Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Disgraced former HRW staffer fired for his Nazi memorabilia obsession now works for US Department of Defense

Remember Marc Garlasco, the former Human Rights Watch "senior military analyst" who was suspended and forced to resign when his hobby of avidly collecting Nazi memorabilia and bragging about how "cool" they are was exposed by a group of bloggers, myself included?

He has bounced from job to job. In December, PBS interviewed him as saying that Israeli non-guided bombs were inaccurate, while a real expert in air defense said he didn't know what he was talking about.

Now Garlasco has a new job - at the US Department of Defense.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Garlasco is now a Division Chief at the DoD, "promoting civilian harm mitigation and response for the US military" based out of Washington, DC. He started in January.

It seems likely that Garlasco was hired in conjunction with the DoD Instruction 3000.1 published in December, to "establish policy, assigns responsibilities, and provide procedures for civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR)."

This guy is the best they could find?

(h/t Irene)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

03/09 Links: Mossad: Hamas toughening demands for hostage deal, seeks Ramadan escalation; Families of Hostages Receive ‘Sign of Life’

From Ian:

Dermer to JNS, Part I: ‘We are sending Hamas to dustbin of history’

Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer is a member of Israel’s small five-member war cabinet, a team that includes three high-ranking generals and Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Dermer himself never served in the Israel Defense Forces. Further, Dermer is an unelected official who was appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to years of longstanding trust.

Dermer was a longtime senior adviser to the prime minister before being appointed as ambassador to the United States, where he served for eight years. He is widely considered to be among Israel’s most gifted diplomats and a master strategist. He was a key architect and negotiator of the 2020 Abraham Accords normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

Senior diplomats in other countries know that when they are speaking to Dermer, they are speaking with someone who has the prime minister’s full backing to execute matters on his behalf, and they understand that he knows the prime minister’s thinking better than anyone else. In many ways, Dermer is Israel’s unofficial vice premier.

As Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Dermer was tasked with three primary portfolios: to expand the regional circle of peace, including normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, the seat of Sunni Islam; to counter Iran and prevent the Shi’ite Islamic Republic from completing the development of illicit nuclear weapons; and to manage Israel’s diplomatic relationship with the United States. This in addition to any other projects he and the prime minister deem to be of major strategic importance.

Each of Dermer’s portfolios has played a major role in the lead-up to the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 and its aftermath. As a minister, member of the war cabinet, and trusted adviser, Dermer is one of the key strategists navigating a complex war that includes multiple military and diplomatic fronts, and endless challenges. And despite all of the domestic and international criticism relentlessly hurled at Netanyahu, most Israelis are satisfied with the prime minister’s handling of the war and the pressures associated with it.

This week, JNS sat with Dermer at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, ahead of a stormy cabinet meeting, and conducted a wide-ranging, deep dive into the strategic challenges Israel is facing.

Dermer to JNS, Part II: ‘Anybody talking about Palestinian state right now is living on another planet’

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the war has been the overbearing calls for a pathway to Palestinian statehood in the aftermath of the worst terror massacre in Israel’s history.

In the 1993, Israel entered into the ill-fated Oslo Accords designed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a two-state solution. While Israel is a relatively tiny country, without much land to give, the Jewish state was prepared to cede strategic tracts in exchange for quiet coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors. The formula, simple enough for a child to understand, was called “land for peace.”

The accords called for the establishment of a provisional Palestinian Authority, to be led by thrice-exiled arch-terrorist PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

Many argued that the accords were doomed to fail. The P.A. never prepared its people for coexistence, continuously inciting its public to violence on television and school textbooks, and naming public squares after terrorists. To this day, the government provides stipends to terrorists sitting in Israeli jails, as well as to families of terrorists killed while in the act of attempting first-degree murder on Israelis. The terror financing scheme is dubbed “pay for slay.”

In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew 8,500 Jewish residents and all military infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

The Strip, the control of which was handed over to the P.A., was the pilot project for an independent Palestinian entity. Within two years, control of the Strip was wrestled away by Hamas. Since then, Israel has suffered countless attacks, including the firing of more than 50,000 rockets at Israel, the building of a 500-mile-long underground terror tunnel infrastructure, the kidnapping of Israeli citizens, and the worst massacre in Israel’s history on Oct. 7.

The massacre proved Israeli fears correct—that an independent Palestinian state would be a launchpad for continuous terror and an existential threat to the Jewish state. And yet the international community is now doubling down on calls for Palestinian statehood, regardless of the Palestinians’ inability to deliver Israel peace in exchange for the land it seeks.

In Part II of an exclusive interview with JNS, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs and member of a five-man war cabinet, Ron Dermer discusses plans for “the day after” the war in the Gaza Strip; the need for deradicalization of the Palestinian society; and why Palestinian statehood in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 would be a “historic mistake.”

Josh Frydenberg: It’s in Australia’s interest for Hamas to be decisively defeated

Hamas’ intentions are clear. Their stated objective is to achieve the destruction of Israel. To state the blindingly obvious, this leaves no room for negotiation or compromise.

Hamas may have launched its jihad attack under the false flag of freedom, but in reality what it has achieved is the opposite of that. It has damaged the Palestinian cause and its legitimate claim for self-determination. Israel’s war is with Hamas, not the Palestinian people who are now suffering greatly as a result of Hamas’ terrorist attack.

At a regional level, Hamas’ survival would also embolden its sponsor, Iran, and send a message to other proxies in the region that terrorism pays. It would guarantee that the Houthis and Hezbollah would continue with their provocations – provocations that have already seen more than 10 per cent of the world’s seaborne trade which passes through the Red Sea disrupted and the prospect of an all-out war in Lebanon become more likely. The momentum of the Abraham accords, which have already brought so much hope and promise to the region, will be dealt a severe blow.

The alignment between Israel and its Muslim neighbours stems in part from a common interest in countering the nefarious influence of Iran. A weakened Israel will have less chance of encouraging Saudi Arabia to normalise ties and the follow the path paved by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

At a global level, anything less than a crushing defeat for Hamas will strengthen the hand of those, including Vladimir Putin’s Russia, who are aggressively seeking to undermine the US-led global order. An international order that has delivered stability and prosperity for close to 80 years, benefiting many including Australia.

We need America to remain strong so that it can provide the leadership and resources we need in our part of the world. As the conflict in Gaza continues into its sixth month the focus will rightly be on ensuring the hostages are returned, humanitarian aid delivered and civilians protected.

But in doing so we must not lose sight of the need for Hamas to be comprehensively defeated. If we don’t support the advancement of this critical strategic objective, our national interest will be harmed.

Most Australians would never have heard of Kibbutz Be’eri as it is thousands of kilometres from our shores. But Israel’s ability to respond effectively to the atrocities committed there on October 7 very much matters to us here at home.

Boris Johnson: Anti-Semitism on our streets. A brutal dictator menacing his neighbours. We must heed the lesson of the 1930s... democracy is always more fragile than we think

Looking at the state of the world today, it is tempting to blame it all on a kind of collective amnesia. There are not many people alive who can remember the 1930s.

There aren’t many people who can remember the Europe of the dictators. People have forgotten the demands of Adolf Hitler — how he would endlessly use the alleged sufferings of German-speaking communities as a pretext for invasion of other countries.

There aren’t many of us who can remember the pre-war culture of casual anti-Semitism that was to be found in so many supposedly civilised European cities.

We know about it generally from watching documentaries, or films, or from reading books. But for the vast majority of the population it is not something that chimes in the memory. We don’t personally hear the echoes and the alarm bells that should be going off in our mind — because we no longer viscerally remember this stuff, and where it can lead.

It must be amnesia, because otherwise it is hard to explain how we fail to draw the comparisons between Hitler and Putin — both of them with their narrative of betrayal and the alleged injustices suffered by the speakers of his own language; both of them with their bogus interpretation of history; both of them claiming that they are committed to peace, and then using barbaric violence to further their demands; both of them habitual liars.

It must be a kind of mass amnesia about the horrors of the 1930s, because otherwise it is hard to explain how we can tolerate the upsurge in anti-Semitism — not just in continental Europe, this time, but also on the streets of our own capital.

We have Jewish people sitting peacefully on the Tube and told that ‘your religion kills people’.

We have SS signs daubed on the walls of synagogues.

We have students jeering at Jewish Society stalls at universities and we have huge crowds demonstrating, week in, week out, in major European capitals — including London — and calling for the homeland for the Jews to be wiped out, ‘from the river to the sea’.

According to the Community Security Trust, there has been a massive increase in anti-Semitic incidents of all kinds. So in the face of this memory loss — this weird senior moment on the part of humanity — let us remember where this all leads.

Look back at the 1930s, and remember the denouement of that low, dishonest decade. The 1930s climaxed with an appalling global conflict that cost millions of lives; they ended with the gas chambers and the Holocaust.

03/08 Links Pt2: The Hostage President; Biden's Push for Two-State Solution Rewards Terrorism; Hamas terror attack exposes Al Jazeera for what it really is

From Ian:

European Jew-hatred too deep to identify ‘even after years of therapy,’ Douglas Murray says

Traveling in the Arab world, the British journalist Douglas Murray has found “fanatical obsessives” who know something about Israel but still criticize the Jewish state. And then there are those who peddle “counterfactual history,” he told JNS.

“For instance, Egyptians think they won the war in 1973. Smart, Egyptian, young professionals will think that they won the war in 1973,” Murray told JNS, of the Yom Kippur War, during an interview in Toronto on Feb. 28 prior to his remarks at a Tafsik event.

“I had to break it to a friend in Cairo once that they lost badly. He said, ‘Really. I thought we whipped their ass?’” Murray said. “I said, ‘No, they whipped your ass. Seriously.’”

Since Oct. 7, Murray, 44, a best-selling author and associate editor of The Spectator, has done a lot of explaining about Israel on television—often on Piers Morgan’s show—and at speaking engagements. The Anglican-turned atheist’s largest social-media following includes many pro-Israel accounts that regularly share video footage of him denouncing Hamas, defending Israel and debating antisemitic guests.

Knesset member Danny Danon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, has called Murray a “great friend of Israel and of the Jewish people.”

“We need a special designation for those bravely standing with Jews and Israel in facing the greatest surge of Jew-hatred in decades. Let’s call them ‘Heroic Friends of the Jewish People,’” wrote former American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris, now vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. “My first candidate is Douglas Murray.”

Murray told JNS that many people aim to distance themselves from the Jewish state “because they don’t want Israel to be their problem.”

“Maybe if we come up with a perfect argument,” he said. “Maybe if we inform people about the history, and broadly speaking, you’re talking about trying to educate or inform people who are not educated or informed.”

Most anti-Israel people aren’t informed about the Peel Commission or the Balfour Declaration, according to Murray. “You’re talking about people who have never heard of any of these things,” he said.

“Among non-Muslims in the West, there’s a lot of ignorance, too. They fall into this psychopathy, in which they knowingly or unknowingly, usually unknowingly, desperately want to be able to accuse Jews of something,” Murray added. “That motivates them, and, of course, it makes them think that they’re good people.”

Bethany Mandel: Hamas terror attack exposes Al Jazeera for what it really is

In the wake of the attacks on Israel October 7, the role that the media network Al Jazeera has played cannot be understated. It is an arm of the regime in Qatar, which serves as a safe haven and benefactor for Hamas, which perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.

In a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yigal Carmon outlines how the Qatari-owned media empire promotes Islamist terror worldwide. That cooperation between Hamas and Al Jazeera is no more clearly evident than how it covered the attacks of October 7.

The network aired "exclusive" clips of the attacks, and Carmon explains, "This footage could only have been obtained from Hamas itself. The Al Jazeera reporter abandoned any pretense of neutrality, proclaiming gleefully that "the settler walls… collapsed… along with the iron image of the arrogant occupation army."

Within the rules and regulations to obtain press credentials at the United States House of Representatives, it is said, "they will not act as an agent for, or be employed by the Federal, or any State, local or foreign government or representatives thereof." These are generally the rules for any press credentials across government, in the U.S. Senate, White House, etc.

And yet, Al Jazeera retains this access, and in 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice required that the media network register as a foreign agent in accordance with Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) laws.

Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen outlined why in a report prepared for Congress, explaining that the network "repeatedly undermines U.S. interests in the region by supporting extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and [the] Al-Nusrah [Front]. […] Moreover, Qatar uses its state-owned, state-funded, state-directed and state-controlled Al Jazeera Media Network to project this vision to the U.S. public."

Since October 7, and the ensuing conflict, Al Jazeera has plainly been operating as an official mouthpiece for Hamas. In his report for MEMRI, Carmon explains, "Since October 7, Al-Jazeera has been airing official military announcements and threats by Hamas spokesmen – as well as by other terror organizations – on an almost daily basis, serving as a semi-official amplifier of Hamas messaging, often featuring outlandish claims of military successes by the group."

Seth Mandel: The Hostage President

Biden also made sure to remind the chamber and those watching at home that Americans reject bigotry, “give hate no safe harbor.” Indeed, he said, “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

It all sounded like a prelude to a discussion about the specific and undeniable prejudice dominating American institutions and the public square. But, as my colleague Abe Greenwald noted on today’s Commentary podcast, there was no mention of the tidal wave of anti-Semitism currently washing away the credibility and legitimacy of mainstream institutions—not even in the typical formulation in which it is balanced with Islamophobia, though there is no chilling epidemic of the latter. It is surely relevant to the state of our union that Jewish college students are subject to a more openly aggressive version of the bigotry they would have faced a century ago at those same universities, that street violence against Jews has become a regular occurrence, that the Jewish singer Matisyahu has had to hire extra staff and security to perform after two of his recent shows were canceled over venue workers’ discomfort with Jews, and that in the America of 2024 a bar in Salt Lake City can hang a sign that says “No Zionists Allowed”—as have campus shops and other establishments.

The president succeeded last night in showing vigor and emotional range and improvisational aplomb. So we can only conclude that all of the above didn’t make it into his speech for the sole reason that he and his staff didn’t want to talk about it.

Just like his brief drive from the White House to the Capitol before the speech, Joe Biden had to take a detour around the traditional route he might have taken had he been permitted to do so by his party’s considerable anti-Zionist freakshow contingent. The president is engaged in an ongoing hostage negotiation with his own party, and he is the hostage. Mr. President, blink twice if no one’s bringing you ice cream.

The floating pier plan will fail. Here's why.

During the State of the Union address, President Biden stated:

Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.

No U.S. boots will be on the ground. A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.

And Israel must do its part. Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the crossfire. They’re announcing they’re going to have a crossing to northern Gaza.

The Gaza pier plan will not work.

The problem with aid distribution is that Hamas keeps trying to disrupt it so Israel would be blamed for the resultant suffering. They are hijacking aid, shooting into crowds, instigating riots and in general trying to make it look like Israel cannot keep the peace the way Hamas could.

Bringing the aid into Gaza has not been the primary problem; getting it to the people safely has been. It is a lot easier to disrupt delivery than to do the logistics of distribution.

The IDF is good at logistics but this is an entirely different problem. Hamas is turning even food distribution into a military action where civilians must be protected from their own purported people who can pop up from tunnels and shoot at them to start the next stampede easier than they can shoot the IDF.

The World Food Programme acknowledges the danger, which is why it was forced to stop doing it themselves.

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.

There have been rumors about an Egyptian truck driver beaten to death trying to bring in aid.

It isn't only Hamas trying to frustrate aid to Gazans. The Palestinian Authority already rejected the plan to bring in goods by ship when Cyprus and Israel agreed to that plan in December.

It is insane that the IDF, which is doing everything possible to feed Gazans under these circumstances, is routinely portrayed as the devil in news stories and NGO reports.

Logistics is not as exciting as combat, but they are what makes things happen. It takes time and a lot of people to build a program like this where Hamas doesn't take all the aid for itself.

Apparently, it isn't even easy to airdrop food by parachute without killing people. If such a comparatively simple task is fatal, how much more difficult is it to transport and distribute food safely to millions of people?

If only there were reporters who could actually dig into the complexity of the problem - but there aren't.

And one has to wonder why.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

03/08 Links Pt1: The war in the Middle East has barely begun; Biden's Bridge to Nowhere; Silence from women in UN is 'deafening'

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The war in the Middle East has barely begun

Which brings me to my second unreported fact. And I hope you’ve had your breakfast before digesting this.

I was on the Lebanon border 18 years ago, during the 2006 war with Israel. I well remember the shelling and the firing. Seeing the activity there in recent months (where it is much more heated than either side wants to admit) has persuaded me of something. The war in the Middle East has not yet begun. Or at least what we have seen in Gaza is merely an opening skirmish.

No country could cope with significant swaths of its population being permanently displaced from their homes. But what the world outside the region seems not to realise is that Gaza is a sideshow. The real showdown in the region will be with Tehran.

The 2006 conflict came to a halt because the UN Security Council passed a resolution – 1701 – which assured peace with the promise that Hezbollah would not be permitted to rebuild its arsenal on Israel’s border. Since people are very keen on UN resolutions, it mystifies me that they never bothered to enforce this one. Perhaps it is the case that the UN needn’t abide by all its resolutions.

If you stand in a deserted town like Metula, right on the Lebanon border, you can see Hezbollah outposts everywhere, including observation posts. The other week I went into a hotel there that had been bombed the day before, and was told to get out because Hezbollah could see that my cameraman and I had gone in and they were likely to shell it again. Camera footage from the day before showed a UN ‘peacekeeping’ vehicle leave its base along the border. Hezbollah fired off a barrage of rockets into Israel – as they do with some regularity – and the UN vehicle simply did a U-turn and returned to base. That isn’t peacekeeping – it’s war-watching. So since the international community doesn’t abide by its own resolutions and has allowed Hezbollah to re-arm, it seems that it will be left to Israel to do what is needed to allow its citizens to return home. And that’s not possible solely from the air.

I hate to be the harbinger of bad news, or war. But the Middle East war has not begun. Everything so far has been a prelude.

The Transfer of War into Enemy Territory to Remove the Threat of Invasion into Israel

Until the 1980s, the occupation of territory and transfer of the war into enemy territory for the purpose of removing the threat of invasion into Israel were central components in the IDF's perception of warfare. Later, the holding of conquered territory that contained an enemy population prepared to conduct guerrilla warfare was perceived as a liability rather than an advantage.

Ever since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the IDF has immediately withdrawn from every territory it conquered, forfeiting any achievement provided by the occupation of territory.

Yet, occupying territory serves multiple purposes on all levels of warfare. On the tactical level, it can be used to capture advantageous positions from the enemy. On the operational level, it can disrupt enemy formations. On the strategic level, the enemy's capital can be occupied for the purpose of regime change.

Losing territory is a painful loss for Israel's enemies. Hamas in Gaza wants to "return" to Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and indeed the rest of Israel. Hizbullah is fighting for the Galilee foothills. Territory remains as important to Israel's enemies as it ever was. Therefore, Israel's holding of enemy territory constitutes a serious loss for those enemies.

Holding territory is also a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations. This was the case with Egypt and Syria in the agreements on the separation of forces at the end of the Yom Kippur War, and later in the framework of the peace agreement with Egypt.

Residents should not be allowed to return to captured territory until Israel's desired diplomatic arrangement is achieved, even if this means the IDF maintains a security zone for months or years in the enemy's territory.

Preventing the return of the population is not for the purpose of punishing them. Rather, it is for the same reason that they were evacuated before the war: to minimize the chances of their being harmed. Territory captured during ground combat will remain largely destroyed and will lack any basic electricity or water infrastructure, and it will be filled with ruins and explosive remnants. Fighting is also likely to continue to occur in the area, even if only sporadically.

First Lady Michal Herzog: Silence from women in UN is 'deafening'

Sexual violence against women – and men as well – in Israel has been ignored systemically on an international level since the war against Hamas broke out on Oct. 7.

Slowly but surely since then, the evidence has been mounting that could no longer be ignored, forcing international human rights and women’s organizations to recognize the suffering that Israelis of the South endured.

Israeli women have been at the forefront of presenting the realities of the Oct. 7 atrocities on the global stage, and no one has been a more prominent advocate for Israeli women than First Lady Michal Herzog.

“The relentless work that Israeli women and Jewish women around the world are doing is having an effect, and it’s causing some change in the way human rights organizations, especially the UN, look at what happened on Oct. 7,” Herzog told the Magazine in an interview at the President’s Residence on the occasion of International Women’s Day, which is marked today.

“It took eight weeks for UN Women to put one phrase of condemnation together – and not a very deep condemnation,” she said.

The interview was conducted prior to the report released this Monday by Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten, who confirmed that she and her team had received conclusive evidence pointing to sexual violence, torture, rape, and necrophilia against Israelis on Oct. 7.

At the time, Herzog had expressed confidence in the report’s revealing, as it ended up doing, the truth about the Oct. 7 massacre.

Michelle Goldberg writes in the New York Times:

We Need to Talk About This Republican Candidate’s Antisemitism

Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, has for some reason not bothered to take down his old Facebook posts about the Jews.

“There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, wrote in one 2017 post. (The reason was left unsaid, but the scare quotes spoke loudly.) He regularly argued on Facebook that focusing on the evils of Nazism obscured the greater danger: the one represented by the Democratic Party. “George Soros is alive. Adolf Hitler is dead,” he wrote in one post, and in another, “Who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”

In 2018, Robinson, who is Black, offered some thoughts about what he seemed to see as a Jewish plot behind the hit movie “Black Panther.” The title character, he wrote, was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist,” calling the movie “trash” that was “created to pull the shekels” from the pockets of Black people, whom he referred to using a Yiddish slur. ["shvartze" - EoZ.] He has refused to apologize for these statements, though he called them “poorly worded” and has denied that he’s antisemitic.

None of this appears to have hurt Robinson with the Republican electorate in North Carolina, where on Tuesday he won nearly 65 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial primary.

I looked at Robinson's posts she mentions and others. He's nuts. And he has a lot in common with the antisemites of the Left.

Like the "progressive" antisemites, Robinson associates Jews with what he hates the most.While the Left eagerly links Jews ("Zionists') with racism and colonialism, Robinson breezily associates Jews with the Hollywood and communism he hates.

In this 2017 post: "The 1977 version of 'Roots' is one of the most vile things EVER filmed. It is nothing but Hollywood trash that depicts the ignorance and brutality of the goyim, and the helplessness and weakness of the shvartze."

He has been accused of Holocaust denial. I haven't seen outright denial. He uses the Holocaust as a rhetorical device to attack thing he believes are worse. He says that communism is at least as bad as Nazism, and to make his point he has minimized the Holocaust and Hitler's crimes. Robinson even approvingly featured an alleged quote of Hitler's about having pride in one's own race.

These examples, and others, should disqualify him from being supported as a candidate.

Goldberg brings other examples of Republican tolerance of antisemitism:

[E]ven if you believe that the Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib’s use of the anti-Zionist slogan “from the river to the sea” is obviously antisemitic — I don’t — it’s worth asking why it received so much more coverage than Robinson’s apparent Holocaust denial, or for that matter, the promotion of antisemitic websites and social media posts by Republican congressmen like Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Mike Collins.

The examples given do indicate antisemitism. Gosar's campaign newsletter linked to an likely Kremlin-funded antisemitic website that wrote an article about him titled "Congressman: Jewish warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangers Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed,’” taking out the word "Jewish" indicating that this was no innocent mistake. Collins slyly noted the Jewishness of a Washington Post reporter who wrote a stupid article minimizing urban crime.

Another accusation Goldberg made, about how CPAC supposedly tolerated neo-Nazis, was not as convincing. The neo-Nazis came to CPAC, some paid and some not, and mingled with the delegates and tried to spread their poison. That is like a serial killer taking a photo with a First Lady and pretending that she approves of his crimes.

And Goldberg's spin, that Republican tolerance of antisemitism is worse than that of Democrats, is similarly unconvincing. They are different in form but the same in fact: on each side, the desire to promote their own political ambitions makes them blind to the antisemitism by their allies. You will have to look long and hard to find a prominent member of either side saying, unequivocally, that antisemitism by their own side is unacceptable and will be rejected.

But she's right about the fact that there has not been nearly as much publicity over Gosar's and Collins' flirtations with hate as with Tlaib's and Ilhan Omar's. Antisemitism is noxious on both sides of the aisle and too many people are afraid to call it out. or willing to minimize it, when it happens on their side.

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!

Biden parrots Hamas propaganda in State of the Union speech

During President Biden's State of the Union address last night, he said:

This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas.

Biden just confirmed and validated the biggest Hamas lie about the war.

There is no source for the "30,000" number besides Hamas. None whatsoever. And we know Hamas lied about the death tolls of various specific events during the war, especially those that were blamed on Israel but were actually done by terrorists.

Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an article in Tablet this week that showed how unlikely the casualty figures from the Gaza health ministry are from a statistical viewpoint, looking at the first weeks of the war when the ministry broke down the alleged women and children casualties.

On the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.

The daily number of children reported to have been killed is totally unrelated to the number of women reported. The R2 is .017 and the relationship is statistically and substantively insignificant.

This lack of correlation is the second circumstantial piece of evidence suggesting the numbers are not real. But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.

...Another red flag... is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked.

Biden's speech was vetted by layers of staffers. Not one of them had a problem with Biden's statement. This shows how insidious propaganda is.

Biden has validated Hamas lies. Newspapers will no longer feel compelled to add "according to Hamas' health ministry" when they quote statistics - the President of the United States accepts them as true, so who will argue?

The speech was a huge win for Hamas. And the sad part is that no one is overly concerned about that fact that the leader of the free world accepts and parrots the words of a terrorist organization.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Horrors! British University Jewish Chaplaincy wants to hire Zionist rabbis!

Middle East Eye has an expose on how intolerant the organization in charge of British university rabbis supposedly is:

A chaplaincy service used by British universities to provide pastoral support for Jewish students requires its chaplains to be pro-active advocates for Israel, Middle East Eye can reveal.

The University Jewish Chaplaincy (UJC) is a registered charity that operates in dozens of universities across the UK. It provides chaplains and chaplaincy couples and says they are “there for Jewish students of all backgrounds and affiliations”.

The UJC is also currently advising ministers on new guidelines the government has promised to deliver on tackling antisemitism in higher education.

But in job descriptions on its website for vacant chaplaincy posts in Brighton, Bristol and Glasgow the UJC listed being a "pro-active Israel advocate" among essential requirements for candidates.

Noted anti-Israel professor Neve Gordon is shocked....shocked - that rabbis are expected to be sympathetic with the political opinions of most Jews.

Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at London's Queen Mary University and vice president of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (Brismes), questioned how a chaplain expected to advocate for Israel could provide pastoral support to all Jewish students on campuses.

“In these job advertisements, there is a conflation with being Jewish and being an advocate of Israel, which by no means reflects the position of many Jews in the UK,” said Gordon, who is Israeli.

Gordon said he had recently met at another university with a Jewish student group supportive of Palestinian rights who said they did not feel that their views were taken into account by the Jewish student society.

“If a chaplain conceives of their role as an advocate of Israel, that chaplain will not only be unable to represent many Jewish students and staff across campuses in the UK but will be advocating a position that undermines some of their core values."

And how, exactly, would the vast majority of Jewish students who are Zionists feel if their chaplain was an anti-Zionist? Apparently Gordon's concern for Jewish students' feelings only extends the ones who are least likely to attend events at Jewish groups.

(Also, Gordon is knowingly deceptive. He conflates the job of the chaplain with the entire Jewish student societies. The chaplain doesn't choose what programming to approve, for example.)

Now, let's look at the entire list of requirements for those jobs, the list that upsets anti-Zionist Jews so much (the page was taken down, this is from an archive copy:)

Why isn't Gordon upset that Orthodox ordination is required? By his logic, doesn't that exclude the majority non-Orthodox students from feeling comfortable?

And the chaplain needs to be sensitive to halacha! Why not hire chaplains who violate Shabbat? Why are they so intolerant???

Two seconds of thought gives the answer to both requirements of Orthodoxy and Zionist. A religious chaplain can understand the needs of students who are both religious and non-religious; a Zionist rabbi can be sensitive to the needs of students who are both Zionist and non-Zionist. An anti-Zionist chaplain - whether from Neturei Karta or from the Reconstructionist movement - could not possibly be an effective role model for Zionist students just as an anti-religious chaplain could not possibly minister to religious Jewish students.

The religious chaplain, and the Zionist chaplain, are more likely to be respectful of those they disagree with than the anti-religious, anti-ZIonist chaplain is likely to be.

Indeed, the requirements mandate that the chaplain is inclusive, non-judgmental, and open to secular events on campus.

It is like a Jewish organization requiring that its facilities are kosher - while most Jews do not keep kosher, it is more respectful to all to insist that the building does. This is what inclusiveness means.

People who scream that Zionists are complicit in apartheid, genocide and other crimes are not being inclusive and tolerant of their fellow Jews. Gordon si using a faux concern for tolerance to push an intolerant agenca.

It is a shame that this needs to be pointed out.

People like Gordon and Jewish Voice for Peace members deceptively pretend that their concerns are for the well-being of others when in fact they are trying to marginalize, exclude and demonize those who disagree with them, This ends up becoming incitement to and actual violence, as we are seeing more and more.

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03/07 Links Pt2: The Pro-Hamas Activists Come for the ‘Jew-Lovers’; It's time to make Judea and Samaria great again; The Song of the Israel-Hamas War

From Ian:

The menacing truth about the ‘boycott Israel’ campaigns

This all speaks to an incredibly conspiratorial mindset in which Jews supposedly dominate the world through their control of international finance (a view propagated by Hitler in Mein Kampf, as well as by many other anti-Semites). Indeed, for European anti-Semites in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the international networks associated with finance – and indeed modernity itself – were seen as somehow Jewish in character. From this unhinged premise, they drew the conclusion that Jews somehow needed to be purged. That Jews should be sacked from senior positions, that Jewish businesses should be boycotted. Eventually the full genocidal conclusions of this approach were drawn out in the Nazis’ Final Solution.

Today, activists focus on those who are Israeli or are deemed to have Israeli connections. In the form of Israel, Jews are once again perceived to be the epitome of evil in the world. And once again they are faced with a political movement, in this case Hamas, which openly pledges to destroy them. This murderous Islamist group has plenty of support in the West, too.

Amid the calls to boycott Israel, to erase all trace of Israel from culture, sport and beyond, it is hard not to be reminded of the horribly prophetic words of 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine: ‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.’ When, in 1933, the Nazis actually started burning books, many were written by Jewish authors, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka. Just a few years later, the Nazis started incinerating actual Jews.

The warning signs are there right now. We need to see the increasingly strident calls to boycott Israel, to erase its presence, for what they are. A threat to Jews everywhere.

Seth Mandel: The Pro-Hamas Activists Come for the ‘Jew-Lovers’

Lest anyone try to claim this is about Israel-related books or authors—as if that would be acceptable either—the piece reports out the story of Gillian Freedman, a 67-year-old Jewish woman who, along with her husband, owns and operates a small farm in rural Bedfordshire. Freedman wrote a book titled Jews Milk Goats, about maintaining a Jewish life while living on a farm.

Pretty wholesome stuff, right? Well, not to the magazine editor who spiked a review of the book on the grounds that Jews are too controversial now. This quote from that editor, sent to the columnist who wrote the review, is among the better descriptions of our post-Oct. 7 reality you’ll find: “In the current, rather febrile, atmosphere I think we need to give a wide berth to anything which references Jewish people and Judaism. It just isn’t worth the hassle that will ensue.”

Nowhere in there does it say anything about Israel or Zionism. Because none of this is now or ever was about the democratic politics of a country in the Middle East. But that last line explains why it’s been so easy for mainstream cultural, educational, and political institutions throughout the enlightened West to simply close the door on anything or anyone Jewish. It just isn’t worth the hassle.

This is why the pro-Hamas demonstrators and activists do what they do. Because they can’t say “don’t serve Jews.” But they can and will make your life hell if you serve Jews.

If you live in Europe, as all the subjects of this particular story do, you know this doesn’t stop at a negative Yelp review. Why risk being labeled “Jew-lovers” or “Jew-lackeys,” as the Germans used to phrase it? It just isn’t worth the hassle.

The hassle, if it isn’t clear by now, is the point. The entire strategy of alienating Jews from polite society relies on cowardice. What few Americans and Brits realize is that their major publishing houses are already in line. They didn’t have to be pushed very far. Indeed, the speed with which the machinery of Jew-baiting came together after Oct. 7 is a reminder that old habits die hard. And there are few habits older than this.

Antisemitism as Anti-Europeanism by Proxy

This all goes to show how unpredictable history is and how quickly constellations change. The Left is now forced to pick the side of Hamas, not because they really hate Jews or care about Palestinians, but because they need to double down on their own beliefs and avoid giving in to the critique of their political foes by admitting that the multicultural project in Europe has failed completely. Nor do they wish to admit that the relations between Israel and Gaza presage the future of Europeans and Muslims in Europe.

Left-wing progressives are happy to reinforce the link between what they see as Jewish imperialism and European rightism, in the same way that the Right—instead of defending Europeanism and nationhood—considers it expedient to portray their cause as a fight against antisemitism. For example, it is quite clear that the march against antisemitism in London on Sunday was as much a march for Britain as it was for Israel, with Union Jacks flying and “God Save the King” echoing over the crowds. As self-described conservative Chris Rose put it on X, the event was “a complete contrast to the anti-West hate marches with people who sympathise with our enemies.” Still, organizing such marches without the pretext of protesting antisemitism would be quite taboo.

It may seem tragically poetic that it is in the conflict between Israel and Hamas that an awakening of Europe might occur. However, in the end, confidence by proxy is no confidence at all. At best, it is a mere beginning. But a beginning of what? Clearly Europeans are now waking up to the fact that mass immigration isn’t leading to a multicultural utopia, and that in the face of incontrovertible evidence there are still well-established forces in Europe unwilling to roll back their destructive policies. These forces will, to the bitter end and at whatever cost, see right-wing populism, Jewish imperialism, and European ‘whiteness’ as the real threats, and they will ally with any anti-Western group in their anti-colonial struggle.

Those who care about the future of Europe and their own nations are therefore correct to defend Israel, but that will not be enough. Europeans need to shake off their feelings of demoralization and defeat. They must win over the establishment on their side regardless of the situation in the Middle East, and they must openly declare that their cause is ultimately not about the fate of Israel, but the fate of Europe. In the end, the rhetoric of anti-antisemitism cannot prove sufficient to the challenges at hand.

The real Sinwar (Maariv)

This was published in Maariv today, translated by commenter Laura:

_______

In the United States, they may try to pressure Hamas even more through Egypt and Qatar, and are debating whether to order the government in Doha to expel Hamas representatives from the country if they fail to convince the organization's senior officials in the Gaza Strip to release the abductees. This is what veteran commentator David Ignatius reported today (Thursday) in the "Washington Post".

"This is the real devil, the new Nazi," Kobi said at the beginning of the conversation. "Yahia Sinwar, whom I first met in 1989 when I interrogated him in the case of two kidnapped Israelis. He was associated with Ahmed Yassin in consulting, when he was his protégé and served as both his assistant and adviser, and also as the commander of the forces that murdered so-called collaborators. He also served as Hamas' education commissioner. For example, he provided them with plastic knives and rubber knives so that they could compete among themselves as to who kills more Jews. Later, Sinwar provided them with guns to practice with, and then trained them with explosive belts."

Micha Kobi, a former Shin Bet investigator who over the course of his career accumulated many hours in front of many murderers, revealed on 103FM a shocking detail: "He told me during the investigation that he was going to establish a unit that would enter the territories of Israel"

"Sinwar, from a very young age he was a fan of Ahmed Yassin. He visited the mosque almost every day, where he studied all the sermons and the Koran as Ahmed Yassin explained to him, that all the Jews should be eliminated. They sat together with several other so-called sages from Hamas, and wrote the Hamas charter. The first section talks about the destruction of the Jewish state. He was around 28, single, I asked him why he didn't get married, he told me 'My mother is Hamas, my father is Hamas, my wife is Hamas, everyone is Hamas.' I have over 150 hours of Sinwar.

We are grinding water, he is simply trying to cause a conflict between the families and the government, and such and such personalities, etc.

This man stabs us with every word he utters, he is a liar, a crook. This is how Hamas behaves , there were never any promises made by Hamas that were kept. And if there were they were always changed.

It is clear that there is a rift between Hamas abroad and Hamas domestically, it has been almost forever, Yahya Sinwar sees himself as the commander of the military and civilian forces in the Gaza Strip.

Sinwar is not interested in any negotiations. He knows he is going to be the martyr. In his opinion, he has already succeeded, he carried out his plan as best as possible for him. He is considered the hero of Hamas, the hero of Islam and the hero of the people of Gaza, many of whom were swept away after him," he added.

Kobi also stated that "he sees the October 7th as a victory, according to his opinion. He does not see it as a massacre Hamas under his authority denies that there was a massacre. His plan is survival - he thinks and is convinced that he will be able to subdue the State of Israel retreat to the borders of October-7th and then he will return to rebuild Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is the trend and this is the ambition, at the same time he is convinced that the State of Israel will persecute him and it is better for him to be a martyr than to flee to Egypt or leave with consent to Qatar.

We do not yet know for sure how many are around him, It is likely that there are several dozen abductees around him. At the same time, he is looking for survivors, that is why he does not want any negotiations, he has no interest in negotiations. This is the reason for the quarrel between him and Haniyeh and Sha'al, they hold meetings, take sentences out of their mouths that supposedly have So and so are abducted and you can make a deal of 40 for 400 - they don't know how many abductees exist..."

"He was interested in the [terror] prisoners in the past, if we had withdrawn, he would have been interested in making a deal to release all the prisoners, but it really doesn't interest him at the moment. He will give up everything in exchange for survival and pushing Israel to its October-7th border. I do not believe that the State of Israel, despite international pressure, no matter from which direction, we should not stop the war with Hamas until the destruction of Hamas's capabilities, both military and civilian.

He [Sinwar].married after he was released [2011] and got a name of a pedophile, he wanted to erase this issue, he married someone by force in Gaza and had a son with her, who is now 8 years old. The children seen in the tunnel could be one of his children, one of his brother's children, there were also two women there.

Sinwar is imbued with an abysmal hatred for Jews, and he wants to carry out, he was not ashamed to give me a version during the interrogation that he was going to form a unit that would enter the territories of Israel and destroy settlements "If he hadn't been sentenced to life imprisonment, he would have carried out his plot even then, but he was sentenced to four life sentences, following which he was released in the [2011 Gilad] Shalit deal. I knew that if he was released, this man would carry out his plot, and fulfill his promise to establish the Nukhba," he added .

At the end of his words, he emphasized that "Hamas has been resurrected at least three times that I know of. They re-establish each time, and if indeed we withdraw and there is no military pressure, he will form a new Hamas that will be much more brutal and extreme than now, he believes in this, he believes that the Jews must be exterminated now.

We found Hitler's Mein Kampf at his house, from where they took the [Hamas] principles."

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International Hamas Brigades Of Self-Immolators So Far Ineffective In Gaza War (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Washington, March 7 - Military analysts concluded this week that to date, the cadre of progressive warriors who light themselves on fire, killing or permanently disfiguring themselves, have a had no measurable impact on the ongoing military conflict between Israel an Hamas, despite significant expenditure of effort on the part of activists to frame the auto-auto da fé phenomenon as a demonstration of the pro-Palestinian position's nobility and power.

Nearly two weeks after a troubled US Air Force employee self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy here, experts on armed conflict published an article in the journal Jane's that contrasts the hype and psychological warfare potential of faraway, impressionable, mentally ill people dousing themselves in gasoline and striking a match, with the reality on and under the ground in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues to systematically dismantle Hamas's fighting capacity.

"Certain analysts probably let their biases get in the way of their initial assessments," allowed one expert quoted in the article. "I daresay previous confrontations between Gaza's armed groups and the IDF established certain expectations for both how fighting is conducted in dense urban spaces and what pressure the international outcry against harm to civilians comes to bear against Israel amid the inevitable civilian casualty reports. People lighting themselves on fire to protest 'genocide' might not have been an important feature of previous rounds of fighting, but those episodes created framework for understanding the dynamic in way that reinforced the preconceived notions about international outcry against Israel and the impact of that outrage on the intensity and duration of the fighting."

The article explores the assumption behind numerous faulty analyses of, and predictions regarding, the conflict since October 7, that emotionally unwell people consuming too much anti-Israel propaganda thousands of miles from the conflict zone and deciding to demonstrate their displeasure by publicly killing themselves in one of the most drawn-out, painful ways possible would move the so-called international community to prevent further "genocide of Palestinians."

It attributes some of the erroneous thinking to the notorious Palestinian use of suicide attackers. "Perhaps some observers confused the offensive use of suicide with the kind intended as virtue-signaling," the authors suggested. "One way in which the mistaken approach might prove correct, however, involves a hypothetical expansion of the phenomenon: if enough supporters of 'free Palestine' follow the example of their self-immolating comrades in the movement, that would bring the end of the conflict closer, as it would remove a sizeable portion of those whose agitation prevents Western and American elected officials from facilitating a decisive Israeli victory."

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03/07 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: The scapegoating of Israel; Why left must lie about Hamas, rape; How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The scapegoating of Israel

So Cameron’s suggestion that Israel is not fulfilling its legal responsibility to provide aid for civilians is utterly false. Israel is indeed doing so. The problems start once the aid arrives.

Israel says there is no limit to the number of aid trucks being allowed into Gaza. There are instead hold-ups at the crossing points because the U.N. is struggling to distribute the aid. And that’s because it uses the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA—which is controlled by Hamas.

The result is that Hamas hijacks the trucks and steals the food and other supplies, either for itself or to sell to the population on the black market.

On social media, there are videos of aid trucks being commandeered by armed men. There are also videos of Egyptian drivers warning others not to drive aid trucks into Gaza because they are being attacked with rocks hurled through their windscreens, leaving some badly injured and even killed.

Even U.S. officials are admitting that Hamas is stealing the aid that the Biden administration is accusing Israel of failing to provide.

One senior official told journalists that the problem was with distribution once the 250 to 300 truckloads of assistance got into Gaza. He said: “This is a product of, if you will, commercialization of the assistance; criminal gangs are taking it, looting it, reselling it. They’ve monetized humanitarian assistance. … The food is there; it’s coming in.”

Other officials have confirmed that Hamas is involved in aid distribution.

David Satterfield, the senior U.S. diplomat involved in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, acknowledged that police escorts for aid deliveries include Hamas members, and that Hamas has been using other aid delivery channels to “shape where and to whom assistance goes.”

In the remorseless attempt to demonize Israel, humanitarian aid has become the blood libel of the day. When dozens of Palestinians were reportedly killed last month as thousands stampeded aid trucks entering Gaza City, the incident was falsely blamed on Israeli fire—even though the IDF shot at no one other than a few Gazans who threatened to attack them.

Social media is teeming with distressing images of Gazan babies who have allegedly been starved to death by Israel. Even if all these images are genuine, it isn’t Israel but Hamas that’s responsible by stealing the food intended for civilians.

Israel is being scapegoated for the war crimes of Hamas. Scapegoating the Jews is the consistent and defining motif of antisemitism through the ages.

It is also precisely what Cameron and Blinken are doing. As a result, they are giving substance to the “genocide in Gaza” blood libel and stoking yet further attacks on Jews.

Israel’s media spokesman Eylon Levy said this week: “We will accept being scapegoated no longer.” Israel isn’t on its knees. The Jews of Britain and America should get up from theirs and publicly tell Cameron and Blinken the same thing.

How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the Oct. 7 massacre itself.

The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

Jonathan Tobin: Why left must lie about Hamas, rape

Activists pretending to be journalists
That says a lot about the contemporary culture of American journalism. It was already clear that many of those who work at the most prestigious publications and for broadcast outlets, especially those who have begun work in the last decade and those who specialize in non-traditional journalism like digital media or videos, are committed to a view of their profession as a way to advance their partisan views rather than a search for objective truth. Their attitudes towards the war against Hamas speak primarily to the way that the spread of critical race theory and intersectionality, as well as related ideas about white privilege, have similarly tainted their understanding of the Middle East.

This is, after all, largely the same group that regards the #MeToo movement as a pivotal moment in American society and culture. It enthusiastically promoted the idea that “believe all women” was the only way to approach even those controversies involving sexual harassment about which reasonable doubts had been raised.

But just as there were double standards when it came to accusations of sexual misconduct in the United States related to partisan affiliation—accusations against Republicans like Justice Brett Kavanaugh were accepted at face value while the woman who alleged that President Joe Biden had assaulted her with just as little proof was depicted as crazy and unreliable—it is equally clear that responses to the use of rape as a weapon of war are similarly determined by how you feel about Israel. This is not so much a measure of the hypocrisy of Israel-haters as it is a function of ideology. If, like so many Americans on the left—particularly those young people who have been indoctrinated in woke mythology—you are always ready to believe that Israel is in the wrong and the Palestinians are victims no matter what they do, then you are merely doing what the teachings of intersectionality dictate. When faced with accusations against people regarded as oppressors, the woke believe all women. When it is their allegedly powerless victims who are committing the crimes, they demand evidence and dismiss the facts even when they are presented with them.

The controversies over Hamas rapes on Oct. 7, coupled with the wars being waged inside publications like the Times about them, are an indication of just how much the toxic influence of critical studies has warped both journalism and public discourse. It has exposed the dishonesty of feminist groups and international bodies that have stayed silent when they should have spoken up.

Above all else, it conclusively demonstrates the connection between the new leftist ideological orthodoxies that dominate academia and popular culture—and the crudest sort of Jew-hatred. The mobs on the streets chanting for Israel’s destruction and terrorism against Jews are no different than the mobs in liberal newsrooms; they are equally disinterested in the truth. What they care about is aiding the war on Israel and the Jews, and if that means engaging in what can only be described as the 21st-century version of Holocaust denial, then that is what they will do. But as we know from past discussions about Holocaust denial, no one should be under any illusions about the questions raised about the veracity of reports about the slaughter and mistreatment of Jews. Such talk is always a reliable indicator of antisemitism.

Here's a video of a rally against defunding UNRWA in the Qalandiya camp yesterday afternoon.

The obviously staged rally features kids holding signs in English and chanting "Free Free Palestine" in English as well.

The kids look happy. Maybe UNRWA closed their school to make the demonstration look more impressive.

During the protest, Nasser Sharaya, director of a PLO-linked Palestinian "refugee" organization, told Anadolu Agency, “We are here today to raise our voice in rejection of the decision that affects every Palestinian refugee, whether in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or the diaspora.”

He added, "This decision means an attempt to liquidate the refugee issue. UNRWA was established by a UN decision as a result of the Nakba (in 1948), and it can only end with the end of the refugee issue and the return of all refugees to their lands."

Of course, that was never the UN's intention when it created UNRWA. The purpose was to help refugees temporarily.

Sharaya warned that "today the right of return is threatened and the refugee issue is at stake."

While UNRWA was not officially associated with the demonstration, it seems highly likely that the agency was behind it. The kids are waving brand new UN flags, where else would they get them from?

So much for UNRWA pretending to be non-political.

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

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