Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 03, 2024

Hundreds of thousands of dollars raised in GoFundMe for Gaza grifters and sketchy charities

GoFundMe has quite a few fundraisers supposedly for helping Gazans that look to be complete or almost complete scams.

People are claiming to raise money for Gaza victims of war. These generally have no organizations, no transparency and no auditing. Perhaps some percentage of the funds raised go towards needy Gazans, but it is difficult to know whether it is 1% or 90%.

A typical one is "Gaza Emergency Relief," by "Anonymous Charity." It raised nearly $60,000 without giving any specifics of what, exactly, the money will go towards.

We reported Friday about Hosam Shabat, a 21-year old "journalist" who raised $79,000 to supposedly help people in northern Gaza but he has no organization and no specifics on how the money is being spent.

Another "journalist," Mohammed Shaheen, raised $100,000 so far, for "helping children financially and morally."

$188,000 has been raised for an extremist Islamist preacher in Gaza who vaguely says that "we will help them, stand by them, and assist" Gazans.

"Care for Gaza" has been around since 2018 and seemingly provides diapers and flour for Gazans. But the amount of aid it gives does not seem to come close to the #427,000 it has raised. It asks to send it money via cryptocurrency and their PayPal account goes to an individual named Farhana Usman, not an organization.

Someone who claims to be a doctor in northern Gaza has raised $45,000 where, she says, half the money will go for food and and other half to "support injured children." She doesn't say how this money will buy food.

Another supposed doctor says he was relocated to Rafah where he built his own personal field hospital for, of course, the children. He raised $65,000 for his "medical tent."

A social media "journalist" in Gaza named Bisan has been accused of raising $400,000 and not giving any of it to Gazans.

There are scores of similar fundraisers. Some might be legitimate, but a lot of them are clearly scams. Running a charity takes organization and accountability. People who want to donate to Gaza should limit their funding to places like the World Food Programme and UNICEF, and not some random person who may not even be living in Gaza for all we 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!

EVERY @ArabicWikipedia page has anti-Israel propaganda on their headers, violating @Wikipedia's neutrality policy

At the moment, every single Arabic Wikipedia page has this header:

The Google translation:

In solidarity with the right of the Palestinian

people, No to genocide in Gaza ....No to killing civilians.

No to targeting hospitals and schools ....No to deception and double standards.

Stop the war .... and spread just and comprehensive peace.

There is not even a pretense of objectivity there. It is pure incitement against Israel aimed at the Arabic-speaking audience.

The words "targeting hospitals and schools" points to the Al Ahli Hospital bombing Arabic Wikipedia page. While the English page on the incident says

The consensus from various independent studies of videos, images, and eyewitness reports of the explosion, its aftermath, and the blast area suggests that an errant rocket launch from within Gaza is the most probable cause. While this is not a conclusive finding, it is currently considered the likeliest explanation based on the evidence gathered in investigations conducted by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.[7] Human Rights Watch stated that the available evidence made an Israeli airstrike "highly unlikely".[6]

the Arabic page says

The Baptist Hospital massacre , also known as the Arab National Hospital massacre , is a massacre committed by the Israeli Air Force when it raided the Arab National Hospital “Al-Baptist” in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City , in the early night hours of October 17, 2023 . The violent Israeli air strike hit the hospital courtyard, which contained dozens of wounded people, as well as hundreds of displaced civilians, most of whom were women and children. The Israeli massacre caused a real disaster. It tore apart the bodies of the victims, making them scattered and burned, while the hospital turned into a pool of blood.

It then goes on to say that Israeli authorities lied about the rocket being from Islamic Jihad and faked the evidence.

Each of the links points to similarly deceptive or outright false pages describing events in Gaza and claims that Israeli "propaganda" is responsible for any disagreement with what Hamas says.

The main Arabic Wikipedia page on the October 7 massacre does not mention any Israeli civilians being slaughtered; the only mention of any civilians killed is in the statistics sidebar but not in the article itself, while it mentions many Gaza civilians being killed. The only mention of the word "terrorism" is for Israel. It only mentions the sexual assault of Israeli women as being an Israeli propaganda lie.

On December 23, all Wikipedia Arabic pages were turned off for 24 hours in protest of the "genocide." The Wikipedia editors said they want a comprehensive peace but pointedly do not say that they want Hamas to release hostages or to stop fighting.

While Wikipedia has always had problems with objectivity because of the nature of a site that anyone could edit, this is not only the bias of people writing Wikipedia pages, but of the editors of Arabic Wikipedia itself. It is a clear violation of Wikipedia's neutrality policy:

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia and of other Wikimedia projects. It is also one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; the other two are "Verifiability" and "No original research". These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material acceptable in Wikipedia articles, and because they work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another. Editors are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with all three.

This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus.

Given the December 23 "strike" it seems unlikely that the main Wikipedia editors are unaware of what their Arabic editors are doing. Which means all of Wikipedia can no longer be considered a reference site, but rather a propaganda site that sometimes includes other points of view for show.

(h/t @NoMoreSmoke1)

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!

03/02 Links: Qatar's blood-soaked hands enable terror; American preference for Israel over Palestinians remains strong; When Jews defeated the Blackshirts

From Ian:

Qatar's blood-soaked hands enable terror, it must be stopped

Qatar’s influence in Western cultural institutions goes far beyond sports. Since 2001, Qatar has donated billions to American universities. These include prestigious universities like Northwestern, Georgetown, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon, all of which have affiliations and campuses in Qatar in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Qatar’s money comes with its exertion of soft power; in return, the universities hold their noses and compromise their values.

IT IS no coincidence that these payments began almost immediately after 9/11. Qatar knew that its role in supporting terror would be scrutinized and proactively moved to influence public opinion in the US.

Qatar’s public relations and diplomacy have been skillful, to say the least.

Recently, news that an alleged Qatari spy operation targeted Republican lawmakers was released. Nonetheless, a day later, envoys from the Biden administration went to Doha to continue negotiations on an Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

The emir of Qatar has the ear of the president of the United States. Qatar is hailed as “being on the front and center of global diplomacy.” It is credited for helping to negotiate the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the accompanying release of Israeli hostages.

Current US strategy holds that Qatar is useful as a go-between between American interests and terrorist organizations. However, Qatar is not an independent third party. Through its generous financial support, it is directly responsible for the atrocities that Hamas and similar groups commit.

The US cannot afford to wait for another September 11 or October 7 to wake up to the dangers of having vital military and diplomatic interests in a country that houses the leaders and financiers of terrorist organizations bent on destroying the United States and Israel.

If Qatar does not end its support of Hamas, the US must condemn and sanction Qatari leaders and institutions.

The US must increase oversight of Qatari finances and freeze funds that are being used for terror. The Biden administration must be willing to use all its leverage, including the renewal of the al-Udeid Air Base, to force Qatar to abandon Hamas.

Qatar believes it has free rein to act as it pleases because of its strategic location and role as a regional interlocutor. However, the US cannot trust Qatar to be a neutral actor in the context of a war that Qatar itself helped to bring about.

For the sake of American and Israeli security, Qatar must be held to account for its sponsorship of terror.

Hamas sympathizers ramp up campaign against Israel with left-wing donor army

In October 2018, Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was ambushed and murdered by his own government at its consulate in Turkey while picking up a legal divorce document. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed off on the assassination of the Washington Post writer, according to a U.S. intelligence report declassified in 2021.

Now, Democracy for the Arab World Now, a nonprofit group in the United States that Khashoggi founded to support “democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa,” has established itself as a key cog in the anti-Israel movement accusing the Jewish state of war crimes for retaliating against Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. And DAWN has done so thanks to influential left-wing foundations helping to keep its lights on, tax documents show.

“So long as apartheid and occupation continue, there will be acts of resistance,” Sarah Leah Whitson, an anti-Israel activist who leads DAWN, told the Washington Examiner. “Sadly, some of that will constitute atrocities and war crimes like the Oct. 7 attack. I don’t think there’s a way to secure Israel and Israelis by entering into yet another round of warfare against a captive civilian population. I don’t think Israel will succeed in its stated goal, just as it has not for the past four months to destroy Hamas.”

Whitson, former director of the left-of-center Human Rights Watch charity’s Middle East and North Africa division, added that “there will never be an end to the insecurity that first and foremost Palestinians experience every single day” so long as Gaza is under what she called “military occupation.” She notably came under scrutiny in 2020 for appearing to lament a lack of violence in Israel while she was working as managing director for research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft think tank.

Khashoggi, who had a documented history of antisemitic posts on social media, founded DAWN in 2018 — though he was murdered before publicly announcing the group. Since that time, DAWN has cashed checks from the likes of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations, and progressive Arca Foundation tied to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fortune, according to federal filings.

American preference for Israel over Palestinians remains strong

Among all registered voters in the United States, 40% sympathize with Israel, and 24% sympathize with Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war, according to a New York Times/Sienna poll published on Saturday.

The remaining respondents either sympathized equally with both (15%) or did not know (21%).

Conducted from February 25 to 28, 2024, this survey included 823 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. Of the registered voters, 49% were or leaned Republican, 43% were or leaned Democrat, and 8% did not know or refused to answer.

Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were significantly more sympathetic to Palestinians (51%), with only 16% sympathizing with Israel. Sympathy for Palestinians declined in each older age group, with 16% of voters over the age of 65 sympathizing with Palestinians and 54% of the age group sympathizing with Israel.

Among those with a bachelor's degree, the percentage of voters who supported Israel compared to Palestinians was 38% and 33%, respectively. Among voters who do not have a bachelor's degree, 46% supported Israel, and 17% supported Palestinians.

The most supportive region of Israel in the US was the Midwest, with 43% of respondents definitively choosing Israel over Palestinians. A third of urban dwellers supported Israel, and a third supported Palestinians respectively.

Among those who supported Israel, 63% planned to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections, and 24% planned to vote for President Joe Biden.

03/01 Links Pt2: Shocking double standard of support for Ukraine and Israel; Berkeley Lets Loose an Antisemitic Mob; The left’s deathly embrace of Islamic identitarianism

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Shocking double standard of support for Ukraine and Israel

“The Ukrainians must stop fighting in case they defeat Putin.”

Have you heard any of our leaders say that in the last two years?

As Ukraine enters its third year of war it is striking how committed political leaders of all parties are to that war.

And not just here but across the West.

At home — Democrat or Republican — almost everybody is committed to arming Ukraine until victory.

They don’t want Ukraine to fight to a stalemate.

They don’t want it to stop just before winning.

They want it to beat Putin back.

So how strange it is that another war, involving a far closer ally, gets such different treatment.

The historian Niall Ferguson noted the curious double-standard this week after a visit to Israel.

In Washington, London and every other Western capital, political leaders are not saying that they will stick with Israel until it defeats Hamas.

They are not saying “Victory at any price and at any cost.”

Instead they are insisting that Israel stop its war against Hamas as soon as possible.

This week President Biden suggested that there might be a peace deal by Monday.

And he seemed positively happy about the fact.

Despite the deal being an disastrously anti-Israel and Hamas having already rejected it.

But why do people like Biden want peace in Gaza?

Why should anybody want Hamas to crawl out of this war, dust itself off and be able to carry out the same terror against Palestinians and Israelis that it has carried out for years?

Seth Mandel: How to Solve a University’s Anti-Semitism Problem

A seminar on diversity? Bizarrely, and accidentally, Mogulof is getting warmer. Rep. Adam Schiff, leading Democratic candidate for the California Senate seat vacated by the late Dianne Feinstein, said, “What happened at Berkeley is just the latest, horrifying example” of anti-Semitism on campus. “It’s unacceptable in any setting, especially in a California university that prides itself on inclusion. And yet, this kind of intimidation — and inaction from administrators — is an all-too-common reality for so many Jewish students today.”

If you combine Schiff’s and Mogulof’s explanations, you have the makings of a solution. Schiff says it’s unacceptable at a school that “prides itself on inclusion.” Mogulof says he doesn’t know how to include Jews in the university’s diversity system.

Well, I do. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are theoretically designed to provide the targeted support that members of “underserved communities” need. In reality, DEI is an anti-Semitism-creating machine of unmatched efficiency.

What Jews on campus need, specifically, is security—just to make sure their events and prayer services and the like can be held without incident. DEI programs increase the security risk to Jewish students. The DEI budget at the University of California, Berkeley is $36 million.

Problem solved. Just redirect some of the $36 million the university spends on DEI toward protecting Jewish students and staff and events. That would satisfy Mogulof’s desire to develop DEI “policies that would be unique to the Jewish community that would be necessary or effective.” And it would make Adam Schiff feel so much better about the pride his state takes in inclusion.

Of course all this raises an obvious alternative: If spending DEI money puts Jews in danger, which then will be mitigated by spending more DEI money, wouldn’t it make more sense to not spend all that money in the first place?

NYPost Editorial: Redefining ‘jihad’ is part of the left’s insidious attempt to twist reality

If you had “jihadism gets a PR makeover” on your 2024 bingo card, feel free to mark it off.

Teachers who attended an “anti-Muslim bias” webinar offered by the New York City Department of Education on Feb. 20 were told the meaning of jihad was “struggle” and that it could apply to a person’s effort at self-improvement, showing a video that suggested that a “jihad” could mean always giving your “best effort,” building “friendships across the aisle” or working “to get fit.”

The video also tried to whitewash “sharia” as “personal religious or moral guidance.”

Of course, no one but ultra-lefties view “jihad” this way: Merriam-Webster’s first definition of the word is “a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty.” The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists aren’t interested in, say, shedding pounds from their own bodies but blood from nonbelievers.

When former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal called for a “global day of jihad,” on Oct. 23 following the Hamas attack on Israel, he wasn’t suggesting that Muslims worldwide slow down on the carbs and fats or look to make more friends.

“When the world, America, the West, and the Zionists see . . . that convoys of mujahideen are on their way to shed their pure blood on the land of Palestine, the battlefield will change, the balance of power will change,” he made clear.

In 1998, when Osama bin Laden signed a letter calling for “jihad” against “Jews and crusaders,” his meaning was clearly stated: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”

The Lancet published another absurd anti-Israel letter. It was written by Somaya Albhaisi, a Virginia internist and associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Has the scientific community ever wondered why many of us know only a few Palestinian scientists or researchers in our respective fields, and why scientists are often not affiliated with or employed by institutions engaged in active partnerships with Palestinian academic organisations? Under oppression and occupation, Palestinian science faces systematic erasure, involving the imprisonment or killing of individuals, the destruction of academic institutions, and the deprivation of resources and opportunities. To become a scientist in the Gaza Strip, you must overcome insurmountable difficulties, including water, food, electricity, and fuel scarcity; severe travel restrictions; little funding and investment in science; and substantial restrictions on both access to equipment for scientific experiments and collaborations with international scientists.

So it is Israel's fault that Western scientists don't know more Palestinian researchers?

An imperfect method to determine how influential Palestinian academics are is by counting the number of articles they publish every year. In 2020, they ranked #95 in that metric, publishing 1204 articles. Thi is comparable to the numbers published by researchers in Costa Rica and Venezuela, and far less than Cameroon and Uganda, less than one third of the numbers from Kenya or Ghana.

How many in the scientific community know colleagues from those countries? If they don't know any colleagues from Armenia, doe that indicate that there is some sort of conspiracy to silence scientists from Armenia?

Her first footnote is to Middle East Eye, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood site that is reportedly funded by Qatar. It claims that Israel is engaging in"educide" - a deliberate attack on academics in Gaza. Israel haters keep trying to find new crimes to accuse Israel of, and when they run out, they make new ones up.

Albhaisi did exactly what scientists shouldn't do: she started with her foregone conclusion and then only adduced evidence that supported it, ignoring any other explanation or evidence.

As we've seen previously, The Lancet has showed that the last bastion of objectivity, which is science and the scientific method, has fallen, with the enthusiastic support of many scientists themselves.

We can say the same about the British Medical Journal, which published an editorial about how "settler colonialism" is the root of all problems only two weeks after October 7. Hamas and Israeli lives lost are not even mentioned in that article.

Albhaisi herself has published 52 scientific papers. If her methodology for those papers is as poor as it is in this letter to The Lancet, perhaps those previous papers should be reviewed more carefully by independent peers.

(h/t YMedad)

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!

03/01 Links Pt1: Israel’s heroes will ensure victory; Hamas Seeks to Use Gaza Stampede to Stop the War; If Protests Are Not Anti-Jewish, Stop Attacking Jews

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The terror of the right

Some people dismiss the realities of Israeli opinion about the war and the “two-state solution” because all they can see is the apparently demonic figure of Netanyahu. Such people are obsessed with him. Many Israeli journalists see nothing but this hate-figure looming in front of them. He fills the entire visual space between the hater and the political horizon.

But it’s perfectly possible to dislike Netanyahu and want to see him gone from office, and yet support his determination to destroy Hamas or oppose the imposition of a Palestinian state on the grounds that there is no alternative strategy that would protect Israelis against further genocidal attack.

So why are so many unable to distinguish between the man and the measures?

For a start, it’s so much easier to blame a man who can be removed from office rather than face up to a terrifying reality that’s far harder to address, such as the Palestinian Arabs’ implacable and brainwashed hatred of the Jews.

For exactly the same reason, it’s so much easier to believe that a Palestinian state would end that enmity, rather than face up to the actual evidence of a century of murderous Palestinian rejectionism that continues without end.

There’s also another reason, a clue to which was provided by certain reactions to the October 7 pogrom both in Israel and abroad.

Among many “progressives,” the atrocities produced a profound sense of disorientation. This was because the Palestinians — people whose cause they had promoted as the acme of conscience and enlightenment — turned out to be barbaric savages.

Even worse, people the progressives had opposed and stigmatised as the “far-right” because they had regarded the Palestinians as murderous foes turned out to have been correct all along.

Worse yet again, some people on their own side actually turned on them for supporting Israel against Hamas. This was a terrible and destabilising shock. That’s because the left is governed by a herd mentality. Their views have to conform to the opinion of similarly “enlightened” people. Anyone who isn’t part of the progressive herd is “right-wing” and wrong about everything.

Moreover, since progressives believe that they embody virtue itself, right-wingers aren’t just wrong but evil. Yet the October 7 massacre revealed that the people supported by the progressives were evil.

This put progressives in a terrible bind. They couldn’t accept anything that revealed their own narrative to be so morally bankrupt.

So they exaggerated the plight of Gaza civilians in the war, for which they blamed Israel not Hamas. In response to the tsunami of antisemitism consuming the west as a result of the Palestinian cause they themselves promoted, they focused instead on the evils of “Islamophobia”. And they redoubled the attack on Netanyahu as their scapegoat.

As a result, both the Biden administration and others who demonise “the right” are supporting the insupportable. If they have their way, more Israelis will be murdered, raped, beheaded and taken hostage; there will be more Islamist intimidation, subversion and violence in Britain and America; and the west will find itself in a terrible war for its survival not against “right-wing” bogeymen, but against truly sinister enemies whom western folly has so catastrophically empowered.

Seth Mandel: A Plan for Postwar Gaza

So how might that better future be facilitated?

The task force recommends the creation of an International Trust for Gaza Reconstruction, funded by the U.S. and partner states in the region. The trust would deal with the two sides of reconstruction: on the one hand, humanitarian relief and restoring services; on the other, governance and administration. It would be advised by a council of Palestinians—crucially, the authors suggest, this would include Palestinians in the diaspora alongside Gazans and West Bank residents.

The de-Hamasification of the Strip would be an ongoing process and one that Israel would, from a security standpoint, continue to oversee. For the rest, a coalition of states such as the U.S., Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia would fund and manage the transition to a new Palestinian government in Gaza. The task force envisions the phasing out of the UN refugee agency’s participation, to be replaced by Palestinian civil-society groups.

If the past few months, and especially tragic events like today’s, have taught us anything, it is that security is paramount. Hamas will not go quietly but neither can militant gangs fill the vacuum. Food, supplies, equipment, and people will need to be safely moved in and out of Gaza for an extended period of time. The projects within the Strip will need to be protected not only from Hamas dead-enders but from any armed gangs that would do what they did today and shoot fellow Palestinians while hijacking aid.

We know from Iran and Syria’s long campaign of assassination in Lebanon that standing up a Palestinian government will be seen as a provocation to the colonizing powers in Tehran and that any foreign presence aligned with the U.S. will be targeted. With security, however, can come true representative Palestinian governance and Palestinian-led economic institutions.

None of this will be easy, but it is essential, and it will only be possible with serious investment and planning from those who want to see the Palestinians live free of the terror and tyranny they experienced under Hamas.

Israel’s heroes will ensure victory

The parents of a brave 21-year-old commander at the Erez Crossing military base emotionally but proudly shared the story of their son, who led his soldiers to safety while fighting Hamas terrorists. He chose to leave his men in a saferoom to save others and then fell in battle. His heroism saved lives at the expense of his own. His parents were remarkably brave in telling their son’s story and pleased to share that their 17-year-old son is excited to join the unit in which his older brother served with such distinction. Like so many with whom we met, these parents were focused on Israel’s future, sharing the common understanding that this war must be the last.

One of the hostages told his father several months before the attack that if he were ever kidnapped, he did not want Palestinian terrorists released in exchange for him. His father, rifle slung over his shoulder, explained why he and about one-third of the families of hostages do not want Israel to release terrorists to save a family member. The epitome of altruism is their focus on Israel’s future. They know that every deal made with terrorists will promote more kidnapping and more wars. The father described “the spirit of our house” revolving around a selfless commitment to the future of the State of Israel and that the lives of its nine million citizens outweigh the life of one.

Up north, we visited the Alma Research Institute, founded by Sarit Zehavi, who bravely monitors the border with Lebanon and documents Hezbollah infiltrations and reconnaissance. She refuses to leave her home despite the constant missile barrages and imminent danger. 60,000 Israelis from the north remain displaced. 500 homes have been destroyed by Hezbollah missiles.

The Druze living in the north also refuse to leave. They welcomed us into their homes and shared stories of their personal losses to Palestinian terrorists and their hope for Israel’s victory. As so often during our stay, we heard that Israel must win this war. Former MK Shachiv Shnaan, whose son was murdered in a terror attack on the Temple Mount, shared that not only is Israel the best place in the world to be a Jew, but also to be a Druze.

All of these meetings exemplified the Israeli spirit and determination to win, to defeat Hamas, Hezbollah and all those who seek Israel and the Jewish people’s annihilation. They all recognize that only when Israel’s enemies are defeated will there be peace.

So what does victory look like? Destroying Hamas’ ability to repeat Oct. 7 is imperative. But one soldier shared that victory is not just finding and killing Yahya Sinwar. It is another music festival with dancing and singing, bringing the lush fields back, opening the schools for children to safely attend, bringing critical factories back online, fixing the fence, rebuilding the military’s defenses and bringing life back to people’s homes.

He concluded that the answer to Hamas and what is owed to those who lost their lives is proving that life was not destroyed and that Israel is stronger than ever. I have no doubt that Israel’s heroes will ensure victory.

A week ago, a woman visited Islam's holiest spot, the Kabaa in Mecca, and unfurled a Palestinian flag while smiling for a camera.

Saudi security quickly came to tell her to put the flag away, which she did.

That was the entire incident. But video of it caused an uproar on social media,where people claimed she was "arrested" (she wasn't.) and that she had every right to display the flag.

Haaretz reports that Saudi officials have responded:

Speaking with Al-Ekhbariya TV, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais stressed that the holy site is a place of worship where only religious slogans and chants should be heard.

Al-Sudais, one of the nine imams of the Grand Mosque, said that visitors come to the site to pray and worship, not to express political views. He urged worshippers not to let their emotions distract them from their prayers, suggesting that they pray to God (Allah) for salvation over their concerns rather than expressing demands at the holy site.

This is a policy. Whether one agrees or not, the Saudis have a policy for their holy sites and are trying to enforce it.

Compare this to what regularly happens on the Temple Mount with the full permission of the Waqf:

But they do prohibit the Israeli flag from being shown.

Meaning the only consistent policy shown by the Waqf is antisemitism.

I'm still waiting to hear from any human rights group that Jews should have equal rights to worship on their holiest site.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The evidence to the "massacre" that the @NYTimes believes

The New York Times sifts through the evidence of the stampede in northern Gaza yesterday. As usual, it shows skepticism for anything the IDF says and implicit trust in whatever Gaza "witnesses" say.

The crucial question is whether the IDF shot at people waiting for humanitarian aid. The Times isn't convinced by the IDF drone video:

The drone video, which does not include audio, was edited by the Israeli military with multiple clips spliced together, leaving out a key moment before many in the crowd start running away from the trucks, with some people crawling behind walls, appearing to take cover.

After a cut in the drone video, at least a dozen bodies are visible on the ground at the scene; it is not clear whether the people are injured or dead. A small number of people may have been struck by aid trucks during the panic, and two Israeli military vehicles are also visible at the scene.

But another video, from propaganda channel Al Jazeera, is described without any skepticism:

A separate video released by Al Jazeera of the crowd near the aid convoy captures the sound of gunfire and shows multiple tracer rounds, originating from the southwest where an Israeli military base is located.

That video is also heavily edited, but the NYT doesn't mention that.

But most importantly is that the Al Jazeera video shows that all the tracer rounds visible were shot well above the heads of any people.

Al Jazeera captions the video as "The first moments of the occupation shooting towards Palestinians waiting for aid" when the video shows that they are clearly not shooting at them.

People do duck when they hear the gunshots, but there is no indication of anyone shot or injured.

اللحظات الأولى لإطلاق الاحتلال النار باتجاه فلسطينيين ينتظرون وصول المساعدات في شارع الرشيد غربي #غزة #حرب_غزة pic.twitter.com/7VOHuZ2ygI
— قناة الجزيرة (@AJArabic) February 29, 2024

The AJ video doesn't refute the IDF account that they first fired warning shots at a crowd that approached them away from the convoy. It confirms it.

But the NYT also has "witnesses."

Around 100 people with gunshot wounds were brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, according to its director, Husam Abu Safiya. The hospital had also received 12 bodies, he said. Another witness at the hospital, Hussam Shabat, 22, a journalist, said all the casualties he had seen had bullet wounds, including to the chest, jaw and shoulder.

Husam Abu Safiya has been interviewed numerous times during the war, consistently attacking Israel. In December he told Al Jazeera that the IDF placed weapons in the hospital, photographed them, and then arrested innocent people. He told other outlets that "The occupation shoots anyone who passes in the streets or looks through the windows."

He also accused the IDF of unleashing dogs in the hospital to attack doctors and patients, “They unleashed dogs on us to maul us.”

And only on Wednesday, he claimed that there was no electricity in the hospital and it was out of service. Yet photo and videos of the hospital treating the injured Thursday showed the lights on and it was obviously open, if chaotic.

This hospital director is employed by and paid by Hamas. He will say what Hamas wants him to say. And the Western media knows this. They choose to report on only the accusations that sound credible, because they want to use him for stories like this one.

What about the other "journalist" who claims that "all" the casualties he had seen had bullet wounds?

Hussam Shabat is not a journalist. He doesn't have a media outlet. He only has an Instagram an Facebook page and managed to get a "Press" jacket.

His report from Thursday shows injured or dead people on a donkey cart. No gunshot wounds are visible, and some certainly look like they were trampled.

If he is a journalist with a camera, why not show the evidence?

But Shabat also has a side gig. He started a GoFundMe page to supposedly provide food and shelter to people in northern Gaza, all by himself.

He raised $75,000 in a week, with no accountability at all. No organization, no auditing, nothing but a promise that he will provide aid to Gazans and a couple of videos of him giving children food.

There is an obvious conflict of interest. He wouldn't raise as much money if he says that Gazans were trampled while trying to get food as he would from claiming that Israel shot them. And, very possibly, a large portion of the money he raises goes to...Hussam Shabat.

These are the witnesses that the New York Times deems credible enough to quote without any caveats, any research, any compunction, all at the same time that every Israeli statement and evidence is examined with a fine-toothed comb for inconsistency.

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!

Al Araby writes that Zionist Jews control American universities with huge donations:

Jewish capital plays a pivotal role in supporting and developing major American universities , which enhances Israel's ability to influence all US decisions.

The influence of Jewish capital in the United States is not limited to Wall Street, nor even to parties seeking to finance their election campaigns. Rather, it is permeated in the educational sector, as it has the largest scientific, technical, and military power in the world.

The presidents of Harvard and Pennsylvania, Claudine Guy and Liz Magill, were removed from their positions, not because of administrative or academic shortcomings, but because they failed to “stamp down anti-Semitic manifestations,” in the words of members of Congress, as they did not stand up to student demonstrations sympathetic to Gaza in the face of Israeli aggression.

Two Jewish businessmen, Bill Ackman and Len Blavatnik, temporarily froze support for Harvard due to their position on its former president, knowing that they gave the prestigious educational institution together more than $330 million.

The latest chapter in Jewish funding for American universities was announced by Ruth Gottesman, the widow of businessman David Gottesman, through her donation of one billion dollars to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, to cover tuition fees for all students.

The largest financier ever is Michael Bloomberg, who gave about $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University.

In conclusion, through these numbers, which are considered a link in a larger chain, it becomes clear how much influence Jewish capital has on American higher education, which in turn produces the elite that rules and has the largest military and economic power in the world.

Between 2014 and 2020, Muslim-majority countries together donated nearly $5 billion to American higher-educational institutions. Most of those came from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And that is just what was reported officially. Much of the money donated to universities is not reported publicly. Mitchell Bard has done more on this topic than anyone, and he found billions of dollars in donations from Qatar that were not reported.

Some of these donations come with strings attached, like the funding for the Edward Said Chair of Middle East Studies at Columbia. It is obvious that foreign nations spending billions expect to exert some sort of influence. Economically troubled Egypt ($125M), Lebanon ($24M), and the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority ($10M) have given donations to US universities, with Harvard receiving the most. The only reason that makes any sense is that they expect to reap dividends in the future, directly or indirectly. Recipients include political centers like Harvard's Kennedy School.

Even seemingly innocuous donations to medical research and the like can be problematic: universities are chasing after donors, and they may believe that if the school is known for being pro-Israel it wouldn't get anything from Arab countries.

It gets worse. A recent report from the Network Contagion Research Institute found a correlation between the amount of money universities received from Middle Eastern countries and antisemitism.

From 2015–2020, institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, three times as many antisemitic incidents as those institutions that did not.

This study has received some publicity - hence this article trying to claim that it is Jews, not Arabs, who are using money to influence universities. Even though Jewish donors don't have political agendas. They typically want to simply show appreciation for their alma maters.

All becomes clear when you understand that Al Araby is based out of...Qatar. Almost certainly, the newspaper was told to write this article to help deflect from the pressure Qatar is feeling on having their donations to be more transparent.

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!

02/29 Links Pt2: Bari Weiss: What It Means to Choose Freedom; If Berkeley Wants to Protect Free Speech It Will Expel Its Rioters; The “Occupation” Dodge

From Ian:

Lipstadt urges US Jews not to ‘go underground’ amid surging antisemitism

She told the congregation that bad actors, particularly autocratic regimes, are fanning the flames of antisemitism to undermine faith in democracies, and that “all government leaders” agree with that assessment, as do members of the US intelligence community.

When members of the public buy into antisemitic conspiracies claiming Jews control elections, the media, or banks, they have “essentially given up on democracy,” she told the audience at Central Synagogue, indicating a loss of faith in the system or that the government cannot ensure their welfare.

She said that trend had become more pronounced since October 7. She highlighted increased antisemitism on social media platforms controlled by the Chinese government, speculating that promoting antisemitic messages could be a way to subvert American interests.

She compared efforts to stoke antisemitism to a “cooking spoon to stir up the pot” of societal discord. If people don’t feel safe due to real or perceived threats, they lose faith in their governing system, she told the congregation.

“If you think you’re a failed state, if you think the government can’t protect you if you think terrible things are going on, then you feel unstable,” she said.

Lipstadt was in New York for a series of meetings, including on Wednesday at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Ahead of the trip to New York, she traveled to Germany for the Munich Security Conference and held meetings in London. Her visit to Central Synagogue and conversation with its rabbi, Angela Buchdahl, was co-sponsored by the synagogue and UJA Federation of New York.

During her visit this month to Europe, she met with American United Nations representatives and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whom she applauded for speaking “passionately” about Hamas hostages and antisemitism. Guterres has come under fire from Israel and its advocates for saying in October that Hamas’s brutal incursion “did not happen in a vacuum,” as well as repeatedly expressing concern about Israel’s military operations in Gaza alongside his condemnations of Hamas.

Lipstadt decried rhetoric from others in the international community, however, saying recent statements by the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, were “beneath contempt” and “overtly antisemitic.” Albanese, who once said that the “Jewish lobby” controls the US and has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, said this month that October 7 victims were not targeted because of Judaism, but because of “Israeli oppression.” The statements drew public rebukes from Israel, the US, France and Germany.

The “Occupation” Dodge

A naïve interlocuter might ask the throngs of young people clamoring for Palestinian liberation what makes Palestine “occupied.” There is only one answer: Jews are sovereign over it. Hamas and its cheerleaders want to liberate Palestine from Jewish control. Is there a difference between murdering Israelis because one hates Jews and doing so because one would sooner burn them alive than accept Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish ancestral homeland?

Recognizing that this line of reasoning does not end well, most anti-Israel activists today have taken an additional step. They argue that removing Jewish sovereignty from Israel is not necessary because Jews are Jews, per se, but because Jews are not “indigenous” to the territory. Liberating Palestine is thus an anti-colonial struggle to restore property to its original national owner. Western students and progressive activists have increasingly adopted this position to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism.

This logic has many problems, too, but let’s focus on just one: If Jews are non-indigenous occupiers in the land that was once called Judea, where do they belong? Where are Jews indigenous? For those who refuse to say, “Israel,” the question yields only bad answers. The most common one is that Jews belong in Europe—a very bad answer indeed. Many Jews, including a majority of Jews in Israel, are Mizrahi or Sephardi, meaning that their forebears spent their diasporic millennia in the Middle East and North Africa. Most of these Jews never lived in Europe. Even Ashkenazi Jews have distinct genetic markers showing that we are quite similar genetically to Levantine Arabs.

What the indigeneity argument (or any other attempt to deny the Jewish connection to Israel) amounts to is a doubly unacceptable claim: first, that Jews are not a unified ethno-religious group that traces its ancestry to ancient Israel, as Jews claim; second, that today’s Jews are impostors who pretend to descend from the ancient Israelites so they can steal property from downtrodden natives.

If these excuses for so-called anti-Zionism end up sounding like the deranged rantings of a conspiracy theorist, that is no coincidence. After all, in some quarters—say, college campuses, the UN, or Hamas—advancing wild theories about the perfidious Jews duping the world is a sure road to advancing your career.

Bari Weiss: What It Means to Choose Freedom

This past Sunday, I gave a speech at the 92nd Street Y called “The State of World Jewry.” The address is a historic one. Over four decades, it has been delivered by the likes of Elie Wiesel, Abba Eban, Amos Oz, and more.

But for a sense of the state of Jewish life in America these days, you need only to have walked by the building that night. You would’ve found that police had cordoned off the entire block—and for good reason. Anti-Israel protesters, many wearing masks, gathered to intimidate those who came to the lecture. On the way in, you would’ve been screamed at—told you were a “baby killer” and “genocide supporter” among other choice phrases. You might have even glimpsed Jerry Seinfeld being heckled and called “Nazi scum” on his way out of the talk. (Classy.)

This is of a piece with what’s happening across the country at Jewish events.

On Monday at the University of Berkeley, to choose one of so many examples, a violent mob gathered outside an event featuring an IDF reservist. The students who gathered to hear him—and never got a chance to—were forced to evacuate. One student reported being physically assaulted. Another says he was spat on. Various students say the mob yelled slurs including “Jew, Jew, Jew.”

I am beyond grateful to the NYPD, and the entire staff of the 92nd Street Y, for making sure that everyone who attended the talk was able to do so safely. But everyone must ask themselves: Do we want to live in a country in which simply giving a speech about a Jewish subject requires serious police protection? What does that reality say about the state of our country and our freedoms?

I hope the words I delivered offer some measure of explanation about the moment we find ourselves in and how we might emerge from it. You can watch the video just below. The transcript follows.

A "destroyed" Gaza hospital is miraculously resurrected

Two months ago, the World Health Organization condemned the "effective destruction" of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

It was bulldozed! Burying Palestinians alive!

Yesterday, Al Jazeera filed a video report from that same hospital, claiming that babies are starving from malnutrition there.

But the video shows the electricity is on, the incubators and equipment is working, and everything we see is intact.

Not only that, but the hospital is - according to the report - busier than ever! The doctor was quoted as saying, "We used to admit 500 to 600 babies a day into the hospital. Now we admit between 1,000 and 1,200 babies a day."

If this is true, then the even babies who supposedly died of malnutrition may have died of natural causes. The infant mortality rate in the US is about 5.4 deaths per thousand; if they are seeing that many every day then one would expect several to die every day.

As usual, the world is being fed propaganda, not truth.

(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!

Leaders Who Dislike Bibi Also Ensuring Israelis Will Reelect Bibi (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Washington, February 29 - Heads of nations who for years have blamed Binyamin Netanyahu for stifling prospects for a peaceful, long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued this week to speak and act in ways that all but guarantee the embattled prime minister will secure another term in office when the time comes, since their rhetoric and decisions play into Netanyahu's established image as an unabashed fighter for Israeli security in the face of unjust opposition.

Netanyahu, who has stood at the helm of Israeli politics for almost all of the last fifteen years, faced a deepening crisis of confidence with voters following the systemic failure of intelligence and preparedness of October 7 and sparking the current war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. His persistent legal troubles, a fizzled attempt to reform the judiciary, and a well-funded opposition protest movement had eroded much of his popular support, even if no single credible alternative leader had yet to emerge. In the meantime, internationally, proponents of deep Israeli concessions to Palestinian demands expressed continual frustration at Netanyahu's refusal to play along with the notion that Palestinians would be ready for peace anytime soon, and many of those global leaders openly spoke of sidelining or ousting him, at least by empowering or funding the opposition.

His administration's prosecution of Operation Iron Swords, however, put the domestic political concerns in abeyance while Israel came together to fight the enemy of the moment - Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. Netanyahu's much-forecasted political doom became something of a consensus prospect in Israel - until the continued international pressure to reward the terrorism of October 7 with concessions came to bear on the Jewish State, allowing Bibi to position himself once again as standing in the breach against a hostile international community that refuses to take Israel's security concerns seriously.

For example, reports of a leak several weeks ago from the US State Department that the Biden Administration intends to recognize a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, whether true or not, galvanized Israelis in a way that only the war effort had been able to achieve until now. Some analysts expected the opposition to seize on the reports as evidence that Netanyahu's decisions have alienated the country's most important ally, but those expectations failed to materialize; Israeli voters, united in a more bunker-like mentality, instead blamed American and global naivety and rallied together instead of against Netanyahu; even the center-left elements of his wartime unity coalition rejected the purported move.

In response to these internal Israeli political developments, international opponents of Netanyahu prepared further moves to prove him correct.

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!

02/29 Links Pt1: Peace can be achieved only through decisive victory; How the Free World Is Failing the Hostages; Sinwar hopes for a high civilian death toll in Rafah

From Ian:

Peace can be achieved only through decisive victory

That is why Israel must destroy Hamas to ensure that, despite the terrorist group’s promises to repeat those atrocities over and over, they will never happen again. Israel must execute this war and save the hostages on its own terms and timetable, as well as implement strategies, protocols, and tactics that will truly prevent 10/7 from ever occurring again.

Everyone with whom we met – ministers and MKs from the Left, Center, and Right; government officials; reservists and active-duty soldiers; retired military personnel, police, and commanders of regional security; intelligence experts; parents of the fallen and a father of a hostage; and members of the Druze community – passionately asserted that Israel must win. In fact, one MK went so far as to suggest that had Israel adopted the MEF Victory Project ideals, October 7 may not have happened. Nonetheless, there is now a nationwide consensus that winning is not an option; it is an imperative.

ISRAEL AND THE WEST share enemies who are watching. That’s why any discussion of rewarding the Palestinians with a state of their own sends the message that terrorism works. The mere mention of two states sends the absolutely wrong message at this dangerous time. Radical Islam understands this. Biden and the West? Apparently not.

Israel’s regional friends are watching as well. Hamas’s intention was to disrupt normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It succeeded – temporarily. The Gulf nations are also observing, and they seek to ally with a strong horse. Without victory, the future of the Abraham Accords is at risk.

While the West seems to have forgotten what it means to win (think Afghanistan and Iraq), Israel can no longer afford to spend its days fighting the next war between wars. Israelis understand that this must be the last.

Too many policymakers in Israel and the West ignorantly mistook Palestinians as a people in search of peace, prosperity, and opportunity. Palestinian aspirations do not align with those of the West. Everyone from Jake “the Mideast has never been quieter” Sullivan to the hopeful Jews living on the kibbutzim in the South failed to recognize this reality. And while 10/7 apparently was not a wake-up call for Western policymakers, Israelis learned the hard way that victory must be achieved in order to end the barbarians’ ambitions of destroying Israel.

The response to the October 7 massacre is an inflection point for Israel’s – and the West’s – survival. If peace is the goal, decisive victory is the only means to its achievement.

Gerald Steinberg: No, Most People in Gaza Are Not “Just Like Us”

According to the mantras of peace activists, the way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is by recognizing that the people on the other side are "just like us." This article of faith is also passionately repeated by Western diplomats. But is Palestinian society "just like" Israeli society?

Israelis look at Gaza and see that many supported the horrendous brutality in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Large crowds turned out to cheer the terrorists returning from their heinous spree of torture, murder, rape and kidnapping. Some of the "ordinary civilians" ran immediately to join in the looting. Long before Oct. 7, everyone living in Gaza (including UNRWA employees) knew that Hamas was stealing international aid to build a massive underground terror infrastructure.

In contrast to the majority of Israelis, many Palestinian mothers repeatedly encourage their children to become "martyrs" and express pride when they are killed while murdering and brutalizing Jews. No, they are not "just like us." In what Prof. Richard Landes calls "honor-shame cultures," humiliation (such as defeat in an aggressive war) leads to unbounded determination to exact revenge. This is the essence of the Palestinian nakba - the ongoing humiliation of the 1948 war in which the Arab armies were defeated by Jews and Zionists. If Palestinians were "just like us," they would instead examine their own shortcomings.

In contrast to Palestinian textbooks, in which Jews and Israelis are depicted as monsters, Israeli children are not systematically raised on hate and incitement. The fundamental differences in our identities are deeply embedded in cultural values taught to children.

To avoid more disasters, Israelis must firmly reject the temptations of "common humanity" and other messianic illusions. As long as the goal of the Palestinians, Iran, and their allies is the elimination of Israel, sufficient military power must be available and displayed so that they understand that attacks on Israel will result in their own destruction. A strong and "disproportionate" deterrent force is the best option for survival.

Why a Palestinian State Isn't Going to Happen

The Palestinians will never accept a state within reasonable parameters. They have painted themselves into a corner with their non-negotiable "right of return" claim, as if 5.9 million "refugees" have the God-given right to "return" to the villages in Israel that their grandparents left 75 years ago. Many of the villages don't exist anymore. Anyway, that demand would mean that while the Palestinians would have their own state, they would insist that the majority of their people must go and live in someone else's state, namely Israel.

Creation or even declaration of a Palestinian state would relieve Israel of several burdensome chores under the Oslo process, which would be automatically canceled. No more Palestinian use of Israeli seaports. Israel would no longer collect taxes for the Palestinians. Coordination of customs duties would end. So would security cooperation.

Israel could close its borders to a Palestinian state completely if it so decided, just as Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon are closed. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers in Israel? Treatment of Palestinian patients in Israeli hospitals? Commerce? Not unless Israel agrees.