Friday, January 26, 2024

Arabic media cheers as Egyptian schoolchildren perform in an antisemitic play

From El Watan News (Egypt) and other Arabic news sites:

"The Message" is a theatrical performance presented by the children of the schools of the Al-Ajami Educational Administration in Alexandria. It tells the history of the exile of the Jews to the land of Palestine. It reveals plans that were carried out and whose goal was to exile the Jews far from Europe and to expel them, because they are arrogant terrorists and the cause of the destruction of many European countries.

The goal of the theatrical performance is to introduce new generations to the history of the Palestinian issue with the Zionist enemy.

Ahmed Al-Rifai, the author of the play and head of the theatrical team in the schools participating in the show under the Al-Ajami Educational Administration, told Al-Watan that the show tells the story from the beginning of the Lebanese Sursock family buying land in Palestine from the Ottoman Empire and then the Jews obtaining it through gambling, and it was a haven for the Jews. Only after they were successively expelled from European countries by strict royal decrees, did they then flock to Palestine and formed a lobby that penetrated until there was a state, and they named it after the Prophet of God, Israel, “our master Jacob.”

30 children participate. 3 schools show and the work is presented in several languages at the same time.

Yes, most Arab children really do learn to hate Jews with their mothers' milk.

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!

01/26 Links Pt1: ICJ rejects South African bid to halt war against Hamas; U.S. halts UNRWA funding over staffers’ involvement with Oct. 7 terror attacks

From Ian:

Top UN court rejects South African bid to halt war against Hamas

The International Court of Justice, the main judicial arm of the United Nations, rejected a request on Friday from South Africa to order a halt to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In its provisional ruling, the high court insisted that the Jewish state take all necessary means to prevent actions that could lead to genocide, and it dismissed South Africa’s demand that residents of the northern Gaza Strip be allowed to return to the area immediately.

A final decision from the court could take years. Friday’s ruling is binding according to international law, yet the court lacks an enforcement mechanism.

The court, which is based in The Hague, ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, to ensure that Israel Defense Forces troops do not commit acts of genocide and to punish alleged public incitement to genocide.

The ruling also called on Jerusalem to “take effective measures to preserve evidence” of military actions that might fall under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and submit a report to the court within a month.

Israel must also take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently-needed, basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians” in the enclave, which is controlled by the Hamas terror group.

‘Mark of disgrace’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the court “rightly rejected the outrageous demand to deny” Israel the right to defend itself against terrorism.

“The very claim that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians is not just false, it is outrageous, and the court’s willingness to discuss it at all is a mark of disgrace that will not be erased for generations,” he added.

Netanyahu vowed to continue the war against Hamas until “absolute victory,” and until all 136 hostages are returned and Gazans no longer pose a threat to Israel.

Ruth Wisse: Kafka at the International Court of Justice

“Are you reminded of Kafka’s The Trial?” a reporter asks me, echoing cries of “insane” and “Kafkaesque” that I’ve been hearing from many of my fellow Jews about proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide for defending itself against the explicitly genocidal attacks of Hamas. But no, the case before the ICJ is not like the work Kafka wrote in German in Prague during the First World War. Der Process was angst; this is evil.

Kafka’s classic novel opens on a mystery we expect the rest of the book to solve: “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” A regular legal case reveals who is leveling the accusation and provides relevant details of the alleged crime. But Joseph K. never learns what he stands accused of, by whom, or under what authority. In this state of indeterminacy, no man can prove his innocence. Unable to figure out the system that has put him on trial, he is ultimately killed. “It was as if the shame of it must outlive him.”

Joseph K.—the deracinated Jew with a truncated identity who stands politically and metaphysically at the mercy of forces he no longer understands—became a universal symbol of modern man’s fate at the hands of the very institutions he looks to for guidance. But Kafka himself came to realize the implications of what he had written, and by the time of his death in 1924 he was studying Hebrew with the intention of moving to Palestine. Several members of his Zionist circle did move to Jerusalem, and one brought with him Kafka’s archive, where it now rests in the National Library of Israel.

By the time Kafka’s sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, several waves of Jews had established the infrastructure for statehood in the land of Israel that had been under foreign occupation for 2,000 years. That return of the Jews to political sovereignty is one of the great chapters in human history. Had the Arabs, their fellow Semites, accepted the principle of coexistence, the Middle East—numbering one Jewish state among more than 20 Arab neighbors—would have flourished in peace and prosperity. Instead, Arab and Muslim factions still compete over who can best whom at destroying the Jews.

Hamas recently beat the competition with a demonstration of savagery unlike the earlier improvised pogroms in Europe to which it has been compared. October’s slaughters were plotted with crucial input from Gazans employed in Israeli homes they had scouted and mapped for the purpose, making this the first military campaign designed to culminate in acts of beheading, torture, and rape of predetermined victims. As attempts to destroy Israel through conventional warfare had only made Israel militarily stronger, the new tactics aimed at destroying the Jews’ will to remain among antagonists sworn never to leave them in peace. More than to intimidate, these attacks were made to demoralize.

Survivor-witnesses describe new refinements of psychological warfare. Hamas murdered parents and children in each other’s presence so as to sharpen the survivors’ agony. They took hostages—not, as others do, for eventual exchange—but to taunt the country with images of prisoners’ suffering, and fear that many would never be returned. Every Jewish value—respect for women, honoring the human being who was made in the image of God—was gleefully defiled.

As for the Jews living in nearby Gaza, many of them self-described Jewish “peaceniks,” they had prided themselves on the medical help and hospitality they extended to their Gazan neighbors, persuaded that cooperation was obviously to everyone’s benefit. The terrorists exploited the Jews’ desire for peace as a means of entrapment and further opportunity for torment. By attacking on a Jewish holiday and a secular festival, they intended to destroy the Israelis’ joy in life. Anyone reading Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s exhilarating book about the collective strengths that constitute The Genius of Israel will recognize how Hamas turned precisely those virtues into weapons of torture to tear the Jewish people apart.

Alan Dershowitz: This ICJ compromise means Israel will continue its honourable quest for justice

The ICJ’s decision was written by one of its real judges — an independent jurist who does not take orders from the nation that appointed her. Other judges on the court are simply pawns in their countries foreign policy. It’s surprising therefore that this compromise decision, despite its lecturing tone, was rendered by a court that includes a Hezbollah-appointed judge from Lebanon.

Previous decisions on the court have been entirely political and deserving of no respect. This decision deserves the respect of a thoughtful law review article written by a distinguished professor of international law, but because of the makeup of the so-called court, it does not deserve the respect accorded independent judicial authorities.

Wearing robes does not turn politicians and diplomats into judges. To be a real judge, a lawyer must be completely independent of the government that appointed her or him. The ICJ can never be a real court, as long as the appointment and removal process of its judges remain in the hands of individual countries. The International Criminal Court is somewhat better in this regard, because its judges are not answerable — at least in theory — to their countries of origin. But in practice, many of its judges are in fact beholden to their countries.

International law, and especially the law of war, is largely an academic enterprise. Enforced mechanisms are entirely political and not deserving of the respect accorded real judges.

So let Israel continue in its honourable quest for justice regarding the past atrocities committed by Hamas, and the prevention of future atrocities promised by Hamas leaders. When Israel next reports to the court in 30 days, hopefully the war will be winding down and fewer civilians will be killed. Already the number of civilian deaths has decreased dramatically, but the best way to reduce any further would be for the international community to enforce international law that prohibits the use by Hamas of human shields. Unless the ICJ addresses the Hamas war crimes, it will deserve no respect.

In the New York Times, an associate professor from The New School named Sean Jacobs gushes over the morality of his native South Africa charging Israel with "genocide" at the ICJ:

On the eve of the hearing, a friend messaged me from Cape Town: “It feels a little bit like Christmas Eve or something here. Or the night before a big final.” Because of the time difference, I watched a recorded version once I got to my office on Jan. 11, the first of two days of hearings. By then, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on Palestine, had already sent a message on X that “watching African women & men fighting to save humanity” from the “ruthless attacks supported/enabled by most of the West will remain one of the defining images of our time. This will make history whatever happens.”

As a Black South African who grew up during the nation’s liberation struggle and came of age watching the birth of South African democracy, for me, Albanese’s words resonated.

[By] forcing the International Court of Justice to act, South Africa is putting down a marker for global civil society. South Africa stepped up. It showed what we could be and how groups that have faced oppression and violence can stand up confidently for one another on the world stage.

So moral! So righteous!

And so silent on Arabs deliberately murdering many black Africans on the same continent, in the same place that there has been a real genocide two decades ago!

As summarized in Just Security last month:

Less than 20 years after the Darfur genocide unfolded, history is repeating itself. The current conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group established by Sudan’s deposed president Omar al-Bashir, has already claimed the lives of more than 12,000 and displaced more than six million people since it broke out in April.

This is all happening against the backdrop of one of the world’s largest, most pressing humanitarian disasters. According to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), approximately 25 million Sudanese people, or half the country, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. In Darfur, hundreds of miles away from Khartoum, the indigenous non-Arab ethnic groups are even more vulnerable, living under the reign of RSF terror and genocidal violence. The RSF has left a trail of mass atrocities in its wake with near impunity, reminiscent of the same brutal tactics used by the Janjaweed in the 2000s. Today, the RSF, as the Janjaweed’s successor entity, is committing the same atrocities and targeting the same indigenous groups on the international community’s watch. During the Janjaweed atrocities of the 2000s, policymakers not only failed to act in time to prevent genocide but even downplayed the nature of the violence to preserve other political interests. This time, there can be no debate over the magnitude of the horrors facing non-Arab ethnic groups at the hands of the RSF, or excuse for the repetition of our collective failure to uphold the promise of never again.

The Economist describes how the Arab RSF is murdering all the men they can find, shooting babies and raping women:

Hanan Khamis just wanted to get to safety. In mid-June, after surviving weeks of gunfire and rockets directed at the Masalit, a black African ethnic group, she fled el-Geneina, the capital of the state of West Darfur in Sudan. Hoisting her 23-month-old baby boy, Sabir, onto her back she started walking towards Chad. Yet fighters wearing the uniforms of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soon surrounded them. They dragged men to the side of the road and told the women to run. Before she could do so, a gunman wrenched open the shawl on her back that covered Sabir. “No men can escape to Chad,” he shouted. Then he shot her baby in the head.

In Chad a humanitarian worker identifies four other mothers who tell of similar horrors. One says she was stopped at a roadblock where Arab militiamen murdered the men in her group. When they saw her 15-month-old son strapped to her, they shot him dead as he clung to her. The bullet burst through his tiny body and into hers, where it remains lodged. “If that isn’t a genocidal act, I don’t know what is,” says Mukesh Kapila, a former un chief in Sudan who blew the whistle on massacres in Darfur 20 years ago.

Zahara Adam Khamis, a women’s rights activist, weeps as she recounts how a 27-year-old university student she knows was gang-raped by five militiamen in front of her mother. ”The baby will be Arab,” they said as they finished.

In November, CNN aired this searing report showing videos of atrocities by the Arab gangs against Black African tribes:

Sean Jacobs founded a website called Africa Is A Country. But he hasn't written or tweeted a word about Darfur or Sudan over the past year. And he has tweeted obsessively about Israel, dozens of times, i the same timeframe.

And the government of South Africa has been curiously silent about the targeting and murder of Black Africans much closer than Gaza. The only statement they made was out the outset of the war, expressing concern - but the words "Masalit" and "RSF" or "Darfur" are not to be found in any of their official statements.

Using the ICJ case as proof of South Africa's concern over human rights is absurd, when that country doesn't defend Black Africans being systematically murdered on its own continent. The South African case against Israel while ignoring actual attacks against its fellow Africans in truth indicates antisemitism, not human rights.

Not surprisingly, in its bio of Jacobs, the New York Times edited a book titled "Apartheid Israel." The New York Times didn't mention that he has a vested interest in this topic.

And if you want one more example of the world's hypocrisy, in 2009, the UN said that what happened in Darfur was not genocide, saying, "the crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central government authorities are concerned."

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!

Israeli hacker group is sending very strong messages to Iran: "We can really, really hurt you if we want"

Wired has a fascinating story about the Israel-based Predatory Sparrow hacking group and their majr attacks against Iranian infrastructure.

These attacks go beyond defacing or taking down websites. They are actually affecting the lives of Iranians, and they show that cyberwar can not only affect cyberspace but the real world as well.

Predatory Sparrow is distinguished most of all by its apparent interest in sending a specific geopolitical message with its attacks, says Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, an analyst at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne who has tracked the group for years. Those messages are all variations on a theme: If you attack Israel or its allies, we have the ability to deeply disrupt your civilization. “They're showing that they can reach out and touch Iran in meaningful ways,” Guerrero-Saade says. “They're saying, ‘You can prop up the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah in these proxy wars. But we, Predatory Sparrow, can dismantle your country piece by piece without having to move from where we are.’”

But the group is calibrating its message:

SentinelOne’s Guerrero-Saade argues that [their] actions suggest that Predatory Sparrow may be the first effective example of what cyber policy wonks refer to as “signaling”—using cyberattack capabilities to send messages designed to deter an adversary's behavior. That's because, he says, the group has combined a relatively restrained and discriminating approach to its politically motivated hacking with a clear demonstration of willingness to use its capabilities for broad effects—a willingness, he points out, that the United States’ hacking agencies, like the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, have often lacked.

“There’s no such thing as effective signaling if you can’t show credibly to the other person that not only do you have the capability, but that you’re willing to use it,” Guerrero-Saade says.

The article lists several specific attacks.

In 2021, Predatory Sparrow triggered malware on Iranian transportation systems, forcing train delays and other problems.

Later that year, the group performed a limited attack on Iranian gas station point of sale systems, but made it clear that they could have caused far more damage. They even warned Iranian emergency services to fill up their vehicles with fuel before the attack.

The next next attack was game changing. "In June of 2022, Predatory Sparrow carried out one of the most brazen acts of cybersabotage in history, triggering the spillage of molten steel at Iran's Khouzestan steel mill that caused a fire in the facility."

And recently, the group repeated its attack on gas stations in Iran, causing chaos for drivers.

There are other attacks attributed to Israel itself that have affected real world living in Iran. The Stuxnet attack on an Iranian nuclear plant was the most famous one. And in 2020, Israel is suspected to have mounted a cyberattack on an Iranian port, effectively stopping most imports to Iran from sea for days. This was in response to an Iranian attempt to poison Israel's water system in its own cyberattack.

Cyberwar is real. And it has real-world consequences. But it is not only limited to state actors, and talented private individuals and groups can cause mass chaos if they choose.

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!

Al Jazeera Arabic features a 30 minute long interview - in English - with Moshe Aryeh Friedman, who they describe as a "haredi Jewish rabbi" and "former chief rabbi of Austria."

He tells them what they want to hear - that the war in Gaza is a genocide that is the worst in history.

He said in the interview that history “will condemn everyone who stood silent in the face of the bloodbath now flowing in the Gaza Strip, which exceeds all the massacres of history,” including, he said, the Holocaust.

In reality, Friedman was never chief rabbi of Austria, and he does not appear to have even ever been ordained.

He attended the infamous Holocaust denial conference in Iran in 2007 and embraced then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the conference he said he didn't deny the Holocaust, but claimed that only one million Jews perished - which indeed makes him a Holocaust denier.

The Austrian Jewish community then excommunicated him, forcing him to move to Boro Park in Brooklyn.

There Friedman and his family moved into two apartments but refused to pay rent for two years. It appears he was evicted as a result, and then moved to Antwerp in 2011, where the schools refused to admit his children because of his noxious views on the Holocaust.

The supposedly religious "rabbi" then sued to allow his boys to attend an all-girls Belzer hasidic Jewish school. He lost that case on appeal.

This is the "rabbi" that Al Jazeera is pretending is a respected scholar and religious figure.

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 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.)

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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.

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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?

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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.