Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Should Israel be worried about CHIRG?

The New York Times reports:

The State Department is reviewing reports of harm to Gazan civilians by Israel’s military as part of a new U.S. program that tracks cases in which foreign militaries use U.S.-made weapons to injure or kill civilians.

A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Tuesday that the Biden administration was “reviewing incidents” in the Gaza war under what it calls Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance [CHIRG], which The Washington Post reported was established last August, several weeks before Hamas led sweeping attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.

The policy was instituted to create greater accountability for the use of American weapons by U.S. allies and partners. It aims to improve assessments of military incidents involving civilians and to create recommendations based on them but does not include automatic triggers for policy responses or penalties.

I cannot find the text of the CHIRG. The Washington Post article is literally its only source. Even Congressional documentation that references it have footnotes to the Washington Post, not to the text itself.

Is CHIRG meant to oversee arms sales to problematic partners like Saudi Arabia to ensure that the weapons are not being used to target civilians? Or is it meant to be much more sweeping and second-guess US allies' legitimate military use of the weapons that may cause collateral damage that is allowed under international law?

Without the text, it is difficult to know.

A year ago, President Biden issued a National Security Memorandum on United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy. The memorandum says:

[N]o arms transfer will be authorized where the United States assesses that it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit, facilitate the recipients’ commission of, or to aggravate risks that the recipient will commit: genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such; or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender‑based violence or serious acts of violence against children.

This is appropriate. And it seems likely that CHIRG is meant to be an implementation of this policy.

However, everything depends on the wording of the CHIRG. Saying that it is being used to evaluate Israel's policies in Gaza is worrying, because it might be possible to misuse CHIRG as a political weapon rather than a legitimate tool to ensure that US arms are not used to target civilians.

Indeed, some far-Left senators are already invoking CHIRG to accuse Israel of violating US policies. The only people who think that Israel is guilty of genocide are people who already hate Israel - because by definition they are assuming that Israel intends to target and murder Palestinian civilians.

The Biden administration (and the Obama administration beforehand) has prioritized human rights in its military policies, because of a number of embarrassing incidents of US forces killing civilians who were nowhere near any military targets. Every decision like this has tradeoffs - working harder to prevent collateral civilian damage may place soldiers at higher risk. International law is open to interpretation, and the US DoD Law of War manual has generally done a good job balancing competing priorities of protecting troops and protecting civilians. The US can certainly choose to interpret international law more towards protecting civilians in its own policy.

But if it starts to enforce US policy on allies beyond the requirements of international law, that is problematic. Failing to shoot a rocket launcher in Gaza with civilians nearby could easily result in the deaths of Israeli civilians, a factor that the US does not have to worry about.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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New survey shows the overwhelming percentage of Americans know anti-Zionism is antisemitism

The American Jewish Committee released a survey of both American Jewish and general American attitudes towards antisemitism.

As can be expected, American Jews are nervous about antisemitism. 63% of American Jews say the status of Jews in the U.S. is less secure compared to one year ago. This is more han double the percentage in 2021.

46% of American Jews say they altered their behavior out of fear of antisemitism. In 2022, this number was 38%.

But one part of the survey shows that most Americans don't buy the propaganda that anti-Zionism is separate from antisemitism.

When asked, "Do you view the statement 'Israel has no right to exist,' as antisemitic or not?", 84% of Americans recognized that as antisemitic. And that is the core belief of so-called "anti-Zionists."

16% disagreeing is still too many, but this shows that the propaganda spread by Israel haters is not nearly as accepted as they pretend it is.

Good news is getting more rare for American Jews. Let's celebrate the wins when they happen.

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!

It isn't Zionists conflating Hamas with Gaza civilians. It's the "pro-Palestinians."

Hulu is airing a commercial showing what Gaza could have been if it wasn't taken over by Hamas.

It is 100% accurate - and Israel haters are livid, trying to get Hulu to ban the ad.

Arab News wrote, "Pro-Israel video tries to blame Palestinian people for Gaza destruction: expert" and "Critics claimed the ad was propaganda, attempting to unfairly attribute the devastation in Gaza to the Palestinian people."

How can anyone watch that ad and think that is the message? The ad explicitly blames Hamas three times in text, once in audio, and does not blame Palestinians at all for Hamas' crimes. It shows nothing but sympathy for Palestinian people, portraying them as wanting normal lives.

We see this often. Israel is in a war with Hamas, it is targeting Hamas, it says over and over again that the enemy is Hamas and not Gazans. But Israel haters take anti-Hamas statements - even to the ICJ - and claim they refer to all Palestinians.

The only people conflating Palestinians with terrorists are the people who claim to be pro-Palestinian. The only people who make a clear distinction between the two are the Israelis.

Reality is more complex. Most Gazans are indeed unhappy with Hamas, but they hate Israel and Jews even more. They cheer murdering Jews. They are not innocent.

But they are also not the targets, and Israel is a nation that adheres to laws.

The Israel haters, on the other hand, claim that any attacks on Hamas are attacks on Gazans. They do not make any distinction between militant and civilian. They consider Hamas deaths to be just as bad as civilian deaths.

And this conflation between civilians and terrorist isn't all for propaganda purposes. These people are really on Hamas' side. They justify the most heinous terrorist attacks against Jews. They really consider Hamas to be as innocent as Gaza civilians are, and even heroic. They vacillate between denying and celebrating October 7 rapes and murders of women and children - just like Hamas.

They conflate civilians with Hamas because they identify with Hamas themselves,

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!

02/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A malign inversionNazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East; Footage of Sinwar in Gaza tunnel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A malign inversion

It is a strategy of war, used by Islamists in the psychological warfare they deploy against their victims. And now it is being used by the Biden administration and the British government against Israel.

This week, the British government imposed financial and travel restrictions against four Israeli residents of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, claimed that they were “extremist settlers” who were involved in “some of the most egregious abuses of human rights,” having carried out violent attacks on Palestinians in the “West Bank” by threatening them “often at gunpoint” and “forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs”.

The Foreign Office said that Israel’s “failure to act” had led to “an environment of near total impunity for settler extremists”, with violence in the West Bank reaching record levels in 2023.

The British are marching in lockstep with the Biden administration, which earlier this month also sanctioned four Israeli residents of these territories — one of whom is on the UK’s list — claiming that “extremist settler violence” had reached “intolerable levels”.

This is all an extraordinary and malign distortion and loss of proportion. As I wrote here, there is indeed a problem with violent Israeli “hilltop youth,” mainly aged between 14 and 19, but who are estimated to number only a few hundred among more than half a million Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria.

All such attacks are wrong and the Israelis should deal with these “hilltop youth” firmly — which they do, when they are indeed guilty of aggressive acts. But what Cameron and the Biden administration conspicuously fail to acknowledge is that in many of these violent encounters, the Israelis are responding to violence against them by the Palestinian Arabs.

Indeed, it is utterly astonishing that Cameron and the Americans defame the Israeli residents of the territories — the vast majority of whom live entirely peaceful and law-abiding lives — while making no mention whatsoever of the multiple attacks perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs against these Israelis every day, vastly out-numbering attacks by the Israelis.

Cameron and the Americans say “settler” attacks last year reached record numbers. But there have been around 300 terrorist attacks against Israelis since October 7 alone.

Cameron and the Americans make no mention of the Arab attacks on Israeli “settlers,” involving shootings, rock-throwing and car ramming, which go on every day. They make no mention of the “settlers” Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, who were murdered last April by Palestinian terrorists who shot them in their car at point-blank range. They make no mention of the “settlers” Hallel Yaniv, 21, and his brother Yagel, 19, who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists a year ago when they were stuck in a traffic jam. They make no mention of the “settlers” Asher Menachem Paley, 8, and Yaakov Israel Paley, 6, who were standing at a bus stop with their father when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into them, killing them along with 20-year-old rabbinical student Alter Shlomo Lederman who had been married for two months.

Israelis are being regularly attacked and murdered by terrorists from a Palestinian population in the “West Bank” of whom more than 80 per cent support the Hamas atrocities. Yet Cameron and his chums in the US State Department have ignored all that. Instead, they have presented the Israelis as committing “egregious human rights abuses” against the Palestinians — thus deploying the Palestinian tactic of inverting victims and aggressors.

This is not surprising given the information upon which the Americans and British have been drawing — the twisted claims made by the UN, “human rights” NGOs and the entire “humanitarian” hate industry, which is deployed to destroy Israel’s reputation through distortion and defamation but which the US and UK foreign policy establishments invest with the sanctity of disinterested conscience. As a result, Cameron and his chums have been played for suckers.

In an important piece in Tablet, Liel Leibowitz writes about Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, a three-star general who currently serves as the US security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC). The USSC, says Liebowitz, is well-known for its regular, sometimes daily briefings and reports about “extremist settlers,” which it provides to members of Congress, policy hands and Israel-related advocacy groups, as well as to foreign countries’ forces in Israel.

Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East

To most Westerners, there are two default explanations for the Israeli-Arab conflict: either it is a response to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, or it is the product of ancient hatreds that stretch back to a time before memory. Neither explanation gets close to the truth, which Matthias Küntzel’s recent book Nazis, Islamic Anti-Semitism, and the Middle East seeks to expose by examining how so many Arabs came to hate Jews. Daniel Ben-Ami writes in his review:
It was the Nazis, Küntzel argues, who played the key role in bringing genocidal anti-Semitism to the region. Küntzel identifies several channels through which the Nazis exerted their influence. From 1937 onwards they gave financial backing and other forms of support to Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. . . . The Nazis distributed large numbers of Husseini’s pamphlet, Judaism and Islam, first published in Cairo in 1937. For Küntzel, it was a seminal document, the first to link the Jew hatred of classical Islamic texts with the conspiratorial anti-Semitism that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century.

Finally, even when it was clear that the Nazis were losing the Second World War they still provided support for a forthcoming Arab war against Israel. This included an attempt to provide a large store of light arms for Muslims to use to fight the nascent Jewish state.

Yet, Ben-Ami observes, some of the seeds were sown even before Husseini and Hitler came on the scene:
Earlier developments had already prepared the ground for the Nazis’ ideological intervention in the region. Christian missionaries had already begun to export traditional European conceptions of Jews into the region in the 19th century. For example, the idea of the blood libel—that Jews drank the blood of non-Jewish children—was an import from Europe.

Who Should Run Gaza After the War?

It’s been clear since October 7 that no sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible as long as Hamas has power in Gaza. And so, the question is: Who should lead in Gaza once Hamas is destroyed?

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has backed the idea of giving control to the Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank. The PA, notoriously corrupt, has been run since 2005 by Mahmoud Abbas, who is now 88.

Is there a way to encourage newer and better Palestinian leadership? Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration, thinks so. Here’s his proposal:

The Gaza war is a chance for Palestinians, with outside help, to make a quantum-leap improvement in their politics and society. And that starts with leadership.

Western countries and perhaps Arab states will inevitably send large sums of reconstruction aid to Gaza after the conflict.

They should use that money to empower a new elite in the territory.

The United States can help arrange to channel the aid through some kind of body whose governors would include Palestinians committed to conditions set by the donors. The main conditions should be radical but hard to argue against:
(1) don’t steal the funds,
(2) fund only civilian projects, and
(3) don’t promote hatred of Israel or the donor countries.

There could also be more specific guidance; for example, construct permanent housing rather than rebuild “refugee camps,” and require schools to promote nonviolent resolution of disputes rather than extremism. This would be the opposite of the approach taken for 75 years by the UN agency for Palestinian relief (UNRWA), which has dedicated itself to perpetuating the war against Israel.

Palestinians agreeing to administer the reconstruction would need security for themselves and their families, who might have to be removed to safe places abroad, as the current Palestinian leaders would see them as enemies.

The Gaza war is a major historical event, and donors can set goals accordingly. They need not be content to aim for minor reforms of current institutions. What is needed is serious improvement in the political culture. There is no harm in trying to move substantially beyond the status quo.

It would be wasteful (at best) to put reconstruction aid into the hands of the PA or UNRWA, let alone Hamas. The existing political institutions are the problem, not the solution. A random set of Palestinian businesspeople would do a better job than the leaders now in power.

Seth Mandel: What Price Is Too High?

The conundrum Israel faced and faces—that its enemies may need to be confronted in a way that the society simply cannot stomach, given the dangers posed to the young men and women who serve as its chief line of protection—was something Ahmed Jibril exploited brilliantly. In May 1985, he got Israel to agree to an unprecedented trade: Jibril would return the three IDF soldiers held by his group, and in return Israel would free 1,150 prisoners from its jails, some of whom would be chosen by Jibril himself. Yitzhak Rabin, then the defense minister, explained the deal before the Knesset: “I see this as a supreme moral responsibility which a government, a defense minister, the state of Israel, owes each of them. This is our humane, moral obligation to the fate of an Israeli, and certainly to the fate of an IDF soldier sent into battle at our command.”

But the cost was steep. Among those released were Kozo Okamoto, the Japanese Red Army terrorist who had led a massacre of 26 people at Ben-Gurion airport (known as Lod at the time) in 1972. More consequential was Ahmed Yassin, who would found and lead Hamas at the outset of the first intifada two years later. Also freed was Ziad Nakhaleh, the current leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the group’s military-wing commander during the first intifada. Jibril himself was credited with one of the attacks that triggered that intifada, in which—in another historical echo—fighters under his command killed several Israeli soldiers after crossing from Lebanon on hang gliders. (Hamas used the vehicle’s more technologically advanced progeny, the motorized paraglider, during its October 7 attacks.)

A 2004 swap saw Israel bring home one live captive, the businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, who had been taken by Hezbollah in 2001, in return for 435 prisoners. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said that one of those released in that deal, Luay Saadi, went on to set up a terror cell that killed 30 Israelis.

In general, Dagan said, recidivism by freed terrorists was high—probably 45 percent. According to an organization that advocates for victims of terror, 80 percent of terrorists released since the Jibril deal went back to their old ways. (Not all, it has to be said, gained their liberty in hostage swaps.)

Dagan left office in January 2011. That October, Israel would complete its deal for Gilad Shalit. In June 2006, Shalit’s tank crew was ambushed by Hamas terrorists on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. Shalit was taken back to the Strip. Two subsequent Israeli rescue operations in Gaza failed. In 2011, Netanyahu agreed to release 1,027 prisoners in Israeli jails for Shalit. Four years later, the Times of Israel reported that between April 2014 and July 2015, six Israelis had been murdered by prisoners released in the Shalit deal. And then came October 7, 2023.

On January 30, 2024, Netanyahu spoke at a pre-military academy and said, “We will not remove the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists. None of this will happen. What will happen? Absolute victory!” Meanwhile, press reports indicated that Israel and Hamas were creeping closer to a hostage deal—and if there is one, there will surely be Palestinian terrorists freed because of it.

In a 1986 essay written just at the beginning of his meteoric political rise, Netanyahu—who had made his name in part as the head of an organization called the Jonathan Institute, dedicated to the study of international terrorism—asserted that terrorist hostage-taking can be stopped with a policy of “refusal to yield and a readiness to apply force.” To the terrorist, this proposes “a simple exchange: your life for the lives of the hostages.” He acknowledged that a rescue operation isn’t always possible. Nevertheless, “governments must persist in refusing to capitulate. This is both a moral obligation to other potential hostages and, in the long view, the only pragmatic posture.”

What Netanyahu said may have been true then, and it may be true now—but it turns out that a democratic society that cherishes its children is unable to make its calculations on safety and risk with pragmatism as its guide. It’s easier to write such an essay when you’re not in power.

The ultimate dilemma for Israel is this: It is religiously and morally obliged to do everything it can to rescue Jews held hostage. At the same time, it is religiously and morally and politically obliged to defend the Jewish state as a whole. This is an irreconcilable dilemma, because its enemies are there to take advantage of the contradiction every time.

Biden parrots Hamas casualty numbers

In the press conference with Jordan's King Abdullah on Monday, President Biden said,

The past four months, as the war has raged, the Palestinian people have also suffered unimaginable pain and loss. Too many — too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children. And hundreds of thousands have no access to food, water, or other basic services.

Unlike most media, he didn't add "according to Gaza authorities" or "according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health."

But that is where the number comes from.

The Gaza Ministry of Health lies. One example was mentioned in the New York Times today:

One of the videos released by Israel showed troops rushing into the hospital and appearing to find explosives, weapons and the hostage room. In the other, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, showed off guns, explosives and other weapons that he said were found in the basement of the hospital.

The video included footage of a piece of paper taped to a wall in the hospital’s basement. Admiral Hagari said the paper — a grid with Arabic words and numbers within each square — could be a schedule for guarding hostages “where every terrorist writes his name.”

The Gazan health ministry said it was nothing more than a work schedule. But the calendar begins on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, and an Arabic title written at the top uses the militants’ name for the assault: “Al Aqsa Flood Battle, 7/10/2023.”

So even the NYT knows that the ministry makes things up to support Hamas' narrative.

Biden, who showed skepticism early in the war about the accuracy of the casualty numbers, now accepts them uncritically.

I don't know the real number of casualties. It is still many thousands of people, and probably thousands of civilians. But the numbers being given every day by the Hamas authorities, certainly since mid-November, appear to me to be exaggerated by about 100%. Israel reduced the number of bunker buster strikes on tunnels as troops are on the ground and able to target terror assets in a more accurate fashion. The areas they are working are mostly civilian-free.

But Hamas loses nothing by lying. They know that their numbers are now accepted with little pushback.

Even by the President of the United States.

There are some jihadists with very wide smiles today.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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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.

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!

02/13 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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