Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

The IDF captured a book of Hamas fatwas saying it is OK for them to kill and kidnap Israeli civilians

Last week it was revealed that the IDF captured a Hamas booklet issued by its Shura Council that discusses the Sharia laws concerning terror attacks against Jewish civilians.

First is says that Islam does not kill non-combatants:

Sharia differentiates between enemy fighters and non-combatants, and the evidence for that is God Almighty who says: “And kill in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not like aggressors.” (Al-Baqarah:100). The Noble Verse commanded fighting all who participated in our fighting, and desisting from those who did not fight us...

But, as always, there is an exception for Israel (highlighted part above):

Zionist society is an armed society that came to take the land of Palestine by force, to defile the holy places and to shed blood. Most of them are conscripted for mandatory military service, therefore - every one of the Jewish occupiers are fighters except for children and the mentally ill who are exempt from service. There is no difference between men and women, old and young. That is why it is permissible to target them, and to take them all as prisoners of war if you manage to kidnap them while they are still alive.

Another captured document, discussed in Haaretz, says that it is forbidden to kill Israelis if there are Muslims among them who might be killed as well. And also that women prisoners must be treated respectfully and cannot be abused.

The children and Muslims killed and kidnapped on October 7, and the women who were raped, shows that even this antisemitic text was disregarded as being too tolerant.

But notice how no major Muslim leaders are condemning Hamas for explicitly violating Islamic law - even their own twisted versions of Islamic law.

In the end, Islamic terrorists do whatever they want to do, and the "laws" are rewritten after the fact in order to justify even the most horrific crimes and outrages.

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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02/13 Links Pt1: Israel’s Deterrence Is Aimed at Hamas’s Patrons; Sorry, but There Is No Two-State Solution; Defund, dismantle, and do over the UN

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Deterrence Is Aimed at Hamas’s Patrons

The deterrence factor is aimed at the countries who enabled Hamas to become the threat that it was before the war. As previously mentioned, the ground underneath Rafah has long been used to connect Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai. In recent years, those tunnels have mostly been used by smugglers and Hamas terrorists. Ever since Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, Egypt has progressively slackened in its efforts to police the tunnel crossings, or to destroy the tunnels completely. The only way to force a change in Egypt’s posture is for the IDF to go into Rafah, all the more so because Cairo doesn’t want it to. Deterrence is about costs.

Israel is also hoping to deter Qatar, whose many millions of dollars of investment into Hamas must be shown to be wasteful. If you are going to help the Palestinians in the Strip after Hamas is gone, do not allow your aid to be used to build underground prison cities.

Iran must be deterred as well, because Tehran cannot be made to believe it is cost-free to maintain a regional spoiler in Gaza. Hamas should be defeated and removed, and the U.S. should make it a point to redirect any efforts it would have made in appeasing Iran over its nuclear program toward strengthening the growing Sunni alliance. The most significant step would be prioritizing an expansion of the Abraham Accords and Israel-Saudi normalization.

Last, the ongoing humiliation of the United Nations in Gaza, which has now been shown to have effectively merged with Hamas, must continue. Every account of UNRWA corruption must be broadcast to the world, and that can only be done if Hamas is first swept out of the Strip.

Hamas doesn’t need to be deterred, it needs to be destroyed. As it’s destroyed, hopefully Hamas’s enablers will have earned the deterrence they so richly deserve.

JPost Editorial: Despite global slander and complicity, the IDF will continue to bring home hostages

In a meticulously planned and executed operation, Israeli forces rescued hostages from Rafah on the Egyptian border in southern Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and Yaman, the special forces of the police, brought home Louis Har and Fernando Marman, abducted on October 7 from Nir Yitzhak. This essential operation fills our hearts with pride for Israel and increases our determination to bring the remaining 134 hostages home.

The operation shows how dedication and determination have paid off in this war against a vicious genocidal terrorist organization. Hamas spent more than 16 years robbing the people of Gaza so that it could fill Gaza with tunnels and weapons and turn it into the world’s largest concentration of terrorist infrastructure. It was into this world of horror and terror that hostages were taken on October 7.

It is tough to rescue them because Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian areas of Gaza. In Rafah, as elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has surrounded itself with more than one million human shields. It bases forces near hospitals, builds terror centers under UNRWA facilities and everywhere there is a civilian site Hamas often tries to burrow beneath it. he moment the rescued hostages are reunited with their loved ones after their dramatic rescue from Hamas captivity by Israeli special forces. (Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

We know this because of the testimony of other hostages and evidence of how they were kept in Khan Yunis or held in private homes. For instance, hostages were held in private homes near Shifa Hospital and transported to Shifa and the Indonesian hospital.

To free the two hostages in Rafah took long preparation and precise timing. “This was a complex rescue operation under fire in the heart of Rafah, based on valuable intelligence from the Intelligence Directorate and the Israel Security Agency,” IDF spokesperson, R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari, said.

“We have prepared for this operation for some time, and with the necessary preparations made we waited for conditions that would allow its implementation,” he added.

Even as it was taking place, Hamas and the pro-Hamas media in the region and online were accusing Israel of attacking civilians in Gaza, and spreading rumors about IDF losses. It is essential to understand the lengths Hamas has gone to prevent an IDF operation like this. It organized supporters abroad, many active and on social media, and it spread false narratives about Rafah.

NYTs: How Hamas Uses Gaza's Hospitals

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is Gaza's largest medical facility. Israel claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control center beneath it. Hamas and hospital staff, meanwhile, insisted it was only a medical center. But evidence examined by the New York Times suggests Hamas used the hospital for cover, stored weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex that was supplied with water, power and air-conditioning.

Classified Israeli intelligence documents reviewed by the Times indicate that the tunnel is at least 700 feet long, extends beyond the hospital, and likely connects to Hamas' larger underground network. According to classified images reviewed by the Times, Israeli soldiers found underground bunkers, living quarters and a room wired for computers and communications equipment along a part of the tunnel beyond the hospital.

American officials have said their own intelligence backs up the Israeli case, including evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa to hold at least a few hostages. American intelligence also indicates that Hamas fighters evacuated the complex days before Israeli forces moved into Al-Shifa, destroying documents and electronics as they left.

Every Jew nowadays has a mental calendar comparing the rabid hate for Israel and "Zionists" in their country to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Are we in 1933? 1935? 1938?

Hamas showed on October 7 that it would build gas chambers and crematoria if it had the ability. And the open support for Hamas' depravity shows that there are a lot of people who would defend a Hamas gas attack as "legitimate resistance."

This TikTok video shows a group of Irish bigots - including an enthusiastic child - clearing what they call Israeli products from the shelves of a supermarket.

I was curious what Israeli products they were in fact tossing.

Pampers diapers.

Now, Pampers are not owned by any Israelis. They are owned by US-based Procter and Gamble.

So what's the connection to Israel?

From reading the fevered rants of today's antisemites, P&G buys much of its material for Pampers from Avgol Nonwovens which is based in Israel. However, Avgol is owned by Indorama Ventures, which is based in Thailand.

This is a pretty indirect reason for boycotting.

"Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!"

Nazi Germany boycotted Jewish-owned businesses. As far as I know, it didn't boycott all imports to Germany that had any secondary or tertiary connection to Jewish suppliers.

Today's Nazis say they have much greater ambitions. Just like the Arab boycotts of Israel from the 1940s through today, the modern Nazis do not only a primary but a secondary and tertiary boycott (blacklisting firms that do business with other companies that do business with Israel,) in addition to boycotting based on mere rumor.

But looking at the lists of companies that BDSers call to boycott, there are plenty whose connection to Israel is even more tenuous that Pampers. Additionally, they would be literally impossible to boycott unless one lives in a cave. Between Google. Intel, Meta and Microsoft these people couldn't have websites or use computers; their homes are filled with Unilever, P&G and Johnson & Johnson products they call to boycott.

This is all virtue signaling. After all, what did these Irish people do after tossing the products into the cart? Did they burn them in the middle of the store? Did they try to push the carts out without paying? They couldn't do either without being arrested - so they just uploaded the video to tell the world how wonderful and righteous they are.

After the cameras were turned off, some working class employee was forced to replace the products on the shelves from those carts.

Which makes these Irish posers pretty lousy socialists as well.

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!

Times of Israel reports:

Jordan’s King Abdullah gave one of his most pointed criticisms of Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel, declaring that the massacre should be unacceptable to Muslims, and calling for a “lasting” ceasefire that would end the war in Gaza triggered by the unprecedented attack.

Speaking alongside US President Joe Biden at the White House on Monday, Abdullah said “all attacks against innocent civilians, women and children, including those of October 7, cannot be accepted by any Muslim. As I have previously stressed, we must make sure the horrors of the past few months since October 7, are never repeated, nor accepted by any human being.”

While he swallowed up his mild criticism of October 7 with much more elaborate and detailed criticism of Israel, it is significant that he said that, one would think.

Or is it?

If an Arab leader says something in English for a Western audience that barely scolds other Arabs, yet no Arabs can hear it, or know about it, does it make a sound?

I cannot find a single Arabic website based in the Arab world that mention this part of Abdullah's speech. (CNN Arabic did.)

Even more bizarre, the official State Department Arabic translation of the press conference only includes President Biden's remarks - it doesn't publish anything that King Abdullah said! The English language site included both leaders' remarks, but not the Arabic site.

It almost seems like everyone knows that King Abdullah could get severely criticized if his statements were publicized in the Arab world. Everyone - Arab media and the US State Department - wants to make sure that Abdullah's pretense of caring about Israeli civilians is kept as quiet as possible.

If so...what good is it? It is like Yasir Arafat's pro-forma "condemnations" of terror attacks during the second intifada, many of which were performed by groups who swore allegiance to him.

It is a meaningless gesture for Arab leaders to criticize attacks on Jewish civilians when their words will never reach the people who wholeheartedly support such attacks. It is a checkbox item to make themselves look "moderate" to the Western world, which never reports that Jordanians are among the most antisemitic people on Earth and Jordanian media publishes explicitly antisemitic content daily.

King Abdullah is doing nothing to change 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!

Everything the anti-Israel side says is a lie. With Rafah, the lies are getting even bigger.

Rafah is now what Gaza always has been, but more.

It now has more civilians, it is where much of the aid arrives, and it is where the bulk of the remaining Hamas forces are concentrated.

Just as with the past four months, Egypt and Jordan are dead set against allowing Gazans to flee - and their rhetoric has increased, with Egypt threatening to scuttle the peace treaty with Israel if Gazans escape past its series of fences and walls.

Anti-Israel organizations are ramping up the already existing industry of lies to hysterical and uber-exaggerated. They are replacing "Gaza" with "Rafah" and putting all their resources into trying to pressure Israel not to attack Hamas there.

The lies about Rafah are insane. Jewish Voice for Peace wrote Monday, "Last night, the Israeli military bombed the over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians the Israeli government forced into Rafah. This is genocide."

Really? They bombed 1.4 million people? They must have really bad aim!

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights says Israel is merely threatening to exterminate 1.4 million people:

Amnesty says civilians in Rafah "are facing the real and imminent risk of genocide."

Palestinian Red Crescent says any Israeli operations would be a "death sentence" for 1.4 million people.

What do all of these statements have in common? They are exactly the message that Iran and Hamas want the world to hear.

Hamas' war has been a war of public relations more than a war of bullets. Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, who prides himself as knowing Israeli psychology inside out, bet that Israel would cave under pressure and allow Hamas to survive the way it did in previous wars. He knows that Israel is sensitive to world opinion and world pressure is his major strategic asset. This is why human shields are an integral part of Hamas' strategy - dead children, real or imagined, are his guarantee that he will survive.

Israel isn't playing by the same rules any more. It is certainly following international law in its attacks, but it is adhering to the way other nations interpret it, not the overly cautious way it had been following it in previous wars. This time it is too important to utterly destroy Hamas as a threat, and this is a valid military goal - anything goes in that pursuit as long s it does not violate the principles of distinction and proportionality.

But Sinwar and Iran bet the farm on Israel's sensitivity to world opinion. And they see that the US and UK are starting to waver, to criticize, to show a shakier support for Israel.

This is why the effort by Hamas and Hamas allies - including "human rights groups" - to shame Israel as genocidal has been redoubled for Rafah.

Rafah is critical to Hamas' survival. The bulk of aid goes through Rafah where Hamas can take all it needs first. There are widely believed to still be major tunnels from the Palestinian side to the Egyptian side of Rafah where weapons and people can be imported or smuggled out. Without Rafah, Hamas is toast.

So the pressure is mounting. And Israel is responding in the only possible way it can: assuring its allies that it will do everything possible to minimize harm to civilians but making clear that the effort to destroy Hamas is paramount.

Every Gaza civilian death is the result of Hamas' war strategy. That is the message that real human rights campaigners would be pushing if they were honest, and not on Hamas' side.

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!

02/12 Links Pt2: Pres. Herzog: The Case Against Israel Rests on Lies; Western appeasement of anti-Israel fanatics threatens to hand victory to axis of evil

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Western appeasement of anti-Israel fanatics threatens to hand victory to axis of evil

Almost five decades ago, following a seminal visit to Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, the American novelist Saul Bellow wondered whether there wasn’t one Israel but two.

The first Israel, he wrote, was next to “insignificant”. Accounting for less than a quarter of a per cent of the Middle East, with a population of three million in a region that was home to 75 times that number, it was both territorially and demographically negligible.

While the Vietnam War, from which the United States withdrew that same year, had claimed millions of lives, the total deaths on both sides in all of Israel’s wars amounted to about 67,000. This blip on the world stage was the Israel of reality.

The second Israel, he wrote, was a phantasm of the imagination. As the umbilical cord of Western civilisation and the foundation stone of Christendom, Israel, alongside classical Greece, formed the wellspring of our morality and the template for our sensibilities and cultural richness.

It also functioned as catnip for anti-Semites, who have always both fetishised Jews as the string-pulling chosen people and despised them as the lowly killers of Christ, a dynamic that persists to this day with smears like “Zionist lobby” and “genocide”.

As Bellow inimitably put it: “The mental Israel is immense, a country inestimably important, playing a major role in the world, as broad as all history and perhaps as deep as sleep.”

Since he wrote those words, the Jewish state has undergone an economic miracle, added a further six million people to its population and become a regional military superpower. But its reality remains relatively small. Until October last year, for example, its total combat deaths over 75 years had risen to 86,000; still far fewer than, say, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in three years when we joined the invasion of Iraq.

Yet the deep sleep remains. The West’s passions about the Jewish state are out of all proportion to reality and shot through with hypocrisy. When the RAF, American Air Force and Iraqi and Kurdish forces destroyed Islamic State in Mosul in 2016-17, at least 9,000 Muslim civilians were killed.

Those deaths, partly funded by the British taxpayer, were no less gruesome than the ones in Gaza magnified on our televisions. Add our other battles against Islamic State and the death toll was far higher. Who took to the streets of London then? Where were the flares and placards? Where was the concern?

Bassam Tawil: 'Why Doesn't Hamas Go to Hell and Hide There?': Other Voices from Gaza

One can understand why Al-Jazeera and Arab media journalists are so anti-Israel that they do not want to provide a platform to any Palestinian to criticize Hamas. Yet, one cannot understand why the foreign media is turning a blind eye to the critical voices coming out from the Gaza Strip and Palestinians and Arabs living outside the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Why? These journalists are busy searching for stories that reflect badly only on Israel.

"Anyone who questioned Hamas's motives or objectives has been painted as a cowardly collaborator. To demand better living conditions or more political liberties was akin to treason.... Others are reluctant to speak out against Hamas for fear of seeming disloyal or pro-Israel. If people outside of Gaza find it difficult to question the forced conformity, imagine how much more challenging it is for many inside the coastal enclave." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X (Twitter), January 6, 2024.

"You're either going to govern and develop the place, or you're going to be a resistance group, but you can't do both at the same time.... Hamas could have made different choices that would have opened new political pathways for Palestinian unity and the development of Gaza. Instead, they chose to hold their people hostage and divert materials and resources into a futile armed resistance project that has set Palestinians back by decades." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X, February 4, 2024.

"Those who don't have to live with the consequences of Hamas's "resistance" are understandably the group's most fervent supporters and excusers (weirdly especially in London). Leave it to lousy beneficiaries of Western privilege to defend a terror group that oppresses its own people and uses them as cannon fodder in its suicidal adventures... Never forget that over 30,000 Gazans would still be alive today if Hamas kept its fighters at home on October 7. The pro-Palestine movement deserves better 'allies' and 'supporters' than overt & covert Hamas enthusiasts." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X, February 2, 2024.

"Anti-Hamas = Zionist. Call for coexistence = Zionist. Condemn Hamas = Zionist. Both sides' lives matter = Zionist. Sympathize with Israeli hostages = Zionist. How many definitions are there for Zionist? .... I forgot the most important one: Peace supporter = Zionist." — Hamza, X, February 5, 2024.

[Palestinian writer Majdi Abd Al-Wahhab] called on the international community and the Arab world to act to eliminate all the Palestinian organizations and stop their military and civilian activity, "so that the Palestinians will be rid of them and their harm and can start blazing a new, straight path for themselves, far from destruction, killing and devastation."

"The destruction caused by Hamas to Gaza will not end even if Israel's war on Gaza does stop. The destruction will continue, as is evident from the 'glorious' history of our [Palestinian] organizations." — Majdi Abd Al-Wahhab, Elaph, January 9, 2024.

How Oct. 7 Has Changed Hearts and Minds in Israel

The unprecedented magnitude of the Gaza war has generated a profound change in hearts and minds. It has become an existential battle.

The strong, violent urges exhibited by Palestinians against Israelis as a whole on Oct. 7, and the lack of criticism and all-around disregard for the brutal massacres, going as far as to argue that they had never taken place, have led many Israelis to wonder whether this is a burning animosity rooted deep within the Palestinian collective mindset.

They are not only "sobering up" from the possibility of making peace but are also realizing that there is an enormous gap between the two communities with regard to moral values, truth, human life, and the ability to be empathetic toward others. The war has cast aside concepts such as coexistence and a political arrangement, creating instead an unprecedented blood score.

This development evokes dark thoughts about the Palestinian national movement and its relations with Israel. The ongoing war is the strongest blow ever to be delivered by the Palestinians to Israel. The Palestinians are priding themselves in the fact that they have now returned to center stage, while proving their ability to destabilize the entire world: from Lebanon, through the Red Sea, to within Western countries.

Not a single person in the Palestinian system has been heard wondering what prospects lay beyond these momentary accomplishments, when Gaza lies in ruins, the Israeli peace camp is going extinct, the concept of the two-state vision has become synonymous with a dangerous hallucination, and deep distrust toward Palestinians has seeped into Israeli society.

In the hearts and minds of the Israeli collective, the war has led to the assumption that Palestinian independence poses an existential threat to Israel since it has now been proven that the extensive freedom enjoyed by Gazans following the Israeli disengagement in 2005 was primarily utilized to accelerate a violent struggle.

Israel may be forced to determine - unilaterally - the physical borders separating it from the Palestinians while ensuring long-lasting control over the gates between this entity and the world - the border area between Gaza and Egypt. This vision may not be very appealing, but in the Middle East, it is sometimes more important to be realistic than optimistic.

Egyptian lawmaker condemns Jews in Parliament; speaker strikes the word "Jews" from the record

Egyptian MP Al-Saeed Amara said during a parliamentary session on Monday, “We are all supportive of the armed forces, and we stand united behind the political leadership and the armed forces, with one heart, to defend Egyptian sovereignty and Egyptian security, and we condemn the actions taken by the Jews aimed at exterminating the defenseless Palestinian people.”

In one sentence he said how much Egyptians care about Palestinians and how much they refuse to give them refuge.

Dr. Hanafi Jabali, Speaker of the House of Representatives, took issue with tAmara's wording. He noted that Egypt's Constitution stipulates the protection of citizens and that they are equal before the law, whether they are “Muslims, Christians or Jews.”

The Speaker of Parliament pointed out that there are Egyptian Jews in Egypt, saying: “Hence the word ‘Jews’ is deleted from the record."

As of a year ago, there were only three Jews left alive in Egypt compared to 80,000 who lived there in 1948. They are all women and the youngest is 72 years old. So, yes, I suppose the remaining Jews in Egypt are treated equally under the law. The other 80,000, I'm not so certain about.

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!

Some of the dumbest Israel/Rafah/Super Bowl conspiracy theories getting millions of views

A good definition of when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism is when their narratives turn into conspiracy theories.

A great number of people think that Israel planned their hostage rescue to coincide with a sporting event because, something about distraction or something.

Here are some of the more prominent purveyors of the latest antisemitic conspiracy theories:

Anytime that someone accuses Israel of trying to do something evil when the world is "distracted" you can be sure they are raving maniacs.

Can you name one time that this worked?

The newscast I listened to this morning had the daring Israeli hostage rescue in Rafah as the top story, and the Super Bowl came in second.

According to the ones incensed by the Super Bowl ad to bring the hostages home, Israel bought the ad specifically so they can time the operation during the game. Ads are bought months ahead of time, but, hey, those Jews probably fixed the game anyway.

Apparently Usher is part of the conspiracy, too.

This is not "criticism of Israel." This is derangement. And it proves, as much as anything can, that anti-Zionism is psychologically identical to classic Jew-hatred - it is obsessive hate where anything even loosely associated with Jews/Israel is assumed a priori to be evil, and the details of exactly how to make the evidence fit is an exercise to be done after the fact.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

02/12 Links Pt1: IDF rescues 2 hostages from Rafah; How the U.S. Can Punish the UN; Israel to shut down all UNRWA offices; The Red Cross Still Hates the Jews

From Ian:

John Spencer: Memo to the 'Experts': Stop Comparing Israel's War in Gaza to Anything. It Has No Precedent

Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has inevitably drawn comparisons to other battles or wars, both modern and from the past. These comparisons are mostly used to make the case that Israel's operations in Gaza are the most destructive in history, or the deadliest in history.

Yet while the use of historical analogy may be tempting for armchair pundits, in the case of Israel's current war, the comparisons are often poorly cited, the data used inaccurate, and crucial context left out. Given the scale and context of an enemy purposely entrenched in densely populated urban areas, as well as the presence of tunnels, hostages, rockets, attackers that follow the laws of war while defenders purposely do not, and proximity between the frontlines and the home front, there is basically no historical comparison for this war.

Let's start with the context: After Hamas crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, murdering over 1,200 Israelis in brutal ways that included mutilation and sexually assaults as well as taking over 200 hostages back into Gaza, Israel formally declared a defensive war against Hamas in Gaza in accordance with international law and the United Nations charter. Since, the IDF estimates it has killed 10,000 Hamas operatives, while Hamas claims that the total number of casualties is 24,000 (Hamas does not distinguish civilian deaths from militant deaths).

The truth is that Israel has painstakingly followed the laws of armed conflict and implemented many steps to prevent civilian casualties, despite enormous challenges. Israel's military faced over 30,000 Hamas militants in over 400 miles of defensive and offensive tunnels embedded in and under civilian areas, populations and protected sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools, and United Nations facilities across multiple cities.

Hamas tunnels
Hamas' strategy is to use Palestinian civilians as human shields, because their goal is not to defeat Israel's military or to hold terrain; it is far more sinister and medieval—to use the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians to rally international support to their cause and demand that Israel halt their war.

Meanwhile, Israel's war aims were more traditional: returning Israeli hostages, dismantling Hamas military capability, and securing their border to prevent another October 7 attack.

These goals required not one major urban battle but multiple. While Gaza is not the densest populated urban region on earth as many claim, it features over 20 densely-populated cities. And while the Israeli Defense Forces are engaged in fighting, Hamas has continued to launch over 12,000 rockets on nearly every day of the war from the combat area toward civilian-populated areas in Israel, literally over the heads of the attacking IDF, who it bears mentioning are fighting just a few miles from their homeland and the homes of their soldiers.

Put all of this together, this war is simply without precedent. Certainly, it cannot be compared to the host of other wars that have been used for comparison sake to paint Israel in an unflattering light.

The Red Cross Still Hates the Jews

Even now, after an agreement was brokered between Israel and Hamas by Qatar to deliver medication to the hostages in Gaza, via France to Qatar and then through Egypt, the ICRC refuses to touch the medicines and has said that it wants nothing to do with them.

"We know that the medications effectively entered into Gaza. The modalities of their transfer to the hostages were dealt with under Qatar's mediation. We now expect to receive verifiable proof that the medications have reached their beneficiaries." — Unnamed French official, Times of Israel, February 6, 2024.

On social media, the ICRC has made no secret of its anti-Israel bias and its complete lack of care for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. "77% [of the tweets] were focused on criticizing Israel, expressly or by implication. Only 7% of the tweets criticized Hamas... No statement was made speaking directly about the massacre of October 7th... it is evident that the ICRC has dedicated large amounts of resources to interviewing doctors and victims in Gaza.... Comparatively little to no attention was paid to Israeli victims." — UN Watch, December 11, 2023.

As if to confirm the ICRC's coverup for Hamas, the newly appointed head of the ICRC is Pierre Krähenbühl, who was the head of UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees from 2014 until 2019, when he was forced to resign after a damning internal ethics probe. UNRWA is effectively embedded with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This is not the first time the ICRC ignored the plight of Jewish victims. During the Holocaust, the ICRC did nothing to help any of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and instead wrote a "favorable report of the good treatment of Jews in German camps."

IDF rescues 2 hostages from south Gaza’s Rafah in daring nighttime operation

In a complex overnight operation, Israeli special forces rescued two hostages from Hamas captivity in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early Monday, marking the first successful extraction of captives held by the terror group in months.

The Israel Defense Forces said that Fernando Marman, 61, and Louis Har, 70, were in good condition after being rescued, following an operation that involved battles with Hamas terrorists and massive Israeli airstrikes in Rafah. Both were later reunited with their families in an Israeli hospital and were said to be in good condition.

The pair had been abducted from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on the morning of October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in a murderous rampage in southern Israel.

It was only the second such successful operation of its kind since October 7. The first was the rescue of soldier Ori Megidish in late October. In early December, the IDF attempted to rescue another hostage, but he was killed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the operation “among the most successful rescue operations” in Israel’s history.

The joint operation by the police’s elite Yamam counterterrorism unit, the Shin Bet security agency, and IDF began at around 1 a.m. in Rafah, an area that Israeli forces had not yet maneuvered into during their ground offensive against the Hamas terror group.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Yamam officers “carried out a very complex action on the premises and the second floor where the hostages were held.” A military helicopter arrives at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan with two hostages rescued from Gaza in a military operation, February 12, 2024 (IDF)

“Reaching the target in the heart of Rafah was very complex,” Hagari said.

He said the forces breached the apartment with explosives at 1:49 a.m., killing the three terrorists guarding the hostages and “hugged and protected Louis and Fernando with their bodies.”

“The troops pulled Louis and Fernando out of the apartment and rescued them under fire, until they reached the safe zone,” Hagari said.

The IDF later released footage from the air showing the rescuers entering a building and strikes hitting the area.

It is a quintessential New York Story.

Gazala's is an unusual restaurant, with Druze cuisine and owned by Gazala Halabi, a divorced Druze woman from Israel. Located in Manhattan, it has had good reviews for years.

The owner is a proud Israeli and displays Israeli flags and a map of Israel on her menu. Since October 7, she has been subject to death threats, screaming customers, vandalism and her glass door has been smashed.

Ever since her restaurant has been subject to attack, the New York Jewish community has been showing solidarity, coming to her restaurant and helping her out.

This is a perfect story for the New York Times. After all, only days after October 7, the newspaper featured a Palestinian restaurant in Brooklyn, Ayat, that was also under attack - with a wave of bad reviews on Yelp.

No one vandalized Ayat. No one threatened the owners or their workers. No one broke plates and glasses. No one screamed at them. While Gazala's restaurant features Israeli flags, Ayat features murals of evil looking Israeli soldiers breaking into the bedroom of an innocent Palestinian girl.

Even the bad reviews were removed quickly.

Both Ayat and Gazala's previous restaurant has positive reviews in the New York Times - Ayat, twice, making that the third NYT article featuring the Palestinian restaurant in four years.

But the Times has not mentioned Gazala's being under attack, Halabi's patriotism and perseverance, and the Jewish community's support for her.

Neighborhood New York papers did. Jewish newspapers did. The New York Post did. Israeli newspapers did. Even Haaretz just published a story on Gazala and Gazala's.

But not the New York Times, which prides itself on stories of oppressed minorities fighting back against bigotry and hate.

Media bias is not only crimes of commission. Often they are crimes of omission.

There is no way the local reporters and editors in the Metropolitan section of the paper are not aware of Gazala's. Bany metric of what is newsworthy, Gazala's is far more important than Ayat.

But to them, an Arab Druze woman defending her country of birth and being supported by her supposed enemies is not newsworthy - when she is a proud Israeli.

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!

Last week, France's president Emmanuel Macron stated that the October 7 massacre was “the largest anti-Semitic massacre of our century.”

Who could possibly argue with that? Hamas is unapologetically antisemitic. Its (still current) founding charter includes phrases like

"Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious"

and

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslim fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him"

and

"We should not forget to remind every Muslim that when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967, they stood on the threshold of the Aqsa Mosque and proclaimed that 'Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women.'"

Hamas officials, in Arabic, are not shy about their antisemitism.

But UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese knows more about Hamas than Hamas does. She responded to Macron's statements with not only a denial that the October 7 pogrom murdering men, women and children was targeting Jews, but she even justified it as an attack against Israeli "oppression."

The 'greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century'? No, Mr. @EmmanuelMacron . The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel's oppression. France & the international community did nothing to prevent it. My respects to the victims.

With every other form of bigotry, the global Left does everything they can to maximize the definition of the terms to assume that every action is motivated by the hate by the "oppressor." The entire "genocide" accusation of Israel - which Albanese asserts is "likely"- is meant to paint all Israeli Jews as bigots against the Palestinian people as a whole, without even considering any other interpretation of events that contradict the thesis of innate hate.

But when a terrorist group attacks thousands of Jews, suddenly the definition of bigotry shrinks down to nothing. We cannot possibly read their minds, even though their own words explicitly prove their hate of Jews. And even if some of them are antisemitic, that has nothing to do with them attacking Jewish communities and Jewish people.

The President of the State of Israel is accused of hating all Palestinians, but bloodthirsty terrorists who brag about murdering Jews are given the benefit of the (nonexistent) doubt that their motives were pure.

When Jews are defending themselves, they are really trying to wipe out a people. When Jews are the victims, the attacks are justified and noble.

No fair minded person can interpret this hypocrisy as anything but pure antisemitism.

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 @NYTimes believes Hamas propaganda without question; but is still not quite sure if Israel really rescued hostages

These two adjacent stories in the New York Times "Israel-Hamas War" news, the most recent stories as of this writing, illustrates anti-Israel bias as perfectly as possible.

The source for the claim of "17,000 children orphaned or separated from their parents" is UNICEF. And UNICEF freely admits that it is a complete guess ultimately based on Hamas propaganda, saying, "Of course, this is an estimation since it is nearly impossible to gather and verify information under the current security and humanitarian conditions."

But the New York Times is reporting this wild guess as established fact. And it is indeed a wild guess, based on Hamas propaganda of the number of casualties and the percentage of women and children killed that even the UN no longer believes.

Contrast this with reporting about the hostage rescue. Perhaps as an initial headline it made sense when early reports were not complete, but the Times has updated the story since then - everyone knows the names and ages of the rescued hostages, their family members have been interviewed, we have photos.

But neither the headline nor the blurb has been updated.

Israeli statements are suspect even after they show clear documentary proof. Statements that even the source admits are made up (and the Times knows that) are reported as fact.

There is another more subtle bit of bias in the very name of the section.

Hezbollah has been shooting rockets into Israel since October 8. Houthis fired rockets towards Israel starting October 19. Rockets have been shot from Syria since at least October 24. Iraqi groups attacked Israel on November 2. And of course Islamic Jihad and other Gaza groups are also involved.

It isn't an Israel-Hamas war. It is an Israel-Iranian proxy war. By naming the conflict incorrectly, the NYT and virtually everyone else are framing Israel as the aggressor when in fact it is being attacked from literally all sides (including the Mediterranean Sea on October 7.)

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!

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?