Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 18, 2024

The Kremlin shows: Social media propaganda works

The Washington Post reports on a sophisticated social media manipulation campaign by Russia against Ukraine:

When news first emerged last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was preparing to fire his top military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, officials in Moscow seemed jubilant. They had been trying to orchestrate just such a split for many months, documents show.

“We need to strengthen the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, along the lines of ‘he intends to fire him,’” one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials and Moscow spin doctors, according to internal Kremlin documents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration ordered a group of Russian political strategists to use social media and fake news articles to push the theme that Zelensky “is hysterical and weak. … He fears that he will be pushed aside, therefore he is getting rid of the dangerous ones.”

The Kremlin instruction resulted in thousands of social media posts and hundreds of fabricated articles, created by troll farms and circulated in Ukraine and across Europe, that tried to exploit what were then rumored tensions between the two Ukrainian leaders, according to a trove of Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The files, numbering more than 100 documents, were shared with The Post to expose for the first time the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Zelensky with the aim of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society — efforts that Moscow dubbed “information psychological operations.”

The details are fascinating - and sound very familiar to Zionists. But while this campaign was centered around troll farms that had people paid by the Kremlin, anti-Israel propaganda seems more taking advantage of the many antisemites who are already out there and eager to do their part to destroy Israel.

Indeed, an earlier campaign against the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in 2021 sounds virtually identical to those that now accuse Israel of "genocide:"

Amnesty International has stripped the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny of his "prisoner of conscience" status after it says it was "bombarded" with complaints highlighting xenophobic comments that he has made in the past and not renounced.

A spokesman for the human rights organisation in Moscow told the BBC that he believed the wave of requests to "de-list" Navalny was part of an "orchestrated campaign" to discredit Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic and "impede" Amnesty's calls for his release from custody.

But on review, Amnesty International concluded that comments made by Navalny some 15 years ago, including a video which appears to compare immigrants to cockroaches, amounted to "hate speech" which was incompatible with the label "prisoner of conscience".

"We had too many requests; we couldn't ignore them," spokesman Alexander Artemev told the BBC, explaining that the team initially discounted Navalny's previous statements - which he has not repeated - as "not relevant" in the light of his current, political persecution.

Amnesty's offices worldwide, including that of the secretary general, were then hit with complaints from "so-called concerned citizens", Mr Artemev says, in an apparently co-ordinated move.

Even though Amnesty knew it was a coordinated campaign, it still caved.

As the article shows, much of the campaign was spearheaded by Max Blumenthal's Grayzone site and writers, which is also a major source of anti-Israel lies like denying any rapes occurred on October 7.

There are tiers of propagandists. The top tier creates the lies and makes them sound somewhat believable. The second tier isn't that imaginative but they eagerly spread these lies. What these articles shows is that there is a Tier Zero, where Russian (and presumably Iranian, Syria, Chinese and other) leaders decide what they want the lies to be and the goals they want to accomplish.

For example, as I've mentioned, there is a large set of bots on Twitter who pretend to be patriotic Israelis but who are trying to split Israeli society. The scope of that campaign is way beyond the abilities of a couple of individuals, and opinion is divided as to whether it originates in Iran, Iraq or Egypt.

Some of the tactics resemble those used in academia. Anti-Israel academics will write social science papers accusing Israel of something, and then other academics will refer to those papers as if they are established fact and build on them. This is how the "settler-colonial" lie became ubiquitous; even though it is absurd on the face of it since Jews were returning to their own ancestral land and aren't "settlers," it is accepted as undeniably true.

The "apartheid" and "genocide" memes have gone through similar cycles but accelerated, and helped by so-called "human rights groups." Again, their arguments are bogus, and anyone who knows anything about those topics knows this. But they recruit academics and "experts" who have a track record of hating Israel, and, surprise, these "experts" all agree Israel is guilty of anything and everything - and no one else is.

This is why it is critical to always, always look at source materials and verify everything and anything that people accuse Israel of. I've shown hundreds of times that the claims fall apart very quickly,. But as the world shortens its attention span and TikTok and Hollywood star opinions are prized more than real experts, this is a very uphill battle.

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02/18 Links: Eugene Kontorovich: Let Terror Victims Sue Unrwa; PA PM: We’re ready for unity with Hamas, world needs to forget October 7

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Let Terror Victims Sue Unrwa

The nature of such entities’ complicity with terror groups is different from that of states. International organizations typically don’t sponsor such groups, but they may conspire with or assist terrorists, or simply fail to prevent themselves from being infiltrated and directed by them. The right way to reconcile the principles of FSIA with the International Organizations Immunities Act is to amend the latter to allow suits by Americans against organizations that provide material support to designated terror groups.

A bill written by Sen. Ted Cruz currently being circulated in the Senate would do this. The draft bill would give victims—such as the families of the more than 30 U.S. citizens killed by Hamas on Oct. 7—an opportunity to receive the compensation they deserve. But it would also give U.N. leaders—who seem completely to have buried their heads in the sand about the conduct of their agencies in Gaza—an incentive to provide meaningful oversight and control.

Such a reform would allow the White House to maintain executive control by limiting liability to those organizations that provide support to groups on the official terrorist list. Some will howl that groups like Unrwa also do important humanitarian work, but it isn’t too much to ask of U.N. agencies that they internalize the costs of forming partnerships with designated terror groups and compensate victims.

Some in Congress are now calling to defund Unrwa. That is certainly appropriate, but if that happens, it shouldn’t be the end of the story, especially since it does nothing for American victims. Moreover, defunding by the U.S. isn’t necessarily permanent and other countries can fill the gap. Damage awards, by contrast, present more than a liquidity problem. And if other international organizations provided material support for terrorism, even short of direct participation in attacks, there is no reason they shouldn’t also be forced to pay damages to victims.

Mike Pompeo: What I Saw in Israel Proves Why We Must Support Our Ally’s Righteous Mission To Destroy Hamas

This Administration should worry less about the impression it makes with its radical, progressive base and instead consider what is right and wrong. In one kibbutz Susan and I visited, K’far Aza, 70 terrorists had infiltrated the small community and murdered at least 60 residents. These were not IDF forces or even police units Hamas was attacking; these were innocent families, many with young children and elderly. In Ra’im, Susan and I saw memorials to the hundreds of innocent people slaughtered by Hamas while at a music festival and met a survivor of that massacre. In Okafim, we saw a community that managed to fight off waves of Hamas militants with only a small police force and some civilians helping – but not before over 50 innocent Israelis were brutally murdered. To walk through these streets lined with burned out cars and the blackened ruins of what once were the vibrant, colorful homes of thriving families and to walk past makeshift memorials to loved ones who were killed by Hamas simply for being Jewish – to see what these terrorists did on October 7 was to see true evil. Israel now has a righteous mission to eliminate the perpetrators of that evil so that it never happens again, and the Biden Administration should stand beside them – not criticize the Jewish state in an effort to placate its liberal Left base.

Despite the tragedy Susan and I saw across Israel’s south and the trauma felt by so many around the country, we also encountered something else that was truly remarkable: the resilience of the Jewish people. Every Israeli continues to sacrifice and give so much to help their countrymen and women and to defend their nation. In Okafim, Susan and I met with a remarkable Rabbi who has built the initiative "Standing Together" that has provided financial support for the families of victims, hospital visits to wounded soldiers and citizens, packages of essentials and toys to displaced families, Tefillin and other religious articles to soldiers and families, and charitable provisions for soldiers. We spent time with many of the soldiers this initiative has helped: men and women who have put their lives on hold to help defend their country and ensure the unimaginable horrors of October 7 never happen again.

The people we met inspired us. America must continue to support and stand by the people of Israel, not simply because Israel’s continued existence supports America’s security and interests, but because it is the right thing to do. Of primary importance is our continued support and assistance in Israel’s efforts to bring the hostages, of which eight are Americans, held in Gaza back home. Right around the time Susan and I arrived, Israeli forces undertook a successful rescue mission and saved two of those hostages; we should be doing everything we can to help Israel continue this success. Indeed, we should do everything we can to continue to stand with Israel, stand with the Jewish people, and support the resolute victory of Israel in this war against evil.

US envoy: UNRWA funding freeze is permanent

American funding to UNRWA has been stopped for good over its ties to Hamas terrorism, and alternative U.N. agencies are being considered to funnel humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, a top U.S. envoy said Friday.

The unequivocal remarks follow a bombshell Israeli intelligence report, shared with the U.S. administration, which showed that dozens of UNRWA employees actively participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, while 10% of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza are Hamas members.

The revelations prompted about 18 countries, led by the US and Germany, UNRWA’s biggest donors, to suspend funding to the agency totaling $438 million, or more than half this year’s expected funding.

At least in the case of the United States, the suspension is permanent.

“Congress has made clear…that U.S. funding for UNRWA will stop,” said U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield during an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday. “It’s not a suspension. It is a prohibition on providing further funding.”

At the same time, the United States wants UNRWA’s functions of aid delivery and support to Palestinians to continue.

“We are working aggressively as possible with the U.N. family, with U.N. agencies, to see how these key functions can be sustained, as we look at the months ahead,” said Satterfield.

On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant released new revelations of UNRWA malpractice, saying Israeli intelligence had “significant indications” that more than 30 additional agency workers joined the Oct. 7 attack. One video released this weekend showed an UNRWA worker participating in the kidnapping of a body from an Israeli agricultural community near the border with Gaza.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi participated in meetings at the Munich Security Conference last night with other foreign ministers, emphasizing how important it is to pressure Israel to abandon its war against Hamas as well as the importance of continuing funding UNRWA.

He has also spoken to other world leaders about how important UNRWA is to Palestinians.

But the real reason Jordan cares about UNRWA has little to do with Gaza, and everything to do with Jordan's own economic crisis..

Reuters reported last week the real reasons Jordan wants UNRWA to continue to be funded - because it doesn't want to take responsibility for its own citizens:

Jordan's already struggling economy will face even tougher times if several donors continue to suspend funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and its services have to be shut or reduced as a result, UNRWA's country head said on Tuesday.

"The current funding suspension is putting the continuation of these services at risk after the end of February. It will have severe consequences (on UNRWA's operations)," said Olaf Becker, Jordan director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.

UNRWA was already helping the economy with 7,000 employees on its payroll, making it one of the largest employers in the kingdom, injecting over $120 million in salaries into the economy annually, Becker said.

Its services support over one million Palestinian refugees in the kingdom with, on average, 20% lower cost than the state in providing comparable services, Becker added.

"Our first option would be scale down our services and it might take different modalities but it's very difficult -- what do you choose, health care versus education or sanitation?" he said.

"School children might not have anywhere to go... It will be very detrimental to social cohesion in Jordan," Becker said.

Let's read Becker's words carefully, keeping in mind that the vast majority of Palestinians in Jordan are full Jordanian citizens and should have all of their social services provided by Jordan, not by the entire world.

Those 7,000 employees are doing functions that Jordan should be doing for its own citizens. Health care, sanitation, food and education are Jordan's responsibility, not the world community's. The 20% per person lower cost is meaningless because there would be economies of scale if Jordan extended its own social services to include Palestinian Jordanian citizens. Separate buildings, separate infrastructure and a separate bureaucracy is not exactly efficient.

And social cohesion? Native Jordanians have always been upset that in some cases their Palestinian "brothers" have better services than their own. A separate education and health care system does not promote social cohesion - it impedes it. Not to mention free living expenses to those who live in "camps."

Those who oppose UNRWA funding often frame the issue as a false choice between Palestinian "refugees" getting critical services or going without. It isn't true. If UNRWA should disappear tomorrow, all the funds that now go to UNRWA would be redirected to the states that host Palestinian "refugees." Jordan would be able to move most of those 7,000 employees into its own social services system. No one would go without medical care or education or food. And over a few years, Palestinians in Jordan would not be treated differently from other Jordanian citizens as they are today.

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!

Human Rights Watch again twists international law in its latest press release on Gaza:

Israel: Rafah Evacuation Plans Catastrophic, Unlawful

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli army and other officials to submit to the cabinet a plan to evacuate Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost governorate. Netanyahu said this action is necessary to attack Hamas battalions in the area.

With a pre-war population of 280,000, Rafah is now housing the majority of Gaza’s population, including most of the 1.7 million displaced Palestinians. Conditions are increasingly desperate, with people sheltering in makeshift camps—tents built with flimsy materials—and in overcrowded apartment buildings. Many have been displaced multiple times amid intense Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, as well as the continued blockade.

International humanitarian law prohibits the forced displacement of civilians except when temporarily required for their security or imperative military reasons. During the hostilities in Gaza, Human Rights Watch has warned that forced displacement, a war crime, is becoming more of a risk.

So according to Human Rights Watch, Israel trying to defeat Hamas is not an "imperative military reason."

HRW is saying Hamas must not be defeated. Because if HRW admits that Israel's war against Hamas is legitimate, it has to admit that Israel is not only allowed but mandated to evacuate as many civilians as possible from Rafah to get them out of harm's way.

There is only one conclusion. In Israel's war ro destroy Hamas, HRW is solidly on the side of the murderers, kidnappers and rapists.

Which is an interesting position for a "human rights group" to take.

But then again, why be surprised? HRW's UN director wrote an article in The Nation claiming that Israel's evidence that UNRWA workers had participated in the October 7 massacre was "scant," "if any." He is broadly implying that Israel is making up evidence. Yet the Washington Post found video footage of one of the UNRWA workers carrying the body of an Israeli at Kibbutz Beeri on October 7, and putting it into his own Nissan Terrano II.

Not exactly "scant" evidence, is it?

But HRW will never correct itself, just as it hasn't in hundreds of other cases where it was found to have reported things that weren't true.

HRW's defense of UNRWA workers-cum-terrorists shows which side it is on: the side of the murderers, kidnappers and rapists.

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!

UNRWA sent a document nearly 5,000 pages long as "evidence" to the International Court of Justice in support of South Africa's case to declare Israel as guilty of genocide.

This "evidence" is mostly public UNRWA reports submitted to the UN since 1967. But those documents happen to include official Israeli responses as well.

And those responses show that the UN and UNRWA cannot pretend not to have been aware of Hamas abuse of their facilities, of aid, and how their own employees were Hamas members. Because Israel told them.

In July 2014, Israel wrote:

In 2013, Gaza terror elements, headed by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, continued efforts to strengthen their military capabilities, in particular increasing the size and range of their rocket arsenal (long-range rockets, up to 110 km).

Much effort was also put into the building of offensive tunnels constructed some 20 m underground and crossing the Gaza border into Israel. In 2013, two tunnels were discovered and demolished: one near Nir Oz (January 2013) and another near Ein Hashlosha (October 2013). The tunnels were constructed using approximately 24,000 concrete slabs (allowed by Israel into Gaza for the building of humanitarian projects) and were tall enough inside to allow people to stand fully upright as they travelled along them. The purpose of the tunnels is to allow the infiltration of terrorists from the Gaza strip into Israeli civilian villages and cities in order to carry out terror attacks. Hamas invests tens of millions of dollars into the construction of these terror tunnels instead of investing the money in schools,

2015:

[B]uilding materials worth tens of millions of dollars were diverted by Hamas for the construction of cross-border tunnels, which were used to attack Israel during the summer 2014 conflict.

2017:

Instead of focusing on relief and humanitarian assistance, UNRWA chooses to promote a controversial political agenda. One example is the agency’s proactive campaigns supporting the so-called “right of return” for millions of Palestinians. The question of Palestinian refugees has not been agreed between Israel and the Palestinians and can be resolved only through direct bilateral negotiation between the parties. It is unacceptable for a United Nations agency to actively promote the agenda of one side of the conflict. UNRWA advocacy in this regard is inappropriate and undermines efforts to achieve a political solution.

Unfortunately, along with UNRWA use of humanitarian funding for the purpose of political campaigns, we have witnessed through the years many examples of misconduct by the agency and its employees. Recently, UNRWA personnel have even been found within the ranks of the internationally designated terrorist organization, Hamas. In February 2016, Israeli authorities revealed that the Chairman of the UNRWA Staff Union in the Gaza Strip and Principal of the UNRWA boys elementary school for refugee children, Suhail al-Hindi, had been elected to the political bureau of Hamas. This is the same al-Hindi who was suspended in 2011 by UNRWA after meeting with the Hamas leader, Ismail Hania. His suspension lasted only three months, after which al-Hindi was allowed to return to his prior position. Likewise, Muhammad al-Jamasi, the head of the UNRWA engineering department, was also reportedly elected to the Hamas political bureau.

At first, UNRWA denied the allegations regarding its employees. Only after being confronted with irrefutable evidence of their terrorist connections did the agency suspend al-Hindi and al-Jamasi, providing no further information on the circumstances of their dismissal. Moreover, only when publicly questioned about the incident by Israel’s Mission to the United Nations did the UNRWA Commissioner-General confirm al-Hindi’s dismissal. Even then, the UNRWA Commissioner-General attempted to reduce the offence, claiming that al-Hindi had been dismissed because he “ran for an elected office”.

These are just two recent examples of UNRWA misconduct. The agency’s employees have often engaged in egregious acts, including calls to commit acts of violence against Israelis on social media. The indications that UNRWA employees are working on behalf of Hamas, while others are inciting violence, raise serious questions about the agency’s monitoring and vetting processes.

2018:

The discovery of a second terror tunnel, operating directly under the classrooms of children, is not an isolated incident, but rather part of Hamas’ systematic effort to exploit the organs of the United Nations. However, UNRWA deliberately chooses to omit any direct mention of Hamas’ responsibility and of its common practice to misuse United Nations and civilian infrastructure. It is of utmost importance to ensure that all United Nations-affiliated agencies, and especially UNRWA, remain neutral and safeguarded from abuse by terrorist organizations.

Despite the reality on the ground, we have seen time and time again the public statements and tweets of UNRWA exempting Hamas of its responsibility and lacking condemnation of the main role of Hamas in those events. Moreover, UNRWA policies only encourage Hamas to keep using civilians, including UNRWA students, for the sole purpose of inciting violence and thus distracting the world from Hamas’ decade-long control of the Gaza Strip and its detrimental impact on the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the area. As we have seen in the past months, especially regarding the riots on the Gaza border, the public statements of UNWRA clearly indicate its growing leniency towards advocacy in the service of Hamas, rather than focusing on relief and humanitarian assistance in the best interest of the Palestinian people in Gaza. By doing so, UNRWA only exacerbates the unnecessary human suffering of innocent Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

These stories were muted in the media and downplayed or ignored in UNRWA's own reports.

It is no surprise that UNRWA has Hamas employees, or that UNRWA schools have been used for terror purposes.

(h/t Irene)

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!

02/17 Links: Michael Oren: The Core Conflict and the Jews; Phyllis Chesler: Silence of the Feminist Lambs: Not a Word on Hamas Horrors

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: Silence of the Feminist Lambs: Not a Word on Hamas Horrors

In 2005, I published a book titled The Death of Feminism. At the time, I was focused on how Western feminists had become obsessed more with the alleged “occupation” of a country that has never existed — Palestine — than with the real occupation of women’s bodies in Gaza and on the West Bank, who were being forced into hijab, niqab, and child and arranged marriages, or who were being honor killed by their families for minor or imagined infractions. This form of femicide is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime both in the West and in Muslim countries but, to a lesser extent, also takes place among Hindus in India, and, less frequently, among Sikhs. Honor killing is likely a tribal custom that religious leaders have failed to abolish, I wrote, one in which women also collaborate.

Both Stalinized and Palestinianized feminists and rabid Islamists denounced me as an “Islamophobe” for prioritizing the rights of women of color over and above the rights of the men (and women) of color who were terrorizing and even killing them. I was also condemned as a “Zionist” for questioning the sacredness of Palestinian victimhood.

Thus, I may have been among a handful of people not surprised by the feminist silence on Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom-on-steroids. It does not ease my sorrow that so many others, including the worldwide media and professoriate, human rights groups, and the United Nations, are also actively engaging in Oct. 7 denialism, as well as in relentless and vicious blood libels against the Jewish state, every single day.

By the late afternoon of Oct. 7, I was a cognitive warrior on fire. Between Oct. 11 and Jan. 25, I had published 24 articles on the subject and been interviewed about it 10 times.

Most second-wave feminists have died, suffered strokes, or are struggling with either dementia or cancer. Many are disabled. They are no longer “dancing in the streets.” But some of my long-time allies still attend conferences, march, sign petitions, write articles, and speak out.

These are the feminist allies who did not respond to the articles that I sent them about their shameful, even unbearable, silence. Perhaps they felt that Israel deserved whatever it got but were too embarrassed to say that to me. Instead, they said nothing.

Only one such feminist ally responded by sending me articles by Masha Gessen and Judith Butler. She suggested that reading their ideas about the moral superiority of vulnerable Jewish Diaspora life and the advantages of dissolving the Jewish state would “open my mind to the truth.” She also sent me an article that blamed Benjamin Netanyahu — and only Netanyahu — for the failure of a “two state solution — the only fair solution.”

I immediately sent her my critique of Butler and Gessen; I sent her Bassem Eid’s fact-based piece in Newsweek. Eid summarizes the long history of Arab rejection of the offers for a Palestinian state, first proffered by the British, then by the UN, and, finally, by Israel at least six times. Thus far, she has not responded.

Another long-time feminist (a friend, not merely an ally) is adamant that Israel is “committing genocide” and is an “apartheid, colonial, occupying state.” I told her that we cannot discuss Israel ever again. But now our conversations are thinned, brittle. There is no way we can discuss Oct. 7 without endangering our suddenly fragile friendship.

Why are my views so different? Here’s one reason.

Most Western pro-Palestinian feminists have never lived in a Muslim country or moved in Muslim circles, as I have — and still do. When I was young and oh-so-foolish, I traveled to Kabul with my Westernized Afghan husband, whom I had met at college. Once we landed, an airport official smoothly, officiously, removed my American passport; I never saw it again. I found myself trapped in the 10th century with no way back to the future.

The sickness of anti-Semitism

It’s often been said that a society that allows anti-Semitism to flourish is in a particularly deep kind of trouble. That a society that fails to keep anti-Semitism in its box not only fails to stand by its Jewish citizens, but also risks becoming consumed and deranged by it. That anti-Semitism’s toxic cocktail of hatred and conspiracism can all too easily lead a reasoned, tolerant society to sicken. If so, Britain looks very sick indeed.

This week, a report by the Community Security Trust (CST) laid out in stark, blood-curdling detail the hatred we’ve seen exploding all around us since 7 October. Anti-Semitic incidents are at their highest for 40 years, the highest since the CST began logging them, surging by 150 per cent in 2023. This includes a 96 per cent rise in anti-Semitic assaults. The most ever recorded.

British Jews have had bricks, eggs and bottles thrown at them. They’ve been punched, kicked and spat on. They’ve been threatened with metal bars, knives and fake firearms. In one incident, ‘pro-Palestine’ protesters kicked a Jewish man on his way home from a Sabbath service in London. They then threatened to beat him up and shouted: ‘We are going to rape your mother, you dirty Jew.’ I’m sure this was all just an unconventional icebreaker, before they made the case for a ceasefire and a two-state solution.

We are seeing Jew hatred at its most visceral. According to the CST, the incidents were at their peak not when the IDF rolled into Gaza, or when this awful war – that Hamas started – began to claim civilian Palestinian life. No, they peaked just a few days after 7 October, just after Hamas had killed and raped its way through southern Israel, long before Israel’s full military campaign had begun. As the CST puts it, the initial surge in anti-Semitic abuse, graffiti and violence represented a grotesque carnival of ‘celebration’ – celebration, that is, of the murder and maiming and defilement of Jews.

It would be sickening enough if Israel’s just war in Gaza was leading scumbags in Britain to menace Jews on protests, or to daub ‘SS IDF’ on the wall of a synagogue, as happened in Sussex. To hold British Jews responsible for the actions – real or imagined, justifiable or unjustifiable – of the Israeli state is the essence of the new anti-Semitism. But we can surely now drop the pretence that the undiluted anti-Jewish racism we’ve seen on our streets in recent months was just mindless, misplaced anger with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows this has been brewing for longer than many would like to admit. Even before the awful events of 7 October, British Jews constituted 0.5 per cent of the British population and around a quarter of the victims of the religiously motivated hate crimes. Jewish pensioners being suckerpunched in north London or Jewish cemeteries being desecrated were grimly regular occurrences that rarely – shamefully – made it beyond local-news websites.

But it really feels like it’s open season now. It’s in the air. Jews – or at least the ones who are pro-Israel, which happens to be the vast majority of them – are fair game. You can even ‘hound’ them out of a comedy show, if they take against a performer pulling out a Palestinian flag at the end of his ‘non-verbal immersive comedy show’, as happened at the Soho Theatre last week. I still don’t know what’s worse, that performer Paul Currie was reportedly so upset with an Israeli audience member that he broke character and blared ‘leave my fucking show now’, or that his audience immediately joined in, chanting ‘Free Palestine’ until the pesky Jew left.

'The end of the Jews': Herzog reveals Hamas textbook seized from Gaza

At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog revealed a book titled "The End of the Jews", which was found in a residential home in Gaza and written by one of the founders of the terrorist organization Hamas.

The book, which has been described as a "blueprint for the annihilation of the Jewish people", was discovered in the Al-Furqan neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, and was showcased during a conversation with senior commentator David Ignatius on the stage of the Security Conference.

The author of the book is Mahmoud az-Zahar, one of the founders of Hamas and former foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, once again proving the antisemitic ideology of the Hamas terrorist organization, whose core is the hatred of Jews and a call for their annihilation; a call that was translated into the monstrous October 7 terror attack.

The book was discovered and seized by security forces, and it describes the allegedly justified hatred of Jews throughout history. For example, it notes that while the family of nations and its leaders defined the Nazis, who acted to annihilate the Jewish people, as having committed crimes against humanity, the Nazis are in fact an important and worthy role model for many around the world.

The chapters of the book focus on hatred of the Jewish people and justify the persecution and murder of Jews throughout history; among them are chapters titled "The World's Burning Hatred of Jews" and "Reasons to Expel the Jews".

"This book was written by Dr. Mahmoud az-Zahar, a well-known political figure of Hamas and one of its founders," Herzog said at the conference. "This book mainly says that there is no need to recognize that there are Jews, that there is a Jewish people, but mainly it glorifies the Holocaust, what the Nazis did, and calls on nations to follow in their footsteps. Now we are in Munich. On the outskirts of Munich, there is the Dachau concentration camp, where tens of thousands of Jews were massacred. And that's the problem, we need to form a coalition of all the moderate forces in the world, fighting this ideology."

02/16 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies; Melanie Phillips: Never again; Bari Weiss with Natan Sharansky

From Ian:

Dara Horn: Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies

The mountain of proof at Harvard revealed a reality in which Jewish students’ access to their own university (classes, teachers, libraries, dining halls, public spaces, shared student experiences) was directly compromised. Compromised, that is, unless they agreed—or at least agreed to pretend, as many Jewish students who are neither religious nor Israeli now silently do—that there was nothing wrong with wallpapering America’s premier university with demonization of Jews. Coercing that silent agreement was the goal, and it was achieved not through arguments or evidence, but through the most laughably idiotic heckler’s veto: screaming at, chasing away, freezing out, or spitting on anyone who dared disagree with supporting the most successful Jew-killers since the Nazis. This left the great minds of Harvard debating the finer points of free speech for hecklers, instead of wondering why their campus was populated by hecklers. The question of why Harvard’s hecklers were heckling in favor of Hamas’s barbarism was too disturbing to consider, and so public discussions ignored it completely.

This heckling was not unrelated to the education that Harvard itself provided. Classes existed at Harvard, it turned out, that were premised on anti-Semitic lies. A course at the school of public health called “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health” looked at case studies from South Africa, the United States, and Israel; its premise—not a topic of discussion, but the premise on which the course was built—was that Israel is a settler-colonialist state. (A Jewish student who wrote to the professor questioning what they saw as the ideological slant of the readings was told that it was “insulting” to suggest that the course had an agenda.) The “Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights” proudly announced that it “utilizes a decolonial framework in program development, leadership, and engagement”—meaning, one might reasonably assume, the “decolonizing” of Israel through the removal of its 7 million Jews. (The program is a partnership between Harvard and Birzeit University, a Palestinian institution where an Israeli journalist was expelled from an event in 2014 just because she was Israeli and Jewish.)

An astonishing number of pop-up lectures, panels, and events at Harvard both before and after October 7 were centered on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza—a worthy topic addressed with almost no mention of Hamas, even though Hamas has ruled Gaza for 17 years. Nor was there much mention of the fact that Hamas was founded in connection with the global Muslim Brotherhood, or of its comically wealthy sponsors in the Persian Gulf. Students had many opportunities to learn about Palestinian suffering from oppression by evil Jews, but far fewer opportunities to learn, for instance, about Hamas’s success in co-opting foreign aid and crushing dissent, or the intifada that students hoped to globalize. Outside of their engagements at Harvard, some guest speakers publicly endorsed extreme anti-Semitic lies, including the straight-up blood libel that Israelis are harvesting Palestinians’ organs or that the Israeli military uses Palestinian children for weapons testing. One could hardly blame students for repeating their educators’ claims.

Out of respect for Gay’s request that our committee’s discussions with administrators remain private, I won’t share here anything that we talked about in our many meetings. But I will say that one thing we did not discuss was Gay’s congressional testimony on this topic, for which she and other administrators never asked for the advisory committee’s advice. Instead, they consulted lawyers, a choice that backfired on national television.

The horror that the hearing laid bare was something far worse than a viral gaffe. Harvard was already being investigated by the Department of Education for allegations of violating Jewish students’ civil rights under Title VI, and perhaps the president was advised against admitting any institutional failure. (In January, a group of students sued Harvard, describing the university as a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.”) Still, the only morally tenable position would have been to admit failure, to reveal that the problem was not all in Jews’ heads; that there truly was an anti-Semitic environment at these incubators of American leadership; that these universities, along with far too many other pockets of the country, had reverted, slowly and then all at once, into what they had been a century earlier: safe spaces for high-minded Jew hatred—not in spite of their aspiration that education should lead to a better world, but because of it.

Melanie Phillips: Never again

I made a pilgrimage this week to the the area of the south-western Negev that was devastated by the Hamas pogrom on October 7.

It was a lot to take in and process. Here are some of the things I saw and heard which particularly spoke to me.

The eerie silence of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, whose once idyllic aspect is still visible through its shrubs and spacious landscaping despite the wrecked and deserted houses.

Outside his house sits Shachar, the only kibbutz resident who is still there.

They came from five directions, he says; between 300 and 600 terrorists. There were only 11 members of the kibbutz civil defence; they were prepared for only two, three terrorists, maximum. Seven of the 11 were murdered.

When the attack started, he said, he got a knife, told his wife Ayalet to get under the bed and stood guard at the door for 30 hours. The terrorists didn’t try to get in.

Why not? He shrugs. The house stands alone: others are connected in pairs. They seemed to be killing people in one of each pair of houses and leaving the other one alone, he says. They thought no-one was inside here, he says. And they were in a hurry. They didn’t think they would have time to kill so many. The terrorists expected the army to come at any minute.

Why did he come back to his house just a few weeks after the massacre, to live here alone, in the silence, in this place of death? He spreads his hands. It’s my home, he says simply. And I hoped that if I came back, others would follow. Not yet.

Further into Kfar Aza, the scene is very different. This is not tranquil. This is a place of the utmost horror. These houses are laid out in neat rows with neighbours facing each other across the pathway. In two of these double rows, the inhabitants of every single house were murdered or kidnapped. Not one house was spared.

Every house is wrecked. Outside each one are pictures of the murdered or the kidnapped who had lived there. Most are taped off. Every house has symbols painted on the outside by those who came to retrieve the remains of the slaughtered. A circle with a dot, we are told, means a body or body parts were inside.

New Documentary Aims to Arm Jewish Students with Facts about Israel’s History to Combat Surge in Campus Antisemitism

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and Israel launched its retaliatory military operation in Gaza, college campuses have been aflame with an anti-Zionism that, more often than not, veers into antisemitism.

One recent college graduate, alongside her former professor, has created a documentary series aimed at educating people past the flashy signs and catchy slogans one might see and hear at an anti-Israel rally, toward a full understanding of what Zionism and anti-Zionism really mean. That series, “Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The History of Two Opposing Ideas” by Zoé Tara Zeigherman, had its Washington, D.C., premiere Thursday night.

The series, a five-episode look at the varieties of both its titular subjects, covers Jewish history and the development of Zionism, the intra-Jewish debates that occurred before Israel’s founding in 1948, and various strains of anti-Zionism from post-1948 Arab opposition to Israel to Soviet propaganda.

Zeigherman, alongside her former Georgetown University professor (and former member of Israel’s Knesset) Einat Wilf, began formulating the idea for the series in 2022, well before anti-Zionism and antisemitism shot to the fore of public debate following the October 7 Hamas attack. Zeigherman thinks the problem was always there, but now that college campuses are under a microscope, the documentary series is even more relevant.

“I think that what a lot of Jews have experienced since October 7 is kind of waking up to this feeling that something is seriously wrong; seeing protests on October 8, they’ve been feeling that something is mobilizing against Jews, and they don’t really understand what’s happening.” Zeigherman told National Review. “I had that feeling in the Black Lives Matter protest era when antisemitism was erupting online and I couldn’t understand where it was coming from.”

“If it can just help one young Jew the way Einat’s course helped me, that’s enough,” she told NR. “But I would really like to see it be part of something bigger, where Jews aren’t afraid to be Jews anymore — where we stand taller and prouder and go on offense as opposed to constantly defending ourselves and apologizing.”

Zeigherman initially came up with the idea for the series during her time as a Beren Summer Fellow with the Tikvah Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes Jewish leaders and ideas, in 2022. While a fellow, she worked with individuals both inside and outside the Tikvah Fund to determine how to bring her vision to life.

Liron and Rakefet Eldor

By Forest Rain

He stood by the door, slightly bent over as if recovering from a punch to the gut and yet he had a smile on his face, warm words, and a hug for friends and family.

I’ve been to many Shiva houses. This is the first time I’ve seen a grief-stricken father greet those who came to pay their respects in this way.

For those unfamiliar with the Jewish mourning tradition of Sitting Shiva, this is a structured way for the bereaved family to express their grief and the community to support the family. Immediately following the funeral, for seven days (shiva means seven in Hebrew), the immediate family resides (usually) in the home of the deceased. Extended family, friends, and members of the community come without invitation to offer condolences, share memories of the deceased, and provide emotional support. The endless stream of people provides a stabilizing distraction for the mourners, helping to pass the initial shock of bereavement. Mourners are not supposed to cook or serve food, so it is customary for guests to bring food, making sure the bereaved family doesn’t have to think about themselves or their guests.

People differ in their adherence to the Jewish traditional guidelines for the Shiva. Secular Jews do not necessarily conduct the proscribed prayers, wear a kippah (yarmulke), or stick to the guidelines regarding clothes, etc. Tradition dictates that the mourners sit on low chairs or even pillows on the floor, indicating their grief and differentiating them from everyone else.

Mourners often remain sitting on their low chairs while the people around them come and go, replaced by new visitors. Sometimes the bereaved move around to visit with the different people who came to comfort them.

Liron Eldor is the first father I’ve seen greeting visitors by the door with a smile and a hug.

Liron’s son, Sergeant First Class Adi Eldor was killed in Gaza. He was just 21 years old.

We don’t know the Eldor family personally, but they live in Haifa and their son’s life journey is very similar to that of our son – same school, both were in the Scouts and they were in the same elite army unit. Israel is a nation of people who are family who haven’t met yet so, it isn’t uncommon for people to pay condolences to families they don’t personally know. What is the difference between their son and ours?

The Eldor family is the cream of Haifa society. Well-to-do, sophisticated, intelligent, and kind people. Liron and Rakefet, Adi’s mother, are both young, attractive, and charismatic. Their beautiful home was overflowing with friends, family, and an enormous amount of food.

After we introduced ourselves to Liron I asked him the question I usually ask bereaved parents: “Tell me something about Adi so that I can remember him, although I didn’t know him.”

(It’s rather horrifying that we meet so many bereaved parents that I have an arsenal of questions to ask)

Liron smiled and told me: “You know the saying; In death, they command us to live?”

“Yes, of course” I nodded.

“In death, Adi commands us to smile. He always had smiles for everyone. There are good things and negative things to see in people. Adi always knew how to see the good and he used that to bring people together. That’s Adi.”

Then he told us about donations of food the family planned to give with an image of Adi smiling, to spread warmth and smiles to other people.

Liron’s choice of how he greeted the people who came to comfort him wasn’t random. It was a simple yet powerful way to honor his son’s legacy. Brokenhearted but still standing, he had smiles to share.

Wow.

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02/16 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Palestinian state recognition ‘huge reward’ to terror; 30 UNRWA employees participated in Oct. 7 massacre

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Shameful Biden tries to reward Hamas terror with a Palestinian state

On October 8th — as terrorists were still running wild across the south of Israel — Blinken told CBS “We think the best way to resolve [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] remains a two-state solution.”

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A month later he could be found claiming that a two-state solution was “the only way to end a cycle of violence.”

By the time he was in Davos in January Blinken was telling the New York Times that creating a Palestinian state would solve all the problems of the region, including (bizarrely) regional instability caused by Iran.

By the end of January Blinken was reported to have ordered the State Department to review options for American recognition of a Palestinian State.

In recent weeks Blinken has been sending out his British counterpart — Lord Cameron — to bang on about the creation of a Palestinian state. He was doing it in Washington this week. Cameron is clearly acting as Blinken’s warm-up act.

Blinken recently boasted that he was in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas “to reiterate US support for reforming the PA and establishing an independent Palestinian state.”

But such a policy is an embarrassment.

As Israeli politicians of left, right and center have told me in recent months, even if you believe that the Palestinians should be given another state, now is not the time to discuss it.

To push for a two-state solution now is to say to the Palestinians “You carried out a horrific terror attack on October 7th, and as a reward you will be given another state.”

I wonder how many more terror attacks will come about by incentivizing terror in this way?

But the other reason why it is so wicked is that since 2005 we know what a Palestinian state in the West Bank would look like. It would not just be one more failed Arab state.

It would be another Palestinian terror state. One which had views over the entirety of Israel and where the rockets could this time easily hit Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion airport.

So long as the Palestinians celebrate terror, encourage terror and pay for terror they should not have another state.

Two-states? It’s not a solution. It’s part of the problem.

Michael Oren: The US charge of ‘indiscriminate bombing’ is over the top

Another country, struck by the type and immensity of the atrocities committed against Israel on Oct. 7, would likely have responded with vastly greater force and inflicted far greater numbers of civilian casualties. But Israel is a Jewish state in the moral manner in which we defend ourselves. Even when the enemy is using its own population as a human shield, Israel must do its utmost to reduce the damage to civilians. This is not only a strategic interest but also a moral imperative.

The IDF takes unprecedented measures to warn civilians of impending actions and to evacuate them from combat zones. It's why Israel has maintained the lowest combatant-to-civilian casualty rate in modern warfare - as Hamas' own statistics show. How, then, can the Biden administration accuse Israel of "indiscriminately bombing" Gaza and of reacting "over the top" to the events of Oct. 7?

President Biden and his staff continue to uphold Israel's right to self-defense, to supply us with vital forms of ammunition, and to resist mounting calls for a permanent ceasefire. Yet, the accusations they level at Israel do far more than insult our soldiers. They fundamentally endanger our security.

By asserting that Israel is violating international humanitarian law, our American ally is bolstering those who accuse us of committing war crimes and perpetrating genocide. The next time Israel faces these charges in an international court, statements by the U.S. president and the secretary of state will be Exhibit A for the prosecution. That evidence, moreover, would be demonstrably false. Israel's efforts to reduce civilian casualties, often at the expense of our own soldiers' safety, are well-documented.

Outrage at the civilian casualties must be directed at those who cynically engineer them. Hamas' goal is to brand Israel as a war criminal. That is precisely the objective served by accusations of "over the top" reactions and indiscriminate bombing.

‘We’ll Be Seen as Losers if We Don’t Complete the Job:’ Israeli Historian Benny Morris Addresses the War Against Hamas

With the US maintaining its role as the leading outside power in the region, talk of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been revived, causing tensions between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden’s Administration. Morris believes that a Palestinian state alongside Israel is theoretically the correct solution, but he doesn’t see a “roadmap” — the phrase much used by successive US administrations in their peacemaking efforts — for getting there.

“The problem is that the occupation is immoral and bad,” he said. “It was forced upon us, but we didn’t do enough to get out of it.” Meanwhile, in the wake of the Hamas atrocities, Israelis have become hardened. “The Israeli public is staunch in its desire to destroy Hamas and pay them back for what happened,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of revenge, it’s understanding that without that, Israel will appear weak.”

As Morris explains it, the dilemma for Israel revolves around how to withdraw from the West Bank without turning it into a Hamas stronghold. Israel has been able to weather two decades of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, but similar salvos from Ramallah, which is just a short drive from Tel Aviv, would amount to an “existential threat,” Morris said. “In the West Bank, there is no way of assuring the benign nature of a Palestinian state,” he said. “They want all of Palestine. That’s the essence of the problem.” Additionally, Morris has little faith in international guarantees, citing Hezbollah’s refusal to move its armed forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, as part of a broader disarmament process envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of Aug. 2006, as an example of the difficulty of implementing compromises that are not enforced.

“The sense among Israelis is that, along with the rapes of Oct. 7, Israel itself was raped,” Morris said. “The world didn’t seem to care about that, and there was an instant rise in antisemitic abuse and anti-Israel rhetoric even before the military response.” The political context is also changing, he observed. “The further away the western world gets from the Holocaust, particularly the younger generations, the less they know and care about World War II,” he said. At the same time, “Islam contains a large antisemitic element” that stems from the bombastic accounts in the Qur’an of the battles in the seventh century between the Jewish tribes of Hijaz and the prophet Muhammad and his followers. “There’s this inherent anti-Jewish element that’s been reinforced by Israel’s existence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” Morris said. “Israel is an innovation in that sense — a Jewish state projecting power at the Muslims. That was not the situation for 1400 years since the rise of Islam.”

Seth Mandel: The Rafah Hostage Rescue Was a Game-Changer

It’s impossible to say for sure how much has been changed by Israel’s dramatic hostage rescue in Rafah. But it’s clearly altered the conflict.

The fact that Israel wasn’t bluffing about going into Rafah, and the revelation to the world that the IDF had legitimate reasons to do so, convinced the other players in this conflict that the Israelis meant what they said and to prepare accordingly.

Hence we have a rather important story about the adjustments Egypt’s government is making for the possible influx of Gaza evacuees: An eight-square-mile walled camp is under rapid construction in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian desert region that borders Gaza.

The history here is important. Rafah was divided between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, briefly reunited after the Six-Day War, and then divided again when Israel pulled out of the Sinai. It became, and remains, the only border crossing between Palestinian-controlled territory and Egyptian-controlled territory.

Given the history, the last thing Egypt wanted to do was accept a large number of Palestinian refugees fleeing Gaza, and the last place they wanted to do it was Rafah, despite the fact that it would obviously save lives.

Egypt’s sensitivity toward an IDF operation in Rafah is twofold. One, tunnels running underneath have long plagued Egypt’s anti-smuggling efforts. (Though those efforts have gotten feebler over the years.) Two, Egypt does not want to take responsibility for any part of Gaza nor any Gazans. As Israel’s experience shows, that is a difficult entanglement to disengage from. Perhaps all the more so because of Rafah’s identity as a divided city.

The latter point has been a running theme of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967. Egypt does not want Gaza. Israel does not want Gaza (it went so far as to leave Gaza unilaterally, without a single guarantee about what the Strip would be used for thereafter). Hamas does not want Gaza—not in the traditional sense. Hamas does not want to govern the people of Gaza. It put all the Strip’s resources into building a second Gaza underground that is inaccessible to most Gazans, and it does not want statehood. There is nothing that Hamas wants, in fact, that is in any way beneficial to the Palestinians unless those Palestinians are members of Hamas (or UNRWA, the UN refugee agency that is essentially Hamas’s very own Learning Annex). Hamas is a terrorist army that is controlled and funded by non-Palestinian entities.

UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths told said on Wednesday that he did not consider Hamas to be a terrorist group.

A Sky News interviewer asked him about the difficulty of eliminating Hamas, and Griffiths responded “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, as you know, it is a political movement."

There was an uproar at a UN representative saying Hamas was not a terrorist group, so Griffiths pretended to clarify, tweeting, "Just to clarify: Hamas is not on the list of groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council."

That hardly exonerates him, since he didn't only exclude Hamas as a terrorist group, but he also said it was a "political movement."

But it is worth examining the UN Security Council list of designated terrorist groups, because it is not meant to be a list of terrorist groups worldwide.

The list started as a list of groups to be sanctioned under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 which was specifically against Al Qaeda and later expanded to the Taliban and ISIS. The name of the the list is the "ISIL (Da'esh) & Al-Qaida Sanctions List."

The UN Security Council does not claim to have a list of designated terror organizations. It has a list of terror organizations associated with ISIS and Al Qaeda, nothing more. (There is also a separate list of entities and people under sanctions for various reasons, but it is not referred to as a terrorist list.)

So Griffiths is being knowingly deceptive about even this.

Of course, the UN would never designate Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations, because the Arab bloc and other non-aligned nations would oppose it. So using the UN as a yardstick to determine whether Hamas is a terror group is absurd. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are designated terror groups by the EU, US, UK and others.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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1,300 Gaza rockets have landed in Gaza since October, and other rocket statistics that no one is reporting

Since October 7, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have launched over 10,000 rockets towards Israel.

About 1,300 of them fell in Gaza.

I'm no expert, but that seems like a lot. Especially in "one of the most densely populated areas on Earth."

Outside the Al Ahli hospital incident, when have reporters even mentioned this? How many have investigated "airstrikes" on civilian areas and noted that they look more like Hamas rockets than Israeli airstrikes?

I have reported that it is likely that a terror rocket hit the Al Awda Hospital in November, an incident where three doctors died. The damage in the hospital is far more consistent with a rocket than with an airstrike. But every other report assumed it was Israel.

Because no one mentions the 1,300 Hamas rockets exploding in Gaza itself.

There are some other statistics of rocket fire that the media cannot be bothered to report (source: INSS).

Here is a graph of Code Red alerts in Israel over time since October 8.

It appears that military action can reduce rocket attacks! Who knew?

Jerusalem, which Hamas pretends to be protecting, has had 48 rocket alerts. Tel Aviv, 163.

Ashkelon has had the most rocket alerts of any town - 576.

Over 2,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from the north mostly from Lebanon.

This map lists the number of attacks on each community from the north.

Nearly 218,000 Israelis have been forced to leave their homes because of the threat of rocket attacks. 62,000 are from the northern communities, the rest from the Gaza area.

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

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HOW TO ACCUSE ISRAEL OF THE WORST HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

A Handy Guide

Time tested by "human rights" groups!

1. Determine which specific crime against humanity you want to accuse Israel of. It is important to have a good libel in mind before you start to gather evidence. This is how the professionals do it.

2. Start to gather evidence. It is not strictly important that the evidence fits the legal definition of the crime; you can declare it does without fear of contradiction. Your audience is looking to affirm and confirm their antisemitism, not to seek truth.

3. (VERY IMPORTANT): While you are gathering evidence, you may find counter-evidence that disproves your accusation. Ignore this counter-evidence at all costs. Even (and especially!) if you need to twist your evidence to make this work.

4. Many accusations of war crimes, like apartheid and genocide, requires you to be able to read the minds of Israeli leaders and Zionists. When they say they want to "eradicate Hamas," for example, we all know that they mean "eradicate Palestinians." We know this because they are Jews, and Zionist Jews are slippery liars so you cannot trust what they say - only what your psychic abilities tell you they really mean. This predetermined assumption of guilt is a major part of building the case that they are indeed guilty.

5. Write a very long, heavily footnoted report. When you present 300 pages that show only one side of the story, no one will even think to spend the time checking all those footnotes. The more footnotes, the more people will think this is a serious work of scholarship and not a one-sided hack job that is desired.

6. Some stubborn Zionists will still insist on checking the footnotes out to prove that you are lying, or taking facts or quotes out of context, or making things up. Do not link or refer to primary sources. Link only to media articles that already twisted the primary sources to damn Israel (The Nation, Time, Washington Post), and treat them as if they are the real source.

7. Liberally quote other reports of human rights groups who have already used these methods to "prove" their own slanders against Israel. When a major human rights group accuses Israel of something like apartheid or genocide or settler colonialism, that makes it a fact that you no longer need to prove again.

8. Treat every Palestinian claim as absolute truth, and quietly discard them when proven to be false. Treat every Israeli claim as already disproven hasbara. In this case, references to Electronic Intifada, Max Blumenthal and Mondoweiss are exceptionally valuable., since they can do the lying for you.

9. If you must refer to Palestinian war crimes to appear balanced, give a passing mention to "rockets." Never mention incitement, rape, murder, antisemitism, misogyny, wife beating, gay bashing or anything else.

10. When forced to debate Zionists and they mention Palestinian war crimes and extremism, blame Israel. Palestinians have no agency or choice in how they act. When Israelis are killed, it is their own fault, and no one else's.

11. Avoid context. Never look at the entire picture. Never compare Israeli actions with those of any other country. Look at Israel with a microscope and don't compare with what other nations do in wartime. (The only exception is if you find a creative way to say Israel is the world's worst at something, like the "most destructive war in the 21st century in an area less than 400 km2 with a Z in its name.")

12. Build on the work of those who came before you. Find obscure concepts like "domicide" and popularize them by applying them to Israel only. If you get lucky enough to apply a new human rights abuse to Israel, repeat it over and over. Make sure that if anyone does an Internet search for the term, Israel fills up the first page of the results.

13. Even though you spend all your time and effort attacking Jews, strenuously deny you are antisemitic. Claim to be merely a "critic" of Israel, a nation you fervently want to see destroyed. Accuse those who say you are antisemitic of being the real bigots if you identify as a woman, a person of color or a Jew yourself.

14. Finally, learn to lie. Find photos on the Internet from sub-Saharan Africa and claim they are Gazans. Use AI to generate photos of thousands of dead children. Refer to nonexistent Talmud sources or fictional quotes by Ben Gurion. Make up new international laws. Pretend UN General Assembly resolutions are legally meaningful. As long as you speak confidently, people who already hate Jews will believe you no matter what you say. You will be surprised how many people are eager to hear new ways to blame all the world's problems on Israel and Jews.

These are all time tested, repeatable methods that have worked well over history against Jews and now against Israel.

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!