Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Another story of Gazans ripping each other off

I mentioned yesterday that Gazan shopkeepers and drivers are charging exorbitant rates to take advantage of people's distress instead of working together to help each other as Israelis are doing during the war.

Another story in a similar vein was published in Sada News - this one about moneychangers.

Gaza workers who normally get their salaries from ATM machines are now at the mercy of moneychangers who are charging as much as 15%:

The banks are closed and the ATMs are destroyed, and until the employee gets the money in his hands, he will go through a journey of exploitation, from people who have “cash” in their hands, and they charge commissions ranging between 5-7-10-15% for the exchange!

This forces the employee to agree to the fees despite the clear exploitation of people's circumstances during the most difficult times they are going through.

The matter is not limited to moneychangers only, but Sada learned that commercial stores were able to partially open their doors recently, disbursing employees’ salaries in the same way, “transferring the value of the salary through banking applications, and when notification arrives of the completion of the transfer process, the employee is given his salary, minus a commission he specifies. He charges money as he pleases.”

This also affected remittances that reach citizens from abroad, for example via Western Union, in exchange for which they are disbursed with large commissions of up to 15%.

They are such wonderful people!

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01/16 Links Pt2: ‘Footballing While Jewish’ and Other Crimes; Oct 7 massacre shows UN's irrelevance; The left’s Houthi apologism; MLK: The Six Day War interview

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Footballing While Jewish’ and Other Crimes

You’d be surprised how sensitive people can be about the possibility they or their family will accidentally see or hear a Jewish person. Last month the Telegraph reported that British Airways had decided to “pause” a plan to include the Jewish sitcom Hapless in its in-flight entertainment offerings just after Oct. 7. The airline didn’t want to “take sides.” The Telegraph had seen the internal messages confirming the airline’s decision.

The series they chose not to show is about a Jewish newspaper in London. I don’t know how to pretend this decision isn’t completely insane.

“Pause” is a word that comes up a lot these days in the post-Oct. 7 entertainment industry. Haaretz reports that “Netflix has hit the pause button on broadcasting several Israeli series. One of them is the action drama ‘Border Patrol,’ which it acquired in September following its premiere on the Hot cable TV channel. Another is the original Israeli comedy drama ‘Through Fire and Water,’ created by Hanan Savion and Guy Amir, which was scheduled to premiere on Netflix in early November but was postponed.” A third series was put on ice by Netflix shortly after.

Producers told Haaretz that European companies were more easily spooked by their association with Israel than American ones were. Some told Israeli producers, “we have to stop and wait for better days.”

Perhaps after some time has gone by, everyone will be more comfortable watching actors portray Jewish characters, or playing hockey or soccer or cricket with Jewish athletes. I don’t think we have much to worry about, though: No one seems particularly bothered by it all, at all.

Brendan O'Neill: Gary Lineker and the bigotry of the virtue-signallers

Let’s be clear about BDS: it is sectarian intolerance masquerading as social justice. It invites the middle classes – those most inclined to cultural boycotts – to obsessively avoid any foodstuff, book, idea or person that originates from the evil state of Israel. It makes a virtue of being ‘Israel-free’. Protect your pristine life and pristine self from the moral pollution of the Jewish State – that, in a nutshell, is what the cult of BDS says to the right-thinking sections of society. The fast track to moral glory in leafy, right-on Britain is to foreswear all things made by Those People.

The impact of BDS has been horrible. We’ve seen violinists booed and jeered at the Proms for the crime of being Israeli. Israeli dance troupes have faced furious protests in the UK. A theatre in London pulled the plug on a Jewish Film Festival. Authors like Alice Walker and Sally Rooney have declined requests for their books to be published in Israel (I guess that’s one upside of BDS for Israelis). Israeli produce is ostentatiously shunned and sometimes even destroyed. A few years ago, ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters in Birmingham stormed a Tesco and hurled Israeli food products on to the floor – proof of the irrational dread of all things Israeli that BDS stirs up in its supporters.

The hypocrisy of the BDS cult is extraordinary. These people will go to mad lengths to dodge oranges grown in Israel and films part-funded by the Israeli government, but they’ll happily buy their kids toys made in China and go on holiday in Turkey. The plight of the Uighurs and Kurds make not a dent in their conscience. The double standards of the BDS mentality can be glimpsed in Lineker himself. He retweets the suggestion that Israel should be kicked out of football yet he’s happy to watch Iran play football. In fact, he’s happy to commentate on Iran playing football.

During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Lineker anchored the England-Iran match for the BBC. This was at the precise time the Iranian authorities were slaughtering hundreds of their own citizens, young women and men, who had dared to rise up against the law of mandatory hijab-wearing and against theocratic tyranny more broadly. No red card for Iran? Why not? Is the killing of young Iranian women who want to show their hair in public less bothersome to the virtue-signallers than the killing of Gazan civilians in the Israel-Hamas war? Lineker’s cant should be treated with the contempt it deserves. This is a man happy to host matches from a misogynistic, homophobic regime (Qatar) featuring a nation that murders its own citizens (Iran), and yet he thinks Israel should be kicked out? What a tosser.

Banning Jewish film festivals, boycotting shops with links to the Jewish State, screaming in fury when a musician from the Jewish nation starts to play… does this remind Mr Lineker of anything? How striking that Lineker hears echoes of the 1930s in so many things – including in Suella Braverman’s comments about immigration – but not in this noisy, feverish boycotting of all Jewish State stuff. That he’s happy to swan around in Qatar, a nation that funds Hamas, the terror group that carried out the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust, and then get on his social-media soapbox about Israel is not only preposterous – it’s sick-making.

I would wager that many Brits with dual Israeli citizenship, or just British Jews who have an affinity with Israel, now feel even more isolated from the public broadcaster following Lineker’s promotion of BDS bigotry. Seriously, Gary – do you have no shame?

Melanie Phillips: Anti-western ideology is infecting public sector

The term “far right” is routinely used to smear anyone whose attitudes challenge progressive dogma. The loudmouth and undeniably offensive Joe Rogan was more accurately described by CNN as “libertarian-leaning”.

Murray’s own thought-crime is to be a passionate and articulate supporter of Israel and a clear-sighted analyst of Islamist extremism. The similarly robust Shawcross had to fight a determined attempt by Home Office civil servants, who subscribed to the “Islamist extremism is exaggerated” mindset, to prevent his government-ordered report from ever seeing the light of day.

Shawcross and Murray play a courageous role in the struggle to defend Britain and the civilised world against its enemies. For lecturers in counterterrorism to dismiss, smear or try to cancel them in this way shows how deeply the rot in society has penetrated.

Stanley resigned from the Foreign Office and has emigrated to Israel in despair at what she perceives as the institutionalised dogma fuelling epidemic Jew-hatred and wildly distorting Britain’s foreign policy by helping forces hostile to the West.

The universities and other institutions are riddled by anti-western thinking. But these tropes are also being used to service the agenda of Islamists intent upon undermining the free world. King’s enjoys close links with Qatar, which funds the university’s centre for global banking and finance. A decade ago, King’s had a four-year teaching contract with the Qatari government worth £26 million. Professor Denise Lievesley, the dean of the university’s faculty of social sciences and public policy, called Qatar “comparatively liberal” for the region.

But Qatar funds Hamas and supports the Muslim Brotherhood, as was laid out in a 2022 Policy Exchange report by Sir John Jenkins, formerly the Foreign Office’s senior Arabist. He said that although both Conservative and Labour ministers had hailed Qatar as a “friend and partner”, it had often pursued a foreign policy at odds with British and western interests.

Significant and often disguised funding by Qatar, said the report, had been used to support Islamist groups in the US, Britain and Europe over the previous two decades. Such funding had openly supported university departments and think tanks studying “highly contested regional issues,” including King’s, Bristol University and St Antony’s College, Oxford, and built influence within parliamentary and other official circles.

Questions in parliament perhaps should go further than merely this disturbing course at King’s. Britain not only refuses to heed the warnings of people like Jenkins, but has spawned a culture that is actively helping promote the enemies of civilisation.

Tom Tugendhat orders review of Left-wing civil servant training over ‘indoctrination’ fear

Just yesterday Home Secretary James Cleverly announced he is to add Hizb ut-Tahrir to the list of proscribed terrorist groups, a group he described as an “antisemitic organisation that actively promotes and encourages terrorism, including praising and celebrating the appalling 7 October attacks”.

The same civil servant training course that downplayed Islamic terrorism also described Spectator journalist Douglas Murray, and US podcaster Joe Rogan, as “far-right”.

The lecturer invited those in attendance to deliberate “to what extent should Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray be suppressed”, and argued “society needs to find other ways to suppress them”.

Following the deeply concerning reports, Mr Tugendhat is demanding answers and action.

Speaking in the Commons yesterday, he told MPs: “If courses aren’t high quality and politically neutral then civil servants shouldn’t be attending them.”

Addressing the debate held at the training day, around whether they could define terrorism, Mr Tugendhat provided the left-wing lecturers with a straightforward answer.

He said: “We know what a terrorist is, the law knows what a terrorist is and this government knows what a terrorist is - that’s exactly why we’ve just proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir.”

A King’s College London spokesman argued the training course was “taught by eminent experts using impartial and evidence-based resources in an environment where different theories, concepts and questions are shared to prompt discussion”.

Latest EoZ cartoons and memes

The first one needs to be blown up (so to speak.)

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Synagogue in Portugal defaced with "Free Palestine" on October 10, 2023

Two years ago, I noted that Jovan Byford, an expert on conspiracy theories, defined the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism to be the line where that criticism turns into a conspiracy theory.

The events since October 7 show this to be true, yet again.

Every accusation against Israel is a conspiracy theory. The Leftist antisemites and their Islamist partners have put forth an astonishing number of Zionist schemes:

* The accusations of rape and sexual abuse on October 7 are all lies made up to demonize Palestinians

* The civilians murdered on October 7 were really killed by Israel and blamed on Hamas

* The returned hostages are all now lying about any abuse they suffered or witnessed; their words at gunpoint in Gaza were the real truth

* The IDF is deliberately targeting civilians and their denials prove it

* Any Israeli statements that they are only going after Hamas is a cover story for their real desire for genocide of Palestinians

* But they are really bad at hiding that genocidal desire because they also say it explicitly, sometimes using secret code words like "Amalek"

* The entire war is a means for Netanyahu to stay in power

* Hamas members admitting atrocities on video have been tortured

* Any Western support for Israel is proof that Israel controls the West

* Israel doesn't really care about the hostages, all statements to the contrary are gaslighting

* Israel is hiding the real number of IDF soldiers killed

* Israel is digging up bodies of Gazans and stealing their organs to give to Jews

The list goes on and on.

But this is not only the domain of far-Left activists and Muslim antisemites. The major conspiracy theory being bandied about is one that every major media outlet is engaging in: the assumption that Israelis are lying in every statement, and nothing they say can be trusted.

This is the antisemitism of the BBC implying that the IDF forged evidence that Al Jazeera reporter Hamza al-Dahdouh was on the Islamic Jihad payroll.

Or CNN implying that that the photos of weapons found in Shifa Hospital were untrustworthy because the weapons were moved to create a photo-op.

Or the widespread assumptions by reporters who do not understand international law that Israel is obviously violating it.

Or that every Israeli denial of accusations of war crimes - from murdering Christian women to firing on hospitals to bombing fleeing Gazans - is suspect, even though the IDF readily admits when it makes mistakes.

I cannot count the number of times I've seen the media parrot Hamas claims about civilian casualties without any skepticism, while all Israeli evidence, photos, documents and videos are treated as inherently untrustworthy.

The subtext for all these stories is that Jews are liars. Not only that, but they collude to hide their lies from the world. Their evidence might be faked, their statements that they were nowhere near reported incidents might be lies, their refusal to allow reporters to wander in a war zone is proof that they have something to hide and every reporter who dies was deliberately targeted. And at the same time, the media can find "experts" to confirm that Israeli statements are suspicious, using the same methods that 9/11 "truthers" use to claim that airplanes could not have brought down the World Trade Center.

Somehow they never look for experts who can confirm Israeli statements.

By their nature, conspiracy theories resist debunking, because all evidence is categorized as part of the conspiracy. When Israel immediately issues a denial it cannot be true because it happened to fast; when they spend three days ensuring that there was no IDF activity in the spot they are accused of war crimes that is proof that they spent the time manufacturing evidence.

The only reason that the theories are so eagerly accepted is because so many people truly believe that Jews are always up to something. Having an audience eager to believe something is 90% of what the conspiracy theorists need to spread their poison.

The progressive Left loves to claim that only the far-Right engage in conspiracy thinking and that they are interested in science and evidence. But their own antisemitic theories are no less conspiratorial than those of Qanon or David Duke.

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01/16 Links Pt1: As Hamas plays sick games with hostages, Biden whines he’s losing patience with Israel; The Israel haters should learn from Thomas Hand’s moral clarity

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg: Pathetic: As Hamas plays sick games with hostages 100 days in, Biden whines he’s losing patience with Israel

Pro-terror demonstrations in America and Great Britain increasingly feature signs supporting the Iran-backed Houthi terror group, which is responsible for the continuous missile attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea — signaling support for radical anti-Western ideologies, not merely opposition to Israel.

At a weekend rally in London, one prominent Palestinian activist said, “We must normalize massacres as a status quo.”

And Hamas released a sickening video Monday of one Israeli hostage revealing the deaths of two others.

President Biden should be using these moments to further marginalize anti-Israel voices on his left flank.

Yet the louder and more extreme those voices grow, the faster Biden runs away from supporting a fellow democracy battling a terrorist group responsible for the murders of dozens of Americans — and which continues to hold other US citizens hostage.

Biden’s more strident insistence that Israel transition to “lower-intensity operations” against Hamas in Gaza comes alongside political pressure on Jerusalem to abandon a planned defensive military campaign on its northern border against an Iran-backed terror threat 10 times larger than Hamas.

Israeli officials may be underestimating Washington’s determination to “contain regional escalation” in an election year — code for strong-arming Israel into permitting Iran’s existential threats to remain intact even if it leaves the Jewish state exposed to another Oct. 7 and deterred from acting against Iran’s accelerating nuclear program.

Israel has already evacuated roughly 100,000 people from towns bordering Lebanon out of fear the Hezbollah terrorist organization might unleash its own surprise invasion.

But Hezbollah is not a threat just to Israel’s border communities — with 200,000 rockets, including thousands of precision-guided munitions, it is capable of threatening Haifa and Tel Aviv in addition to the country’s critical infrastructure.

Israelis will not return to their homes in the north so long as Hezbollah remains across the border.

And waiting around for Tehran’s order to rain missiles down on Israel while the ayatollah races across the nuclear threshold is a status quo Israel’s leaders can no longer accept.

But if Biden can’t stomach 100 days of war against Hamas after the horrific scenes of Oct. 7, can anyone be confident he’ll green-light military support for an even larger fight in Lebanon?

Indeed, the president withdrew a carrier strike group off Israel’s coast and sent a senior adviser to the region to negotiate Israel’s surrender of territory to Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah moving a few kilometers north.

All while letting Iran gain access to $10 billion.

More than 75 years after its founding, Israel is waging its second war of independence.

Surviving the 21st century depends on Jerusalem dismantling Iran’s so-called “ring of fire” and denying Tehran its quest for nuclear weapons.

The war against Hamas in Gaza must be viewed as merely the first phase of this multifront confrontation.

Facing a shared adversary in Tehran, any US president should be fully committed to Israel’s success in this effort — not trying to pull the plug before Phase 1 is even complete.

WSJ Editorial: Palestinian ‘Pay for Slay’ Keeps Growing

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch explains that “the PA does not differentiate between Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities after invading Israel on Oct. 7, the Hamas terrorists killed by Israel in the ensuing war, and civilian non-combatants killed in the Gaza Strip while being used as human shields by Hamas.” All are treated as heroic martyrs to be compensated by the PA, whose activities are subsidized with Western aid.

Meanwhile, in Ramallah, Mr. Blinken said that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is “committed” to reform. Where’s the evidence? His four-year term is stretching into its 20th year. Even as the PA complains of a budget crunch, it is readying to move from glorifying the Oct. 7 attack to compensating its participants.

Why, again, does President Biden insist Israel hand over postwar Gaza to this group? Mr. Blinken also talks prematurely of giving it a state. No wonder the PA sees little reason to change.

Seth Mandel: Israel’s War Isn’t About Revenge

Necessary and winnable. True victory, then, is obligatory. To refuse to do so would be to knowingly subject your fellow citizens to wanton violence. It would diminish the freedom of the people whose freedom you have no right to diminish, and whose freedom you vowed to protect and defend.

Crucially, Cicero pointed out that to leave such an enemy intact is to increase its power. A wounded king receives pity from some and admiration from others; both provide help. And in each round, the act of rousting support for his stand against the stronger power makes the next fight more of a cause than the last, eventually including populations that otherwise have no vested interest in the war:

“And so Mithradates, after his defeat, was able to accomplish what, when he was in the full enjoyment of his powers, he never dared even to wish for.”

And so Hamas.

Every temporary defeat has left Hamas able to come back, rally a lifeline of support from countries like Iran and Qatar and Turkey, and construct a permanent base of war. And this time, after its greatest achievement was the carrying out of unimaginably barbaric atrocities, it has garnered its loftiest status as a heroic force, attested to by the throngs of marchers all over the world who were enthralled by what Hamas was willing to do to innocent Jews. Everything the world has done since Oct. 7 has incentivized Hamas—and, it should be said, other daring terrorist armies—to make Oct. 7 seem like a trial run for its next attack.

Yes, Israel has an obligation to achieve permanent victory over Hamas. Anything less would be unjust.

The Palestinian Arabs Are "Open" -- But Not To Compromise (Part 2 of Dr. Harold Rhode interview) (Daled Amos)

The following is a second interview with Dr. Harold Rhode.

The key to discussing the Middle East is understanding the cultures and languages. In Hebrew, you have the root P-T-Ch, corresponding to F-T-Ch in Arabic. The root has the general meaning of "open." But in Arabic, there is an additional meaning: opening up a land to Islam. So the leader in battle is called Fatih and the man who conquered Istanbul was called Mehmed Fatih.

Similarly, there is Fatah, the organization. The name is a reverse acronym of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine -- Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr l-Filasṭīn. The reference is to the liberation and return of all of today’s Israel – including Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip – to Islamic rule.

This concept of being "open" means that once a land has been conquered and is "open to Islam," it is Muslim forever, even if Muslim control comes to an end. The Muslims ruled Spain from 712 CE until 1492, when the Christians finally expelled them from all of Spain. But in the Muslim mind, though their physical control over Spain ended centuries ago, Spain still belongs to the Muslims and will never be part of the non-Muslim world. Many Muslims, when mentioning Spain, often add the phrase “Allah-Willing, it will again be ruled by Muslims.”

Similarly, there was a time when all of Southeast Europe up to Vienna was under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans saw themselves as Muslims, not Turks. Their defeat in Vienna in 1683 gradually led to the complete Ottoman withdrawal from Southeast Europe, resulting in 1914 to the borders of present-day Turkey. Yet many Turks and other Muslims still talk about the area as being part of the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan still talks about Southeastern Europe as being “part of the Ottoman-Muslim area.”

That brings us to the years 1948-1949, when Israel defeated five Muslim armies. At the Rhodes talks in 1949, the Muslims insisted on the phrase "ceasefire lines" instead of "borders." The word "borders" implies the recognition of the people living there. Jews would have the right to live in Eretz Yisrael. A Muslim would find that unacceptable because those lands should remain Muslim forever.

To the Arabs, there is nothing magical about the lines drawn in the 1948-49 map. Those borders do not matter. The land is completely Muslim. But from the Western point of view, we are talking about how to divide up land and this is the point of pushing for the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. However, Netanyahu understands that the Arabs are not talking about Israel’s borders and how to renegotiate them. They are talking about Israel’s existence. And people cannot compromise on their existence.

This issue of borders and Israel's legitimacy caused a problem for Yasser Arafat. The 1993 Oslo Agreement was an interim agreement, not a Peace Treaty. Yet, at the very last moment, Arafat kept changing the terms. He was afraid of what might happen.

Years later, when President Clinton was trying to get Israel and Arafat to sign a Peace Agreement, Arafat was quoted as saying he would not sign because he did not want to end up drinking tea with Sadat. If Arafat had signed, he would have risked assassination like the Egyptian president, whose signing of the Egyptian agreement with Begin was viewed as a treasonous acknowledgment of Israel's right to “Muslim” territory.

There are YouTube videos of Israeli Muslim children -- whose ancestors had been living in Israel for 3 to 4 generations -- telling an Israeli journalist that Israel was Muslim land and that someday Muslims would get it back.

When the interviewer pointed out his family had been living in Israel for many years, since 1948, the teenager responded that this is what he had been taught, both in school and at home: You Jews have no right to live here and we are going to take our land back from you. There was no issue of rights or that Jews were on the land long before the Arabs arrived in 637-638 CE.

None of that made any difference.
To the Palestinian Arabs, it still doesn't.

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On Monday, Hezbollah shot two anti-tank missiles at a house in Kfar Yuval. Mira Ayalon, 76, and her son Barak Ayalon, 48, were killed.

Hezbollah has been using laser guided anti-tank missiles a great deal since they started their fighting with Israel in October.

There is a qualitative difference between Hamas-style rockets and these missiles. First of all, there is no defense for a home or building targeted by such missiles. Iron Dome cannot defend against them; the missile are shot at ground level.

Secondly, they cannot miss. They use lasers or radar to guide them to their target.

Which means that this is a different quality of war crime than the Qassam-style rockets. The violation of the laws of war for Qassam rockets is violating the principle of distinction - indiscriminate fire does not distinguish between civilian and military targets; the rockets are shot in the general direction of a town and the terrorists don't know exactly where the rockets will land. They are tools of terror but Hamas can (and does) claim that they really only want to shoot military targets but just don't have the tools to be that precise. It is an obvious lie - in Arabic they happily admit they want to terrorize Jewish civilians - but they can at least make that claim.

Here, Hezbollah deliberately aimed at a civilian house. Their own video makes this quite obvious:

And they have shot scores of anti-tank missiles at homes, public buildings, chicken coops, businesses and vehicles have been hit by this fire.

The deliberate nature of knowingly and provably aiming at unquestionably civilian objects - and civilians - changes things from the violation of the laws of armed conflict to a grave breach of international law. It is the moral equivalent of holding a gun at a civilian's head and pulling the trigger.

Hezbollah has been aiming these weapons at civilian targets for months. One would think that human rights groups would be up in arms about using a weapon that is directly aimed at civilians.

One would be wrong.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem - none of them tweeted a word about a deliberate murder of a 76 year old woman and her son. A clear war crime, that was documented by Hezbollah itself, is not worth mentioning.

These organizations will dig as deep as they can, and spend tens of thousands of dollars, to to find bizarre new things to blame Israel for - but egregious war crimes by Hezbollah are simply ignored.

Because, to these organizations, Mira Ayalon and the other civilians murdered by Hezbollah are somewhat less than human.

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While Israelis are pitching in to help each other, Gazans are price gouging their neighbors

We've seen the stories about how Israelis are volunteering to do farm work that had been done by foreign workers, or spending whatever spare hours they have where they are needed, of Jews worldwide coming to Israel to volunteer to help, volunteering to or to give empty apartments to those who have had to evacuate their homes, or hotel operators providing free room and food for those who need during the war.

In Gaza, things are quite different.

Amad has an article and video showing how Gazans are price gouging their friends and neighbors,. Cheese has quintupled in price, medicines are being sold for stratospheric prices, people with cars are charging exorbitant rates for evacuees to move to safer areas. "The merchants have no compassion, mercy, or humanity for the condition of the people of the Strip," the article says as it details the huge price hikes Gazans are suffering from.

This besides what we've already seen - Egyptians promising they can get Gazans permits to leave, also for exorbitant prices.

In Israel, misery is shared and everyone pitches in. In Gaza and the Arab world, it is something to take advantage of.

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01/15 Links Pt2: John Podhoretz: They’re Coming After Us; Hamas sacrifices Gaza children, and UNRWA is complicit; NYTs to Jews: Forget thy right hand

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: They’re Coming After Us

For those deeply bound up with the condition of the Jewish state—Zionists whose commitment to the cause has made them hyperaware of the risks and opportunities in Eretz Yisrael, and those whose Israeli family members give them a personal stake in it—October 7 was also a trauma, though perhaps not entirely unprecedented. To feel the individual instability I just described really requires being an Israeli in Israel right now. For the rest of us, the combination of terror, war, hostages, and slaughter evoked feelings not experienced in klal Yisrael, the worldwide Jewish community, since the 1970s.

In four years’ time, recall, Israeli athletes were taken hostage and massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Yom Kippur War of 1973 shattered the triumphalist spirit that had prevailed since the 1967 Six-Day War. By 1974, the Soviet Union had made it clear it would keep Jews hungry to emigrate to Israel imprisoned inside Soviet borders. The United Nations declared that Zionism was racism in a notorious 1975 resolution. A planeful of Jews was hijacked to Entebbe in July 1976.

The idea that Israel, Israelis, and would-be Israelis have become targets of a new kind of evil took depressing, even debilitating, root. The staggering rescue of those Entebbe hostages helped calm the overwhelmingly anxious atmosphere that prevailed at the time among world Jewry—and was followed the next year by the stunning journey to Jerusalem by Egypt’s dictator Anwar el-Sadat and by the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. The crisis facing Israel seemed to be over, and the depression lifted.

That was nearly a half-century ago. In the decades since, Israel has continued to be a source of unity for American Jews and Jews worldwide, the efforts of the New York Times to convince us otherwise notwithstanding. The data are absolutely clear. American Jews have supported Israel, consistently and in vast numbers—though in broad-brush terms, and there’s no question the fractiousness of the Diaspora community regarding Israel’s internal politics and behavior is often deeply unpleasant and divisive.

For every 10 Jews in the Diaspora, there have been 12 opinions about Israel’s political and social situation. Truth to tell, what we thought hasn’t really mattered all that much, no matter how hard we tried to believe it did. Here at home, we had our own problems anyway, and they weren’t that we were under threat or potential threat from outside forces. Our problem was, as the rueful joke had it, that once-hostile Gentiles didn’t want to kill us, they wanted to marry us. We weren’t at risk of disappearing due to violence; we were at risk of melting away into the great American melting pot.

Consider this astounding fact. After the lynching of the Atlanta businessman Leo Frank in 1915 at the hands of a mob that believed he had raped a worker in his factory, it would be another 52 years until a Jew in America was publicly murdered for being a Jew. That happened in 1977 in St. Louis, when a neo-Nazi shot a few men at random outside a synagogue. It would then be another 41 years before the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. In the intervening four decades, you could count on one hand the number of anti-Semitic killings in the United States. The fact that there were any such killings is awful, of course, but the point stands: American Jews of my age and younger simply did not feel themselves to be at any specific physical risk for being Jewish.

That began to change after the Tree of Life killing spree. Hate crimes in general against Jews began to spiral in number—including two subsequent synagogue attacks in California and Texas. YouTube kept displaying short videos of visible members of the tribe (those with black hats, beards, fringed garments) being randomly assaulted from behind on the streets of Brooklyn and elsewhere in so called knock-out attacks. A kosher grocery store was shot up in New Jersey. The home of a haredi Jew in Monsey, New York, was invaded by a man with a machete. Though polls still demonstrated that the United States remained the most philo-Semitic nation the world has ever known, actual violence against Jews for being Jews was bubbling to the surface after remaining largely still over the previous century.

Defamation case against antisemitic slander only the beginning

On July 10, 2020, a statement of claim for defamation was issued against Kimberley Hawkins, owner and “directing mind” of now-closed Toronto Bloor St. eatery, Foodbenders. The plaintiff, Shai DeLuca, a Canadian with Israeli citizenship, is a designer and longtime contributor to CTV’s lifestyle show, Cityline. He’s also a gay Zionist who served with the IDF as a combat engineer.

Hawkins is an ardently progressive, anti-Zionist activist. She mounted a gigantic “I (heart) Gaza” sign in Foodbenders’ window; her social media account warned “Zionists” (taken by many to mean Jews) away from her business. In short, you couldn’t ask for any antagonists more passionately divided in their beliefs about Israel or more committed to defending their corner to the bitter end.

The suit was triggered by offensive statements featuring DeLuca’s name on Foodbenders’ official Instagram account; a gravely problematic one read: “(DeLuca) is an IDF SOLDIER (aka terrorist) yet he’s using the BLM movement for likes. How can you sit here and post about BLM when you have your sniper rifle aimed at Palestinian children.”

DeLuca was represented by David Elmaleh and David Rosenberg of Re-LAW LLP. They partnered with The Lawfare Project, which “provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil and human rights of the Jewish people worldwide.” Hawkins’ lawyer was pro-Palestinian activist Stephen Ellis, who also represents controversial Ontario MPP Sara Jama, who was kicked out of the provincial NDP caucus for antisemitic comments on social media.

On Dec 22, a Superior Court judgment was released, finding DeLuca had been defamed in a series of “abhorrent” antisemitic Instagram posts by Hawkins, and was entitled to $85,000 in damages, which included $10,000 in punitive damages to indicate the court’s “outrage” over Hawkins’ conduct. The judge found Hawkins “acted with malice,” was “irresponsible” and had hoped to end DeLuca’s career at Cityline. (Cityline stood by DeLuca. Ironically, Covid and public opprobrium shut Foodbenders down.)

Justice Gina Papageorgiou castigated Hawkins for never apologizing during three years of the suit’s progress. “Despite the many cases referred to me involving allegations like the ones here, the Defendants in this case were not deterred,” the judge wrote. “These kinds of statements not only affect people’s reputations, but they also contribute to prejudice, antisemitism and intolerance and have the potential to incite violence.”

Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger: The Professor-Ambassador Who Combats the Antisemites

Hosted by Jay Nordlinger
Deborah Lipstadt is a well-known scholar of modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. She has written many books. In the 1990s, she was involved in a famous trial against David Irving, the notorious English Holocaust-denier. (She won.) The case was depicted in a 2016 movie, “Denial,” in which Prof. Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz. Today, Prof. Lipstadt works in the State Department: as the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism. She has a lot to say, as you can imagine—very important things to say.

US Central Command tweeted:

On Jan. 15 at approximately 4 p.m. (Sanaa time), Iranian-backed Houthi militants fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and struck the M/V Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated container ship. The ship has reported no injuries or significant damage and is continuing its journey.

Earlier in the day, at approximately 2 p.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Forces detected an anti-ship ballistic missile fired toward the Southern Red Sea commercial shipping lanes. The missile failed in flight and impacted on land in Yemen. There were no injuries or damage reported.

In other words, the US and UK airstrikes accomplished literally nothing. They might have even prompted the Houthis to attack more uninvolved ships. After all, it is the chance of a successful attack that derails shipping traffic to the Red Sea, not actual successful attacks.

The US pretty much screamed that it was going to do some limited strikes, and is not interested in starting a war. The Houthis are seeing their popularity soaring by standing up to the US.

Whatever happened to understanding the enemy? Anyone who studies the Houthi terrorists could have predicted this.

Deterrence for an enemy like that has got to hurt enough to make them think twice. When the enemy embraces martyrdom and enjoys forcing a superpower to dance to its tune, that becomes a lot more tricky.

Right now, the Houthis feel that they are in a better place than they were beforehand. US and UK actions need to be a lot more creative and a lot less predictable, not to mention cause damage in a way that makes the Houthis feel that they would lose their grip on Yemen altogether. Anything less than that and they look to themselves and to much of the Arab (especially Shiite) world as winners, with more incentive to attack more ships.

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Hamas spokesman claims the "red cows" were one reason for their October 7 attack

Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida has become a celebrity in the Arab world, and his statements are eagerly listened to and analyzed.

On Sunday, he said,

We look back 100 days to remember the educated, the complicit, and the incapacitated among the world powers governed by the law of the jungle, reminding them of an aggression that reached its peak against our path (Al-Quds) and Al-Aqsa, with the start of its actual temporal and spatial division, and the bringing of red cows as an application of a detestable religious myth designed for aggression against the feelings of an entire nation in the heart of its Arab identity, and the path of its prophet (the Night Journey) and Ascension to heaven.

Over the summer, Arab media were filled with stories about five red cows that a group of religious Jews imported from Texas to examine and see if they were pure enough to be used to purify descendants of Aaron. They were concerned that any Jews who undergo the procedure would then be allowed to enter the entire Temple Mount and begin the building of the Third Temple, which cannot be done without the procedure.

Abu Obeida's offhand mention of the red cows has brought about a flurry of articles explaining the issue anew, with illustrations meant to incite violence.

I wonder how the world would react if Jews referred to Mohammed's so-called "night journey" to Jerusalem as a "detestable religious myth designed for aggression against the feelings of an entire nation." Because, it really is.

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

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01/15 Links Pt1: Hostages Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky reported dead in Hamas video; Bari Weiss: Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder?

From Ian:

Hostages Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky reported dead in Hamas video

The Hamas terror organization announced on Monday that hostages Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, had been killed in captivity. Noa Argamani, 26, is reportedly still alive.

The update from the Gaza-based Islamist terror organization comes in a video featuring Argamani, where the 26-year-old reported the death of her fellow hostages. Hamas has been teasing the announcement

The video followed Hamas's sequence of teased announcements, where they claimed that they would announce the fate of the three Israelis.

"I was located in a building," Argamani said in the Hamas video. "It was bombed by an IDF airstrike, an F16 fighter jet. Three rockets were fired. Two of the rockets exploded, and the other didn't. We were in the building with Al Qassam soldiers and three hostages: Myself, Noa Argamani, Itai Svirsky, and Yossef Sharabi.

"After the building we were in was hit, we were all buried under rubble. Al Qassam soldiers saved my life, and Itai's, unfortunately, we were not able to save Yossi's.

"After many days...two nights, Itai and I were relocated to another place. While we were being transported, Itai was hit by an IDF airstrike. He did not survive."

Hamas has a track record of engaging in psychological warfare.

"Itai Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi," Argamani added in the video. "They died because of our own IDF airstrikes. Stop this madness and bring us home to our families. While we are still alive, bring us home."

Chilling Hamas video asks viewers whether terrorists should kill Israeli hostages: ‘What do you think?’

Hamas released more sick video Monday featuring the faces of three Israeli hostages — and asking viewers for their opinions on whether the terror group should kill them.

“What do you think?” the Palestinian terrorists said of the captives, who include Noa Argamani, a Nova music-fest attendee kidnapped during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and last seen being driven off screaming on the back of a motorcycle.

The Hamas clip then offers a trio of options for the innocent victims: all three are killed; “some are killed, some are injured,” or all three are spared.

The chilling propaganda footage was a follow-up to an undated 37-second clip the terror group released Sunday in which Argamani, 26, and fellow hostages Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, pleaded with Israel to stop its offensive against Gaza — ending with the ominous message: “Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate.”

This is just pure, unhinged evil!

Hamas has just released another film, asking people to guess the fate of the 3 Israeli hostages, before making an announcement tonight.

I wonder if those great humanitarians South Africa have any comment on this fresh hell? pic.twitter.com/FjoijFW4Z8
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) January 15, 2024

A thread by ShipofTheseus:

Israel journalist @Roi_Yanovsky just published an amazing piece in Hebrew about what Gaza is really like, based on his personal observations there. Here is an English translation that you need to read🧵

100 reserve days officially ended yesterday. Some initial insights:

1. Gaza is seen as a backward area, the "most densely populated in the world" which has been under Israeli "siege" for years. There is no bigger lie than this. Gaza is a modern, beautiful, developed city, with large modern houses, wide boulevards, public spaces, a promenade by the sea and parks. Looks much better than any other Arab city from the Jordan to the sea, much more similar to Tel Aviv than to Kfar Qasim or Umm Al Fahem. And of course it is very far from being "the densest in the world".

2. If it's a siege, let me live in a siege. The houses are bursting with goods and food from all countries of the Middle East, latest furniture, electronics and whatnot. There are also luxurious mansions that wouldn’t embarrass Savion and Kfar Shemariahu (rich areas in Israel)

There is absolutely no shortage of wealth in Gaza. In general, most of the houses I've been in were much bigger than the apartment I live in in Tel Aviv. The sentence "If only they had a chance for a good life, they wouldn't fight in Israel" is simply not relevant to Gaza.

3. The most common thing in the houses of the Gaza Strip: a map of the Land of Israel the heading "Map of Palestine". There is no mention of Israel or Israeli towns in general.
And it is found in almost every home, in every school and in every public institution, the goal of
erasing the State of Israel is neither hidden nor suppressed, it is almost everywhere. The historical distortion of this map which is taught from age 0 is a topic for another discussion that only emphasizes the distorted perception of reality by the residents of Gaza.

4. In all the neighborhoods we were in, there are ready-made Hamas combat complexes - weapons, tunnels, charges, launching complexes, all inside residential houses, some of which are also prepared with openings in the walls for passing between buildings and what not.

The residents of the Gaza Strip who live in the combat zones know this, they have received countless notices to evacuate. Long before the IDF entered. IDF announcements are still there everywhere. Those who decided to stay in the fighting areas are either Hamas members in various positions or people who consciously decided to stay in the areas used by Hamas for fighting, for their own reasons.

5. Hamas members rarely walk around armed. They are neither stupid nor suckers. They know they won't be shot if they go in "civilian" guise.

They prepare the weaponry ahead of time at the entrances to the buildings and arm themselves just a moment before they attack. That’s why the fighting is much more complex than any other arena. those judge from the outside why soldiers shot X or didn’t shoot Y - enter Gaza for a week or 2 and you’ll return with insights.

6. The circle enabling Hamas is much larger than its tens of thousands of terrorists. The ideology of Hamas is found in almost every home, in pictures, in propaganda materials. Hamas in Gaza is like Messi in Argentina.

7. The strengthening of Hamas at this level requires active assistance of a population. There is no way that the residents of the compounds where we located rockets and weapons did not know that the place is used as a launching complex where they try to massacre Israelis daily.

And I find it hard to believe that the parents in the kindergarten where there was a tunnel shaft do not know this. Who chooses to send their children to a kindergarten that serves as a terrorist infrastructure?

8. Hamas's strongest weapon is lies and propaganda. It's their fuel. This is how you will maintain the "siege" lie for years, this is how they are doing now with the photos of the innocent victims and the killing of the "journalists" who turn out to be terrorist operatives.

Gaza is the only place in the world where 500 deaths are reported half an hour after an explosion. Even in earthquakes and heavy disasters it takes the rescue forces a few days to identify and estimate the number of dead, but the Palestinian Ministry of Health already knows a minute after the explosion what the damage is. This is ridiculous and the world media quoting the numbers as living words of God is pathetic. I would attribute the same level of credibility to the reports this week about "hunger" in Rafah.

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

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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)

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!