Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 04, 2024

03/04 Links Pt2: How Much Is a Dead Jew Worth?; UN finds evidence of rape on Oct. 7; Over 450 UNRWA Teachers Participated in Oct. 7 Massacre

From Ian:

How Much Is a Dead Jew Worth?

Lital Shemesh, a host on Israel's Channel 14, has written a new book, How Much Is a Dead Jew Worth? (Hebrew), a detailed look at the Palestinian Authority's "Pay to Slay" policy. The author explained in an interview that throwing a firebomb at a vehicle is worth NIS 4,000 a month to Palestinian terrorists. Stabbing and critically wounding a Jewish youth - NIS 6,000. A key factor in compensation is the amount of time the prisoner serves in jail.

Already by the fifth year, the prisoner earns more than the average Palestinian, and much more than the minimum wage. Abdallah Bargouti, a commander of the Hamas military wing in the West Bank, was sentenced in 2004 to 67 life sentences. Over 20 years he has received more than a million shekels.

The Palestinian Authority also pays compensation to Gaza residents and Israeli Arabs that have attacked Israelis. It even gives a bonus to terrorists who are from eastern Jerusalem or Israeli citizens. And when the terrorist is released from jail, his years of incarceration are counted as part of his seniority for jobs in the PA civil service. In the hostage release in November, one young Palestinian who was due to be released asked not to be freed because he would lose out on a PA bonus.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, described cases where the defense attorneys requested a heavier sentence for their Palestinian clients in order to qualify for bonuses from the PA. A week after the Oct. 7 massacre, the PA announced that it would give grants to all the families of terrorists who participated.

In the month after Oct. 7, the PA distributed close to $3 million to families of the 1,500 Hamas murderers who participated in the attack. Every family of a terrorist who was killed in the invasion of Israel received a grant of NIS 7,400 in honor of his participation in the murders and atrocities - a gift from the Palestinian Authority. Seven percent of the PA budget today goes to families of terrorists. This is money that incentivizes the murder of Jews.

The PA has created a well-oiled murder machine which educates and incentivizes people to go out and kill Jews. Today, the best-paid profession in the Palestinian Authority is to be a murderer. When will the West take a stand and tell the Palestinians: "If you want our money, stop incentivizing terror."

Daniel Gordis: Is this 1948 all over again? Comparisons are often made, which is why some say this should be called "The Second War of Independence"

Last Sunday, on Feb 25th, we posted a column about those in Israel who are urging that Israel “help” Gazans leave Gaza. Depending on what they mean by “help,” that suggestion could range from kind to very not PC. We wrote then, “Some readers will find this shocking. We’ll soon review a well-known conversation that the Israeli press had many, many years ago with one of Israel’s leading historians, Benny Morris, on the question of what was the agenda in 1948, whether ‘transfer’ was the goal and what he thought of that. His responses will likely surprise you.”

Today, we’re following up on that. As he is one of Israel’s leading historians, Benny Morris’ work on 1948 (in books such as Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 and 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War) has been widely quoted and discussed. Almost as well known in some circles is an interview with Ari Shavit, then a young journalist, from about twenty years ago, almost to the day.

What Professor Morris says about 1948 is illuminating for today, as well.

As we’ve noted several times, some people in Israel have suggested that this war, which still does not have a name, be called The Second War of Independence. Because the victory will likely not be decisive, just as was the case iin 1948. Because it’s existential, and long, just as in 1948. And because much of the country will have to be built (or in this case, rebuilt), just as in 1948.

There’s yet another similarity—the issue of what to do with large numbers of Palestinians. The video above, in which veterans of 1948 speak to today’s soldiers, doesn’t have the expressly in mind, but for many Israelis, one can’t raise the issue of 1948 and war without also wondering about the parallels with the Palestinians. Hence the long interview with Ari Shavit and Professor Benny Morris, of which we present a small portion below.

Their dovish hopes clipped, some Gaza border residents make peace with becoming hawks

The fact that the Hamas terrorists who invaded her kibbutz on October 7 wanted to murder everyone there came as no surprise to Irit Lahav, a peace activist from Nir Oz, where one in four residents were killed or kidnapped.

Even before the massacre, Lahav had entertained no illusions about Hamas. Like many other kibbutzniks and moshav residents with dovish attitudes near the border with Gaza, she had seen how the group deliberately targeted civilians, including by firing rockets into residential areas at specific times to increase loss of life.

Yet she had always believed that Hamas’s actions were distinct from and unrepresentative of the wishes of the silent majority of Palestinian civil society — ordinary and decent people whom she imagined were concerned primarily with providing for their children and improving their own lives under difficult circumstances.

That belief was shattered on October 7, by what she says were “hundreds of civilians, including women and children, who followed” behind the terrorists, invading Israeli communities to celebrate and join in the pillaging, vandalization and destruction of Israeli communities.

“This wasn’t something I had factored in,” said Lahav.

In the wake of October 7, Lahav and other Israelis who had supported and campaigned for territorial compromises with the Palestinians as a pathway to peace now say they are being forced to reconsider their views.

“I used to think Palestinians were good people, like you and me. That Hamas were thugs who got in the way of the population’s desire for a good life: a pretty home, a good car, a good job, a nice yard; good schools for the children.” Lahav said from the temporary home she shares with her daughter Lotus, a new three-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a residential project in Kiryat Gat where many Nir Oz survivors have relocated to.

“After October 7, I realized I was wrong. Just as the Israeli government represents Israelis, Hamas represents the people of Gaza.”

Lahav, a travel agent who used to belong to a group of volunteers who would drive Palestinians in need of medical treatment from Gaza to hospitals in Israel, now believes that “all of the people of Gaza, all of them, hate us to a degree where they would murder babies and pillage our property with zero compunction.”

The Road to Recovery, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that helps Palestinians reach medical treatment in Israel, remains operational, although its volunteers have brought patients only from the West Bank since October 7 because Israel is not issuing entry permits from Gaza. “It’s not simple, but I want to keep feeling human,” Yael Noi, the nonprofit’s director, told (Hebrew) Channel 12 in December.

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From the Washington Post:

Hamas is calling on Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank to rise up against Israel during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut on Monday, said Palestinians should “make every moment of Ramadan a confrontation.”

CAIR gives a fairly typical description of Ramadan:

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. The spiritual significance of Ramadan lies in its focus on self-discipline, personal growth, and increased devotion to Allah (God). Through acts of worship, charity, and self-control, Muslims strive to grow closer to Allah, purify their hearts, and become more compassionate and mindful individuals.

Anyone see a contradiction here?

In 2020, the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades website published a list of 40 terror attacks that they proudly mounted during Ramadan in years past. These include:

The double suicide bombings on Ben Yehuda Street in 2001, killing 11.

The Haifa Bus 16 suicide attack, killing 15.

The Kiryat Menachem bus bombing in 2002, killing 15.

The 2004 Carmel Market bombing, killing 4.

The Hadera Market bombing in 2005, killing 7.

4 killed in a shooting attack in Kiryat Arba, 2010.

August 20, 2011, one killed Beersheva during a barrage of 70 rockets from Gaza.

Hamas would claim that there is no contradiction - attacking Jewish civilians is also a time honored part of Ramadan.

As the Christian Science Monitor reported back in 2003, in an article that would not be written today:

For Islamic militants, Ramadan allows them not only to reaffirm their religious observance but to strengthen their political ideological convictions as well. "Ramadan is a month of commitment and renewal to their faith and also to their cause, whether by military or nonmilitary jihad," says Prof. Nizar Hamzeh, a specialist on political Islam at the American University of Beirut. "It is a month of martyrdom and commitment to one's Islamic ideology."

Throughout Islamic history, Ramadan has been seen as a time of victory for Muslim armies - and a period when those who are martyred have a greater assurance of a place in paradise.

This is why one rarely sees Muslims condemning Hamas for their Ramadan attacks on innocents. Jihad is a part of Ramadan, too, just not the part that they mention in English.

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03/04 Links Pt1: Longing for Auschwitz; The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending; IDF accuses additional UNRWA officials of Oct. 7 massacre

From Ian:

Longing for Auschwitz

As a result of their success in invading Israel on October 7th and killing and capturing so many Jews, Hamas has incited the passions of many in the broader Arab and Muslim worlds and, alarmingly, well beyond. In doing so, it has made emphatic the Islamist reading of the Arab-Israeli conflict as essentially a Muslim-Jewish conflict. Most people in the West view the problem as basically political and territorial in nature. That is true, but only in part. As represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (the sponsor of all the others), it is also religious, and at its heart of hearts there resides an annihilationist fantasy of killing Jews and bringing an end to the Jewish state. Hamas and its allies are not looking for a two-state solution but a repeat of the Final Solution. Their brutally successful killing spree on October 7th was an extravagant rehearsal for that larger goal, a genocidal one.

Where does that leave Israel? Right now, at war with Hamas in Gaza and in a simmering battle with Hezbollah in the north that could rapidly explode into a full-scale and even more fearsome war.What is at stake, as most Israelis understand it, is nothing less than the survival of the state itself. Hamas spokesmen have said as much. On October 24th, Gazi Hamad, speaking as a representative of Hamas to a Lebanese television station, declared that the October 7th attack “is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth…until Israel is annihilated.” Iran, long sworn to finish off “the criminal Zionist entity,” has inscribed some of its newest ballistic missiles with the words “Death to Israel” in bold Hebrew letters. The Houthis in Yemen, well-armed with powerful Iranian-supplied missiles, chant “Death to America, Death to Israel, and a curse upon the Jews.” Iran itself, as recent reports indicate, continues its progress toward building nuclear weapons. As far back as 2001, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of Iran, boasted that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.”

What is new here are not the threats against Israel but the determination to carry them out and the capability of doing so. Hamas’s successful penetration of southern Israel and the extreme violence it displayed has no precedent in Israeli history. The country was traumatized on that day and remains traumatized, making October 7th a date frozen right now on the national calendar. Most of the world has moved on, but to Israelis every day will remain October 7th until all the hostages are returned home from Gaza, Hamas is militarily disarmed, and its aim of obliterating Israel is definitively nullified. Whether Israel can succeed in achieving these goals is an open question. What is clear is that Israelis today feel seriously let down by their national and military leaders, less secure, and far more vulnerable than they did before October 7th.

Every Israeli’s worst nightmares have come true.
Although the existential circumstances of Jews living outside of Israel are much different, on the emotional and psychological levels they, too, have been shaken by recent developments. The anti-Israel passions set loose in street demonstrations and on college campuses and social media have heightened already resurgent displays of open Jew-hatred and rattled a previously assumed sense of security. Academic scholars will continue to debate whether anti-Zionism and antisemitism are similar or separate phenomena, but to most others, the links between hatred of Israel and Jew-hatred are apparent. The reasons are clear: the widespread and unapologetic branding of Israel as an apartheid, genocidal, even Nazi state—defamatory accusations that were in wide circulation well before October 7th—are rapidly becoming normalized. The same is true for both verbal and physical hostility to Jews. As these impassioned animosities coalesce and go mainstream, Jews everywhere are experiencing an unease about their place in society that is new and unnerving for many of them.

Reactions vary: for reasons of self-protection, some feel it’s best to be less visibly Jewish, set aside Jewish markers, and distance themselves from Israel. For reasons of pride and self-affirmation, others refuse to be cowed, step forward as strongly identified Jews, and publicly proclaim themselves in solidarity with Israel and other Jews. October 7th has sharpened both responses, and what lies ahead remains to be seen, but the date’s significance for how Jews see themselves and others see Jews is evident.

Also evident is the following: There will be no Jewish future worthy the name without the State of Israel. At present, something like 47% of world Jewry lives in Israel. That’s almost 1 out of every 2 Jews alive. Were Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and their allies ever to succeed in liquidating Israel, the loss would be immeasurable and irrecoverable. Most Jews still alive elsewhere would be physically imperiled, psychologically traumatized, and spiritually enervated to the point of collapse. That might have been the Jewish condition after the Holocaust, were it not for Israel’s founding only three years after the liberation of the death camps—an act of collective revival that demonstrated a level of national resilience and spiritual rebirth almost without parallel in history. But far from recognizing the Jewish people’s reestablishment of national independence and political sovereignty in its ancient homeland in positive terms, some of Israel’s neighbors have seen the existence of the Jewish state as an intolerable affront that needs to be reversed.

Hamas set out to reverse it as forcefully as possible on October 7th. Its murderous deeds on that day were meant to debase and kill Jews and rally others to collectively put an end to the Jewish state, a strategic objective that recalls some memorable words of the Hungarian Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, Imre Kertész: “The antisemite of our age no longer loathes Jews; he wants Auschwitz.” Today’s most passionate antisemites continue to loathe Jews and, for that very reason, want Auschwitz. If Israelis were not fully aware of those hateful passions before October 7th, they surely know them now. They also know that one Holocaust is one too many and are committed to doing whatever they must to make sure there will not be a repeat. They need and deserve all the support we can give them.

The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending

After each incident, my anxiety about the safety of my own family and synagogue would spike, but I consoled myself with the thought that once Trump disappeared from the scene, the explosion of Jew hatred would recede. America would revert to its essential self: the most comfortable homeland in the Jewish diaspora.

That reassuring thought required downplaying the anti-Semitism that had begun to appear on the left well before October 7—on college campuses, among progressive activists, even on the fringes of the Democratic Party. It required minimizing Representative Ilhan Omar’s insinuation about Jewish control of politics—“It’s all about the Benjamins baby”—as an ignorant gaffe. And it meant dismissing intense outbreaks of anti-Zionist harassment by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, which coincided with tensions in the Middle East, as a passing storm.

Part of the reason I failed to appreciate the extent of the anti-Semitism on the left is that I assumed its criticisms of the Israeli government were, at bottom, a harsher version of my own. I opposed the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank, the callousness that military occupation required, and the religious zealotry that had begun to infuse the country’s right wing, including its current ruling coalition.

Such criticisms were not those of a dissident—the majority of American Jews share them. The Palestinian leadership has a long record of abject obstructionism, historical denialism, and violent irredentism, but American Jews heap blame on recalcitrant right-wing Israeli governments, too. Polling by the Pew Research Center in 2020 found that only one in three American Jews said they felt that the Israeli government was “sincere” in its pursuit of peace. But whatever criticism American Jews leveled against Israel, the anger was born of love. Eight in 10 described Israel as either “essential” or “important” to their Jewish identity. And they still held out hope for peace. In that same poll, 63 percent of American Jews said they considered a two-state solution plausible. Jews were, in fact, more likely than the overall U.S. population to believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestine.

Among the brutal epiphanies of October 7 was this: A disconcertingly large number of Israel’s critics on the left did not share that vision of peaceful coexistence, or believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own. After Hamas’s rampage of rape, kidnapping, and murder, a history professor at Cornell named Russell Rickford said Palestinians were understandably “exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence.” He added, “I was exhilarated.” A student at the same university was arrested and charged with posting online threats about slitting the throats of Jewish males and strafing the kosher dining hall with gunfire. In Philadelphia, a mob descended on a falafel restaurant, chanting about the Israeli American co-owner’s complicity in genocide. Over the three-month period following the Hamas attacks, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 56 episodes of physical violence targeting Jews and 1,347 incidents of harassment. That 13-week span contained more anti-Semitic incidents than the entirety of 2021—at the time the worst year since the ADL had begun keeping count, in 1979.

The New Israel, and the Old

Since the end of the Second Lebanon War (2006), Israel had enjoyed a run of relative safety and stability, unlike any period in its history—perhaps including the early Zionist settlements in Palestine in the 1880s. The suicide terror that had tested the social fabric during the 1990s and especially during the Second Intifada (2000–05), when thousands of Israelis were killed or injured, largely tapered off, despite occasional flare-ups. In the West Bank and, above all, in Gaza, the terror threat seemed to be “in a box,” with violence met by the Israeli strategy of “mowing the grass”—killing a certain number of Hamas fighters and taking out infrastructure while avoiding the risks involved in trying to destroy the Hamas regime.

All through this period, the Israeli economy grew at a seemingly unstoppable rate, typically above 5 percent per year, even in bad years. When Israel turned 75 in 2023, many Israelis agreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim that the country had become an “indispensable partner” because of its rising power. The Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, seemed to confirm Israel’s stature and its acceptance in the Middle East. A recent geopolitical title in Hebrew, How Israel Became an Empire, expressed a popular opinion about the Jewish state’s rising fortunes. We now see such claims as laden with hubris, but they also expressed an undeniable reality: Israeli power had increased dramatically over the last generation.

It was a phenomenon as rapid as it was unexpected. During the Second Intifada, many intelligent observers wondered whether the state could weather overlapping security, demographic, and economic crises. When I came to Jerusalem for my first several-years-long stint, in 2006, a series of national traumas had battered the country. The Oslo Accords and mainstream Israel’s dream of normalcy had crashed in the Intifada, which dealt the Israeli Left a blow from which it has yet to recover. In response to the Intifada, Ariel Sharon led a costly but successful reassertion of Israeli military control over the West Bank. Sharon subsequently enacted the unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, calling on Israeli troops to remove some of the 7,000 Jewish settlers there who had refused the order to leave. The following year, Hamas forcibly asserted itself as the government of Gaza, where it has ruled ever since.

The Second Lebanon War was a national trauma all its own. The 32-day conflict saw Israel launch a ground incursion into southern Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s murder of three soldiers and rocket fire on northern Israel. Judged a “bloody stalemate” by foreign observers, the war was widely regarded as a failure in Israel due to high military casualties (more than 100 killed and more than 1,000 wounded), as well as Hezbollah’s further military and political entrenchment in Lebanon.

Israelis were in a surly mood after that war. War-veteran students from Hebrew University frequently excused themselves from class to join weekly protests against the government, outside the prime minister’s residence. Public anger over the war’s mismanagement melded with a sense that the state had reached a political impasse. The peace process seemed dead, despite one final attempt by Ehud Olmert to conclude a two-state solution in 2008—rebuffed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, to no one’s surprise. Where would Israel go from here?

UNRWA violating its mandate again to attack Israel

The New York Times reports:

An unpublished investigation by the main United Nations agency for Palestinian affairs accuses Israel of abusing hundreds of Gazans captured during the war with Hamas, according to a copy of the report reviewed by The New York Times.
The report was compiled by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is itself at the center of an investigation after accusations that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees participated in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The authors of the report allege that the detainees, including at least 1,000 civilians later released without charge, were held at three military sites inside Israel.
The report said the detainees included males and females whose ages ranged from 6 to 82. Some, the report said, died in detention.
The document includes accounts from detainees who said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.

I cannot comment on the report itself without seeing it. It appears to rely almost exclusively on witness testimony, which even Amnesty has admitted is often unreliable. It requires real expertise to weed out facts from suppositions and assumptions in from supposed witnesses, expertise that UNRWA is not known to have.

However, we do know UNRWA's mandate. And this report is certainly not within that mandate.

UNRWA's mandate is based on UN General Assembly resolutions:

UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. ...

The Agency’s mandate has evolved over the years, as set out in various General Assembly resolutions, to extend to the provision of emergency services to persons in its area of operations who are currently displaced and in serious need of continued assistance as a result of the 1967 and subsequent hostilities. ...

UNRWA provides humanitarian assistance and contributes to protection of refugees through essential service delivery, primarily in the areas of basic education, primary health care and mental health care, relief and social services, microcredit, and emergency assistance, including in situations of armed conflict, to millions of registered Palestine refugees located within its five fields of operations (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza).The Agency does not have a mandate to engage in political negotiations or durable solutions.

But it appears to be more than willing to spend its funding on items that fall quite a bit outside its mandate.

UNRWA's job does not include researching and writing reports on alleged human rights violations by Israel. It has neither the mandate nor the expertise to write such a report. (Neither do Amnesty and HRW, by the way, as they regularly violate every formal anti-bias standard required for objectivity.)

Given that UNRWA has been under financial pressure, why is it spending so much time and money on something that has nothing to do with its mandate?

It appears that UNRWA is playing the "offense is the best defense" game. As it itself is under investigation for its employees being linked to terrorism, it wants to change the conversation to say that Israel is the only violator of human rights in the region.

UNRWA would never even consider writing a report about Hamas human rights abuses of the people the organization is pledged to protect. That in itself shows how biased UNRWA is.

No matter what the report says, and no matter how professional or amateur it is, the report itself shows that UNRWA violates not only its own mandate but also its own vaunted dedication to neutrality.

Nations who fund UNRWA should be asking themselves - is this a humanitarian aid organization or an anti-Israel propaganda outfit? Which part of UNRWA's supposedly transparent budget is being used for reports like this? And what other activities does UNRWA do outside its mandate that it hides inside its budget?

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Russia is fomenting both Left and Right wing antisemitism

It is well-known that Max Blumenthal's fringe far-left website The Grayzone is an apologist for Russia and Russian state interests. As Bruce Bawer wrote in 2019:

Much of the journalism [Blumenthal] produced during the [early years of the Syrian civil war] conveyed a strongly anti-Assad message. In 2013, he reported for the Nation from a refugee camp in Jordan, where, he wrote, every single Syrian he interviewed supported a U.S. military strike on their homeland.

But then something happened. We don’t know exactly what it was. All we know for certain is that in December 2015, Blumenthal traveled to Moscow—all expenses paid by the Kremlin—to attend a gala dinner, hosted by Vladimir Putin himself, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of RT, the international TV network owned by the Russian government. When he returned to the U.S., his position on Bashar al-Assad—and on U.S. intervention in Syria—had turned around completely.

Only a month after the RT bash, Blumenthal founded something called “The Grayzone Project,” which describes itself as “a news and politics website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on war and empire.” Basically, however, Grayzone is a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel.

The connection between Russia and today's antisemitism has been more and more publicized recently. Long-time observers note the nearly identical antisemitic arguments of the Soviet Union and today's Leftist "anti-Zionism," especially by Izabella Tabarovsky. The Grayzone site has been in the forefront of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas propaganda, denying that there were any rapes by Hamas on October 7.

But it appears that Vladimir Putin is interested in fomenting antisemitism in the West not only via the far-Left, but also via the far-Right.

Here is a fairly well-designed, seemingly well-funded video from a far-right studio that popped up on X yesterday and already has tens of thousands of views. It espouses the long-discredited Khazar conspiracy theory, claiming that all Ashkenazic Jews today are really descended from the Khazars. Just like left-wing anti-Zionism, it pretends that it is not antisemitic at all - just that nearly all Jews today - including, of course, the Rothschilds - are really the descendants of a Babylonian Talmudic cult based on worship of Moloch that murders and eats children.

This is well-worn territory for right-wing antisemites. The Khazar theory is popular among Arabs as well.

But this video has much higher production values than most other far-right propaganda. And it also has a decidedly pro-Putin message (3:30):

"America has been infiltrated by traitors, murderers, pedophiles and thieves. And lucky for us, no coincidence, that Russia's Vladimir the Great has got our back again," it says, as a picture of Vladimir the Great morphs into one of Vladimir Putin.

The video then goes into a history of the Khazar kingdom, where the heroes are the Russians who defeated the baby-eaters. But the Khazar/Jews had a "well developed spy network" which then infiltrated into Europe "and Slavic nations" where they took their gold and silver. "Ever since, the Khazars have plotted their revenge against the Russians."

(I was mildly curious what it says on the "Khazar" tallit. It is a mirror image of backwards Hebrew that says "Kings and Generals.")

This is a pro-Russia video as much as it is an antisemitic one.

The filmmaker, one Nick Alvear, has made many "red pill" documentaries previously through his "Good Lion TV' site. Just as with Blumenthal, it appears that the Russian propagandists chose to influence him to use his video skills in to their own benefit, and antisemitism has been identified as an effective way to destroy the West by marginalizing and demonizing the Jews who have contributed to its success.

The West tends to put all right-wing antisemitism into a box, assuming that it is all of Nazi origin. The Khazar theories being bandied about the Internet nowadays are just as likely to come from Arab or Russian sources as from neo-Nazis. And this stuff looks like it is being funded by Russia itself.

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Times of Israel reports:

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.

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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.

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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!

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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)

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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.