Thursday, March 07, 2024
- Thursday, March 07, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Thursday, March 07, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
It mentions the challenges of figuring out the truth:
The mission team also faced specific challenges in the gathering and verification of incidents of sexual violence included: limited professionally-gathered forensic material; inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations by non-professionals; the extremely limited availability of victims/survivors and witnesses of sexual violence due inter alia to the internal displacement of affected communities....But when it went to interview Palestinians for their accusations of IDF soldiers sexually abusing Arabs, none of these standards were used.
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.The Jews who witnessed the attacks are cross-checked with forensic evidence and photos and videos, verified with other witnesses, and anything that doesn't pass their supposedly professional standards is not even mentioned. But the Palestinian accusations are published in detail, with absolutely zero corroborating evidence. Their use of the word "allegations" does not water down the next sentence where the "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention" is published as fact.
It is even worse than what I am saying. Because not only do the media and "human rights organizations" and lawmakers assume Jews are liars, they believe that the lies are a conspiracy. After all, when the IDF is accused of a war crime, this means that an entire chain of command and many soldiers are part of the conspiracy, all lying in concert with each other.
Wednesday, March 06, 2024
Phyllis Chesler: The New Hamas Times
The New York Times simply cannot help themselves. Every time they write about Israel/Hamas/Gaza/Palestine they get it all wrong.The Free Press in Israel: A Special Limited Series
Their anti-Israel bias and their pro-Hamas bias is malicious. It also constitutes incitement to genocide since so many Westerners swear by what they read here.
I–and many others–have documented this pernicious bias hundreds of times and it has made no difference. The Times just digs its heels even harder. Why do I even bother? I just can’t help myself.
Someone has to speak truth to power. One must stand up to say that the Emperor is oh-so-very naked. As Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men (and women) to do nothing.”
Let’s look at the language the Times uses. The piece, by Farnaz Fassihi and Isabel Kershner, is titled, “Signs of Sexual Abuse in Several Locations in Hamas Attack.” “Signs?” Only “signs?” In “several locations?” Not in the south of Israel? Not at a music festival? Not as strategized and funded by Iran and launched by Hamas?
Online, the Times changed the title to “U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attack.” Of course, they also discuss “reports of abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention.” Of course.
Here’s their language in a previous piece based on Gazan Health Ministry statistics.
On February 29th, 2024, the Times titled their article: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd in an Aid Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll.” The authors, Hiba Yazbek and Aaron Boxerman write:
“The Gazan Health Ministry said in a statement that Israeli forces had killed more than 100 people and injured 700 others in a ‘massacre’, as they waited for food from the convoy. The latest bloodshed came as Gaza’s health officials reported that the death toll from the war had risen above 30,000, a grim milestone that intensified pressure on Israel to end its military offensive.”
They do not write that Hamas “claims” that this number is accurate or that there are “signs” or “grounds” for believing these figures.
Why do they refuse to understand who Hamas officials really are–yes, including the Health Ministry? They are terrorists, not resistance fighters. Even President Biden “told reporters that he had ‘no confidence’ in how Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip has calculated the mounting death toll.”
“I don’t know if I should go,” I told my husband. It was a few days before I was supposed to fly from my home in Atlanta to Tel Aviv with Bari and a small team of Free Press producers to report on the war. I had the ticket. I am the executive producer of Honestly and I needed to be there. I just didn’t know if I could get on the plane.Daniel Greenfield: Feminist Gender Theorist Explains Hamas Raping Jewish Women is “Resistance”
There were the practical reasons holding me back: I have two small children and I had never been away from them for anything close to an entire week. There were the safety concerns that kept me up at night: I am the kind of person who does not like to shower when I am alone in my house. I bring pepper spray with me wherever I go.
But there were also intangible, existential things eating away at me.
The last time I had been to Israel was a decade ago, when I lived in Jerusalem after college. I was young and hungry, and I devoured the country.
I loved its motley cultures, the country’s ancient history, the way everyday people found a way to live inside one of the most contested pieces of land in the world. Israelis are often called sabras, after the thorny desert cactus: prickly, thick, harsh on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside. I remember a man yelling at me on the bus one afternoon after I mistakenly took his seat. Minutes later, as my dates and grapes and tomatoes from the market spilled out of my bags, he helped pick them up. We happened to get off at the same stop, and he carried my heavy groceries for me all the way to my apartment.
I also felt safe there, both in a practical sense (I would walk the streets alone late at night without hesitation) and also in a deeply emotional sense. I was safe in Israel as a Jew. And as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who once had no place to flee, I realized how precious and profound that feeling was.
Now, months after Hamas invaded the country, I knew that Israel was gone. What I would find in its place, I didn’t know.
But I went. I went because I wanted to know.
The sun was just beginning to rise as we flew over the Mediterranean Sea and past the city-side beaches of Tel Aviv, but you couldn’t tell because it was an overcast and foggy morning. I looked at the in-flight map in front of me and I thought of the two redheaded boys—ages 1 and 4, the same age as my own children back home—who are being held as hostages by Hamas in Gaza. I thought: if only we could fly just a few more minutes south, we could reach them. We walked down the long hallway from the gate to customs and saw those two redheaded boys—on posters lining the walkway—along with hundreds of others, some already confirmed dead.
Judith Butler has always been ahead of her time.
She was ahead of her time in adopting pronouns and in promoting gender theory. And all the way back in 2006, the feminist gender theorist and UC Berkeley academic declared that Hamas was progressive.
“Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.”
Like most fanatics, Oct 7 only made Judith Butler double down on her belief in the progressive qualities of Hamas.
“We can have different views about Hamas as a political party, we can have different views about armed resistance. But […] the uprising of October 7th was an act of armed resistance,” Butler recently declared.
Butler’s brand of gender theory had begun the deconstruction of the idea that women exist. A few years ago, Butler was claiming the “trans” brand and arguing that “the category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way.”
Feminist gender theorists begin by declaring that women don’t exist and then conclude by justifying their rape and murder.
- Wednesday, March 06, 2024
- Varda Meyers Epstein (Judean Rose)
- Judean Rose, Nazi propaganda, Not Elder, Opinion, Palestinian propaganda, rape, Rashida Tlaib, United Nations, Varda, Varda Opinion, Zionist propaganda
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.”
Rashida Tlaib @RepRashida is the ONLY member of Congress who refuses to condemn Hamas’ rape. What an absolute sicko.
— Ellie Cohanim (@EllieCohanim) February 15, 2024
pic.twitter.com/JOtba7BCWE
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."
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".
I’d rather be an anti-Semite than a baby killer.
— Charles Bronson (@C_P8_8) February 12, 2024
Keep looking at what you’ve done: pic.twitter.com/Pae1ukbrsm
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.
Reem Alsalem, the @UNSRVAW (UN's Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls) is more than happy to vilify Israel but is silent about the constant barrage of rocket fire targeting millions of Israelis.
— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) March 5, 2024
Her response?
She hasn’t seen any reports of rockets being… pic.twitter.com/5Ijqh5b4Po
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
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! |
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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.The left serves as apologists for Hamas rapists' heinous crimes on Oct. 7
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?
Remember when rape was a sickening crime, and not a form of resistance?Aviva Klompas: Fresh Evidence That UNWRA Isn't Helping Anyone—Not Even the Palestinians
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.
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
-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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
- Wednesday, March 06, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon