Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 22, 2024

EU High Representative Josep Borrell admits he wants "two states," not "peace"

From the EU External Action website:, press remarks by EU High Representative Josep Borrell:

[W]e will have a discussion among us, among the ministers, and I will present - I have already presented - a comprehensive approach. A comprehensive approach to what? I think that we have to stop talking about the “peace” process, and start talking more concretely about the “two-state solution” process. Because peace, it could be many different [kinds of] peace. What kind of peace are you talking about?

So, let’s talk about what we want to do. What we want to do is to build a two-state solution, so let’s talk about it. The way you are naming it is important. So, from now on, I will not talk about the peace process, but about the two-state solution process. If we are serious about that, we have to study the underling [sic] causes that prevent this solution from being implemented. Certainly, Hamas is one of them - an important one - but there are others.

This comprehensive approach has to be studied, and discussed. I know it is difficult. The 27 [Member States] have different approaches, but we have to work together with the Arab world. I know it is difficult, but it is our moral endeavour, our moral obligation to try to do our utmost to try to look for a solution.

So, from now on, please talk about the “two-state solution” process.

Originally, the "two state solution" was assumed by much of the world as the only possible way to peace. For decades, the priority has not been peace, but two states, as if they are synonymous.

The "two state solution" based on the 1949 armistice lines had become a kind of religion, accepted as the only way forward. Nothing the Palestinians could do would shake that faith - Arafat's and later other Palestinian refusals that would bring exactly that solution, the intifadas, the suicide bomb attacks, the view by the vast majority of Palestinians that "two states" is a stepping stone towards a single Arab state, completely compatible with Yasir Arafat's "phased plan" to destroy Israel.

But until now at least there was some pretense that the "two state solution" would lead to peace.

Now, the EU's foreign policy leader is disconnecting the two-state religion from the main goal it was ostensibly meant to accomplish: peace. A Palestinian state is now an independent goal for the EU, and whether it will endanger Israelis .or lead to more October 7ths is utterly irrelevant.

In this worldview, Hamas is not the main obstacle to progress, but Israel. Because Israel still wants to ensure that its people aren't murdered on a daily basis by Jew-hating jihadists. If the Palestinians cannot possibly offer a permanent, real peace, then let's drop that demand and give them what they want on the way to their ultimate goal.

Did Israel's withdrawal from the internationally accepted Blue Line with Lebanon bring peace with Hezbollah? Did Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - giving the land to the responsible, moderate Palestinian Authority, not Hamas - bring peace? How did demilitarizing the Palestinian Authority work out?

If peace is the goal, these are uncomfortable questions for two-staters. If two states is the goal, then these questions become irrelevant. Jews want security? That's an obstacle to the two-state solution!

Perhaps more insidious is Borrel calling "two states" a "solution." It doesn't solve anything. It very possibly would make things worse. But he defines it as a "solution," and who doesn't want solution? This way the EU has a goal, and once it is achieved, they can wash their hands of the matter and say that the problem - now redefined itself as "lack of two states" - has been solved.

One there is a solution, any problems that result are disconnected from the EU's courageous role in creating two states.

Which makes this sound a lot like "final solution."

(h/t Irene)

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01/22 Links Pt1: Israeli FM demands EU backing for hostages’ return, defeat of Hamas; Former Miss World slams women’s groups for Oct. 7 ‘silence’

From Ian:

A Second Exile

For over a quarter-million Israelis, Oct. 7 didn’t only signal the start of a war. It was also the day they realized they’d have to leave their homes. Some of them had a sense of déjà vu. They had been exiled from their homes before.

For Pnina Rogolsky, this evacuation brought back memories of the spring of 1982, when she lost her home in southern Sinai after Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt.

Dreaming of a quiet agrarian life, Rogolsky and her husband had moved to the Yamit settlement bloc in the early 1970s in response to a government call to settle the Sinai, which had come under Israeli control after the Six-Day War in 1967. They joined a brand new moshav near Yamit called Netiv HaAsara.

“The Jewish Agency gave us a tract of land and a tractor, which we shared with another family,” Rogolsky told me. “We grew tomatoes, mangoes, and flowers. I had my first baby. We were all young. We helped each other out. We socialized. It was a good life.”

She didn’t expect it all to end, and certainly not so quickly. “When the talk started about a peace treaty with Egypt, we assumed that we’d remain in our homes,” she said. “We didn’t think we’d give back Sinai.”

Initially, Rogolsky and the other Sinai settlers fought the plan. “We lobbied Knesset members, we demonstrated, we even burned tires,” she recalled. But by the spring of 1982, she said, the battle was lost: “We left our moshav in a caravan with our lights on as if we were on the way to a funeral.”

Rogolsky and her family—along with the other 70 families who evacuated the moshav in the Sinai—helped to reestablish the moshav, also called Netiv HaAsara, in what they hoped was a more secure location just outside the Gaza Strip.

Starting again wasn’t easy. “Losing our moshav in the Sinai felt like losing a limb,” said Rogolsky. “Some of our people could barely function.” But Rogolsky, who was then in her 30s, felt compelled to pull herself together. “Working the land helped me to heal,” she said.

Then came the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, when terrorists killed 20 members of the moshav. Rogolsky and her husband were in another part of the country visiting friends, but her son was at the moshav leading the security team. Fortunately he survived the attack. Rogolsky has been back several times since Oct. 7 “to visit and to do laundry,” she said; her husband goes back more frequently to tend to the family’s chicken coop. But neither of them stays for long.

Netiv HaAsara is in its second exile, its 900 residents scattered in hotels and apartments throughout central Israel. Rogolsky lives in the Yearim Hotel in the Judean Hills just outside of Jerusalem with several dozen of her neighbors, most of them like herself in their 70s and 80s, but it’s far from ideal.

The first days were the hardest, she said: “That whole first week we went from funeral to funeral, shiva to shiva.”

Dr. Albert Bourla is Chairman and CEO of Pfizer: An Unexpected Encounter At Davos Inspired My Call to Action For the Israeli Hostages

It is our moral duty, as global citizens, to take the necessary steps to help the hostages. To start, we can learn more about them. They are real, innocent people facing unspeakable cruelty.

As citizens of the digital generation, we have the opportunity to raise public awareness, calling for the release of all hostages using the hashtag #BringThemHomeNow. We must rally around those elected officials who are advocating to bring the hostages home. By participating in the democratic process—sending an email or calling our senators, representatives, and the White House—we can give a voice to the hostages.

Join Ms. Goldberg, just as I did in Davos, by wearing a piece of tape on your shirt, counting the number of days that the 136 hostages are still not home. As the devoted mom told me, it reminds the world of the inhumanity at play.

As a healthcare leader, I have a responsibility to stress the urgent need for hostages to gain access to medication. International organizations need unfettered access to assess the conditions of the hostages, so that they can receive the necessary care. Supporting the families of hostages, and of course, the hostages themselves, does not end when they are brought home; mental health services must be made available to those in need, for as long as necessary.

The conditions for a return to calm and stability should be our priority. We owe it to the hostages to hold tightly to the hope that eventual peace, and the end to this cycle of violence, is within reach.

I will sign off with a question: Imagine if it were your loved one being held captive. What would you do?

Former Miss World slams women’s groups for Oct. 7 ‘silence’

Israeli lawyer, actress, model and beauty queen Linor Abargil, who won the Miss World title in 1998, has spoken out against the silence of women’s organizations in the wake of the murder, sexual assault and kidnapping of women by the Hamas terror organization.

“On Oct. 7, we witnessed the most horrible massacres, atrocities, rape, mutilation—the worst human behavior,” Abargil said at an event organized as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I turned to all my colleagues and friends worldwide, as well to the leading women’s rights organizations, to expose this terrible event, certain that they would speak out and condemn this unspeakable event. And what did I discover? That there is a discriminatory approach— violence against one woman doesn’t equal violence [toward] another,” she said.

“Their silence, apathy and oblivion shocked me to the core. They even had the cheek to ask for evidence when it was all there to see. There is no need for more proof, it’s all out there to see,” she added.

The event, titled “Women at the Forefront of the Global Peace and Security Agenda” and organized by Israel, was also attended by Tatiana Kotlyarenko, an international expert in gender-based violence and human trafficking, Qanta Ahmed, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and Anastasiya Dzyakava, adviser on human online safety.

Abargil shared how at a young age she, too, was assaulted, and what helped her survive and speak up.

“I was invited to speak all over the world. I gave lectures, and I spoke about the fact that we women truly understand the world and its needs. I found out that this world of men, weapons and war doesn’t understand that women can work without agendas…[and] politics and rise above all this. I decided to dedicate my life to this cause. And it’s been my life’s journey [for] the past 20 years,” she said.

“Hamas established a new evil strategy: Openly abusing mostly the female hostages, and also men, mutilating them—not in secret and not in the dark. Everything was filmed. Anyone who doesn’t speak up against this is silently complicit in sexual violence against all women, not just Israeli women,” she continued.

Israeli lawyer, women’s rights activist, and winner of Miss World 1998 Linor Abargil confronts a @UN rep for her damning silence over the mass rape committed by #HamasRapists.

“After two months you didn’t have even one response?!”#BelieveIsraeliWomen #BringThemHomeNow… pic.twitter.com/rKQqYUBOML
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) January 19, 2024

British R1 Shadow surveillance aircraft

Declassified UK, a British open source intelligence website that appears to be anti-Israel, reports that they have seen evidence of regular British flights over Gaza by planes whose job is to gather intel:

The UK military has flown 50 surveillance missions over Gaza since December, it can be revealed.

The flights have taken off from Britain’s controversial air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, and averaged around one a day since the beginning of December.

The British plane used is the Shadow R1, which is known as an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) aircraft.

The Shadow R1 is operated by the UK military’s No.14 Squadron, which is based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, east England.

The British flights began on 3 December when two R1s flew over Gaza. The flights have continued nearly daily up until now, with around half the days featuring two flights. On 3 January, the British sent an R1 over Gaza three times.

The flights appear to last around six hours.

The purpose of the flights has not been revealed, although UK officials have given two separate reasons for these flights.

One is to help search for British hostages in Gaza. There are two British citizens there.

The other, mentioned in November, came from an answer to a question to Parliament:

A total of 12 aircraft have deployed to the eastern Mediterranean. These flights have provided surveillance support to Israel, including preventing the transfer of weapons to terrorist groups, and to wider regional security. They have also delivered humanitarian aid into Egypt.

It is unclear whether the UK is sharing the information gathered with Israel, and what kinds of data it can gather than Israel cannot with its own technology.

The same site had previously reported on a 2008 Wikileaks cable that said the US was routinely operating spy missions from that same British airbase in Cyprus but that memo mentioned Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, not Gaza. But the US has stated that they are using their own drones and flying over Gaza to help with the hostage rescue efforts.

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Infographic: Refugees from war in Syria vs. from Gaza

Eugene Kontorovich writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

America Helps Make Gaza an Open-Air Prison

Refugees flee every other war, but Palestinians are kept prisoners of Hamas.

Gaza is unique among modern war zones. Despite being the center of a conflict fought in dense urban areas, it hasn’t produced waves of refugees leaving for neutral countries. This has been deliberate, the result of policies by Hamas and Egypt tacitly supported by the U.S.

Every prolonged conflict creates refugees. Months after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, 3.5 million Ukrainians had applied for temporary residence in countries such as Poland and Germany. The Syrian civil war produced five million refugees—nearly a quarter of the country’s prewar population. The U.S. invasion of Iraq produced two million international refugees, and a similar number of people were displaced internally. Fleeing a war zone and seeking asylum in a neutral country is a human right enshrined in the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. If civilians hadn’t been allowed to flee past conflicts, their death tolls would have been even higher.

Yet three months after Oct. 7, fewer than 1,000 people—either foreign nationals or wounded—have been allowed by Egypt and Hamas to leave Gaza. In Israel this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected the possibility of Israel helping Gazans who wish to escape the conflict to do so. But he also complained that the war’s toll on Gaza civilians was “far too high” and echoed earlier demands that Israel “do more” to reduce the collateral damage caused by Hamas’s hiding behind its population.

I had created this infographic to show the hypocrisy of the Arab and Muslim nations who allowed millions of Syria refugees to take refuge in their countries, compared to Gaza refugees.

Palestinians and the Arab world alike like to talk about Palestinian "sumud," or steadfastness - how they heroically stay on what they consider their land.

But Gazans want to leave. They are trying any and every means to find ways to exist Gaza. Their families are paying thousands of dollars to Egyptian brokers to in turn bribe officials to put their names on the lists of people allowed to leave. (That bribery system has been around from way before October 7.)

Egypt and Jordan have flatly stated they do not want any Palestinians to take refuge in their countries, ostensibly both for security reasons and to enhance Palestinian "sumud." But as this infographic shows, there was no such insistence to keep Syrian civilians out of their countries during that country's civil war.

Not that Arab countries welcomed the Syrians with open arms; there was resistance. But in the end, millions of Syrians were able to flee to other Arab or Muslim-majority countries. Many of them returned in recent years. And these countries had also allowed refugees from Iraq and other trouble spots.

But no one wants Palestinians.

Even when Palestinians want to leave.

Before the war, some 29% of Gazans said they would like to emigrate.

The news media simply doesn't want to highlight the hypocrisy in the Arab and Muslim world towards Palestinians - they claim that they support Palestinians but they simply do not want to save any of them.

And nothing shows that hypocrisy better than comparing how Muslim countries allowed millions of Syrians to take refuge - and not one says they will accept the Palestinians they claim to support.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.