Wednesday, March 06, 2024




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


On February 14, Rashida Tlaib refused to support a resolution denouncing Hamas for raping and sexually violating and mutilating Jewish men, women, and children. The only member of the House of Representatives who voted present instead of voting for the resolution, Tlaib said she condemns all sexual violence, but claimed that H. Res. 966, Condemning rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas in its war against Israel, “completely ignores and erases any sexual violence and abuse committed by the Israeli forces against Palestinians, especially children.”

This, of course, is a lie. On many levels. For one thing, the resolution is broad and inclusive, condemning all rape and sexual violence as weapons of war (emphasis added):

That the House of Representatives—

(1) condemns all rape and forms of sexual violence as weapons of war, including those acts committed by Hamas terrorists on and since October 7th;

(2) calls on all nations to criminalize rape and sexual assault, and hold accountable all perpetrators of sexual violence, including state and non-state armed groups;

(3) calls on all international bodies to unequivocally condemn the barbaric murder, rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping by Hamas and other terrorists on and since October 7th, and hold accountable all perpetrators;

(4) reaffirms the United States Government’s support for independent, impartial investigations of rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas on and since October 7th; and

(5) reaffirms its commitment to supporting survivors of rape and sexual violence, including those brutalized on and since October 7.

Tlaib could have happily signed on, knowing that the resolution includes every act of rape and every act of sexual violence no matter the parties responsible for these heinous crimes. But that would not have served Tlaib’s true aims, all of which she accomplished:

She inserted a new idea: that the IDF also commits rape and sexual violence. This is a lie.

She inserted a second new idea: that IDF soldiers are pedophiles who specifically prey on and prefer to rape and commit sexual violence against Arab children. This too, is a lie.

She inserted a third new idea: The resolution does not specifically focus on children as victims of Hamas rape and sexual violence. In accusing the IDF of pedophilia, Tlaib intimates that IDF soldiers are actually worse than actual (Hamas) terrorists. Absolutely false and also repugnant.  

She created a false equivalence between perpetrator and victim—Hamas committed rape and sexual violence on October 7th, and has continued since that time to rape and violate Jewish men, women, and children. The assertion that the IDF also engages in such atrocities is false and also abhorrent, since the war on Hamas is a defensive war, a direct response to Hamas rape and sexual violence.

She inverted the truth. The oldest Arab trick in the book: she accused the Jews of doing what they, the Arabs do. There was no rape or sexual violence by the IDF. The atrocities were committed by one side alone and that one side was Hamas. 

 


The Arab enemy plays dirty. It cheats and it lies and it inverts the truth. But we know what happened. “The evidence is abundant and beyond compelling. Through survivors coming forward, witnesses, video footage and independent analysis, we know that Hamas’s use of sexual violence including rape, mutilation, and brutality was not an anomaly. It was a premeditated part of its strategy to purposefully use sexual violence as a weapon against innocent civilians,” said Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, regarding the horrific sexual crimes of Hamas.

Meanwhile, there are no credible reports that similar deeds, or worse, have been perpetrated by the IDF. But with her lies Tlaib offers up new ways to demonize the Jews, with new lines of propaganda for use by the legions of ugly-minded people siding with terrorists against the Jewish victims. Antisemites don’t care about truth or proof. In their minds, all’s fair in their hatred and envy of the Jewish people.  

The Arab tactic of inverting the truth unlike Tlaib's fake "facts" is not new. A 2007 essay by Joel Fishman goes into the history and use of the "inversion of reality" as he calls it, appropriately begins with the following (ancient) verse:

Woe unto them that call evil good, And good evil;

That change darkness into light, And light into darkness;

That change bitter into sweet, And sweet into bitter.

Isaiah 5:20

A summary of the essay appearing just below these lines makes clear that inversion of the truth is a propaganda tactic designed to be used against the Jewish people (emphasis added):

From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel‘s adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an “inversion of reality,” an “intellectual confidence trick,” “reversing moral responsibility,” or “twisted logic.” Because Israel’s enemies have, for nearly half a century, repeated such libels without being challenged, they have gradually gained credence. Since inversion of reality constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, it is important to understand what it is and how it works. This propaganda method is a product of Nazi Germany. It is totalitarian both in its methods, particularly the use of the paranoiac myth, and in the absolute solution it advocates. It totally denies all of Israel’s claims and leaves no room for introspection and compromise.

Why is it necessary to invert the truth? Because the truth does not serve the cause of those responsible for spreading twisted logic, the desire to demonize and ultimately, to do away with the Jewish people:

One of the tactical tools of ideological warfare is propaganda, which has been defined simply “as an attempt to influence the attitudes of a specific audience through the use of facts, fiction, argument or suggestion-often supported by the suppression of inconsistent material-with the calculated purpose of instilling in the recipient a certain belief, values or convictions which will serve the interests of the source, by producing a desired line of action.”

To this definition one may add the statement of Dr. Joseph Goebbels that “propaganda as such is neither good nor evil. Its moral value is determined by the goals it seeks.” Here is the classical argument that the ends justify the means. One may ask, however, if in certain cases the very means can be morally defective.

The rise of technology and social media has made spreading lies easier than ever, making the inversion of truth the perfect tactic for modern-day antisemites, for instance Arab propagandists like Tlaib, who have infiltrated the US government. Seventeen years have passed since this essay was penned, yet the ideas and tactics outlined here remains remarkably current (emphasis added):

Inversion of reality as a tool of media war, with its paranoiac state of mind, has persisted to the present. Although contemporary observers have been able to describe its manifestations with considerable accuracy, many have not placed it in historical context. It was in this sense, for example, that the French researcher and philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff applied the term “absolute anti-Semitism” to describe the post-1967 outlook of the Palestinians. He wrote that for them, “Zionism, then, is a new ‘Nazism’ threatening to dominate and destroy the whole human species…. Thus, in a context where Western elites never tire of calling for the avoidance of ‘Islamophobic’ utterances, the head of the Islamic Center in Geneva, Hani Ramadan, coolly denounced ‘the genocide being organized against the Muslims.’”

It is noteworthy that Ramadan’s story line is nearly identical to that of Nazi propagandists. Both presented themselves as targets of a Jewish conspiracy, and the potential outcome of their “logical process”-to use Hannah Arendt’s expression-was genocide. Although both have inverted the truth, their assertions contain an additional feature which is disturbing and dangerous: the inversion of morality which leads to criminal behavior and violence without constraint.

Citing Melanie Phillips as his source, Fishman now quotes Leo McKinstry, a Belfast-born author and journalist who described the inversion of reality with regard to Israel, as it plays out in British public discourse (emphasis added):

In a remarkable inversion of reality, Israel has become a pariah state because of its determination to defend itself. A grotesque double standard now operates, where murderous Arab terrorists are hailed as “freedom fighters” yet Israeli security forces are treated as fascistic thugs. No nation has been more demonized than Israel. One recent survey across Europe revealed that Israel is now regarded as “the greatest threat” to world peace, an utter absurdity given that Israel is actually the only democratic, free society in the Middle East. But such a finding reflects the strength of the hysterical anti-Israeli propaganda that fills the airwaves of Europe. No matter how much this anti-Israeli feeling is dressed up as support for Palestine, it is in fact profoundly antisemitic….

It is clear that nothing has changed since 2007, except for it being easier than ever to invert the truth and spread antisemitic lies whether in Britain or DC—or anywhere else where there are people who don’t like Jews. The Arab inversion of truth, however, really hits its stride beginning in the 1960s:

Prof. Arnold Toynbee delivered a lecture in Montreal in January 1961 in which he “compared from a moral standpoint, the attitude of Israel to the Arabs in 1947 and 1948 with the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews.” The ambassador of Israel to Canada, Yaakov Herzog, read this statement in the Montreal newspapers and challenged Toynbee to a debate which followed on 31 January 1961 at McGill University. Ambassador Herzog did well in this disputation, but it is not clear if Arnold Toynbee’s statement represented an isolated event or, in the years which followed, provided a source of inspiration to others. (Two years later, in April 1964, Arnold Toynbee came to Egypt on a twelve day visit to lecture at Egyptian universities.  It would be interesting to know, if, beyond considerations of academic scholarship, an authoritarian regime such as Nasser’s Egypt had other motives for showing Toynbee such a public sign of great favor.)

During the 1960s, and particularly after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War in 1967, the Soviet Union and its allies in the Arab world reintroduced some of the old propaganda themes. Israel’s victory represented a humiliation to the Soviet cause and posed an internal danger because it shook the foundations of authority.  Domestically, it heartened the minorities in the Soviet Union, not least the Jews. Having suffered a major reverse, the Soviet Union and the Arab countries decided to use political anti-Semitism as a means of shifting world attention from their defeat. They endeavored to delegitimize Israel, to brand Israel as the aggressor, and to bring about its isolation. Some elements of the new propaganda campaign were:

·        The accusation that Israel was the aggressor in the Six Day War and denial of its right to self-defense.

·        The passing of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is racism,” on 10 November 1975 which gave the standing of international law to a proposition totally based on the inversion of reality. This resolution transformed Zionism, the Jewish national movement, into the embodiment of evil by equating it with the depravity of Nazi Germany.

·        The drafting of the PLO Covenant in its various versions of 1964, 1968, and 1974. This document claimed that justice was totally on the Palestinian side and that Israel had no standing at all.

·        The Hamas Charter of 1988.

·        The unprecedented assault on Israel at the end of August and beginning of September 2001 which took place at the UN Conference in Durban.

The UN Resolution of 1975, later overturned, declaring that “Zionism is racism,” is another prime and historic example of how truth can be stood on its head in order to demonize the Jews (emphasis added):

On 10 November 1975, the Soviet Union and its supporters passed UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is racism,” which transformed an anti-Semitic slogan into an internationally accepted “truth.” Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman explained that “the term ‘racism’ was coined in 1936 to rally scientific and political opinion against Nazi doctrines of ‘Aryan superiority’ over Jews and other alleged untermenschen.” According to the original meaning of the term, then, “racism” denotes one of the great abuses of Nazism.  Thus, to equate Zionism with racism represents a serious accusation and inversion of reality.

In considering the tactic of reality inversion, once must also look at the results. The academic in his ivory tower knows the truth, but pushes the lies that serve him. The common man on the other hand, the regular Arab Joe/Yussef on the street, actually believes the lies. He wants to believe the lies, because they put him in the right and the Jews in the wrong. Nadav Shragai describes the impact on ordinary Arab Muslims of the lie that the Jews aim to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque (emphasis added):

The Palestinians and many Muslims charge that Israel “seeks to destroy al-Aqsa” and build the Temple in its stead on a site where no Temple ever stood; that the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount is al-miza’um, that is, “supposed,” “fraudulent,” “invented,” or “imaginary;” that the Jews have no connection to the Temple Mount or, for that matter, to the Western Wall.     

This is a libel on top of a libel, a double lie. The many Muslims who are convinced that al-Aqsa is in danger are now also convinced that “their” al-Aqsa stands on a place where “our” Temple never stood – the latter being nothing but a fabrication.

Some of the legitimacy that terrorism draws from the libel rests on that added lie. It is more legitimate to libel and murder Jews, so as “to protect the captive al-Aqsa and free it from the Jews who are plotting to destroy it,” if Israel and the Jews who “conspire to attack the site,” have only a false and concocted connection to it. Thus, the lie that undergirds the libel also bolsters the legitimacy to murder in its name. From the standpoint of the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terrorists and their supporters, they do not murder only those who seek to wrest the Mount from their hands. As they see it, they are also murdering the falsifiers of history, who have no link to the site at all. They also want the Mount to be “liberated” psychologically so that their historical and religious narrative will prevail.

Already a decade ago, Lesley Klaff described how the Holocaust has been appropriated by the enemy, and distorted and abused to blame and demonize Israel for the condition of the Arab people (emphasis added):

What has been called ‘Holocaust Inversion’ involves an inversion of reality (the Israelis are cast as the ‘new’ Nazis and the Palestinians as the ‘new’ Jews), and an inversion of morality (the Holocaust is presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of ‘the Jews’). More: those who object to these inversions are told [that] they are acting in bad faith, only being concerned to deflect criticism of Israel. In short, the Holocaust, an event accurately described by Dan Diner as a ‘rupture in civilisation,’ organised by a regime that, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, ‘had no other clear principle except murderous hatred of the Jews,’ is now being used, instrumentally, as a means to express animosity towards the homeland of the Jews. ‘The victims have become perpetrators’ is being heard more and more. That is Holocaust Inversion.

Klaff goes further, underlining the ways in which even the memory of the Holocaust is abused, as it places unique moral strictures on the Jewish people—the actual victims of the Holocaust—alone:

Holocaust Inversion [involves] the abuse of the Holocaust memory to issue a moral stricture aimed at Israel and ‘the Jews’, imposing upon them a uniquely onerous moral responsibility and accountability in their treatment of others.

Dr. Yechiel Shabiy, writing for BESA, elaborates on the inverted logic that portrays the Arabs as indigenous to Israel even in the face of absolute proof to the contrary (emphasis added):

The elected representatives of Israel’s Arab community claim that the Palestinians are the original owners of the land—an indigenous minority disinherited by foreign invaders. According to this notion, which is aimed at undermining the Zionist narrative about the Jewish people’s return to its historical homeland, the Arabs of the Land of Israel—like the Indians in America, the aborigines in Australia, and the Zulu tribes in South Africa—are victims of European imperialism/colonialism, which turned them into a disenfranchised and oppressed minority in their own land. From this standpoint, Zionism is a crude perversion of Judaism because the Jews do not constitute a people but only a religious community with no national attributes or aspirations, let alone any right to a state of their own in even a tiny part of the Islamic-Arab-Palestinian patrimony.

That thesis is not only baseless but a complete inversion of the historical truth.

It was Arab/Muslim invaders who came to the Land of Israel as an ascendant imperialist force in the decade after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and laid the groundwork for the colonization of this land by a long string of Muslim empires up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. During this lengthy era, the non-Jewish and non-Christian residents of the land identified themselves as Muslims—not as Arabs, and certainly not as Palestinians—until WWI, when the idea of Arab nationalism gathered steam with the help of British imperialism.

One need only look at common family names among the Palestinians to see their colonialist origins: Hijazi, from the Hijaz in the Arabian Peninsula, from which the original invaders came; Bosniak, from Bosnia; Turk, from Turkey; Halabi, from Syria; Hindi, from India; Yemeni, from Yemen; Masarwa/Masri, from Egypt; Mughrabi, from the Maghreb, and so on.

In contrast, countless place names in the Land of Israel testify to a Jewish presence over thousands of years. Take, for example, the Narbeta River in northern Samaria. Narbeta, which is the Aramaic pronunciation of Arubot, the biblical city in which one of King Solomon’s 12 governors lived, ruled the whole region of northern Samaria. In Narbeta, as Yosef ben Matityahu (Josephus) recounts, the Romans slaughtered thousands of Jews during the Great Revolt (66-73 CE). The area teems with archaeological relics from the Second Temple, Mishnaic, and Talmudic eras.

Each year, Israel is faced with the dilemma of whether to allow Muslim worship on the Temple Mount during Ramadan. With the season upon us, concurrent with Israel’s war on Hamas, the issue was once more discussed and decided: The Arabs are to be allowed to worship on the Temple Mount, in spite of the war and the Arab propensity for violence with the Jews as their target. When Israel was confronted by the same yearly conundrum in 2022, David Weinberg took the opportunity to outline some of the more inflammable Arab rhetoric batted about in regard to Jews and the Temple Mount along with the history of how it has evolved (emphasis added):

I am infuriated by the calls of Western leaders upon Israel, all week long, to "ensure the status quo" on the Temple Mount and "respect the sanctity" of its Moslem holy sites. Often this has been accompanied by tsk-tsking about "provocative incursions" by Israeli police and so-called "excessive force" employed by police to disburse "peaceful Arab worshippers."

The inversion of truth contained in the above description of events and the perversion involved in blaming Israel for Arab rioting on the Temple Mount – is utterly galling!

The plain facts are that the so-called "status quo" on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem long has been dead. It has been violated repeatedly in recent years by radical Palestinian and Islamic actors who have turned the Mount into a base of hostile operations against Israel, instead of protecting it as zone of prayer and peace. Israel, on the other hand, has acted with utmost restraint in the face of Arab assaults. (Too much restraint, in my opinion.)

Waqf and Islamic movement provocateurs have attacked Jewish visitors to the Mount, Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall below the Mount, and Jewish worshippers on their way to the Western Wall. They have attacked Emiratis and Bahrainis praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque (because these countries signed Abraham Accord peace treaties). They have greatly restricted visitation rights to the holy Mount for all non-Moslems; and have hijacked the pulpits in the mosque on the Mount to preach hatred and violence against Israel.

Palestinian terrorists have smuggled machine guns onto the Temple Mount and killed police guarding the gates of the Mount. The terrorists launched their attack from within the Temple Mount and then fled into the shrines on the Mount. The tens of thousands of boulders and rocks stockpiled by Arabs on the Mount for their periodic, planned "outbursts" of rock-throwing violence, including repeated attacks over the past week, are no less outrageous.

The Waqf also has conducted vast, illegal construction projects on the Mount and beneath it, willfully destroying centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a supposedly "moderate" Palestinian figure, continues to roil the waters and foment violence against Israel by repeating the canard that "Al Aqsa is in danger," meaning that "the Zionists are conspiring to blow-up the mosque and Islamic shrine" on the Mount. This is a blood libel that goes all the way back to the notorious pro-Nazi Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini in the pre-state period.

In fact, Abbas has stoked a broad-scale campaign against the authenticity of Israel's historic rights in Jerusalem. In September 2015 he screeched about "filthy" Jewish feet that were "desecrating" holy Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. "Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher," he bellowed. "They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won't allow them to do so, and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem."


In 2019, Tzvi Fleischer wrote of the UN inversion of the truth in regard to the status of Arab women, be they Arab women with Israeli citizenship, or those who live under Abbas or Hamas (emphasis added):

The UN has produced another one of the anti-Israel absurdities for which it has become infamous. On July 23, the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council voted 40-2, with 9 abstentions, to single out Israel as the only state in the world branded as a violator of women’s rights. Among those who voted in favour were such paragons of women’s rights as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen (Australia is not a member).

Most of the long resolution said nothing about women but simply parroted generic UN anti-Israel rhetoric, accusing the Jewish state of numerous crimes, but the key clause condemned Israel and the “occupation” as “a major obstacle for Palestinian women and girls with regard to the fulfilment of their rights, and their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society.”

Of course, the resolution did not mention how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities—the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. These surely have the primary responsibility for progressing the “advancement, self-reliance and integration” of the Palestinian women of the West Bank and Gaza respectively.

Yet with regard to the situation of the Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel, recent years have seen achievements which make a mockery of the UN’s claims. A decade ago only 22% of Israeli Arab women were working outside their homes. Today, that number is more than 40% (admittedly, this is still way below the workforce participation rate of Jewish Israeli women, who have one of the highest participation rates in the OECD).

The jump in employment rates among Israeli Arab women is in part the result of deliberate Israeli Government policy. The Israeli Government has set a target of 54% employment for Arab women by 2030. To help achieve that goal, they have been improving public transport to Arab villages so women can reach jobs, building industrial zones in large Arab towns like Nazareth that can offer employment closer to Arab villages and have set up 22 employment centres specifically for Arab women to help match them with available jobs.


The UN is still busy inverting the truth when it comes to Israel and the Jews. CNN reports that UN is investigating “credible reports” that IDF soldiers did to Arabs the disgusting things that Arabs did to Jews (emphasis added):

United Nations experts have called for an investigation into what they described as “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations” against Palestinian women and girls in Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli forces.

The allegations include extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment, rape and sexual violence, according to a statement by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released on Monday. It did not detail how they did their fact-finding, but they referred to photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances reportedly taken by Israeli troops and uploaded online.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied the accusations and said it adheres to international law. “Without precise details or proof of individual cases it is not possible for us to examine them in depth,” the IDF said in a statement to CNN.

 i24 News further elaborates (emphasis added):

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of raping Palestinian women and girls in detention, sparking a contentious dispute as Israel vehemently denies the claims.

In a report by Sky News, the UN Human Rights Office a few reports of Israeli officers allegedly sexually assaulting Palestinian women and girls while in detention.

Allegations include strip searches conducted by male soldiers and alleged instances of sexual violence against detainees.

“We are particularly disturbed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have been subjected to several forms of sexual assault,” accused the UN agency, affirming that “they had been stripped naked and searched by male soldiers.” “At least two Palestinian detainees were raped, while others were threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the agency said, adding that “photos of detention in humiliating circumstances were taken by the IDF and uploaded on the Internet".

Naturally, no proof is provided. Because there is none. Yet, Reem Alsalem, she of the Muslim Arab-friendly first and surname insists that Israeli violence against Arab women has been “normalized,” and that anyway, the women don’t speak out because they’re afraid of “reprisals” (emphasis added):

The panel of experts said there was evidence of [at] least two cases of rape, alongside other cases of sexual humiliation and threats of rape. Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said the true extent of sexual violence could be significantly higher.

“We might not know for a long time what the actual number of victims are,” said Alsalem, who was appointed special rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2021.

She noted that reticence in reporting sexual assault was common because of the fear of reprisals against victims. She said that in a wave of detentions of Palestinian women and girls after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on 7 October, there was an increasingly permissive attitude towards sexual assault in Israeli detention centres.

“I would say that, on the whole, violence and dehumanisation of Palestinian women and children and civilians has been normalised throughout this war,” Alsalem said.

Interestingly, Alsalem claimed to be unaware of any rocket attacks against Israel. In spite of actual evidence, something she does not have in regard to imagined Israeli crimes against Arab women.

Perhaps the most galling part of this concerted effort to invert reality was the insertion of a supposed need to investigate reports of imagined Israeli crimes against Arab women, in a UN investigation of actual Hamas sexual crimes against Jewish women (and men and children).

In a piece called UN Investigator: ‘Convincing Information’ of Rape and Torture, But Check the Jews Too Just In Case, the Jewish Press, author David Israel tells us that while "Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on Monday that she and a team of experts had found 'clear and convincing information' of rape and sexualized torture being committed against hostages seized during the October 7 terror attacks.”

Based on reports in the media, when Patten arrived in Israel, I was encouraged that even though, as a UN representative, Patten was unlikely to be sympathetic to Israel, she would be fair in her investigation. And she was. Up to a point. That point being the one where Arab guilt must be balanced by the presumption of Jewish guilt, even in the absence of proof (emphasis added):

The NY Times report on Patten’s report points out that it “also cited allegations that Palestinians detained by Israel have also been sexually abused.” No need to provide citations, of course, because it’s a known thing that Jews rape Arab women all the time. The fact is that from 1950 to this day there hasn’t been a single rape complaint of an Arab woman against Israeli soldiers. Several academic researchers have actually argued that this phenomenon is an expression of Israeli racism…

According to Israel Police data, between 2007 and 2014, Arab men committed 533 sexual offenses against Jewish women, of which 70 were outright rapes. In many cases, the rapists called their victims “dirty Jews,” later explaining that “Jews are subhuman,” and “Jewish girls have no honor.”

Oh, and the Patten report for some reason noted deep suspicion among Israelis toward the United Nations.

Shocking.

The Patten report was disheartening, because my expectations had been higher than they should have been. By now, I should know better. Where there is proof of Arab malfeasance and no proof of Jewish malfeasance, the idea of Jewish malfeasance will be inserted to minimize that of the Arabs. It’s just the way it is.

Since October 7, world Jewry has woken up to the fact that there is overwhelming Jew-hatred everywhere. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or haven’t done. It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. We Jews live in a time where the truth doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t serve our enemy, which is most of the world. 



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!

 

 

  • Wednesday, March 06, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu presented a plan for "the day after" in Gaza that relied on local officials, untainted by terror, being responsible for security on each town.

It is widely believed that these would be the heads of respected, influential clans in Gaza who would take full control of civil matters with the support and protection of the IDF.

One of the families responded favorably - so Hamas threatened them.

A source in the ministry of interior in the Gaza Strip told Ultra Palestine that threats had reached families who responded to Israeli communications, saying that Hamas would deal with them "militarily."

The source said that there were still many thousands of Hamas security personnel who are doing all they can to ensure that they will still control the Gaza Strip as soon as the war is over. 

The Hamas ministry official claimed that the families considering the offer are most interested in revenge on Hamas for how it took over Gaza in 2007, and they see an opportunity to even the score with the IDF on their side. He also claimed that these same families are the ones attacking aid convoys and the Hamas members with them . 

At the same time as these threats, Hamas and other groups insist that no one is interested in taking the civil service jobs from Hamas. 

I don't know whether any of this is true, although Ultrapal has been a pretty good source in the past. It would make sense that amongst the chaos, clans will look for an opportunity to settle old feuds. 




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!

 

 

From Ian:

Bret Stephens The New Rape Denialism
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless.

Yet Hamas denies that its men sexually assaulted Israelis, calling the charges “lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.” And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-described progressives, parrot that denialism in the face of powerful and deeply investigated evidence of widespread rapes, documented most recently in a United Nations report released on Monday.

The interesting question is, why? Why the refusal to believe that Hamas, which butchered children in their beds, took elderly women as hostages and incinerated families in their homes, would be capable of that?

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first it’s worth looking at the forms this denialism takes. One method is to acknowledge, as one recent article put it, that “sexual assault may have occurred on Oct. 7,” but nobody has really proved that it was part of an organized pattern. Another is to raise questions about various details in stories to suggest that if there’s even a single error, or a witness whose testimony is at all inconsistent, the entire account must also be false and dishonest. A third is to treat anything an Israeli says as inherently suspect.

And finally, there is the point that there are barely any witnesses to the assaults. Where are the women who were allegedly raped? Why aren’t they speaking out?

The answer to that final question is the grimmest: Overwhelmingly, the women who could have spoken out are dead, for the simple reason that any Israeli who got close enough to a terrorist to be raped was close enough to be murdered. As for the credibility of Israeli witnesses, who else — other than the early responders who encountered the victims at first hand — should be interviewed and quoted by anyone investigating this?
The left serves as apologists for Hamas rapists' heinous crimes on Oct. 7
Remember when rape was a sickening crime, and not a form of resistance?

Remember when #MeToo was a universal movement against sexual violence that brooked no excuses or exceptions?

Those landmark advances came after long struggles, and now they are being riddled with exclusions and in danger of being gutted.

All because the latest victims are ­Israelis.

Or, as an Instagram meme put it, “Me Too Unless You’re a Jew.”

Antisemitism takes many forms, and we must add to the list the refusal to accept as fact the horrific scope of rape and sexual mutilation carried out by Muslim terrorists on Oct. 7.

The claim by Hamas that there were no sexual atrocities has given license for despicable apologists in America and abroad to insist that such crimes never happened.

Or if they did, well, there were only a few.

Besides, the Israelis had it coming.

A new report from the United Nations, though belated and imperfect, puts the lie to the denial and excuses.

The report confirms that members of Hamas, other terror groups and Gaza civilians were guilty of committing many heinous sexual crimes that day.

Notwithstanding the authors’ dry language and excuses about not having enough time to be more thorough, the findings leave zero doubt that scores, perhaps hundreds of instances of rape and mutilation took place in Israeli communities near the border.

The investigators also found “clear and convincing” evidence that some Israeli hostages were raped in Gaza and believe some hostages still in captivity could be suffering the same fate.

It is impossible to read the report and not feel sickened by the savage brutality it recounts.
Aviva Klompas: Fresh Evidence That UNWRA Isn't Helping Anyone—Not Even the Palestinians
The notion that a different set of rules applies to only one people in the world is absurd. But that's how UNRWA keeps its mission alive, its 30,000 workers on the job, and its billions of dollars flowing in from foreign governments.

To sustain the system, UNRWA also moved beyond the "humanitarian aid" business and into the education business. It operates hundreds of schools in Gaza and around the Arab world with curricula and textbooks that incite the next generation by dehumanizing Jews, denying Israel's right to exist, and depicting all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine.

UNRWA also turned a blind eye (or worse) to the terrorism perpetrated by the Hamas government in Gaza.

Over the past few months, the world has learned that a number of UNRWA employees participated in Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attack. These included a social worker who carried a murdered Israeli's body into his car and drove the dead man into Gaza. And now the IDF released recordings of an UNRWA teacher saying he had captured an Israeli woman on October 7 as a "sabaya," a Jihadi term for sex slave.

The IDF has also produced evidence that Hamas' network of terror tunnels includes an elaborate command center built right underneath UNRWA's Gaza headquarters.

UNRWA officials claimed they weren't aware, but Western nations are skeptical. The United States and Germany, among others, have begun halting payments to the organization.

Now it's time to take the next step.

Other humanitarian aid groups, forward-looking Arab nations, or even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees could step in to oversee the provision of aid to Palestinians with an eye toward enabling a more peaceful and prosperous future.

UNRWA has failed the people it's supposed to help. It's incited and protected terrorists. And now it's lost the trust of its funders. After 75 years, it's clear the agency will never play a role in ending Palestinian suffering—and even clearer that it needs to go.

Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a nonprofit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat hatred of Jews.
  • Wednesday, March 06, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon


Last month, the heads of various UN agencies and other NGOs issued a joint statement expressing concern over Gaza and a list of demands, nearly all of them from Israel.

-An immediate ceasefire.
-Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on to be protected.
-The hostages to be released immediately.
-Reliable entry points that would allow us to bring aid in from all possible crossings, including to northern Gaza. 
-Security assurances and unimpeded passage to distribute aid, at scale, across Gaza, with no denials, delays and access impediments.
-A functioning humanitarian notification system that allows all humanitarian staff and supplies to move within Gaza and deliver aid safely.
-Roads to be passable and neighborhoods to be cleared of explosive ordnance.
-A stable communication network that allows humanitarians to move safely and securely. 
-UNRWA[1], the backbone of the humanitarian operations in Gaza, to receive the resources it needs to provide life-saving assistance.
-A halt to campaigns that seek to discredit the United Nations and non-governmental organizations doing their best to save lives.  
Not one of the ten demands was for other countries to allow Gazans to take refuge elsewhere.

This omission is even more glaring when you see one of the signatories: Ms. Amy E. Pope, Director General, International Organization for Migration (IOM) .

And it was posted on the IOM website.

The UN organization in charge of migrants rights cannot even hint that Gazans - who desperately want to leave Gaza - have the right to flee elsewhere. 

Indeed, looking through the tweets of Amy Pope, and press releases from IOM,  we can find no indication that the organization cares at all about Gazans' right to movement.  

(h/t Irene)




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  • Wednesday, March 06, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon


Human Rights Watch continues its long anti-Israel tradition with a new press release, accusing Israel of actively blocking aid to Gaza:

The Israeli government has failed to comply with at least one measure in the legally binding order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in South Africa’s genocide case, Human Rights Watch said today. Citing warnings about “catastrophic conditions” in Gaza, the court ordered Israel on January 26, 2024, to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid,” and to report back on its compliance to the specific measures “within one month.”

One month later, however, Israel continues to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid, acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes and include the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. Fewer trucks have entered Gaza and fewer aid missions have been permitted to reach northern Gaza in the several weeks since the ruling than in the weeks preceding it, according to United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”
It points to a graphic by UN-OCHA showing that for several days in February the number of aid trucks decreased dramatically.


OCHA's daily report for February 9 says the reason that aid was limited:

The deteriorating situation and escalation of hostilities have caused significant damage to critical infrastructure, including roads, electricity, and water supply systems, impeding the distribution of food aid.
Not Israel actively blocking aid, but the practical realities of the difficulties of getting the aid transported. In other words, logistics.

And more evidence that this is a logistical problem and not because of Israeli actions comes from the semi-regular COGAT reports. I cannot find historic reports online, but I do have emails from COGAT. On February 14, they reported:

208 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip Yesterday (Feb. 13). 44 trucks were inspected at Nitzana and transferred via the Rafah Crossing, and 164 were inspected and transferred via Kerem Shalom. 87 trucks carried food.
But the graphic above says that only 100 trucks entered Gaza on February 13. 

COGAT:

106 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip Yesterday (Feb. 15). 15 trucks were inspected at Nitzana and transferred via the Rafah Crossing, and 91 were inspected and transferred via Kerem Shalom.
OCHA says only 20 trucks entered February 15:

February 19: COGAT says 100 trucks, OCHA says 9.

And, as photos show, long lines of trucks are lined up at the Rafah border waiting to enter Gaza. Israel isn't blocking Rafah. 

Logistics problems take time to solve, especially when Hamas is hijacking trucks and shooting at people trying to receive aid.The World Food Programme paused its efforts on February 20, and described the chaotic and dangerous conditions in Gaza, well before HRW's report:

On Sunday, as WFP started the route towards Gaza City, the convoy was surrounded by crowds of hungry people close to the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. First fending off multiple attempts by people trying to climb aboard our trucks, then facing gunfire once we entered Gaza City, our team was able to distribute a small quantity of the food along the way. On Monday, the second convoy’s journey north faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order. Several trucks were looted between Khan Younes and Deir al Balah and a truck driver was beaten. The remaining flour was spontaneously distributed off the trucks in Gaza city, amidst high tension and explosive anger.

Despite all this, the number of truckloads are increasing week after week. 

One more data point showing that HRW lies. Egypt Today reports that not only are the US and Jordan airdropping supplies to northern Gaza, but also the UAE and Egypt. 



Israel is very careful about airspace over Gaza. Any country that wants to have airdrops must closely coordinate with Israel, and Israel only. There are no other obstacles to air-dropping aid. And Israel is facilitating those missions, even from countries whose own lawmakers are nakedly antisemitic and anti-Israel. 

While the total amounts of aid from planes is still small, it shows that Israel is not "blocking" aid at all. 

And it shows that Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch is a liar. 




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  • Wednesday, March 06, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon


There are reports that the US is studying ways to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza by ship.

What the media isn't reporting is that Israel approved a similar plan in December - and it was rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

In November, Cyprus proposed a very similar plan to send aid to Gaza via ship. They made an agreement with Israel to have the goods inspected in Larnaca and from there sent to Gaza, bypassing the alleged bottlenecks of Israeli inspection on land.

In December, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen led Israeli teams who discussed with their Cypriot counterparts the technical details of how such a plan would work. “Cyprus and Israel, together with other partners in the region are promoting the initiative for a secure maritime corridor to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza in an organized and well inspected manner,” Cohen said at the time.

Israel was ready to get the plan moving. It put spent many hours into working on the  logistics. Cyprus was ready to get going. (In February, Israel said it was willing to build a floating dock north of Rafah to facilitate aid by sea.)

The Palestinian government rejected the idea.

“We objected to the sea corridor agreed upon between Cyprus and Israel,” Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told his cabinet. “This is because we have suspicions that the ships operated by Cyprus could be used to remove our people from Gaza.” 

In this one statement, the Palestinian government in Ramallah spurned not only the idea of massive amounts of humanitarian aid arriving by sea, but also the idea (that no one even mentioned) of allowing Gazans to flee a war zone should they so desire. They want Gazans to stay in a dangerous place, against their will, more than they want to avoid their going without food.

This episode shows that Israel cares far more about the well-being of Gaza civilians than the Palestinian Authority.

The world media is simply not willing to report a story like that. 

So they don't. 



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Tuesday, March 05, 2024

From Ian:

Richard Dawkins: Some fears about Islam are entirely rational
In Britain, phobia is hardly the right word for any fear Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, might feel. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: ‘Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him. His mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah.’ A Muslim who is losing his faith would have good reason to fear the penalty for apostasy, which is death. When I taxed Sir Iqbal with this on television, he said, ‘It’s very rarely enforced’. That’s good to hear. But a would-be apostate doesn’t have to be ‘phobic’ to still feel a reasonable fear.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition of Islamophobia, which was published in 2018, begins with the statement that it’s a form of racism. In a new paper for the Free Speech Union, Tim Dieppe makes the obvious point that Islam is not a race, and he very well develops the inconsistencies that this remarkable solecism leads to.

I would make one further observation. A religion is something you can convert to, or opt out of. Your race isn’t like that. You can’t convert to a race or leave it. The fact that you can’t leave your race means that, if Islam is indeed a race, apostasy is literally impossible. Yet apostasy has to be possible in Islam or it couldn’t be punishable by death. So the statement that Islamophobia is a form of racism is more than just incorrect. It contradicts a fundamental, and incidentally obnoxious, tenet of Islam.

Here I have not considered the issue of freedom of speech. Tim Dieppe covers it so well that I have nothing to add, except this final thought. If ‘Islamophobia’ becomes punishable by law, will it be illegal to even state, as a matter of fact, that a woman in some Islamic countries can be stoned to death for the crime of speaking to a man other than her husband? Will I be arrested for stating the undenied fact that apostasy carries the death penalty?

If so, bring it on. I look forward to defending myself in court.
Seth Mandel: The Deadly Manipulations of the Anti-Israel Mob
Bushnell felt that complicity, a writer for n+1 magazine theorized, working for “the US Air Force, the mightiest incendiary device that humans have ever constructed.”

He desperately needed people close to him to tell him they wanted him alive not dead. But if there were any such voices, they were clearly drowned out by the activist class falsely accusing him of complicity in genocide. In that way, Bushnell is less a conscientious objector than he is like Conrad Roy, the teenager who hesitated in taking his own life and was told by his girlfriend over the phone to get back in his truck as it was filling with carbon monoxide.

Bushnell represented something evil to these activists: the United States armed forces. Thus to them he was expendable. They came to bury him first, then to praise him. But oh, did they praise him. “Let us never forget the extraordinary courage and commitment of brother Aaron Bushnell who died for truth and justice!” tweeted professor and presidential candidate Cornel West. The suicide was, according to a writer for Current Affairs, “an act of courage and honor.” A professor at Gonzaga lamented he’d never “be able to muster up the courage of someone like Aaron Bushnell.”

Yet it’s hard to escape the conclusion that what they were attracted to wasn’t Bushnell’s courage but his vulnerability. A Veterans Affairs suicide prevention psychologist found in a 2017 study that guilt “had direct effects on” suicide ideation in military veterans. A 2021 study found that “[w]hen examined concurrently, guilt—but not shame—remained significantly associated with suicidal ideation, after accounting for effects of depressive symptoms and past suicide attempt.” According to an Ohio State Medical Center researcher, “literature has consistently implicated guilt in suicidality.” Those studies focused on the U.S. and UK. In similar research in Australia, “guilt was significantly associated with PTSD severity, anger, alcohol use, attempted suicide and being a contemporary veteran.”

I mention all of those simply to show that guilt, the category of emotion into which complicity falls, is nearly a universal marker of the chances of attempting suicide among military and veterans. It is emotional cyanide. The activists disrupting everyday life with cries of “genocide!” are feeding the population a steady dose of rat poison.

Redemption politics have always been a mainstay of extreme political movements—the Soviet gulags themselves were seen as purifying by their sociopathic wardens. And that concept is clearly driving the campaign of human sacrifice that has claimed real victims and whose ringleaders seem to be taking only encouragement from that fact.
Jewish Londoners ‘make plans to flee capital’ amid huge antisemitism wave
Growing numbers of Jewish families are considering fleeing London for abroad because of rising antisemitism in the capital, campaigners warned on Tuesday as they demanded tougher action to combat intimidation and hate.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism said some Jewish residents had already left because of fears for their safety.

But it added that the number of those considering leaving London was increasing daily in response to hostility being displayed towards them.

The campaign group has exposed a series of antisemitic attacks in London amid reports of increasing nervousness among Jewish people about their safety.

Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said an earlier opinion survey had already shown that about half of Jewish people were considering moving abroad and that the trend was growing because of continuing hostility from sections of the community.

He said examples ranged from threats made to MPs and outside Parliament to antisemitism in universities and attacks on the streets, as well as

the impact of Gaza protest marches involving incidents of antisemitism and support for Hamas terrorism.

“We are aware of people now who have left the country. It’s the biggest untold story, the effect it’s having on Jewish families of mass intimidation. The cumulative effect is pretty devastating,” he said.
  • Tuesday, March 05, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon


Yesterday, Hezbollah shot several anti-tank missiles at targets in Israel, killing a Thai worker and injuring seven others.

Hezbollah's weapons are usually laser guided, meaning that they cannot easily miss. Those workers were the targets.

But Hezbollah celebrated the attacks with a video:

It turns out that the song playing in this celebration of murder is a 2009 classic, "Death to Israel." There are lots of people who took this song and made their own music videos out of it. 

Here is a mostly machine-generated translation:

I write with bleeding blood...death, death to Israel,
and I create with bleeding flesh...death,death,death to Israel
From the wounds of Al-Durrah, Al-Ayyash, and Izz Al-Din...create the days of victory. 
Challenge the angry occupiers from the land of Jerusalem...expel a usurping occupier...Get that one out of your house...That humiliated Zionist

I write with bleeding blood..death.Death to Israel.
And I do with bleeding flesh..death.death.Death to Israel.

I hit them with stones, with a slingshot and with a knife... I chase them day and night, for my resolve is strong

Be a volcano of fire, be a sijjil stone
In the language of your Jihad repeat: “Death to Israel”

 ... Do not consider that his equipment and the weapons of the soldiers are dangerous

I write in bleeding blood...death, death to Israel
And do to the bleeding body...death, death, death to Israel

Be a red death, do not have mercy on the aggression army... whoever wears the uniform of soldiering and settlement
From the land of angry Jerusalem... expel the usurping occupier... remove that humiliated Zionist from your home...

I write in bleeding blood...death, death to Israel
And do with the bleeding body...death,death,death to Israel...death to Israel

It doesn't seem like they are singing for Palestinian liberation, are they?


(h/t Ibn Boutros)




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By Daled Amos

If you are in the business of looking for examples of media bias, one endless source is Donald Trump.
Another is Israel.

That is what Newsbusters has found. They are part of the Media Research Center (MRC):
The mission of the Media Research Center is to document and combat the falsehoods and censorship of the news media, entertainment media and Big Tech in order to defend and preserve America's founding principles and Judeo-Christian values.
They even have a section on their site dedicated to Israel/Palestine.

In a recent article, they cover the problem of bias in the media coverage of Israel following the Hamas massacre on October 7 -- namely, the pro-Israel bias of CNN.

That is what Christiane Amanpour and her fellow Arab journalists claim. According to The Intercept, CNN has a double standard when it comes to Israel, and there is an anti-Arab climate at the media institution:
In the hourlong meeting at CNN’s London Bureau on February 13, staffers took turns questioning a panel of executives about CNN’s protocols for covering the war in Gaza and what they describe as a hostile climate for Arab reporters. Several junior and senior CNN employees described feeling devalued, embarrassed, and disgraced by CNN’s war coverage.
I never would have thought of CNN harboring a pro-Israel bias.
Nor would I have thought of CNN having an anti-Arab bias.

Yet that is what CNN journalists claim:
“I was in southern Lebanon during October and November,” one journalist said. “And it was more distressing for me to turn on CNN, than the bombs falling nearby.”

...Instead of finding solace in CNN’s coverage of the war, the staffer continued, “I find that my colleagues, my family, are platforming people over and over again, that are either calling for my death, or using very dehumanizing language against me … and people that look like me. And obviously, this has a huge impact in our credibility in the region.”

The journalist posed a question to the executives: “I want to ask as well, what have you done, and what are you doing to address the hate speech that fills our air and informed our coverage, especially in the first few months of the war?”

...Another staffer disputed that characterization and noted that Arab and Muslim journalists walk a difficult line between feeling proud of working for CNN while facing pressure from their families and communities over working for a network with a pronounced pro-Israel bias.
What is the anti-Arab bias this journalist is talking about?
The Intercept helpfully fills in the blanks:
Another newsroom staffer chimed in to object to the network’s uncritical coverage of statements by Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. “I think a lot of us felt very strongly about the fact that there were very senior anchors not challenging people like, comments like, the defense minister using what is considered under international law, genocidal language, ‘human animals,’ all of those things that made up the first seven pages of the South African legal case at the ICJ,” referring to the International Court of Justice.

...The staffer went on to say that Muslim or Arab journalists at CNN were made to feel that they must denounce Hamas to clear their names and be taken seriously as journalists. “I’ve heard this, where a number of younger colleagues now feel that they didn’t want to put their hands up to speak up even in the kind of the local Bureau meeting,” the staffer said. “People were taking their names off bylines.”
What The Intercept thought was the icing on the cake reveals what is really going on. Criticism and objections aimed at Hamas are being interpreted as attacks on Palestinian Arabs and on Arabs in general.

One issue is the alleged verbal threats. As far as the allegedly genocidal comments by Israeli officials go, Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic has an article, What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza? that addresses this. He goes point by point, quote by quote, and demonstrates that quotes directed at Hamas are being twisted to make it seem they are directed at Gazans and Palestinian Arabs in general. That Arab journalists would be expected to denounce Hamas terrorists for the massacre and rape of Israeli civilians is hardly extreme. But the claim by these journalists that such an expectation was unreasonable and unexpected is.

Another issue is that some of the claims by CNN journalists of their reaction to alleged anti-Arab prejudice sound similar to what Jews have long suffered, first on college campuses and now on the streets around the world. We hear about Jews being told they need to condemn Israel or Zionism. For years, the media has reported that Jews are afraid to do anything or wear anything that reveals their Jewish identity. Now, Arab journalists claim they are intimidated by the idea they should condemn Hamas or afraid to raise their hand at a meeting.

This is reminiscent of CAIR's claims about rising Islamophobia.

Investor's Business Daily had an article in 2006 describing CAIR's exaggerated claims about attacks against Muslims:
New FBI data on hate crimes reveal Muslim groups are crying wolf about exploding anti-Muslim abuses. They're actually shrinking, belying claims of mass Islamophobia.
The article went on to point out that the data indicated that 66% of religiously motivated attacks targeted Jews, but 11% were carried out against Muslims.

FBI data showed that hate crimes against Muslims, while a reality, were clearly declining.


But that did not stop CAIR from issuing its 2006 report where it said it hopes "the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and Congress will come to understand the full scope of anti-Muslim discrimination and rising Islamophobia in our nation today."

Fortunately, CAIR is not the only source for hate crimes against Muslims:
The FBI report gives lie to CAIR's alarmist narrative of "Islamophobic" lynch mobs marching on mosques across America. In reality, Americans have been remarkably, and admirably, tolerant and respectful of Muslims and their institutions since 9/11.
There were 2,042 reported incidents based on religion. More than half of these (1,122) were driven by anti-Jewish bias. Incidents involving anti-Muslim (158) and anti-Sikh (181) sentiments remained at similar levels compared to 2021.
It's fair to ask if CAIR is still exaggerating reports of Muslim hate crimes.

This issue of antisemitism vs Islamophobia can also be flipped around. We hear the accusation that Jews weaponize antisemitism to deflect criticism of Israel. Rarely is the accusation supported with examples. Some criticize the IHRA definition of antisemitism for the same deflection, even though that definition explicitly says not all criticism of Israel is antisemitism.

Western Islamists utilize Islamophobia as a label for any criticism not just of Islam and Muslims but also of themselves. Any scrutiny of Islamist ideology and actors can be easily labelled as racist, an attempt by people with privilege to silence marginalized voices of color. This charge is made also against critics of Islamism with a Muslim background, as they too are not rarely accused of being Islamophobes.
This reminds me of a report in 2011 when French President Sarkozy's advisor said Muslims should wear a "green star" to protest against a debate on secularism and Islam.

Abderrahmane Dahmane, former diversity adviser of French President
 Nicolas Sarkozy points to a green star during a news conference
 in front of the Grande Mosque of Paris on March 29, 2011.

Then, too, Muslims claimed to suffer discrimination that rivaled, if not surpassed, the suffering of the Jews.

The irony then was that the yellow star originated not with the Nazis but with the Muslims themselves.
Just as the current upsurge of hostility against Jews and Muslims originates in no small part from the Hamas massacre. 

Hate crimes exist, and there is more than enough hate to go around.
Before accusing Jews of weaponizing Jew hatred, perhaps those accusers should look in their own backyard.




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!

 

 

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: The Demand for a Ceasefire Is a Demand for the Annihilation of Israel
When the Americans and British bombed Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed. But it was not a crime. This was a necessity in order to defeat the Nazi axis of evil. When the U.S. bombed Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa to defeat al-Qaeda or ISIS, thousands were killed. This was not a war crime. It was a necessity, even though there was no existential threat to the West.

When Hamas leaders repeatedly declare their intent to exterminate the Jews, and embark on a campaign to murder innocents, Israel is forced to defeat Hamas. As Razi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, declared: "October 7 was only the first time. There will be a second and third and fourth time." So it is not only Israel's right to defeat Hamas. It is Israel's duty.

A demand for a ceasefire is tantamount to supporting the resumption of Hamas' extermination efforts. Anyone who would have proposed a ceasefire with Germany without the complete surrender of the Nazis would have been considered insane.
WSJ Editorial: Playing Hamas' Game on Aid to Gaza
After the tragic stampede at a Gaza aid convoy on Thursday, President Biden decided to airdrop some aid to the strip and increase his pressure on Israel. The onus on Israel plays into Hamas' strategy: Place civilians in maximum danger and trust the international community to set up Israel to take the blame.

In war, civilians flee to safety. Only in Gaza has the world decided that all civilians must stay trapped in the war zone, in danger and harder to reach with aid. One would expect Egypt to face great pressure to save lives. The opposite occurred. Rather than demand that Egypt follow its obligation under international law to accept refugees from the fighting next door, the U.S., UN and aid organizations took up Egypt's position and admonished Israel not to "displace" civilians from Gaza.

Only when it can damage Israel does it become the liberal position to close the borders and keep refugees penned in a war zone. Instead of civilians fleeing the fighting, receiving aid in freer conditions and then returning after the war, they have been kept in Gaza to serve as "Israel's problem." Rather than get Gazans to safety, the world's humanitarian organs have demanded that Israel cease fire, leaving Hamas in power with hostages in tow. Gazans need aid, and they also need the world to stop playing Hamas' game.
Why aren’t the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack designated as terrorist organizations?
On Oct. 7, a horrific act of terrorism claimed the lives of 1,200 people in Southern Israel, with over 240 others taken hostage into the Gaza Strip. Among those killed were at least 32 Americans, with multiple others still held captive in Gaza.

While the primary terrorist organization leading the massacre was Hamas, six other Iranian-backed terror groups participated in the carnage as well. Despite the American blood on their hands, some of these groups are still not designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) by the U.S. State Department, which provides them with an unacceptable level of operational freedom.

This should be rectified forthwith. Not only would an FTO designation ensure that these groups, their members and their allies face the most crippling and wide-ranging sanctions possible, it would also serve as a powerful declaration that the United States stands firm in its resolve that those responsible for Oct. 7 will not escape justice.

Among the groups involved in this appalling act that are already classified as FTOs are Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. That leaves three groups — the Popular Resistance Committees, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) — undesignated.

All three groups clearly meet the criteria for an FTO designation, namely Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and Section 140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989.

In fact, some of these organizations have for years faced calls to be designated as FTOs, such as the Popular Resistance Committees, the third-largest terror group in Gaza. One of the group’s notable attacks came in 2003 when it detonated a 200-pound bomb beside a convoy in Gaza that killed three American security guards and injured a U.S. diplomat. On multiple occasions, spokesmen for the organization explicitly acknowledged that it receives financial and military support from Tehran and Hezbollah.
Israel Demands UN Security Council Declare Hamas a Terror Organization
Israel demanded Tuesday that the United Nations (UN) Security Council convene to recognize Hamas as a terror organization, in the wake of a UN report confirming Hamas committed rape against Israelis in the October 7 attack.

As Breitbart News reported Monday, the UN issued a report largely confirming Israel’s accusations, noting that Hamas terrorists had committed gang rapes on October 7, and was also committing sexual violence against Israeli hostages.

“Israel calls for the immediate convening of the UN Security Council with the aim of declaring Hamas a terrorist organization,” Avi Hyman, an Israeli government spokesperson, said. “Now, even the UN recognizes Hamas’s horrific sexual crimes.”

Though Hamas is clearly a terrorist organization, the UN has refused to recognize it as one. As the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) has noted:
The UN does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist group despite decades of suicide bombings, thousands of rockets launched indiscriminately at Israeli cities, and the barbaric actions of October 7. In addition, the UN body formerly known as the 1267 Committee, now known as the ISIL (Dae’sh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, does not view Hamas (or any other Iranian proxy) as a terrorist group.

The UN’s refusal to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization is the result of the influence of Islamic nations, as well as Russia and China, which adopt a generally anti-Western stance.

In that regard, the UN report Monday was unusual.
  • Tuesday, March 05, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
The UN report on sexual violence by Gazans on October 7 says:

In Kibbutz Be’eri, the mission team determined that at least two allegations of sexual violence, which had been widely reported in the media, were unfounded. These included the graphically publicized case of a pregnant woman whose womb had reportedly been torn open, before she was killed, and her fetus stabbed while still inside her. 

The leading independent researcher on the rapes and sexual abuse by Hamas is Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy. In a press conference on November 14, she described the evidence for that exact incident - and it is all on video.



I want to bring one one example we've heard from the in the first week of the war of a pregnant woman found slaughtered.  It was broadcast in international media in the second weekend.  We were shocked we're like 'could it be that they took a baby out of a woman's womb?'  

The second week of the war we've heard about it from the rescue teams; we got a report that the rescue team collected a body of a woman and the baby. And the third week or a few days afterwards we got the information from Shura [military base] from treating the body of of this woman.  

And the most terrible thing is that last week we got the video of this woman.

Now I didn't know what really happened to her, we could only imagine,  but to see the video - I didn't see it,  I had a person next to me describing exactly what it is,  I couldn't watch - it was alive.  I didn't imagine that she was alive,  I don't know,  I just imagined that she was dead while they did it,  but that she was alive,  she had her mouth covered with something,  her breasts were cut while she was screaming and tortured,  the baby they cut it up, they cut open her belly.  I couldn't really  understand that this has happened.  

Did the UN even speak to Dr. Elkayam-Levy? How could it possibly say that this report was "unfounded?"

Now compare the standards of evidence required by this UN team for Israeli evidence compared to Palestinian allegations of sexual violence by the IDF.

It says:

In other locations, such as kibbutz Kfar Azza, while circumstantial information may indicate some forms of sexual violence, the mission could not verify reported incidents of rape. 

Compare to:

The mission team also visited Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to hear the views and concerns of Palestinian officials and civil society representatives in response to allegations of conflict-related sexual violence received by the mandate in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, allegedly implicating Israeli security forces and settlers. Interlocutors raised concerns about cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention, including various forms of sexual violence in the form of invasive body searches, threats of rape, and prolonged forced nudity, as well as sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house raids and at checkpoints. This information will complement information already verified by other UN entities on allegations of CRSV in Gaza and the occupied West Bank for potential inclusion in the annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.

For Israel, they are quick to deny and reluctant to confirm. Extensive forensic evidence is required to verify the testimony of Jews who cannot be trusted on their own. 

For Palestinians, allegations with zero evidence are published in detail and considered important enough to be included in future reports. Not a shred of skepticism is seen with the Palestinian slanders. No hint of corroborating evidence is requested or even expected. 

It seems clear that if Palestinians are accused of a crime, then the UN requires  "balance" by uncirtically reporting whatever they make up.

This UN investigation does everything it can to minimize Hamas crimes, only publishing what cannot possibly be denied. But when it comes to wild accusations against the IDF, no evidence is sought or required.

(h/t Irene)




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  • Tuesday, March 05, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Fikra Forum of the Washington Institute asked Egyptians in November/December what they thought of Hamas after the October 7 massacres.

While we had seen other polls showing broad approval of Hamas' terrorist attacks in the Arab world, this one is especially interesting because it compares Egyptian attitudes of Hamas after October 7 with their historic disapproval of the group.

The turnround in Egyptian attitudes towards Hamas is stunning.

In 2020, 73% of Egyptians viewed Hamas negatively and 23% positively. That has now flipped to 75% who now approve of Hamas compared to only 21% who disapprove.

The poll showed that Hamas' newfound popularity has not bled over to Hamas' allies. Egyptian attitudes towards the Muslim Brotherhood are worse than ever before - an overwhelming 87% disapproval rating. And 79% had a negative opinion of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

How to explain this? 

Look at the answers to one other question:  Over 70% agreed that "Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their other militia allies are actually unwilling or unable to help the Palestinians, no matter what they claim."

Egyptians think that Hamas is the only group that actually risks its members to fight Israel; the other groups are just blowhards. There is no bravery in lobbing rockets from a distance. That is why Hamas is so popular: its willingness for martyrdom in its zeal to murder Jews up close.

The poll also found that 94% of Egyptians don't believe that Hamas killed civilians on October 7.  This is in line with Palestinian polls that showed that over 90% also don't believe that Hamas committed any war crimes on that date.

These results show the amount of cognitive dissonance necessary in order to maintain an antisemitic attitude. Hamas' own videos show explicit attacks on civilians but people who support Hamas cannot square those atrocities with their beliefs that Hamas is righteous and the only war criminals are Israelis. The only way to make it make sense is to invoke another antisemitic conspiracy theory: all the evidence of Hamas atrocities are Jewish lies. 

Jew-hatred is endlessly pliable and can be used to explain anything. 




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!

 

 

  • Tuesday, March 05, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
JordanZad, a Jordanian news agency, has trafficked in pure antisemitism for years. has taken the next step.

It is praising Hitler for killing Jews.

The title of column by Dr. Haitham Abdel Karim Ahmed Al-Rababa is, simply, "Heil Hitler."

In light of the aggression, the criminal war, and the escalating events by the Zionist occupation against the Palestinians, especially children, women, and the elderly, some are searching for the most prominent things said by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi German politician. He wanted to exterminate them from the face of the earth, so his view of them was correct that they were the cause of the devastation that was coming upon the world, so he burned them.

The reason for Hitler's hatred of the Jews is because before Hitler took power, the Jews controlled the media and art and spread kitsch and theaters that promoted homosexuality, and this type led to the Germans revolting.

When World War II broke out, he burned the Jews in the famous incident of the Holocaust, where the Jews succeeded in promoting that Hitler burned more than a million Jews, but historians believe that this number is exaggerated, and only 100 to 200 thousand Jews were burned.

...In September 1939, World War II broke out, as Germany invaded Poland. The Jews in Poland were forced to live in specific areas called ghettos, and they were persecuted and many of these pigs were killed. At the end of 1940, the Nazis reached the necessity of having extermination camps to get rid of the Jewish population. In Europe, an extermination camp was established in every country in which hundreds of thousands of Jewish Zionists were killed . Camps were established in Poland, Belarus, Serbia, Ukraine, and Croatia.

I have come to the conclusion that even though 100 years have passed, Israel with this mentality will never be safe in these lands. Because it has built its entire existence on injustice, seizure and genocide.

... In the past, the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas hoped for help from the Islamic world. But everyone now knows that this unity collapsed after the martyrdom of the leader of the nation and the symbol of the Arabs, the martyr Saddam Hussein, and that many of the countries that were founded after that became under the control of global imperialism. Today, Hamas has become more rational and a symbol of jihad and struggle against the usurping Zionists. 
Dr. Al-Rababa is a professor of modern comparative linguistics.

Even when Arab media embraces Nazism, the West shuts its eyes.





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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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