Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 14, 2024

A succinct and blunt presentation of Israel's position, by academic Dan Schueftan (video)

Here is a blunt but accurate description of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by Israeli academic Dan Schueftan, who has also been an adviser to multiple Israeli prime ministers. It come from a much longer video interview published in Quillette last month.

The Palestinian perspective is, and this did not change in the last 100 years, that the very collective existence of the Jews here in the Middle East is illegitimate except as individuals of the Jewish religion. They deny the existence of a Jewish people, even today. The so-called president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech - if you want I'll send you the video of it. It's so ridiculous, it's unbelievable. I mean he tells stories about there's never been a Jewish people and so on and the Khazars in the Caucasus. It's ridiculous.

So they even deny the existence of a Jewish people and of course they believe that Israel is a product of of a colonial British act and the very existence of Israel is illegitimate. They make the option of national coexistence, of a historic compromise, impossible and therefore they don't have a state.

Now the way they behaved in terms of violence persuaded the Jews after October 7, more than any time in the past, that since whatever they have they weaponize, and what they want in the final analysis (and they say openly) is to obliterate the state of Israel. When you speak about Hamas they even speak about obliterating all the Jews and their charter relies on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So this is an attempt by the Palestinians to terminate the existence not only of the state of Israel but also of the Jews as as a national collective, as a sovereign entity in this region.

This is a problem that at least in the foreseeable future it doesn't have a solution.

You see, one of the problems Americans have is that Americans have a operational oriented mindset. They look at problems like engineers: there's a problem, what's the solution? Tf you want want to be a historian if you want to understand human behavior you say to yourself this is a kind of operational thinking, while strategic thinking is what do you do when a problem doesn't have a solution. In other words, what is the response or the damage control that you can apply if a problem doesn't have a solution?

Most serious problems don't have a solution. Poverty doesn't have a solution. Crime doesn't have a solution. But if you you have a good law enforcement system you can bring crime from an unacceptable level to an acceptable level; if you have a well-functioning welfare state you can bring down poverty from an unacceptable level to an acceptable level. But people speak in terms of the two-state "solution."

By the way, in my recent visit to the US Congress I suggested to a number of Senators that the United States should adopt a two-state solution for a state for the Republicans and a state for the Democrats because the polarization in American society is alarming.

The only thing in life that has a solution is a crossword puzzle. For people who insist that every problem has a solution I remind them of their marriage and then they finally understand that there are some problems that have no solution.

You need to think in terms of what can you do when a solution is not available. Any serious thinking about the Palestinians or about Israel should start from that assumption but if somebody feels good about himself by playing with himself intellectually or politically and he wants to think about solution, it's okay. I mean, Americans come to Israel now and say, "Tell us what your end game is." I tell them, "Oh ,we really need to learn from you! You had an end game bringing democracy to Iraq. Then you had an end game bringing women's rights to Afghanistan. Since this went so well let's learn from you and tell us how after bringing democracy to Iraqis and women's rights to Afghanis you'll bring peace to the Palestinians, with the great successes you've had so far."

[To bring violence down to an acceptable level, Israel has to do] whatever it takes, limited by what we're willing to do based on our values. It's not you can have violence for a week but not for month, or you can kill 100 people or not 500 people. The question is what do you have to do that there is no other way of doing.

For instance, if you want to deter Stalin from using nuclear weapons, you adopt a policy that basically says we will obliterate the human race if you do this to us. [That's the whole idea of nuclear deterrence. Or when in the Second World War people are threatened in Britain, they burn Hamburg and Berlin. When the Americans want to invade Japan they burn Tokyo and they nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So the question is, can you use less violence and still obtain your objective? For instance, if you have precision guided munitions you can kill the terrorist without killing the people around him so use it to minimize collateral damage, as we have.

Today in Gaza we have the most fortified position ever in human history. It's not only fortified by every house being booby trapped and full of weapons under the beds of children and in hospitals and in schools and in mosques, but also it is fortified by the New York Times and Amnesty International and Joe Biden and everybody else. You must be very careful in terms of getting what you need, namely to root out the barbarians with as little civilian casualties as possible. The Palestinians want us to kill their children not only by putting their weapons in their bedrooms and in their schools but also because they want the pictures of their children killed so that they can use a public opinion against Israel. We can try to minimize it but you cannot avoid it altogether. ...When dumb people or evil people say stop the war because civilians are being killed they're basically saying once the barbarians embed the weapons in their children the barbarians will win because civilized people cannot respond and root them out. And if that will happen then the barbarians win not only vis a vis Israel - the Jews are always the canary - they will win everywhere...The barbarians are looking for things that work. The number one weapon of the barbarian is our values and the dumb application of our values. We need to keep our values because we're civilized people, we are not like them. The one thing Israelis are frightened more than anything else that we become like the Palestinians, in other words, to behave like barbarians as they do. When the barbarians rape and decapitate and burn families alive, between 75 and 90% of the Palestinian people support them and every time they kill Jews the Palestinian people support them. The only role model that the Palestinians have are people who kill Jews. They don't have other role models; their schools are named after terrorists.

So when you are faced with it you have to find your way between getting what you must have, namely root out the barbarians, and keep your values, because if the Palestinians will force you to become like Palestinians this will be the worst that they can do to us. The one thing we we don't want to let them do is to make us be like them.

Read or watch the whole thing.

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

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From Turkish Minute:

A sister city agreement signed between Turkey’s popular holiday resort of Antalya and the Israeli coastal city of Bat Yam in 1997 has been canceled by the Turkish side in protest of the ongoing Israeli war on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, the Birgün daily reported.

The decision was made by the city council of the Antalya Metropolitan Municipality run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) during its meeting on Monday. The council, comprising members from various political parties, voted unanimously to cancel the agreement dated November 26, 1997.

A statement from the municipality said all current and future relations with the Bat Yam have been halted due to the “ongoing inhumane attacks by Israel on the people of Gaza before the eyes of the world.”

The mayor of Antalya thanked the members of the city council for their decision.

Don't worry. Antalya still has a sister city relationship with many towns in those paragons of human rights China (Haikou, Kunming, Liwan, Qingdao, Ürümqi, Xining) and Russia (Kazan, Omsk, Rostov-on-Don, Vladimir.)

Five towns in Turkey have twinned with Gaza City, one with Rafah, three with Beit Hanoun, one with Beit Lahiya, and one with Deir al Balah, all in Gaza. The Hamas control of those cities didn't offend anyone in Turkey. No one thought that October 7 and the Palestinian support for murdering Jews should shake their relationship.

Indeed, the world has not and will never cancel sister city relationships with Palestinian cities like Jenin, Ramallah or Hebron despite Palestinian terror and widespread support for terror. Even bringing up the possibility would result in death threats. Who needs the hassle?

But symbolic moves against Israel are risk-free and makes one popular among genteel antisemites.

Those who engage in virtue signaling are never virtuous.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Jewish lives don't matter to the UN

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs pretends to be even-handed. Its daily reports from Gaza dutifully include the number of Israelis killed on October 7 as well as during the war along with its parroting Hamas statistics (attributing them to "GMO," or "Gaza Media Office."

But it is only an exercise to forestall criticism, not an indication that the UN cares about Israeli lives.

We can see that from this part of the infographic, on the very top:

What is missing from this infographic?

The 128,000 Israelis who are displaced from their homes from this war.

67 communities in Israel have been emptied both near Gaza and near the northern border.

I have yet to see a single mention of that by the UN, or any so-called human rights group. If there have been articles in the international media about them since October, I haven't seen them.

Certainly, the displaced Israelis don't have as dire a situation as the displaced Gazans. But it is still a large number of people, and they certainly suffer.

But they don't rate even mentioning in UN statistics from the war.

It isn't a mystery why that is.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

03/13 Links Pt2: Howard Jacobson: Who dares to “hijack” the Holocaust?; The left’s sickening betrayal of Israeli women; Floyd Mayweather dedicates motorcycles to Magen David Adom

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Who dares to “hijack” the Holocaust?

Such are the canards deployed to rob the Jews of any lingering sympathy they might yet enjoy as victims of that inhumanity The Zone of Interest depicts, and so to downplay, as just another gambit in Jewish subterfuge, the Holocaust itself. Hijack! Consider the import of that word. So despicable are the Jews, they will steal from themselves the most hellish events in their history to justify visiting hell on others.

Why would Jonathan Glazer, of all people – a man who has been immersed to an unusual degree in recent Jewish history – give the slightest weight to this libel?

I don’t say he should have stood before a televised audience of millions and cheered on the Israeli Defence Forces. Indeed, he had no need to invoke his Jewishness at all. But since he chose to do so, could he not have used the opportunity to unite rather than divide, to explain, to speak wisely about a tragedy that is tearing all parties to it apart? Could he not have spoken of the horror felt by every Jew on 7 October, not just on account of the violence done but the approving reactions to it, and the horror felt today by every Jew at the death toll in Gaza, and allow no one to suppose that the heartbreaking scenes there somehow give succour to a fictional Jewish blood-lust justified by the Holocaust?

I don’t accuse Jonathan Glazer of being selective in his compassion. “Whether the victims of October 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza,” he said, “all the victims to dehumanisation – how do we resist?” But resistance to dehumanisation does not necessitate divesting oneself of Jewishness, however one interprets that, whether as the hijacking of it to win a false legitimacy or in seeking any other advantage that being Jewish might confer. For a Jew to concur in this fashionable defamation – that Jews are moral profiteers, and that it is only by shedding such Jewishness that a Jew can feel pity – is doubly despicable.

As a serious, thinking Jewish man, Jonathan Glazer must have read the late Amos Oz on the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which both parties could be said to be in the right, and then, when the situation worsened, both parties could be said to be in the wrong. The “occupation” didn’t just happen one day to satisfy Holocaust righteousness. It was a child of history, born of a mutual intransigence that pre-dated the Holocaust, the consequence of mistakes and violent obduracies on both sides. A tragedy does not entail blame, but if Jonathan Glazer must buy into Jewish blame he must buy into Palestinian blame as well. It would have taken real moral courage to pursue that line; right now it takes none to castigate Jews.

In my years teaching English literature I had frequent recourse to DH Lawrence’s dictum, “Never trust the teller, trust the tale.” That Dickens was a bad husband, I was forever telling my students, no more made him a bad novelist than beating her dog made Emily Brontë a bad novelist. We will no more fathom the nexus between art and moral intelligence, than that between a normal family life and savagery.

Jonathan Glazer made an ambitious, important film. I salute the artist. But his abject mea culpa debases him as a man.

Seth Mandel: Berkeley’s Jews Show Some Spine

In the late 1950s, the University of California, Berkeley started cracking down on campus politicking. By the ’60s, this effort almost became a total ban. The backlash congealed into the famous Free Speech Movement, whose strategy was to make sure that any rulebreakers were accompanied by dozens (or more) others. This way, the ban’s enemies could paralyze virtually any disciplinary enforcement. The signature moment was a march to a central campus building where participants held giant signs in favor of free speech.

There’s an iconic photo of the demonstrators marching through Sather Gate in November 1964. Ironically, they could not have done so in recent weeks: The antithesis of the Free Speech Movement, at the center of what is now the antithesis of Berkeley 1964, has had the gate blocked off. Pro-Hamas activists on campus have been blocking the gate and harassing any Jewish students in the vicinity. This comes on the heels of the same group’s violent and highly symbolic night of fascist role playing, in which they forced the cancellation of a Jewish speaker by physically assaulting a Jewish woman, spitting on others, smashing the venue’s window and hurling obscenities that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in The Zone of Interest.

It is appropriate, then, that the jackboot siege of Sather Gate was protested on Monday by a peaceful but determined march of Jews reprising their role as enemies of blood-and-soil racial hierarchies. “At noon,” an ABC affiliate reported that “the Jewish students marched onto Sproul Plaza and instead of passing through Sather Gate and past the banner, they avoided a confrontation by literally fording the creek to get to the other side on a foot path.” The report continues: “The crowd of 200 Jewish supporters ended up in front of California Hall where faculty members offered their support, commenting on the Feb. 26 disturbance that forced Jewish students to move off campus.”

That Feb. 26 incident was the breaking point. Anti-Semitic harassment and threats have been part of life for students there since Oct. 7. Other Jews have been assaulted on campus. A federal civil-rights complaint alleges that two-dozen law-school groups have anti-Jewish policies. Kosher restaurants have been targeted. It’s reached the point where one Jewish Berkeley professor is staging a live-in at his campus office.

Berkeley’s repression of Jewish civil rights won’t be solved by one march, but the change in posture to visible protest is welcome. The students and families tried working with the administration but have been ignored at every turn. A school spokesman even admitted the university would not be taking down the Palestine banner blocking part of campus because, although it clearly violates campus rules, “we assessed that using law-enforcement to clear it would create turmoil.” And God forbid there should be turmoil!

Batya Ungar Sargon: The left’s sickening betrayal of Israeli women

Every Palestinian outranks every Jew on the oppression scale and so any Palestinian in conflict with any Jew is the one the left must side with. The Jew has all the agency and the Palestinian has none. Anything bad that happens between them cannot be the Palestinian’s fault, because you cannot blame someone with no agency for anything. They are innocent, like a child. To the woke, the less powerful have no responsibility to act ethically because their rank on the oppression scale means they cannot act at all – and they are already inherently imbued with virtue, no matter what they do. And that goes for the terrorists among them, too.

To the woke, when a so-called person of colour commits a heinous act against a so-called white person, the agency of their actions – and the evil inherent in them – must be reassigned to their victims. What this means is that when a Palestinian rapes a Jewish woman, the agency was hers, not his. She remains the oppressor. His act was her fault, and her suffering does not release her from the burden of her status as oppressor, even in death.

That’s why leftist feminists can’t side with raped Israeli women. To do so would betray everything they believe. They see the Israeli women as deserving of everything that happened to them – as having brought it on themselves. Like the conservatives of yore who blamed rape on the miniskirt worn by the victim, the left today blames the fact that Israel has more power than Hamas for Hamas’s brutalisation of Israeli women. They simply can’t think their way out of seeing Hamas as virtuous. Because to do so would be to admit that their entire worldview is not only wrong, but also morally depraved.

Why didn’t the images from the Nova festival move the left? Because the left has moved on from things like peace, love, dancing, eros, joy, beauty, truth and goodness. It has replaced these with an embrace of ugliness, hatred, resistance ‘by any means necessary’ and a rejection of the kind of joyous sexuality one finds at a music festival. That’s why the images that I assumed would draw sympathy only further served to cast the Israelis as worthy of condemnation.

The Israelis dancing at that festival didn’t know they were ‘evil oppressors’. They didn’t know that any calamity that might befall them would be ‘deserved’, instigated even by their joyous existence. Their agency itself was a crime.

At the end of the day, 7 October revealed how little of the left’s ideology is about values, and how much of it is about power – specifically, about using a person or a group’s supposedly abject status as a method of wielding power. That is the leftist playbook now. Masquerade as powerless so as to grab power. Bray about being marginalised as a way of silencing dissent. Screech about being oppressed as a way of firing your boss and getting their job, or casting your political opponents as unworthy of the franchise.

And that’s why the woke just can’t quit Hamas. They recognise their own game when they see it, even when it shows up as a raping Hamas butcher.

The BBC reported earlier today:

The UN says a new land route has been used to deliver food to northern Gaza for the first time in three weeks.

The Israeli military said six lorries from the World Food Programme crossed via a gate in the Gaza border fence.

Tuesday night's delivery was "part of a pilot to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid", it added.

It comes amid global pressure on Israel to allow more access to the Palestinian territory for aid amid a looming famine as it continues its war on Hamas.

It looks like Hamas was more resourceful.

According to a report by Kann News, the six aid trucks were looted and did not reach their destination.

And this is the entire problem, whether it is coming from an additional crossing or sea or air. The "last mile" is the issue - how to get the aid into the hands of the people who need it when there are criminals and terrorists who are willing to kill Gazans and who will use force to get it first.

Everyone who blames Israel for supposedly "preventing" aid knows quite well that they have no solution to this problem either.

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

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I am pretty much the only person who reported about the Palestinian Authority rejecting the idea of having aid come by sea via Cyprus, back in December.

Their reason was that they were afraid Gazans would leave via the same boats, and no one wants Gazans to flee, except Gazans.

Unlike Israel, which welcomed the plan (and in fact had been pushing since early November), there have been no public statements by Hamas or Fatah about the planned US pier and the aid corridor being implemented now.

Ultra Palestine went and asked the terror groups their reactions. And the answers are interesting.

One anonymous "factional source" said that Hamas stipulated that only specific groups and Hamas allies be able to receive the aid from the ships. This includes the Gaza city municipality, which is run by Hamas, in addition to international relief institutions, and the Emirati side that sponsored the project. He also warned that US troops on the pier could easily be attacked.

PFLP official Haitham Abdo warned against the possibility that Gazans could leave via the sea, as well as expressing reservations over the speed of its implementation.

Islamic Jihad remained silent about the plan, as has the PA government. There have been no articles about it in official PA media. Perhaps because they don't want to publicly oppose the US.

MEMRI's Yigal Carmon loves the plan, calling it "the beginning of the end of the war." He says Qatar and Iran are against the project, since Qatar is not involved and it has used its near monopoly over Gaza aid to make itself appear indispensable. He also claims Egypt is against the move because it is relying on bribes at the Rafah crossing. But he is excited that the UAE and Jordan are on board, thinking that they will be heavily involved in distribution, instead of Qatar.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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03/13 Links Pt1: BHL: Stop the War in Gaza by Defeating Hamas; John Spencer: Why the World is Wrong in Comparing Gaza to Any Other Conflict

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Stop the War in Gaza by Defeating Hamas

Those crying out against genocide are the same people who call for the birth of a Palestine from the Jordan River to the sea that would involve an ethnic cleansing purging the entire region of all Jewish presence. (Apparently, pure genocide is OK, where imagined genocide is worthy of an impassioned outcry!)

A small, fragile, and threatened country, confronted with the most sadistic mass terror attack in modern history, responds like any other democracy would have in its place, and, in fact, like the U.S. did when invading Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Instead of supporting Israel in its legitimate self-defense, the world accuses the Jewish state of poisoning wells and starving the civilian population.

It takes for granted that Israel is "indefensible," that Zionism - alone among national liberation movements - is a curse word, and that the very survival of the Jewish people on its land is an entirely legitimate object of dispute.

"Ceasefire now!" is a solution that would hand victory to Hamas; prolong the hold of a Muslim Brotherhood death cult on a population that serves as its guinea pig in a horrific experiment; and see the aura of the terror cult and its backers grow beyond Gaza, with all the cataclysmic consequences that one can imagine, both throughout the Middle East and in Europe.

Does anyone care about peace and justice enough to demand an end to this war in the only way it can actually end - with the defeat of Hamas?

Seth Mandel: Time for Biden to Deliver an Inconvenient Truth on Gaza

America can only reduce the threat by capitulating to Hamas and Iran, according to this reading of the report. There are two major problems with this. The first is that it’s hogwash, and the authors of the report know it’s hogwash.

As terror experts pointed out in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter, the attacks themselves were a catalyzing force for global terrorism, much more so than was Israel’s dismantling of Hamas in response. In October, I quoted Lynn O’Donnell on the “broader impact of the Hamas attacks,” which was, she said, “the possibility that terrorist groups around the world will try to match the spectacular carnage that Hamas pulled off earlier this month, which had a death toll equivalent to multiple Sept. 11 attacks on a per capita basis in a small country such as Israel.”

This is because it’s the successful attacks, not the failures, that garner funding for terrorist groups. Hamas has had fairly steady financial patrons because it is somewhat fixed territorially and serves a very specific purpose that is tied to Israel. But the global terror groups that could represent a threat to America are in competition for resources that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks will free up for groups other than Hamas. The Hamas attacks serve as model and inspiration for copycats and their moneymen.

Which means the most dangerous option is to allow Hamas to get out with anything it can reasonably claim as a victory. Hamas’s defeat will benefit America’s security; its survival will put more targets on Western backs.

The other problem is that administration officials know this—the Post says the report itself acknowledges the public-relations coup that Oct. 7 was for Hamas. The administration feels the need to spin how the report is sold to the press and the public because the truth contradicts the president’s political interest in uniting his party in an election year. To do that, he wants (though he doesn’t need) to bring back into the fold enough dissenters on his Gaza policy to take the air out of the pro-Hamas faction of his progressive base.

This is becoming a pattern. In a stunning moment in the president’s MSNBC interview over the weekend, Biden admitted that “Hamas would like a total ceasefire across the board, because then they see they have a better chance to survive and maybe rebuild.” The president sputtered immediately after saying that and fumbled out four separate segues as if he were a skipping record: “But that’s not what—I think the majority of people think—you have to—look—.” Then he went silent to collect his thoughts and get back on track. He wasn’t supposed to make the argument against a permanent ceasefire precisely because that argument is unassailable. He can’t pretend to want to give in to his left flank if he’s also going around explaining why their demands are so ludicrous and contrary to U.S. interests.

But he’s going to have to explain this, eventually. And when he does, he cannot pretend he misspoke. The fact of the matter is Biden and the intelligence community know what’s best for America and are choosing to dissemble at a time when U.S. leadership is called for. This will continue to backfire until someone is willing to be honest with the anti-Israel caucus in the party and align American policy and the president’s rhetoric with what Biden knows to be true: Israel must win this war.

Bret Stephens: Israel Has No Choice but to Fight On

If Israel were to end the war now, with several Hamas battalions intact, at least four things would happen. First, it would be impossible to set up a political authority in Gaza that isn't Hamas: If the Palestinian Authority or local Gazans tried to do so, they wouldn't live for long. Second, Hamas would reconstitute its military force as Hizbullah did in Lebanon after the 2006 war with Israel - and Hamas has promised to repeat the attacks of Oct. 7 "a second, a third, a fourth" time.

Third, the Israeli hostages would be stuck in their awful captivity indefinitely. Fourth, there would never be a Palestinian state. No Israeli government is going to agree to a Palestinian state in the West Bank if it risks resembling Gaza.

This is the fifth major war that Hamas has provoked since it seized power in Gaza in 2007. After each war, Hamas' capabilities have grown stronger and its ambitions bolder. At some point this had to end; for Israelis, Oct. 7 was that point.

Whenever Israel's critics lecture the country on better calibrating its use of force, they don't have any concrete suggestions. The reality of urban warfare is that it's exceptionally costly and difficult. The U.S. spent nine months helping Iraqi forces flatten the city of Mosul to defeat ISIS, with results that looked even worse than Gaza does today. I don't remember calls for "Ceasefire Now" then.

Israel is fighting a war it didn't seek, against an enemy sworn to its destruction and holding scores of its citizens hostage. Around 200,000 Israelis are living as refugees inside their own country because its borders aren't secure. No country can tolerate that. There should be more public pressure on Hamas to surrender than on Israel to save Hamas from the consequences of its actions.

"Trusted media sources:" More proof that Hamas lies in its Gaza casualty statistics

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health publishes a weekly document that goes into details of the casualty statistics in Gaza. And buried in that document is proof that - if you believe the ministry - Hamas must be lying.

The Ministry breaks down its statistics on the number of dead people they counted in Gaza hospitals and those they did not. According to the latest report from March 3, 30,228 people had died, of which they counted 17,348 in hospitals, and the other 13,186 they counted from "trusted media sources."

Meaning, the Hamas media office.

43% of all Gaza deaths and demographic breakdowns come not from the doctors in the health ministry but from the masked terrorists of Hamas.

Let's assume that the Gaza health ministry is telling the truth about the people it counted in its hospitals, which they break down per hospital. For the ones that they count themselves, 42% are men and 58% are women and children. (English from Google Translate)

Yet they also say that 72% of the total deaths in Gaza are women and children, not 58%.

Somehow the demographics they see in their hospitals are way, way different from the ones that their "trusted media sources" claim.

To make the numbers work, the "trusted media sources" of the Hamas media office must be claiming an amazing 90% of their otherwise unreported casualties by MoH to be women and children. - roughly 12,000 women and children compared to 1,300 men.

Needless to say, this is virtually statistically impossible.

So even if one believes the health ministry on the numbers its hospitals counted, it is still reporting Hamas media office numbers - and vouching for their accuracy in their own summary reports. Which makes it just as unreliable as everyone else in Hamas.

(h/t Mark Zlochin)

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

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Many UN agencies keep pretending that false Hamas casualty statistics are from other UN agencies

Earlier this week I reported that UN-OCHA claimed "9,000 women" were killed in Gaza, citing a UN Women report. The UN Women report, in turn, cited UN-OCHA for the same statistic.

The only source for this number is a terrorist group.

This statistics laundering is happening a lot within the UN.

UN-OCHA's latest report says that "According to UNICEF, 17,000 children in Gaza are currently unaccompanied or separated, constituting one per cent of the total displaced population of 1.7 million people."

The link at UNICEF says, "UNICEF estimates that at least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip are unaccompanied or separated.....Of course, this is an estimation since it is nearly impossible to gather and verify information under the current security and humanitarian conditions."

So UNICEF made up numbers based on a wild guess of how many children became orphaned or (somehow) separated from their parents, which in turn was based on faked statistics that came directly from...Hamas. But while UNICEF admitted its numbers were an "estimation" and could not be considered accurate at all, OCHA repeats them as official UNICEF stats.

Another UN agency, UNRWA, also repeats Hamas fake statistics.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini tried to be careful in his wording, tweeting, "Staggering. The number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in #Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars around the world combined."

But after that weak caveat of admitting that the Gaza numbers are only "reported," he accepts them as proof that Israel is deliberately targeting children: "This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future."

It is an antisemitic libel supported and spread by the UN.

WHO also unquestioningly reports the Hamas statistics as authoritative, including the completely made up statistic of over "7,780" people missing or buried under rubble, a number that has only gone up even as fighting has decreased. Has no one been uncovering bodies in northern Gaza for months? When they find a body, does the MoH subtract that from their "under the rubble" figure?

Yet since these statistics are reported by the UN, the media and NGOs feel confident to report them as originating with UN agencies instead of noting that they originally come from Hamas.

It is laundering of statistics.

But the antisemitism doesn't end there. The Hamas statistics are accepted unquestioningly, including the absurd idea that 72% of all Gazans killed are women and children. That would be, as of today, over 22,300 women and children killed.

But Israel says that 13,000 terrorists have been killed. In previous wars, Israel's estimates of terrorists killed have been proven to be accurate.

Presumably all of them are men.

It is impossible for both the Israeli and Hamas statistics to be true, since they would add up to thousands more deaths than even Hamas admits. But the UN assumes Hamas to be accurate and the IDF estimates are not considered.

Believing terrorists over Jews is another type of antisemitism we are seeing constantly during this war.

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

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At the Oscars on Sunday night, some of the Hollywood glitterati wore "ceasefire pins" designed by "Artists for Palestine."

The pins depict a reddish hand on a red background with a heart in the palm.

Zionists, including the Government of Israel's X account, immediately associated this symbol with the image of the lynching of Israeli soldiers Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in Ramallah in 2000 and the bloody hands displayed by the murderers in front of a cheering crowd.

Artists for Palestine claim that the symbol is innocuous, and the hand is orange:

The red background [is] to symbolize the urgency of the call to save lives. The orange hand conveys the beautiful community of people from all backgrounds that have come together in support of centering our shared humanity. The heart being cradled in the center of the hand is an invitation for us to lead with our hearts, always, to lead with love.

I don't know if the group is being truthful or not but their explanation seems unlikely.

Palestinians regard the murderers as "heroic"even today. The photo of the lynching is well known to Palestinians. And the crazed Palestinians outside the police station ripped the soldiers apart and had one of their hearts in their hands, quite literally.

There must have been someone on the Artists for Palestine committee who knew this.

Beyond that, to think that anyone who hates Israel doesn't think of the phrase "blood on their hands" when they see a red hand is a liar. Protesters have been painting their hands red (not orange) from the beginning of the war, this photo from an October Senate hearing. It doesn't look like an orange hand.

However, there is another connection between the idiotic "ceasefire now" Hollywood stars and the lynchers in Ramallah close to 24 years ago.

They both act based on slanderous lies about Israel.

The person in the photo above with the bloody hands, Abdel Aziz Salha, was interviewed by Electronic Intifada in 2013. He was released from prison in the Shalit deal and was sent to Gaza, where he was treated as a hero. Hamas provided him with "a spacious, well-decorated apartment ten minutes from the sea."

He describes why he was filled with such rage in Ramallah:

“Earlier on that day, one Palestinian from Ramallah was murdered by Israeli settlers from a settlement neighboring Ramallah,” Salha said in a low voice. “After they had killed him, they cut his ears and threw his body. This is the reason there were thousands of protestors across Ramallah on that day, and accidentally, we got the word that there were two Israeli soldiers held in one Ramallah police station.”

But even Electronic Intifada admits that the rumors weren't true.

Salha was referring to the death of a Palestinian man who was reported to have been savagely killed by Israeli settlers. His funeral procession was the angry crowd that the Israeli reservists had come across. A forensic investigation by Physicians for Human Rights later found that the man was most likely killed in a car accident.

The false rumor whipped the crowd into a frenzy and that very possibly is why Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami were lynched.

Lies become incitement, and incitement kills. The lie that Israel is wantonly murdering Palestinians is resulting in Jews being killed today in Israel. And that is a lie that the Hollywood stars are eagerly pushing, because they think that a "ceasefire" that leaves the 10/7 terrorists free to plan the next 10/7 is a good thing.

Whether the designer of the pin consciously aped the Ramallah photo or not, the slanders behind both stories are the same. And they result in murder.

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03/12 Links Pt2: The WWII ‘lessons’ that wouldn’t have saved a single Jew; Hollywood Jews are like turkeys for Christmas; The Holiday from History Is Over

From Ian:

The WWII ‘lessons’ that wouldn’t have saved a single Jew

Antisemites like Ken Roth, ‘as-a-Jews’ like Jonathan Glazer, and even non-antisemites like US President Joe Biden are lecturing Israel on the lessons Israel should learn from the Holocaust and the Second World War, but their ‘lessons’ would have prolonged the war, left Hitler in power, and led to more Jews being murdered in gas chambers.

There’s a lot that can be learned from the Holocaust and World War II as a whole. There are lessons in the bravery of some and the cowardice of others. There is so much to be learned from how Hitler was allowed to start another World War and commit a crime so great a new word had to be developed to describe it, "genocide", as well in how he was finally defeated.

People seem to love to try to apply these lessons to Jews and the Jewish State, Israel, especially in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7, the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. But the lessons they want Israel to learn would not have stopped World War II or saved a single one of the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

On Sunday, during the Academy Awards, Writer/director Jonathan Glazer used his acceptance speech for best international picture to attack Israel using the supposed “lessons” of the Holocaust and even “renounced” his Jewishness.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst,” Glazer said. “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims, this humanization, how do we resist?”

How fitting that the film for which Glazer won his award, “Zone of Interest,” is a Holocaust film in which the actual victims of the Holocaust, the Jews, never appear. He has joined the ranks of the ‘as-a-Jews,’ those supposedly Jewish people for whom Judaism is nothing more than a means to attack or erase the 99% of the Jewish people who don’t think Jews should let themselves be slaughtered.

Former Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth, the man who almost single-handedly transformed that NGO from a respected defender of human rights into an antisemitic cesspool obsessed with denying Israel’s right to not let its civilians be murdered, invoked the Holocaust on Sunday while criticizing Israel’s left-wing president.

“The Holocaust teaches no one's rights are secure unless everyone's are, but Israeli Pres. Herzog faces protests today for spreading the opposite message by saying there are no "uninvolved civilians" in Gaza, suggesting Palestinian rights are dispensable,” Roth wrote on X.

It is no secret that Roth believes that Israeli and Jewish lives are dispensable, just as so many did before and during World War II.

Hollywood Jews are like turkeys for Christmas

One cannot help but compare Glazer to Marius von Mayenburg, whose play Nachtland is having a short run in London. Nachtland tells the story of Nicola and Philipp, German siblings who find a painting by A. Hitler in their father’s attic. In an effort to find a Nazi provenance for the painting so that they can sell it for a fortune, the family’s past associations with Martin Bormann are revealed. It is up to Philipp’s Jewish wife Judith to make the moral case for why the family should not be making money from the blood of dead Jews.

Nicola brings up the Palestinians in order to tell Judith to ‘learn from the lessons of history’.

‘Isn’t it surprising that the Jews of all people should know better than to ‘erect camps, build walls and kill innocents’, she declares.

Judith retorts: ‘If you think you can talk about Israel and point fingers as if it has nothing whatsover to do with Germany, then (…) I’m not going to do your homework for you, and I can’t give you absolution …with your vain perpetrator cult…look it up yourself, al-Husseini, Arafat, Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas charter.”

Interestingly enough, these words, written before the 7 October Hamas massacre, were cut out of the script on the night I saw Nachtland. The director clearly thought that, spoken against the background of the current Israel-Hamas war, they would prove too controversial for some in the audience. But they are in the playtext.

Marius von Mayenburg knows what Jonathan Glazer could not be bothered to find out: that there there is a direct link between the Holocaust, the Palestinian Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al Husseini and the Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood, whose Gaza branch – Hamas – was founded in 1987 by Ahmed Yassin.

Like turkeys voting for Christmas, the Hollywood glitterati who sport their Free Palestine pins and abjure their Jewishness have no idea that they are actually supporting a form of antisemitism that would murder them – as Jews – if it could.

It takes a non-Jewish German to have the moral clarity that Glazer and Co so clearly lack.

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Those Pushing For Diplomacy Between Israel And Hamas Forget The Secret Ingredient (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

When people argue that Israel and Hamas need to negotiate and make peace, they sometimes draw comparisons between Hamas and the IRA:

Yes, they have to negotiate w/ Hamas. Just like the Brits had to negotiate with the IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. The IRA were terrorists. They almost killed Margaret Thatcher once. But negotiation was necessary for durable peace. Have to do it in Israel now & end the war https://t.co/3WblyxUcfB
— Zane (@zanealb04) March 8, 2024

It is not an unexpected sentiment.

Those negotiations led to the Good Friday Agreement in 2001, where the Irish Republican Army agreed to begin disarming. It was an amazing achievement.

CNN interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Powell praised the agreement, saying it "shows what can happen when one remains persistent and is determined to solve what appear to be intractable problems." Midway through the press conference, the topic of Israel came up.

The final question was, "Secretary Powell, does the situation in Northern Ireland not show us all that negotiations is really the only way forward in all of these situations?" Israel was not mentioned, but it clearly was on everyone's mind.

Powell responded:

what we have seen in Northern Ireland in the last 24 hours, which culminates a process that took many, many years long to get to this point, is an example of what can be achieved when people of good will come together, recognize they have strong differences -- differences that they have fought over for years -- but it's time to put those differences aside in order to move forward and to provide a better life for the children of Northern Ireland.

Very...tactful. He praised both the participants and the diplomatic process in general.

But Straw got in the last word:

It also has to be said that, before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiation, and we'd not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Before diplomacy could work, terrorism had to be defeated and those who practiced it had to reject it. And for that to happen, military force was necessary.

And terrorism still needs to be rejected. A diplomatic approach won't suffice.

Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, made this point in his Victory Project. He wrote in 2017 that Israel needs "to indicate to the Palestinians that this conflict, this war that they have been engaged in for a century, is over. And they lost. And they've got to recognize it." He describes a plan of deterrence that goes beyond tough tactics:

When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year. Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank. When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field. When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad. Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank. When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure. Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies. In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.

Israel has used some of these suggestions, such as subtracting from the tax money that goes to the PA in response to Abbas's pay-to-slay program. And in light of the Hamas massacre of October 7, Israel may consider stricter measures, both in terms of Gaza and the West Bank. The measures themselves are not purely punitive. Their goal is deterrence and ultimately to show the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost.

That would be the opposite of the approach of the Dalai Lama to the terrorist attack of 9-11:

How to respond to such an attack is a very difficult question. Of course, those who are dealing with the problem may know better, but I feel that careful consideration is necessary and that it is appropriate to respond to an act of violence by employing the principles of nonviolence.

The Dalai Lama (YouTube screenshot)

And yet even here, he leaves some wiggle room for a stronger, harsher approach:

Of course, in particular instances a more aggressive approach may also be necessary.

Two years later, the Dalai Lama raised eyebrows when the New York Times reported, Dalai Lama Says Terror May Need a Violent Reply

The Dalai Lama, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of the world's most prominent advocates of nonviolence, said in an interview yesterday that it might be necessary to fight terrorists with violence...

He goes on to say that ''terrorism is the worst kind of violence, so we have to check it, we have to take countermeasures" and even suggests, at the time, that it was ''too early to say'' whether the war in Iraq was a mistake.

In 2009, the Dalai Lama was still saying the same thing:

The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence on Saturday candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the principle of ahimsa [non-violence] because the minds of terrorists are closed.

And if the minds of terrorists are closed, then as Jack Straw suggested, military force is necessary, and as Daniel Pipes says, you have to convince them that they have lost.

Who knows? Maybe even Biden understands that to a degree. In an interview following his State of the Union Address, Biden was asked when Hamas really wants a ceasefire:

Biden admits the futility of a ceasefire and acknowledges that Hamas will use the opportunity to rearm itself for more attacks -- before pausing and going back to attacking Israel, with an outlandish accusation that it is carpet-bombing Gaza, consistent with his unquestioning acceptance of Hamas's exaggerated number of casualties.

And if Hamas is allowed to live to fight another day -- it will.

The fact remains -- Israel will not win unless Hamas loses.

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03/12 Links Pt1: Biden’s Alienating Strategy; The Road to Ceasefire Leads Through the Rafah Offensive; What's Behind the Propaganda War Against Israel

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Biden’s Alienating Strategy

Joe Biden is used to talking to Israel-skeptics who insist their beef isn’t with the Israeli people but with their government, and claim that their resentment isn’t aimed at the Jewish state’s existence but at the lack of a Palestinian state alongside it. The problem is, those folks are gone. Or, to put it more precisely, the people protesting Biden’s support for Israel no longer rely on polite arguments. Now they come right out and say they object to Israel’s very existence.

Biden refuses to address this new reality. It’s the primary reason why his attempts to mollify his party’s base on Gaza have fallen flat. They are talking right past each other.

Biden’s MSNBC interview with Jonathan Capehart on March 10 made it clear the administration has settled on the talking point that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the problem. “In my view,” the president said, “[Netanyahu] is hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world—it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake.”

What is the “it” here? Biden tried to explain that Bibi is not, apparently, paying enough “attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”

That didn’t make it any clearer, but his discussion of the war in Gaza followed this pattern: he brought it back it back to Bibi.

Vice President Kamala Harris took a more explicit route to the same destination. “I think it’s important for us to distinguish, or at least to not conflate, the Israeli government with the Israeli people,” Harris said. “The Israeli people are entitled to security, as are the Palestinians. In equal measure.”

This is the sort of thing the administration says about the Palestinians and Hamas. The moral equivalence is egregious, but another problem with it is this: Whom are they talking to? Who is the audience for this?

Vilifying Bibi was edgy a decade ago, maybe, especially as a way of saying Israel might conceivably have the right to defend itself but not this way. Today, the activists powering the pro-Hamas protest movement don’t believe and don’t claim that “the Israeli people are entitled to security.” They are, instead, saying that the Israeli people are colonizers, that decolonization is necessarily violent, and that Israel doesn’t have the right to security and self-defense from the people it supposedly oppresses.

Biden and Harris are arguing with a ghost.

Jacob Stoil & John Spencer: The Road to Ceasefire Leads Through the Rafah Offensive

Chair of Applied History at the West Point Modern War Institute; chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point

When Hamas attacked and invaded Israel, it did so knowing there would be a massive response by Israel and an operation into Gaza. It knew many Gazan civilians would die, indeed they counted on it, referring to their population as a "nation of martyrs." Hamas' hope is that repeated attacks like Oct. 7 will eventually break the will of the Israeli population. To do that, Hamas would need to survive the war.

Hamas saw that if the U.S. could be made uncomfortable enough with the continuing war, it would put more pressure on Israel to wind down operations. Hamas believes the U.S. will keep Israel out of Rafah, enabling Hamas to walk away with a strategic victory and emerge as the only Palestinian organization to defeat Israel.

Without the realistic threat of an Israeli operation in Rafah, Hamas has no reason to seek a ceasefire, and given Hamas' strategy, there can be no truly lasting ceasefire if Hamas can return to control Gaza. Hamas' unwillingness to negotiate is entirely dependent on the U.S. acting as Hamas wants.

What's Behind the Propaganda War Against Israel

What does Israel have to do to be allowed by the rest of the world to defend itself? The insistent effort by some governments, officials and much of the media in the U.S. and Europe to get the Jewish state to relent against enemies that actively seek to destroy it gives rise to the suspicion that for too many of them, perhaps Israel doesn't deserve the right to exist at all. Fortunately, Israel doesn't need the West's permission to save itself.

The president feels obliged to balance his support of Israel with a rhetorical campaign of increasingly shrill, daily denunciations of Israel's efforts in Gaza. He told MSNBC that the offensive in Gaza was "hurting Israel more than helping Israel...and I think it's a big mistake."

Even after the horrors of Oct. 7, Israel is tagged as the aggressor in the media. Israel is said to have - either recklessly or out of genocidal intent - massacred tens of thousands of innocent civilians. But in the process of extirpating Hamas it was inevitable civilians would be killed. This wasn't simply because there is "collateral" damage in any large-scale warfare, but because Hamas intended it that way. To the terror group, the propaganda value of a dead Palestinian child is as great as that of an Israeli.

From the official Palestinian Wafa news agency:

Thousands of Palestinian worshipers today evening performed Tarawih prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, despite the restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation.

The Islamic Endowments Department said that about 35,000 worshipers performed the Tarawih prayers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, despite the occupation’s measures.

There are so many stories in the media about how Israel makes it difficult for Muslims to worship at Al Aqsa, yet a nighttime prayer session attracts far more people than could fit in Madison Square Garden.

While the media emphasizes that Israel restricts young men from going there, that appears to only apply to West Bank Palestinians. Muslims who live in Israel, including Arab sections of Jerusalem, don't seem to have any problems getting there.

How many articles mention that?

The media spends more time talking about a couple of hundred Jews visiting their holiest site than tens of thousands of Muslims visiting (and, from the perspective of Jewish law, desecrating) the site every day.

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