Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 04, 2024

Publicly, Jordan says it hates Israel. Privately, it begs for more water from Israel.

Amid bumpy relations, Jordan has asked Israel to extend a water supply deal by an additional year, and Israel has responded by seeking to smooth overall tensions between the nations, according to a report in the Kan public broadcaster.

Relations between Amman and Jerusalem have been markedly tense since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas.

According to the report, Israel has replied to Jordan with a request that Jordanian officials moderate their vocal criticism of Israel, and to return their ambassadors to their respective posts.

Most Jordanian media doesn't even admit that Jordan get oil and natural gas from Israel. The only Jordanian media report on this topic I can find is framing this as "The occupation is delaying extending the agreement to double water supplies to Jordan."

In late 2021, Israel and Jordan signed a deal where Israel would provide an additional 50 million cubic meters of water a year for 65 cents per cubic meter, with the option to extend it for two additional years at a slightly higher price. It looks like the current deal will expire in December so there is plenty of time.

But a long planned agreement between Israel and Jordan, where Israel would provide even more desalinated water in exchange for Jordan providing solar energy to Israel, was scuttled by Jordan at the beginning of the Gaza war.

Moreover, Jordanian media has published lots of vicious antisemitism, and even Jordan's Foreign Minister pronounces lies about Israel every day (like "Israel has killed 30,000 civilians in Gaza." ) He also said during that same press conference that he never speaks to his Israeli counterpart.

Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel and blocked Israel's ambassador from coming when the war was less than a month old.

Jordan is one of the most water-insecure countries in the world. Israel is not making any real profit when selling water to Jordan; it is a neighborly thing to do. Yet Jordan is not reciprocating the goodwill at all; on the contrary, it has been tacitly supporting Hamas during this war and it attacks Israel at every turn.

Israel has no obligation to continue to do Jordan any favors. If it is going to slander Israel with charges of genocide, Israel is well within its rights to say that they don't want to subject Jordan to the discomfort of having to accept evil Zionist water within its borders.

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!

Journalists know Hamas lies about casualty figures. They don't care.

The New York Times has a large feature article about the victims in Gaza - just like they seem to have every week.

Lives Ended in Gaza
Since the war started, more than 30,000 people have been killed during Israel’s bombardment and invasion. Here are some of their stories.

Yes, the "newspaper of record" is now saying, as fact, that 30,000 people have been killed.

Their source? Hamas!

The thing is that reporters and editors know damned well that Hamas is lying about Gaza casualties.

Look at their reporting for alleged mass casualty events in Gaza since October.

After the Al Ahli hospital fiasco they admitted that there was no way 471 people were killed. The NYT reported a week later, "The death toll, initially put at 500 by Hamas and then lowered to 471, is believed by Western intelligence agencies to be considerably lower — but no number has been verified. The hospital itself was not directly struck; whatever caused the explosion actually hit the hospital courtyard, where people had gathered for safety, and a handful of parked cars."

Hamas claimed the October 13 Salah-al-Deen road explosion, also falsely blamed on Israel, killed 70 people but respected news media did not parrot those figures; some counted about 12.

They all know Hamas lies about numbers. But they never report any doubts about them, even when they themselves show they aren't buying it in their reporting.

The fact is that in the past there were independent sources in Gaza (like PCHR and the UN-OCHA) that could do their own counts and keep Hamas honest. Today there is nobody. So Hamas lies with impunity, since they see that the media doesn't publicly doubt those accusations the way they do with Israeli statements. The "118" that Hamas claimed were killed by the IDF last Thursday during thee aid truck stampede includes absurd claims by the Gaza health ministry like there are still bodies being found at the scene two days later. (It isn't like they were hidden under rubble.)

This is a major media fail, happening in real time, in front of our eyes. And sometime in 2025 some researcher will spend the time to count all the deaths and discover that these are all lies, but it will be too late.

It already is.

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!

03/03 Links: Where is the ‘humanitarian aid’ for the hostages?; BBC News – obsessive, biased- and unaccountable; Hamas refuses to list living hostages

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Where is the ‘humanitarian aid’ for the hostages?

Finally, Biden added, “We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several. I won’t stand by. We won’t let up, and we’re gonna pull out every stop we can to get more assistance in.”

He failed to mention that nearly 15,000 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the start of the war. According to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), only 1.5% were refused entry, on the grounds that they contained forbidden “dual-use” items—those that could be employed for terrorist purposes.

Biden also forgot to point out that Hamas steals most of the goods that make their way into the Strip, hoarding some of the food for its terrorists while selling the rest to noncombatants at exorbitant prices. And it commandeers all the fuel to keep its tunnels operational.

This is in addition to the travesty of international agencies—chief among them UNRWA—being in complete cahoots with Hamas. Obviously, then, getting the supplies to the people for whom they are intended has been challenging, if not downright impossible.

Meanwhile, those of the 134 remaining hostages in Hamas captivity who are still alive have been receiving no assistance of any kind, not even from the International Red Cross. Some require medication for chronic conditions. Others aren’t being treated for serious wounds sustained during the Oct. 7 massacre. But all are subsisting on half a pita per day—malnourished to the point of starving.

The actual number of “innocent civilians” in Gaza is debatable, since even 10-year-olds there have been aiming RPGs at IDF soldiers. There is no question, however, that the hostages being held in physically and sexually abusive conditions in the dungeons of Gaza are guiltless victims of a genocidal onslaught.

Theirs is the plight that the world should be highlighting. Instead, the “humanitarians” are calling on Israel to cease its battle against Hamas.

Biden, Meloni and anyone else whose heart is bleeding over the crisis in Gaza ought to be reminded that this war would end instantly if Hamas were to surrender and free the hostages.

Since that’s not happening, Israel has no choice but to force the release of the hostages through increased military pressure, and ultimately to demolish Hamas. This is the sole acceptable scenario for anyone in his—or her—right mind.

David Collier: BBC News – obsessive, biased- and unaccountable

On Friday (1 March), BBC News published the latest findings from their ‘fact-checking’ flagship ‘BBC Verify’ – looking at the 100+ deaths that occurred during the chaos surrounding the aid convoy in Gaza.

BBC launched BBC Verify last year – a unit comprising of 60 journalists to help fact-check, verify video, and counter disinformation. Intended to be a gold standard in the age of fake news, BBC Verify has just ended up being another obsessive anti-Israel propaganda outfit.

While BBC Verify do not actually come to any conclusions over the aid convoy deaths, the piece is heavily slanted to blame the Israeli army for the deaths.

This latest ‘fact checking’ story rested heavily on one key eyewitness – a Palestinian journalist called Mahmoud Awadeyah. This is what he told the BBC:

This eyewitness account provides the backdrop for BBC Verify to imply that ‘Israel did it’. BBC News then rely on one other witness – the interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, to drive home the claim.

But there is a larger problem. BBC Verify don’t actually verify anything here. They just take these people at their word and publish these statements without question.

Anyone who follows my work knows that I always check Journalists where I can. Research has shown that 50% of the journos in Gaza appear to work directly for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Who exactly is Mahmoud Awadeyah that the BBC relied on to create their BBC Verify headline?

The BBC’s source – Mahmoud (Al) Awadeyah
Mahmoud Al Awadeyah posted an account on his FB from the scene. He has an IG account as well and uses both Awadia and Al Awadia on his social media.

He works for Al Quds Today and the Tasnim News Agency. Tasnim is an Iranian news agency set up and controlled by the IRGC.

Gaza deal close to collapse: Hamas refuses to list living hostages

The negotiations for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal were near collapse, Israeli media reported on Sunday, after Hamas refused to provide information on the status of the remaining hostages in the Strip.

Representative from Hamas, Qatar, and the US have arrived in Cairo, Egypt, for a renewed round of hostage negotiations. The Israeli delegation is thus far absent, with a KAN News report quoting an official as saying that the delegation "will not leave until a response from Hamas is received."

The Hamas delegation is being led by the terror organization's deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official told Reuters. Al-Hayya was the Hamas official leading the Islamist group's delegation for the Cairo hostage negotiations in February. He has previously acknowledged that Hamas has military capabilities in Rafah.

As per Israeli reports, Qatar informed Israel that Hamas's response leaves little room for progress in talks.

Deal not close to being finalized
When asked if a deal was imminent, Reuters noted that a Palestinian official familiar with the ongoing talks said that one was not yet even close to being finalized.

An Israeli delegation was initially expected to arrive in Cairo to take part in the talks. However, according to KAN, Israel has since denied its participation, citing Hamas's refusal to provide information on the wellbeing of the hostages.

The Israeli response comes after a senior Hamas official told the London-based Qatari news outlet The New Arab that the terrorist group would not be releasing information on the wellbeing of any of the hostages until a ceasefire is enacted.

My last post was about the scam artists using fundraising platforms to steal money that people want to donate to help Gazans.

However, there is another type of Gaza fundraiser that is dominating GoFundMe - raising funds to pay off Egyptian officials and others to allow family members to leave Gaza.

There are over a thousand such fundraisers on GoFundMe, representing thousands of people who are desperate to flee Gaza.

Egypt closed the border and built a huge wall to stop any refugees from coming, claiming that this is for the good of the Palestinian people. Hamas agrees, because the more human shields between them and the IDF, the better.

The details of the fundraising pages don't directly say "bribes" but this is what they mean.

One says the need €6,300 per family member for "permits" and "crossing fees." Another says between $10,000-$15,000 per person for permits and crossing fees. Another says $5,500 per adult and $2,700 per child, and yet another says $7,000 per adult, and $1,500 per child.

These numbers aren't coming from Egypt but from "brokers" who promise to bribe the right people to get the Palestinians out, and who may or may not simply pocket the money themselves. Some are assumed to be connected to Egyptian intelligence.

In January, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project looked at how Gazans must pay to go to Egypt:

The head of a Gaza-based travel agency, which was listed as one of Hala’s agents in a company Instagram post, told a reporter posing as a potential customer that he would need to pay $5,000 each for his Palestinian sister and mother to leave Gaza within seven days.

The formal process of registering through Hamas “stopped after the war,” the agent said on January 10.

“The Palestinian side has nothing to do with these permits anymore. It is purely an Egyptian intelligence operation,” he added.

In December, reporters contacted another broker based in Egypt, with no known affiliation to a travel agency. To prove his credentials, the broker texted a copy of his identity card, a receipt from a previous customer, and copies of Palestinian passports for which he had obtained exit permits.

“You pay half the price now through Vodafone cash” — an online payment method — “and the rest when you cross,” he wrote.

Asked if he could provide the names of people who left and their phone numbers, he responded: “Sister… after they cross, we destroy their application and all personal data for privacy. If these files fall into the hands of anybody it will be a problem, understood?”

As with most GoFundMe and similar sites, some requestors raise large amounts but most of them raise only a pittance or nothing.

Most of these seem to be legitimate requests. Yet "human rights groups" remain silent on this issue, and have not yet written one word of rebuke for Egypt and other Arab countries refusing to accept Palestinian refugees.

Isn't it amazing that there are so many stories in the media about how Gazans are suffering but next to none about how they are being actively prevented from leaving?

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!

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!