Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 15, 2024

The UN no longer parrots Hamas' obviously false "women and children killed" claims

For months, the UN OCHA unit faithfully reported Hamas' statistics saying that 70% of Gaza's deaths were women and children.

This is from their January 2 report:

For a week or so after this report, they maintained the steady "70% women and children" figure but without the specific count, which Hamas seems to have had ended December 11 but the UN kept reporting. Here is their January 11 report:

A few days ago, they even dropped the "70%" figure from their daily statistics:

But it isn't as if the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health dropped their claims that 70% of the fatalities were women and children. They still say so to this day.

Apparently, quietly, even the UN no longer believes the Hamas' obviously inflated statistics on women and children killed which they eagerly rubber stamped for over three months. This is even though there was plenty of evidence that Hamas would sometimes pretend that the number of "women and children" killed was higher than the total reported fatality rate for the day - clearly aiming at arriving at and maintaining this fictional 70% figure.

While the UN won't say out loud that they no longer trust Hamas civilian casualty figures, they are no longer reporting them as assumed true.

Not to say that the UN suddenly believes what Israel says. Even though Israel has released estimates of the number of members of terror groups killed - today it says that it has killed 9000, making the "70% women and children" claim impossible - UN-OCHA has never mentioned the Israeli estimates, which is what it would do if it actually cared about the truth.

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The Amalek monument and plaque near the Hague

People who know nothing about Judaism have been pretending that Benjamin Netanyahu's evoking of Amalek in October means that Israel intends to eradicate all Palestinians.

Suddenly we have all these Biblical experts who don't know the basics about Amalek.

The South African ICJ case selectively quoted Netanyahu, when in fact he was not quoting the Biblical verse saying to destroy Amalek but the verse in Deuteronomy saying "Remember what Amalek did to you," which is a separate Biblical commandment. He said, "We remember and we fight," and he was referring to "the murderers." The remembrance is the commandment, and every observant Jew knows this, since we are obligated to listen to that verse on a special Shabbat before Purim every year called "The Shabbat of Remembrance."

But there is another irony here. Near the ICJ in The Hague is a sculpture commemorating the Jews of Holland who were deported and murdered by the Nazis:

The plaque underneath refers to the exact same verse that Netanyahu quoted:

If quoting the Biblical verse about Amalek shows intent for genocide, then why would it be featured near the Hague?

(The sculpture has been moved since this photograph, but it still references the same verse, and in fact is known as the Amalek Monument.)

The sad fact is that everything that Jews do or say today is twisted to make them sound as evil as possible - and people are taught that this is normative, that Jews always have a secret underhanded agenda. It is a conspiracy theory that is not from the Right this time, but from the Left.

This is what modern antisemitism looks like. And it is all over the place.

(h/t ElishevaSays)

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Hating Israel warps one's brain

The New York Times has an article trying to mainstream the bizarre notion that Israel does not have to be a central component of Judaism.

That is pretty much like saying God doesn't have to be a central component of Judaism. Sure there are Jewish atheists, but don't call it Judaism.

Yet there are some people who hate Israel so much that they feel they must twist the religion itself to fit their biases.

I've demolished the "diasporism" idea a number of times, but one part of this article is worth examining.

The star of the article is Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth and a rabbi. His scholarly credentials are impressive.

But he says something that is mindblowing:

Mr. Magid, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, favors one state for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, but he said in an interview that he also would welcome a negotiated two-state solution. More than its shape, Israel’s centrality to Judaism elsewhere is what he hopes can be adjusted.

“Israel has become the substitute for Jewish identity,” he said. “And we have at least a 2,000-year history — maybe longer, certainly 2,000-year. A robust history. We have to grab ahold of that and basically take it back from those who took it away from us.”

"Maybe" longer?

2,000 years happens to be the date of the destruction of the Second Temple. Magid is essentially saying that Judaism did not start until after the Jews lost to the Romans. The Jewish kingdoms and the Temples seem, according to him, to have little or nothing to do with Jewish history.

Conveniently, he is redefining Jewish history to start with the Diaspora that he fetishizes.

All of Judaism is centered around remembering and hoping to bring back the Judaism of the Temple periods, the Judaism where Jews controlled our land. The Land of Israel is central to the Hebrew Scriptures. If you re-define Judaism to have begun afterwards, you are no longer talking about Judaism.

This shows how anti-Israel attitudes warps one's brain. The religion, the prayer book, Psalms, world history and basic facts are diametrically opposed to Magid's viewpoint - so he has to change reality to conform with his perverted view of Judaism.

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01/14 Links: Pres. Herzog: A hundred days of war: Spirit of Israel will triumph over our enemies; Brendan O'Neill: These accusations of ‘genocide’ bring shame on humanity

From Ian:

Rail thin, scared to speak, but free: my daughter’s life after Hamas hostage ordeal

When his nine-year-old daughter Emily first came back home after nearly two months in Hamas captivity, Thomas Hand didn’t let her out of his sight. At night, he would sit up watching her sleep. Whenever she frowned, he’d wake her, worried she was having a nightmare.

The rare times that Emily went out with her two grown-up siblings, he’d put an electronic tracker in her pocket, so that he could follow her on his phone. Each day, he marvelled that she was really there, thin and exhausted, with matted hair and lice, rescued from an ordeal that defies comprehension.

Now, he knew, came the really hard part. Bringing the little girl who loved singing and dancing to Beyoncé back to herself — regaining the confidence she lost during the 50 days of horror she spent in Gaza. And, for himself and the rest of his family, trying to move back towards some sense of normality, in a country at war, with their lives forever changed. “When she first came back, we were very happy, but just heartbroken,” said Hand, 63, who is originally from Ireland and moved to Israel more than 30 years ago. “Her condition, she wasn’t physically injured at all. She wasn’t molested, she wasn’t hurt in any way. But just it was more on the mental side.”

A hundred days after the October 7 attacks, the former hostages, mostly women and children, who were released during the short pause in fighting in late November are reckoning again with life back in Israel. Many of them have lost family members, murdered or kidnapped in the initial attack by Hamas militants, or their homes; burned and looted.

At least 130 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas. Among them are several children, including Kfir Bibas, who turned one this month if he is still alive, and his brother Ariel, who would be four. They were kidnapped with their mother, Shiri, and father, Yarden. Hamas has claimed that Shiri and the two boys were killed during an Israeli bombardment; the IDF said this has not been verified.

For the hostages who make it out, the road to recovery is slow, and can be fraught with setbacks.

Pres. Isaac Herzog: A hundred days of war: Spirit of Israel will triumph over our enemies

A hundred days have passed since life was halted, the skies darkened, and we, all of us, were exposed to a boiling and horrifying cauldron of terror and deep-seated hatred unleashed upon us.

One hundred days of a war forced upon us, a test for the entire nation. A test of our collective heart, courage, determination, righteousness, strength, mutual support, unity, and the values and principles that define us as a nation.

In these challenging times, we cannot help but reflect on the sacrifices of our daughters and sons, who fall as civilians and soldiers alike. Their bravery, their commitment, their love for life, and their dedication to ideals dear to us are a testament to the strength within all our hearts.

We must not nor cannot forget, not for a moment, the hostages and the missing. It is difficult to fathom an ordeal more arduous and painful than that of the families whose loved ones are in the hands of Hamas murderers. We all carry a prayer, echoing the words of the prophet: “And your sons and daughters shall return to their borders.”

We mourn the loss of the fallen heroes, their courage, sanctity of will, and self-sacrifice that permeated the fierceness of battle. We weep for the many lives, far too many, snuffed out brutally – victims of monstrous and antisemitic violence. Yet, we remember that even in the darkest hours, we witnessed the strength, courage, resilience, and compassion that define us as a people. We made a grave and painful mistake by not being ready. But the greatest mistake is that of the enemy.

A generation has proven itself heroic, undefeatable
The enemy, whose “great heroes” indiscriminately murdered, massacred, violated, and slaughtered infants, elderly, girls, boys, burned homes with people inside and committed the worst crimes against humanity.

An enemy for whom Hitler’s playbook, Mein Kampf, has pride of place in their homes, whose children’s summer camps were centers of murderous brainwashing and blind hatred. An enemy who thinks he knows us and belittles the bravery of our sons and daughters until he sees with his own eyes how “a people rise like a lioness and lift itself like a lion.”

The forces of courage within our midst have erupted in an inspirational manner.

We saw how the “TikTok generation” emerged as a generation of historic strength, whose bravery will be etched in the annals of Israeli history. I met with the fighters and commanders, the leaders on the front – made of steel, eager to engage the enemy, with the oath of “never again.”

We all witness the strength of communities and displaced families, the bravery of our wounded in hospitals, the unwavering faith and pride of the bereaved families, the volunteerism and mutual responsibility in Israeli society – Jews and Arabs alike – and the determination of our allies standing by our side, headed by the United States, and the Jewish communities around the world standing with us as one, sometimes at personal risk. No one can defeat such a people, such a united and determined nation.

A message to every Parliament in the world: pic.twitter.com/OHM3mG7Hge
— Amir Ohana - אמיר אוחנה (@AmirOhana) January 14, 2024

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

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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."

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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.

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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!