapping and rape, and you blame the victims, you are condoning war crimes.

But it gets worse:

(Ruling party) ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri accused Israel of being a “blatant apartheid state that methodically imposes privilege on Jewish Israelis' behalf and discriminates against Palestinians”.

“As a result, the decision by Palestinians to respond to the brutality of the settler Israeli apartheid regime is unsurprising. The ANC stands with the people of occupied Palestine as it is clear that the degenerating security situation is directly linked to the unlawful Israeli occupation,” said Bhengu-Motsiri.

Additionally, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor spoke by phone with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh only ten days after the attack. Hamas announce that she has congratulated them; Pandor denies that. But she did attend a socialist conference a week after the attack wearing a keffiyeh to show which side she was on.

In short, South Africa did not say a negative word about Hamas when other African nations condemned the terror group.

Saying that they are representing Hamas at the ICJ may not be literally true but it is not an exaggeration. Even Hamas says so..

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!

01/12 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: The ICJ's genocide travesty; The Agony and Determination of Sderot; Glick: Israel Faces the International Lynch Mob

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The ICJ's genocide travesty

People are understandably reacting with astonishment and disgust to the obscene Soviet-style show trial now under way at the International Court of Justice in which Israel is being accused of genocide against the Arabs of Gaza.

It is indeed a surreal and Orwellian spectacle. Israel is the victim of attempted genocide by Hamas and its patron, Iran, which openly declare their intention to erase every Jew from the planet and wipe Israel off the map.

Israel has gone to war in Gaza solely to prevent the genocide of its people after the depraved atrocities of October 7 and the declared intention of Hamas to repeat these again and again until Israel ceases to exist. The destruction and suffering in Gaza are indeed distressing and regrettable; but that is the inevitable price to be paid even in a just war, waged as Israel is doing purely out of defensive necessity against a vicious and fanatical aggressor. As any country is entitled to do under international law, which Israel is following by the book.

Israel goes to greater lengths than any other country to reduce the number of civilian casualties among its enemy population. It does so even at the cost of its own soldiers and even where, as in Gaza, Hamas have deliberately sited their missiles and infrastructure of genocidal warfare among Gaza’s homes, hospitals and schools. They do this in order to cause civilians to die in large number, and thus provoke the world to blame Israel for taking the only available recourse to defend its people against mass murder.

This is the cynical strategy now being deployed at the ICJ’s kangaroo court in The Hague. The argument to which the ICJ — on past form — is likely to be all-too receptive effectively casts the attempted genocide by Hamas as self-defence and Israel’s defence against that murderous onslaught as “genocide”.

The case would bring the ICJ into total disrepute if it actually had any reputation to defend. It does not. Despite its pretensions to being a court of law, it is in fact a theatre of partisan political activism. It squats at the vortex of the legal and moral black hole that is international “human rights” culture.

Laws draw their legitimacy from being passed by nations rooted in specific institutions, history and culture. Without the anchor of national jurisdiction, laws can turn into instruments of capricious political power.

The ICJ has no such national jurisdiction but is made up of many nations. That’s why, from its inception, it was in essence a political court. That’s why it’s an existential foe of Israel — the principal target of some of the world’s many human rights abusers, who have grasped that international law provides them with a potent weapon.

Boston Herald Editorial: Going After Oct. 7 Terrorists

For eight years, the U.S. State Department has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on the whereabouts of Saleh Arouri, a Hamas terrorist whose hands were dripping with blood. Last week, Israel found him in Beirut. The New York Times reported that "Arouri worked with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' chief in Gaza, in recent years to link the group's military wing more closely to Iran, which, regional security officials say, most likely helped the group develop some of the capabilities it used in the Oct. 7 attack."

In other words, he was knee deep in carrying out a barbaric military operation against Israeli civilians that left more than 1,200 innocents dead and led to the kidnapping of more than 200 men, women and children. Critics of Israel maintain that the attack on Arouri will escalate the violence, but Hizbullah has been shelling northern Israel with missiles from Lebanon since the Oct. 7 massacre. Who is escalating what?

It's just as likely that Israel's targeted operation sends a message of steely resolve to those who wish to destroy the Jewish state. Israel has made clear that it won't be cowed into a ceasefire that allows its enemies to rearm and recuperate in order to terrorize innocents once again. Arouri ran but he couldn't hide. They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

Alon Davidi, Mayor of Sderot, Israel: The Agony and Determination of Sderot

Until the morning of Oct. 7, the town of Sderot was a parable of hope and success. Less than a mile from the Gaza border, it emerged as a haven for Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitic persecution - from North Africa, Kurdish lands, Ethiopia, and the former Soviet Union. My parents found refuge in Israel from Iran. Those people forged a city brimming with cultural richness, industrial vitality and a spirit of coexistence.

After Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, rocket attacks from Gaza-based terrorist groups became the new normal. Air raid sirens and rushed trips to bomb shelters invaded our days and nights. Over the years, 10 of our residents were killed. The children of Sderot grew up in an atmosphere of perpetual danger. Despite these challenges, Sderot flourished, even attracting new residents.

The Israeli government tried to help Gazans where we could, offering job opportunities in agriculture and industry within Israel and a proposed, but unrealized, industrial zone aimed at providing jobs for thousands of Gazan residents. On Oct. 7, my friend and colleague Ofir Libstein, head of the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council, who spearheaded the industrial zone project, was slain defending his town, Kfar Aza. Sderot lost at least 50 people, including eight members of our police department who died trying to protect our city.

As Israel fought to recover control of the area and as Hamas rocket attacks on Israel intensified, we evacuated 30,000 inhabitants of our city to shelters all over Israel. As mayor, I face an overwhelming task while forced to work out of a hotel in Jerusalem: ensuring the provision of essential public services like education, after-school programs and social services for our city's residents at 110 locations across the nation.

What sustains us is the hope that Oct. 7 was a turning point, igniting global awareness of the need to end the Hamas nightmare. The world must understand that Israel's fight is existential, that we will not cease until the Hamas threat is eradicated. Our community has suffered immensely, and it's time to guarantee us the basic security that every human being deserves.

Antisemites create their own version of Canary Mission trying to shame Zionists with their lies

Israel haters have created "Raven Mission," obviously an attempt to counter Canary Mission, where they look for any statements that they can twist into making Jews look like bigots.

I looked at one of their posts, and it shows their level of dishonesty.

They claim that John Strauss, professor of economics at the University of Southern California, advocated for genocide of Palestinians:

John Strauss, Professor of economics at the University of Southern California was caught on video speaking on Palestinians in Gaza "Every one of them should be killed, and I hope they all are".

They show a video where he says that but they don't show who he is talking about.

Sure enough, the full video shows that he is referring to Hamas only. He said, "People are ignorant. Hamas are murderers. That's all they are. Everyone should be killed, and I hope they are killed.”

Strauss was suspended from campus because of this lie. Raven Mission, and its parent organization Stop Zionist Hate, is knowingly lying about what he said.

While there are of course Zionists who say things that are unacceptable, this example shows that, unlike Canary Mission which goes out of its way to show full context for every one of its entries, the "Raven Mission" exists only to slander.

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 ICJ is where lies crash into truth

One of the most bizarre aspects of reading media and social media since October 7 is that the anti-Israel side lives in a completely different world as the real world. They look at the same facts yet interpret them consistently in the most antisemitic ways possible.

It is unclear how much of their rhetoric is malicious and how much is what they honestly think.

Even during the current sessions before the ICJ, each side listens to the same arguments and comes out with diametrically opposed interpretations and conclusions.

It should be obvious to anyone watching the sessions that the South African case was a large set of cherry-picked "evidence" that was stripped of all context. The Israeli side is showing that they were deliberately ignoring most of the facts, as well as every fact that contradicts their case.

Israel's lead lawyer is the expert who literally wrote the most definitive book on international law, Malcolm Shaw. He summarized how South Africa's case was distorted and malicious.

But the other side is dismissive:

The question is whether the ICJ jurists themselves are just as partisan as the two sides are.

The promise of the ICJ is to be as objective as possible and to evaluate the evidence honestly. This is where, in an ideal world, the lies should be exposed. Unfortunately, ICJ judges have been shown to generally follow the politics of their home country more than independent judgment.

This is more a referendum on the ICJ itself. If they rule for South Africa's case in any way, it will show that the ICJ itself has failed in its mission.

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 starvation meme

I cannot tell you how bad things are in Gaza today. Israel says there's plenty of aid; the UN claims there is a food crisis.

But what I can tell you is that there have been accusations of Gazans "starving" since at least 2006 - and they were all lies. Not one Gazan starved. It was all theater.

Jimmy Carter falsely claimed more than once that Gazans were "literally starving."

The meme reappears every few years, and is always equally false.

News Line (socialist), 2006: "Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people has created refugees, death squads, and now starvation in Gaza, and hunger throughout the occupied territories."

The UN, 2007: "The forced starvation diet of Palestinians"

Richard Falk, 2007: " Israel ...has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation and desolation."

Business Insider, 2011: "The Israeli Campaign To Starve Palestinians Into Submission Is A Crime"

WRMEA, 2019: "The Scenario of a Million Palestinians Going Hungry in Gaza"

Guardian, 2019: "One million face hunger in Gaza after US cut to Palestine aid"

And sometimes that meme is replaced with "Gaza supermarkets have too much Israeli stuff." Not a joke, this was published in Al Monitor in 2013:

Walking into a supermarket in Gaza might come as a great surprise for a person visiting the coastal enclave for the first time. At first glance, the visitor would be amazed by the level to which the shelves are packed with all kinds of products, ranging from basic food supplies to expensive chocolates and Coca-Cola. A father pushing a heaped stroller, or a toddler restlessly pulling her mother's hand and pointing at a lollipop, are scenes one is likely to encounter.

A closer look into the shelves, however, reveals a paradox that finds a manifestation in almost every aspect of life in Gaza. On the surface, everyone seems to be normally going about their daily lives, but even purchasing behaviors are controlled by Israel. The Israeli government brags about the truckloads it allows into the Strip through the Karem Abu Salem commercial crossing point, but it always forgets, deliberately or not, to mention that the products that enter the Strip through this very crossing are mostly marked with 729, the made-in-Israel barcode.

Yes, Israel was not only falsely blamed for starving Gazans, it was also blamed for sending lots of Israeli foods into Gaza, too.

Do you get the idea that perhaps the starvation meme was just an excuse for bashing Israel?

So while I cannot say what is going on now, when the same people who falsely claimed Gaza was starving for 18 years are saying it today, keep in mind how little credibility they have. I would trust COGAT's statistics on how much food is getting into Gaza far more than I trust the UN.

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 @BBCWorld implies Israel faked evidence that reporter was a terrorist based on "experts" who are liars

From BBC:

The families of the two Palestinian journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza have rejected as "fabricated" and "false" a new claim from Israel's military that they were "terrorists".

...On Wednesday night, the IDF put out another statement about the incident which said an Israeli aircraft targeted the operators of a "hostile drone near Rafah" and that Palestinian media had subsequently identified them as journalists.

"However, IDF intelligence has confirmed that both the deceased were members of Gaza-based terrorist organizations actively involved in attacks against IDF forces," it added.

It alleged that troops in Gaza had found a document that identified Mustafa Thuraya as a "member of Hamas' Gaza City Brigade, serving as squad deputy commander in the Qadisiya Battalion".

Troops had also found documents that showed Hamza al-Dahdouh's "role in the Islamic Jihad's electronic engineering unit and his previous role as a deputy commander in the Zeitoun Battalion's Rocket Array", it added. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is the second largest armed group in Gaza and, like Hamas, it is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK and others.

The IDF released a photograph of one document in Arabic that included Hamza al-Dahdouh's name among a list of "operatives from the electronic engineering unit" of PIJ.

The image is very poor quality, making it hard to assess its authenticity independently.

However, two regional experts told BBC Verify that the use of English alongside Arabic in the document was unusual.

Erik Skare, a researcher at France's Sciences Po university who has written a book on PIJ, said: "I regularly visited the website of the al-Quds Brigades... I have read their martyr biographies, their books etc, and I have never seen the combination of English and Arabic text."

Here is the document the IDF released, and the Google Translate of that document, showing the full name of the Al Jazeera "journalist" Hamza Al-Dahdouh and that he was part of the Electronic Engineering (G22) unit.

The entire case that the BBC has that the document is forged is that two "experts" said they visited the Islamic Jihad Al Quds Brigades website and never, ever saw any documents there that included the Al Quds name in English.

Is that true?

The website of the Al Quds Brigades is saraya.ps - a site that has been down since the beginning of the war. But we have plenty of archives of the site online. And here is what every single press release looks like:

"Al Quds Brigades" in English, upper left, organization name underneath in English, logo in the middle. Just like the document released by Israel.

The main logo of the group also includes English:

Either the "experts" are lying about what they've seen on the site or they never went to the site at all. Either way, this makes the BBC look very bad indeed.

And based on this non-existent "evidence" the BBC broadly implies that Israel is faking documents, which is a serious charge.

The problem goes beyond just lying. The BBC doesn't show anything near this level of skepticism for anything that Hamas or Gaza people say. They don't bother looking for "experts" to identify where the Hamas statements are inconsistent and provable lies. And make no mistake - every BBC employee who knows Arabic could easily prove Hamas lies all the time by comparing their daily claims of killing so many Israelis with the number of Israeli funerals there are. Any BBC employee with a spreadsheet can see the glaring inconsistencies of the daily casualty reports where the number of "women and children" killed sometimes exceed the total number killed.

Yet the BBC never reports about Hamas lies.

Israel is assumed at the outset to be always lying, and even that its evidence is faked, while Hamas is trusted implicitly.

This isn't journalism. This is anti-Israel propaganda.

Official IDF statements, which we can assume are not objective, are still far more trustworthy and objective than anything published by the BBC.

(If you think that the Islamic Jihad document is referring to another person with Al Dadhouh's name, his full name was indeed Hamza Wael Hamdan Al-Dahdouh as shown in the document.)

(h/t Martin)

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!

01/11 Links Pt2: Chilling winds towards Israel from Britain and America; ‘Decolonization’ and the Danger of Folktale Anti-Semitism; NYC School Wipes Israel from the Map

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Decolonization’ and the Danger of Folktale Anti-Semitism

The world-historical idiocy required to assert that Israel is nothing more than a colonial power is, in fact, one reason for how quickly it spread in the sealed containers of Ivy League classrooms. No one expected to have to argue against the historical equivalent of “the earth is flat,” and it was hard to believe something so daft would catch on so quickly and spread so widely.

But catch on it did, so here we are. Harry Lewis is right that “When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles—between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked—a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people.”

And he is right that it might help students if there were a system of committee-led curriculum diversification that would enable some Harvard students to be exposed to facts without prohibiting the classes that teach decolonization.

Such changes would be a race against the clock. The decolonization blood libel moves fast. It’s likely that the authors random college students like to read, musicians they listen to, actors they follow, and essayists they think they’re supposed to admire have signed on to some open letter accusing the Jews of systematic ritual child murder. Maybe it’s too much to assume that they’ve read Chaucer or Joyce but they’ve probably read Sally Rooney, or at least watched the equally excruciating tv adaptations of the books she refuses to have translated into Hebrew. They might’ve been inspired not by Roger Waters’s Nazi cosplay but by Lana Del Rey’s courageous decision not to inflict her aggressive mediocrity on her Israeli fans. Perhaps they pretend to know who Melissa Barrera is so they can stand with her, or they read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s name on one of the most morally repugnant documents of our time and remembered that whatever it is he says, they’re supposed to agree with.

Anyway, they know you can’t trust anyone who hasn’t added a watermelon icon to their social-media feed. Which probably means Professor Lewis’s advice will fall on deaf ears.

Melanie Phillips: Chilling winds towards Israel from Britain and America

Neither the British government nor the Biden administration acknowledges that the onslaught against Israel is part of a broader Iranian war against America, Britain and the West.

Instead, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was again bizarrely insisting this week that the “only” way to peace was “a pathway to a Palestinian state” and that “Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively.” This from an administration that continues to fund the Palestinian Authority even while the P.A. rewards terrorists and their families.

Although both Blinken and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, have condemned the preposterous charge of genocide being brought by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Cameron proceeded to lob at the beleaguered Jewish state a defamatory missile of his own.

He was “worried,” he told a parliamentary committee, that Israel has “taken action in Gaza that might be in breach of international law” and that “on lots of occasions” its compliance was “under question.”

Since Cameron offered no evidence of any such breaches, his remarks served merely to smear Israel when it is fighting for its life and being demonized and thus undermined by a torrent of such false accusations from around the world.

With allies like these, who needs enemies?

Don't Worry About the "Arab Street"

Surely there was an “Obama bounce,” right? Not at all. A 2010 University of Maryland/Zogby International poll found that 62 percent of Arabs polled had a negative view of the then-president, 63 percent were discouraged by his approach to the Middle East, and a combined 85 percent of people across the countries polled had either a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable view of the United States. When the Arab Center in Washington DC (an outpost of the Doha-based and Qatari-funded Arab Center) asked people in eight Arab countries how they viewed the United States after President Donald Trump’s first months in office, almost two-thirds had a negative or somewhat negative view of the United States. Only seven percent of people had a “very positive” view of the country.

It would be one thing if Arab public opinion had declined 40 or even 10 or 20 percent as a result of U.S. support for Israel in Gaza, but is there a significant difference between the 13 percent of Egyptians who had a favorable view of the United States 2003 and the nine percent who do in 2023? Does the two percent decline in U.S. favorability among Jordanians (from six to four percent) matter? It does not. The one outlier seems to be Tunisia, where the Arab Barometer research network found that support for the United States fell 30 percent as a result of President Biden’s approach to the war. That’s significant and deserves further investigation. The excellent scholars who run Arab Barometer believe Tunisia is a bellwether, but the declines in the favorability of the United States in other Arab countries were not as steep as in Tunisia—if only because they did not have very far to fall.

Would it be better if Middle Easterners held more favorable views of the United States? Absolutely. There’s the risk of being so closely associated with Israel’s withering military response to Hamas attack that any number of Islamist extremists will target Americans in response, but this has long been a risk to the United States for its support for Israel and other policies.

Still, the issue at hand remains whether support for the United States has cratered because of U.S. policies in the current conflict. If polling over recent decades is accurate, it has not for the very simple reason that Washington was profoundly and persistently unpopular well before the first IDF soldier crossed into Gaza. And despite Washington’s deep unpopularity, it has historically achieved its strategic goals in the region—the free flow of energy resources, helping ensure Israeli security, and making sure the United States remains predominant in the region so it can achieve its other two goals.

If the United States wanted to improve its standing in the region, one of the policies it could pursue toward that end would be to change its support for Israel. That is essentially what many progressives now demand: a ceasefire with no conditions that Hamas lay down its arms or release its hostages. Of course, previous support for Israeli security has placed the United States in awkward and uncomfortable diplomatic and political positions—but it has never actually resulted in a strategic setback. The one time Arab governments used the oil weapon in 1973, the embargo only lasted a few months. But the resulting recession in the United States blew back on them as Americans blamed oil producers and embargoing Arab governments for their economic pain—not Israel.

Kevin D. Williamson: Hamas Is Winning the Propaganda War

Israel’s enemies are winning the propaganda war. And here I thought the only kind of operation they were any good at was blowing up children in pizza shops.

It is remarkable—shameful, too, but really remarkable—how effective the opponents of the Jewish state have been in arm-twisting something close to the entirety of the Western intelligentsia into accepting Hamas’ framing of the war, now habitually described in nearly every journalistic venue as “Israel’s war in Gaza,” as though the Israelis simply woke up one Sunday morning and decided to wage a war in Gaza with no precipitating event. On practically every front page, the war is discussed as though the overriding issue were civilian casualties in Gaza (as though Israel’s actual military objects were an afterthought) and as though these civilian casualties were being caused by Israeli callousness rather than by Hamas’ intentional strategy of sheltering its military assets among the civilian population, in schools and in hospitals and in residential areas, for the express purpose of maximizing civilian casualties.

Nothing new here.

From the beginning, the Arab forces looking to eliminate the Jewish state (or proto-state) have exhibited two characteristics that have defined almost every engagement in the conflict. The first—and, ultimately, the more important—is cowardice; the second is an inclination toward moral blackmail, using the fact that the civilized world is civilized to hamper the response of the people who do not go around sawing the heads off of children in their fight against the people who do. October 7 was the most recent in a long, dreadfully monotonous series: The day before Israel declared independence in 1948, 20 Jewish women hiding in a basement in Kfar Etzion as their husbands and sons were massacred above them were themselves massacred by Arab fighters who threw hand grenades into the basement. In 2014, Palestinians attacked synagogue worshippers with guns, knives, and axes, killing, among others, three Americans. In 2019, they blew up a teenage girl with an IED. In 2001, they bombed a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing, among others, seven children and a pregnant woman. The Battle of the Pizza Shop might be considered the apex of Palestinian valor—but if you put actual soldiers on the other side of the line, the Palestinian men at arms will cower in hospitals, schools, and mosques, and then howl when the Israeli military turns its fire on those hospitals, schools, and mosques. That is the story, over and over again.

The Israelis would be perfectly happy to meet Hamas and the other Palestinian champions on what used to be called a battlefield. It would be very convenient for the Israelis, because while the Palestinians are very apt when it comes to massacring unarmed mothers and burning children to death, they are, and generally have been for decades, feckless and unreliable fighters against armed men. And so they hide behind their mothers’ skirts.

The Belgian antisemitic Presidency of the European Union just began (Guest post by Rudi Roth)

By Dr. Rudi Roth

Now that Belgium has taken over the Presidency of the European Union, we can observe a very dangerous evolution in Europe for the Jewish people.

Some Belgian Flemish leftist politicians, who do not have a legal majority but are in power, want the Jewish state, Israel, to fall under an international investigation for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation Caroline Gennez has called on the Belgian government to support the South African submission before the ICJ. She is a member of Vooruit, the Flemish Socialist Party, and has been well-known as an Israel-hater since 2002 (at the 2002 Eurovision song festival, she wantedpublicly to give zero points to Israel.

Gennez is also known for having released several million euro to Palestinian NGOs with clear links to terror groups. Today she compared the war Israel conducts against Hamas to the horrors committed by Nazi Germany, perhaps a mental heritage from what some Flemish Nazi collaborators did in 1942 against the Jews. But Germany is much wiser than Gennez or her ancestors.

Should there be one political party in Europe that should keep a low profile on genocide, it would be the Flemish Socialist Party. The scandalous comparison of Israel's war in Gaza with the Nazi genocide is in itself pure Holocaust denial, and it should shame her even more! It was Flemish Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, Willy Claes, in charge during the genocide of around one million Tutsis in Rwanda, who knew what was about to happen and enforced the withdrawal of first the Belgian UN blue-helmet paratroopers and later of all UN troops; it allowed the genocide without any disturbance. It was his Cabinet that, according to declassified U.S. documents, did hide the importance of the ongoing genocide.

Becoming NATO Secretary General, Willy Claes ended up being the only one in the history of NATO to resign, given the corruption accusations. However, he was the first to criticize the Jews and explained that their Holocaust moral credit (6 million deaths) was decreasing because of the 2014 Gaza conflict. He was, despite the corruption and his responsibility in the genocide of the Tutsi, despite his Jew-hatred, reinstated as a candidate for his political party. Maybe is their moral credit not worth a euro cent anymore?

Also worrying with the Belgian Presidency are facts related to NGOs in Belgium, fully supported by the Belgian public press or MSM and subsidized by Belgian federal or other governmental authorities. OXFAM Belgium cooperates with the agricultural affiliate of the terror group PFLP, UAWC, and whose Belgian R.V.H. was deeply involved in the sex scandals in Haiti and elsewhere. But also communist NGOs, such as Vrede or Intal, are supportive of the criminal actions of Assad in Syria or Putin in Ukraine and are dependent on public funds and distribute hate documentation against Israel and even against the Jewish community to schools.

Worse in this Gaza crisis are organizations qualifying as human rights organizations: the Red Cross, as was the case in WWII when it pretended not to know about the 6 million murdered Jews, states now that it does not have information about the Jewish hostages taken by Hamas or by other Gazan organizations, despite the facts that hostages were in hospitals with a heavy Red Cross presence.

Another interesting case in Belgium is Doctors without Borders. Their general manager, Ms Meinie Nicolai, already accepted in 2019 to participate in the "extra festive event" to get a peace price in Caserne Dossin, where more than 25,000 Jews and several Romas were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Very "well-chosen" location for an "extra festive event." She also promoted on the VRT the "panic cries" of Norwegian activist physician Mads Gilbert in his fauxtographs from a Gazan hospital … in Cairo. About the October 7 cruel and criminal pogrom by Hamas and the Jewish hostages? No word… “un detail sans doute."

One has the right to strongly disagree with Israel's war response against Hamas in Gaza. But it is difficult to understand their position when NGOs do not see Jewish victims for what they are and when governments, such as the one taking over the European Council Presidency, have no consideration for them. Israel is on its own, but at least it is not the same situation when the Jews had no means to defend themselves, not anymore. Now that in that same Europe, Hamas supporters can claim and call for the destruction of the Jewish state, but also for the destruction of all its citizens. Where are those in power who should denounce this hate speech? Caroline Gennez? The Red Cross? Doctors without Borders? Alexander De Croo? Everybody? Somebody? Anybody? Nobody!

Undoubtedly, the Belgian government's behavior has shown it crystal clear: Hamas praised Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo for his November speech while he was at the Rafah border in Israël The scene is perfectly prepared for the anti-Israel and also antisemitic Belgian Presidency of the European Union!

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!

ICC To Probe Whether Israel Behind Stampede That Killed Mufasa (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

The Hague, January 11 - The International Criminal Court announced today that it has opened an investigation into a deadly wildebeest incident that killed the king of the lions at Pride Rock and allowed a usurper to seize control of the territory, following evidence that agents acting on behalf of the Jewish State were responsible for the tragedy.

Chief Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan convened a press conference at the ICC this morning to share details of the impending investigation into the stampede death of Mufasa, which he said now looks more and more like a Mossad operation.

Initial reports of the stampede focused on the possible involvement, possibly unintentional, of the crown prince Simba, last seen in the gorge where the herd of gnus trampled Mufasa to death as the latter attempted to rescue his son from the oncoming horde. Simba fled, leaving Mufasa's brother Scar to take over the pride and ushering in a period of drought and oppression that featured a shaky alliance with the hyenas and widespread discontent among the lions and the larger fauna community in the vicinity. Acting on tips from human rights groups, however, the ICC will probe what Khan called "disturbing indications" that in fact Simba had no culpability in his father's death, and that even Scar, whose resentments gave him motive to bump off his brother, may not be the one behind Mufasa's grisly death, but Israel.

"Given the default status of Israel as responsible for all the ills in the world, this investigation is both proper and necessary," stated Khan. "Our inquiry will examine whether the events surrounding Mufasa's death are consistent with Israeli brutality and criminality, and if so, we will open proceedings to prosecute the decision-makers in Israel's government."

Khan declined to elaborate on the evidentiary requirements that will determine the inquiry's conclusions. Analysts, however, take it as a foregone conclusion that the ICC will move to initiate a full criminal case against Israel - a development that experts say would be fraught with technical and legal complications.

"Israel isn't a signatory to the agreements that give the court its jurisdiction," explained International Law scholar Ken Garucourt. "That has stymied other efforts to seek justice for crimes against Palestinians - I mean 'alleged' crimes," he added, using air quotes and rolling his eyes.

"I'm sure we'll eventually find a way around that," he continued. "The Circle of Life cannot continue if Israel keeps killing everything. And all the animals in the area of Pride Rock are indigenous Palestinians under assault by colonialist, Zionist usurper imperialists. Sure, Scar is an unsavory character, but everyone knows that's of marginal importance for the sake of an alliance against Israel."

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!