Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Two hostages rescued in dramatic IDF operation in Rafah. Terrorists claim "massacre."

From Times of Israel on the dramatic rescue of Israeli hostages Fernando Marman and Norberto Har:

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari offers details on the rescue of hostages Marman and Har.

“The IDF and the Shin Bet have been working on this operation for a long time,” he says.

“Conditions were not ripe to carry it out until now, and we waited for them to ripen.”

He adds: “Reaching the target in the heart of Rafah was very complex.”

Forces clandestinely arrived at the target at around 1 a.m., and carried out a very complex action on the premises and the second floor where the hostages were held.”

He says preparations included “backup, a major aerial envelope, and intimate intel.”

He says forces then broke into the building through a locked door and exchanged fire with gunmen in the building and in adjacent buildings, while extracting the hostages to armored vehicles.

“There was intense firepower from the air. Fire was opened from nearby buildings. The Air Force struck intensively there,” he says. At the same time, the armored corps also provided cover for the extraction.

Hagari says “many terrorists were eliminated tonight in this action.”

One soldier was lightly injured, but beyond that no Israelis were hurt.

“The entire operation lasted about an hour from start to finish.”

Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the US have been pressuring Israel not to operate in Rafah. After seeing that hostages are kept there and Israel saved some, practically no Israelis will agree.

The terrorists, knowing that their hope that Israel won't invade Rafah have dwindled, decided to make up a story about massive massacres there without mentioning the rescue. Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today almost admits that terrorists were killed, but not quite:

The Israeli occupation committed a massacre in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, leaving dozens of martyrs dead and hundreds wounded.

Medical sources reported that more than a hundred martyrs so far and hundreds of injuries arrived at Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, after the occupation aircraft targeted several homes and mosques with dozens of raids, noting that the sounds of violent clashes between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation army were taking place near the vicinity.

Ramallah News reports that "The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the city of Rafah is witnessing violent Israeli raids concentrated in the center of the city, targeting inhabited homes opposite the headquarters of the Red Crescent Society."

This indicates that Hamas is keeping hostages near areas like medical facilities in order to dissuade rescue attempts.

Altogether this was an extremely impressive operation. It points to the need for the IDF to go into Rafah in order to get rid of the rest of the major Hamas battalions and leaders - if there are any left who haven't already fled under tunnels from Rafah to Egypt.

This also points to how Israeli successes breed more success. Intel received from detained terrorists, computers and documents captured make it easier for Israel to mount pinpoint operations that can be better planned and better executed.

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!

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!

02/11 Links: UNRWA, the Greatest Welfare Scam Ever; US obsession with two-state solution is ‘delusional’; There’s no bigger hypocrite than a Left-wing ‘anti-racist’

From Ian:

UNRWA, the Greatest Welfare Scam Ever

Fatah, following its terrorism debut in 1965, grew in strength as would the other Muslim terror fraternities. Still, not since the founding of the UN in 1945 had there been one resolution, amid hundreds on the interminable violence, referring to a “Palestinian people” as a party to what otherwise was known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not until GA Resolution 2628 of December 8, 1970 did the General Assembly produce its first document referring to a “Palestinian people.”

And the rest is history. In the decade of the 70s, PLO Arabs so “mugged” Europe with their terror attacks, in 1980 the European Community (precursor to the EU) submitted to their demand for recognition as not criminal terrorists but political activists in a legitimate war of national liberation. It was called the “Venice Declaration.”

And as for UNRWA, many of its sixty-seven donor nations support it in fear of these “Palestinians” if they do not. For others, it has never been anything but a false front for peoples with histories of atrocious hostility and persecution of Jews who have supported the gangs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria with billions of dollars. Post-Holocaust, with antisemitism out of fashion, “Palestinian nationalism” became the new, “legitimate” way of reviling Jews and accusing them of crimes against humanity. UNRWA has been the conduit for maintaining more than a million people on its welfare rolls. And why? To give the Jews no peace. For such nations, UNRWA is ostensibly about charity for the “Palestinian refugees” that cloaks a timeless hatred of Jews.

There is nothing “Palestinian” about these people, and they certainly are not refugees. Their great-grandparents were, but unlike other war refugees in history, they were never helped to restart their lives in a new country of asylum. The PLO terrorists got the UN to recognize that the status of “Palestinian refugee” passes to their children and grandchildren, etc. until they can all “return home.” It is the only war-refugee population in history that has not dissolved over time via resettlement and the inexorable reality of actuarial tables but ballooned exponentially. The original 200,000 refugee migrant workers suddenly in Gaza in 1949 produced between one and two million of the Arabs in the Strip today, all of them recognized by the world as “Palestinian refugees” when they never in their lives sought refuge anywhere.

In the last week in January, UNRWA made headlines when the IDF revealed evidence of some dozen employees participating in the satanic Jew-killing, Jew-raping, Jew-mutilating, and Jew-kidnapping, sadistic murder orgy of October 7. At first, UNRWA protested they were a few bad apples and unrepresentative of the organization. But IDF soldiers in Gaza have been astonished to find Hamas propaganda, weapons and ammunition in home after home. Thousands worked for UNRWA/Hamas. These IDF veterans of Gaza have come to believe that everyone in Gaza is Hamas.

And that is why all the recipients of UNRWA handouts in Gaza, that is, 70% of the population, must be relocated away from Israel, which should be no problem since there are 56 officially Muslim states, 21 of them officially Arab as well, so surely Believers in the One True Faith will want to care for their co-religionists by taking them in and helping restart their lives.

Right beneath UNRWA's headquarters: Israel Hayom gets inside look into Hamas' servers

With impressive cooperation between the 401st Brigade, the IDF Military Intelligence Direcotrate, the Engineering Corps, the Shin Bet security agency, and the 162nd Division – the careful clearing of the tunnel began. For several days our forces advanced meter by meter. They discovered a maze whose deciphering required great ingenuity. They also discovered the luxury conditions that the terrorists had prepared for themselves underground – from a first aid kit for emergencies to motorized scooters that would save them from having to walk bent over for 300 meters there and back, to state-of-the-art Electra air conditioners.

These were intended not only for the people – even in winter it's hot underground – but mainly for Hamas' technological brain, meaning for the server room located, as mentioned, beneath UNRWA's main compound in Gaza.

We were not allowed to see the full room, but even from the little we saw, it's clear this computer system would not embarrass an advanced high-tech company. Columns and columns of servers are cooled by new white air conditioners. Next to it, is a power facility, connected above ground.

"We are at the heart of the secret, in the server farm," Col. Nissim Hazan, who was brought in to command the operation to expose the tunnel, says. "This is the farm from which Hamas created its intelligence superiority. There are ten server cabinets here, full of much-coveted information. You could only get to this place with maneuvering soldiers. You can't do this by remote control or with an aerial bomb. Above us is UNRWA's huge building, which Hamas intentionally located here so we couldn't strike it. This is Hamas' intelligence treasure."

The information in the servers behind it will soon be sucked out. In the meantime, one can only guess that they were used to plan the murderous attack, to collect and concentrate intelligence information ahead of the raid, to remotely control the firing of missiles at Israel over the years, and perhaps also to prepare and build the tunnel array itself. What's certain is the connection to UNRWA is there for everyone to see in broad daylight.

After we again sank into the mud, crawled through the tunnel, walked hunched over for hundreds of meters, and came out into Gaza's trembling skies, the IDF APCs brought us to UNRWA's headquarters. There, among offices, schools, kindergartens, and SpongeBob drawings, the commander of 401st Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, shows us the agency's own server room.

"We're in UNRWA's server room. Coincidentally – I say this cynically – it's located right above the server room you found underground," he says. "Notice that all the cables are ripped and disconnected, they left almost nothing, only what they managed to cut off. We're lucky a few cables remained that they didn't manage to cut off some of the cables that going down below. They took out all the DVRs and computers from here. Only someone who has something to hide does something like this. What kind of international humanitarian organization that only has good intentions behaves this way?"

Evening is falling and a cool breeze comes from the sea. The APCs head back to the beachfront handoff point. The brand new Netz unit – black coffee is their courtesy – again takes us in the armored vehicles, this time out towards Be'eri. We speedily cross areas our forces destroyed, and on that same route, the Hamas killers raced toward our communities that fateful morning.

The whole way, I couldn't stop thinking, why did they do this? The Hamasniks knew that one day the IDF would arrive. Hence the tangled tunnels, hence the fortified steel doors, hence a whole array of obstacles meant to delay the invasion that would sooner or later come. But if so, if you knew that in the end, Israel would defeat you anyway, why did you do this? What's the logic and benefit of committing crimes against humanity that end in your own destruction?

Axios reported last week:

The State Department will start restricting visas Monday for people who are believed to be linked to misuses of commercial spyware.

The State Department plans to decide who would fall under this category on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official told reporters.

The visa restrictions would prevent those who have profited from or facilitated the misuse of commercial spyware from traveling to the U.S., the official added.

The timing of this announcement sure seems to indicate that this is another US salvo against Israel.

As Haaretz reports:

The new U.S. policy may also expose Israelis active in the field to new sanctions, even if they have been acting with the approval of Israeli authorities.
Sources in the Israeli cybersecurity technology ...claimed that the American decision is an attempt by the Biden administration to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in connection with the current war in Gaza.
Though the decision is a continuation of an existing policy that began with the placing of Israeli spyware manufacturers like NSO and later Intelexa on a Biden administration blacklist, the timing of the new decision – during the war in Gaza – is "disturbing," senior industry sources say.
A number of leading figures in Israeli cyber intelligence firms all agreed that the announcement had less to do with spyware and more with sending a message to Netanyahu: "Precisely like the reports on [United States] withholding ammunition, like sanctions on [extremist Jewish] settlers, this is another case of the U.S. trying to create leverage on Israel and pressure the Netanyahu government to agree to American terms," a senior Israeli cybertechnology executive told Haaretz.

We've seen since the spyware stories started coming out in 2021 that the overwhelming amount of attention was paid to Israeli spyware companies and the fact that that they are linked to Israel, even though there are similar companies throughout Europe.

And guess what? The US doesn't ban spyware use by the US government!

The Biden administration has not banned all uses of spyware within the U.S. government — the ban only covers use cases involving companies the administration deems a threat to national security, such as Cytrox, NSO Group and others.

When the decision as to who will be sanctioned is made on a "case by case basis" that means there are no rules and no consistency in applying them. This makes this policy ripe for abuse for political purposes. In fact, politics seems to be the entire reason for this policy change right now.

This isn't a national security policy, and not a policy against all spyware as a potential vector for human rights abuses. Just like the recent anti-"settler" executive order, it is a policy to send messages of displeasure to Israel, and uses spyware as a convenient excuse.

The messages are getting louder and clearer.

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!

Biden is throwing Israel under the bus to win Michigan

Axios reported on January 31:

Secretary of State Tony Blinken asked the State Department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible U.S. and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, two U.S. officials briefed on the issue told Axios.

For decades, U.S. policy has been to oppose the recognition of Palestine as a state both bilaterally and in UN institutions and to stress Palestinian statehood should only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Efforts to find a diplomatic way out of the war in Gaza has opened the door for rethinking a lot of old U.S. paradigms and policies, a senior U.S. official said.

Some inside the Biden administration are now thinking recognition of a Palestinian state should possibly be the first step in negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of the last, the senior U.S. official said.

What has changed? It isn't as if Palestinians have become more moderate, or willing to accept a Jewish state, over the past decade. It isn't as if they have turned against terror - on the contrary, the vast majority of Palestinians supported Hamas October 7 attack and the Abbas government never condemned October 7.

It is true that Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry said last week that it will not open diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the fictional "1967 borders" with East Jerusalem as its capital. But this came only days after the Saudis signaled that they would accept only declarative steps of Israel saying it commits to an eventual Palestinian state to move forward because they are eager to forge a NATO-style pact with the US within two months and didn't want the Palestinian state issue to get in the way.

Which means that the Saudis aren't the reason the US is considering recognizing a Palestinian state. It strongly indicates that the Biden administration told the Saudis that they have the political space to demand more, and provide cover for any change in US policy.

So we are back to the question of why the US is sending the message of a change in longstanding US policy, to publicly support the worst antisemites in the world and throw Israel under the bus?

All indications point to Michigan.

Michigan is a key swing state in the November elections, and it has 200,000 Muslim voters - double the number of Jewish voters. And while the Jews reliably for the Democratic party no matter what its Middle East policy is, Muslim and Arab leaders have been saying since October 7 that they will abandon Biden and even allow Trump to win out of displeasure of Biden's public support of Israel after the massacre.

Back in October, the New York Times wrote about how Michigan Arabs and Muslims say they are willing to abandon Biden out of anger at the US' pro-Israel policies.

Some prominent Arab American figures in Michigan have predicted that many voters in the state will choose to leave the presidential candidate ballot blank next year.

One of them is Osama Siblani, the publisher of The Arab American News and an outspoken voice on Middle East policy. He has heard the worry that abandoning Mr. Biden means that Mr. Trump, should he be the Republican nominee for president, will prevail.

“My argument is, ‘Let him win,’” he said of Mr. Trump.

Unlike Jews, Michigan Arabs look at the Middle East as their most important issue. In a poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute in October, nationwide support among Arabs for Biden went down from 59% in 2020 to 17% now.

In Michigan, that would translate to 84,000 votes lost for Biden. Biden carried Michigan in 2020 by only 154,000 votes, and Trump won in 2016 by only 11,000 votes.

Recognizing a Palestinian state would probably barely affect the Jewish vote in Michigan at all but Arab and Muslim leaders are threatening, as a bloc, to abandon Biden.

Biden cannot afford to lose Michigan if he is to win the election. Trump is only 2 points ahead in Michigan in the most recent poll.

Palestinian US Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, has not supported Biden during the presidential campaign. Her sister, Layla Elabed, is spearheading a campaign for Michigan Arabs and Muslims to vote "uncommitted" in the February 27th Democratic primary just to embarrass Biden and send a strong message that they prefer that Trump wins unless Biden does a U-turn on US policy away from Israel.

There have been numerous articles claiming that Benjamin Netanyahu is waging war in Gaza for political reasons only. But here we see that political reasons are the only possible reasons for the US to signal a sea change in policy against Israel and to unilaterally support a Palestinian state - and there is barely a squawk of protest from the people who claim to be the moral compass of America.

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!

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."

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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)

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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.

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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.