Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Repeating a lie makes it the truth. Like "occupied Palestinian territory."

"The Big Lie" is normally defined as "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Surprisingly, Joseph Goebbels did not make up the concept of "the Big Lie." Adolf Hitler did, in Mein Kampf, claiming that this was a propaganda method of the Jews:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true in itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

Hitler, of course, used this method against the Jews. In the very next paragraph, he wrote:

From time immemorial. however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?

The Holocaust was based on this Big Lie, that Jews are an inferior race.

Israel haters have used The Big Lie method liberally. we are seeing it today with their applying the terms "genocide" and "apartheid" to Israel. They don't even pretend to defend these absurd accusations anymore - they believe that by just repeating them, and "thinking past the sale," they can plant the association between Israel and these crimes against humanity in people's minds, so the lies become accepted as self-evidently true. No one can believe that they are being lied to so brazenly.

But before these libels, there was another lie I have documented previously - the lie that Israel is on "occupied" or ("stolen") "Palestinian Territory." That lie is so entrenched that the very title of the of the current International Court of Justice case against Israel is "Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."

Many have discussed Israel's official (and correct) position that the territories aren't "occupied" but "disputed." But not as many have discussed whether the territories are "Palestinian."

Practically no one called them "Palestinian territories" in 1967. Even though Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was almost universally not recognized, suddenly in 1967 the West Bank became "Israeli-occupied Jordan."

The UN didn't start using the term "occupied Palestinian territories" in its own reports until 1983. Before then they were "occupied Arab territories."

We know that the land was Ottoman before 1917. We know that the British controlled it but didn't annex it before 1948. We know Jordan controlled it and illegally annexed the west bank before 1967, and maintained it had a legal claim on the territory until 1988.

So when did it become "Palestinian" in the juridical sense?

Under international law, territory can be legally acquired in a limited number of ways, and Palestinians never acquired any land using any of those methods except by agreement with Israel for Area A in the Oslo Accords and Gaza when Israel withdrew from the sector. Outside of those areas, the Palestinians never had any legal title to any land. They certainly never had title over Area C or "east" Jerusalem, indeed not over any areas that Israel has controlled since 1967.

When Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank in 1988, it had no right to do so since it never had legal sovereignty over the territory. If you look at their actions in July 1988 closely, you can see that Jordan severed all ties with the West Bank but I do not see any formal, legal transfer of the territory to the PLO. King Hussein's speech on July 31 is not a legal treaty. If anything, the official decision by Jordan to stop its fiction of control over the West Bank made Israel the only legal entity that had any claim on the West Bank before Oslo.

Which means that the very basis of the ICJ discussion is based on a Big Lie - the lie that these territories are Palestinian to begin with. There was never any title or transfer of the title of the land to the Palestinians.

I am afraid that the same method that was used to normalize the Big Lie that there exists "Occupied Palestinian Territory" is fast being used to normalize the "apartheid" and "genocide" lies.

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!

02/21 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: How the ‘settler violence’ campaign works; Amy Winehouse and the fanaticism of the Israelophobes; The PLO Covenant Was Never Abolished

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Are American Jews Prepared for the Return of History?

This sentiment has become the norm in the literary world. PEN America (to its great credit) faced down a torrent of protest for inviting Mayim Bialik to speak at an event. The American writer Randa Jarrar had to be removed from the event, so insistent was she on disrupting the Jewish speaker. This is not the first time Bialik’s Judaism has made her a target. In 2021, when Bialik was chosen as one of the two new Jeopardy! hosts, the Daily Beast ran a story taking aim at her “sketchy” support for Israel’s existence. The piece was updated with a note at the bottom that still makes me laugh: “This story has been updated to replace the word genocidal in reference to the IDF.”

According to JTA, two award-winning writers “broke ties” with PEN America in response to Bialik’s appearance and blamed Bialik for “ongoing slaughter” in the Middle East.

There was a similar campaign, JTA reported, to pressure a subscription service into dropping a promotion for a special edition of the novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. I enjoyed the book immensely and racked my brain to try to figure out the activists’ beef with Zevin. I assumed it had to be because one of the characters is Israeli. But it appears to have been even dumber than that: Readers objected to, believe it or not, Zevin’s having participated in events with the Jewish group Hadassah.

The New York-based writer Erika Dreifus told the reporter that the organized literary world’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 7 and their aftermath “certainly distances me from any sense of really belonging to a wider literary community.”

I asked Dreifus for the running list she’s been keeping of literary institutions’ responses to Gaza. I noticed some had incorporated them into their writing guidelines. An example from the Feminist Press: “We define our feminism as anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, and decolonial, and we intend to make that explicit with not only our work, but also our practices of solidarity.… In 2023 and beyond, we particularly hope to collaborate with and center Palestinian authors, in light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the century of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine.”

I mention all these to make clear that the problem stretches far beyond academia and journalism and politics and, as I have noted previously, global sports. It’s everywhere. It’ll get worse, and the American Jewish community is going to have to be ready and willing to advocate for itself. It certainly won’t be able to rely on anyone else to do it.

Does Antisemitism Explain Feminists' Failure to Condemn Oct. 7?

The relationship between feminism and antisemitism leaves women in an uneasy alliance with a movement that began with boosting noble conventionalities such as achieving workplace equality yet has now been manipulated by and grouped with a troubling social justice pedagogy.

The reluctance to reckon with intersectional discourse's role in driving gender biases against Jews contributes to the rise in the number of women central to the promulgation of antisemitic trends in American society. First elected in 2018, the congressional "Squad" was initially composed of four women and is still overwhelmingly dominated by female lawmakers.

While running for office, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., invoked themes of overcoming adversity in a male-centered system. During former President Donald Trump's 2020 State of the Union Address, Democratic women doubled down on the atmosphere of empowerment by wearing white and declaring solidarity in achieving "equality for women across the country."

The victories of far-left lawmakers like Ocasio-Cortez and comrade Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., led seasoned female politicians, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., anxious to indulge in this unsavory feminist revival by welcoming their entrance into the political arena with a Rolling Stone cover photo depicting the former Democratic House Speaker grinning alongside politicians whose positions would have made them unworthy contenders for a congressional seat decades ago.

As media outlets explore the shift in attitudes among young Americans towards Israel, with a Harvard-Harris poll released last December finding 51% of respondents 18 to 24 years old believing "Israel should be ended and given to Hamas," it may be worth exploring why embedded within a generational change, are gender disparities under which more women are seduced into taking hostile positions against Israel.

It bears mentioning that Within Our Lifetime, the organization responsible for sowing much of the anti-Israel chaos in NYC, is led by pro-Hamas and female activist Nerdeen Kiswani, whose litany of antisemitic invectives did not stop the City University of New York (CUNY) from platforming Kiswani as its 2022 Law School commencement speaker.

Whether at pro-terror protests unfolding across the U.S. or in videos displaying the tearing of Israeli hostage posters, women are a steady and growing presence at the center of these disturbing scenes.

It's a phenomenon advanced by a philosophical sorting that grants progressives the freedom to falsely frame Jews as oppressors while leaving less ideologically inclined liberals ill-equipped to navigate the feminist landscape and confront the distortions that have captured today's contemporary moment.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

The whole world blames Israel for the loss of life and devastation in Gaza. But the people of Gaza are having none of it. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, went so far as to compare Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler against the Jews and the president of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, agreed with him. And still, the Gazan people know better. They know who bears the fault for laying waste to Gaza, and it's not Israel. The body responsible for destroying Gaza is Hamas.

But try telling that to the Zionist- Jew-hating, Israel-hating world, and they’ll only double down. UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths, for example, said that he did not consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. In spite of the clamor from regular Gazans.

Martin Griffiths, @UNReliefChief, denies Hamas is a terrorist organization. No wonder he is abusing his power to save Hamas' skin after the deadliest terror attack since 9/11 instead of demanding its surrender. pic.twitter.com/0FIA3fmtDU
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) February 15, 2024

Michelle O’Neill, the recently elected First Minister of Northern Ireland, also does not care what the people of Gaza think, going so far as to claim that Hamas will come to be regarded as the future partner for peace in the Middle East! The people of Gaza, however, vehemently disagree with this naïve assessment, and now that Hamas is on the way to extinction, have begun to lose their fear of speaking out. They know that Israel not to blame for their suffering, and they’re pointing their collective finger at the real culprit, Hamas.

The IDF, for example, posted a video compilation of Gazans speaking out against Hamas on December 15. One of the most striking moments in this video occurs during a news reporter’s interview of a Gazan man: “And if I told you that Hamas ruined Gaza? What would you respond?”

“Obviously. It’s obvious,” said the interview subject, “The reason of this destruction is Hamas.”

Here’s another IDF clip of a Gazan blaming Hamas for the war.

Hamas’ oppression has started to collapse. Gazan civilians are speaking out against Hamas— watch this: pic.twitter.com/zICKDtakR9
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 7, 2023

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center on December 13, published bulleted lists of Gazans criticizing Hamas in the media and on social networks. Some excerpts:

Criticism of Hamas in the media

·        The Palestinian Authority’s Wafa TV interviewed residents and evacuees from Khan Yunis who left the city for the Rafah area. One of them angrily claimed that they had been forced to evacuate Rafah to a place where there was no water, food or showers. He wondered why “they” [Hamas] were doing it to them. “Hamas, protect the people!” he said. Another resident who was riding in a horse-drawn cart, shouted “May Allah disgrace the honor of Hamas and al-Sinwar” (Wafa YouTube channel, December 6, 2023).

·        Radio Alam, which broadcasts from Hebron, aired an interview with residents of the Gaza Strip who criticized Hamas and its leadership. One of the interviewees cursed Yahya al-Sinwar and claimed, “You destroyed us.” He said, “the Palestinian civilians speak without fear because they now know that death is everywhere, the leaders of Hamas must pay attention to the Gazans to protect what is left of the Gazan people and end the useless war.” He spoke of the civilians’ difficulties after they moved from Khan Yunis to Rafah, and emphasized that the Hamas leadership did not care. Another interviewee appealed to Yahya al-Sinwar in distress, saying there was no food or water and the number of evacuees was increasing, while there are 20,000 people in one school. He called for help for the children and expressed fear of epidemics spreading among the citizens (Assaf Mustafa’s X account, December 6, 2023).
Hamas rats hide in tunnels while Gazan civilians suffer (Issa Alris X account, November 23, 2023)

·        Al-Hadath TV, an Arab channel, played a recording of a Palestinian evacuee, which was originally broadcast on the local radio, who claimed Hamas had destroyed them and that everything happened because of al-Sinwar. He said they had gone from Gaza City to Khan Yunis and from there to Rafah. He said Hamas stole humanitarian aid meant for the Palestinian public, adding that the Hamas leadership, including al-Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, were underground and did not care about what was happening [to the Gazans above ground]. He also appealed to al-Sinwar to release the hostages (al-Hadath TV, December 6, 2023).

·        Ahmed Rifat Muheisen, an evacuee, was interviewed by QudsN channel TV, a Palestinian TV channel, from the tent camp of the evacuees in western Rafah, and complained that at night it rained on them. He complained there was no [central] entity in the Gaza Strip, not even a governmental entity [i.e., the Hamas administration] taking care of them. No one, he said, gave them answers about their situation (QudsN X account, December 6, 2023).

·        The American satellite Alhurra network broadcast a video of a Palestinian sheltering in al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, after members of her family were injured in an IDF attack. She shouts [at Hamas] to end the war in Gaza, stating that enough is enough, they do not want more destruction or a prisoner exchange deal (Alhurra TV X account, December 4, 2023).

A Palestinian woman calls for the end of the war in Gaza (Alhurra TV X account, December 4, 2023)

Criticism of Hamas on social networks

·        Kareem Jodha (4,300 followers) posted a quote from senior Hamas terrorist Osama Hamdan, which read, “Gaza was and will continue to be a cemetery for invaders and occupiers.” Jodha replied, “True, it was, but people like you turned it into a cemetery for its residents and genocide” (Kareem Jouda’s Facebook page, December 4, 2023).

·        Ghattas (1,012 followers) wrote, “When the war is futile and the defeats taste like massacres, retreat is courage, admitting defeat is chivalry, and the one who preserves the blood, honor and livelihood of the innocent is the winner. That is of course part of the morality of “the knights,” however, insane al-Sinwar and the other leaders of the tunnels and the Hamas Muslim Brothers who live in fancy hotels are not among them” (@Moraqeb2020 X account, December 4, 2023). He attached a photo of Yahya al-Sinwar.

·        Ghattas also retweeted a tweet by a Saudi journalist, who wrote, “With all the destruction and killing, where are Yahya al-Sinwar, Mashaal and Haniyeh, where is their offer of protection for their people? Maybe they enjoy the torture and bloodshed, as is the custom of the Muslim Brotherhood? Where is the wisdom of the leader and his compassion for his people? The world will not stand with you, because on October 7 you foolishly gave your enemy the chance to go down in history. So be brave and take action to stop the killing of your children and women Are the lives of some Israelis you bargain for more valuable than the lives of your own civilians?” After that he added, “Hamas is not only an armed movement, but a movement of seats [of power], rule and money. History has taught us that the Muslim Brotherhood does not leave the seat of power unless they and those who rule them are [forcibly removed], and Gaza will be no exception” (@Moraqeb2020’s X account, December 4, 2023).

·        Naama Hassan (7,431 followers) wrote that “Displacement and death will not stop unless the war stopped. The war in Gaza has to stop. The lives of the people of Gaza are more important than all your negotiations and demands. Share our demands, we have the right to choose life” (Naama Hassan’s Facebook page, December 2, 2023).

·        Amjad Abu Kush (6,387 followers) wrote, I hope that in a future prisoner exchange deal we will not see another dog being carried by an Israeli captive. It will hurt our hearts that he and the dogs that protect him are safe underground, while their people are being destroyed now. #Open_the_shelters, #Open_the_tunels, and #lead us to al-Sinwar, take our children somewhere safe, as the released hostage was told” (Abu Kush’ Facebook page, December 1, 2023). He added that whoever wants to create a flood must first build a ship to save his people, and not a submarine to save himself (Amjad Abu Kush’s Facebook page, December 5, 2023).

·        Marwan Abu Sharia wrote: “Protect us! If Hamas sees itself as the ruler, it must protect the homes of the displaced from thieves. The dogs stole from us” (@elthwrah X account, November 27, 2023).

·        Hani al-Hassan posted a video of a man wearing a yellow vest putting a tray of food in front of a child and then walking away with the tray in his hand. Alhassan wrote that Hamas members are seen in a shelter for the displaced, photographing a child they offer a meal to and then take it from him even though he reaches out to take it (@Hanialhasn1999 X account, November 27, 2023).

Hamas operatives beat civilians in the Shejaiya neighborhood and steal their food (IDF spokesperson in Arabic, Dec 9, 2023)

A Wall Street Journal piece from December 21 cites a survey from a Ramallah-based think tank, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which found that one in five Gazans blames Hamas for their suffering as a result of the war. The article quotes a 56-year-old Gaza businessman, “People are dying every minute. Hamas is the one that dragged us into this terrible vortex.”

A hairdresser from Gaza City, now taking refuge in Rafah was also quoted, “Damn Hamas. If I see Ismail Haniyeh, I will hit him with my slippers,” she said. In the Arab world, throwing shoes at a person is a serious insult.

The use of civilians as human shields, has not helped to endear Hamas to the people of Gaza. On February 12, for example, Gaza-based journalist Jehad Saftawi said that Hamas had sacrificed his family members and neighbors as cannon fodder in its war against Israel.

"Hamas terrorists used my family and hundreds of our neighbors as human shields. Hamas continues to hold the people of Gaza captive," Saftawi wrote on X. "There should be no reconstruction of my family's home while a stockpile of weapons lies underneath.

"Goals rather than causes are what is behind Hamas's masterminds' wars. The case for removing Hamas is not to fuel escalation but to prevent it, which is why they should never be allowed to retake control of Gaza.”

The journalist also said that this was the first time in over 10 years that he felt “able to speak about this publicly,” adding that it’s "a cry for realignment for our Palestinian society as well as an appeal to the international community."

Saftawi further related that while his family home was being built, there were masked men who built a tunnel below. "In the years since my family or their neighbors heard sounds or movements from time to time. They wondered sometimes if there really were tunnels, if they were active. My family was too afraid to speak about this with anyone, so it was our secret. It felt shameful even though we knew we were deeply opposed to whatever Hamas had done on the other side of that cement slab."

Just after October 7, Saftawi and his family evacuated to southern Gaza, and his home and neighborhood are now reduced to rubble. "I may never know if the house was destroyed by Israeli strikes or fighting between Hamas and Israel. But the result is the same. Our home, and far too many in our community, were flattened alongside priceless history and memories.

"This is the legacy of Hamas. They began destroying my family home in 2013 when they built tunnels beneath it. They continued to threaten our safety for a decade—we always knew we might have to vacate at a moment’s notice. We always feared violence. Gazans deserve a true Palestinian government, which supports its citizens’ interests, not terrorists carrying out their own plans. Hamas is not fighting Israel. They’re destroying Gaza," concluded Saftawi.

The Gazan voices crying out against Hamas injustice grow louder by the day. Only yesterday, on the night of February 20, residents from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, and from Rafah in the south, took to the streets in protest against the leaders of Hamas, in particular calling out the head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, who is living in the lap of luxury in Qatar. The people of Gaza protested against these Hamas leaders first and foremost for stealing the humanitarian aid meant for them, "We need food, we need flour, Sinwar and Haniyeh, stay away from us, you thieves.”

The Gazan protesters were also heard to condemn Hamas’ representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, "Hamdan, leave Lebanon; the people are the victims. With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, Gaza."

Rafah now has demonstrations against Hamas pic.twitter.com/FnDqsLwoNZ
— Ph.Gritti (@Philipp27960841) February 20, 2024

شيعة .. شيعة
حرامية .. بدنا اكل وبدنا طحين
يا سنوار يا هنية حلوا عن شعبنا يا حرامية

هتافات شعبنا الآن في شمال غزة وعناصر حركة حماس تطلق النار تجاه المتظاهرين وسط جباليا https://t.co/RNLJpeXYxX pic.twitter.com/n91PIuY0VY
— Mohammed Emad 𓂆 (@moh_re21) February 20, 2024

Even as the voices of the people of Gaza swell to ear-piercing decibels, the academics in their ivory towers continue to stick their fingers in the ears. They want to put the onus on Israel and the ~~Zionists~~ Jews for the leveling of Gaza. This is because like Hamas, these antisemites are two-legged beasts with black hearts of stone.

Someday the people of Gaza will curse not only Hamas, but these Jew-haters too, for misleading the world and pointing it in the wrong direction as so many Gazans lost their homes and died.

Not because of the Jews. But because of Hamas. Something the world would rather not know.

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!

A recent survey of Muslims in France point to some very disturbing findings.

17% of French Muslims admit that they hate Jews. 39% say they have a bad, or very bad, opinion of Judaism.

45% of French Muslims say they want the total destruction of Israel. An equivalent number of French Muslims define the massacre rape, torture, beheadings and burning alive of Jews by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7, 2023, as an "act of resistance".

19% of French Muslims say they have sympathy for Hamas.

49% of French Muslims want Catholics to convert to Islam, and that 36% percent want churches to be transformed into mosques.

37% of Muslims express sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood; 57% among the young and 54% among the most religious.

42% of French Muslims respect Islamic Sharia law above respect for the laws of the French republic. Among young Muslim adults below 25, the percentage rises to 57%.

23% want a total or partial application of sharia in France: 35% among 18-25 year olds and 48% among the most religious.

Jews in the US have a crystal ball of what life will be like for them in America in the next decade or two. It's called "Europe." All the hate we are starting to see now in the US was normalized in western Europe years ago.

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!

02/21 Links Pt1: Hamas’s ‘sadistic sex crimes’ on October 7 revealed; The West is about to hand victory to Hamas; Melanie Phillips: The Duke of Gaza

From Ian:

Hamas’s ‘sadistic sex crimes’ on October 7 revealed in new report

The systematic nature of the “sadistic sex crimes” committed during the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 has been revealed for the first time, in a report published by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.

Furthermore, the document has been translated into English and sent to decision-makers in the United Nations to leave “no room for denial or disregard.”

The report, authored by Dr. Carmit Keller-Halamish and Nega Berger, analyses public and confidential testimonies about the sexual violence, eyewitness accounts and interviews with victims and first responders.

“The terrorist organization Hamas has chosen to injure the State of Israel with two clear strategies—taking civilians captive, and sadistic sex crimes,” said Orit Soliciano, CEO of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers.

“It is no longer possible to remain silent—we expect the international organizations to take a clear position, it is impossible to stand on the sidelines. Standing on the other side will be remembered as a historic stain on all those who chose to remain silent and deny the sexual crimes committed by Hamas,” Soliciano added.

The first official report on the sexual element of the atrocities highlights the systematic and deliberate manner in which the sexual violence took place. Over a thousand people were murdered, thousands more wounded and 253 kidnapped during the Hamas-led attack.

According to the report, sexual violence took place everywhere the terrorists invaded, including at the Supernova music festival, kibbutzim, cities, towns and IDF bases. The hostages in Gaza continue to be victimised.

Examples of the sexual crimes committed include violent acts of rape, with weapons pointed at the victims, in some cases aimed at wounded women. Many mass rapes occurred. Often, the rapes were intentionally committed in front of husbands, partners and family members to maximize the pain and helplessness felt and increase the terror.

Hamas terrorists carried out a hunting expedition to catch young men and women who attempted to escape the carnage at the music festival, dragging them by the hair screaming. The sexual violence targeted men, women and girls and included binding their bodies, mutilating genitals and the bodies of both males and females with knives and in some cases inserting weapons inside the genitals.

In most cases, the victims were executed either during the rape or after.

'Many victims' bodies found mutilated and bound, some discovered deliberately booby-trapped'

The report presents several testimonies from massacre survivors who witnessed incidents of gang rape, where women were passed between terrorists who beat, injured, and ultimately murdered them.

Testimonies from first responders and corpse-handling personnel in southern kibbutzim and communities indicate that many homes showed signs of rapes committed close to the time of murder, with a significant number of these incidents occurring in the presence or vicinity of family members.

“Many cases involve heinous attacks on women and girls, including a case of hiding a knife in a genital organ,” the report reads. “Additional information was received by the ARCCI but cannot be disclosed due to privacy concerns.”

The report includes several testimonies, among them that of Noam Mark, a member of the alert squad at Kibbutz Re'im, who found the bodies of three young women from the nova rave in one of the kibbutz homes. The bodies were found naked, with clear signs of severe sexual violence.

According to the report, these violations also occurred at IDF bases. Bodies of female soldiers that arrived at Camp Shura for forensic identification bore unmistakable signs of sexual violence.

“Information regarding sexual assaults in captivity has been published following the testimonies of those who returned from captivity. These testimonies include various cases, including those of captives who are still alive.”

The report indicates that sexual crimes were systematically and deliberately committed during and after the October 7 terror attack, characterized by multiple assailants, assaults in front of family members, executions and accompanied by unique sadistic practices.

"The brutal practices used on October 7, such as genital mutilation of girls, women, and men, shooting, and weapon insertion, were designed to destroy and inflict sadistic terror,” the report authors stated.

According to the authors, the manner in which the assaults were carried out and the actions that accompanied them were intended to maximize the impact on the victims and their communities, which were unable to prevent the attacks.

“As the scars in our hearts refuse to heal, and the souls of our sisters and brothers cry out to us from the depths of the earth, a significant portion of those we considered partners responded in silence and denial of these horrors. We call on you to raise your voices and not allow the cries of these victims to fade away,” they say.

This report, the first official study since October 7, aggregates testimonies and provides conclusions, demonstrating that the incidents were not anomalies or isolated occurrences but rather part of a deliberate and systematic strategy of extremely cruel sexual abuse, establishing an initial evidentiary basis for the widespread perpetration of sexual crimes. "The report, submitted to decision-makers at the UN, leaves no room for denial or disregard,” said Orit Sulitzeanu, CEO of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.

“The terrorist organization Hamas chose to harm Israel strategically in two clear ways – kidnapping citizens and committing sadistic sexual crimes. Silence is no longer an option. We expect international organizations to take a clear stance; we cannot stand on the sidelines. Silence will be remembered as a historical stain on those who chose to remain silent and deny the sexual crimes committed by Hamas.”

Families were reportedly coerced by Hamas to witness the rapes of victims on October 7th

Orit Sulitzeanu, Executive Director, The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, and Miriam Schler, Executive Director, The Tel Aviv Crisis Center for Sexual Assault discuss

Hamas reportedly forced families to witness rapes of October 7 victims

Miriam Schler, executive director of the Tel Aviv Crisis Center for Sexual Assault, breaks down the harrowing report that describes terrorists forcing Israelis to watch as they raped and killed their family members and neighbors.

UNRWA death statistics over the past two months strongly indicate that Hamas casualty figures are lies

A month ago, we looked at a Lancet article that used statistics from the first month of the October 7 war to shore up the idea that the Hamas ministry of health statistics were accurate.

Briefly, they compared the number of UNRWA deaths per thousand employees (about 7.5) with the number of total Gaza deaths per thousand residents according to the MoH (about 5) during the first month of the war. Based on that, they decided that the Ministry of Health statistics were largely accurate.

I pointed out the methodological flaws. As I noted,

It makes an assumption that everyone in Gaza has an equal chance of being killed, meaning that Israel is killing people randomly and indiscriminately. This is not only a false assumption, but an antisemitic one.

Indeed, one reason UNRWA workers could have been killed at a higher rate is because none of them are children - and more than half of them are males of fighting age. About two thirds of the first 101 killed were men, a higher percentage than the percentage of male employees at UNRWA (about 54% across UNRWA, not sure about Gaza itself.) Chances are that at least some of the UNRWA casualties were also legal combatants, either actively participating or acting as "spotters" or other support.

In other words, one would expect a much higher percentage of UNRWA employees, especially males, to be killed than the general population if you don't accept the antisemitic assumption that Israel is killing indiscriminately.

Which means that if UNRWA death figures are to be statistically meaningful, we must assume that they represent a higher death-per-thousand rate than the general population.

However, since that first month, the rate of UNRWA workers killed has dropped dramatically - far more than the drop in deaths published by the Hamas authorities.

If the Lancet felt that UNRWA's figures support the MoH figures in the first month, then why have they diverged so dramatically since then? Doesn't that indicate that the MoH figures have become increasingly unreliable?

If the UNRWA deaths can be used as a sample of total Gaza deaths, which the Lancet peer-reviewed claimed, that would mean that the true number of deaths over the past month in Gaza is about 1,100, not the 5,095 the MoH claimed.

I don't think the UNRWA numbers are a proper proxy for calculating deaths either way. My theory is that the Gaza health ministry statistics on total casualties (not women and children) were roughly accurate for the first month or so, but as communications broke down in Gaza they (and the Hamas media office) just started making things up. There is simply no infrastructure in Gaza to provide anything close to accurate casualty statistics but Hamas relies on these numbers being reported daily to pressure Israel to cease fire. Since the world believes them, so why not continue to lie?

A group of supposed experts are projecting the number of Gaza deaths if there is a ceasefire orif Israel presses into Rafah. Their entire analysis is based on accepting the casualty figures from Hamas as being 100% accurate. And while they don't say exactly how they use the UNRWA figures, they seem to be accepting the Lancet methodology in their report: " We estimated the proportion and number of unreported (e.g. those killed that may be under rubble and have not been reported) traumatic injury deaths by comparing the ratio of mortality among United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) staff (for whom 100% detection was assumed) to that among the general population, including uncertainty ranges, to estimate a confidence interval."

One of the authors of this report was also a co-author of the Lancet report.

At any rate, even if you completely trust The Lancet methodology of using UNRWA casualties as an accurate sample of Gaza total death rates, you have to admit that their evidence supporting Hamas casualty figures has been thoroughly debunked. Science depends on consistency, and the data from the past two months contradict the Lancet's conclusion from one mere month.

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Nasser Medical Center lights appear to be turned off for Western media reports

I reported that the Hamas Health Ministry claimed on Sunday that electricity had been cut off at the Nasser Medical Center in Khan Younis for three days (since February 16) - yet I found a Sky News Arabia report from February 18 showing the lights and medical equipment were still on.

Then the World Health Organization posted a video apparently taken the same day showing the lights off.

Maybe the electricity was cut between the two scenes?

If that was the case, then why are the lights on in Al Ghad TV on February 20?

Today there were more scenes of the hospital with the lights off in patient rooms, and teams of doctors relying on flashlights, from CNN and Euronews.

This seems strange - because even the WHO admits that there is a backup generator in service in the hospital. (It was provided by the same Israeli soldiers who are portrayed as the evil invaders. ) Why would there be no electricity where it is needed most?

More importantly, why would the hallway lights be prioritized over the lights where the doctors are treating patients?

Perhaps it depends on the audience and the message that they want to tell. To the Western audiences of WHO, CNN and Euronews, footage of doctors treating patients with small handheld lights is dramatic. For reports by Arabic sources, they want to see scenes of overcrowding, chaos and injured people being rushed through the hallways, which look a lot better when the lights are on.

I'm not saying that things are wonderful at the hospital. I'm saying that you can assume that everything you see out of Gaza is being staged and choreographed to send a specific message to manipulate you.

That's entertainment.

That's Pallywood.

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Hamas shooting rockets in civilian clothing

We've discussed why we believe that the number of Hamas terrorists killed is far higher than the 6,000 that Reuters quoted a Hamas official in Qatar as admitting.

If we take Hamas at its word, though, their claims of civilians killed are impossible.

Hamas claims that 70% of those killed in the war are women and children, which would mean about 20,000 of the 29,000 they claim were killed. This is roughly the proportion of women and children in the total population of Gaza.

Hamas' overarching narrative has been that Israel killed indiscriminately.

If we take them at their word, that leaves 9,000 adult males killed by Israel.

Roughly two thirds of Gaza adult males, about 370,000, are fighting age - under 40. So if we assume Israel is killing adult males indiscriminately as well, we could expect 2/3 of the adult males killed were of military age.

That means about 6,000 military age males would have been killed - the same number of terrorists the Hamas official is admitting.

But only about 10% of Gaza's adult males of military age are members of armed groups. These numbers seem to indicate that 100% of the males of fighting age who have been killed were members of Hamas, and zero innocent adult males were killed - while at the same time all other demographic groups are killed indiscriminately.

Israel is perfectly efficient at picking out Hamas members among young males and terrible at distinguishing them from women and children.

Needless to say, this is statistically impossible.

Hamas has been exaggerating the number of civilians killed by orders of magnitude. And no one in the media is bothering to do even a cursory examination of the statistics Hamas is putting out.

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02/20 Links Pt2: The woke wing of Hamas; Australia has succumbed to anti-Semitism; The Don Quixote Delusion; Harvard Probes Anti-Semitic Cartoon Shared By Faculty

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neil: The woke wing of Hamas

Can we call them hate marches now? On Saturday in London there was yet another gathering of frothing Israelophobes. Another noisy assembly of bourgeois leftists and radical Islamists. Another long trudge through the city by that unholiest gang of Waitrose shoppers and jihad fanboys, of plummy liberals and the people who’ll be giving them a hundred lashes if the Islamic Revolution ever sweeps Britain. And this time the mask was well and truly off. This was no ‘pro-Palestine’ march – it was a viscerally anti-Israel march that frequently crossed the line into something even darker. Into the darkest hatred of them all.

There was the usual anti-Semitism. The kind we’ve seen at every anti-Israel demo since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October. ‘I thought Hitler was dead’, said one placard, next to an image of the Star of David. The Jews are the new Nazis, you see. They are such a wicked people that they now gleefully visit on Palestinians the kind of horrors once visited on them. ‘Wanted for mass murder’, said another, with an image of Benjamin Netanyahu next to Hitler. One turbo-smug hippyish couple, complete with culturally appropriated keffiyeh scarves, held up a placard featuring a photo of Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy and the words: ‘The Goebbels of Gaza.’

This is rank Holocaust inversion. Anti-Israel hotheads seem to derive a sick thrill from comparing Jews to Nazis. If you hate Mr Levy so much that you feel the need to take a day off from perusing the kale aisle at Whole Foods to defame him on the streets of London, then why not just call him a ‘liar’ or a ‘propagandist’? Because that wouldn’t achieve the true aim of these vile marches, which is not merely to criticise people like Mr Levy but to hurt Jews. To taunt Jews. To rub salt in their historic wounds. The public branding of Levy as ‘the Goebbels of Gaza’ is hard proof of the racial animus behind these fake anti-war gatherings.

Holocaust inversion is so widespread now, it’s such a key motif of fashionable Israelophobia, that there is a danger we’ll come to view it as merely irritating. As the ravings of witless youths who don’t know their history, who don’t know that there’s no comparison whatsoever between the bloody war in Gaza that Hamas started and the Nazis’ meticulously planned effort to exterminate every Jew on Earth. But that would be wrong. For this is more than hyperbole. It’s a nauseating inversion of truth designed to trivialise the crimes of the Nazis while criminalising the actions of Israel. As that great warrior against anti-Semitism, Deborah Lipstadt, says of Holocaust inversion, it ‘elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did’.

We must never become inured to Holocaust inversion. That the streets and social media are overrun by activists screaming ‘Nazis!’ at Israel should horrify us all. Projecting the crimes of Nazism on to the Jews is surely the highest – or lowest – form of anti-Semitism. It is a flagrant effort by the activist class to denude the Jews of their historic experience of suffering and reimagine them as the reincarnation of their own evil persecutors. That people are happy to march in London with placards showing the swastika enmeshed with the Star of David is testament to how unabashed this racist project of the moral demotion of the Jews has become.

Nick Cater: Australia has succumbed to anti-Semitism

Albanese has shown a reluctance to call out the rise in anti-Semitism without tempering his words with moral equivalence. When asked about the chants at the Opera House protest, Albanese said: ‘Anti-Semitism has no place in this country, nor does Islamophobia, nor does any form of racism.’ But there was no ‘Islamophobia’ on display at that demo, or at any other.

This blurring of lines denies the peculiar evil to which Jews have been subjected recently. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry reports an eight-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents since 7 October. The council recorded 662 incidents in October and November, compared with 79 in the same period in 2022.

Earlier this month, almost four months after the Opera House protests, NSW police reported on their review of video recordings from the night. There had been no arrests. No one had been charged under Victoria’s usually restrictive racial-vilification laws, which criminalise ‘any public act that threatens or incites violence towards a person or group of persons based on their race, religious belief or affiliation’.

The police had, however, bought in an independent voice expert to listen to the chanting. They confirmed that the recorded audio was genuine and had not been doctored. However, it had supposedly been miscaptioned in social-media videos. The expert claimed, ‘with overwhelming certainty’, that the crowd had not been chanting ‘Gas the Jews’, but ‘Where’s the Jews?’.

The suggestion is utterly implausible. Yet even if the voice expert is correct, it is hard to see how a chant of ‘Where’s the Jews?’ is much less threatening than ‘Gas the Jews’. That this mob chanted ‘fuck the Jews’ is not in dispute.

The attempt to excuse those hateful words suggests that Australians are not yet ready to confront the hatred in their midst. Australia’s Jews have been totally abandoned.

The rise of barbaric progressivism

Progressives share more with radical Islam than hatred of Jews, however. For example, both movements have an essentially messianic worldview. Islam has its final day of judgment and the progressives their blessed society. The two groups are also obsessed with the same alleged evils, such as imperialism, American foreign policy, and Western civilization in general. The alliance further plays to progressives’ obsession with race, as they have convinced themselves that all Muslims are “people of color” (they aren’t) and therefore oppressed by “white people” (they aren’t). Despite the Muslim world’s considerable trade in black African slaves, which continues to this day in various forms, progressives have decided that radical Islam is simply pursuing the shared task of overturning the global racial hierarchy and defeating “white supremacism.” That the Islamic radicals seek to replace it with Muslim supremacism does not perturb the progressives, as they likely consider it just revenge for centuries of depredation.

Most important of all, however, is that most of today’s progressives and all radical Muslims are against freedom. In the case of radical Islam, this is obvious, as they make no pretense of valuing freedom, and the movements and regimes they have built are, without exception, brutally oppressive, violent, terroristic, and totalitarian. In the case of progressives, the issue is less clear-cut, as they publicly proclaim that they value freedom, particularly for oppressed groups. But if we examine progressive actions rather than rhetoric, a different picture emerges.

It is notable, for example, that the institutions ruled by American progressives, particularly academia, are by and large the least free institutions in American society. They place a great deal of value on ideological conformity and almost none on fundamental liberties like free speech and assembly. Basic legal rights do not exist in the academic disciplinary system. Those who wish to avoid being fired or expelled for alleged transgressions must often submit to humiliating Maoist-style reeducation and struggle sessions during which they are forced to confess and repent their sins in a wretched public spectacle. As a result, progressive rule suffocates independent thought and silences criticism, thus destroying two of freedom’s greatest benefits. Similar circumstances prevail in those areas of corporate culture, the arts, the media, and even sports that are dominated or ruled by progressives.

Taken together, the above seems to indicate the emergence of a kind of barbaric progressivism. A progressivism that, while it advocates progress in certain areas, is also quite comfortable with supporting some of the most barbaric ideas imaginable, such as antisemitism, totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, theocracy, patriarchy, racism, anti-democratic politics, terrorism, rule by a designated minority, suppression of heretical ideas, and opposition to human freedom itself.

The question, then, is what Americans who have no desire to live under this kind of progressivism should do. Certainly, there are political and legal measures that could be taken, but the most important form of resistance must come from within the movement itself. Many good people in the progressive movement sincerely believe in its principles and do not want to see it collapse into barbarism. They need not exit the movement. Instead, they should stay and fight for a better progressivism, one that is at least vaguely worthy of the name. There are signs that this difficult and unhappy resistance is already underway. Whether or not it can succeed confronts the rest of us with one of the more ominous questions of our present moment.

Every day Arab antisemitism gets worse. In Arabic, they don't even try to pretend they are only against "Zionists."

One of today's examples comes from Shahid Al-Aan, a Saudi news site that claims it is "Providing objective and highly credible news from the heart of events." But the article is also in Yemen media.

Dr. Awad Ahmed Al-Alqami comes up with a novel argument that the Holocaust is a myth. He doesn't bring any evidence - he just says that since Jews are liars, of course it must be a myth.

Since I grew up and my awareness began to blossom, I was passionate about reading, as I used to read everything I could get my hands on. One day, I read several pages from a book whose name I no longer remember now - as forgetfulness has become dominant in memory in this era - although nothing I read has left my memory, especially... These allegations depict what the Jews were subjected to; Of abuse, torture, and burning at the hands of Hitler.

I did not sympathize with them; Because I knew for sure that the story was doubtful; Because since the Jews lied to their father Jacob and harmed their brother Joseph, their lives have been based on lies, falsehood, and blackmail, in addition to the fact that they were known for killing the prophets and conspiring against the pious.

Based on the above, I kept wondering to myself: Is it possible for the brave German leader, Hitler, to do to the Jews everything that the Zionist Western media is promoting, and that writers and scholars in the Western lying empires are promoting? Then I go back and ask myself, why is this not a form of the Jews’ plots, lies, and conspiracies that they were born with, and then passed down throughout history to blackmail Germany and those who allied with it in World War II? I remained in this state, attracted by doubts and filled with suspicions, until October 7, 2023 AD, when Netanyahu and other members of his notorious government said: The Palestinian resistance had beheaded Jewish children and newborns by the hundreds in the settlements surrounding Gaza, and the sun had not set on that day until it became clear. The falsity and lies of these allegations, even though the administration of the great lying empire in Washington had agreed with the Netanyahu government and confirmed the veracity of these Zionist fabrications and lies without hesitation or scrutiny of these irresponsible nonsense.

The Zionists and their masters in the White House did not stop there, but rather continued to spread lies day and night without any scruples of religion or modesty of conscience... And their latest lies and impoliteness are that they launch tons of bombs and lava fires on the Yemenis under the claims of self-defense. He is defending himself; The Yemenis who are in their land, or the Zionist invaders who came from the Crusader West and traveled thousands of miles until they reached Yemen?

I think that you, my dear reader, after this brief presentation, share my opinion, and you believe me when I say that Hitler’s Holocaust of the Jews is nothing but a Zionist lie to blackmail Germany for many decades, and may continue for centuries. Those who forged, fabricated, lied, and stole in the land of Palestine, desecrated its sanctities, and also demolished homes on the heads of their inhabitants. And they burned it, and killed every living person they could get their hands on, without distinguishing between the resistor and the defenseless old man, the woman, and the child. They never hesitated to falsely invent a holocaust, and call out an injustice by slander!!!

Al-Alqami is a dean for an Aden community college.

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1890 painting of Kotel, discovered in a California synagogue storage, sells for $3.4 million

Jewish News reported in the end of January:

A hyper-realistic 19th-century painting of worshippers at the Western Wall that spent many forgotten years in a synagogue’s storage room is headed to auction at Sotheby’s New York on Thursday.

The Western Wall, created circa 1890 by German artist and illustrator Gustav Bauernfeind, is expected to fetch an estimated $2 to $3 million.

In his day, 1848-1904, Bauernfeind, who had some Jewish ancestry, was a well-known ‘Orientalist’ painter who stood out for his realism and focus on architecture. This particular piece was donated to a synagogue in Southern California in the mid-1980s by the family of Theodore Cummings, a former US ambassador to Austria and confidante to President Ronald Reagan. However, about 10 years ago, during renovations on the synagogue, the painting was placed into storage — where it remained until the executive director of the congregation discovered the piece last summer.

The Western Wall depicts, in remarkably realistic fashion, a diverse set of worshippers huddled together at the base of the Kotel. Some Jews wear the fur hats known as shtreimels, while others wear fezzes and still others wear black hats and kippot. Nearly all of the men are wrapped in prayer shawls, while women are shown in the rear of the scene, their hair and bodies wrapped in colorful scarves and shawls.

The painting is four feet high by three feet wide.