Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, March 16, 2024

03/16 Links: Shattered; Sharansky: Oslo sowed the seeds for the October 7 massacre; Why wasn’t October 7 prevented? Time to look to the West

From Ian:

Shattered

When Israelis speak about Oct. 7, they frequently say “there are no words.” But one word they consistently use is “shattered.”

Israeli psychologists have been treating severe trauma, complex trauma and collective trauma. The word “trauma,” however, fails to convey the scale, the savagery or the sadism of events that day. The term does not encompass the complex mix of disorientation, anguish, emotional overload and the experience of utter brokenness after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

There is no word for the shock felt by Jews around the world when Israel was suddenly and without warning attacked by thousands of rockets targeting civilians from the north to the south and from the river to the sea. There is no word to describe what it is like to be a Jew kidnapped by terrorists indoctrinated since early childhood to believe that murdering Jews is rewarded in the afterlife. Or to know that the people you love are in the hands of terrorists who delight in rape, torture and slaughter; who enjoy forcing parents and children to watch as they inflict horrors on loved ones.

There is no word to convey the terrifying ordeal suffered by survivors of the attempted genocide that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7. There is no word that communicates the panic, betrayal, horror and distress of those who hid for hours waiting for help to come, reading WhatsApp messages about terrorists inside their neighbors’ houses. Hearing terrorists break into their own homes. Hearing the screams of injured and dying friends and relatives. Hearing sounds of gunfire and exploding RPGs punctuated by ecstatic shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” All the while knowing they were being hunted.

Everyone in Israel is just one or two degrees of separation from someone who was murdered, injured or kidnapped on Oct. 7. And everyone knows someone who sped to the rescue that day, many of whom never returned.

There is no word to describe the grief of a country still holding its breath while more than a hundred hostages remain in Gaza, and while hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many in their teens and early 20s, go to battle. Some returning badly injured. Some returning to be buried.

Israel, which in the 20th century absorbed hundreds of thousands of displaced Holocaust survivors as well as nearly 900,000 Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitism and violence in neighboring Arab countries, is now temporarily housing about 200,000 displaced Israelis — refugees in their own country — some in hotels and even dormitories.

This includes not only those evacuated from areas near the Gaza border, but also from the north, as confrontations with terrorists in Lebanon escalate. Many displaced families are unsure how long it will take before they can return home. Some refugees from the south have already returned. Some don’t have homes to return to. Some don’t know if they want to return.

There is no word in the psychological lexicon for what happened on Oct. 7 or the new world in which Israelis now live. But “shattered” comes closer than “trauma.”

Sharansky: Oslo sowed the seeds for the October 7 massacre

THE DISCUSSION quickly turns to Oct. 7 and the “shocking” and “terrible” failure beforehand of Israel’s intelligence community and of the IDF that day. He says that everyone wants "to fight back and restore peace, but our perception of our security changed that day.”

On the other hand, he says, “I think so much good has come out of our people” since the massacre. “In one day, we went from being a polarized society to the most united. Suddenly, it was clear that the whole year of these mutual accusations was not in the hearts of the people.

“I am sure there will be at least two new parties in the next elections: one to the left of Likud, and one to the right, with new faces for everyone.”

But Sharansky cannot let go of what he believes was the catalyst for the Gaza war: the Oslo Accords, meaning that the seeds of Oct. 7 were planted 30 years ago. He says the Olso approach essentially communicated that “It’s not our business, and it’s not important for us in what kind of society the Palestinians live” but rather that Israel “find a dictator who can guarantee our stability.”

“That was the idea of Oslo,” Sharansky explains. “We are bringing [Yasser] Arafat. We know that he is a ruthless dictator. And we say to the Palestinians, ‘Whether you want it or not, he will be your leader.’ And we say to ourselves, ‘Our prime minister said that it’s good he [Arafat] is not restricted by democracy because that’s how he will defeat Hamas much quicker than we can do it.’”

Sharansky opposed Oslo because he believed Arafat would quickly understand that the only way he could maintain power by force was to find an external enemy. “What other external enemy would he have except us?” he asks. “A lot of public money was put into Arafat’s account so he would be loyal to us. And it failed big.”

The former minister says that not only did Arafat fail to defeat Hamas, but “Hamas defeated him.”

Then came the Disengagement in 2005 and the vision that Israel could separate from Gaza. Sharansky was the first minister to resign over the idea.

It’s not that he does not want peace or believe it is achievable, Sharansky stresses. Rather, he does not think Israeli and world leaders have gone about obtaining it in the right way. He calls former prime minister Shimon Peres “primitive and a neo-Marxist,” having fully bought into a blissful vision of Mideast peace.

“He was so popular because of his optimism,” Sharansky says of Peres. “I am also optimistic, but I am not naive.” Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, he opines, was more realistic but felt it was worthwhile to proceed.

He says he does not believe that then-prime minister Ariel Sharon really felt the Disengagement would achieve its goal. Sharon told Sharansky that he thought if Israel separated from Gaza and gave the Gazans complete independence, Israel would have 10 years of international approval – and be able to respond if Gazans carried out attacks against the Jewish state.

“I told him, ‘We don’t have 10 years; we don’t have 10 days,’” Sharansky says. “I was wrong. We had a couple of months.

“We are paying a very big price for our attempts,” he continues, speaking quickly. “We have no choice now. If we want to continue to exist as a state, we have to destroy Hamas. We have to take control over the security.”

Seth Frantzman: Why wasn’t October 7 prevented? Time to look to the West

While Israel will need to investigate its own failures on and leading up to October 7, there is also enough blame to go around Western nations.

Hamas is hosted by Qatar, a major non-NATO ally of the US. Doha is also close to many other western countries. In addition, Turkey, a member of NATO backs Hamas. As such, two of the West’s closest allies in the Middle East are both closely connected to Hamas.

How did Hamas plan the greatest mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust while also being hosted by western allies? How is it possible that western allies hosted and backed Hamas while western governments knew nothing about the plans for October 7?

These are important questions because October 7 was certainly not in the interests of Israel or Gazans. More than 200,000 Israelis had to be evacuated in its wake, and Hezbollah’s supporting rocket fire.

'Ceasefire' calls amid post-Oct. 7 realities
Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 253 were taken hostage. Israel’s inevitable response has been massive. Most countries in the region as well as in the West would surely have wanted to avoid this war. Pro-Palestinian activists across the West demand a ceasefire and there are fears of a wider regional war Gaza war and famine in Gaza.

All of this could have been prevented, not just by more vigilant Israeli protection of its Gaza border. October 7 could not possibly have been carried out by a handful of terrorists alone. Hamas has never carried out such a complex attack. In fact, Hamas has only recently become powerful enough to conceive of such an attack. Its sophistication point to foreign support and advice.

Reports have shown that Hamas cyber and intelligence capabilities have expanded in recent years. It expanded its rocket arsenal and ability to fire large barrages of rockets simultaneously. It expanded its knowledge of Israel’s border fence electronics and sought to use new methods to outsmart artificial intelligence-driven technologies.

In addition to two Western backers Hamas’s main backer is Iran. After October 7, Russia and China did not condemn Hamas and have appeared to excuse its attack. In addition, the Iranian regime sent its foreign minister to Qatar to congratulate the Hamas high command.

03/15 Links Pt2: As a Zionist; The West’s abandonment of the Jews; Glazer’s Partners Refute Glazer; Musical Lemmings

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West’s abandonment of the Jews

As the ultimate particularist culture, Judaism is in the way of all universalizing creeds; and so Israel, the particularist Jewish state, had to be dumped. The stage was set for the demonization of Israel tied to the increasing dominance of international human rights doctrine.

A living example of this is Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Obama administration’s U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

A noted expert on genocide, Power has long said the United States bears a unique responsibility to prevent mass atrocities.

It was therefore an irony that, earlier this year, Power was attacked by current and former USAID employees for belonging to an administration providing military support to Israel in the war against Hamas. Although she told these officials it was “very important that what happened on Oct. 7 never happen again,” she failed to push back against their claim that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza.

Given her history, this perhaps wasn’t surprising. In 2002, she was asked as a “thought experiment” what she would advise the U.S. president to do about the Israel-Palestinian problem “if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving towards genocide.”

In response to this already disturbingly loaded question, Power said that something should be put “on the line” to help the situation. This might mean “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. … It does require external intervention.”

Power wasn’t talking about preventing the Palestinians from committing genocide against the Jews of Israel. She was talking about invading Israel to prevent an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.

She was suggesting that Israel might commit atrocities against people who themselves make Israel the victim of precisely such atrocities: The vile smear being used against Israel today.

She also suggested that the only people who might be alienated if the U.S. invaded Israel for this purpose would be American Jews, who she said exercised tremendous political and financial power over America.

The antisemitism of this remark aside, the thinking here was that Jews can’t be allowed to get in the way of the human rights doctrine that state power is always used to make victims and never to protect people from becoming victims in the first place.

Israel is fighting a desperate battle for its survival. Its people are in a state of ever-deepening trauma, grief and anxiety. Some of their families and friends are still hostages in Gaza meeting unthinkable fates. The death toll among their conscripted children and grandchildren fighting to defend their country is steadily ticking upwards.

They understand that genocidal savages intend to continue their attacks until they have destroyed the Jewish homeland and slaughtered every Jew.

In this truly desperate situation, what’s even worse is that the so-called “civilized” West—which also wants the Jews removed from its headspace and its conscience—is accusing them of the crime of which they are the present and intended victims.

That is an unspeakable abandonment of the Jewish people and to the West a source of ineradicable shame.

‘He Made a Good Speech,’ Biden Says of Schumer's Call To Oust Netanyahu

President Joe Biden told reporters on Friday that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer's (D., N.Y.) call for Israelis to vote out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in "a good speech."

"Sen. Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staff, he was gonna make that speech. I'm not going to elaborate on the speech," Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. "He made a good speech, and I think he expressed a serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans."

Schumer in the Thursday speech on the Senate floor said Netanyahu was "stuck in the past" and that he allied with "radical right-wing Israelis," even saying that he should not remain in power.

"I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel," Schumer said.

Several Republicans blasted Schumer for his remarks. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said his call for new elections was "inappropriate and offensive."

"Israel is a close ally and a healthy, vibrant democracy. The last thing Israel needs is the 'foreign election interference' that Democrats so often decry here," Cotton said in a statement.

Even the more centrist American Jewish Committee admonished Schumer for his call.

Douglas Murray: Why do clueless Hamas supporters keep getting away with disruptive protests? Arrest them!

If your print copy of The New York Post was slightly delayed yesterday morning you can blame the “peace” brigade.

The same people who have spent the last few months blocking bridges and stopping New Yorkers getting to work yesterday morning targeted one of this paper’s printing works in Queens.

The plant also prints The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, USA Today and the New York Times.

The protestors seemed especially angry about the last of these. Though I’m tempted to say that they deserve each other.

In the early hours of the morning these protestors lay across the road and put a barricade in the middle of it.

They also put up a sign saying “Consent for genocide is manufactured here.”

Wearing Palestinian bandanas and other terrorist-chic the protestors sought to disrupt the operations of the free press. All to demonstrate their opposition to something that isn’t happening.

Because of course there is no “genocide” in Gaza. There is a targeted military operation in a heavily built-up area where Hamas hide behind the civilians and also dress as civilians.

In any case, what military operation there is could stop at any moment if the terrorists of Hamas just handed back the more than 100 Israeli hostages who they are still holding.

But you never hear calls like that from these activists. Because human details don’t disturb them. Any more than facts or reality do.

‘We Should Salute Them’: Hezbollah Leader Expresses Gratitude for American Anti-Israel Activists

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday praised Americans who are putting pressure on US President Joe Biden to limit support for Israel because they are helping the Lebanese terrorist group’s cause.

“Today, what many people demonstrating in America are doing … Of course, we should salute them and be grateful to them,” Nasrallah said in remarks translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

In his speech, the terrorist leader highlighted the importance in his view of anti-Israel activism in the US.

Nasrallah went on to praise Democrats in America who are threatening not to vote for Biden in this year’s US presidential election due to his support for Israel in its war against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

“The Arabs, the Muslims, and the non-Muslims, from among the other free Americans — Christians and others — in the Democratic Party who wrote to Biden: ‘We are uncommitted to vote for you.’ These people are very influential at this stage,” Nasrallah said.

These Americans are so important, Nasrallah explained, because Biden “is not afraid of the world, the international community, God, history, or anything. Biden now is afraid of one thing only — that his policy and actions in Gaza will lead him to lose the presidential elections. This is why he keeps debating, denying, and playing games.”

More than that, Nasrallah seemed to see an opening to help his cause, saying, “If the pressure and opposition [to Biden] in America continues, this may also open a door for hope.”

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which provides the Islamist terrorist groups with arms, funds, and training.

In its 1985 manifesto, Hezbollah wrote, “Our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

The terror group’s praise for American anti-Israel activists comes amid rising pressure in the US from segments of the Muslim community, the far left, and increasingly the mainstream left on Biden to lessen his support for Israel.

Times of Israel reports:

The Israel Defense Forces on Friday denied claims by the Hamas terror group that troops had opened fire on crowds of civilians waiting for aid at a square in Gaza City, saying that Israeli soldiers did not shoot at any stage during the incident and that Palestinian gunmen caused the casualties.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip accused Israeli troops of opening fire from “tanks and helicopters” at the civilians gathered at Kuwait Square late Thursday, killing 21 people and wounding more than 150 others.

The Israeli military said that after conducting an “intensive preliminary review,” it found that “the IDF did not open fire at the aid convoy at Kuwait Square.”

“Approximately one hour before the arrival of the convoy to the humanitarian corridor, armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were awaiting the arrival of the aid convoy. As aid trucks were entering, the Palestinian gunmen continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks. Additionally, a number of Gazan civilians were run over by the trucks.”

Meanwhile, the imaginary death toll from the incident has now climbed in Palestinian media from about 15 to over 100, according to the Hamas media office. The health ministry still says 20.

We know there were people shooting. We know it wasn't the IDF - even without their denial, why would they go through the trouble to facilitate bringing in aid trucks when if just want to shoot civilians? Only a crazed antisemitic conspiracy theory would say that somehow the IDF spends hundreds of man hours to facilitate aid and then turn around and attack the people it was meant for.

But there is another option besides assuming it was Hamas.

For all its terrorism, Hamas largely kept law and order in Gaza. It is in Hamas' interest to keep Gaza in chaos in order to give the impression that it is the only party that can restore order. But the chaos, while perhaps fomented and encouraged by Hamas, can come up organically. And Hamas wants to make itself look like it alone can make things better.

Gaza is now a black market society. People are selling the food and aid they don't need to informal pop-up stores. The prices have increased dramatically. People are desperate.

Gaza is a wonderful place to be a criminal. And criminals who want to profit off the shortages would have no problem shooting people to make their money - and to keep the supply available to the public low.

I'm not saying Hamas couldn't be involved as well. But Hamas can more easily get the aid off the trucks coming from Egypt than the trucks going up north. A lot of the food is paid for by Qatar, which would collude with Hamas to hand it over to them. Hamas has limited resources in Gaza and hijacking food trucks up north is probably not one of their highest priorities.

But they could easily be encouraging, or even paying, criminals - perhaps even sprung from jail - to create the chaos that Hamas benefits from. They get to blame Israel for any deaths, they get to multiply the deaths by a factor of 5 or 10, they get to look like a better alternative to the IDF occupying Gaza.

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!

03/15 Links Pt1: The Problem in Gaza Is Hamas, Not How to Provide Aid; Schumer provides cover for Biden’s smears of Israel; Netanyahu approves Rafah operation

From Ian:

The Big Lies About Israel’s Big Bombs

President Joe Biden says Israel is losing support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. He says that Israeli conduct in Gaza has been “over the top.” His secretary of state, secretary of defense, and vice president have all said Israel must do more to make the war in Gaza less destructive. Yet the White House has never laid out precisely what Israel is doing wrong on the battlefield. How does one wage a less destructive war when facing an enemy that has spent more than a decade building hundreds of kilometers of tunnels underneath densely populated areas, turning whole neighborhoods into human shields?

A growing contingent of journalists believes it has the answer to this question: Israel must stop using 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza and shift to smaller, less powerful munitions. Investigations by CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all make the case that employing such large bombs in dense urban environments is inherently reckless, even criminal.

Yet the military analysis that informs this conclusion is amateurish, placing inordinate emphasis on the potential of 2,000-pound bombs to inflict grave harm on people and buildings far from the point of impact. This ignores how a well-trained air force can limit such harm by fusing a bomb to detonate below ground, as well as adjusting factors such as the angle and velocity of its delivery.

The indictments also tend to brush aside that Hamas has spent a decade constructing a tunnel network that is more extensive, built tougher, and buried deeper than those of other insurgent forces, such as ISIS. Ignoring this key fact, the critics ask why Israel needs to use 2,000-pound bombs if the United States and its allies used them infrequently in urban environments when fighting ISIS.

Another flaw of the broadsides against Israel’s use of large bombs is that their conclusions rest heavily on analysis provided by experts drawn from progressive ranks, and especially from organizations calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an immediate end to U.S. military support for Israel. The voices of independent military experts are conspicuously absent.

Finally, the critics shy away from observing that Hamas has embedded its military infrastructure directly under homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques. This is a war crime, plain and simple, yet the media’s emphasis remains on Israel’s alleged culpability, with no reference to the original sin of locating military infrastructure in prohibited spaces. Unquestionably, the war has inflicted unprecedented suffering on the people of Gaza. Yet that is part of Hamas’s plan.

Top U.S. intelligence officials refuse to reject claim that Israel is "exterminating" Palestinians

Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, and Williams Burns, director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday. Sen. Tom Cotton asked Haines and Burns whether they agreed with allegations that Israel is “exterminating” the Palestinian people.

For any honest, non-biased intelligence director, answering would be easy. Of course, Israel isn’t exterminating the Palestinian people; nor is it attempting to do so.

Yet, neither Haines nor Burns disavowed this slanderous claim. Cotton gave Burns two tries. Both times, Burns refused to disagree with the slander, choosing instead to mouth non-responsive Biden administration talking points about the need for a cease-fire, etc.

Cotton then asked Haines the same question. She replied that she fully endorses Burns’ (non) response. You can watch these exchanges here, beginning at around the 1 hour, 8 minute mark

The answers Burns and Haines gave are disgraceful. One can be “mindful” of the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza, as Burns said we should be, without lending credence to the calumny that Israel is exterminating the Palestinian people. But neither of Americas two top intelligence repudiated that charge.

The charge is manifestly false. According to Hamas, Israel has killed around 31,000 Palestinians in Gaza. This number is garbage, but let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that it’s accurate. And let’s add in the nearly five hundred Palestinians that, allegedly, have been killed in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Netanyahu says that Israeli forces have killed approximately 13,000 Hamas terrorists. I have no reason to doubt this figure, but let’s say, again for the sake of argument, that the real number is half of what Netanyahu claims.

Under these assumptions, all of which are highly favorable to the Hamas propaganda machine, Israeli forces have killed approximately 25,000 Palestinian civilians, around 24,500 of whom resided in Gaza. The population of Gaza is around two million.

“Exterminate” means to destroy completely. Clearly, there has been nothing resembling an extermination.

Nor, especially in light of Hamas’ strategy of hiding among civilians, has there been an attempt at extermination. Given Israel’s massive military superiority, if its forces were trying to exterminate Palestinians, they would have killed many times more of them than they have.

Yet, America’s two top intelligence chiefs wouldn’t deny the calumny — a modern day blood libel — that Israel is exterminating Palestinians.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s strategic game of survival

To understand the nature of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, “you really have to go back to World War II-style battles,” said Spencer.

“Defense is always the strongest form of warfare … Hamas has had 15-plus years to build defensive positions. … Yes, they don’t have an air force. They don’t have armor and tanks. They’re mostly light infantry. But they’re in probably the most defensive terrain that could ever be created. They’re in literally bomb-proof bunkers underneath every house. … It’s 400 miles of tunnels that range from 15 feet to 300 feet underground where no military munition can reach.”

The IDF, Spencer noted, “has lots of drones and things above, but you can’t see through concrete. You can’t see underneath the buildings. It’s an immense defensive capability, but also the rocket supply. The fact that Hamas has launched over 12,000 rockets at Israel’s civilian sites—every one of them a war crime—is part of their combat power. … The fact that they’re sitting in their defensive positions, waiting for attack and have been planning for that for 15 years means it doesn’t really matter how big the IDF is or how powerful they are.”

The second fundamental feature of Hamas’s war against Israel that the United States refuses to acknowledge is that Hamas’s Oct. 7 operation was not a terrorist attack. “They did terrorist things, but that was a full division-level invasion of a nation, of Israel,” and “while Hamas is a terrorist organization, it’s also an army.”

The terrorists that carried out the slaughter that day didn’t “penetrate” Israel, like a suicide bomber who explodes himself in a crowded cafe. Hamas operatives invaded Israel with thousands of well-trained, heavily armed terror forces organized as light infantry and artillery units. Their goals were to seize whole communities, military bases and villages, and enact a premeditated plan of sadistic slaughter, gang rape, seizure of hostages of all ages, seizure of strategic targets, and, if possible, the holding of territory within Israel. The ground invasion was synchronized with a massive missile and drone strike, in addition to a cyber-attack against first-response systems and other critical infrastructure.

Three things Israel must do to win
Israel’s mini-war against Hamas in 2014 ended with a tactical victory and strategic stalemate. Ten years ago, Netanyahu was able to withstand the Obama-Biden administration’s demand that Israel capitulate and enable Hamas to win a strategic victory by mobilizing the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which opposed Hamas.

Fearing Hamas’s mastermind Iran—and in light of the U.S.’s determination to enable a Hamas victory to empower Iran—today the moderate Arab states are unwilling to stick their necks out. In the absence of Sunni support, Israel is compelled to stand alone against the United States.

To win, Israel must do three things. It must remain politically stable. Schumer’s broadside from the Senate floor was just the latest salvo in an all-out effort by the administration to destabilize Israel politically and replace Netanyahu with his chief rival Benny Gantz, whom they believe will agree to capitulate and accept the formation of a Palestinian state. Minister-without-Portfolio Gideon Sa’ar’s decision on Tuesday to ditch Gantz’s party and take his faction’s four Knesset seats into the coalition speaks to the near consensus view in Israel that Netanyahu is the only leader that will fight to victory despite U.S. opposition. On Wednesday, a new Direct Polls survey showed that U.S. hostility has strengthened Netanyahu and the right. Netanyahu leads Gantz 47 % to 37% in public support. His right-religious bloc of parties, (including Sa’ar) is polling a 62 seat-majority to Gantz’s leftist bloc of parties’ 48 seats.

The second thing Israel must do is mobilize U.S. public opinion on behalf of its goal of achieving strategic victory by eradicating Hamas and maintaining its security control over Gaza for the foreseeable future. According to last month’s Harvard-Harris poll. Americans support Israel against Hamas 82% to 18%. Netanyahu opened a campaign this week to secure public support with a slew of interviews to the American media and his speech to AIPAC’s annual convention.

Schumer’s hysterical attempts to walk his remarks back amid a furious storm of criticism from all quarters revealed that pro-Israel public opinion remains a factor in American politics.

Finally, Israel must conquer Rafah in defiance of the Biden’s redline and do so as quickly as possible.

As the weeks and months pass, and Election Day in America draws nearer, if Israel remains politically stable, if the IDF continues its brilliant fight in Gaza and if U.S. opinion remains supportive, just as Israel has turned Hamas’s tactical advantages into its own, it will turn the Palestinian U.S.-centered strategy on its head. For once, time will work in Israel’s favor, and Israel will win the strategic victory it needs to secure its survival.

As bad as things are for Jews in the US, it's much worse in Western Europe

My last post surveyed the huge uptick in antisemitism in the US in the past few months.

But if you want to know how thing will look into the future, look at Western Europe. Because everything that happens to Jews there ends up happening to Jews in the US afterwards.

SkyNews has a depressing video feature of how bad things are for the Jews in Belgium nowadays.

A Holocaust survivor in Belgium says she knows Jewish people who have packed their bags ready to flee amid a spike in antisemitism.

Regina Sluszny, 84, from Antwerp, says incidents have rocketed since the outbreak of the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas.

"In Antwerp, the Jews are much more visible with these black coats and big hats, and bunches of boys go by, and they just try to throw the hat on the floor, or when they drive with the bicycle, they try to push them from the bicycle," Ms Sluszny says.

"We really feel it - that it's much, much worse than it was before."

Ms Sluszny says some people are so scared, they've packed bags in case they have to flee.

A text graphic in one of the videos, not mentioned in the article, says that Sluszny had been discussing her family history in Belgian schools for years - but this year teachers found this Holocaust survivor's presence to be "offensive."

In France, already a scary place for Jews, antisemitic incidents quadrupled after October 7.

In England, things are just as bad:

Among the victims of abuse in the UK is Jack Christie, 25, who says he had never felt threatened by antisemitism until recently. While on a train home after a march against antisemitism in November, Mr Christie and his friends were targeted by a man who used racial slurs and threatened to assault him.

“There was nothing to do with the conflict, just a few people holding signs about antisemitism like ‘never again means now’,” he told The Independent. “Some people were wearing kippahs on their heads and there were quite a few visibly Jewish people on the train.

“I was talking to my friend and then next to me I hear someone say ‘pigs’. The guy next to me was on FaceTime and says, ‘I’m on the train with a bunch of dirty Jewish pigs, scumbags and baby killers’.

He went on to accuse other passengers of “supporting killers”, being “donkeys” and branded them “child molesters”.

“No one said anything to spark a reaction, it was out of nowhere,” Mr Christie said, adding that it has made him not want to be openly Jewish on public transport anymore. “It wasn’t even about Israel, it was just plainly antisemitic.”

It was not that long ago that synagogues in America didn't need to have combination locks, bulletproof glass and heavy planters or gates in front to stop potential truck bombs - but synagogues in Europe had been fortresses years before that.

Jews in the US and Canada have a crystal ball as to how things are going to be. Just look across the pond.

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!

Hate crimes against Jews in US cities exploded in 2023, and 2024 looks to be worse

Not all cities have up to date hate crimes databases, but most of the ones that do show that the number of hate crimes against Jews has been exploding in most major cities.

The NYPD hate crimes database shows a huge increase in antisemitic crimes since October 7. This graphic shows the proportion of anti-Jewish hate crimes compared to all others combined, per month, in 2023.

In Los Angeles, 90% of the anti-religious hate crimes in 2023 were anti-Jewish. And after only two months of 2024, it is clear that this year will smash last year's records for antisemitic hate.

In Chicago, hate crimes against Jews soared in 2023, and already in 2024 there are half as many as in all of 2023.

In Portland, anti-Jewish hate crimes dwarfed that of all other anti-religious hate crimes, with a spike in the fourth quarter (although the third quarter was also very bad.)

Antisemitic hate crimes are an order of magnitude more prevalent than anti-Islamic and anti-Arab hate crimes in all these cities.

If anti-Zionism is not related to antisemitism, then what else can possibly account for these huge increases in hate crimes in the fourth quarter of 2023?

And if "progressive" Americans are as much against antisemitism as they claim, then why aren't they protesting this giant rise of antisemitic crimes the way they protest racism and sexism?

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!

Mohammed Al Emadi in Khan Yunis in 2017

Haaretz reports on fierce fighting in the Hamad neighborhood in western Khan Yunis, known for its Qatari-built luxury apartments.

"We have experienced combat here the likes of which we have not seen anywhere else in the Gaza Strip," said [Col. Omer] Cohen. "The neighborhood is full of terrorists and advanced combat equipment, including sophisticated explosive devices that have already been used against us."

Built with Qatari aid money, the neighborhood was seized by Hamas as a protected area that Israel would be wary of harming. Intelligence information may have indicated the presence of hostages in the area, as well as the presence of senior Hamas members who likely fled to the tunnels that IDF bulldozers are currently working to uncover.

It almost seems as though parts of the neighborhood were built in preparation for the day when IDF forces enter the area. Each building has hiding places and corners beneficial for urban fighting.

"Everything here seems extraordinarily organized. On its face, it is a beautiful and quiet neighborhood," says Lt. Col. A. ... "We understand that there is an underground system here, and it's only a matter of time before we expose it."

"Only when you come in do you understand that this is really a hornet's nest of terrorists," A. adds. He leads us to a nearby building and into an apartment where weapons were found. Guns, grenades, explosive devices, intelligence materials and other items are arranged neatly. "All these are just from this building," he explains before we hear another radio call about a clash.

A number of years ago, a European diplomat told me some information about how the Qatari envoy to Gaza, Mohammed Abdul Karim Al Emadi, operated when he was building apartments there.

Emadi bragged about bringing in suitcases of cash to pay Hamas salaries, for example.

The diplomat had directly dealt with Emadi.

Emadi is not a diplomat. He is a builder. He has a successful real estate enterprise in Qatar. He did not feel bound by agreements and diplomacy, which he felt only slowed him down. At one point, the only construction materials allowed into Gaza came from Qatar. This was clearly allowed by Israel - and it appears to have been a major mistake.

The diplomat described how Emadi worked:

The whole objective of Qatari engagement in Gaza is to strengthen Hamas. This Emadi guy is an engineer who has his own construction company, so he's not a politician and he's certainly not a development aid person. He was appointed to implement the $1 billion that Qatar pledged in 2014.

They build roads, hospitals and apartment complexes, but when I asked him, what they do with the apartments once they are finished, he said "we hand them over." When I asked to whom, he said it depends, some people just get it as a present, others have to pay some money for an apartment in installments that goes into a fund. When I asked according to what criteria they chose who gets an apartment and who doesn't, he said they decide it with the local partners (Hamas) and the only real criteria is that the person doesn't own an apartment yet. And he said sometimes his wife comes and talks to the people and when she meets someone needy she gives them an apartment as a present.

What it means is that Hamas sympathisers and important people get an apartment as a present. And then we're back to the question of how is Arab gulf money used to reward "martyrs."

Qatar worked hand in glove with Hamas to build and then hand over these apartments to people Hamas approved.

Seeing what is reported today about these apartments, and how tenaciously Hamas is fighting there, is there any doubt that the Qatari engineers designed the buildings to Hamas specifications, to include the connection to the tunnels (or maybe the tunnels themselves) and rooms that could be used for military purposes? Hamas has been building the tunnel system since 2006 for military purposes, why would anyone think that they wouldn't plan a luxury apartment complex meant for Hamas members and sympathizers for the exact same purposes?

The Haaretz article ends with this:

"We will finish the work here, do what is necessary and expose what needs to be revealed before people return," said a senior officer in the brigade in a conversation near the fighters' makeshift coffee corner at headquarters. "They are fighting stubbornly here over something important to them, and we will find out exactly what it is."

Whatever it is, the Qataris already know about it. Because they built it.

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03/14 Links Pt2: Arnold Roth: Betrayal, lies, politics and grief; The world must be reminded of the Palestinian genocide campaign against Jews

From Ian:

Arnold Roth: Betrayal, lies, politics and grief

Seven years have passed since criminal charges were brought in Washington, D.C. against the woman who murdered my sunny, lovely, empathetic 15-year-old daughter Malki. The anniversary of the charges being made public is today, March 14.

As milestones go, this one is dark. The fugitive killer admits to her central role in the massacre for which she is being prosecuted. Though she brags about her atrocity, she lives the life of a celebrity and an inspiration to others. Yet her ongoing freedom gets negligible attention in the news industry and public discourse—even in the U.S. To the extent that the Arab media report on her, it is overwhelmingly favorable and sympathetic.

The dry details of Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi’s long-thwarted prosecution are easy to find. The mugshots, biographical details and charges are accessible via three sites: The FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, the 2017 Department of Justice announcement of the previously secret charges and the State Department’s 2018 post of a $5 million reward that is still unclaimed two decades after it first went public.

What’s behind Tamimi’s freedom is harder to ascertain. Those who know don’t talk openly and those with a stake in her ongoing freedom are too often untruthful about it. Understanding this and conjecturing why it is the case is at the heart of the nightmare my wife and I endure years after our beautiful child’s life was extinguished.

Yisrael Medad: The world must be reminded of the Palestinian genocide campaign against Jews

If you do a Google search for the entry “Palestinian genocide accusation,” it starts with the 1948 Nakba, goes on to the 1967 Naksa, includes the Maronite-perpetrated Sabra and Shatila killings, and ends with the Gaza blockade. It references such terms as “ethnic cleansing,” “politicide,” “spaciocide,” and “cultural genocide.”

However, if you are looking for this year’s model, the entry is titled “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza.” That includes such sub-sections as “Alleged genocidal intent,” “Academic and legal discourse,” “Statements by political organizations and governments,” and “Cultural discourse.” When I last looked, there were 299 references, not including footnotes.

The charge that Israel is engaged in a campaign of genocide in Gaza is ubiquitous, from The Hague to campuses, to the media, and in the streets. It is heard in museums and art galleries. It has led to the slogan “Abolish Zionism.” In a medical journal, British Medical Global Health, Israel’s policies were described as an “eliminatory settler colonial strategy.”

All this is propaganda, of course. After all, despite Israel’s campaigns against Hamas aggression, Gaza’s population shows no real signs of any serious demographic downfall. Neither has that of Judea and Samaria, except for voluntary emigration abroad.

Yet, there was a genocide campaign. It was conducted not against ‘Palestine’, but in Palestine, in the Mandate of Palestine. It was a campaign of attempted genocide, not against Arabs but against the Jews. It began in April 1920, and through riots, pogroms, and terror, as well as political and diplomatic pressure, it has not let up.

Michael Oren: Hamas has reminded us that we are a nation, a family - a mishpacha

Anybody who’s ever concluded a speaking tour, especially one as long as mine—nine weeks—knows this feeling. Of being in an airport and not being able to say for sure what city it’s in or even the date of the month. All that remains are the impressions which, gathered in a time of desperate war, of a deepening sense of Jewish loneliness, and of skyrocketing antisemitism, are unprecedentedly profound.

In visits to several dozen Jewish communities across North America, I saw a degree of confusion and fear I never before encountered. People unfamiliar with antisemitism now confront it persistently and in multiple forms—in the Jew-hating slurs of pro-Palestinian protestors, in university administrators indifferent to their Jewish students’ plight, to the ovations received by comedians poking fun at Hollywood’s Jews, and filmmakers weaponizing the Holocaust against Israel.

Virtually every Israel supporter I met had lost friends because of that support. Though an occasional heckler accused Israel of causing antisemitism by killing Palestinians—internalizing the antisemitic claim that all Jews everywhere are liable for Israel’s actions—the vast majority of American Jews understood that rampant anti-Zionism merely exposed a latent Jew-hatred that existed well before October 7. All but a few realized that Israel’s security was directly linked to their own and that the state of American Jewry was severely threatened by attacks on the Jewish state.

Asked repeatedly, “What should we do?” I responded that American Jews could adopt one of three courses. They could remove the mezuzah from their doors, lock themselves in, and ignore all the prejudice outside. They could move to Israel. Or they could stay and fight. They could resist in the Churchillian sense, I explained, on the campuses, in the media, and through their elected officials. And Jews were only beginning to discover the many ways they can fight back.

Recalling the resignation of the presidents of Penn and Harvard, I reminded my listeners of their ability to exact a price from any official who fails to stand up to antisemitism. “Support pro-Israel media initiatives,” I urged them. “Support anti-boycott legislation.”

From Times of Israel:

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urges Israel to hold snap elections, arguing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “no longer fit” to serve as premier, as gaps between the US and Israel continue to grow over the latter’s prosecution of its war in Gaza against Hamas.

“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed – radically – since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” says Schumer.

Netanyahu has “lost his way, putting himself in coalition with far-right extremists like [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich and [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben-Gvir.”

Schumer doesn't have a clue about how Israelis think.

Netanyahu is not popular. His government rates abysmally in polls with only 20% of the people finding it trustworthy. He would not get a majority in any election, although he is probably still the most likely to put together a coalition.

But Schumer cannot distinguish between Netanyahu and Israel, and he is poorly informed about what Israel is doing in Gaza.

The people of Israel overwhelmingly support the war in Gaza, including how it is being waged. While trust in the government is low, trust in the IDF is quite high, and has remained so throughout the wat.

Schumer may consider himself pro-Israel, but his speech appears to betray that he believes the lies of Hamas over the truth from the IDF.

He has access to the best and brightest military minds in the world from the US armed forces. Yet he apparently has never asked any general or military expert what Israel could do better to minimize the loss to human life while maintaining the goal of destroying Hamas. Because, as the military experts that have visited Israel all testify, Israel is doing about as good a job as humanly possible, and better than any of them expected.

Not even asking the question - or, worse, knowing the answer and still claiming that Israel is acting recklessly in Gaza - is not pro-Israel. To say the least.

Beyond that, Schumer is attempting to conflate the war with the two state solution, something that practically no Israeli is stupid enough to do outside some writers at Haaretz. Israelis realize that tlking about a Palestinian state now is a reward for October 7. Any thinking person can see that - attack Israel and achieve what couldn't be achieved through negotiations that went nowhere not because of Israel but wholly because of Palestinian intransigence.

Even worse, every poll of Palestinians show that they supported the October 7 attacks. They have proven more than ever that as they are now, they do not deserve a state. A Palestinian state would be pro-terror, antisemitic, misogynist, anti-gay and would, in short order, become a vassal state for Iran.

How would Schumer prevent that? If he cares so much about the day after the war, certainly he has a plan for the year after a Palestinian state, right? But I haven't seen any such plans promoted by any Democratic leader, or any progressive mouthpiece.

The idiots who still believe in a two state solution have no plan. They have a religion. It is all based on faith, on hopes, on dreams, and on the fatal assumption that Palestinians would act like rational Westerners would when given a state.

The second intifada proved that a Palestinian state is not a realistic solution for Israel's future, not as the Palestinians act today, with terrorists as their role models and Hamas the most popular institution in the West Bank, today.

The Oslo process ended long ago. If anyone is stuck in he past, it is Schumer.

Chuck Schumer loves to say - and he said it during this speech as well - that his last name is derived from the Hebrew word "shomer," or guardian.

It is almost certainly a lie. Wiktionary says "The surname Schumer was an occupational name for a cobbler. The name Schumer is derived from the Old German words "schuoch" and the suffix "mann," which means shoe maker." Ancestry.com says it is "probably an occupational name for a dairy man from his activity of milking cows which produces foam, from Middle High German schūm German Schaum."

However, based on this speech, I think the true origin for Chuck Schumer's surname is the one mentioned in the American Dictionary of Family Names, which actually tracks far better than "schuoch" and "schaum."

North German (Schümer): nickname from Middle Low German schumer ‘good-for-nothing.'

Sounds about right.

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Gazans Panic As US Airdrops Watermelons (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

(I received a note from PreOccupied Territory with this story saying that it was written before the reported air drop mishap in Gaza. He said he was "not sure whether that makes publishing it funnier." It is far from the first time that his satire ended up becoming true. - EoZ)

Gazans Panic As US Airdrops Watermelons

Zaitoun, March 14 - Palestinians hoping to bypass Hamas's tight control of aid distribution in this embattled coastal territory by getting to the parachuted packages of food by American Air Force, only to discover to their horror today that the latest payload, in a misguided attempt to show solidarity with Palestinians with a new symbol of their struggle, contained mostly watermelons. Six Palestinians were killed and a dozen injured. The Air Force has promised an investigation. Gaza officials, who give the official Hamas line, will include the casualties in the count of innocents killed by Israel.

Aid distribution inside the Gaza Strip has proved a tough logistical nut to crack, experts noted, given the monopoly that the Islamist terrorist group maintains through its control of the major aid organizations operating there. Israel allows in hundreds of trucks per day, but those vehicles sit idle on the Gaza side of the border while Hamas hoards the supplies, distributing it only to cronies who then sell the goods to those in need. Deadly clashes and stampedes have occurred as a result, with Gazans attempting to reach the aid before Hamas thugs can seize it. American and Jordanian air drops of supplies have tried to address the situation, with limited success.

Last week, a State Department employee passed a suggestion to a colleague in the Pentagon that the US military demonstrate its support for the people of Palestine by showering them with watermelons. The watermelon became a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israel in the wake of the October 7 massacre last year that saw Hamas invade southern Israel and slaughter 1200 people, among other atrocities. The fruit evokes the green, black, white, and red Palestinian flag, and celebrates the "cutting open" of Israeli security on that day. The watermelon features in social media handles and has become a new shorthand for support for Palestinian violence against Israel.

The suggestion moved through the ranks of military until approved by the chain of command, who requisitioned several tons of watermelon, loaded them onto cargo planes, and dropped them over areas of the Gaza Strip where locals might be able to collect them.

The USAF investigation will attempt to determine who gave the green light for the mission without verifying that the air dropped cargo had parachutes, and will set forth revamped protocols to ensure no such disaster occurs again, according to a statement by the Air Force.

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03/14 Links Pt1: Biden's Middle East Is a Fantasy World; Schumer urges elections in Israel, saying Netanyahu unfit to serve; Fmr Hostage: Nurses cheered at captured ‘prey’

From Ian:

Biden's Middle East Is a Fantasy World

According to the White House, the Palestinians aspire to peace, reject Hamas, and are ready to make painful concessions. In reality, according to a November survey by Arab World for Research and Development, affiliated with Birzeit University, 59% of Palestinians "extremely support" the Oct. 7 massacre, and another 16% "somewhat support" it.

When President Biden refers to the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, he ignores that its president, Mahmoud Abbas, was last elected 19 years ago to a four-year term, and that the last time the Palestinians went to the polls, in 2006, they voted for Hamas.

Vice President Kamala Harris this week uttered a statement about Israel typically reserved for dictatorships: "It's important for us to distinguish or at least not conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people." Yes, there is a significant disparity between Israel's leadership and its citizens - but it's the opposite of what people in Washington assume.

A February survey conducted for Channel 12 News found that 63% of the Israeli public strongly opposes a Palestinian state under any circumstances. The Israeli government has been providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, but a January survey found that 72% of the public opposes such aid until all hostages are released.

The Israel Mr. Biden knows - the one that supports deep withdrawals, settlement evacuations, and the two-state solution - ceased to exist two decades ago during the second intifada. Savage Palestinian violence at that time indiscriminately claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis, including babies, women and the elderly.

It's time the administration recognizes reality: The Palestinians overwhelmingly support the murder of Jews, and the Israelis don't think the Palestinians deserve a state.

I'd like to remind my fellow Israelis that it's important for us to distinguish, or at least not conflate, the American government with the American people. According to a recent Harvard Caps-Harris poll, the American public supports Israel much more than the president does.

Dennis Ross: Building a New Security Reality for Israel in Gaza

Oct. 7 changed Israel, inflicting trauma and hardening Israelis' belief that they cannot live with Hamas in control of Gaza. Israel needs a strategy for ensuring that its military efforts and achievements in Gaza translate into a new political reality that means Israel will no longer be threatened from the strip.

Israel does not want to be responsible for the Palestinians living in Gaza. However, Israel should not leave Gaza before it knows that Hamas is not in a position to reconstitute itself, its military means, and its political control. This requires that Hamas' military infrastructure, weapons depots, military industrial base, systems of command and control, and organizational coherence are largely destroyed. Israel's objective - and that of the U.S. - needs to be a permanently demilitarized Gaza, which can never again be used as a platform for attacks against Israel.

As long as 91% of Palestinians believe that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should resign and 80% are convinced that the PA is corrupt, it is pointless to talk about a political horizon or an endgame involving the PA.

Everyone knows that Hamas will seek to divert the assistance and to reconstitute itself and its military machine. No donor will invest in Gaza if Hamas is in control or siphoning away supplies. So a condition for reconstruction must be a genuinely different administration in Gaza.

There's No Such Thing as a "Ramadan Truce"

An aspect of Ramadan that has been a tradition through the ages is the holy month as a time for war.

There is a history of Muslim armies waging war during Ramadan.

This makes it ironic that some well-meaning non-Muslims are calling on Israel to suspend its military operations against the Islamist extremists of Hamas out of respect for Ramadan.

The 1973 Arab-Israeli war is widely known in the Arab world as the Ramadan War, when Anwar Sadat dispatched Egyptian forces to cross the Suez Canal.

The Saudi newspaper Arab News reported that "some of the greatest victories in Islam occurred during Ramadan."

The Washington Institute's Patrick Clawson noted: "Modern proposals for Ramadan ceasefires by secular governments - the Soviets in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein when fighting the Islamic Republic of Iran - were uniformly rejected by the Islamist side, which usually intensified fighting during Ramadan."

For Hamas and their fellow travelers, waging war during Ramadan is as valid as in the other months of the year.

The American government should not fall for well-meaning calls to urge Israel to display one-sided military restraint out of deference to Ramadan.

We can be sure that Hamas (or what's left of it) won't be devoting the next month to introspection, service and worship.

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.

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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.

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