Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 11, 2024

UNRWA's top priority is survival and appearing innocent, not fighting terrorism inside the agency

This weekend we found out that there was a huge Hamas data center directly underneath UNRWA's Gaza headquarters. The main entrance to the tunnel was located under a UNRWA school in the area. Cables were found between the Hamas data center and the UNRWA data center above it.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini responded, saying that UNRWA was not aware of this and "In the past, whenever suspicious cavity was found close to or under UNRWA premises, protest letters were promptly filed to parties to the conflict, including both the de facto authorities in Gaza (Hamas) and the Israeli authorities. The matter was consistently reported in annual reports presented to the General Assembly and made public."

As someone who has discovered UNRWA websites that extolled martyrdom and antisemitism, UNRWA employee social media posts that support murdering Jews and UNRWA schools that directly teach students to murder Jews, I wanted to see how transparent UNRWA has been about incitement in previous investigations.

In my experience, UNRWA was quick to take down websites and even to discipline employees that violated its policies, but they never seemed to actively try to fix the underlying problem. And the things that they did discover were not publicized, but hidden under innocuous sounding sections of reports that didn't spell out what exactly the violations were.

After my and UN Watch's exposes, UNRWA began to take steps to address these issues we found - but even in their official reports, one gets the impression that the reason is to protect their own reputation and funding, not to ensure that there was true neutrality.

In their 2015 Operational Report - the year I had discovered so many damning examples - they wrote in one table:

Real or perceived breach of UNRWA neutrality as humanitarian actor
• Donors reduce their financial support.
• Reputation of UNRWA as a non-neutral actor creating distrust among beneficiaries and partners

The organization started a Department of Internal Oversight Services to investigate these sorts of issues. But even they admit that their reason for existence is to make UNRWA look good more than actually rooting out the deep-seated problems in UNRWA itself. Their 2017 report about their response to the social media posts that support terrorism says:

The Ethics Office took the lead in developing a new mandatory, all staff, e-learning course on social media and neutrality, two issues representing a significant reputational risk to the Agency.

Not a risk to the students learning hate. No, the main risk of teachers who openly support terror is the reputational risk to UNRWA, which results in bad publicity and a loss of revenue.

Similarly, in 2015 they began doing "neutrality inspections" of schools to look for visible examples of things that were "non-neutral." They found them. But they only dealt with a few:

Neutrality issues that could be addressed included the removal of political graffiti or posters on the outside walls of the installations. Many of the issues that remained unsolved related to long-standing memorials to individuals killed in the conflict that the Agency was unable to remove.

Meaning, UNRWA refused to remove memorials to known terrorists, because it would upset - UNRWA employees.

They decided that the reputational risk of employees publicly protesting to keep memorials to terrorists was higher than the reputational risk of someone outside finding out about the memorials - so instead of removing the incitement and support for terror they made a calculation based on the comparative reputational risks and chose to keep the memorials.

Anyone see a problem here?

Which is what is happening now with the revelations of UNRWA employees moonlighting s Hamas terrorists and Hamas siphoning off UNRWA electricity (and probably network access.) The response is about the importance of maintaining the flow of cash to UNRWA more than anger at finding terrorists inside the organization.

In the end, the claim of "neutrality" is ludicrous anyway. The entire purpose of UNRWA is to keep the fake refugee issue alive, with the sole purpose of destroying Israel one day via "return." It doesn't get less neutral than that.

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!

02/10 Links: Under UNRWA’s Gaza HQ, IDF uncovers Hamas data center; The Global Complicity in Hamas’s Mayhem; A Brief History of the ‘AsAJew’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Global Complicity in Hamas’s Mayhem

The global complicity in Hamas’s brutal reign is quite a thing to behold. Egypt won’t accept even the temporary residency of Palestinian civilians, but it knows that under its nose Hamas leaders mosey in and out of the Sinai. The Qataris only possess leverage in the hostage talks because they are Hamas’s checking account, funding their wayward buddy’s murder habit. Turkey is, for crying out loud, in NATO. And yet Ankara hosts Hamas offices, aids the group financially, gives it diplomatic backing whenever conflict flares up (always at Hamas’s instigation), and even temporarily hosted one of the key planners of the October 7 rampage, Saleh al-Arouri. (Israel eliminated Arouri in Lebanon right around the new year.)

None of this even gets into the support Hamas gets through the various agencies of the United Nations, or from naïve-seeming Western nations, or even the fundraisers on America’s college campuses.

All of which is to say: On this issue, there isn’t much credibility to go around. Israel deserves full support from a chastened community of nations—especially those that will benefit from a Hamas defeat. That includes Egypt, which will sit on its hands while Israel dismantles terror tunnels underneath Egyptian sands. In fact, defeating Hamas will benefit everyone in the region who is threatened by Iranian expansionism. And this certainly includes the Biden administration. Washington’s sudden obsession with taking “irreversible” steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state cannot even be contemplated so long as Hamas rules a single square foot of land on which such a state would stand.

All these countries’ opinions on Gaza deserved consideration up until the moment October 7 revealed a dearth of clean hands among them. And if the IDF’s operation in Rafah further embarrasses Hamas’s enablers, so be it.

The Master of Israeli Fiction Comments on King David and the “Secret” of the IDF

In 1964, an Israeli journalist asked S.Y. Agnon, a towering figure of 20th-century Hebrew literature, to comment on the fact that the Jewish state was now defended by a Jewish army. Herewith, an excerpt from Jeffrey Saks’s translation of his reply:

I think the army is nothing to play around with, but dabbling in pacifism is a bad business. Regarding our regular pacifists, who bask in their pacifism, the sages have already said, “Whoever shows mercy to the cruel ends up being cruel to the merciful.” I had one of the Shomer HaTzair members visit, from that leftwing youth movement. In response to the opinion he shared with me, I responded that the time when the people of Israel outstretched their necks for slaughter has passed. They claim that an army and war are not fitting for the people of Israel. Is it “fitting” for our enemy to slaughter us and for us to be slaughtered? Regarding the messianic era, it is said, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation” (Isaiah 2:4)—but to achieve that we must be worthy of the messiah.

I don’t like the military. I would not talk about a Gentile army this way. I am not moved by anything practical or technical. . . . Yet when I witnessed, here in the Talpiot neighborhood [of Jerusalem], the young men in the War of Liberation, how they defended us and how they would come from their posts on Shabbat eves to hear kiddush—then I couldn’t hold back tears.

Israel, which had the insight to make the great and valiant warrior King David into a poet of the Psalms, one who sits and passionately studies the Torah—perhaps this is the secret of our army’s endurance.

Eli Lake: A Brief History of the ‘AsAJew’

The intellectual godfather of the AsAJews is a former professor named Norman Finkelstein. In the 2009 documentary American Radical, Finkelstein says he was proud of the sign he waved at a protest of the Israeli consulate in New York at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War. It read: “This son of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Auschwitz, Maijdenek will not be silent. Israeli Nazis Stop the Holocaust in Lebanon.”

One hears this atrocious equation of the Jewish state to the Third Reich all the time today. Forty years ago, though, Finkelstein was a pioneer. Comparing Israel to the Nazis was something one might hear at a Weather Underground meeting or on Egyptian state radio, but not inside the corridors of power. Today, this defamation is a core part of Finkelstein’s performance.

A clip of Finkelstein addressing college students who asked why he compared Zionist students to the architects of the Holocaust has gone viral since October 7. With the pitch of his voice rising into a fury of indignation, he tells a student who is in tears: “Both of my parents were in the Warsaw uprising, and it is precisely because of the lessons they taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent as Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians.”

In November 2023, when I debated Finkelstein, he was more subdued. But he still repeatedly referred to the Gaza before October 7 as a concentration camp and said he could not bring himself to condemn Hamas’s massacre for the same reason that many abolitionists would not condemn the Nat Turner slave rebellion before the Civil War.

On the substance, Finkelstein is, of course, dead wrong. There are shopping malls and luxury hotels in Gaza. Billions in humanitarian aid have poured into the Strip since before Israel forcibly withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the land in 2005. And much of that aid has been stolen by Hamas for its war machine. To compare the conditions of Gaza to Auschwitz or Dachau or for that matter a plantation is an act of moral and historical illiteracy.

But leaving these facts aside, we should say that Finkelstein is a gift to the enemies of the Jewish people. After all, a Gentile who traffics in such toxic analogies would be instantly labeled an anti-Semite. But a child of Holocaust survivors? That is something entirely different. What’s more, if Israel is the Nazi state that Finkelstein claims, can you really blame the Palestinians for their blood lust on October 7?

In this sense, Finkelstein is following in the footsteps of Pfefferkorn, who brandished his credential as a former Jew to slander the Talmud, just as Finkelstein brandishes his credential as the son of survivors to slander Israel.

These libels matter. They justify, rationalize, and incite atrocities large and small. Jews do not learn black magic from the study of Talmud, but millions of Europeans believed this lie for centuries. Israel does not target Palestinian children; rather, Hamas endangers them by shooting rockets from schools and mosques. But millions of people around the world believe that Israel does.

The anti-Semites of the Middle Ages needed AsAJews to provide credentials for the lies that justified their pogroms and expulsions. Today, Hamas and its allies in Iran need the AsAJews to persuade the Hague, European governments, and the White House to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense.

The silver lining is that, just as in Pfefferkorn’s time, there are righteous Gentiles like Reuchlin. The honor roll includes New York Representative Ritchie Torres, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, and many others. But the biggest surprise since October 7 has been Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. He ran as a left-wing populist in 2022 and managed to win his race despite suffering a stroke that diminished his brain’s speech functions. As he has recovered, Fetterman has emerged defiant of the pro-Palestinian activists in his party. In January, he walked past a group of them with a wide grin as he waved a small Israeli flag. When South Africa began its prosecution of Israel in the show trial at the Hague, he told the Orthodox Union, “South Africa oughta sit this one out.”

It is important to know that there is a long tradition of converts who work hard to credential the libels of the enemies of the Jews. But we must also acknowledge the tradition of righteous Gentiles who have debunked them—even if those who advance these slanders testify to these lies “as a Jew.”

02/09 Links Pt2: UNRWA's "Nobel Prize for Genocide"; Anti-Zionism is not ‘worthy of respect’; Biden gives Israel 45 days to submit report on international law violations

From Ian:

UNRWA's "Nobel Prize for Genocide"

Norwegian Labour MP Asmund Aukrust recently nominated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to receive a Nobel prize. The UNRWA nomination comes as the world bears witness to incontrovertible evidence of UNRWA employees' direct role in the Hamas mass terror invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer testified before Congress on Jan. 30, 2024, documenting UNRWA employees' incitement of the murder of Jews and glorification of the Hamas massacre. "In November 2023, we sent a report to the UN on 20 teachers who celebrated the October massacre. In March, together with the organization Impact-se, we identified 133 UNRWA teachers who promoted hate and violence on social media....The core problem with UNRWA is that the very purpose of the agency is to perpetuate the war of 1948, and to send the message to Palestinians that the war of 1948 isn't over."

UNRWA isn't the only worthy nominee for the "Nobel Prize for Genocide." The South African government is another leading candidate for its abominable and unforgivable referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide.

Just months before South Africa's ICJ petition was submitted, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. Almost magically, following South Africa's minister of international relations, Dr. Naledi Pandor's, Oct. 23, 2023, visit to Tehran, it was reported that the ANC's finances had "stabilized." Pandor's visit was almost immediately followed by South Africa's full-throated accusation of genocide against Israel. Soon after, the South African Parliament voted in favor of severing diplomatic ties.

Our own worst enemies

It’s bad enough that we have real enemies who are attacking Israel; the last thing we need is “friends” who, perhaps with the best of intentions, are undermining Israel’s case in the United States. One example is an organization I have never heard of, the A-Mark Foundation, which erroneously believes “clear, concise and unbiased information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is difficult to find.” Maybe, if you don’t bother to look. My publication, Myths and Facts, has only been around for 60-odd years (originally published by the founder of AIPAC), and the legacy Jewish organizations have produced plenty of material. My first impulse was to think, “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” but then I saw that the material is based on the work of UCLA professor Dov Waxman, a frequent critic of mainstream American Jewry and one of the signers of an anti-Israel screed published before Oct. 7 (another was Harvard University professor Derek Penslar, who Harvard naturally put on its antisemitism task force).

If the material A-Mark published, based on Waxman’s book, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know, is any indication of his scholarship, students at UCLA are in trouble, as are any readers of the A-Mark answers to the “10 Common Questions About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Waxman exemplifies the worst of woke academia, where facts don’t matter as much as narratives, and their truthfulness or speciousness is irrelevant because everyone’s narrative is their truth. He says both sides dismiss the others’ narratives as myths. He doesn’t acknowledge that facts can be distinguished from myths. It’s a flypaper version of history where there are two sides, and it doesn’t matter which side the fly lands on.

The first paragraph in the “unbiased” answer to question one on what the conflict is about is misleading and inaccurate, reducing it to the two peoples fighting over one piece of land cliché. The religious dimension of the conflict is ignored completely; that is, the Islamic rejection of a Jewish presence on “Muslim land” from the days of the Mufti to Hamas today.

He dates Palestinian nationalism to the mid-19th century, which is untrue. People at that time identified themselves by clans and religion. In the 1920s, the Palestinians began to talk about wanting to be part of Greater Syria, not an independent state. The Jews wanted to return to their homeland and were willing to share it. Unhappily, they accepted the reduction of the size of the Jewish homeland.

Starting in 1937—and as recently as 2008—the Palestinians were offered opportunities for statehood nine times and rejected every one. The Palestinians’ disinterest in independence during the 19-year Jordanian/Egyptian occupation is not mentioned.

It is simply taken for granted that the Palestinians should get a state just because they want one. The Kurds and Basques have a greater claim to independence. Why are only Palestinians entitled to one?

Anti-Zionism is not ‘worthy of respect’

But there is something about the language of the ruling that I find unsettling. After all, strictly speaking, it is not based on upholding Miller’s right to free speech. It’s based on Judge Rohan Pirani’s unprecedented claim that anti-Zionist views, including Miller’s obsessive hatred for Israel, are ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’ and therefore protected under the Equality Act.

This aspect of the Equality Act has been at the centre of various free-speech battles of late. It has enabled many gender-critical feminists – most famously, Maya Forstater – to assert their right to criticise trans ideology and its impact on women’s rights. The trouble is, this aspect of the law is not about upholding free speech for all, it is about deciding which views are and aren’t permitted. It is about which views fit within the Overton window. Unlike the US First Amendment, which takes a content-neutral approach to protecting speech, the UK’s Equality Act effectively allows the state to decide what is and isn’t ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’.

That the courts have judged anti-Zionism to be ‘respectable’, then, is disturbing. After all, anti-Zionism doesn’t just express an opposition to an ideology – like ‘anti-Communism’ does – it also expresses hatred for a nation. Namely, Israel. The tribunal has effectively dressed up a bigoted hatred of Israel as a considered philosophical position, as a perfectly normal belief.

It is unlikely that the court would have come to this view before the 7 October pogrom. Yet, in the shadow of the Israel-Hamas war, not only have anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic sentiments become increasingly prevalent, they have also been normalised and legitimised.

This was something Miller’s lawyer, Zillur Rahman, clearly recognised. After the verdict was delivered, he said that when Miller ‘expressed his beliefs about Zionism, which led to him being dismissed, they weren’t that widely known’. But since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, people have ‘woken’ up to the supposed fact ‘that Zionism is inherently racist and must be opposed’.

Here we can see how Miller’s victory has provided a platform for anti-Israeli propaganda. Miller has every right to spout his conspiratorial nonsense. But we shouldn’t be expected to treat it as a respectable philosophical position. We must challenge and protest against this bigotry before it becomes fully institutionalised.

A "child" with a beard was killed today near Nablus

Palestinian media is reporting:

Aw, what a cute little baby!

All the reports say that he was involved in "confrontations" with the IDF, meaning he was attacking soldiers.

Which could get one killed. Even a "child."

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!

02/09 Links Pt1: The U.S. Promises Palestinians a State While Demanding Nothing in Return; Biden and Cameron are falling into Hamas's trap; Hamas tunnel under UNRWA’s HQ

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: The U.S. Promises Palestinians a State While Demanding Nothing in Return

After criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed the need for “a concrete, time-bound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state.” Elliott Abrams comments:

Even if one assumes that creating a Palestinian state is an important goal, what Blinken has done here is to destroy any preconditions. Blinken of course said that new state should live side by side with Israel in peace, but he did not make that a condition of its creation.

If the path forward is “time-bound and irreversible,” there are by definition no conditions that would slow or preclude creating that state. . . . A “time bound and irreversible path” to Palestinian statehood demands nothing of Palestinians. They are not asked to confront hatred of Jews, not asked to end terrorism, not asked to create decent and effective governance. Instead of being asked to reform their institutions and confront the murderers in their midst, they are asked for nothing. And if that is what they are asked for, that is what they will deliver.

This U.S. position would be understandable in many ways were it entirely cynical. . . . The deeper problem with the U.S. position today is that it appears to be idealistic: Blinken actually means what he says and does want a “time-bound and irreversible path” that will create a Palestinian state no matter how great a danger to Israel it presents. If so, he is promoting a policy that does Palestinians no favors and endangers Israelis.

Col. Kemp: Biden and Cameron are falling into Hamas's trap

They know that in an election year the last thing President Biden wants is to allow US forces to get dragged directly into another serious conflict in the Middle East. So rather than permit the Houthis’ disastrous assault on world trade and the continued humiliation of largely unanswered attacks on US bases to continue, the hope is that Biden will pressure Israel to cease the war in Gaza and refrain from intensive conflict against Hizballah in Lebanon.

Both Iran and Hamas have been given good reason to believe that is possible. Since the start of his presidency Biden has been appeasing the ayatollahs, not only by turning a blind eye to their regional aggression but also releasing millions in frozen assets to help fund it. While both Britain and the US have stood staunchly by Israel since 7th October, they have also compromised their backing by digging at Israel and trying to “two side” the conflict, including innuendo that the IDF is being less than discriminating and proportionate in its strikes against Hamas.

In the same vein, Washington has made a show of sanctioning Israelis accused of isolated and often low-level attacks against Arabs in the West Bank while paying little attention to the far more deadly organised terrorism there by Arabs against Israelis, often backed by Iran.

Both countries have also given emphasis to re-energising a “two-state solution” in the wake of this conflict, most notably in imperious pronouncements by Foreign Secretary David Cameron and his American counterpart Antony Blinken. Any such idea at this point is nothing other than facile. Apart from its sheer impracticability following the October 7 massacre, it seems to reward and further incentivise terrorism.

Of course much of this is for electoral purposes, to balance undoubted support for Israel with a nod to the vehemently and increasingly strident anti-Israel elements among the voters in both countries. But it is also highly dangerous, not least for the civilians of Gaza. It encourages Hamas to hold out hope for Western diplomatic intervention in their favour and therefore helps prolong the war. Hence their impossible demands in these negotiations in the face of impending destruction.

Col. Kemp: 'Hamas plans to use civilians until the last Palestinian is dead'

The war in the Gaza Strip has brought together Israelis from all different walks of life and facets of society with a shared goal of defending their home from Hamas terrorists in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze, Circassians, and others stand united, showcasing diversity and camaraderie. Yahya Mahamid, an Israeli Arab speaker, educator, activist, IDF veteran and self-described Zionist, embodies this unity.

He discussed his journey with Colonel Richard Kemp, a former UK Armed Forces commander, in the Ynet studio. Raised in an Arab city to despise Israel, Mahamid shared how he grew to love the country and join the army.

"I see my service and the IDF as part of my duty to my country, Israel. As an Israeli citizen, I have a duty to my country, just like any other citizen in the world although my education growing up did not put me on this path," he says.

"Unfortunately, I grew up with a very negative image of Israel and the Jewish people, and I was put on a path of a different identity, a made-up identity. But later on in life, I realized and embraced my Israeli side and my Israeli identity, and therefore my duty, was to serve in the IDF and to protect the people of Israel and the country." What do you mean by a made-up identity?

"Up identity made-up identity. I was told that I was not Israeli only solely on the fact that I'm Arab. I was told that I am very distant from Israel and later on I connected to the actual land and dirt of this country. When you put on that green uniform and you fight and you sweat and you bleed and you forge a brothers-in-arms relationship with your colleagues and with your fellow soldiers, you feel connected to this land. And this is a shared feeling among all soldiers in the world, soldiers fight for their country because they're connected to the values and to the flag and to the land of that country."

And did you pay a price within your own family or community for joining the IDF?

"Joining the IDF has definitely been a challenge, and one of those challenges was because going against the flow and forging a new path usually comes at a price. Unfortunately, my family excommunicated me for a few years, because of my service and even before that because of my pro-Israel opinions. And I don't blame them because some other folks in my town where I come from have endangered my family and threatened my family solely on the fact that I hold other views, different views. But on the brighter side, my company commander, when I joined the IDF, called up my mother and told her that I joined the army and he highly encouraged her to go back into contact with me and that I am her son and based on that conversation, me and my mother spoke for the first time after three years."

You can't escape anti-Israel slander, even in mobile games

"Royal Match" is a very popular mobile game where players can join teams and compete. The most obsessive players would naturally want to join teams with the other best players.

There are plenty of teams that claim to represent countries or regions. Most of their descriptions say things like "Have fun" or something patriotic.

One of the top teams in the game is called "Royal Palestine."

Its self description says nothing positive about "Palestine." It's only about how Israel "is an evil terrorist state that kills women and children."

Like the Palestinian national cause itself, there is nothing "pro-Palestinian" here. It is purely anti-Israel.

Ukrainian teams don't insult Russia in their descriptions. Kurdish teams don't attack Turkey. But "Palestinian" teams define themselves with hate, not pride.

Hating Israel is not a reasoned opinion. It is an obsession. It is a psychosis. It is the socially acceptable way to be antisemitic.

And Jews who just want to live their lives are forced to be exposed to this hate, even when they just want to play a game.

(h/t Junior Elder)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The media doesn't believe everything the terrorists say - only what they want to believe

Hamas and Islamic Jihad issue daily reports not only of the alleged casualties of civilians in Gaza, but also of their supposedly successful attacks on the IDF.

On Wednesday, Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today site gave details on a number of alleged attacks by terror forces against the IDF:

The Mujahideen of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, and the Mujahideen of the Al-Qassam Brigades were able to target an Israeli special force consisting of 10 soldiers holed up in a house in the fighting axis west of the city of Khan Yunis, with two anti-personnel shells and clashed with them with machine guns. Al-Qassam announced that the Mujahideen had confirmed that the force had caused deaths and injuries.

Al-Saraya claimed responsibility for targeting an Israeli military bulldozer with an RPG shell, killing those inside it and setting it on fire, in the vicinity of the Al-Amal neighborhood, west of Khan Yunis.

Al-Saraya published a brief statement in which it conveyed the confirmation of its mujahideen, after their return from the areas of clashes, that they were able to kill all members of an Israeli force of 7 soldiers, which was holed up in a residential apartment in the vicinity of Al-Hawouz near the Hayat School, west of the city of Khan Yunis, after targeting it with a “TBG” shell.

Earlier this week, Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida claimed Hamas had killed 15 IDF soldiers in the previous 24 hours.

Hamas also claimed this week to have destroyed 962 Israeli tanks during the war.

In the real world, three IDF soldiers have fallen this month.

Mainstream media ignore these obviously false statements by the terrorists. They know they are lies, so they almost never even mention their claims.

Yet when the same spokespeople claim hundreds of Gaza civilians are killed every day, the same media has no problem believing it. There is no skepticism. The media just adds "according to Gaza health officials" and pretend that they've done their jobs.

No, they haven't. If Hamas and the other groups are known to be liars - and the media clearly knows they are by only reporting their claims that align with the biases of the reporters and their editors - journalists should report that their statements are suspect.

By not reporting that Hamas and the other groups are openly and provably lying, they give more credibility to the Gaza casualty figures that have been universally accepted. And those are exaggerated just as much as the supposed IDF deaths are.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Guardian really wanted to write a story about IDF abuses resulting in gratuitous civilian deaths. They interviewed many IDF soldiers who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they aren't supposed to speak to the press.

While the British newspaper tries to spin their statements as proving Israel's wartime practices are awful, when you read what they actually say, they prove yet again that the IDF is the most moral army in history - and it is The Guardian' reporting that is immoral.

For example, the newspaper says:

Some had not seen Palestinian civilians at all, passing weeks in Gaza without encountering anyone other than small bands of Hamas militants. Others said they had been in close combat almost every day and considered those civilians who ignored Israeli instructions to flee as complicit with Hamas and thus legitimate targets. Those interviewed also expressed sympathy for civilians and said they had tried to help them.

When you read the details, you see that the "legitimate targets" part was made up by the Guardian:

Some of the soldiers said that they considered any civilian who remained in the combat zone after being warned to leave as complicit, and several described fighting Hamas militants in the upper stories of apartment blocks while families sheltered on the ground floor, or even in the same house.

“What am I going to think? That they’re not supporters of Hamas? What are they doing there then? We should ship them all to Yemen, if [the Houthis] like them so much,” a special forces soldier said.

The soldier didn't say that anyone attacked the civilians. He didn't say that they were legitimate targets. He only said they were complicit - and they almost certainly were. Providing cover for terrorists and seemingly acting as voluntary human shields sure indicates that. But no one they quoted supports the assertion that the IDF considered them legitimate targets. The special forces soldier was frustrated because they were obstacles to achieving a military objective, not as a military objective themselves.

If they were legitimate targets, they would have called in an airstrike or artillery round to blow up the whole house rather than engage in a dangerous firefight. These soldiers endangered themselves to avoid killing the civilians.

It is a Guardian lie.

In other sections, the Guardian bends over backwards to validate Hamas lies about casualties. The newspaper tries to understand why none of the many soldiers they interviewed saw any dead civilians:

Several veterans said they had not personally seen women or children killed or wounded, despite both groups comprising the majority of Gaza’s victims, which is possibly a consequence of most of these casualties being inflicted by long-range artillery or airstrikes some distance from most ground troops.

“You do see a lot of dead Hamas fighters, or men anyway. I didn’t see dead children or women and that helped a lot,” the NCO said.

This indicates that Hamas is lying about the majority of the victims being women and children, a claim that has not been corroborated by a single non-Hamas source - yet that claim is reported as fact by anti-Israel media like The Guardian.

Similarly, the newspaper makes the unfounded "suggestion" that the IDF uses massive firepower unnecessarily, and this kills many civilians.

The interviews suggest that the soaring civilian death toll is at least in part due to Israel’s use of massive fire power to limit its own losses.

Yet the soldiers they quote on that topic prove the opposite.

One soldier from the special forces Duvdevan unit said his unit had only encountered Hamas militants on three occasions during six weeks in north Gaza, from where the majority of civilians were ordered to evacuate early in the war.

When asked what tactics the unit employed in such situations, the soldier laughed.

“There are no tactics. We take some fire and identify a target. For an hour we unload everything we’ve got, our own weapons, tanks, anything we can get. Then we advance and find dead terrorists,” he said.

[Another] described how a relatively light injury to a fellow soldier triggered a “massive response”.

“We just took down the whole area where we thought the shooter was,” he said.

Not one civilian was identified as being killed in these two testimonies - but the Guardian says that the huge response to Hamas attacks is responsible for civilian deaths. Without a single shred of proof.

Moreover, the paper implies that a "relatively light injury" does not merit a serious response. What should the IDF do, wait until a soldier is killed before shooting back? A terrorist has revealed where he is; any army would ensure that he is neutralized - and in an area where the civilians have evacuated, the proper response to minimize risk to soldiers is to destroy the building the shooting came from. That is proportional under international law.

Nothing in the laws of armed conflict proscribe these actions. Every army would do the same thing.

The most outrageous part was when one soldier says that IDF troops died for no reason to make Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken happy:

Another special forces soldier said that advances were “done properly” during the early stages of the war.
“We had everything we needed and all in the right order. First airstrikes and artillery, then the tanks, and only then the foot soldiers. By the time we got somewhere, there wasn’t much left,” he said.
The soldier said that more recently, following US pressure to minimise civilian casualties, tactics had changed. “Now the infantry are going in alongside the tanks and that’s why they are getting killed,” he said.

IDF soldiers are putting themselves in danger, and being killed, to please the US. That is sickening and damning.

Even though these soldiers were interviewed anonymously, not one of them gave any indication of the IDF not performing its duties properly, fully in accordance with the laws of armed conflict. (If one did, we know the Guardian would have featured that testimony in paragraph 1.) Clearly the newspaper was hoping to find soldiers among dozens interviewed who would angrily claim that his commanders or comrades were wantonly shooting women and children, as Hamas and Hamas supporters claim happens daily.

They couldn't find one.

On the contrary, every single soldier verified what the IDF has been saying throughout the war. In a place of chaos, where there are thousands of underground hiding places for terrorists, where civilians and civilian objects are cynically used by Hamas to protect terrorist lives, the IDF soldiers from all levels of the army all agree that they are performing professionally and superbly.

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02/08 Links Pt2: Israel’s American frenemy; The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers’; Argentina’s president calls Hamas ‘21st-century Nazism’

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel’s American frenemy

Some Bidenites clearly subscribe to the liberal fantasy that all conflict can be ended by negotiated compromise based on a universal drive for self-interest. Other members of the administration are viscerally hostile to Israel. Far worse, some of these have had links to Iran.

Last September, the news platform Semafor and the London-based émigré opposition outlet Iran International reported from thousands of leaked emails that Iran had infiltrated the Obama administration.

Three people in an Iranian network were aides to U.S. envoy Robert Malley, who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed last June following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified material.”

The leak also revealed that more than ten Iranian analysts in Western think tanks, including Ali Vaez and Dina Esfandiary—two employees of the powerful International Crisis Group—were part of an influence network called the Iran Experts Initiative formed and guided by Tehran.

Last week, Iran International and Semafor further reported that, during the Obama administration, the Crisis Group formed a secret alliance with Iran which used it to lobby the U.S. government throughout the negotiations leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal.

In 2002, Malley founded and directed the Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program. After being appointed in February 2014 to the National Security Council’s staff under the Obama administration, he left the group but continued to use Vaez to send messages to Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Zarif, and sent Vaez to Vienna to meet Iranian officials. In January 2018, Malley became the Crisis Group’s president and CEO.

The leaked materials showed that within a month of his return to government in 2021, Malley helped infiltrate Ariane Tabatabai, who was associated with the Iranian network as an agent of influence, into the U.S. State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.

Tabatabai then moved to the Pentagon, where even today she still serves as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier—what’s more, in an office that oversees hostage recovery.

Anti-Israel protests against Biden have given the impression that his administration is on Israel’s side. America’s Jewish leaders need to start telling the American people that “Genocide Joe” is putting the United States and the West at ever greater risk and is actually helping those who intend the genocide of the Jews.

The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers’

U.S. officials are using pro-Palestinian NGO sources to back a controversial effort aimed at punishing the Jewish state. In November, a month after Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog attended a meeting on Capitol Hill. Instead of focusing on Hamas or Hizbullah, the lawmakers, including senior-ranking senators from both parties, wanted to focus on the risks posed by roving bands of allegedly violent settlers in the West Bank.

Much of the information they were citing came from a single, ostensibly impartial source: Lt.-Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, who currently serves as the U.S. security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC). The USSC is well-known for its regular briefings and reports about "extremist settlers," which it provides to members of Congress. According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel's reports, nearly every claim presented as fact seems to have been lifted directly, sometimes verbatim, from the websites of highly partisan pro-Palestinian organizations.

In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank - not counting those slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023 - while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero. But the story the administration has been telling anyone who will listen is very different.

By scrubbing any mention of the daily violence directed by Palestinian terror operatives against Jewish civilians living in the West Bank from his reports, Fenzel has eliminated the clear retaliatory motive for the vast majority of attacks by Israelis against West Bank Palestinians. Thinly laundered reports from expressly anti-Israel organizations, designed to support an illusion of innocent Palestinians being violently attacked by bloodthirsty Israelis, paint a picture of an Israeli equivalent to the Palestinian atrocities of Oct. 7, lending itself an easy "both-sides" posture.

The Biden administration wants to isolate so-called "extremist settlers" as a major threat to regional stability. Biden's new executive order says they constitute "a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region...[and are] threatening United States personnel and interests." Palestinian terrorism regularly attacking Israelis in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, and elsewhere went unmentioned.

A Proportionate Response

In the summer of 1982, Israel was strategically bombarding a besieged Beirut to uproot the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had long terrorized the Jewish state from its northern border. During the siege, Shlomo Goren, Israel's chief rabbi and a supporter of the war, declared that Jewish law required Israel to allow combatants and noncombatants to flee Beirut.

The great medieval scholar Maimonides had codified a Talmudic opinion that the "fourth side" of a besieged city must remain open as an evacuation corridor. Doing so gives combatants an incentive to flee; otherwise, they might fight to the finish, at great cost to both sides. The Israeli army agreed and left open two major escape routes from Beirut. The IDF had no interest in the PLO terrorists fighting to the last man. Goren would deem this gesture a prime example of how Judaism can teach the world how to fight wars ethically.

Since Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, Israelis are united in believing that the country must remove the threat of Hamas from its border. Yet they have not opposed their government's attempts to forewarn Gazan civilians of impending attacks, or to create evacuation corridors from neighborhoods in which Hamas embeds its fighters. Israelis want to minimize noncombatant casualties. The Jewish state's enemies target its citizens, but Israel will not respond in kind.

Propaganda past the sale is difficult to counter

One of the most effective propaganda techniques used against Israel is "thinking past the sale."

Instead of arguing the technical points accusing Israel of "genocide," which is absurd, they make people think the question of genocide has already been decided and to think "how can we punish Israel for this crime that everyone knows it is guilty of?"

So demanding, for example, that FIFA ban Israeli football is an effective form of propaganda. The coverage does not include any discussion about whether the genocide libel is true so casual observers assume the matter is settled - and we are only discussing the penalties to be meted out on the guilty party.

There is very little room to counter the lie because the lie is implicit in the discussion. The entire question creates its own framework ("Should Israel's genocidal actions result in its expulsion, or not?") where the assumptions are assumed to be true, and engaging in the discussion means one is already accepting the premise.

People need to learn how to know they are being manipulated, because there is no easy way for pro-Israel voices to counter this insidious propaganda method.

By the way, the West Asian Football Association demanding FIFA ban Israel includes the UAE and Bahrain. Jordan is leading the effort.

(h/t Yoel)

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UNRWA To Address Funding Cuts By Holding Bake Sale Using Stolen Aid Flour (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Rafah, February 8 - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees announced today a raft of measures to meet the challenges inherent in the organization losing much of its budget by the end of this month because of ties to terrorism, measures that will include an event or series of events in which Gazans will prepare cakes, pastries, and other confections, and market them to passers-by, with the proceeds helping to cover some of the hundreds of millions in shortfall. The supplies for the event will come from the organization's own Hamas-run warehouses, where the goods are kept safe from the Gaza residents who might otherwise obtain them for free, as intended.

The United States, the European Commission, Austria, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Australia, and Lithuania, among others, declared a suspension of funding UNRWA unless and until the body undergoes an overhaul of its policies, culture, and procedures, in the wake of damning evidence that not only did some UNRWA staff participate in the atrocities of October 7 last year, numerous employees have direct Hamas associations, with half the workers connected to the terrorist group through family. Video and documentary evidence also shows that thousands of UNRWA teachers, for example, celebrate terrorism, and that nothing the organization does in the Gaza Strip can happen without approval and direction from Hamas itself, which appropriates aid goods and funds for its own purposes.

Analysts see the bake sale announcement as an extension of existing Hamas-UNRWA practices. "The UNRWA-provided foodstuffs are meant to be distributed to Gaza residents," explained Matan Shetten of the RAND Corporation. "But no one gets it free except the well-connected among Hamas itself. Everyone else has to buy it. It's even sold at retail in supermarkets. So what we have here with the bake sale is more of the same: Hamas-UNRWA extracting every last shekel from ordinary Palestinians, and letting only the barest amount of aid of any kind trickle down to the people."

"Who's going to buy the cakes - Egypt?" he continued. "No, the only people in Gaza are Gazans; Israeli soldiers, who wouldn't be interested; and Israeli hostages of Hamas, who have no access to the bake sale or money with which to buy anything. That just means more money siphoned away from the people who need it most."

A spokeswoman for UNRWA continued to insist today that every bag of flour is strictly audited and controlled.

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02/08 Links Pt1: PM: Absolute victory within reach; surrender to Hamas demands would bring disaster; Rewarding the Oct 7 Massacres With a ‘Palestinian’ State

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: The Two-State Solution: Nothing More than Wishful Thinking

The hopeless, corrupt, failed, and incompetent Palestinian Authority is no more capable of administering Gaza than it has been capable of administering the West Bank areas.

One wonders how and why serious international leaders continue to spout the absurd "two states" cliche as if it were a sort of magical panacea that, if repeated often enough, will somehow magically move out of the sphere of wishful thinking. It is inconceivable to imagine that a viable, peace-loving Palestinian political entity could materialize out of the present Middle East realities.

The idyllic vision of "two states living side by side peacefully" has never in fact been agreed to by the involved parties themselves - the Palestinians and Israelis. On the contrary, as agreed in the still valid Oslo Accords, the permanent status of the territories remains an open negotiating issue.

The accords make absolutely no mention of any Palestinian state entity. As such, repetition of the call for a "two-state solution" both prejudges the potential, future outcome of a permanent status negotiating process and seriously underestimates regional realities.

Clearly, a two-state solution could not be imposed on unwilling parties. It could only emanate from a negotiated settlement between Israel and a unified, fully representative, responsible, and capable Palestinian leadership, and not a conglomeration of terror groups.

A politically and economically unstable and non-viable Palestinian entity would represent an open invitation to more Iranian meddling and intrusion in much the same way as is occurring in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. This would constitute a constant and even greater threat both to Israel's security, as well as to regional and international stability.

Daniel Greenfield: Rewarding the Oct 7 Massacres With a ‘Palestinian’ State

What do you get when you massacre over a thousand people, rape, behead, torture and kidnap everyone Jewish, Christian or non-Arab in sight? International diplomatic recognition.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken has reportedly begun conducting a review of options for recognizing a ‘Palestinian’ state after the war. The State Department has claimed that there are no policy changes, but that may be yet more diplomatic doubletalk.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, brought in after PM Rishi Sunak ousted Minister Suella Braverman for speaking out against the pro-Hamas rallies, published an op-ed calling for a “pause” in the fighting, exchanging Israeli hostages for captured Hamas terrorists, and providing “safe passage” to “key Hamas leaders” and “the people responsible for October 7” to leave Gaza. After that he announced that his government might recognize an Islamic terror state.

“We – with allies – will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations,” he claimed. “That could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”

Why the urgent need for the “irreversible” recognition of a terror state?

According to Cameron, “we must give the people of the West Bank and Gaza the political perspective of a credible route to a Palestinian state and a new future.”

The “people” in question have already been polled on what they want from the future.

A poll found that 74% of ‘Palestinians’ supported the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 and a majority “extremely” supported them. Only 12% were against. 83% of those in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority and the immediate beneficiaries of statehood, supported the crimes.

98% in Gaza and the West Bank said that they felt ‘pride’ as ‘Palestinians’ over the war. 74% expected the fighting to end with the defeat of Israeli forces in Gaza. Only 17% supported a two-state solution while 77.7% wanted to destroy Israel and replace it with a ‘Palestinian’ state.

This is what supporting the “Palestinian people” with a “Palestinian state” really means.

Seth Mandel: Can Biden and Blinken Stay Out of Their Own Way?

After his prepared remarks, Blinken was asked by an Al-Jazeera reporter: “Is it in any way acceptable to the U.S. for Hamas to be playing a role in governing Gaza in a day-after scenario?”

Blinken gave a one-word answer: “No.”

He also repeated throughout his remarks that it was his job to help construct a path toward a better Middle East but not to tell Israel what to do.

The upshot of all this is that Blinken clearly used his meetings and his public remarks today to try to reset the vibe after getting on the Saudis’ nerves yesterday and earning a public rebuke. He did not frustrate his hosts today.

Indeed, Netanyahu sounded a triumphant note in his own presser. Hamas’s latest counteroffer in the hostage talks was dismissed by Blinken several times today as a “nonstarter,” so Netanyahu was unburdened from the perception that he’s the intransigent party.

“The victory is within reach,” Netanyahu said, referring to Israeli forces’ continued gains in the Hamas stronghold city of Khan Younis. Throughout his comments, Netanyahu returned time and again to an important point: The only message that matters right now is “Hamas must go,” because any wavering on this—especially, though he did not say so explicitly, by the U.S.—makes postwar planning impossible.

This is key. If regional actors—the Saudis, Egypt, Jordan (which has a large Palestinian population)—think America is wavering on the total defeat of Hamas and the expulsion of its leaders, they simply won’t commit to facilitating the transition in Gaza. Nobody’s going out on that limb if they think there’s a chance Biden will cut it down. Nor would they want to commit manpower to any civil administrative role if they think they’ll “get a bullet in the head” from remnants of Hamas left behind, as Netanyahu put it today.

The same is true for any Saudi normalization deal with Israel, since Hamas has shown it can torpedo any progress at will. “There will be no agreement if Hamas is not defeated,” Netanyahu said.

The postwar goals that are so dear to the Biden administration are only possible if a united front leads to complete victory. Every day that is spent by Biden or Blinken sowing doubts about Israel’s mission or showing impatience is a day spent undermining normalization and obstructing any path to Palestinian self-determination. Israel is currently in the process of removing the roadblock to the Biden administration’s wish list.

The schizophrenic policy whereby the White House impedes the fulfillment of its own demands is wearing out its welcome. Today Blinken’s message was clear, and it was in line with the intent of our Mideast allies. But those allies need to believe the same will be true tomorrow, and the day after that.

Jordanian news site: "We are in a war against the Jews." (Not "Zionists.")

Dr. Ahmad Shahrouri, a sharia professor at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, writes in the Albosafa news site that Jordan is in a war with the Jews.

Since Jordan and Palestine were oppressed under what they called the British “mandate,” our region has never been well, and the evil shown in the Balfour Declaration was perpetuated. The British Foreign Minister gave Palestine a gift to the Jews to establish their religious state on it, so that one of the lungs of the Jordan River could breathe carcinogenic oxygen, and the other would get cancer due to the neighboring environment.

To know, O Jordanian, that you are threatened by the prophecies of the Torah and the Talmud, and that the Jews have an open appetite to swallow up your land at their appropriate time, is half the recipe for your true independence, and the other half is to live through the calamity and appreciate it as it deserves, and to spend the hours of your life anticipating an affliction that you should not surrender to if you are sane.

A nation whose enemy displays a map of his state, which includes the east and west of the Jordan River, and who for decades has been declaring while heading to visit our land that he is heading from the liberated Land of Israel to its occupied land, what more proof of the disastrous truth needs than to condemn its enemy from his own mouth? Is it not pedantic to then accuse us of being conspiracy theory lovers?

...Gentlemen, we are in a real battle, in which the Jews are not our primary enemies. We are in a battle with our selfishness, with the lusts of publicity within us, with the absence of awareness from our intellectuals.
...
Our battle with the Jews will not be victorious until we defeat their agents who stand as a stumbling block in the way of the entire nation’s liberation from slavery to them and their whims. Jordan will remain threatened until rational people know that its arena and the arena of Palestine are one, one in danger, one in fate, one in victory, or defeat, God forbid.

It's funny that he accuses Israel of printing maps including Jordan as part of Israel. Because in 1964, Jordan published this map of Jordan on a stamp:

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The reporting on Hamas' absurd ceasefire demands can only be described whitewashing a terror group.

As I reported yesterday, Arabic media described the offer in detail. It included bringing things back not only to how they were on October 6, but to improve the ability for Hamas to plan and stage further and deadlier attacks than October 7 even before the hostages are all released.

Their demands included:

- Hamas stays in full control of Gaza (so it can stage attacks in the future)

- No restrictions on imports to Gaza (including weapons) even during the first phase of the swap

- No restrictions on travel to and from Gaza (including terrorists) during the first phase of the swap

- Immediately banning Jews from visiting Judaism's most sacred spot

- 500 of the prisoners to be released would be those with life sentences or other very long terms - meaning, the worst murderers and terrorists must be allowed to go free.

All of these demands (except the release of the worst terrorist prisoners) were to be implemented immediately or during the first phase of the swap while most of the Israeli hostages would not be released until the second phase.

The news media reviewed the same document I did. Yet they ignored nearly everything Hamas demanded outside hostage-for-prisoner swap framework.

Many reports quoted Anthony Blinken as saying that some of Hamas' demands were clearly "non-starters" but no Western media I could find reported on what those non-starters were.

The New York Times characterized Israel's rejection of these terms as "Netanyahu Spurns Hamas Offer for Gaza Cease-Fire." It completely ignored the details I wrote above. And the only "experts" it quoted were a Hamas leader abroad and an Israeli expert who said this is the best Israel will get so it should take the offer.

Reuters wrote a specific article with what it said were the details of the plan - and didn't mention anything listed above.

BBC relied on Reuters to report on the demands, not bothering to use its many Arabic speaking employees to report on the plan directly.

AP didn't report on the details as far as I can tell, and characterized Netanyahu's rejection as a "snub" in its headline.

CNN read Hamas' absurd terms and didn't report on anything I mentioned.

Financial Times and others again ignored the details that shows Hamas' plan is absurd.

Al Jazeera gave a few more details, including the demand for the 500 of the worst terrorists to be released and the ban on Jews on the Temple Mount (" Israeli settlers stop attacking Al-Aqsa Mosque.")

There is clearly a mindset among the mainstream media to soften and whitewash Hamas' image. They are eager to report Netanyahu's demand that Hamas be utterly destroyed as evidence that he is the one who is delusional, but they actively hide Hamas' actual delusional demands.

Hamas' ides of a ceasefire is to make every day October 6, where it can choose to attack at any time for any reason. There is not one word in the Hamas proposal that contradicts Hamas' Ghazi Hamad's statement that Hamas intends to mount October 7-style attacks "again and again" in the future. Good luck finding any Western media outlet that mentions that.

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Ronen Tal in Haaretz writes that Eurovision will become an anti-Israel circus if Israel sends a contestant, and it is better not to feedthe months of hate that will inevitably come:

Between now and May 7, when the first semifinal is held, the protests against us will continue to mount and spread much further, while now they are still mostly limited to the Nordic countries. Representatives from various countries will pull out in protest over the scenes of destruction in Gaza (some of them will be replaced other singers who are willing to risk being subjected to cancellation.) The pressure on the European Broadcasting Union, which has so far supported Israel, will become a raging tsunami of threats and counter-threats. If we take part, the entire competition will become a huge anti-Israel display that will do no one any good, certainly not Israel.

Israel should pull out of Eurovision ...even if it's perceived as an act of surrender to the Roger Waterses and John Cusacks of this world. A decision to withdraw would nullify the scandal before it really got started and completely took over the competition.

The immediate audience of Eurovision fans – loony progressives with an abiding nostalgia for sequins – is incapable, and not the least bit interested, in giving us a genuine opportunity to prove the rightness of our position. This battle needs to be waged in the UN and the Hague, not at a singing competition without an orchestra. Aside from national pride, and a childish fear of looking childish and defeated, there is really no reason to drown in the humiliation waiting for us in Sweden.

There is an appeal in this argument. Why consciously put Israel through months of hate?

Tal's right that Eurovision will become a platform for lots of loony anti-Israel performative pretense of morality. But he's wrong that Israel should withdraw.

One reason is that the world is filled with anti-Israel rhetoric anyway. Staying away will not reduce it.

A second reason is because when people and organizations cave to anti-Israel pressure, it never decreases the hate. On the contrary, it is blood in the water for the piranhas. Success at forcing Israel out will result in a redoubling of effort to force Israel out of every sporting competition, every chess competition, every math Olympiad, every international event.

The third reason is actually one of Tal's arguments itself: let the haters leave the competition, not Israel. Let them refuse the honor of representing their countries. If entire countries withdraw, then they look like idiots to their citizens who are fans of the show. And if the news stories go towards unhappy fans missing out on cheering their country - and Israel haters trying to bully singers and countries to boycott it - that would be a good outcome. The boycotters would look stupid on the world stage.

I don't care about Eurovision for a minute. But the downside for Israel not participating is far greater than any downside from taking part.

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