Sharing this resource.On February 3rd from 10AM-12PM Educators for Palestine will be hosting a virtual "curriculum share" geared to K-12 classroom teachers. In the first part of this session, teachers will have the opportunity to hear from a panel of organizers and legal experts on how to combat censorship as we strive to create classrooms that foster justice, understanding, and healing.In the second part of this session, teachers will have the opportunity to present and share original lessons and materials they have developed on topics such as Palestinian history, the history of Israeli occupation, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza—every teacher who attends the curriculum share will leave with a collection of lessons they can use with their students.Our hope is that by creating space to share resources and build meaningful connections, that we can empower each other to serve as changemakers within our individual schools. We especially want to highlight the incredible work educators are doing right now to combat hate, misinformation, and misunderstanding during this critical time. If you are an educator who has developed a lesson around Palestinian history, the history of Israeli occupation, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, or a related topic, and you'd like to present it to other teachers on February 3rd, please fill in ! Generous humans who donate lessons will be contacted by event organizers to answer questions and provide further details.Anyone interested in attending should please RSVP HERE. We hope to see you on February 3rd, NYC Educators for Palestine, Working Group on Education & Curriculum DevelopmentWith Appreciation,Your Partner in Education and Proud Principal,Terri Grey
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
- Wednesday, January 24, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Wednesday, January 24, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
All this economic influence that the Jews enjoy around the world makes their power extend, openly and secretly, to the centers of the global economy, through their planned arm represented by the Zionist group, which attracts all those who sympathize with Israel, whether influential Jews or Christians, or from other religions. It is more like Masonic or Templar organizations [than a religious group.]
CSR Gulf is a Kuwaiti based think tank whose president is unapologetically pro-Iran. He gave a speech in Tehran last month supporting Hamas and the entire Iranian "axis of resistance" against world Zionists.
- Wednesday, January 24, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
5.19.1 Siege and Encirclement Permissible. It is lawful to besiege enemy forces, i.e., to encircle them with a view towards inducing their surrender by cutting them off from reinforcements, supplies, and communications with the outside world. In particular, it is permissible to seek to starve enemy forces into submission.5.19.3 Passage of Relief Consignments. Commanders should make arrangements to permit the free passage of certain consignments:• all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians; and• all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing, and tonics (i.e., medicine) intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases.However, allowing passage of these items is not required by the party controlling the area unless that party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing that:• the consignments may be diverted from their destination;• the control may not be effective; or• a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy.
Since we know from previous wars, as well as this one, that Hamas controls all access to food - at gunpoint - allowing any food into Gaza is giving Hamas a definite advantage, and it is impossible to starve Hamas without also blocking food from the civilian population.
The prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit siege warfare as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This is stated in the military manuals of France and New Zealand. Israel’s Manual on the Laws of War explains that the prohibition of starvation “clearly implies that the city’s inhabitants must be allowed to leave the city during a siege”.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Seth Mandel: Israeli Patriotism in Full Bloom
Why, besides for the rally-round-the-flag effect of the attacks and their response, has Hamas’s slaughter made those in the line of fire more eager to stay put? The answer is one the Jewish community already knows too well but the rest of the world struggles to understand.Matti Friedman: Readjusting Sights
Ben-Haim told the Post that when he saw a Black Lives Matter account praise the Hamas attacks, he thought of the BLM shirt that hangs in his closet and the marches he wore it to.
Another Israeli liberal the Post spoke to, Shai Rapoport, learned that his fellow Londoners might have joined him in protesting the Israeli government’s judicial reform for reasons that differed quite a bit from Rapoport’s. “After Oct. 7, he said, he felt a chill from his liberal and Muslim friends. Then outright hostility. Now he’s moving back to Israel, wars and all.”
Still in London at the time of the interview, he told the Post: “I felt that people who were once my friends have become my aggressors. Here, I feel terribly alone.”
After Oct. 7, nobody fooled themselves into thinking that they were safer in the long run outside of Israel. Safer or even welcome, that is. Notice that Rapoport didn’t “feel a chill from his liberal and Muslim friends” after, say, Oct. 27, when Israel launched its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. He felt that chill “after Oct. 7.” As soon as Jews in one place were victimized, Jews everywhere became targets of suspicion, or worse. Same thing happened in America, where pro-Hamas protests began immediately after the massacre of innocent Israelis in their homes. The BLM tweet that Ben-Haim saw was posted on Oct. 10.
Everywhere in the world, consciously or subconsciously, the Jews are considered guests. Everywhere except for one country. The unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7 didn’t convince Jews they were unsafe in Israel; they reminded Jews of Israel’s necessity.
Tomer read Adjusting Sights a few years ago, when he was in tenth grade. The intimate relationship among very different men was familiar to him now, he said. He mentioned a tank in his unit with a Russian-speaking gunner, a stringently observant loader-radioman, an officer who grew up religious but isn’t serious about it, and a Druze driver. “In the beginning everything was a mess,” he said of the beginning of the war, “but then the muscle memory and the Armored Corps discipline kicked in.” This, too, reminded him of the book. When his brigade went into Gaza City, he and his crewmates were in the tank for fifty hours straight. As I write these lines, they’re back there, facing Hamas fighters armed with RPGs and magnetic bombs they try to stick to the sides of the Israeli tanks.Jews Are Indigenous to Israel; They Are Not Colonizers
In quiet moments, Tomer said, the men talk about why Israel must fight and about the need to retaliate for October 7. They differ about politics but not about that. There isn’t much talk about faith in God, he said, nothing like “Gunner, pray!” If the men share a belief in anything, he said, it’s the tank. He spoke about the Merkava IV like young men from other countries might describe their first cars. The armor plates are angled just so to deflect rockets; every detail in the turret is engineered for the safety and convenience of the crew; navigation and communication are at your fingertips on screens. “There were minutes when I was dying to get out, of course,” he said. “But it’s truly a wonder of creation. We have faith in the machine.”
When I met Sabato, I asked if he’d change anything if he wrote the book now. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s an artistic book, not a newspaper article. It was written about experiences that ripened after decades and expresses an internal truth that doesn’t change with time.”
Since this war began, we’ve heard stories that might have been drawn from pogroms or medieval persecutions. We’ve seen images of cruelty, suffering, and heroism that seem biblical. In Adjusting Sights, the Amshinover Rebbe blesses the young soldier leaving for the war with a passage from the book of Exodus: “May dread and fear befall them,” the rabbi says, and adds, “Them and not you.”
Gunsights won’t be enough, the book tells us, and neither will the ideas of the modern world. It’s 2023 and 1973 and 70 CE. Gunner, pray.
The remains of at least 80 synagogues, built after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE have been identified, and while most are in Galilee, others have been discovered throughout the land.
I had initially been under the impression that Jewish life in the Holy Land more or less ceased after the fall of Masada in 70 CE. I knew the 70 CE date was not a sharp demarcation. After all, the Bar Kokhba revolt, an even greater challenge to Roman rule than the one that ended at Masada, occurred 70 years later, and the meeting of rabbis in Bnei Brak portrayed in the Passover Haggadah must have taken place around the year 100. Yet, the ruins I’ve described indicate that a large and prosperous Jewish community persisted for hundreds of years after the destruction of the Temple.
I was not the only one blown away by the Bar’am ruins. Edward Robinson, one of the first to identify the Bar’am ruins as synagogues (there were two), who was an important Bible archeologist of the 1800s, made the same point in a book (written with Eli Smith) called Biblical Researches in Palestine (1856).
Encountering the synagogues at Bar’am (Kafr Bir’im), they wrote, “The size, the elaborate sculptured ornament, and the splendour of these edifices do not belong to a scattered and down-trodden people.” They add, “All these circumstances would seem to mark a condition of prosperity and wealth and influence among the Jews of Galilee in that age, of which neither their own historians, nor any other, have given us any account.”
The comment about the lack of attention to this period of Jewish life is still true today, 168 years later. One of the only news articles about the history of the Bar’am synagogues that I could find was one by Joe Yudin (“Baram’s Ancient Synagogue,” The Jerusalem Post, 2012).
In fact, Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the 5th century. An autonomous Jewish Patriarchate existed until the year 425, and the Jerusalem Talmud was written there (mostly in Galilee) during the early centuries of the Common Era. Two additional Jewish revolts, against Byzantine rule in the 4th and 7th centuries, also indicate that a substantial Jewish population lived in Palestine.
While it is true that from the sixth or seventh century until modern times, Jews formed a minority of the population of Palestine, periodic immigration (aliyah) ensured that their numbers were appreciable throughout the years. Besides, indigeneity is not dependent on numbers, and Palestinian indigenous status does not invalidate the Jewish one.
Palestine is the name given Judea by the Romans in 136 CE, as punishment after the failed Bar Kokhba revolt. The Arab conquest of Palestine took place in 637 CE, when Umar Al Khattab captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. Now, in a deliberate inversion of the truth, the indigenous homeland of the Jews is “occupied” when Jews live there.
- Tuesday, January 23, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
An unlawful Israeli strike on a family in a car on November 5, 2023, should be investigated as an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack killed three girls and their grandmother and wounded their mother.“This attack by Israeli military forces that struck a car carrying a family fleeing violence shows a reckless disregard for civilian life,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Three young girls and their grandmother have lost their lives, our investigations show, as a result of the Israeli military’s failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Their killing is a violation of the laws of war, and Israel’s allies, like the US, should respond to this apparent war crime by demanding accountability for this unlawful strike.”
Last week, there was a different attack on civilians near the Lebanese border. A 76 year old woman and her 48 year old son were killed in a targeted attack where there was no doubt that the targets were civilians. In fact, there is video of the attack - a video made by the attackers themselves, Hezbollah.
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! |
|
- Tuesday, January 23, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
24 IDF soldiers killed in deadliest day since start of Gaza combat
Twenty-four Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday, the deadliest single day for the Israeli military since the start of its ground operation against Hamas on Oct. 27.
Twenty-one soldiers were killed in central Gaza when two buildings collapsed due to a blast, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday morning.
Three other soldiers were killed in battle in the southern Gaza Strip.
The incident occurred 600 meters (2,000 feet) from the Israeli border, near the northwestern Negev community of Kibbutz Kissufim, as Israeli forces were working on clearing Hamas infrastructure and buildings to establish a buffer zone.
According to Hagari, around 4 p.m., terrorists fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank securing the forces. At the same time, two two-story buildings collapsed as a result of an explosion while most of the troops were inside or near them. The blast was apparently caused by explosives placed by the Israeli forces, intended to destroy the buildings in a controlled event.
Hagari emphasized that the incident is still under investigation, including the cause of the explosion.
He added that a “very complicated” rescue operation took place involving commanders and rescue workers who quickly arrived at the scene.
“War has a very painful and heavy price. The dedicated reservists, who stood up for the flag, sacrificed the most precious of all, for the security of the State of Israel and so that we can all live here safely,” said Hagari.
War Cabinet ministers—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Gantz—issued a joint statement about the incident on Tuesday afternoon.
“We bow our heads in memory of our fallen, and yet we do not for a moment stop striving for an irreplaceable goal—the achievement of absolute victory,” they said.
President Herzog: An unbearably difficult morning, in which more and more names of the best of our sons are added to the gravestones of heroes, in a war that has no justice.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) January 23, 2024
The intense battles are taking place in an extremely challenging space, and we send strength to the… pic.twitter.com/yMxZ87WJjm
IDF Chief of the General Staff on the 21 soldiers killed in action: “They fell during a mission whose aim was to enable the safe return of the residents of southern Israel to their homes. We grieve this loss; we will learn the necessary lessons.” pic.twitter.com/c6Y5P6RGt3
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) January 23, 2024
"Approved for publication," is more than a phrase, it is the term the @IDFSpokesperson uses when the painful announcement of soldiers fallen is made. An announcement made to the public only after the bereaved families are notified. A task challenged today by the endless flow of… pic.twitter.com/oVPgNseTtg
— Lt. Col. (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) January 23, 2024
- Tuesday, January 23, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- book review
"Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People," edited by David Hazony, reminded me of my college experience with a wide range of committed Jews. The 65 essays are each written by Jews from disparate backgrounds who are passionate about Judaism and its future. Each essay is a personal attempt to answer the question of what they think should be the single most important priority for the collective future of the Jewish people.
The contributors are a stellar list of the most interesting thinkers today, from Hen Mazzig to Ruth Wisse, from David Wolpe to Yishai Fleisher. The book is the equivalent of a really great dinner party where everyone has something fascinating to 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! |
|
- Tuesday, January 23, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Tuesday, January 23, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
I participated in a conference in support of Gaza a few days ago in Istanbul, and I was invited to recite one of my poems on its sidelines in the presence of the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, and a large number of leaders of parties and union institutions from various parts of the world, including Jews belonging to Neturei Karta movement. In the poem, I said: "we are against the Jews forever and ever."One of the honorable attendees jumped up and shouted: “Say the Zionists and do not say the Jews.” I immediately responded briefly, saying, God Almighty said: “You will find the people most hostile to God [are Jews.].” I wondered: Should I respond to your words or to the words of the Lord of the Worlds? I continued: The Jews that I meant in my poem are the Jews that God meant in his book.The Jews are Jews in faith, and I will not change the concept of the conflict because ten or a hundred of this type of Jews from the Neturei Karta party went out with me in a demonstration here or there.The Neturei Karta movement does not oppose its Zionist government in our sight; It opposes it because of their different prophecies regarding the establishment of the State of Israel. If the two had the same goal but differed in timing, does this call for me, the slain victim, to put my hand in his?! No and a thousand times no.
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! |
|
Monday, January 22, 2024
Seth Mandel: Why Do We Let Our Detractors Speak For Us?
Harvard alum Ira Stoll notes that Penslar last year signed a letter accusing Israel of apartheid and of seeking to “ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.” Just last month, he extolled the virtues of seeing Israel through the prism of “settler colonialism,” the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that denies Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel and evinces a deep ignorance of basic world history. Along those lines, he also incorrectly believes “Zionism is a modern phenomenon.”How Racial Entitlement Leads to Anti-Semitism
He summons concepts from some pretty dark shadows of anti-Jewish discourse, too. In a book published last year, he wrote, “Veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization.” That’s the sort of line you expect to see on the Twitter feeds of white nationalists and unrepentant Soviet-brained tankies. And, I guess, Harvard professors of Jewish history.
I’ve written in recent weeks about the AsAJews, a group of agitators from within the Jewish community who sell their birthright to anti-Zionist political activists. What Penslar’s case shows is that these agitators are not merely reactive; they are proactive. The anti-Zionist political activists they serve know very well to have their AsAJews in position long before they’re needed for any public debate. From his perch at Harvard, a professor like Penslar can manipulate the discipline of Jewish history even beyond the confines of the Ivy League, simply by telling the non-Jewish academic world what it wants to hear, such as that “veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization.”
We don’t like to admit it, but the purpose of having professors like Penslar at Harvard is to soften the ground for a whole mess of ideas that denigrate Jews and Israel and fuel an inevitable backlash against both—“decolonization” being a prime example. The uncomfortable truth is that Penslar wasn’t hired at Harvard so that he’d be in position to defend the school after an anti-Semitism scandal. He was there to help brew the conditions of the scandal in the first place.
American Jews will need to guard our history much more carefully in the coming years, and pay more attention to who claims to speak for us. Has any other religious community or national minority so often put its detractors in charge of telling its story?
With a generation that sees entitlement as virtue, the act of Jews pushing back—“actually, Hamas is not entitled to rape Israelis”—makes us easy targets of snowballing entitlement rage. This manifests in a blistering desire to tear down Jewish lives and communities, painting restraint itself as an insidious trick to usurp others’ lands and rights, to run institutions, and to mask mythical bloodlust. Doubling down on non-restraint, protesters shout, “By any means necessary!”Simon Deng: First They Came for My People, Then They Came for the Jews
And truly, Jews would have to be annihilated to purge the supreme value of self-restraint that is the hallmark of Jewish survival: the endurance against all odds of a culture in which, say, self-restraint about mixing meat and milk is actually prized above existential faith. Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of Our Fathers,” part of the larger Jewish oral tradition compiled in the Talmud, famously declares: “Who is strong? He who conquers his evil inclination…he who masters his passions is better than one who conquers a city.” And even the ubiquitous Jewish exhortation to be a mensch is a reminder that the ultimate way to be a “man,” to be a person, is just to behave considerately.
While these ideas are obviously not achieved by any single person all the time, the expectation of self-restraint that fundamentally defines the Jews has helped keep alive and thriving traditional definitions of what it means to be an accomplished adult. This is certainly not unique to Jews, as Max Weber and his theory of the Protestant ethic would remind us. But it has helped this tiny minority become disproportionately successful; dedicated to maintaining family and community through involvement and philanthropy; and willing to take the kind of constructive risks that yield large dividends.
The Jewish state itself reaps these benefits of traditional virtue. Israelis excel in business, in particular by embracing smart risks that rank it number three worldwide for start-ups. Israelis prioritize duty: Military service is obligatory, while Israeli families average three children and have only a 7 percent birthrate outside of wedlock (“keeping it in your pants” being among the most ancient obligations of male self-restraint). Perhaps the most extreme example: The Israel Defense Forces, at a clear cost to its own aims and soldiers’ lives, circulates maps to Gazans of where they will be fighting to prioritize the escape of enemy noncombatants.
There is no time to lose. America has gone critically off course. We need to restructure our educational, criminal-justice, and mental-health systems to center on advancing the ideals of self-restraint. If we don’t, not only will anti-Semitism flourish, but American adulthood as a whole will wither. Hillcrest High students indulging in a violent tantrum don’t need lectures on rejecting hate. They need to be told what BLM’s Hamas apologists were reminded of by former NBA star Amar’e Stoudemire: “On my mama, we don’t respect none of y’all for that. Peace.”
A South Sudanese former slave recognized the Palestinian pogrom on Oct. 7Eugene Kontorovich: America Helps Make Gaza an Open-Air Prison
On Oct. 7, 2023, I watched the news and was sick. Seeing the video of the attack on the music festival in Israel, everything welled up inside me. From the experience of my people, from my own experience, I knew exactly what had just happened and how those terrified hostages were going to suffer. Israelis had been raped, tortured, mutilated, and burned alive just like my people had been for centuries. I will never forget the fires and the burned bodies: They looked exactly like what I saw the day my village was destroyed.
What Hamas did was precisely like what Arab Sudan’s genocidal government did to my people. Since they invaded Africa in the seventh century, Arab Muslims had always been doing jihad. We will never really know many Blacks have died between then and today. It is one of those numbers which, because it is unknown, proves how huge the suffering must be.
Both Israel and my country, South Sudan, were born through jihad, one which began in 1948, the other in 1955. In 1948, the Arabs declared a jihad against the new State of Israel and tried to finish what Hitler had started. In 1955, the Black Christian people of southern Sudan revolted against the north because the Muslim government refused to give them autonomy or freedom of religion. In response, the government declared a jihad—but not on paper, as it would later in 1989. The Arabs killed possibly up to 1.5 million Black people in the south. Nobody knows the number they enslaved, since nobody really counted.
The Israelis, like the Black Sudanese, won the war but lost the peace, and the jihad continued. People in the West only learned about jihad and slavery in Sudan in the 1990s, during the Second Sudanese Civil War, which began in 1983, but it was going on throughout the first one, which ended in 1972. I was kidnapped in the 1960s, so this terror has been happening for my entire lifetime. All we know is that about 200,000 Black Christians like me were enslaved in the Second Civil War, which only stopped in 2005, and about 2 million were killed. Sadly, there are still many Africans owned as slaves today. Now I saw what was done to me and my people being done to Israelis.
Israel secretly helped the southern Sudanese fight the north. We would never have fought the Arabs to the negotiating table without them. Today, South Sudan is independent partially because Israel chose to help us win over our Arab colonizers—because that is what they are. The Jewish people, just like us, are native to our lands, which the Arabs conquered.
Recently, I went to Israel to show my solidarity with my Jewish brothers and sisters, and with the (enslaved) hostages. I walked twice from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and back along the highway to show that we Africans love and care about Israel. I picked strawberries on a kibbutz and met with Jewish hero Natan Sharansky—a freedom fighter who went to prison, like Dr. King, for trying to free his people.
Living in New York, I see protests against Israel. These manifestations of sympathy for evil should disgust all decent people. They disgust me because Hamas is made up of the same people, acting on the same colonizing and imperial motivations, who enslaved me and murdered 4 million of my Black brothers and sisters. The Jewish people—who helped my people gain our freedom—were slaves in Egypt, just down the Nile from where I was a slave. Later, they were slaves in Auschwitz. Now they are slaves in Gaza. Our peoples have both survived slavery, and we will continue to survive it. We will triumph over the murderers who do their best to enslave and exterminate us.
True survivors are not victims. Both Africans and Israelis stand tall and will not rest until all of our people are free. And our Jewish brothers can count on us to be there for them.
Gaza is unique among modern war zones. 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.
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. The U.S. invasion of Iraq produced two million international refugees. Fleeing a war zone and seeking asylum in a neutral country is a human right enshrined in the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention.
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. The Biden administration's repeated professions of concern about an imaginary Israeli plan to force out Gazans has distracted from its unconscionable silence about the deadly reality that Gazans are trapped against their will in what has now become the world's largest open-air prison.
By not pressuring Egypt to open its border, according to its obligations under international refugee law, the U.S. is letting Gaza become a pressure cooker of civilian suffering. Washington has no problem with Cairo putting Gazans in harm's way, accepting a tightly sealed Egypt, while he lets millions pour across America's southern border. Why would the U.S. support locking Gazans in like North Korea does? Since 1948, Arab states and the UN have refused to treat Palestinians like ordinary refugees, keeping them in a unique intergenerational limbo to provide a reservoir of resentment against Israel.
- Monday, January 22, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
[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)
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! |
|
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.Dr. Albert Bourla is Chairman and CEO of Pfizer: An Unexpected Encounter At Davos Inspired My Call to Action For the Israeli Hostages
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.”
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.
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) January 19, 2024
“After two months you didn’t have even one response?!”#BelieveIsraeliWomen#BringThemHomeNow… pic.twitter.com/rKQqYUBOML
- Monday, January 22, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
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.
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.
- Monday, January 22, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- infographic
America Helps Make Gaza an Open-Air PrisonRefugees 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.