Thursday, January 25, 2024

01/25 Links Pt2: An ‘Eichmann Trial’ for Hamas’s Crimes; Niall Ferguson: “The Treason of the Intellectuals,”; Tu b’Shvat Is a Testament to Jews’ Connection to Their Land

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: An ‘Eichmann Trial’ for Hamas’s Crimes

Putting Sinwar on trial for his war crimes would absolutely garner the attention that Eichmann’s trial received; we are after all in the era of social media and livestreaming. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. The Nazis had plenty of sympathizers, but their ideology was not dominant (though it was present) throughout American educational institutions from Harvard down to various public grade schools. The ideology that justifies Hamas’s Oct. 7 campaign of mass murder, sexual torture, and child kidnapping is dominant on campuses and has had no trouble worming its way into the curricula fabric at every level of education. Whether you call it “decolonization” or find some German compound word for it, the race-obsessed conspiracy-addled theory justifying the extrajudicial murder of Jews is all the rage, and Sinwar would be preaching to an aggravatingly large choir.

It would certainly be revealing to watch Intersectionality Eichmann be elevated to godlike status in the enlightened West. But it would also be unbearably dark, a point of no return if ever there was one.

It would, however, solve the representation problem. Eichmann found a German lawyer to defend him and Israel picked up the tab. Sinwar would have a line of high-profile American and British attorneys begging to take up his case pro bono.

Nevertheless, a legal process to establish facts for posterity would be of great benefit to society, even without an Eichmann figure at its center. The most intriguing angle is one Haaretz reported on a few weeks after the attacks, when Israeli domestic security and law-enforcement teams were put on the case: “A number of Israeli firms with expertise in digital intelligence were enlisted to build what is called ‘the library’ — a database of all the Hamas terrorists who entered into Israel and documentation of their actions, almost minute by minute.”

That “library” is being built on the foundations of Hamas’s own despicable pride: many terrorists wore body cameras to document their own descent into psychotic barbarity.

The massive amounts of evidence being gathered by investigative authorities and emergency responders and other officials is clearly intended to be used in a court of some kind, but Israel will not be taking its case to international or UN courts, whose legitimacy cannot be salvaged. Eichmann was tried in Israeli courts, and Hamas terrorists can be tried in those courts or in military tribunals, though the latter would somewhat defeat the purpose of the trials, which would be to place in the public domain an unimpeachable record of events. The Oct. 7 version of Holocaust deniers have come out of the woodwork already, existing as they do in a postmodern world of “living your truth.” The library of evidence that Israel is currently building is the proper antidote to the lobotomizing poison of such a world.

Brendan O'Neill: Why Are People More Agitated by the Gaza War than by Any Other?

This week, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said there is a dearth of political concern for the poor people of Gaza. I'm sorry, what? There have been more public displays of sorrow for the people of Gaza than for any other people caught up in a war as far back as I can remember. Solidarity with Gazans is virtually mandatory at dinner parties across the land.

We've seen think piece after think piece about the pain of the Palestinians. Bourgeois youths have hit the streets every weekend to register their compassion for Gazans and their hatred for Israel. MPs have made tub-thumping speeches on the need for a ceasefire. Palestinian flags fly from lampposts. The keffiyeh has become the fashion item du jour for the ostentatiously virtuous.

The real question is not why people are silent on Gaza (they're not), but why they seem so much more agitated by this war than by any other of recent times. There's been a tsunami of media coverage on Gaza. Far more than there was for the Saudi-Yemen war, every African war of recent years, or the horrific return of Azerbaijan-Armenia hostilities last year. Our activist class have obsessively devoted themselves to the cause of Gaza, to the exclusion of every other issue on earth.

Where were these people when tens of thousands of Muslims, including Palestinians, were slaughtered in the war in Syria? Or when the mullahs of Iran massacred hundreds of their own citizens for the sin of standing up for women's rights? Do the lives of young women in Iran who want to show their hair in public have a "different value" to the lives of people in Gaza? The lives of Syrian dissidents?

Why did they not make as much noise over those violent assaults on Muslim life as they have done over Israel's war against Hamas? Because it is only when the Jewish state is involved in the loss of Muslim life that people take to the streets in vast numbers.

Tu b’Shvat Is a Testament to Jews’ Connection to Their Land

Today is the holiday of Tu b’Shvat, the “new year of the trees.” In the diaspora, this day over the centuries came to embody the Jewish longing for the Land of Israel. With the return from exile, it has taken on a new meaning as a day to be celebrated by planting trees. Alon Tal considers its significance:

There is no more concrete manifestation of the Zionist impulse as the national movement of an indigenous people, than Israel’s forests. Seventy years ago—when the country was an impoverished, developing nation, the founders set about returning the woodlands to a decimated land—a land where 97 percent of the original vegetation had been extirpated.

That is not Zionist propaganda. Empirical evidence from aerial reconnaissance photography of the British army in World War I confirms the absolute bareness of Palestine following 2,000 years of Jewish exile. Since then, almost two million dunams of woodlands have been planted. There is something deeply meaningful about this profound act of national, ecological revival during these troubled times.

Over the years, I was always annoyed that Palestinian leadership never respected the authenticity of my Israeli identity and Jews’ historic connection to their homeland. But invariably, I let it go. Many Jews working on coexistence even avoided openly defining themselves as “Zionists,” lest they create unnecessary antagonism. The main thing was to get on with the “peacemaking.” In retrospect, this was a mistake.

To-thousand years ago, the Mishnah codified the four new years that are built into our national calendar. . . . The fact that Israel has revived this arboreal birthday and turned tree-planting and tree-preservation into a national holiday is a sign of just how much our heritage informs our present-day lives.

Would the Holocaust have happened if Twitter existed in the 1940s? Yes, of course it would have, and the proof is from now

From Times of Israel:

On his first visit to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said that free speech would have prevented the murders that were perpetrated there.

“If there had been social media, I think it would have been impossible to hide,” Musk said of the murders committed at Auschwitz. “If there’d been freedom of speech as well,” Musk told Shapiro about his visit. Musk also said it was “deeply sad and tragic [that] humans could do this to other humans.”

Social media is not much different from the news sources available in the world in the 1940s. Polish fighters and Jews in Europe managed to get messages out about the Holocaust and other Nazi policies.

And that is the point. The details of the gassing and crematoria might have been obscured, but the general outlines were known not too long after the Wannsee Conference. It was spoken about, warned about, and Jews were distressed over their relatives.

It wasn't a secret. At all.

Jewish Press (Omaha), November 6, 1942

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 21, 1943

Indianapolis News,
bottom of page 2, August 27 1943

But the news media didn't make it a front page story.

Social media wouldn't have changed that. On the contrary: The Nazis (and their worldwide sympathizers) would have used social media the way antisemites do today.

In the 1940s, there were social media equivalents: self-published pamphlets and flyers, shortwave radio broadcasts, speeches, dinner party conversations, ethnic newspapers. Not exactly the same as Facebook but they served the same purpose, and they could either spread propaganda or the truth.

We've seen ourselves in recent months how social media has been used to deny atrocities against Jews as much as it is used to publicize them.

This is what Nazi Germany did as well.

Despite the public broadcast and publication of general statements about the goal of eliminating “the Jews,” the regime practiced a propaganda of deception by hiding specific details about the “Final Solution,” and press controls prevented Germans from reading statements by Allied and Soviet leaders condemning German crimes.

At the same time, positive stories were fabricated as part of the planned deception. One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that, in occupied Poland, German authorities had put Jews to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training. Posters and articles continually reminded the German population not to forget the atrocity stories that Allied propaganda spread about Germans during World War I, such as the false charge that Germans had cut off the hands of Belgian children.

We are seeing the same dynamic, from Hamas sympathizers and Iranian allies. The October 7 atrocities are denied, obviously faked videos are pushed as truth, and hostage videos taken at gunpoint are produced as "evidence" that Hamas treats them well.

It is the jihadist version of Theresienstadt. And the Red Cross did then what it is doing today in not protecting the Jews.

Then, as now, the atrocity deniers rely on a simple fact: there are a lot of Jew-haters in the world. They will believe anything anyone says bad about Jews and disbelieve anything the Jews say. Social media doesn't dilute their influence - it multiplies it.

Imagine what would have happened if social media existed in the 1940s and politicians in the UK or US accused Germany of war crimes. Nazi sympathizers would have shrilly denied it, publicized videos of happy Jewish children, and accused the Jews of murdering each other. Many people who don't spend the time on their own research would be convinced by the pro-Nazi messages. Nazi defenders would dig up dirt on these politicians - or make things up - and accuse them of being the real genocidaires. Daily protests would have formed instantly outside the homes of any of these politicians, which would inevitably prompt others to mute their own criticism of the Nazi death machine for fear of their families' lives.

We know this would happen because we see it happen today in response to the Nazi-style mass extermination event in October.

The more you research the propaganda techniques of the Nazis and their acolytes in the West, the more you feel a sense of deja vu with what people are saying today.

The Kansas City Times

17 Nov 1941

What, exactly, is the difference between today's antisemites and the antisemites of the 1940s?

Outside of using the terminology "Zionists," nothing.

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!

I Assure You The Red Cross Is Working As Hard As It Can To Facilitate Terrorism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

I Assure You The Red Cross Is Working As Hard As It Can To Facilitate Terrorism

by Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president, International Committee of the Red Cross

Geneva, January 25 - Since its founding in 1863, this organization has led the world in first aid and disaster response, and continues to do so even in the most dangerous locations worldwide. This mission includes the Gaza Strip, where the ICRC has responded to the most recent outbreak of violence by making every imaginable effort not to get in the way of Hamas's operations, even going as far as to refrain from criticizing Hamas.

Unfair accusations have stemmed from the Red Cross's handling of Israelis held hostage in Gaza: that we have neglected to insist on visiting them; that we have cooperated with a terrorist organization; that when some hostages were freed, we served as little more than couriers. Those charges are profoundly insulting to anyone who knows what our organization does, the values it upholds, and how it operates.

To begin with, open criticism of Hamas in a Hamas-controlled area would put our personnel at risk and threaten the crucial functions that the Red Cross plays in Gaza. Without a robust ICRC presence, Hamas might be forced to provide health care for Gaza residents, and that would hamper the group's ability to, and resources toward, killing and torturing Israelis. Imagine how annoyed that would make Hamas! We cannot take that risk.

Thus our refusal to convey medications to hostages in need of it is understandable in context. The same for our silence on the question of hostages being raped or otherwise mistreated. We simply have to take Hamas at their word, since they are known for strict adherence to the truth in medical matters, such as the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital and the total absence of Hamas military infrastructure in or under health care facilities.

Also the death toll and classification of every single casualty as a noncombatant, which we all know to be unimpeachable and completely in line with every other urban combat situation in military history. The missiles into Israel are launching themselves!

Israeli sources enjoy no such credibility, as they contradict what everyone knows without checking. This is common knowledge. I cannot believe it requires explaining. It is precisely the attitude we were trying to get across when we told the family of an Israeli held hostage in Gaza, "Don't you feel sympathy for the Palestinians?" Because that it what one says to a suffering, grieving, terrified person.

If they're Jewish.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

01/25 Links Pt1: The Meaning of Gaza's Tunnels: Spare Us the Outrage, Qatar; American Troops Know: Iran Is Already at War with Us; Idan Amedi released from hospital

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: The Meaning of Gaza's Tunnels

Ever since Israel withdrew its soldiers and civilians from Gaza in 2005, critics have accused it of blockading the territory - turning it into an "open-air prison." The charge was always preposterous. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. Gazans were often treated in Israeli hospitals for cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Israel provided Gaza with much of its electricity and other critical goods even after Hamas came to power in 2007.

Gaza's vast underground tunnel network has turned the territory into a gigantic military fortress. How much did it cost to build these tunnels? How much concrete, steel and electricity did it divert from civilian needs? How many millions of hours of labor were given to the effort? Hamas stole from foreign donors, subtracted billions of dollars over several years from Gaza's gross domestic product, and diverted labor from productive to destructive ends, all to feed its war machine.

Hamas could have averted this tragedy if it had turned Gaza into an enclave for peace rather than terror, if it had not started four previous rounds of war against Israel, if it had honored the cease-fire that held on Oct. 6. It could have eased it by releasing all of its hostages. It could end it now by surrendering its leaders and sending its fighters into exile. Till then, Hamas bears the blame for every death in this war.

UN Agency in Gaza Alleged To Have ‘Blood on Its Hands’ in Aftermath of October 7 Massacre of Israelis

Worse, he adds, in the early stages of the war, the IDF brass approached Unrwa officials, asking for help in removing civilians from areas where the army planned to wage battle, and usher them to proposed safe zones. The organization made a decision “at the highest levels” to refuse, as Hamas objected to losing human shields.

“Had Unrwa agreed to the IDF plan, the lives of many civilians could have been spared,” Mr. Conricus says. “Not only did they refuse to cooperate, they actively prevented the creation of safe zones. They have blood on their hands.”

Yet Secretary-General Guterres is adamant that the agency will have a role in Gaza after the war. “Unrwa plays a critical role in supporting many Palestinians on education, on healthcare and other services, and it plays a stabilizing role in the region,” Mr. Dujarric told the Sun, adding that Mr. Guterres “continues to believe that.”

Nevertheless, “Unrwa has taken the decision to commission an independent review, to look at all the allegations regarding Unrwa and its activities in Gaza,” its commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, told Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wang, last week.

After UN Watch published the trove of evidence of unethical conduct, Australia demanded an investigation. Under pressure from America’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, America denied funds to Unrwa. President Biden renewed America’s status as the agency’s top donor, contributing nearly $1 billion to its coffers since 2021.

“Our constituents are horrified that their taxpayer dollars may have, through Unrwa failures, supported Hamas terrorists,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Michael McCaul, wrote last week, inviting Mr. Lazzarini to testify.

Mr. Lazzarini takes these allegations “very seriously,” the UN spokesman, Mr. Dujarric, says, adding that Unrwa takes “disciplinary action when needed and when things are proven.” As yet, though, Mr. Lazzarini has indicated only that he would investigate “smears” against his agency, Mr. Neuer tells the Sun.

Seth Mandel: Spare Us the Outrage, Qatar

The Qatari statement is idiotic. If Netanyahu had said this publicly, one could argue that it would be a breach of diplomatic politesse. Ill-advised, at the very least. But if Netanyahu is explaining in private why the usual objections about Qatar shouldn’t disqualify them from the diplomatic process, then the reaction is thin-skinned bush-league whining.

Fact is, Qatar funds and enables Hamas. It hosts Hamas leadership. And as Jonathan Schanzer wrote here last month, “In their efforts to steer the Gaza conflict toward a permanent ceasefire, the Qataris have actively tried to help save Hamas from destruction, which is Israel’s stated war aim.”

Qatar is a major reason that Hamas has the capabilities it possesses to pull off barbaric invasions like its Oct. 7 rampage, which resulted in the hostage standoff that it is supposedly helping to solve. I’m glad they’ve played some productive role in all this, but it is the role of an arsonist putting out the flames in a few of the rooms of the building it set ablaze. The suggestion that they’re doing the world a favor is risible.

In fact, Qatar has been far less useful than it should have been throughout the hostage crisis. Israel has had to turn to the Egyptians time and again when Qatar’s gold-plated incompetence gets put on display. That ineptitude is one reason Israel is in Gaza collecting the bodies of its citizens. Qatar is very good at ensuring the money keeps flowing to its clients but not very good at predicting what, exactly, its clients are preparing to do with that largesse.

Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t say any of this, of course. Publicly, he said nothing unkind, and privately, he offered mild criticism but no objections to Qatar’s role in the hostage negotiations. Qatar should put a Band-Aid on its wounded ego and go back to helping to fix a fraction of the problems it has caused the free world.

A great catch by UN Watch's Hillel Neuer.

Last week, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric was asked a question in a press conference:

Q: Given the UN's big role in Gaza, UNRWA, has there ever been any indication to the UN that tunnels are being built under the city?

UN: Not to us. I mean... it seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way. I mean, I see it just as an observer... To think that the UN had any understanding of what was… any information about those operations, I think, is... No is clearly the answer to that.

This is even though the UN has admitted in previous years that tunnels were found underneath their own schools.

In fact, former UNRWA Gaza director Matthias Schmale admitted that it is a "safe assumption" there were extensive tunnels under Gaza, in a 2021 interview:

One of our schools...less than half a kilometer from our compound, you can see it from our compounds very close, the [Israeli] military bombed, put two missiles into the courtyard of that school.

They destroyed a tunnel going underneath that school. And again, with precision. They struck exactly at one end of the tunnel and the other end of the tunnel. So they closed it off, basically. Very clear. They knew exactly what they were hitting.

Many people told me through my four years, there's tunnels everywhere and it's a safe assumption.

Whether there are tunnels under our main compound, I cannot say, you know, that's speculative at this point. But yes, why would they hit so close if there is not something there?

And it isn't as if there were no news articles about the tunnels, especially during the 2014 war.

This is the same interview that got Schmale fired from his UNRWA job, because he said that Israeli airstrikes were accurate, and Gazans protested that he said out loud something that contradicts Hamas' narrative.

(Corrected, I originally thought they were the same person. H/t Hillel Neuer.)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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More evidence that the Palestinians literally make up casualty statistics

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics is keeping its own tally of deaths in Gaza that they claim comes from the Gaza ministry of health and the UN.

As of today, they are claiming that there have been 25,700 total deaths, of which 12,345 have been children and 7500 women.

That would mean that 77% of those killed were women and children, far higher than the 70% that Hamas claims.

Here's the problem: the Hamas health ministry has not issued any statistics on the number of women and children killed for over a month. The last time they did, on December 11, they claimed an already absurd 70% were women and children.

And here is irrefutable proof that these numbers ar ecompletely made up.

As of December 11, Hamas claimed that there were 5,153 women and 7,729 children killed out of a total of 18,205 deaths.

As of January 16, the PCBS - claiming to be using figures from the same source - said that there were 12,345 children and 7,100 women killed out of 24,100.

That means that during those 36 days, there were 5,895 new total "martyrs" - but 6,563 additional women and children killed.

Yes, they are claiming that there were 668 more women and children killed than there were total deaths. Truly miraculous!

Not only that, as of January 16, the PCBS claims that some 81% of all deaths were women and children, which is far higher than the total percentage of women and children in Gaza (I estimate it is 73%.) Any terrorists killed are just accidental, apparently.

It's all made up.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics brags how professional and accurate it is. But these numbers are completely fictional (isn't the number of children being 12345 a little odd?)

If they really are getting these numbers from the Hamas authorities, then Hamas is obviously lying. If Hamas hasn't updated its women and children numbers since December as the UN says, then the PCBS is obviously lying.

In truth, both are. As we've shown, Hamas statistics sometimes also counted more women and children than total deaths. We see here that the "professional" PCBS happily posts numbers that simply don't add up.

And the world media apparently doesn't have a single employee with a spreadsheet that can notice that the Palestinian authorities are proven to be liars.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The IDF released three samples of memos written from Gaza's Al Qassam Brigades to Dr. Muhammad Hamdan, Head of the Directorate of Education and Teaching in Gaza, asking teachers to be excused from work because of military training ahead of October 7.

First memo:

Date: September 10 2023

Subject: Lenient Work Schedule

With regard to the matter mentioned above, we ask of you to provide the brother Nur-Aldin Naim Mahmoud Siam, who works at the Aljanan high school (as a math teacher), with a flexible work schedule, as the nature of his position with us requires constant follow-ups.

Second:

Subject: Granting Release

With regard to the matter mentioned above, we ask of you to release the brother Moataz Abed-Alrazk Muhammad Alfara, who works at the education administration in west Khan Yunis, as we need him for military training on the date 28/09/2023. This date is not flexible.

Third:

Subject: Granting Release
With regard to the matter mentioned above, we ask of you to release the brother Hani Saeed Saleem Salah, who works at the education administration in west Khan Yunis, as we need him for military training on the 28/09/2023. This date is not flexible.

So we know that Gaza teachers, journalists and even doctors are also Hamas members. But how many articles that blame Israel for targeting specific people mention this quite important fact?

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

01/24 Links Pt2: This War Is Different; Shylock at the U.N.; UN Agency Floats Funding For Orgs That ‘Diverted’ Aid To Hamas; Hollywood stars join new campaign against Jew-hatred

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: This War Is Different

Normally this set of conditions, in which only one side is subjected to any real pressure because the other side’s leaders cannot be made to value life, would whittle down governmental resistance until it reached its breaking point and agreed, like a game of musical chairs, to the best available deal on the table when the music stopped. Indeed, it is no longer just Netanyahu in the crosshairs of public opinion: The most recent polling shows a majority of Israelis are dissatisfied with the war council’s handling of the conflict. There is almost no conceivable development in which the cabinet’s numbers would improve.

In a normal conflict, then, this would be the moment the government would begin to collapse, and the war’s days would be numbered because the public’s will was nearly sapped.

But this isn’t a normal conflict. And what’s more, the families of the remaining hostages know it.

One exchange in a recent meeting between Netanyahu and the hostage families, included in the Times of Israel report, caught my attention: “Netanyahu was reportedly asked during the meeting why Israel could not simply agree to end the war in order to secure the release of the remaining hostages and then restart the fighting once the abductees have been returned.”

In other words, the hostage families—sleep-deprived, tortured by psychic pain—know the fighting must go on and Hamas must be defeated. They are desperate, as would be any human in their situation, for some way to bend reality enough to end their suffering. But they will not relinquish that sense of reality, even in this state. Just lie to the Americans.

Netanyahu then proceeded to explain to the Israelis gathered that, no, we cannot deceive the Americans. Israel would have to give its word and keep its word.

And that is part of what makes the weight on Israel’s shoulders so heavy. There is no pretending to end this war, because this war is different.

Shylock at the U.N.

It seems obvious that neither diplomat would ever have thought of urging restraint upon Islamic nationalists, or an understanding of a broader context to Palestinians, who are implicitly granted a freedom of action that comes from being outside of a Judeo-Christian cultural imaginary (though often enrolled in a different one—I’m looking at you Caliban.). Indeed, one searches in vain for similar calls by European and U.N. leaders for anger management to Assad in Syria or Erdogan in Turkey. But, in the case of Israel, a Jewish demand for justice (or retribution) in the here and now is an inevitable, and perhaps even pleasurable, occasion for hardened diplomats to open up the possibility of an ultimate or final justice that will transcend justice, in the process of which the Jew will be inducted into the ways of mercy.

A similar dynamic can be seen at play in President Biden’s account of a recent conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu:
It was pointed out to me — I’m being very blunt with you all — it was pointed out to me , by Bibi, that ‘Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died,’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again — it didn’t happen again. Don’t make the same mistakes we made at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to be in a war in Afghanistan at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to do some of the things we did.

In Biden’s gaff- prone way, he admits that these institutions of international law set up after World War II and intended to prevent massive civilian casualties were ignored again and again by the United States, most recently during the Afghanistan war, thereby contradicting his statement that “It didn’t happen again.” He’s also implicitly urging Netanyahu to set a better example than the United States has. The quality of mercy is not strained and becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.

In the way that, according to James Shapiro, The Merchant is not about Jews but rather a projection onto Jews of another people’s anxieties, so is the ongoing drama of Israel-Palestine. Biden turns a dialogue about Israeli national security and how that country should respond to terrorism – not being a global terrorism expert, I personally don’t know! - into a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy full of belated and uneasy American guilt and doubt about its own response to terrorism and insurgency, in parts of the world that are certainly much farther away from U.S. borders than Gaza is from Israel’s.

The Biden-Netanyahu conversation also shows the first tendency of Shylockism running headlong into the second. That is, Jews claiming the right to be as bad as gentiles, because they can imagine no other recourse. We don’t know if Bibi said exactly what Biden said he did: Biden may have been hearing Israel’s leader through the same distorting field that is audible in the rest of his account. Yet much of the historical rhetoric of Zionism as well as the State of Israel’s own messaging amounts to a kind of “honesty in vice” that attempts to justify actions seen as excessive through appeals to a tarnished self-image of “Western Civilization” from which Jews were historically excluded and “Western nations” no longer want to defend.

What remains exceptional about Jews and the Jewish state is a wish to exit a state in which Jews must be exceptional, either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. But this desire to be like others is also an old wish that runs through the heart of modern Jewish experience, going at least as far back to the time of Shylock and Rodrigo Lopes, and is inextricable from the searing prejudices that provoked it, at times becoming their obverse.

In a remarkable interpretation of The Merchant of Venice that turns on the question of what it meant to be a human being and a man in 16th century Europe, the critic Marc Shell suggests that much of Shylock’s behavior is “out of character for a Jew.” Specifically, Shell notes Shylock’s contract with Antonio as being inherently goyish. As he writes, “The apparent commensurability between persons and purses which this enactment reveals turns out to be more typical of Christian law, which allows human beings to be purchased for money, than Jewish “justice” and practice, which disallow it.”

Shylock is not afraid to say or do in broad daylight—transact with human flesh—what the Venetian nobles are themselves ashamed of. Shylock’s mention of slavery is the first time slaves appear in the play, although one might wonder what cargo Antonio is indeed trading to and from Mexico and the Indies. The play’s response to this is to invoke something beyond the law: Portia’s merciless mercy dressed up in judicial robes. It is through the invocation of mercy that Shylock inherently lacks that the crimes of the nobles of Venice are made to disappear from view. Without Jewish guilt, there can be no Christian innocence. I don’t like it.

NGO Monitor: Concerns about NGOs listed in UN OCHA-oPt’s “Flash Appeal” on “Hostilities in Gaza and Israel”

On October 12, 2023, UN OCHA-oPt launched the “OPT Flash Appeal,” seeking $294 million “to address the most urgent needs of 1,260,000 people in the Gaza Strip (Gaza) and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for three months.” On November 3, the target amount was raised to $1.2 billion.

The money will go to “13 UN Agencies, 29 International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), and 38 National NGOs (NNGOs).” UNRWA was the only one of the 80 to be named in the October 12 document as an intended recipient. However, NGO Monitor researchers note that in January 2023, OCHA-oPt published a list of 78 partners that were projected to work within its “Humanitarian Response Plan” (HRP) in 2023. By cross-referencing grants listed in OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service database, NGO Monitor was able to identify, with a high level of confidence, the other two partners. (See Appendix 1.)

As of January 24, 2023, $697 million had been received as part of the Flash Appeal – by 9 UN Agencies, 22 international NGOs, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. (See Appendix 4), and an additional $250 million had been pledged.

NGO Monitor raises the following concerns regarding this appeal:
Many of these same UN agencies and NGOs were responsible for the hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid that Hamas systematically diverted for terror purposes – including for rockets and tunnels. Some of the recipients actively lobbied the US and European governments to significantly relax vetting standards meant to prevent this theft of aid. It would be irresponsible to continue funding these groups in the absence of significant changes in oversight and prevention.
At least two of the NGO partners have been sanctioned after working with terror groups:
In 2016, Mohammad El-Halabi, World Vision’s manager of operations in Gaza, was arrested by Israeli authorities, accused of diverting approximately $50 million (60% of the World Vision’s Gaza budget) to Hamas for tunnels and to fund other terrorist activity. In June 2022, the Be’er Sheva District Court convicted El-Halabi of taking “an active and significant part in the activities of Hamas and assisted Hamas over the years in a variety of ways, including transferring monies and equipment that he knew would be used to fund terrorism and assisting terrorists…marking exit points for tunnel openings on the Israeli side of the Erez Crossing…”
In January 2023, the Jerusalem District Court approved a request from the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits to disband the World Vision’s Israel branch, due to concerns of terror financing and financial mismanagement.
According to the US Department of Justice, Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) provided “material support” to Iran, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
During the current fighting, as with the past 16 years of Hamas control, the terror group has exploited humanitarian arrangements. There is no evidence to support a conclusion that the UN agencies and NGOs have will and security capabilities to prevent further large-scale abuse by Hamas and other brutal terror actors in Gaza.
A number of recipients are listed as “International NGOs (Confidential)” and “National NGOs (Confidential)” (emphasis added). The lack of transparency and the possibility that the grantees are problematic actors are concerning.

UN Agency Floats Funding For Orgs That ‘Diverted’ Aid To Hamas And Worked With ‘Terror Groups,’ Report Says

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory (UN OCHA-oPt) coordinates humanitarian action within Gaza and the West Bank, and is currently requesting a $1.2 billion total appeal for roughly 80 partners, which includes non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and sister agencies at the UN, to deliver aid to the region. In some cases, aid handled by UN OCHA-oPt’s partner NGOs has ended up being “diverted” to Hamas for “terror purposes,” according to a report from NGO Monitor obtained by the DCNF.

“Many of these same UN agencies and NGOs were responsible for the hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid that Hamas systematically diverted for terror purposes – including for rockets and tunnels,” according to the NGO Monitor report. Some of these partners lobbied the U.S. and Europe to loosen regulations and standards surrounding the delivery of aid, thereby making it directly easier for it to be stolen.

“There is no evidence to support a conclusion that the UN agencies and NGOs have will and security capabilities to prevent further large-scale abuse by Hamas and other brutal terror actors in Gaza,” the NGO Monitor report reads. “The lack of transparency and the possibility that the grantees are problematic actors are concerning.”

“At least two of the NGO partners” were previously sanctioned for ties to terrorism; World Vision’s location in Israel was approved for disbandment by an Israeli court in 2023 over terrorism financing, one year after the organization’s Gaza manager, Mohammad El-Halabi, was convicted for his “active and significant part in the activities of Hamas,” according to the report. The second, Norwegian People’s Aid, reached a settlement in 2018 after being civilly accused of providing “material support” to Iran, Hamas and other Islamic terror organizations, according to the Department of Justice.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Antisemitism is personal. Like snowflakes—no wokeness intended—no two Jews experience antisemitism the same way. Even the same Jew will experience antisemitism differently when there are multiple incidents or when exposure to antisemitism is ongoing.

Social media antisemitism is probably the safest kind of antisemitism, because the antisemite hides behind a keyboard. An ugly comment, it must be acknowledged, is not the same as being beaten by gangs. Still, there is always the possibility that the online antisemite will doxx you, or use what you write to identify you to people who could do you real harm IRL (in real life).

The comments themselves range from brainless to so ugly that you gasp out loud from the shock of it. One particular antisemitic barb will make you giggle for its stupidity, while another will make you tremble, and your eyes well up with tears. Sometimes you feel a wry sense of the familiar. This is what it is. This is our lived experience, to be hated for false reasons or for no reasons at all.

Sometimes the hurt is compounded by the attitude of the people at the top. People like Mark Zuckerberg who has made his community standards such that horrific antisemitic comments and memes are left up, while our innocent pro-Israel memes and comments are removed when reported by Arabs and their supporters.

A pattern has developed wherein I report the offensive, antisemitic post and Facebook says no, it doesn’t violate its community standards. I then appeal where they allow it, and they say no again, and the vile antisemitic post stays up.

Here are some antisemitic comments and memes that I have reported over the past several weeks. Facebook has refused to take action:

In my personal experience of social media however, the worst offender in allowing antisemitic comments and online calls for genocide, is Quora. It’s all anti-Israel, antisemitic lies and propaganda posed as questions. Sure, you can report antisemitic questions and comments and they’ll be collapsed or deleted, but repeat offenders are never banned. I think about leaving or even muting Quora all the time, but I stay, mostly to encourage those still interested in learning the truth about the Jewish people and Israel.

Here’s a selection of 26 antisemitic Quora questions that have accumulated over the past 12 days and are awaiting my attention—for me to either reply or pass:

1. With the utmost respect intended, how is it possible for so many average Israelis on sites as this to defend their state's ongoing assault on Gaza, when even such mainstream " Western " sources like Oxfam attest to its singular level of brutality?

2. Why did Hamas commit terrorism against Israel which can annihilate itself entirely?

3. Does Satan support Israel victory over the people of Palestine?

4. Has Trump asked Netanyahu to cause maximum embarrassment for Biden, with Israel's assault on Gaza, by completely ignoring Biden's pleas for restraint?

5. Would there have been more outcry against Israel's actions if any major Fortune 100 companies had been headquartered in Gaza?

6. Would people who oppose Yemen's blockade of Israel-linked ships also have opposed the partisans who blew up Nazi train lines?

7. Why is Palestine more pro-American and trustworthy than Israel?

8. Are Israelis going to give the stolen land back to the Palestinians and stop their thieving ways?

9. Why doesn't Israel just give back the land it won and pretend the war never happened and we get a 2 state solution?

10. Why are Israelis basically flat out admitting to genocidal intent by calling approximately 1.15 million minors (including children) terrorists and "the enemy" when asked why Israel was withholding water, food and medicine from them if not genocide?

11. It’s only a matter of time until our generation is elected to office, and the rogue terrorist state of Israel will cease to exist, but what can we do in the meantime to stop Israel's bloodbath?

12. What is the reasoning behind Israel refusing to embed journalists to show the world Hamas is still aggressive and leaving the world to only see civilian suffering? [untrue]

13. It was just last year that Israel was funding Hamas millions of dollars in cash and weapons. What happened that made Hamas attack the people that support them?

14. Do you think Israel will rebuild Gaza for the Palestinians, or do you think they will just steal the land?

15. Why does Africa love Hamas so much, should Israel start a war with them?

16. Why do the Zionists in the social media persistently seek to dehumanize the Palestinians, despite having themselves been subjected to similar dehumanization tactics by Hitler that led to genocide against them?

17. Why does America seem unable to influence or control Israel, while other countries supporting Palestine exert more control over the situation?

18. Is Israel’s attack on Gaza legitimate?

19. Why am I seeing so many Israeli propaganda posts in my feed?

20. Polls show Israel has completely lost younger Americans with 74% or more disapproving of how it has handled the Hamas-Israel war. Has Netanyahu and his right wing government permanently damaged the US - Israel relationship or can it come back? [false]

21. Why was the USA disturbed by the disruption of navigation in the Red Sea and not disturbed by genocidal crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, but rather supported it in that?

22. Is the only way of stopping Israel's slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza for ten [sic] USA to withdraw all support from Israel? If so, isn't it morally incumbent on them to do so?

23. Why is Western media calling the Palestinian genocide a war, and censoring people in support of Palestine?

24. Is Israel using artificial intelligence to deny humanity and wage war?

25. Is someone who supports both Israel in Gaza and Russia in Ukraine a pawn of the Likud?

26. Is it true that the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th was relatively hilarious?

That last query was actually older, from early December 2023. I leave it in my inbox as a future reminder of a time when the world was once again overrun by masses of people rejoicing at Jewish suffering while too many watched on, indifferent. Atrocities are never hilarious. Good people know this. Yet Quora, as powerful as it is, with its 400 million active monthly users, leaves this question up on its website where it has sat now for seven weeks. Is Quora’s indifference to antisemitism evidence of malfeasance? Is Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to ban evil antisemitic memes and comments, evidence of his malfeasance?

Which leads to another question: Are antisemitic evil, hate, and depravity still real if they exist only in the virtual halls of Quora and Facebook? The answer depends on your personal experience of antisemitism. One Jew will laugh off an antisemitic comment, or block it from their consciousness, while others may feel hurt or anger. But no matter how a Jew experiences antisemitism, some damage is done, even if the “damage” consists of absorbing the bitter lesson that not all, or even most people are good.

It’s a lesson that Jews have been forced to learn and relearn over millennia, a lesson that perhaps even Anne Frank was forced to learn in the end. We’ll never know, because Anne Frank was murdered before she could tell us, because she was a Jew.

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!

ITV has a distressing video showing a man in Gaza, with a white flag, being shot and killed.

Nowhere in the video do we see any IDF soldiers.

Yet everyone reporting on this story, somehow, "knows" that Ramzi Abu Sahloul was killed by an "IDF sniper."

Not one news outlet asks a basic question: who gains more from a man being shot with a group holding a white flag? Israel or Hamas?

Add to that question: We know that Hamas' entire military strategy is based on using Gaza civilians as human shields. And their political strategy is based on pressuring Israel to stop fighting using world pressure, partially based on a spiraling death count that Hamas wholly controls.

Every Gaza civilian who is killed makes the IDF's job harder.

Any sniper who could take that shot could also clearly see the cameraman who was interviewing the victim shortly beforenahd, as well as the white flag.

Why on Earth would any IDF sniper do such a thing that would do nothing but hurt the war effort?

And, why on Earth would Hamas not want to kill a civilian in front of Western cameras? Does anyone think at this point that Hamas cares about the lives of Palestinians, when they have never lifted a finger to protect a single one, and on the contrary, they have done everything they can to endanger them?

There is zero evidence from this video of who shot Abu Sahloul. Hamas has huge incentive, and the IDF has huge disincentive, to kill him.

Michael Elgort adds:

1. Israeli army is right now about 6-7 kilometers away from the Al Mawasi humanitarian safe zone (see the recent map from January 21 below), the ground forces of IDF are not in Al Mawasi or anywhere near. There is no existing sniper rifle that can cover that long range (mostly they are good for along shot between 1000-1500 meters, rarely slightly farther)

2. We can hear automatic gun fire in the video, not a single shot fire that sniper rifle produces, which implies we hear a machine gun fire (like M-16 or Kalashnikov) and effective range for those are between 500 to 550 meters for M-16 and 350 meters for Kalashnikov.
3. The clip is edited between the time we hear gunshots and we see the body - it misses several seconds of the footage and these are important seconds, because during these seconds the person was hit with a bullet
4. We do not see on the video any armed person, we do not have a clear visual on the body either, the angle does not allow us to see where he was hit and from which direction, what we see is that he is covered with a white piece of cloth and dragged to a nearby area behind the fence

It is unconscionable that the media reports this story as if it knows how Abu Sahloul was killed. They don't. And all the circumstantial evidence we have points away from the IDF and towards Gaza armed groups.

Assuming that Abu Sahloul must have been killed by Israel is not journalism.

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!