Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 01, 2024

02/01 Links Pt1: Designate UNRWA as a Terrorist Organization; Glick: The New Hostage Deal EXPLAINED & Why It Means Israel's Defeat

From Ian:

Andrew McCarthy: Designate UNRWA as a Terrorist Organization

The UNRWA is not “politicized,” as intelligence officials gently put it. The UNRWA is jihadi-cized.

As Noah Rothman forcefully argues, we should cut off the United Nations, period. But to have restored support for UNRWA is an abomination worthy of the Biden administration itself being cited for knowingly supporting a terrorist organization.

There are no virtually no refugees among the approximately 5.5 million Palestinians resident in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem. It was estimated that 700,000 were displaced in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence; of those, as former Trump secretary of state Mike Pompeo has observed, fewer than 200,000 Arabs remain. Meanwhile, generations of Palestinians have grown up in the Palestinian territories since the U.N. was established after World War II. They are not refugees seeking a homeland; they have one — one for which they demand recognition as a sovereign country (which they could long ago have had if they renounced terrorism and conceded Israel’s right to exist, instead of committing to terrorism as a means of swallowing Israel — “from the river to the sea”).

Yet the U.N. and UNRWA persist in the “refugee” fraud in tandem with the demand by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that the refugees be granted a “right of return” to homes in Israel. This patently unacceptable condition perpetuates the conflict while undermining Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign state (rather than a “settler-colonialist” intruder). Rather than “relief and works,” what UNRWA provides, thanks to its underwriting by Americans and citizens of other nations, is rabid antisemitic indoctrination, rockets, and jihadists — for both Hamas (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The revelations about UNRWA’s complicity in the October 7 atrocities are nothing new. UNRWA’s willful support of terrorism has been open and notorious for decades, notwithstanding the determination not to notice by the State Department under various American administrations (Trump’s honorably excepted).

In making the determination to designate UNRWA as what it is, a sponsor of terrorism, the fact that it is an arm of the despicable U.N. should be of no moment. In 2019, our government designated the nation of Iran’s principal military arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a foreign terrorist organization. And on significantly less evidence of hands-on jihadist activity than exists with respect to UNRWA, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was designated by our government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist government in 2001 because of its financial support of Hamas.

A terrorist designation would make it politically untenable for the United States government to provide one more dime of American taxpayer funding to UNRWA, and to provide funding to any entity, including the U.N., that supports it. If we are serious about condemning and combating terrorism, that is as it must be.

Einat Wilf: Without UNRWA there would be no Hamas — it must be dismantled

In practice the Palestinian “refugee” issue is quite small. Only around two to three hundred thousand people living in Lebanon and Syria are either the real original refugees (the ones who escaped the war from 1947-1949) or their status deprived descendants who are in need of settlement in place or resettlement in third countries. These are small numbers that the actual UN agency for refugees is quite capable of managing. But the issue was never practical, it was always symbolic, the purpose being to keep the Palestinian “refugee” issue as the living symbol that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is temporary.

Not only are those registered as “Palestine Refugees” not refugees by any international standards, but they also do not possess a “right of return”, meaning a right that supersedes Israeli sovereignty to settle within the sovereign territory of Israel. Such right for a people who were never citizens of a country, that supersedes the right of sovereign countries to control their borders and decide who become their citizens, simply does not exist. Even the various UNGA resolutions that Palestinians cite, do not support such a right. But Palestinians believe they have such a “right” and have forged themselves into a nation based on the singular commitment to “return” and revenge.

It should therefore come as no surprise that UNRWA has given rise to generations of trained murderers who took pride in the slaughter of Jews, whether the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics of 1972, or the peace supporting Kibbutzniks on Oct. 7. Even if UNRWA employees were not directly involved in murdering Jews, and we know that several of them were, given that their entire ideology is about undoing the Jewish state, their continued existence all but ensures that such organizations, whether Black September or Hamas, will always rise to fulfill that goal.

I have spent 14 years by now researching UNRWA, writing and speaking about it and advocating for its dismantlement. The only reason I devoted my time and capabilities to doing so is that, contrary to the reigning impression, UNRWA and the Palestinian “refugee” issue are not marginal aspects of the conflict. They are at the core of the conflict and the reason for its perpetuation. The conflict has always been about one thing and one thing only, the Arab rejection of the Jewish right to self determination in any part of the Jewish historical homeland. Everything else has been the outcome of that single rejection. UNRWA has been one of the most substantial forces in ensuring that this rejection not only never ends, but is indulged, supported and magnified to become the core element of an entire people.

I have always supported the idea that the Jews and Arabs of the land would be best served governing themselves by themselves in states of their own — known as the two-state solution. I continue to support that idea, but I now consider myself a long-term peace activist. Precisely because I continue to be committed to peace, I understand there can be no peace as long as the fundamental reason for the century long war waged by the Arabs against a Jewish state remains. For there to be peace, the war must first end, and the war cannot end if there is an organization, supported by Canada and other Western powers, that does everything possible to ensure it continues.

UNRWA exists only to push the delusion that Israel is a temporary state

Generations of Palestinians have been brought up in this delusion. The Palestinian identity forged in UNRWA schools over the years relies upon a mythology of unique victimhood, unforgivable dispossession, the glorification of violence and martyrdom, and the ineradicable wickedness of the Jews. The result: Black September, Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the lot.

UNRWA has been fostering and incubating this sociopathology ever since the agency was established in December, 1949. For a thorough survey of the tragedy, read The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed The Path To Peace, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf.

During the middle years of the 20th Century, the wars and upheavals in Europe and Asia disgorged tens of millions of refugees. Roughly 14 million Muslims and Hindus were uprooted and resettled on the Indian subcontinent. Ten million ethnic Germans were driven out of Eastern Europe after the Second World War, eventually finding a home in West Germany. A million North Vietnamese settled in South Vietnam in the 1950s, 600,000 Chinese fled to Hong Kong after Mao’s triumph in 1949, and three million Koreans fled the north to settle in South Korea during the early 1950s.

The convulsions brought about by the Arab States’ war against the newly independent state of Israel and their refusal to accept the UN’s partition plan resulted in the displacement of about 700,000 Palestinians, while an equal number of Jews were driven from their ancient communities across the Arab World, settling in Israel.

Of all these displaced populations, only the Palestinians were relegated to a kind of permanent limbo, ending up in 58 “refugee camps” in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan (UNRWA’s jurisdiction is separate from the UN High Commission for Refugees). Apart from Jordan, the Arab states still refuse to grant “Palestinian refugees” permanent status and integrate them into their societies. To do so would be to tacitly admit the Arab states’ loss in the 1940s, Israel’s victory, and the permanence of the Jewish state.

During the Cold War, the United States abandoned the hope of Palestinian integration and let the Arab states have their way with UNRWA. In 1965, UNRWA decided that the children of Palestinians born after 1948 were eligible for registration. In 1982, the UN General Assembly extended eligibility to all descendants of the first Palestinian refugees. From that initial population of 700,000, “Palestinian refugees” now number 5.6 million people.

The last time the liberal democracies toyed with the idea of abolishing UNRWA was in 1959. Reform won’t work. The liberal democracies provide the bulk of UNRWA’s funding, but until there is some “international community” route around UNRWA to get life-saving aid to the hundreds of thousands of Gazans living in the rubble, we’re stuck with it. Even so, sooner or later, it has got to go.

Tunnels? What are tunnels? The @NYTimes doesn't seem to know

The New York Times published yet another extensive anti-Israel story, complete with no fewer than 43 photos, videos and illustrations, of Israeli controlled demolitions in Gaza.

The reasons that the IDF is destroying buildings are barely addressed. The thrust of the article is widespread destruction, and any reasons given for such destruction are treated skeptically.

Yet a close look at the evidence in the article itself indicates that the IDF has very specific, solid reasons for each and every controlled demolition.

For example, one demolition is described this way:

Another demolition in December destroyed over a dozen buildings around the city’s central Palestine Square, which the Israeli military said was home to a large network of tunnels.

Here's the video:

The explosion is in a straight line. The tunnels and their shafts were the primary targets, not the buildings themselves.

This is the only mention of the word tunnels in the article, although it admits in passing that "in some videos, the demolitions appear to be targeting underground infrastructure. "

Here is one diagram showing how the Israeli demolitions follow a right angle, strongly indicating a tunnel system underneath:

Even when the tunnels aren't an obvious target, Israeli demolition engineers are careful to avoid collateral damage outside the targets themselves. Check out this diagram:

Look at how the perimeter of the damage is so unusually shaped, with buildings surrounded by the explosions untouched - even a building with a curved facade:

This is not wanton destruction for no discernible reason, as the article implies. These are military targets. Buildings that are not targets are not destroyed.

The few times the article quotes Israeli claims it shows skepticism:

While the site had been cleared and secured by Israeli ground troops, military officials said it had once served as a Hamas training camp and weapons-manufacturing facility — a claim The Times was unable to verify.

But claims by Palestinian officials who pretend to be able to read Jewish minds don't require any verification or skepticism at all:

“Israel’s plan is to destroy Gaza and make it unliveable and lifeless,” said Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain. “Israel’s goal has always been to make it impossible for our people to return to their land.”

As always, the Times finds an "expert" to support what the article is heavily implying, that there is no military necessity for these demolitions:

“That it has previously been used by enemy fighters is not a justification for such a destruction,” said Marco Sassòli, a professor of international law at the University of Geneva, who emphasized that such demolitions should only be carried out if absolutely necessary for military operations. “I cannot imagine how this can be the case for a university, parliament building, mosque, school or hotel in the midst of the Gaza Strip.”

Sassòli's lack of imagination is extensive. We know that Hamas used universities for manufacturing bombs, "parliament buildings" to plan attacks, mosques to serve as weapons depots and cover for tunnel shafts, schools as rocket storage and protection for underground military locations, and hotels as command and control centers.

Israel has intelligence that the New York Times and that know-it-all professors do not have. The patterns of attack even in this article indicates very specific targets, not random destruction for destruction's sake.

But what is arguably worse is the subliminal anger that the article, and hundreds like it, exhibit towards Israel. And they are meant to get the reader to be angry as well. There are very few similar articles that show the same level of anger at Hamas for deliberately turning civilian objects into military centers. The extent of this plan to turn all of Gaza into a shield for Hamas' terror infrastructure - the thousands of tunnel shafts, hundreds of miles of tunnels, weapons discovered in hospitals and schools - are not treated with anything close to the same level of vitriol that Israeli actions are.

The military assets found and documented by Israel are always treated as if they are suspect, but unfounded implications that Israel has no reason to blow things up are the headlines.

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!

As reported, the Houthi attacks on worldwide shipping is hitting Egypt's economy very hard, as hundreds of ships are avoiding the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Yet Egypt rejected joining the coalition of nations confronting the Houthi threat to shipping. Indeed, Egypt has not publicly rebuked the Houthi government for its actions and its media is silent on its resulting economic difficulties. According to analysts, Egypt wants to maintain good relations with all Arab countries and groups, allowing it to mediate in conflicts. Egypt is also skittish because of its own disastrous involvement in the North Yemen Civil War in the 1960s.

Instead, the Egyptians quietly initiated communications with the Houthis through security channels asking them to only attack ships heading to Israel or otherwise linked to Israel.

According to a source speaking to Al Araby al Jadeed, "the Egyptian-Houthi communications, in which Iran was a party, included Egyptian demands that the Houthis repeat assurances that these operations only target ships related to Israel and announce guarantees for that, in a way that encourages ships that are not covered by the warning to pass through."

The Houthis refused, but communicated their appreciation that Egypt did not join forces protecting the Red Sea traffic. The Egyptians also asked Iran directly to intervene with the Houthis, and that request was also rejected.

Publicly, however, Egypt has blamed the Houthi actions squarely on Israel.

On Sunday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry spoke at a press conference following a meeting in Cairo with his Saudi counterpart Faisal bin Farhan, where he held Israel responsible for the tensions in the Red Sea. He stressed that freedom of global navigation and trade are established international rights and principles that everyone must abide by, yet added that "the risks that the Red Sea is witnessing are a direct result of the tension in the region due to Israeli practices in Gaza," accepting Houthi claims that they are somehow protecting Gaza.

Israel, naturally, is upset at Egypt for throwing the Jewish state under the bus. The two nations had signed an agreement in 2022 to increase Israeli gas sent to Egypt where it would be liquified and then sent to Europe suffering energy shortages from the Russian war on Ukraine. This is an important income source for Egypt.

Israel shut down the Tamar gas field after October 7 because of Hamas rocket fire and this reduced the amount of gas exported to Egypt, but it re-opened the field and resumed exports to Egypt a month later. At the moment Israeli natural gas exports to Egypt exceed the amounts before October 7.

Even during wartime, Israel is working hard to help Egypt economically at a time when Cairo in dire need of economic aid.

Egypt's response is to tell jihadists to attack Israeli assets.

It is very much a one-way friendship.

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!

Sheikh Khaled Al-Jundi, who is a major figure in Egypt and a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, was interviewed on Egypt's DMC satellite channel on Wednesday in the program “May They Understand, " about a favorite topic in the Arab world: Jews.

DMC is widely believed to be controlled by the Egyptian military.

During the interview, which was widely cited in major Egyptian media, Al-Jindi said that the Jews pretend they are oppressed and victims, even though they are killers of children, women, and the elderly, and enemies of civilization.

He added that Jews are raised on treachery and betrayal. Lying and falsifying facts are part of the nature of the Children of Israel, according to Al-jundi.

El Balad expanded on the theme, appending to their article about the interview an expanded description of the evil of Jews by Dr. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the late Sheikh of Al-Azhar. He listed a catalog of terrible attributes of Jews all mentioned in the Quran, including disbelief, ingratitude, selfishness, arrogance, cowardice, lying, deceit, disobedience, transgression, cruelty, perversion of character, hastening into sin and transgression, and consuming people’s wealth unjustly.

As I've been cataloging, this sort of thing is published every day in Arabic media. It is pure hate and incitement.

But hey - they aren't antisemitic. They must be really talking about "Zionists."

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!

01/31 Links Pt2: Bibi: UNRWA gave ICJ false information against Israel; BMG dumps anti-Israel musician Roger Waters; Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk Discuss DEI, Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Netanyahu: UNRWA gave ICJ false information against Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of providing false information against Israel to the International Court of Justice at The Hague during a conversation he held with a delegation of visiting ambassadors on Wednesday night.

“Many of the charges, false and unfounded, that were leveled against us in The Hague were brought by UNRWA officials,” Netanyahu charged.

He spoke close to one week after the ICJ issued a provisional order against Israel in which it asked it to refrain from acts that could lead to genocide against the Palestinians but fell short of asking it to stop its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

It listed UNRWA as one of the organizations that provided it with information, on which it based its ruling.

Israel has rejected all genocide accusations and has argued that it is Hamas that seeks to annihilate the Jewish people. It has been said that the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 253 were seized as hostage, is proof of those genocidal intentions.

“The only time that we've seen anything like that directed against the Jewish people was in the Holocaust,” Netanyahu told the delegation of ambassadors from different countries stationed at the UN headquarters in New York.

Netanyahu: "UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas"
On the same day as the ICJ issued its order, Israel provided UNRWA with information that 12 of its staff members had participated in the October 7 attack. UNRWA summarily fired nine of those staff members.

In the wake of the accusations 18 countries, including the US, have suspended funding to UNRWA. The agency has warned that unless the suspensions are rescinded it would not be able to provide vital humanitarian aid to the 5.9 million Palestinians it services in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Netanyahu has persistently called for the agency to be replaced.

He told the ambassadors that “UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas. It has been in the service of Hamas and its schools, and in many other things.

“I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid. We need such a body today in Gaza. But UNRWA is not that body. It has to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that job.”

‘UNRWA Is a Front for Hamas,’ Israel Says. Read the Full Intelligence Dossier.

Israel this week shared with the Washington Free Beacon and other news outlets a declassified intelligence dossier detailing how the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency has allegedly been compromised by Hamas. About 10 percent of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's some 12,000 workers in Gaza are Hamas or Islamic Jihad "operatives," according to the document, and at least 13 participated in Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack in southern Israel.

"UNRWA is a front for Hamas," Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said during a briefing on Tuesday that marked the 116th day of the war in Gaza.

The dossier—based on signals intelligence, interrogations of Hamas terrorists, and documents recovered in Gaza—was part of an Israeli briefing of U.S. officials that convinced Washington and others to suspend funding to UNRWA. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken on Monday called the findings "highly, highly credible." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday welcomed the world body's announced investigation of UNRWA. She said the United States would need to see "fundamental changes" to the agency before any resumption of funding.

Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk Discuss DEI, Anti-Semitism and X

It is truly a remarkable coincidence that every party fighting Israel and the West in the MIddle East nowadays - Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian armed groups, Iraqi armed groups, Houthis - are all allied with, funded by, and armed by Iran.

Iran avoids being attacked by using these groups as proxies, knowing that most nations are reluctant to widen the conflict by attacking Iran itself, even though in most or all of the cases, Iran is calling the shots.

Proxies are obviously effective. No one is attacking the head of the snake. And the proxy groups are happy to sacrifice themselves and their people for Iran's Supreme Leader.

Hezbollah, however, is starting to feel some pain. Nearly 200 of its members have been killed in southern Lebanon. Israe lis seriously considering a full scale war if they keep up their aggression.

So, Hezbollah is following the Iranian playbook and creating ...proxies!

Two weeks ago, an armed group of men went o the Shebaa Farms area and shot at IDF troops, who promptly fired back and killed them. The attack was claimed by th "Al-Ezz Brigades."

There is no such thing.

This Is Beirut reports:

According to political circles close to the obstructionist axis (called al-Moumanaa), Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya (Al-Ezz Brigades) is the name given to a fictitious group that is not known to the factions that gravitate in the orbit of this axis.

According to the above-mentioned sources, this group is credited with any operation that has not been validated by these factions, namely Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Al-Quds Brigades, and others.

In practice, any military operation carried out from the Lebanese front requires the approval of the various parties in the operations chamber, in particular Hezbollah, the same sources explained. Consequently, any operation not approved by the latter is claimed by Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya, with the aim of covering its tracks.

This was the case with Sunday’s operation in the Shebaa Farms, where three armed men had infiltrated. They were killed by the Israeli Army. According to the above-mentioned sources, their bodies were left there to avoid giving Israel any clues about the Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya group, which claimed responsibility for the operation.

Lebanese MP Ashraf Rifi agrees, saying the Al-Ezz Brigades are fictional, and accusing Hezbollah of "inventing organizations with fictitious names to evade responsibility.”

The proxy has a proxy!

According to other Lebanese reports, Hezbollah is recruiting Palestinians to join these proxy groups, going into the camps and mostly getting Palestinians who had fled Syria. But Hezbollah is calling the shots, giving them transportation and weapons, escorting them through Hezbollah's many checkpoints in southern Lebanon. No one goes anywhere without Hezbollah knowing.

So this is how Hezbollah is trying to keep shooting at Israelis and Jews but hoping to keep the heat off itself by using its own proxies.

It's called "plausible deniability" - and it is just as plausible as the "plausible genocide" that the ICJ accused Israel of.

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!

Elder (and CAMERA-UK) gets results! Independent Arabia removes antisemitism from article

Last week,

Gulf CSR screenshot

I reported that Independent Arabia, the Arabic version of the British Independent, published an article with the headline "Jewish pressure groups and their influence on global decision-making." It included a large excerpt of a study by the Arab Gulf Center for Studies and Research, "The hidden Jewish empire and the plan to control the world," which is filled with antisemitism and lies.

The author of the Indy Arabia article is a Lebanese writer named Sawsan Mhanna. The antisemitic part of the article was its main point - she quoted it extensively in her tweet promoting the article, including its bogus statistic that Jews have double or triple the wealth of all Arab countries combined.

The article also claimed that Judaism isn't even a religion, but a secretive organization like the Masons or Templars that illicitly plan to take over the world.

After reading my post, Adam Levick of CAMERA-UK complained about this article to the managing editor of the British Independent.

Commendably, he removed the bulk of the article that quoted the Gulf CSR study and changed the antisemitic headline.

Hopefully this will prompt Independent Arabia to be more discerning in what it publishes.

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!

01/31 Links Pt1: Never mind UNRWA — end US funding for the pro-terror UN itself; With the US public still standing behind Israel, protestors focus on Democrats

From Ian:

Bret Stephens NYTs: Abolish the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency

UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 and Israeli intelligence estimates that 1,200 of UNRWA's 12,000 employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

But the fundamental problem isn't that UNRWA is infested with terrorists and their sympathizers. It's that UNRWA may be the only agency in the UN system whose central purpose is to perpetuate grievance and conflict. It should be abolished.

The UN has two agencies dedicated to the plight of refugees. One, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is responsible for nearly all the world's 30 million refugees, with a mandate to help them resettle in third countries if they can't go home. The other is UNRWA. No other group except for Palestinians gets its own permanent agency.

Why? In part, because neighboring Arab countries refused to fully absorb Palestinian refugees. The changing borders and independence movements of the postwar era produced millions of refugees, including 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of Arab countries that had been their homes for centuries. Nearly all of the world's refugees found new lives in new countries - except for Palestinians.

The Palestinians have been kept as perpetual refugees as a means of both delegitimizing Israel and preserving the irredentist fantasy that someday their descendants will "return" through the elimination of the Jewish state. UNRWA's very existence keeps this hope alive.

Palestinians should be citizens of the countries in which they live - just as some two million Arabs are in Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can't be solved so long as millions of Palestinians have been turned into the world's only permanent refugees. By doing that, UNRWA makes itself an obstacle to peace.

National Review Editorial: End UNRWA

UNRWA tried to cover its tracks. In December, it demanded that an Israeli reporter delete a social-media post in which he reported that one of the Hamas hostages had been held by a UNRWA teacher. In October, UNRWA made a post alleging that Hamas had stolen supplies, then deleted it and gave an explanation so incomprehensible that there can be no doubt that it was covering for the terrorist group.

All the while, U.N. leaders have dismissed the critical work of watchdogs such as UN Watch, which has brought evidence of UNRWA’s links to terrorism to light countless times.

In the short term, Congress needs to pass a blanket prohibition on the use of U.S. funds for any of UNRWA’s operations. It must do this to preempt any future decision to lift the temporary suspension of funding and to set the stage for UNRWA’s eventual elimination.

UNRWA’s supporters say that cutting the agency out of the picture would leave a gap in humanitarian aid for Gaza. They ignore that much of the assistance entering Gaza is likely snatched by Hamas anyway. Most important, to continue funding UNRWA would maintain America’s de facto culpability in financing terrorism. Other U.N. agencies with a better track record, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.-dominated World Food Program, should step in, and America should help them build the capability to do so.

But that’s just a start. America needs to fight hard to repeal UNRWA’s U.N. General Assembly–granted mandate. Given the rank antisemitism that goes unquestioned at the international body, that’s no small task, but Washington also has not tried particularly hard to get this done.

Other U.N. agencies need to be on the chopping block as well. UNRWA might be the worst, but that doesn’t say much.

John Bolton once said that if the highest ten floors of the U.N. headquarters were to disappear it “wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But depending on where UNRWA’s offices are, it might lessen international support for Hamas terrorism.

NYPost Editorial: Never mind UNRWA — end US funding for the pro-terror United Nations itself

It’s time — beyond time — to rethink US funding for the United Nations.

After all, America has laws against financing terrorist groups, and the United Nations does just that:
It employs actual Hamas terrorists and promoters of terror.
Its secretary-general supports Hamas, demanding an end to attacks on the terror group, whose Oct. 7 massacre he tried to justify.
Its “court of justice” claims Israel is a possible perpetrator of genocide.
It’s aided and abetted mass murderers, demonized an innocent democracy (Israel) and perpetuated Mideast venom.

And, no, it’s not just the 13 UN Relief and Works “staffers” who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including at least nine actual Hamas terrorists.

As UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer notes, UNRWA’s ostensible mission — to provide social services for “refugees” of the Arabs’ 1948 war against Israel — is a “front.”

After all, most actual refugees are handled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

UNRWA’s main purpose is to perpetuate the notion that the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel 75 years ago are themselves refugees today, and that through violence and “martyrdom,” they’ll one day return and make the land Jew-free.

Its staff teach children to strive for this and never give up.

They spread lies about Israel, redirect international aid and resources to Hamas and welcome terrorists to use their schools and homes as bases, including storing weapons and holding hostages.

The United Nations can plead ignorance; Secretary-General António Guterres claims he was “horrified” — “horrified” — to learn about the 13 UNRWA workers.

In fact, over a thousand of these UN employees have documented terror ties.

Groups like UN Watch (and The Post) have long sounded the alarm about UNRWA.

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee heard testimony about how UNRWA is part of the problem in the Middle East, not the solution. Experts testified about UNRWA teachers' support for terror and how UNRWA's entire mission is to prolong misery of millions of Palestinians, not alleviate it.

The entire session can be seen here.

As the world learns about UNRWA staff's complicity with and support of Hamas crimes, supporters of UNRWA are saying that UNRWA provides essential services and therefore must continue to be funded.

They have a point. The cash spigot cannot just be turned off without causing suffering to many people who have relied on UNRWA for their medical needs, education and other services, even if these services go way beyond what any other UN agency does for any other group of people.

In 2017, I wrote a plan on how UNRWA can be dismantled over a multi-year period. If the world would have taken the problem seriously, we would not be in this situation today.

Here is an updated version.

It isn't easy to get rid of an entrenched 75 year old bureaucracy - but with some willpower, it is possible. And getting rid of UNRWA will be good for the entire Middle East.

The first and most important thing that needs to be done is to get rid of the noxious UNRWA definition of "refugee" that helps no one and only serves to perpetuate a permanent state of victimhood. There is only one definition of refugee, that of the Refugee Convention, and that definition should be the only one used worldwide. The myth of the "Palestinian refugee" must be ended.

Gulf states, especially Abraham Accords partners UAE and Bahrain, need to be recruited in this plan to dismantle UNRWA. They are not fans of Hamas and they have never heavily supported UNRWA financially.

These oil-rich states need brainpower and the next generation of workers, and among Arabs, Palestinians are the best educated and hardest working of all Arabs. Dubai and Saudi Arabia want to diversify their economic base beyond oil, and they want to do it if possible with Arab talent. The fit is obvious.

Palestinians have already been instrumental in building much of the Gulf, but they didn't have citizenship rights. It is time for the US to pressure friendly Sunni Gulf states to allow Palestinians from Lebanon, Jordan and Syria - and Gaza! - to immigrate and become citizens. The program would be voluntary for Palestinians but it would be very popular, as past experience with limited granting of citizenship to Palestinians in Egypt and Lebanon show. Every time Palestinians were offered citizenship they eagerly took it. It is an investment that would pay off for everyone.

The Gulf states can in turn pressure the Arab League to rescind its racist decision from the 1950s to not allow Palestinians to become citizens.

In Jordan, the vast majority of Palestinians are already Jordanian citizens. Redirecting the UNRWA budget towards Jordan over a five year period for the purpose of demolishing the camps, building new communities, mainstreaming the UNRWA schools into Jordan's educational system, and naturalizing the Palestinians who aren't citizens, is an idea that is way overdue. Jordan needs the cash, and to get rid of UNRWA it would be worth it to increase the amount given beyond UNRWA's budget for, say, 5-8 years to allow the full integration of Palestinian camp-dwellers into Jordanian society.

There isn't as much leverage in Syria. But the many Syrian refugees of Palestinian origin who are outside the country should be immediately placed under the aegis of UNHCR like other refugees and those who qualify for moving to the Gulf should do so. Of course, the portion of UNRWA's budget dedicated to Syrian refugees should go to UNHCR as well for now. Syria claims to support Palestinians - let them take care of the ones that they have there.

Lebanon is more anti-Palestinian than any other country in the world. (They would protest that characterization but no country treats Palestinians worse.) As it is, UNRWA already exaggerates the number of "refugees" in Lebanon by over 100%. Lebanon should be pressured by the world community and Arab nations themselves to stop putting Palestinians in open-air prisons, allow them the rights to work in any profession and to live wherever they want, to give them real human rights and give them a path to citizenship in the entire Arab world - let them choose where they want to live. Those who have lived in Lebanon for generations must become citizens. Money that now goes to UNRWA can help cash-strapped Lebanon do the right thing.

The Palestinian "refugees" in the West Bank should not exist 25 years after self-rule. The entire UNRWA budget for the West Bank should simply be eliminated. The PLO needs to treat all its citizens equally, and that means taking responsibility for them. Let them beg UNRWA's donor nations to help them demolish the camps, build real houses and to incorporate their schools and medical clinics under a single umbrella. It is true that Palestinian schools don't teach co-existence with Israel any more than UNRWA schools, but it isn't as if UNRWA moderated anyone's opinions of Jews and Israel.

In Gaza, the essential services provided by UNRWA must be transitioned to other UN agencies, like UNHCR, the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme. Obviously some of the UNRWA employees would transition to the proper agencies, but those agencies would do a better job vetting them for terrorist ties than UNRWA ever did.

Moreover, give the option for the people in the camps in Gaza to move to the West Bank, to Arab countries or even to Europe.

As a recipient of billions of dollars in US aid, Egypt can and should be pressured to admit any Gazans who wish to immigrate there. Many Palestinians trace their families to Egypt and in the past when Egypt allowed a limited number to become citizens, Gazans jumped at the plan.

The best way to force the Arab countries to treat their Palestinian "guests" as more than cannon fodder is using the honor/shame system against them. Shame them into treating Palestinians at least as well as any other Arab non-citizen, and give them a path to naturalization.

Now happens to be the perfect time to talk about dismantling UNRWA. And it is over 70 years past the time to finally do something about it.

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Rafah smuggling tunnel, 2010

The Palestine Press Agency, a pro-Fatah news site that no longer exists, reported in March 2008:

A reliable source revealed to the Palestine Press News Agency, “The outlaw Hamas movement is digging tunnels under the densely populated western camp, specifically in the Qatatuta camp area in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.”

The source said, "Hamas militias are digging these tunnels that lead to the UNRWA school in the camp as part of their plan to store heavy weapons (Dushka machine guns and missiles) in tunnels under the students' schools."

The source added, "While Hamas militias were digging a tunnel in the area, they broke one of the main water pipes in the camp, which led to water leaking onto the neighboring residents, which sparked the residents' anger at these foolish actions."

A couple of months later, the same news site reported on a network of tunnels in Khan Younis that went under a number of elementary and secondary schools as well as a Gaza City tunnel underneath the Islamic University of Gaza,

This is 2008. Residents knew about it then. And there is no way they didn't know about the thousands of tunnel shafts that Hamas dug in homes, in cemeteries and in schools since then.

In fact, in the comments, one person named Samer from Khan Younis added information about other tunnels he knew about, under mosques and houses.

Firstly, Yunus Al-Astal has at least three tunnels around his house on the eastern line. Secondly, Fawad Abu Marouf has two tunnels, one of which is Mariout in the Halima Mosque near his house, and there is another tunnel that leads to Ibn Ummah’s house east of Khan Yunis’ license. Amjad Abu Al-Tajja has a tunnel that leads in only three directions. Al-Muttaqeen Mosque in Al-Bahr Street has a large weapons storehouse supervised by Mounir Abu Hatab, an explosives storehouse in Omar Al-Najjar’s house in the Rantissi area, a lathe, a weapons storehouse, and four tunnels near Al-Salam Hospital on the eastern line road.

At the time, in 2008 and over the next several years, Western media reported on tunnels - but only on smuggling tunnels underneath the Egyptian border. As far as I recall, no one reported about tunnels wholly inside Gaza that were planned specifically as military assets and specifically to make Gza civilians into human shields above them - tunnels that were storage for weapons systems and escape routes (and bomb shelters!) for terrorists and Hamas leaders in 2008.

Yet Gaza residents knew. Everyone knew. That includes every reporter living in Gaza. (Have you noticed any media outlet apologizing for ignoring and covering for Hamas crimes for the past decade and a half? )

And UNRWA knew this as well. The agency officially tasked with protecting "refugees" did not do a thing or say a word about weapons caches directly under their schools. Indeed, some of the commenters complained that the publication of the article - not the tunnels themselves - put students at risk because Israel would attack the tunnels.

Let's put to bed the lie that Hamas tunnels were secretly built and that Gazans didn't know, that the UN didn't know, that reporters didn't know. Everyone in Gaza knew about them since at least 2008, and with very few exceptions, they didn't say a negative word and chose to protect Hamas, either out of solidarity or out of fear.

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Al Azhar University denies it is antisemitic. Let's see!

Israel's Channel 12 reported about antisemitism a Egypt's Al Azhar University, the most important educational institution in the Sunni Muslim world. The report said “the educational curricula in its schools incite hatred.”

According to the report, 1.8 million students are being taught to hate Jews in the Al-Azhar educational system.

Al-Azhar University denied the accusation, saying that the report, and indeed all Zionists, are nothing but a bunch of liars.

Dr. Ahmed Zaree, spokesman for Al-Azhar University, told the Cairo 24 website: “The Zionists have mastered lies, and what was written and said about Al-Azhar is nothing but slander and a violation of the Islamic religion, and this is not new to the Zionist entity. They have mastered lies as well as extreme hostility.”

Zaree added that Zionists are nothing but an outcast body rejected by Europe and the West to be an instrument of destruction and usurpation of the Arab homeland.

Yeah, "Zionists" are who were discriminated against in Europe through the centuries.

So let's look at what Al Azhar faculty and leaders have said about Jews over the years.

In 2011, head of the school Dr. Ahmed Tayeb told a rally that promised genocide for all Jews that Jews everywhere in the world are seeking to prevent Islamic and Egyptian unity.

In 2013, Tayeb said, "See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism…Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs."

In 2018, Tayeb said, "As long as this entity is alive and active, the Arabs will remain neither living nor dead, and the Muslims will remain under attack. Note that if we continue this way, it will not end with the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They will march on the Kaaba and on the Prophet’s Mosque [in Medina]. This is on their minds and in their hearts.." This goes beyond the "Al Aqsa Mosque is in Danger" myth to say the Jews want so Judaize Meccan and Medina.

After October 7, Muhammad Omar Al-Qady, dean of the Faculty for Islamic and Arabic Studies at Al-Azhar, wrote, "[When I say] resistance I mean the jihad fighters in Palestine, who defend their honor and land, those who fight against their enemy and ours, namely the Jews… I ask Allah to strengthen His soldiers and his camp and grant our brothers in Gaza, in Palestine and in the rest of the Muslim countries victory over their enemy and ours, the enemy of Allah and humanity, the cursed descendants of apes and pigs [i.e., the Jews]."

And people still buy the "we hate Zionists not Jews" lie.

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01/30 Links Pt2: Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent; Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy

From Ian:

The Briton who joined the IDF: ‘My family died in the Holocaust – I had to defend Jewish people’

It was hearing one of my comrades praying as we crossed the border into Gaza in October 2023 that brought home what we were about to do. Just a few hours earlier, I had been in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend, when I was sent a codeword on my phone which meant we were going to be moving in and I needed to be back with my unit which had been sitting on the southern border for three weeks.

In some ways, the waiting was harder than anything else. It was frustrating, because apart from getting acquainted with the newest technology, there wasn’t much we could do. On the one hand, we weren’t in danger, which was great, but on the other, we were still reeling from the events of Oct 7 and we were poisoned with anger about the massacre of our civilians.

We wanted to go and get the hostages back and we knew we needed to fight for Israel. But we also knew that some of us may not come back.

Even on that first night, as we rolled through the border at 3am with the words of our commanding officer telling us that this was the war of our generation ringing in our ears, we saw coming in the opposite direction a wounded soldier leaving Gaza and it was chilling.

It is a shock, surreal, to actually get there. Everything seemed like a mess. I’d been told to head to a particular building but the stairs had caved in so I then had to get to another building not knowing what would be in it.

The whole time you are moving there are these crazy explosions going off, noises of gunfire, bombs. You hear more than you see in Gaza – it takes a while to get used to the intense noise.

My job is reconnaissance – I am the eyes and the ears of my unit, watching out for danger. It is a huge responsibility and I felt it keenly as my girlfriend’s cousin was among those I was tasked with keeping safe. The sun was going down at 4.45pm and then you can’t see anything apart through night vision goggles.

I hated seeing the scale of the destruction in Gaza. People have been killed and displaced on both sides and I know that Gazans are suffering too. I am not a war-mongering person and I found it quite tough knowing the human impact of what we were doing even if I knew why I was there; our war is not with the Palestinian people but with Hamas.

Going into Gaza we also saw the scale of what we were fighting. I would say that 75 per cent if not more of the homes we went into had some sort of affiliation with Hamas. Lots of weapons; we’d find RPGs and grenades on the floor. You’d go into a pink bedroom and think about the young girl who lived there and hope she was safe, feeling terrible, and then go next door and see guns or detailed maps of Israel showing the kind of thing that was happening in that house. Knowing that that stuff was there because they wanted to kill us.

Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy

No amount of “public relations” could “explain” anything to a judicial body that is supposed to be impartial but consists of justices who lack the moral clarity to separate good from evil. Israel may have to honor the decisions of the ICJ, but that does not mean those decisions should be respected.

It is ironic that a country that was recently obsessed with issues related to the need for an independent judiciary has become the subject of a supposedly “independent” panel that issued an interim order described as a “blood libel” by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. In a ridiculous move, the ICJ accused Herzog, a consensus figure in Israel known for his moderation and mild-mannered personality, of engaging in “incitement” by using language that any rational person would consider appropriate after the type of attack perpetrated by Hamas.

We are dealing here with a distorted value system, not a lack of information. It is senseless to believe that, after experiencing the atrocities of Hamas, Israel would have to “explain” anything. It is futile to continue trying to convince people with debased moral standards that beheading, rape, kidnapping and random murder are wrong. Of course, the ICJ judges would say that those actions are terrible, but they fail to act on that belief, creating a reality in which the victim and not the oppressor is in the dock.

The ICJ farce may not mark the death of hasbara, but it proved that it is on life support. Morality is not something that can be sold like a hamburger at McDonalds. It is something that comes from one’s culture, social experiences and ability to show fortitude in the face of corrupt pressure.

Rather than investing energy and resources into convincing others, we would be better served by continuing our fight to be a “light unto the nations” and doing what is right. As for those who see Hamas as an entity deserving of protection, let their moral failings serve as a model for evil.

To anyone with a good heart and a logical mind, this is something that does not need to be explained.

Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent

Watching American Justice Joan Donoghue read the decision of the International Court of Justice, live at 2 p.m. Israel time on Friday afternoon, was surreal.

Everything about this legal proceeding is grotesque and represents a perversion of ethics and law that is beyond difficult to process. South Africa, a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — as is Israel — brought this application to the court with the support of some rather nefarious international actors. There has been a significant uptick in activity and contact between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran of late, either a coincidence or reflecting an enhanced alignment of values between the two countries. Iran, of course, is the head of the proverbial Islamist snake, openly fomenting antisemitism globally and responsible for significant acts of violence targeting Jewish civilians.

The moral inversion of all pertinent circumstances giving rise to the Israeli military action in Gaza was of secondary importance in the ICJ hearing, presided over by Justice Donoghue, the court’s chair, and with an unprecedented panel of 17 judges.

Hamas invaded Israel on Saturday Oct. 7, shortly after 6 a.m. on a quiet holiday. The stated intent of Hamas, before, during and after the well-documented savagery unleashed on that day and into the following night, was, is and remains to obliterate the state of Israel and annihilate every Jewish person living in its borders. Hamas’ hatred of Israel and Jews is so primal that any person it encountered on this particular mission was marked for murder. If the odd non-Jew got in their way they were not spared, either. It seems that the crime of merely consorting with Jews is enough to justify murder, to Hamas.

Hamas leaders and supporters worldwide have gloated over the suffering inflicted and stated their unequivocal aspiration to repeat the genocide of Oct. 7, repeatedly. All Jews, ultimately, must be murdered, according to Hamas doctrine. This will facilitate the liberation of Jerusalem and establishment of a global caliphate.

Hamas is also closely allied with and supported by Iran, which boldly proclaims its genocidal intentions with respect to Israel, constantly. Its regional proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, bolster its position and claims.

That the victim of true genocidal conduct and policy — Israel — should be put in the dock at the ICJ and charged with perpetrating the crime perpetrated against it by Hamas, is more macabre, almost, than the events of Oct. 7 themselves.

Israel to Pursue Genocide Case Against Iran’s Regime with ICJ

On Monday, an Israeli cabinet minister announced plans to begin efforts to bring charges of genocide against the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Gideon Moshe Sa’ar, an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Justice between 2021 and 2022, highlighted that the leadership of the regime in Tehran has openly called for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, providing immense support to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist proxies in the Middle East region that were responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

“Iranian leaders have been making genocidal statements for years, with impunity,” said Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law at George Mason University and Director of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Middle East and International Law to The Foreign Desk.

“There are public statements by senior Iranian officials in favor of destroying Israel,” Sa’ar told the Kan public broadcaster. “Iran finances, arms, and trains all the jihadi terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which carried out Oct. 7, so in my opinion, there is an abundance of evidence which can be submitted to the court in the Hague,” he added.

Knesset member Sa’ar noted that the Jewish state is a small and persecuted nation that is fighting for its life while “fighting on the international stage for its right to self-defense.”

“It is a nation that is truly at risk of genocide given that there are enemies around it that declaredly want to destroy it,” Sa’ar told Kan.

“The State of Israel, a liberal democracy fighting against the most heinous act of mass terror perpetrated against the Jewish state, should never have been in the dock of the accused at The Hague in the first place,” said Arsen Ostrovsky, human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based NGO International Legal Forum, a global network of pro-Israel lawyers combating antisemitism and terror, who was also present in The Hague, for the hearings against Israel.

“If anyone ought to have been on trial at the ICJ, it was Hamas and their genocidal sponsors, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which remain open about their intentions of annihilating the Jewish state and supporting Hamas,” he said to The Foreign Desk.

South Africa's Case at the ICJ Is Built on Reports from Groups with Links to Terrorist Organizations

For years, a network of Western-funded NGOs involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been engaged in a concerted and coordinated effort to attach the "apartheid" charge to Israel.

South Africa's submission to the International Court of Justice contains 45 references to NGO publications, including several from outfits linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.

Staff and board members of these PFLP-linked groups helped prepare South Africa's case.

The ICJ should be ashamed that it is accepting evidence from blatant propaganda groups that have proven track records of supporting hate and violence against Israel and Jews.

Haaretz writes about the current fighting in Khan Younis.

The article makes several important points:

The Israel Defense Forces has recently changed its orders to soldiers in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and its special units have begun fighting inside the city's tunnels and engaging Hamas fighters in close combat.

The reason for the change stems from the army's perception that creating contact with Hamas in the tunnels will lead to significant information about the location of the hostages and senior Hamas figures residing inside them. Intelligence officials believe that the hostages and the Hamas leaders are still in the tunnels in the area, and are moving from place to place based on the army's progress.

When the fighting started in Gaza, soldiers were ordered not to enter the tunnels because army brass believed that Hamas was trying to draw the forces in to attack them. In practice, it seems that Hamas didn't really believe that the army would try to look for its leaders. In most tunnels, only the shafts were booby-trapped, and so far the tunnels themselves have not been booby-trapped in a way that threatens the soldiers. Commanders have said that they were surprised by the scope of the tunnels and the shafts dug throughout Gaza. They added that they think that Hamas was surprised that the army was also fighting underground.

The IDF is the first army to deal with underground fighting of such proportions and are learning on the fly. Battles underground are difficult and complicated, with fighting conducted in complete darkness and knowledge that hostages could be there as well. The army recognizes that aerial attacks are insufficient to reach Hamas leaders because most of the tunnels they are in are too deep.

As previously mentioned, fighting in tunnels in urban areas is the most difficult kind of warfare there is. But if the IDF has been good at anything in its history, it is flexibility, learning on the job, and applying lessons learned very quickly in battle.

This is a huge advantage of the IDF's organizational structure and culture. While it has strict policies and must adhere to the laws of war and its own standards, it also has the ability to adjust during wartime and to learn from mistakes instantly.

While the IDF is not sharing details, it clearly has also innovated in tunnel warfare itself, almost certainly using methods like robots and trained dogs. Moreover, they must have come up with solutions to electronic communications from the surface to the depths of the tunnels: radio will not penetrate that deeply, so I imagine they are deploying ad-hoc wireless hubs to allow everyone to have situational awareness even in the deep, dark underground.

These are impressive achievements. And at least some of them were only tested and deployed during the battle itself, which is astonishingly fast for a large army.

Similarly, in a press release, the IDF announced that it was indeed flooding some Hamas tunnels, which is a complex job:

In cooperation between units in the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, various tools were developed to channel large volumes of water into Hamas’ terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. This is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels.

These capabilities consist of installing pumps and pipes, the materialization of engineering developments, and the ability to locate tunnel shafts suitable for the deployment of these tools. The capability was developed in a professional capacity, including analysis of the soil characteristics and the water systems in the area to ensure that damage is not done to the area's groundwater. The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case.

This project was developed following combat procedures, accelerated force-building efforts, and while training forces with technological expertise.

While I'm sure these plans existed for a while, actual testing, fixing unforeseen engineering problems and implementation couldn't be done except while under fire in an actual war zone. Again, this is impressive.

As long as Israel is fighting, it will continue to get better and better, both at attacking Hamas and at minimizing civilian deaths that Hamas tries to maximize. Hamas does not have any new tricks up its sleeve: the tunnels were its guarantee, and they bet their organization on the IDF not being able to fight in the tunnels themselves and not being able to neutralize more than a small percentage of them. But the IDF is gaining more knowledge, more experience and more intelligence every day, and it applying this information extraordinarily quickly.

Which means that time is on Israel's side. It needs to make clear to the world that it will not stop fighting until the war's goals are met, but also that it is not only progressing but accelerating in achieving them.

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Before the Holocaust, there was plenty of overt antisemitism in America.

Newspaper ads would seek to rent spaces for "gentiles only." Hotels attempted to restrict their clientele to non-Jews. Henry Ford could freely publish antisemitic libels in The Dearborn Independent, and fully a quarter of all Americans listened to Dr. Charles Coughlin broadcast his antisemitic opinions on the radio. Ivy League universities imposed quotas on the number of Jews they would allow to attend.

The Holocaust and the State of Israel seemed to end that. Americans recognized the hate in their midst and no longer tolerated it. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Jews could live where they want, travel where they want, apply for jobs where they want, go to college where they want. The second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate appeared to herald a new era in Jewish-Christian relations and to end official Christian antisemitism.

History will look at 1970-2015 as a golden age, where Jewish men in most Western cities could walk openly with a kippah without much concern. where synagogues did not need to have guards or combination locks to enter. Antisemitism still existed, of course, but it went underground - it was unacceptable.

During this Golden Age, Jews could go on family outings with only a vague worry that there is a tiny chance that some crazy person might harass them. No one had a second thought about walking to and from synagogue with the kids.

Some seven decades of limited antisemitism in the West has come to an end. People can now publicly harass and attack Jews at will, and Jews are reverting to living in fear.

As with previous flavors of antisemitism, the new antisemites pretend to be righteous and protecting the victims of Jewish evil. This is what the Communists said about workers, what the Germans said about pure-blooded Aryans, what the Christians said about their children. The supposed Jewish oppressors could be bankers, or Hollywood, or communists.

Today "Zionists" are the oppressors who must be fought by the modern antisemites. They don't hate Jews, they claim, they are just protecting Palestinians that the Jews are oppressing. And the current hate for Jews from the Left and from the Muslim community has empowered the far Right to crawl out from under their rocks and join in with the orgy of publicly hating Jews and publicly attacking Jews - all for a noble purpose, they say.

The days of Jewish Americans being free to do what they want, where they want, are rapidly ending. And we can see the future, because what is happening in America is exactly what has been happening in France, the UK and Sweden in recent years.

Certainly there are some neighborhoods where Jews are still safe, but the map of where Jews can walk without fear has been shrinking. It shrank dramatically since October 7, after decades of expansion.

New York City - the most tolerant, diverse city in world history, the city with more Jews than any other city ever - is now the scene for daily attacks on and harassment of Jews.

Like it or not, the normal state of the world over the past 2000 years is where Jews are outcasts and demeaned. These last decades were not a trend as we had hoped, but an anomaly.

Not to say that things are all bad. There are many, many non-Jews who are aghast at antisemitism. Israel has supporters. Jews have allies. But the trend is decidedly negative.

The West should be nervous. Jews are the canary in the coal mine, and this is just the beginning. History shows that the future for countries that decide that it is too much trouble to protect their Jews is bleak indeed.

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!