Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 22, 2024

Hamas issues report filled with lies about October 7, claiming no rapes and no attacks on civilians. The media knows they lie. But they still quote Hamas as reliable.

Hamas issued a document in English purporting to describe why it decided to attack Israel on October 7.

The lies are transparent and disgusting.

Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.

You can watch the documentary about the Nova music festival, showing video from both Israeli victims and Hamas. The full version doesn't seem to be online anymore but here is a shortened version shown on i24:

You can see Hamas members on Hamas cameras shooting at civilians in numerous places in the documentary.

And this is just Nova - other videos of Hamas shooting civilians are plentiful. Like this one showing a Hamas terrorist shooting a young woman at point blank range as she begs for her life.

Hamas lies continue:

The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement. A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”

Newspapers independently investigated the events and agreed with what Israel is saying about the murders and rapes.

Which means that the mainstream media knows that Hamas lies - these lies were consistent since October 7.

Yet they continue to report Hamas' casualty numbers, often without any caveats about the source, as this AP report on Sunday showed:

And as the New York Times does today.

Hamas then hedges its bets because it knows that its case about not attacking civilians is so weak - so they redefine everyone in Israel as a soldier:

When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms. This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”

That is not a phrase often used to describe Israel (I found it in Haaretz in 2014 and Jacobin in 2021; I've seen it used to describe Prussia, Germany, the US, Jordan and Pakistan). It is Hamas' way to justify the civilians they killed after denying it.

The Palestinian people have always stood against oppression, injustice, and the committing of massacres against civilians regardless of who commit them.

This may be the biggest lie of all.

The Hamas Al Qassam website (now down but a mirror exists) has an entire section praising scores of the most depraved terror attacks against Israeli civilians, in buses, cafes and the Passover seder at the Park Hotel, among others.

Hamas describes the Sbarro pizza shop massacre of August 2001 that murdered 16 civilians including seven children in glowing terms:

It created an unprecedented state of terror and chaos among the Jews.
The strength and size of the explosion was seen from the ambulances, and this, thanks to God, shows the strength of the explosive material used by the Al-Qassam Brigades ...

It shows the brigades’ ability to plan, develop, and reach the depths of the enemy and in the safest places, and which astonished the enemy and caused rejoicing among our loved ones and family, and healed the hearts of believing people.

They, and (as polls have shown) Palestinians altogether, relish and celebrate the murder and massacres of Jewish civilians.

If everyone knows Hamas are liars, why does the media still believe what they say?

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!

Houthi blockade hurting Egypt, Europe - probably more than Israel

The Houthi piracy at the entrance to the Red Sea is affecting others more than it is affecting Israel.

The main loser seems to be Egypt, which has seen traffic through the Suez Canal drop dramatically, by as much as 40%. Remittances for shipping brought over $8 billion to Egypt's economy for the fiscal year that ended last June, and Egypt has had other economic woes recently - a drop in tourism and in natural gas exports. Inflation in Egypt is at over 33%.

Interestingly, I am not seeing Egyptian media talk about this, although other Arabic media is featuring this story.

Also, the extra time it takes oil tankers to go around Africa to reach Europe has brought some energy shortages to Europe during this winter.

Yet stories about this Houthi attempt to blackmail the world all seem to have an undercurrent as if this is Israel's fault - as if the terrorists really care about Gazans and are not just using the war as an excuse to throw their weight around and feel important.

Meanwhile, Israeli businesspeople are trying to come up with solutions that could help everyone - an overland truck route from the UAE to Haifa and Egypt that would probably be faster than the ships going around Africa.

One thing this Hamas war is teaching us: people who already had a deep antipathy to Jews and Israel are eager to find any excuse to justify that hate.

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!

01/21 Links: Documenting the Enablers of Hamas War Crimes; Biden Admin, Qatar, Egypt Propose Hostage Deal Where Israel Loses War; Unmasking Gaza's so-called journalists

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Documenting the Enablers of Hamas War Crimes: UN Agencies, Government Aid Programs and NGOs

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: UN agencies, government aid programs and NGOs have consistently and willfully aided and abetted Hamas as it built its vast terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. They diverted aid money to Hamas to fund its terrorist activities, provided propaganda and disinformation support to Hamas in its efforts to tarnish and discredit Israel, and indoctrinated Gazan schoolchildren to hate Jews. Systematic documentation of the roles played by UN and government officials, as well as NGOs operating under the vast framework of international humanitarian aid, in enabling and cooperating with Hamas, both tacitly and actively, is vital to prevent a repetition of this abdication of responsibility and accountability.

Detailed documentation of the brutal Hamas mass slaughter of October 7, 2023, which included rape, torture and other heinous crimes, is essential in preserving the historical record, particularly in an era dominated by social media propaganda and disinformation. Documentation has begun through Israeli frameworks, both governmental and private, and also by journalists, including at The New York Times. In addition, Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation is conducting a project to document the “unspeakable brutality.”

In parallel, there is discussion of a special tribunal under the Israeli court system for trials of the perpetrators, particularly Hamas leaders who surrender or are taken alive. As in the trials of Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, the testimonies of survivors will inform future generations in the face of campaigns working to erase and deny the atrocities.

A third layer is also required: the systematic documentation of the complicity of Hamas enablers and allies. This category includes numerous UN agencies and officials operating in Gaza, governmental aid organizations and diplomats, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) claiming to promote human rights and humanitarian aid. Evidence of their involvement and behavior – specifically with respect to the large-scale theft (“diversion”) of aid for construction of the massive terror infrastructure beneath Gaza and tens of thousands of lethal rockets – is available in numerous photographs and videos from the IDF. This and other information needs to be consolidated and systematically organized and made available in different forms to the general public.

The compilation of verifiable evidence is also essential in planning for “the day after” the war in Gaza and is independent of whatever political arrangements are eventually implemented. By carefully examining the activities of the organizations operating under international humanitarian aid frameworks, policies can be formulated to prevent a repetition of this behavior.

Many of the agencies and organizations comprising the multibillion-dollar Gaza aid industry have been active since at least June 2007. At that time, Hamas violently overthrew the Palestinian Authority, which had taken control when the Israeli government unilaterally ended its presence in Gaza in 2005. These agencies and organizations allowed Hamas to devote all available resources to building the terror network underground while relying on aid providers to supply the general population with food, water and essential above-ground services. As Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk boasted in October, “We built the tunnels to protect ourselves from airplanes… The refugees, the UN is responsible for protecting them.”

Throughout the 17 years since the Hamas takeover, numerous reports have been published and videos posted detailing the growth of the terrorist capabilities inside Gaza. The frequent clashes with the IDF exposed additional information on the terror network and command centers located under and inside civilian locations, such as hospitals, mosques, schools and residential buildings. In the course of the operation that began following the October 7 attack, the IDF and journalists have added to this information, posting numerous pictures and videos showing the links between the aid operations and Hamas installations.

Accusing Israel of genocide is a perverse moral inversion

No decent person could be unmoved by the tragic suffering of innocent Palestinians. The ongoing debate about how this war can be prosecuted in a way which minimises that suffering is more than legitimate. It is vital. Yet, the enthusiastic clamour by some to declare it as something which belongs in a different moral category to the many other just wars with horrific humanitarian consequences, represents a moral failure built upon a foundation of hatred and disinformation.

That failure is compounded by the inescapable truth that if there is indeed a genocidal force in this conflict, it must surely be Hamas, whose rape, sexual mutilation and cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians, which it proudly broadcast to the world, is clear evidence of its dehumanisation of Jews. It is the leaders of Hamas who have made it clear that they will repeat their atrocities “again and again” and whose founding charter makes it clear that killing Jews is among its very reasons for existing.

The Biblical Prophet Zecharia declared, “Love truth and peace!” Sadly, truth is often the first casualty of conflict. When facts are presented selectively and truth becomes inverted, peace drifts yet further away.

Next week, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis simply because they were Jews, alongside millions of other victims. It is also a day when we recall more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. The misappropriation of the word ‘genocide’ is an affront both to the victims and the survivors of these unspeakable crimes.

Its use in the context of this conflict is the ultimate demonisation of the Jewish State. It is a term deployed not only to eradicate any notion that Israel has a responsibility to protect its citizens, but also to tear open the still gaping wound of the Holocaust, knowing that it will inflict more pain than any other accusation. It is a moral inversion, which undermines the memory of the worst crimes in human history.

Israel finds itself caught between the anvil of Jihadism on its border and the hammers of a global hatred whose proponents seem to care more about demonising the world’s only Jewish state and lionising terrorists, than about peace. Those are conditions which have already inspired a widespread view within Israel, that whatever it does, it can never win. If we are to yet make any meaningful contribution towards forging a peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians, the world must ensure that its discourse around the conflict is far more sober and honest. The destructive and manufactured hyperbole, which reaches its nadir with the accusation of genocide, can only harm the cause of peace.

Bret Stephens: In Davos, Israel’s Hostages Get a Hearing

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is largely an opportunity for the powerful to mingle with the even more powerful. For the most part, I’ve spent my time here listening to government leaders — Iran’s foreign minister struck me as an exceptionally talented dissembler — and schmoozing with business leaders, think tankers and officials at Davos’s famous private dinners and after-parties.

But the most moving stories I heard this week came from some of the least powerful people here.

“I open my eyes and feel my throat close,” Rachel Goldberg told me, describing her mornings over the previous 100-plus days. “I say a Jewish prayer and ask, ‘Let today be the day.’ And then I say, ‘Pretend to be human.’ And I put on this costume because, if I’m a ball on the floor, I can’t save him.”

She was speaking — with extraordinary self-composure — of her 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. On Oct. 7, he was attending the Nova music festival with a friend when terrorists from Hamas, arriving in paragliders and vans, murdered 364 people there in cold blood. Hersh and nearly 30 others tried to hide at a small roadside bomb shelter. Terrorists attacked it with hand grenades, then an R.P.G., killing nearly everyone inside.

Hersh survived the assault, barely. Goldberg showed me video footage, taken by Hamas, of him being put into the back of a truck and driven off to Gaza. The lower half of his left arm has been blown off, leaving a bloody stump. It’s stomach-churning to watch.

Hamas, Inc.: The Property Empire That Funded Militant Attack on Israel

The Amman-based Jordan Society for Science and Culture says its role is "Contributing to discussing intellectual, scientific and cultural issues, developing new ideas and positions to help realise development and advancement in Jordanian organisations, supporting scientific thoughts, freedom of expression and pluralism."

The JSSC hosted a lecture on Saturday by Dr. Ibrahim Badran, former Jordanian Education Minister, where he discussed his antisemitic theories formulated in a 2014 book, "Readings on the Israeli Issue" to a crowd of academics, politicians and media figures.

Badran pointed out that one of the most important characteristics of the Jews is also their hatred of others. They are a people who do not love other people. Since they were expelled from Palestine and the Arab countries later on historically, they have continued to believe that they are hated by the whole world and that they are the only victims of the injustice of any international system under whose protection they lived, and they always love to play the role of the victim. Therefore, they plot against others and hatch conspiracies without publicity. They pretend to be calm and peaceful, but they are people who cannot be trusted at all, as they are also distinguished by long-term planning and long-term schemes.

Badran spoke about the cunning of the Jews that they always try to describe themselves as weak in front of others, and that they have been historically oppressed by the Arabs, and by standing behind these characteristics, they found work in the financial, media, smuggling, and espionage sectors, and they also infiltrated the medicine and law sectors, which are the two most important sectors in the world, and therefore you see the largest international medical and law companies owned by Jews. .

But, Arabs must not fall into the trap of conflating Zionists and Jews - like Badran himself does:

Badran added that the Israelis are trying to link the Zionist movement to the Jewish religion....,We, the Arab nation in particular, must differentiate between the Zionist movement as a political movement and the Jews as a heavenly religion.

One of Badran's previous jobs on his resume is supervisor of Human Rights Unit at the Prime Ministry of Jordan.

The lecture did not draw more than 20 people.

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!

From New Hampshire Journal:

New Hampshire Jewish leaders lashed out at a progressive Democratic campaign to use write-in ballots in their party’s primary to accuse Israel of genocide and condemn President Joe Biden’s support for its war on Hamas.

Former Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky (D) and a grassroots group of progressives launched their “Vote Ceasefire” plan on Wednesday, urging their fellow Democrats to write “Ceasefire” on their ballots in the First in the Nation presidential primary.

“I think about this in terms of ending the regional conflict and stopping the annihilation of the people of Gaza,” Volinsky said during a Wednesday press conference.

Asked to condemn the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which governs Gaza, the “Vote Ceasefire” leadership declined to respond. Reached via Facebook after the press conference, Volinsky responded to a follow-up request for a statement condemning the terror attack with a heart emoji.

Does that heart emoji mean he loves the pogrom? That he loves Hamas? Or just that he wants to turn the biggest slaughter of Jews since Nazi Germany into a joke?

He could have pretended that his call for a "ceasefire" is meant for both sides and that he is against all violence. He could have "all live mattered" the issue. But instead, he chose to mock it.

Either way, this little episode shows that any "progressive" leader who only condemns Israel is not just amoral but immoral.

Using write-in votes for political purposes like this is itself immoral - it subverts the democratic process that is critical to this nation. But because he started it, I hope that decent New Hampshire Democratic voters write in "F*ck Hamas."

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!

Israel is going to be blamed for Gaza men sexually abusing Gaza women

From The Telegraph:

Gaza’s displaced women and girls face severe danger of physical and sexual violence, the UN has warned.

Overcrowding in shelters, coupled with “increased stress levels” among refugees due to a lack of food, water and privacy, has “created increased gender based violence (GBV) risks,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Population Fund said.

Women and girls are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence “while travelling to and lining up for hours to use wash facilities including water points, water distribution sites, and sanitation facilities that are limited in number, and located far from where they are seeking shelter,” the spokesperson added.

Outside of war, Gaza has long suffered from high rates of gender-based violence. In March 2022, the UN said that 37.5 per cent of married (or previously married) women in Gaza between the ages of 18 and 64 had experienced violence in the previous 12 months.

And according to 2019 data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 41 per cent of women in Gaza had been subjected to domestic violence.

This is a problem throughout the Arab world. In Egypt, for example, 99.3% of girls and women surveyed reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime. 82.6% did not feel safe or secure in the street. 86.5% don't feel safe on public transportation.

But when it happens in neighboring Gaza, suddenly the Jews are at fault. The Lancet has blamed Israel for Gaza men beating their wives, using a very flawed methodology. UNRWA has made that same claim, as has the UN.

Yet violence in Palestinian society is endemic. Here are results from 2019 about how prevalent violence against children under 12 is.

The Telegraph didn't quite blame Israel for gender-based violence that is expected or already happening in Gaza, but it is setting the stage.

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!

01/20 Links: Support for Israel is stronger than we think; The myth of ‘the Muslim world’; IDF finds tunnel where 20 hostages were held in ‘inhumane conditions’

From Ian:

Israel’s Fight

It had been years since I awoke to the wail of an air-raid siren. A born-and-bred Israeli who has lived in America since 2007, I once almost thought of myself as a world citizen—a rootless cosmopolitan, some might say. I have an American education and job, American friends, and an American accent I picked up from watching The Simpsons. But as it turns out, my roots are deeper than I ever anticipated.

I was at my parents’ Tel Aviv home on October 7. We quickly realized that the attack wasn’t what we called a “regular war.” When the initial death toll passed 100, a number none of us was familiar with, we briefly froze. Then we started moving again. What happened in the days and weeks that followed was both unreal and utterly familiar—the unthinkable happened; yet somehow, we all knew exactly what to do.

Through October, I and other Israelis mapped out bomb shelters on the way to the supermarket. We tried to calculate when to shower to avoid being attacked (after 10:05 pm, Tel Aviv time). We walked down the streets and overheard nothing but conversations about the “situation,” whether it was a group of teenagers parsing the military response or people longing for a lost friend or family member. Everyone knew someone who was lost—missing, murdered, or taken. We tried to learn the names and faces of the hostages and murdered, only to realize that there were too many.

We gave every spare moment to our people, whether it was volunteering to drive food and supplies to bases, emptying the drugstore of toothpaste to send to the front, or hosting a displaced family for dinner. Every Israeli phone became a mini war room, with dozens of WhatsApp groups with names like “brothers for the farmers” or “volunteers to edit videos.” Our camera rolls, once filled with family and vacation shots, filled up with memorials and old photos of the now-dead. Our restaurants became mass-production kitchens for soldiers and displaced people; we didn’t complain when, instead of a table, they handed us knives and cucumbers and put us to work. We walked down the street and met fathers wearing shirts bearing images of their kidnapped children. We cried for people we had never met, wondered idly which photo of our families we might use on a “kidnapped” poster, and who would show up to pay their respects.

This has been Israel for the last three months, and this is how it will be for the foreseeable future. The nation had been at loggerheads over judicial reform, right up until the night of October 6. Unity didn’t come because we healed our internal rifts but because we decided to set them aside temporarily, for better days.

Brendan O'Neill: The myth of ‘the Muslim world’

The hollowness of the Muslim identity has rarely been so starkly exposed. It’s a point Olivier Roy, the French political scientist, has made for some time. In his stirring analyses of Islam in the West, Roy has consistently pointed to the ‘de-territorialisation’ of the new Islamic identity. Among second- and third-generation Muslims in the West, the attraction of an abstract ‘Muslim identity’ is precisely that it allows them to separate themselves both from Western society and the cultural traditions of their own communities. Or ‘folk customs’, as Roy calls them. Uninterested in integration into the West, and disdainful of the ethnic and national heritage of their own parents and grandparents, the self-styled ‘Muslim’ instead signs up to a ‘global and abstract’ ummah, says Roy, ‘an imaginary ummah, beyond ethnicity, race, language and culture, one that is no longer embedded in a specific territory’.

Roy’s keenest insight is that this new Muslim identity is more an offspring of Western globalisation than Eastern fanaticism. The abstracted Muslim builds an identity for himself, like a consumer, in keeping with ‘modern models of individualisation and the free market’. In this sense, the West’s Muslim identitarians are not that different from other Western tribes. Many young Westerners now feel alienated from both nation and community, both flag and family, and prefer to piece together an identity from ideas and beliefs found online and in the other global networks of late-stage capitalism. Only where they wave the Pride flag and ditch their pronouns to signal their rejection of nation and tradition, the Muslim identitarian waves a Koran and denounces the Great Satan of imperialism.

This is not to deny the specific problems posed by the abstracted Islamic identity. As we’ve seen, this identity lends itself to extremism, even violence. Indeed, it is the very ‘de-territorialisation’ of the Islamic identity in the West that makes it susceptible to fanaticism. Unanchored from both the conservative culture of his parents’ and grandparents’ generation and from any sense of connection to the nation or to the West, the abstracted Muslim can come to be unmoored from moral and social norms. And thus prey for extremism. The great tragedy is that our elites, far from seeking to alleviate the alienation of young Muslims from culture and society, celebrate it. They institutionalise it. Courtesy of Britain and America’s identitarian rulers, the abstracted Muslim is now the Muslim. That very phrase – ‘the Muslim community’ – speaks to their reactionary belief that Muslims exist on a plane beyond the issues of nationhood, class and material aspiration that animate other, ‘normal’ communities.

The construction of a narrowly Muslim identity is a terrible idea. It incites young folk in Britain, America and elsewhere to cut themselves off from their own history and their own society. It inevitably stokes feelings of hostility, both for one’s own community and one’s own society. And it can lead, as we’ve seen, to huge numbers of Muslim identitarians taking to the streets of London and other capitals to cheer the fascists of Hamas. Well, they’re part of ‘the Muslim world’ too, right, and thus good? Identity politics is a disaster. It weakens the moral authority of community elders and national institutions and nurtures a kind of savage narcissism. Undoing its damage is the most pressing task we face.

Support for Israel is stronger than we think

Rallying in support of Israel
I see this in my own life – friends who have returned to attending synagogue services, wearing a Start of David necklace, or donning a yarmulke to express their solidarity with the Jewish people in the aftermath of October 7.

The largest gathering of Jews in the history of America occurred on November 14, when nearly 300,000 American Jews and allies gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC to support our friends and family in Israel. Unity and solidarity continue to be the order of the day.

The extremists using Judaism as their shield blocking access to Grand Central Terminal in New York or chaining themselves to the White House do not represent American Jews nor the American people writ large.

An overwhelming majority of Americans say Hamas bears the responsibility for this war, including the majority of Republicans and Democrats, and the vast majority of American Jews support Israel in its war aims of bringing the hostages home and removing Hamas from power.

The terror that Hamas practices represents an existential danger not only for Israel, but for the United States, the West, and the entire world.

Out of our unity and solidarity, we must fight libelous anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic narratives that are being propagated across the Internet.

Particularly on social media platforms such as TikTok, misinformation and disinformation are flourishing. Congress and its partners are investigating how social media algorithms are elevating anti-Israel and antisemitic speech and how remedial action might be taken.

I have spent much time in Israel since the October 7 atrocities. I see the focus and intensity of the Israeli people in this awful time and their commitment to destroy Hamas, liberate the hostages, and secure a safe future.

Jews in Israel and across the world, are taking constructive action driven by our despair and rage. For now, the center holds.

01/19 Links Pt2: Can Biden and Blinken Read the Middle East?; For Palestinian Arabs, the Problem Is Israel's Existence, Not Its Borders; School Are Chasing Out Their Jews

From Ian:

WSJ Editorial: Can Biden and Blinken Read the Middle East?

Liberal policy on the Middle East is like a machine with a part missing. No matter the input, its output stays the same. Hamas launches the most gruesome invasion of Israel imaginable? Create a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority glorifies the massacre, prepares to compensate the killers and pledges solidarity with Hamas? Create a Palestinian state.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out in Davos on Wednesday the perennially failing solution to Middle East problems. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” he said. “Iran is suddenly isolated,” he envisioned, “and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.”

Special points for Mr. Blinken’s use of “all of a sudden.” Presto, peace.

Tehran wants to erase the Jewish state from the map, but the main obstacle Mr. Blinken sees to his plan is Israel. “When in previous times we came close to resolving the Palestinian question, getting a Palestinian state,” he said, “I think the view then—Camp David, other places—was that Arab leaders, Palestinian leaders, had not done enough to prepare their own people for this profound change. I think a challenge now, a question now: Is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions? Is it prepared to have that mind-set?”

In other words, the Oct. 7 attack and broad Palestinian support for it have demonstrated that Palestinians now want to make a deal for peaceful coexistence. Why in the world would Israel hesitate?

If this sounds bizarre, recall that it was the liberal internationalist reflex throughout the 1990s. The more Palestinian terrorism Yasser Arafat unleashed, the more Israelis had to prove they were committed to peace.

For Palestinian Arabs, the Problem Is Israel's Existence, Not Its Borders

Once a land has been conquered and is "open to Islam," it is Muslim forever. In the Muslim mind, though their physical control over Spain ended in 1492, Spain still belongs to the Muslims and will never be part of the non-Muslim world. Turkish President Erdogan still talks about southeastern Europe as being "part of the Ottoman-Muslim area."

In 1949, after Israel defeated five Muslim armies, at the Rhodes talks the Muslims insisted on the phrase "ceasefire lines" instead of "borders." The word "borders" implies recognition of the people living there. But a Muslim would find that unacceptable because those lands should remain Muslim forever. To the Arabs, the lines drawn in 1948-1949 do not matter. The land is completely Muslim.

From the Western point of view, we're talking about how to divide up land; this is the point of pushing for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that the Arabs are not talking about how to renegotiate Israel's borders. They are talking about Israel's existence. And people cannot compromise on their existence.

‘This money will go straight to Hamas’: Penny Wong has made a ‘complete fool of herself’

Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger has slammed Penny Wong for making a “complete fool of herself” as the Australian taxpayer dollars she is sending to Palestine “will go straight to Hamas”.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently announced an additional $21.5 million in aid to support Palestinian efforts.

“Penny Wong has made a complete fool of herself,” Mr Kroger told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“What they’ve worked out here is if you work out how much concrete is needed for those tunnels and how much metal is needed for 500 kilometres of tunnels, it’s about $15 billion.

“The Palestinian leadership in Gaza have stolen $1 billion a year from the international community and the UN, never been accounted for, no one has ever said where are you getting all this money from.

“This money will go straight to Hamas like the other $1 billion they’ve stolen from the dunces in the international community who think this aid is going to the UN, to the Palestinian people, to the children, to the hospitals, to the schools, to the needy.”

You know how Muslims like to say to the West that Judaism is one of the "divine religions" ad therefore should be honored?

Well, Iranian proxies want to change that definition. All in order to justify the eventual genocide of Jews.

Hezbollah mouthpiece Al Mayadeen summarizes a book called "How Religion Becomes Evil." Here's how it says it describes Judaism:

The author draws a complete historical picture of the Jewish mentality and argues that it is not a religion, but rather an ideological hallucination or “political program,” in the words of the philosopher Kant. It was formulated at a late time in response to the harsh needs of her desert society and expressed that with its spirit, the causes of its violence and self-worship, and her dreams of inheriting other people’s countries and depriving them.

It is these dreams and ambitions that have become for these clans a functional religion whose most prominent worship is deadly violence, and which has a sacred centrality called “the covenant,” and a goal that sanctifies conquest, plunder and extermination called “the Promised Land,” a sacred obligation called “self-worship,” and an exceptional hereditary superstition called "Divine choice,” and absolute permission from their Lord with “the right to sacrifice the other” and the permissibility of eradicating the other called “the Curse of Canaan,” and a ritual of worship that includes slaughtering, destroying, and burning, thinking that their Lord was pleased with the smell of roasted corpses and became for it a warrior god obsessed with annihilations of other nations.

The texts from which the mentality was woven and centered around the idea of Israel's "promised land" (occupying someone else's land and replacing one people with another) put us before an ideology of genocide, which can only be achieved through lethal violence. It is embodied today by the Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist movement. What the world is witnessing in Gaza today is a live ritual display presented by the government of religious people with audio and video of this genocidal and prohibitive ideology, which was and still is a worship of theirs that has haunted the idea of Israel from the day they believed that their Lord announced his marriage to Israel.

Of course, a moral Muslim would be obligated to destroy such an evil from the world. It would be immoral not to.

And this is how Arab and Muslim media, every day, have been trying to incite their readers into a violent frenzy against Jews worldwide.

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!

01/19 Links Pt1: Israel must draw a red line in Gaza; The Great Jackass-Terrorist Alliance; The ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Peace Activist’ Who Cheered the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack

From Ian:

Israel must draw a red line in Gaza

Now, six weeks after the last of an aggregate of 70 Israeli hostages was released, there is a justified sense that a new deal is nowhere in sight, that the previous formula no longer works, and that the situation of more than 130 abductees still held in Gaza’s suffocating tunnels is deteriorating by the day.

Writing out of this nadir, Yediot Aharonot’s Nahum Barnea last week reported that the deal that negotiators are promoting involves eight points:

A three-month ceasefire; a phased release of all hostages, the living and the dead, with the elderly and the wounded coming first; release of thousands of Palestinian convicts; the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza; redoubling humanitarian aid shipment into Gaza; displaced Gazans’ return to the northern strip; the establishment of an internationally financed administration for Gaza’s reconstruction; and Hamas’s inclusion in Gaza’s future government.

Barnea, the dean of Israel’s journalists and an Israel Prize laureate, then asked: “Does the hope for 136 Israelis’ lives justify such prices?” and answered his question himself: “I think it is.”

The inverted argument was offered earlier by Yedidia Stern, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute and a Bar-Ilan University law professor, who wrote in this newspaper that “the call to release the abductees at any cost must be rejected.” The 1,000 terrorists released in 2011 for Gilad Schalit’s, he reasoned, “were set free to plan the death trap” we met in 2023.

Jewish heritage, added Stern, counts hostages’ redemption among its highest values, but at the same time also caps the price of their release. “The captives are not redeemed for more than their actual value,” he quoted the Mishna (Gittin 4:6).

Between these two poles, and with a very heavy heart, this writer sides with Stern who, like all Middle Israelis including this one, has much immediate family deep in the current fighting.

Anyone who ever negotiated anything knows that the first rule of negotiation is to bargain with a red line in mind, a maximum price above which one will not pay even one penny. Now, as we digest what was done to us last October, we must draw such a red line as we set out to free our hostages.

OUR RED line should be drawn with a political marker and a military ruler.

The political red line has to be that Hamas does not get another day in Gaza’s government, in any size or capacity. This is not just a moral imperative or a political prerequisite. It’s a strategic precaution.

The fanaticism of the hatred Hamas has cultivated over the decades, and the intensity of the violence it has just displayed, must make us assume that anyone associated with this ideology is dedicated to nothing but our massacre and that, if given an opportunity, will always be guided by this obsession.

We must, therefore, avoid any empowerment of any of Hamas’s members, or the Jewish state will lose its sense of security, not to mention its merciless neighborhood’s respect.

The military red line we must draw stems from this political red line, and says plainly: we will continue fighting Hamas; physically, frontally, and stubbornly, until Gaza’s military disinfection.

The Gaza Strip should thus be divided into a grid of several dozen blocks separated by bulldozed dirt roads. Each block will be given to one IDF unit that will comb it street after street, alley after alley, house after house, so that every tunnel, shaft, armory, or missile launcher within it is found and destroyed, even if this takes months, years, or decades.

Under one of those blocks, we will find our hostages and their captors. That’s how victory can arrive, negotiations can begin, and the war can end.

In central Gaza, where gunmen lurk underground, a commander sees a long slog ahead

Shushan, who grew up in Yated, an agricultural community near the Gaza border, was supposed to take command of the brigade on October 8. But hours after Hamas began its assault on October 7, Shushan understood that the IDF needed all the forces it could muster as quickly as possible and took the reins a day early.

One of his first acts was to activate the brigade’s reconnaissance battalion, showing up at Kibbutz Be’eri in the afternoon with 100 paratroopers.

His men searched for terrorists and helped families escape from their homes.

While Shushan was fighting Hamas infiltrators and saving Israeli civilians, he also tried to calm his mother, hiding in her safe room in Yated. He lost contact with her when her phone died, but she succeeded in fleeing safely to Eilat.

Shushan only understood the immense scale of the massacre the next day, as he cleared bodies along Route 232. The reservists piled dozens of bodies onto trailers as they searched bomb shelters and fields.

On October 9, the brigade helped clear Be’eri of slain Hamas terrorists. He counted 104 bodies.

Shushan’s soldiers didn’t join the initial ground operation into Gaza, instead serving as a reserve force for the northern theater. During this time, the brigade was sent to Jenin in the West Bank where it carried out a major raid on foot into the heart of the city’s refugee camp.

The brigade joined the 99th Division’s offensive into central Gaza in early December, and since then has battled to keep a corridor from the border toward the coast secure. Shushan’s forces have been slowly pushing northward against Hamas’s Zeitoun Battalion, and southward against the Nuseirat and El Bureij Battalions.

The Zeitoun and El Bureij battalions have disintegrated as fighting units, and the remaining fighters are reconstituting in smaller formations, Shushan said. Nuseirat, however, is still operating as a coherent unit, though he said the last week had seen that battalion also begin to fall apart.

Earlier this month, one of the 646’s battalions began going through central Gaza’s al-Azhar neighborhood, dubbed by Israeli officials the “Towers neighborhood” for the 31 apartment buildings allegedly populated by Hamas officials.

“We discovered that every house has a shaft, and a whole underground network connects them, including the school and the mosque,” said Shushan.

They’ve found hundreds of rocket launchers and dozens of rocket workshops.

The brigade has lost five soldiers in the effort to clear the area. In every episode, Hamas fighters used tunnels to attack IDF forces.

“The clearing phase takes a long time because there is a very significant underground network,” Shushan explained. “We are able to attack everything above ground quite easily, but know of a lot of terrorists are waiting for us underground. ”

Many of the decisions on where to attack come from the work of a major who serves as the brigade intelligence officer. Using a range of sources, the officer, a startup executive with a PhD, has created a map of the tunnel network in the sector, one that he is continuously updating as new intelligence comes in.

“We have started in a systematic fashion to go from tunnel to tunnel, to attack shafts based on intelligence, to get to the main routes and to destroy them,” said Shushan. “That determines the pace of the attack.”

Jonathan Schanzer: Pakistan, a New War Front?

In other words, the likelihood of a full-on war between these two countries is probably quite low. Neither country is willing to wage a wider war over a bunch of radical Baluch separatists. But we can also now add Pakistan to the long list of countries at war in the region, in response to Iranian aggression.

It is certainly worth noting that this is the first time a Sunni country has fired back at the regime after a provocative action. Some might even say this could serve as a roadmap for the Sunni states that continue to suffer from Iran’s hegemonic designs on the region. But Pakistan is not at all similar to a weak Gulf Arab state. It is in another league. It’s a nuclear power, after all.

Still, one could argue that Islamabad has just showed the world how to respond to Iranian aggression. The Pakistanis fired after being fired upon, and the Iranian regime has backed down, at least for now. Whether we would see the same reaction by the regime after military action from the U.S., Israel or a coalition in the Middle East is hard to say.

In the end, the skirmish between Iran and Pakistan is something that must be tracked, but it’s not likely to change the equation significantly. Islamabad is not going to swoop in and put a stop to the Iranian regime’s aggression across the Middle East. So if the Biden administration wants to prevent a wider war, it’s time to address the source of the chaos. It all started and ends with the Islamic Republic in Iran.

The "Emirate of Palestine" - the UAE is the key for a lasting solution to the Gaza crisis

There are lots of articles about "the day after" in Gaza.

Most of them envision some sort of Palestinian self-rule. The US, Saudi Arabia and others are pushing a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority.

This is a recipe for disaster. Palestinians overwhelmingly support Hamas and destroying Israel, in survey after survey. If there are elections, the terror supporters will win handily, just as they did in the last elections.

No one has come up with a better plan than my suggestion two months ago to turn Gaza into an emirate of the UAE.

As I wrote then (this is slightly modified):

There is one country that could turn Gaza into a wonderful place: the UAE. Gaza should become the fifth United Arab Emirate.

The UAE is at peace with Israel. it could pour massive amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza into a paradise. It wouldn't allow Islamists to gain a toehold.

Gazans would suddenly live in a place that has a future. The UAE and Israel could work on joint business ventures and economic zones to help employment and bring Gaza up to modern standards. One could imagine luxury hotels and high tech skyscrapers being built on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Gazans would become citizens of an Arab country and could still call themselves Palestinians. The emirate itself could be called "the Emirate of Palestine." Why not? And Gaza citizens of the UAE could move to the other emirates to seek other opportunities if they prefer, with Emirati entrepreneurs moving to Gaza to take advantage of a blank slate. Which is not dissimilar to how they built the UAE to begin with.

Why would the UAE be interested? Well, a port on the Mediterranean is a pretty big carrot. Shipping lanes from and to Europe would be a huge economic boost. Working with Israel, the proposed train line from the Gulf to Israel could be extended a bit to Gaza to tie the Gulf countries closer to the sea as well.

Beyond that, there are some significant gas deposits off the coast of Gaza. No one wants to risk drilling there now, but the UAE would solve that problem.

Also, Palestinians are among the best educated Arabs. There is a competent workforce already there.

Moreover, Gaza could become a money-making tourism destination. Wealthy Europeans could rub shoulders with wealthy Arabs and make deals much closer to home.

Gazans would have huge opportunities to work and thrive. There would be no more "refugees" in Gaza. UNRWA would be gone.

Egypt would be thrilled to have such a neighbor.The entire Sinai could benefit from increased trade.

Since then, my suggestion makes even more sense.

Right now, there is competition between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE for influence over the Levant. Talal Mohammad writes in Foreign Policy:

Israel and the United States—its most important ally—have insisted that [Hamas] can have no role in Gaza’s future administration. Instead, both have proposed the establishment of a multinational force that would include a role for Arab states—including those in the Persian Gulf. This means that Gaza could become a hot spot for geopolitical rivalries between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Qatari influence is disastrous. They support Hamas both with direct aid and through Al Jazeera, by far the most influential source of news in the Middle East. They cannot have a role in the future of Gaza.

Saudi Arabia might want more influence, but without peace with Israel, it is highly limited in what it can do.

The UAE is the solution.

Some people responded to my idea by saying the UAE wouldn't be interested, but as the FP article notes:

The UAE, which balances relations between major powers such as Russia and the United States, has expansionist ambitions. In addition to Yemen and Sudan, Abu Dhabi also backs proxies in conflicts in the Horn of Africa and Libya.

This would be a peace dividend for the UAE - a reward for the Abraham Accords. If anything, this benefit for the UAE would pressure Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel to have its own place at the table.

The article floats the idea of Mohammed Dahlan, the former Gaza Fatah strongman who now lives in Abu Dhabi, taking a role in rebuilding Gaza . I am not sure he is the best choice - most Palestinians can't stand him. But any UAE-approved leader of the "Emirate of Palestine" would be ruthless in suppressing the Islamists in Gaza, and that ruthlessness is what is needed for any plan to work. But they would also bring in billions to rebuild Gaza into a Singapore.

There is a lot of money in the Gulf to rebuild Gaza - but no one wants to spend a dime if there is a chance that Israel will destroy the new buildings in a few years, virtually a guarantee if Hamas or a successor has a role there. But Israel would fully support the UAE's ambitions for Gaza. It will never attack an ally.

A Gaza emirate instantly converts Gaza from an enemy to a friend. Isn't that what everyone dreams of? Besides those who want to destroy Israel, that is.

Moreover, the UAE has been negotiating with an Israeli firm to build a "land bridge" of trucks from the Port of Dubai to Israeli ports to bypass the Red Sea and the Houthis for shipping to Europe. If the UAE were to build a port in Gaza, it could be on both ends of the shipping traffic.

The UAE is uniquely positioned to turn the Gaza lemons into lemonade. This is the real reward for the Abraham Accords - a port on the Mediterranean, access to gas reserves off Gaza, and the opportunity to solve the Gaza quagmire not just for a few years but forever.

It is easy to poke holes in any idea, especially one as out of the box as this one. The political obstacles are formidable. But can anyone suggest anything that is better? Or one that could be expected to last for decades?

This plan is a win for Israel, a win for the UAE, a win for Gazans, a win for Egypt, and a win for the West that wants to solve the Middle East crisis. It is a real solution, and a permanent one.

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!

Popular anti-Israel Jordanian cartoonist loses his license over cartoons calling Hamas terrorists

Emad Hajjaj is a very popular Jordanian cartoonist whose works often veer into explicit antisemitism.

But he is also critical of the Arab world. Here is his criticism of Egypt's policy not to allow Gazans to take refuge there.

Since October 7, he has gotten in hot water by comparing Israel to Hamas and other Islamic terrorists.

Here is explicitly says that Israel defending itself is like Hamas taking hostages.

And here he put a jihadist-style mask with an Israeli flag on an Israeli soldier.

This has caused a scandal from the many Arabs who support the Islamic terrorists.

Anguished op-eds asked how such a wonderful artist could stoop so low as to compare the hero rapists and baby killers with the IDF.

Haddad answered that he sometimes draws for a Western audience, and his entire body of work must be seen as a whole, but he admits some "mistakes." (Some of his cartoons are published at politicalcartoons.com.)

Alas, his explanations were not enough.

Following complaints, the Disciplinary Committee of the Jordanian Journalists Syndicate issued a ruling to freeze Imad Hajjaj's membership for two years. Presumably this means he will not be able to work.

Previously, Haddad was arrested by Jordanian police over a cartoon that criticized the UAE for making peace with Israel.

This is what press freedom looks like in "moderate" Jordan.

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!

Why isn't UNRWA publicizing the names of their employees that were killed?

Since October, UNRWA has been keeping a tally of how many of its employees have been killed in Gaza. As of now, the total is 151.

But for some reason, they aren't releasing a list of their names.

A few of them are mentioned in specific communications, but there is no single online memorial where people can see their biographies, their positions, or the circumstances of their deaths.

The closest that they do are videos showing the first names only of the casualties.

Isn't that strange? What organization doesn't publish the names of its victims?

The only reason I can think of is that if they would publish the names, people could look up the their social media and see that many of them were celebrating October 7, or otherwise support terrorism. And it is altogether possible that many of them were legitimate targets themselves - either performing military support for Hamas, or sheltering Hamas members or weapons in their homes.

There is something odd going on.

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!

01/18 Links Pt2: Progressive Judaism ‘without Israel’ is a tool for antisemites; JNF: War Proves Again Israel Must Rely Only on Itself; The 'Palestinianization' of international law

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Progressive Judaism ‘without Israel’ is a tool for antisemites

The conceit of the piece is similar to other articles published in the Times that seek to generate support for left-wing groups that are harshly critical of Israel, like J Street, or to legitimize anti-Zionist organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which openly traffic in antisemitism as well as seek the elimination of the Jewish state.

To so-called “progressives,” like those who edit and report at the Times, the aftermath of the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—an event that also set in motion a surge of antisemitism around the world, and especially, in the United States—is the perfect time to lend credence to the tiny minority of Jews who sympathize more with the perpetrators of those crimes than the victims. As former White House speechwriter David Frum, who is now among the most bitter opponents of former President Donald Trump and pro-Israel Republicans, aptly put it, “On Day 100, the NYT features a closely reported profile of the Wicked Son from the Passover Seder. “What does all this mean to you?”

Anti-Zionists quoted in the piece are searching for a way to express their discontent not merely with Israel but with the entire concept of Jews possessing the power to defend themselves. Most prominent among them is Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, who touts himself as a champion of “diasporism.”

According to the Times, diasporism is a belief “that Jews must embrace marginality and a certain estrangement from Israel the country, and perhaps even Israel the place.” And it argues that this is a worldview that has deep roots in Jewish history.

There have been movements that specifically rejected Zionism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Socialists of the Bundist movement and the authors of Reform Judaism’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. But the attempt to link Magid’s thoughts—and those of the clique of anti-Zionists who write for the extremist left-wing publication Jewish Currents cited in the article that put forward a Marxist argument against Israel’s existence—to either of those movements is both deeply dishonest and drenched in hatred for Israel and its Jews.

Today’s “diasporists” share Magid’s belief in Jewish “marginality.”

They are appalled by the reality of Jews living fully Jewish lives, whether religious or secular, Ashkenazi or Mizrachi, right-wing or left-wing in a Jewish state where its citizens speak Hebrew and live by the Jewish calendar in their people’s ancient homeland. To them, Jewish powerlessness—the root cause of millennia of persecution and martyrdom that culminated in the Holocaust—is a good thing since it relieves Jews of the responsibility to govern or protect themselves. In this way, they can bask in the faux righteousness of victimhood, absolved of any guilt that comes from the difficult and complicated task of survival in a hostile world.

This is deeply wrong on several levels.

Those who claim that support for Jewish life and sovereignty in the land of Israel is marginal to Judaism—and those who do make that argument are usually antisemitic non-Jews—are betraying their abysmal ignorance. Israel is integral to Jewish observance, prayer and its most profound beliefs, as well as to the history of the Jews. For two millennia, Jews prayed every day for their lost homeland, for the rains to come in season there, and for the complete rebuilding of Jewish life and worship there. Nor was there ever any time in history since the Roman expulsion when Jews were completely absent from it despite the hardships, humiliations and persecutions exacted by various foreign conquerors, of whom the Arabs were only relative latecomers.

Top JNF Official: War Proves Again Israel Must Rely Only on Itself

The war against Hamas in Gaza and the subsequent wave of antisemitism around the world has demonstrated “very clearly” that Israel must rely only on itself and that Diaspora Jews must start a serious debate about the future of their communities, Samuel Hayek, the Israeli-born British chairman of JNF-UK, told The Algemeiner during a visit to Israel.

Hayek, who was visiting some of the southern Israeli communities that were massacred on October 7, said that the existence of Jewish life in the diaspora was of “tremendous strategic importance” to Israel.

But pointing to the UK in particular, Hayek said the Jewish community must begin addressing “hard questions” about its future.

“The most important thing is to create a forum that debates different aspects on Jewish life in the UK,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves, do we want to continue to live in fear?”

“Do we want to live in a place where we need to hide Jewish symbols? Do we want to where people drive through neighborhoods shouting for the destruction of Israel and calling for the rape and murder of Jews with megaphone?” he said, referencing a 2021 antisemitic incident.

Antisemitism in the UK has soared since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Protests occurring most weekends in London have drawn vast crowds, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands, where people have been arrested for either chanting or displaying antisemitic slogans, or for expressing support for Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK.

“I urge everyone to consider the consequences of what we’ve seen in the streets of London, the magnitude of which took nearly everyone by surprise,” he said.

“If we don’t want to live this kind of life, and we don’t see prospects getting better, we need to make a decision about what kind of steps to take,” Hayek went on. He underscored that his views were expressed not in his capacity as the leader of JNF-UK, but rather as a “very worried Jew.”

Time for Honesty

Time to be brutally honest. The Jewish people are going through the most heartrending, horrific time in modern history. We were attacked unimaginably, followed by millions across the world cheering on our attackers before we had time to catch our breath and bury our dead. At the same time, we are privileged to be part of a Jewish awakening the likes of which we’ve never seen.

The Jewish nation has been inextricably linked to the Land of Israel for thousands of years. Our ancestors prayed the same words every day that Jews all over the world say today, and that prayer is filled with yearning to return to Israel and live as Jews where our forefathers walked and breathed. As a teenager, when I visited Israel for the first time, I felt the strongest pull I’ve ever felt in my life. Everything I learned, everything I prayed for came to life when I stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport and felt the ground, the air, and looked at the cloudless and stunning blue sky. During that short two-week trip, I drank in every moment of being in Israel and even tried to convince my parents to lose my passport and let me stay (I was 14. They said no.)

From the moment I returned to the US after that trip, my heart had a huge, Israel-shaped hole in it. I prayed as I’d never prayed in my life that I would merit to return to Israel as soon as possible and join my nation in our incredible Land. During the three long remaining years of my childhood in the US, not a day went by when I didn’t think about, talk about, and learn about Israel. I have a slightly obsessive personality, as long-time readers may have noticed, and my full attention was turned towards Israel.

I could not understand the mindset of Jews in the US who had no intention of moving to Israel. It simply didn’t make sense to me. G-d had performed an open miracle in 1948, when He softened the hearts of the members of the UN who voted for the Jews to be given the right to officially govern our own Land, a Land that had never been devoid of Jews no matter who was in charge in previous eras. To me, it seemed like a slap in the face of G-d to reject this incredible gift and say “no thanks, I’d rather stay abroad”.

With endless thanks to G-d and my parents, we all made Aliyah (moved to Israel) once I finished high school. I woke up every day to a stunning view of Jerusalem that first year, and it was an actual dream that had come true.