Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 02, 2024

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I was interviewed by JNS a few weeks ago, ahead of my 20th Blogoversary coming up this August.

The reporter dug up some stuff about the site even I had forgotten. (I added links.)

The Washington think tank Jewish Policy Center has called him an “essential” read half a dozen times, and the watchdog CAMERA UK said he is “indefatigable” and “one of the best pro-Israel bloggers out there.”

“Elder of Ziyon” is the pen name of a man who works in high tech and, for the past 20 years, has authored some 40,000 posts on a reader-supported, pro-Israel blog that goes by the same pseudonym. The site has received between 30,000 and 50,000 daily views, “Elder” told JNS.

The anonymous poster’s first entry was dated Aug. 15, 2004, and it ran five words, linking to an article in the Israeli press. Since then, “Elder”—whose identity is unknown to JNS—has reported longer-form material, including an investigation that led McGraw-Hill Education to pull the publication of a textbook he accused of anti-Israel propaganda.

In 2022, “Elder” self-published Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism, which Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor, called “the essential reference handbook” in “exposing the lies behind the modern embodiment of the infamous ‘Protocols.’”

....Among the blog’s greatest hits over the years are some cheeky items, including the backdoor nomination of “Elder” for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

“Is it that difficult to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Not really. The Nobel committee has criteria for who can nominate others for the prize, and tens of thousands of people—parliamentarians and university professors in certain fields among them—are qualified,” he wrote on Oct. 3, 2018.

“A friend of mine, who happens to be one of those people, has officially nominated my blog persona, the Elder of Ziyon, for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2019,” he added.

The blog also offers an “intersectionality victimhood” calculator—an attempt to calculate “who is the perceived underdog, and therefore, the more righteous of each side in any conflict.”

The blog is also quite serious at times.

An “Elder gets results” section details some of the site’s impact, from an antisemitic article removed from an Arab news site to Israel and its flag added to U.S. online visa applications, and Washington boycotting the Durban IV conference to an amended National Geographic article that displayed anti-Israel bias.

Looking ahead, “Elder” would like to see human-rights nonprofits answer whether Gazan refugees who want to go to Egypt or Jordan ought to be allowed to do so.

“That’s the only question I want to know because they’re so pro-refugee,” he told JNS.

“Elder” noted that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International complained that Egypt created unnecessary impediments for refugees entering from Sudan. The organizations also supported Iraqi, Somali and Syrian refugees. “So why not Palestinians?” he asked.

When you have over 40,000 articles over 20 years, you are allowed to forget a few.

Read the whole thing!

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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04/02 Links Pt1: Palestinian terrorism is not about self-determination; Iran is at war with the West, but only Israel is fighting back

From Ian:

Palestinian terrorism is not about self-determination

At its core, Palestinian terrorism against Israel has nothing to do with high-minded, law-based principles of statehood or national self-determination. As a pragmatic tactic of terror, such principles merely disguise relentless criminality usefully sanitizing darkly primal objectives.

Israel must first examine Palestinian violence against the innocent in terms of the wider human need to belong. This compelling need can be expressed harmlessly, as in sports hysteria and rock concerts, or perniciously, as in jihadist terror. Further, the Hamas murders of Israeli noncombatants on October 7, 2023, went far beyond the pernicious. Prima facie, they were conspicuously barbarous and patently inexcusable.

What does this candid assessment suggest about the seemingly authentic Palestinian demand for a “two-state solution?” Above all, it reveals a demand that is based upon deliberate misinformation and orchestrated subterfuge. Not only would a Palestinian state fail to inhibit or halt Palestinian terrorism, it would render such grievous wrongdoings increasingly likely and still more injurious.

In explaining these many-sided security matters, analytic thinking and philosophy will deserve pride of place. Long ago, Aristotle understood that “man is a social animal.” Typically, the seminal Greek thinker recognized that even “normal” individuals can feel empty and insignificant apart from tangible membership in the “mass.”

Aristotle’s reasoning endures. Sometimes that “mass” is the state. Sometimes it is the tribe. Sometimes the faith (always the “one true faith”). In the case of Palestinian terror violence, it is the aspiring state.

Details aside, whatever the “mass” claims at a particular historical moment, it is an unquenchable craving for belonging that threatens to produce the catastrophic downfall of individual responsibility and correlative triumphs of collective criminality.

In jihadist-centered parts of the Middle East – and this includes places that harbor the Shiite Hezbollah as well as the Sunni Hamas/Fatah/Islamic Jihad – belonging is generally determinative. Unless millions can finally temper the all-consuming psychological desire to belong, all military, legal, and political schemes to control virulent terrorism will fail.

Col. Kemp: Iran is at war with the West, but only Israel is fighting back

Tehran claims that the air strikes which killed Iranian military commanders in Damascus on Monday were “Israel’s latest war crime against a foreign mission with diplomatic immunity”. They were nothing of the sort.

The target was, in fact, widely reported to have been an Iranian command centre coordinating military action against Israel, adjacent to the Iranian consulate. This would not, then, make the strikes a breach of the Vienna Convention, as those ever eager to condemn Jerusalem have suggested. Israel is perfectly entitled to hit military facilities in another country that is engaged in active hostilities.

Nor was this a major escalation by Israel, however, as many others have argued. It was merely the latest move in a war that Tehran itself has launched against Israel and the West.

Indeed, it may well turn out to be the most significant strategic setback for Iran since the US took out Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander, in 2020. The main target of Monday’s attack, IRGC brigadier general Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was believed to be the principal interlocutor between Syria, Tehran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah. With decades of experience in this clandestine world, he will not be easily replaced.

The flow of arms to Hezbollah could well now be further impeded. Since October 7, that terror group has launched regular missile strikes against Israelis near the Lebanese border, as a consequence of which nearly 100,000 civilians have been evacuated. Do Jerusalem’s critics really expect it to sit back and let those attacks continue?

But the real question is why it only seems to be the Israelis who are taking the Iranian threat seriously. It’s not as if Iran has only been targeting Israel. Iranian proxies have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea and Iranian-backed militias have launched more than 150 strikes against US forces in Syria, Iraq and Jordan since October 7 alone.

Arsen Ostrovsky and Richard Kemp: Israel's Attack on Rafah Must Proceed. Here's Why

In 1944, as the Allies were preparing for the D-Day landings in Normandy, it is unfathomable that anyone sought to pressure British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to halt the landings and enter a ceasefire agreement with Nazi Germany. Yet that is exactly what the international community is seeking to do with Israel, in pressuring the Jewish state to enter a one-sided ceasefire with Hamas and avert a necessary operation in Rafah.

Although the perpetrators may have changed 80 years later, Hamas' monstrous savagery and agenda is no different to the Nazis. And just as Normandy was a pivotal turning point in World War II, putting the Allies on a decisive path toward victory, so too can be an IDF operation in Rafah, the last remaining Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza.

Yet since its establishment in 1948, the Jewish state has been the only democracy repeatedly denied the right to achieve total victory against enemies who have time and again initiated wars and now pogroms too, seeking no less than its very annihilation.

This week, for the first time, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, following the United States' decision to abstain from the vote. Meantime, both the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, have been exerting overwhelming pressure on Israel to avoid a ground operation in Rafah.

However, any leader's primary duty is, first and foremost, to defend their nation. In Israel's case, this follows in response to the most heinous massacre perpetrated against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and one in which 134 people, including children, elderly people, and women, suffering horrific ongoing sexual abuse at the hands of their Hamas captors, remain hostage in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel "will not compromise on less than total victory over Hamas."

"Victory" in this sense includes destroying Hamas's military and governing capability to ensure there can never be a repeat of Oct. 7, that Hamas cannot constitute a threat to Israel, and the return of all hostages.

It is currently estimated that up to 60 percent of Hamas' 30,000-strong terrorist force in Gaza has been either eliminated, severely wounded or arrested by IDF forces since Oct. 7, while at least 20 of their 24 battalions have been dismantled, with the remaining 4 battalions still present in Rafah. Israel is also operating on the working assumption that Hamas is holding hostages captive in Rafah as well.

Simply put, the IDF cannot complete its military aims, without a full ground incursion into Rafah, to take out the remaining Hamas battalions. Those who are seeking to pressure Israel to refrain from entering Rafah are denying the Jewish state the decisive victory it has every right to pursue against Hamas after the pogrom of Oct. 7.

Occasionally, videos pop up of Gazans expressing their anger at Hamas. Yet the mainstream media - who rely on Gaza-based stringers who are afraid of Hamas - steer away from any stories that show both how Gazans are angry at Hamas and how they still fear the group, which makes the quotes of all Gazans suspect.

Haaretz' Amira Hass, to her credit, reports that Gazans are deathly afraid to denounce Hamas, even though they know it is Hamas decisions that are making their lives miserable.

The donkey cart full of people and mattresses is one of the sights of the war on Gaza and the current siege. "More than once, I've heard a cart owner urging his donkey on and saying something like, 'Move it, Yahya Sinwar, move it,'" says Basel (a pseudonym, as I've used for everyone in this article).

"People are constantly cursing Sinwar, but this isn't reflected in the journalists' reports," he says.

As he put it in a phone conversation, not our first, he said, "Early this week, an elderly man standing in the middle of the market cursed Ahmed Yassin for giving us Hamas" – Yassin was one of the Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel in 2004. "I blew him a kiss for his courage. I'm not for cursing a dead man, but I love it when people rebel."

I didn't know Basel before we started our phone correspondence; he initiated the contact to express his fury at what he calls "Hamas' takeover of our narrative." He's angry that the Palestinians outside Gaza and their supporters expect Gazans to shut up and not criticize Hamas, because the criticism ostensibly helps the enemy. He rejects the assumption that doubting the decisions and actions of this armed group – and to do so publicly – is an act of treason.

"I have the right that they should know what I think and feel, even if I'm in the minority – and I know that I'm not in the minority. And I know that I speak for a lot of people," Basel says. "I have the right to speak, if only because I'm one of the millions whose lives Hamas is gambling with for crazy slogans with no basis in reality, which have dwarfed the Palestinian cause and turned the struggle for high and existential goals into a struggle for a piece of bread and cans of food."

Two friends and an old acquaintance of mine confirm that Basel's criticism of Hamas represents many people.

[Nura] too hears the curses against Hamas everywhere: at the hospital that couldn't treat her wounded granddaughter, when she's waiting in line to fill their water container, and when passing by piles of stinking garbage that no one clears – and there's nowhere to take it to anyway.

"I sat with some friends at a café," says Shaher, 75. ..He and his friends sat at the café and criticized Hamas. But, "the owner heard us and told an employee not to serve us until we went," Shaher says and adds: "The café owner may agree with the criticism, but it was clear he got afraid." Meaning, he was afraid that someone from Hamas might overhear and harm him in one way or another.

"Obviously, there's enormous anger and bitterness everywhere against Hamas," says Amal, another woman in her mid-60s, whose apartment building in Gaza was bombed at the start of the war a few days after she and her family moved south. She has also heard about people "who were threatened after they expressed their opinion in public."

Nura tells how someone proposed that they demonstrate, but others were afraid that Hamas would shoot at them.

Shaher tells about demonstrations that called for Hamas to release the hostages in order to end the war. "Applying a typical tactic of a dictatorship, anonymous supporters of the organization mixed in among the demonstrators until the slogan was changed to 'We demand to go back to the north of the Strip,'" Shaher says.

As Basel puts it, "Hamas' military power in Gaza has been almost totally destroyed, but not its power to oppress us."

Basel and Shaher boil with anger when they talk about the silence of the Palestinian and Arab-world media – and about the freelance photographers who turn their cameras aside when one of the people gathering around the rubble cries out against the Islamic resistance movement rather than only against Israel, the United States and the world in general. Whether they're photographers who support Hamas or are simply afraid of the group, the result is the same.

The Free Press also has shown a number of cases of Gazans railing against Hamas.

Don't think the mainstream media is simply not aware. As I noted earlier this week, CNN interviewed a person, who insisted to remain anonymous, confirming Israel's story that Shifa Hospital had hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, many openly brandishing guns. But they said they "couldn't confirm" the statement and buried that fact between anti-Israel statements by others.

The depth of fear that ordinary Gazans have for Hamas is simply not being mentioned in the thousands of articles that uncritically quote Gazan "testimony" saying things like they have seen Israeli bulldozers run over living people. Gazans know the narrative they are supposed to say to Western reporters and they play their part.

It is just another example of how most media cares more about an anti-Israel agenda than telling the truth.

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!

Egypt denies more Gaza medical permits than Israel ever did. NGOs who issued reports condemning Israel are silent.

The hypocrisy of so-called human rights groups is more apparent every day of this war.

In 2017, five of those NGOs released yet another statement condemning Israel for denying or delaying medical treatment for many Gazans.

The record-low rate of permits issued by Israel for Palestinians seeking vital medical treatment outside Gaza underlines the urgent need for Israel to end its decade-long closure of the Gaza Strip, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said today in a joint statement.

Israeli authorities approved permits for medical appointments for only 54 percent of those who applied in 2017, the lowest rate since the World Health Organization (WHO) began collecting figures in 2008. WHO reported that 54 Palestinians, 46 of whom had cancer, died in 2017 following denial or delay of their permits.

Now, when Gaza's health crisis is far more acute, how many medical permits are being approved by Egypt for travel and treatment?

According to the latest Gaza health ministry report, Egypt has a far worse approval rate than Israel ever had. (They don't say "Egypt" - only "abroad.")

They count 8,120 patients applying to be treated abroad (most of them multiple times) but only 3,283 have been approved to travel.

That is a 40% approval rate - far lower than Israel even did in 2017, and half of the 80% Israel was approving every month of 2023 before the October 7 massacre.

The Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a report yesterday about how kidney dialysis patients in Gaza are having a difficult time getting treatment. Not one of its recommendations mentioned urging Egypt to allow more dialysis patients to travel there to be treated. As with the MoH, the word "Egypt" is not even mentioned in their report. But according to the ministry of health, only 20% of the applications for kidney patients have been approved by Egypt for travel and treatment.

The "human rights organizations" refusal to say anything negative about Egypt's denial of Gazans to take refuge even extends to not saying a word when Egypt refuses most Gazans who need lifesaving medical help!

The conclusion is inescapable: all these NGOs that issue report after report on Palestinian suffering lose all interest in the topic if someone besides Israel is to blame. They don't care about Palestinians - they only want to do their part to deny the human rights of Jews.

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!

🎶🎵"Who's afraid of the big red cow, the big red cow, the big red cow?"🎶🎵

Arabic and even English Arab media are up in arms over the potential slaughter and burning of a purely red cow. As Egypt's Shorouk News reports:

Extremist Temple groups are counting on the fact that holding a ritual of purification by slaughtering and burning the five red cows could open the way for hundreds of thousands of religious Jews to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, who abstain from doing so on this day in compliance with the official rabbinic prohibition.

According to the allegations, once that cow appeared; The time of the “Savior’s” descent will come, and the Third Temple will be built on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque after its demolition, and then it will be slaughtered as the first sacrifice inside the Temple. So that the Jewish people will be prepared to enter it.

Last February, during the war, the Temple Institute published an announcement requesting volunteer priests to train them in the ritual of purification with the Red Cow, and set special conditions for the volunteers. This process is supposed to take place on a plot of land that these groups had previously seized for the purpose of slaughter on the Mount of Olives in exchange for Al-Aqsa.

Another site notes that Hamas leaders are talking about the red cow as well:

The Red Cow and its Relationship to the Flood of Al-Aqsa.
In one of his speeches, Abu Ubaydah, the spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, mentioned that Israel's red cows were ready, referring to a news report last July about the most extremist Israeli government importing 5 cows from Texas; USA, signaling the start of building the third temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque; according to Torah teachings.

Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, also stated that there was a plan to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the alleged temple by importing five red cows from the United States in order to carry out the Zionist plan and destroy AI-Aqsa as quickly as possible.

A photo illustrating several articles and tweets make a red cow look as sinister as possible:

I think we can do one better:

A Yemeni site adds quite a bit of antisemitism in its Red Cow reporting:

Some of the articles accurately say that many religious Jews refuse to ascend to the Temple Mount without this purification procedure, but chances seem quite low that they would ascend even with it, since they would follow their own rabbis and not the religious Zionist rabbis who are considering slaughtering the red cows next week.

The only difference I can imagine is that the religious Zionists who ascend today to the Temple Mount would be allowed to visit the area of the Dome of the Rock; right now they stay on the perimeter of the Mount when they visit. That is the only practical effect I can see happening.

As far as destroying the Al Aqsa Mosque, I have bad news for the Muslim doomsday prophets: No one cares about the Al Aqsa Mosque. There is no reason to destroy it. Jews could visit there without the ashes of the red heifer because it is on one of the Herodian extensions of the Temple Mount; it is not where the Temple was. That would be the vicinity of the Dome of the Rock.

But no one is going to destroy Al Aqsa or the Dome of the Rock. The Israeli government would not allow it, the police stop Jews from bringing prayer books to the Temple Mount let alone sledgehammers.

For over 100 years Muslims have been warning that Jews are about to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount. And it is just as much a fiction today as it was when the Mufti made up that libel.

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!

04/01 Links Pt2: The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism; PA Religion Minister: Jews are “apes and pigs”; What Chuck Schumer Has Wrought; Ritchie Torres to 'Post': Israel is not alone

From Ian:

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: An Interview with Andrew G. Bostom

Since the invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and the massacre of around 1,200 people there, antisemitic, pro-Hamas marches have swept both majority-Muslim countries and Western nations.

In London, antisemitic hate crimes are up 1,350% according to police, and pro-Hamas protestors chanted, “Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad is coming.” In the Tunisian city of Al Hammah, hundreds of people were filmed setting fire to a synagogue. In Russia’s Muslim Dagestan region, hundreds of people stormed into the main airport and onto the landing field, chanting antisemitic slogans and seeking passengers arriving on a flight from Israel. In California, a Jewish dentist was killed, and two others injured in a shooting by a Muslim. In Chicago, a Jewish man was attacked by anti-Israel protesters at an October 7 documentary screening in the Logan Square. In Paris, a Jewish man was attacked outside a synagogue; and another was stabbed in Zurich.

In the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region, this genocidal hatred has resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Over 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years following the re-establishment of Israel in 1948. Another major exodus of Jews took place from Iran in 1979-80, following the Islamic revolution. Jews had resided in those lands for over 2,500 years. The rising Muslim population in the West has imported the same—and exceedingly violent—Jew-hatred into Western nations. Antisemitic attacks and threats abound since Hamas ignited the war in Gaza by massacring and raping Israelis on October 7. To learn about the theological and historical roots of Muslim antisemitism, I interviewed a prominent specialist and researcher on Islam, its history and theology.

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom is a leading expert on the history and scriptures of Islam. He is the author of Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism and the editor of both The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. He has also published articles and commentary on Islam in The Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, FrontPageMagazine, American Thinker, and other print and online publications. More on Bostom’s work can be found at www.andrewbostom.org/blog/. What motivated you to write The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism?

Two specific discoveries motivated my research culminating in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

First, since the end of the 12th century, Al Azhar University (and its mosque) have represented the apogee of Islamic religious education, which evolved into the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gameia, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S., and imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks, provided a very concrete and disturbing example of the authoritative Al-Azhar Islamic mindset exported to America. Within three days of the 9/11 jihad carnage, al-Gameia, who according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was “known for his moderate views,” sermonized, as the Tampa Bay Times reported, “calling for peace, healing, and love among people of all religions.” The good Sheikh struck an entirely different chord when he was interviewed for an Al-Azhar University website on October 4, 2001. Gameia returned to Egypt after September 11, 2001, alleging, without any substantiation, that he was being “harassed.” Gameia’s interview (original Arabic; extracts translated here) was rife with conspiratorial Islamic antisemitism, which riffed upon his invocation of what I would later come to understand are the central Quranic motifs of Jew-hatred, while equating Jews and Zionists. Al-Azhar’s representative to the U.S. melded this sacralized anti-Jewish bigotry to virulent calumnies against Americans and threats to the U.S.—whom he imagined as witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews.

Second, in early 2005, when I was nearing completion of my initial book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad (specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent), I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Indian Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar’s 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Quranic poll tax, as per Quran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar’s pro-Hindu reforms, that, “Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.”

‘Elder of Ziyon’ doesn’t want readers to say, ‘I knew that already’

The Washington think tank Jewish Policy Center has called him an “essential” read half a dozen times, and the watchdog CAMERA UK said he is “indefatigable” and “one of the best pro-Israel bloggers out there.”

“Elder of Ziyon” is the pen name of a man who works in high tech and, for the past 20 years, has authored some 40,000 posts on a reader-supported, pro-Israel blog that goes by the same pseudonym. The site has received between 30,000 and 500,000 daily views, “Elder” told JNS.

The anonymous poster’s first entry was dated Aug. 15, 2004, and it ran five words, linking to an article in the Israeli press. Since then, “Elder”—whose identity is unknown to JNS—has reported longer-form material, including an investigation that led McGraw-Hill Education to pull the publication of a textbook he accused of anti-Israel propaganda.

In 2022, “Elder” self-published Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism, which Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor, called “the essential reference handbook” in “exposing the lies behind the modern embodiment of the infamous ‘Protocols.’”

“In tackling the broad range of hate campaigns, from manipulating the slogans of international law and human rights in the United Nations, to the fake media experts and the NGO anti-Zionist jihad, the new Protocols is a concise and fact-filled response,” Steinberg added.

“Elder” spoke with JNS some four-and-a-half months before the 20th anniversary of his blog, which remains on the platform Blogger, which launched in 1999 and which Google acquired in 2003.

“Maybe people are overwhelmed with the anti-Israel arguments. They’re overwhelmed with the sheer volume of hate that’s out there,” he told JNS. “I hope to be a place that they can go to get informed.”

Seth Mandel: What Chuck Schumer Has Wrought

Congratulations to Chuck Schumer, this year’s true April Fool. The predictably vile consequences of his public attacks on Israeli democracy are here, and no doubt there will be more coming.

Schumer has long fashioned himself the shomer—Hebrew for “watchman,” a play on his last name—of Israel. But he has revealed himself instead to be more of a mashgiach, the man who officially certifies products as kosher. And he has been certifying the political version of porkchops and pepperoni.

“I’m 100% with Senator Schumer,” declared Jamaal Bowman, the Squad-adjacent Democrat who has built his brand around anti-Jewish incitement. “[Benjamin Netanyahu] needs to be removed. He is a blockade to a pathway to peace. And we need a ceasefire right now. That’s what we should be focused on, humanitarian aid, not weapons.”

Appearing on MSNBC yesterday, Bowman had more to say: “The majority of Gaza has already been destroyed through acts of collective punishment by this maniac, Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Bowman was last seen yelling on a New York street corner that Israeli women were lying about the rapes committed by Hamas terrorists. Previously, he had been cited after he was caught on camera pulling a fire alarm to prevent a congressional floor vote. So it’s possible that Bowman uses the term “maniac” as a compliment, that it’s his way of trying to find common ground with the Israeli prime minister.

There were even worse things said by people in Congress yesterday, more evidence that Schumer has helped to open the floodgates of Jew-baiting when he called for regime change in an allied country.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon posted yesterday: “On this Easter, let’s ponder Netanyahu’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 20,000 women and children, and his restriction of humanitarian aid, which has pushed Palestinians to the brink of famine.”

There is a long tradition of using Christian holy days like Easter to scapegoat the Jews for the world’s misfortunes. The Kishinev pogrom of 1903, the most infamous of its kind and the closest relation to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, began stirring on Easter. Warsaw was the site of an Easter pogrom in 1940—presumably folks remember what happened next.

Times of Israel says:

The Israel Defense Forces withdrew early Monday from the Gaza City complex housing the Shifa Hospital, after a two-week raid in which the military said it detained or killed hundreds of terror suspects.

During the raid, which began March 18, the IDF said troops captured some 900 suspects, of whom more than 500 were confirmed to be terror operatives, and killed more than 200 gunmen. Among those killed and detained were top commanders in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Valuable intelligence was also seized, the IDF said.

The Jerusalem Post adds:

Top officers do not even refer to Shifa as “Shifa Hospital” but as “the Shifa compound” to reflect their belief that it was not so much an abused hospital as a command center with some hospital camouflage built around it.
The three centers of gravity for the terrorists were the Qatar facility, the emergency room, and the childbirth center – though there were terrorists in every single one of the sprawling hospital’s buildings.
According to the IDF, they gave the mostly 6,200 civilians and terrorists at least two separate opportunities to surrender.
Hamas not only fired mortars at the IDF, in disregard of the harm to the hospital buildings, but also used patients and doctors as human shields.
The IDF said that Shayetet 13’s special training could be credited for the successful evacuation of the patients and doctors without them being harmed, even as they fought off the Hamas terrorists.
These patients and doctors were moved to a pre-setup field hospital.
Moreover, the IDF said that those terrorists who did not surrender fought very hard, and several of them exploded themselves with grenades to try to kill nearby IDF troops.

Hamas's Media Office, which the Health Ministry uses as a trusted source, gives a completely different picture. From their Telegram channel:

⭕ *The “Israeli” occupation commits a shocking crime against humanity by destroying, burning and bulldozing the Shifa Medical Complex and killing and arresting more than 700 Palestinian civilians and we demand the introduction of field hospitals to save the health situation
◼️ The “Israeli” occupation army withdrew from Al-Shifa Medical Complex at dawn today, two weeks after storming and occupying it completely, leaving widespread destruction and a terrible crime against humanity and against international law, as this destruction affected all aspects of the complex and the occupation deliberately destroyed, burned and demolished all buildings and departments without exception. In a clear crime that shames humanity.
◼️ The occupation army killed more than 400 martyrs inside and around the complex, and tried to hide its heinous crime by executing hundreds of civilians, the wounded, and the sick inside the walls of the Shifa Medical Complex by covering the bodies with piles of sand, bulldozing them, burying them, and mixing them with the floor of the complex. It also arrested more than 300 prisoners. 100 Palestinian civilians are missing as a result of the shocking crime of the occupation.

And most of the world believes the terrorists over Israel.

Including, apparently, the media.

By every possible measure the Shifa hospital operation has been a huge success. The two weeks of battles is testimony to the fact that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had returned there and fought hard.

And the world media is doing everything it can to not report that to you.

Hundreds of reporters all trying to find angles to make Israel look bad and Hamas look good. They ignore that terrorists turned the hospital into a major terror hub. They downplay that hundreds of terrorists were killed or captured in a hospital, in maternity wards and surgery centers. I don't think one major international media outlet has mentioned that using a hospital for military purposes is not only a war crime but also makes the hospital lose protection under international law.

It is perhaps the most egregious misreporting from a war that already has the Al Ahli debacle.

Until this Jerusalem Post article I wasn't aware that Israel set up a field hospital ahead of time just for the patients. (The Gaza Health Ministry mentions that the IDF evacuated many patients and doctors to an administrative building on the hospital campus, and claims that conditions there were horrific. My guess is that this is the field hospital that Israel set up for the enemy, which is pretty much unheard of in urban warfare history.)

Where are the journalists with any integrity?

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The Institute for the Study of War frames the war properly

From the Institute of the Study of War website:

Dr. Kimberly Kagan founded ISW in May 2007, as U.S. forces undertook a daring new counterinsurgency strategy to reverse the grim security situation on the ground in Iraq . Frustrated with the prevailing lack of accurate information documenting developments on the ground in Iraq and the detrimental effect of biased reporting on policymakers, Dr. Kagan established ISW to provide real-time, independent, and open-source analysis of ongoing military operations and insurgent attacks in Iraq.

Its board members include military experts like retired generals Jack Keane and David H. Petraeus.

It has daily updates from various hotspots around the world. It covers the activities that Israel is involved in in a much different way than we see in the media.

It frames it as part of the war between Iran's Axis of Resistance against the West.

The site lists Axis of Resistance objectives for each arena:

Gaza:
Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to sustain clearing operations in the Gaza Strip
Reestablish Hamas as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip

West Bank:
Establish the West Bank as a viable front against Israel

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights:
Deter Israel from conducting a ground operation into Lebanon
Prepare for an expanded and protracted conflict with Israel in the near term
Expel the United States from Syria

Surprisingly, it doesn't list objectives of the Houthis, but it does cover their activities as well as those of Syrian pro-Iranian forces as part of the same Axis of Resistance forces.

Seeing the war as part of a multi-front war by Iran against Israel and the West is more accurate than this being considered an "Israel-Hamas war." While it is true that Hamas may have attacked on October 7 on its own, it generally follows the dictates and strategy of Iran.

ISW updates its maps daily.

Reading this after following the media - and even the Israeli media - is a breath of fresh air. They report incidents that don't make it into the news or that get buried. They give references to Hamas sources. Everything is transparent and there is no agenda beyond having accurate information to relay to US decision-makers.

From what I can tell so far, this is an essential site to understand what is happening and the larger context without the layers of spin and politics that most news media has.

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04/01 Links Pt1: IDF announces 600th soldier killed in action; Hamas hides casualties, blames failed rocket launches on Israel; Drone attack from Iraq damages building in Eilat

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Analysis of the Human Rights Watch/Oxfam Allegations of "Israeli Forces' Conduct in Gaza"

As seen in the following report, the joint HRW-Oxfam document “Israeli Forces’ Conduct in Gaza – March 19, 2024” (formally, a submission under National Security Memorandum 20, regarding compliance with requirements on the use of US military assistance) reflects a fundamental and consistent lack of rigor, credibility and verifiability.1 Under the thin facade of analysis, HRW and Oxfam have published a prosecutorial diatribe that dispenses with the practice of presenting and weighing information from and perspectives of all the main actors and sources before reaching a conclusion.

Many of the claims of Israeli violations are ostensibly substantiated by “evidence” sourced to these same NGOs – 18 or 37 footnotes are self-references to previous HRW and Oxfam statements. These and the other references quote from the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM – controlled by Hamas); UN agencies including UNRWA, OCHA and the World Health Organization (WHO), which themselves lack credibility and which reference the same sources; unverifiable claims by anonymous “eyewitnesses” in Gaza; journalists and media platforms, such as Al Jazeera and CNN, which also cite UN agencies and anonymous “eyewitnesses”; and amorphous technical analyses. On this basis, HRW and Oxfam repeatedly claim to have “verified” various allegations regarding IDF responses to the October 7 atrocities, when in fact, no credible verification took place or was even possible. Contrasting and often more credible evidence is systematically erased, further highlighting the ideological and partisan objectives of this publication, in contrast to accurate and credible fact-finding.

Two of the central accusations in this document are the allegations that 1) Israel is deliberately and unjustifiably hampering the delivery of humanitarian and medical aid to Gaza – which HRW and Oxfam falsely declare to be an “unnecessarily complex inspection process” (Items 6 to 11 in appendix), thereby constituting “collective punishment,”2 and 2) that the IDF’s military actions in Gaza hospitals are arbitrary and unjustified. Notably, the “evidence” to support these allegations explicitly ignores numerous sources and facts constituting actual and monstrous war crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians that do not fit this narrative – in particular, the massive diversion of aid, including for the construction of hundreds of kilometers of massive fortifications below schools, residences, medical facilities, etc,; the large-scale exploitation of hospitals for terror; and the manufacture and use of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles that target Israeli civilians. 3

In addition, assertions using the language of international humanitarian law (IHL) consist primarily of the authors’ political opinions. In a number of instances, they “conclude” that a particular IDF strike took place for which they did not discern a military purpose, repeating the fiction that NGO staffers have access to the real-time battlefield information available to Israeli military commanders, as well as the ability to ascertain their decision making processes. Similarly, the use by NGO political advocates of terms such as “disproportionate force” is entirely subjective and lacking in consistent criteria.4

In examining this document, as well as previous reports and the record of partisan political advocacy activities of HRW and Oxfam, it becomes clear that the objective of this document is to impede and disrupt cooperation between the US and Israel in counter-terrorism operations, particularly the brutal atrocities of October 7. Any citations from and references that give credibility to the allegations vilifying Israel, including in government documents, media platforms, and academic publications, would reinforce the unvirtuous circle of using unverifiable and politically motivated NGO claims as “evidence” to further defame and disrupt IDF responses to terror atrocities.

Will Arabists finally kill the US-Israel relationship?

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his merry band of Arabists must feel like they’re on the cusp of Nirvana as they prod President Joe Biden to ignore his instinct to protect Israel and destroy the special relationship nurtured over the last 75 years. In the tradition of the Arab world, they have played the long game, never giving up the hope that, Inshallah, the partition could be reversed.

Loy Henderson failed. George Marshall failed. John Foster Dulles failed. Wouldn’t you know that it would be Blinken, a Jew, who could be responsible for the unraveling of an alliance rooted in shared values and interests? The Arabists (who also inhabit other departments and include National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan) are trotting out all the shopworn arguments that proved erroneous in the past but are now finding acceptance in the lynch-mob atmosphere. They insist that our relationship with Israel is undermining our national interest, damaging relations with the Arabs, allowing the Soviets (I mean, Russians) to gain strength, impeding peace, provoking terrorist attacks on our troops, and only they know what is best for Israel.

Their case is as spurious today as it ever was. As President Dwight Eisenhower learned after listening too long to Dulles, forcing Israel to withdraw from the Sinai and pinning his hopes on Saudi Arabia for defending American interests in the region, only Israel shares our interests (though they are not always perfectly aligned) and will act on them.

Just as the Arabists wrongly predicted relations with the Arabs would deteriorate as ties with Israel grew more robust, the opposite occurred. Even now, the Abraham Accords are holding firm. Putting their interests ahead of the national interest, the Arabists are trying to sabotage normalization with the Saudis by linking it to a two-state solution that the Israelis, Palestinians, and certainly, the Saudis (and the Jordanians) don’t want. They will never admit that their vision of a Palestinian state is not only unwanted but untenable.

Outside of Syria, where it has a naval base, Russia has made no inroads with the Arab states. What it has done is strengthen ties to Iran thanks to the U.S. State Department’s appeasement of the mullahs. The Arabists want to blame Israel for attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed militias because they will never accept that radical Islamists don’t care about Israel; they want to destroy the West to build a global caliphate. Iranians were chanting “Death to America” long before Oct. 7. ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the other jihadis would attack us if Israel disappeared.

Biden is holding the relationship together by his fingernails, as evidenced by his moving from vetoing egregious U.N. resolutions to abstaining from them. Supporting the next one will be one sign that the Arabists have won. Others will be cutting or conditioning aid to Israel while funding the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority and making more concessions to Iran.

The Abraham Accords will probably survive

Six months into the Gaza war and world opinion – widely in support of Israel’s initial onslaught on Hamas following the horrendous events of October 7 – has steadily hardened and turned.

Appeals for a pause in the fighting have grown ever more strident, culminating in the resolution passed on March 25 by the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The resolution, while also demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages held by Hamas, did not link the ceasefire call to the hostage release. In short, the UN is instructing Israel to stop fighting Hamas, giving it time to revive and regroup and leaving it free to continue bombarding Israel with rockets and drones.

Security Council members knew, of course, that demanding Hamas release all its hostages was simply virtue signaling, since it is quite unenforceable. Hamas is a terrorist organization, unbeholden to the UN or anyone else.

Arab street opinion and the self-interest of Arab sovereign states rarely coincide. The Abraham Accords were initially sold to a skeptical Arab public on the grounds that they would give rich Arab countries unprecedented financial leverage on Israel, and would eventually improve conditions for the Palestinians.

Months into a conflict that has cost thousands of lives, polls of Arab opinion indicate overwhelming support for Hamas. Regardless, Abraham Accord regimes, convinced that the benefits from the accords override other considerations, are sidelining public opinion.

The New York Daily News reports:

Three protesters were arrested after they crashed the Easter Vigil Mass at Manhattan’s iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral, police said Sunday.

Protesters with the group XR NYC Palestine Solidarity held a banner reading “SILENCE = DEATH” before they were shoved away by church officials, video posted on X shows.

The protesters’ chants of ‘Free, free Palestine!’ echoed through the cathedral as they were shoved outside.

The protesters are affiliated Extinction Rebellion (XR), which has for years used flashy civil disobedience to call attention to the fight against climate change.

“War, occupation and industrial pollution are poisoning the soil, air, and water in Gaza and all over the planet, destroying the earth’s capacity to sustain life, said Gregory Schwedock, an XR NYC Palestine Solidarity activist arrested inside the cathedral. “This destruction is called ‘Ecocide.’”

To the progressive Left, Israel is guilty of violating every trendy social justice issue. So why not accuse it os "ecocide" as well?

They aren't the first, of course. The anti-Israel group Forensics Architecture wrote up an entire report on Israel's "ecocide" of Gaza for Land Day last week.

Also last week, The Guardian wrote, "Researchers and environmental organisations say the destruction will have enormous effects on Gaza’s ecosystems and biodiversity. The scale and potential long-term impact of the damage have led to calls for it to be regarded as “ecocide” and investigated as a possible war crime."

Only one problem: "Ecocide" is not a war crime. There are plenty of people who are trying to get it added to the Rome Statute, but it isn't there.

Given that Israel is accused of lots of "war crimes" that are not war crimes, why not make up a new one?

As usual, the double standards are blatant. When waging a war, the environment is a secondary consideration, although even under existing laws it has importance - actions that cause people to not have adequate access to water or sanitation would need to be weighed against military necessity, and this would happen even if ecocide is added as a major crime under the Rome Statute.

But we saw a few years ago that Hamas and its allies deliberately and consciously sent incendiary devices over the Gaza border, specifically to set forest fires. Those fires destroyed ecosystems in the area.

And in fact Arabs have been setting fires to Jewish-owned forests and crops since the 1920s. There were waves of such attacks in the 1930s.

No one called this "ecocide" even though the attacks were wanton, deliberate attempts to destroy the environment.

So why the double standard? Perhaps the reason can be found in a 2010 forest fire reported by YNet:

Six foreign nationals and Palestinians set fires alight near the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion bloc. Police said the suspects were taken in for questioning on suspicion of arson and illegal congregation.

Settlers said that at about 11 am they saw fires on lands they said belonged to Bat Ayin. Security sources said it was apparently land whose ownership is not regulated.

Dov Mark, land supervisor for the Gush Etzion Council, said such acts have taken place a number of times. "This is a known Palestinian method to take over state land," he said. "With the support of anarchists, who usually come from abroad, they come to an area of natural woodland which has never been cultivated, burn it on purpose and at the same time plant trees. It's all supposed to alter the reality on the ground."

The same types of people who claim to care about "ecocide" are the ones who purposefully set fires on Jewish lands.

There is only one consistent position from these so-called "progressives" - they hate proud Jews.

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Oxford's Dictionary of Law Enforcement says "Perfidious killing or wounding is a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court whereby the perpetrator kills or wounds the victim by taking advantage of the victim's belief that he is in a state of protection under international law....Guerrilla fighters dressed in civilian clothes would always be guilty of perfidious killing or wounding by pretending to have civilian status, but they are not guilty if they carry their weapons openly."

Throughout the war, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists have been wearing civilian clothing and almost never carry their weapons openly. Instead, they have pre-positioned weapons throughout the Gaza Strip in civilian areas and use these caches as necessary, and then pretending to be civilians after they put the weapons back away.

Hamas videos consistently show that their members are exclusively wearing civilian clothing.

Today, Hamas released a video of terrorists shooting mortars. They hide the mortars underground and bring them out when they want to fire them.

Every single shooter is in civilian clothing.

Here's the full video.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad's videos of them shooting at Israeli tanks also invariably show their members wearing civilian clothes. When they are killed, "human rights" groups consider them civilians unless the weapons are right next to them.

Another recent video shows additional crimes: the mortar is being shot from an urban area, and it had been hidden by a blanket so it wasn't carried there openly as per international law.

Now, try to find a single mention, let alone condemnation, of these war crimes by any NGO or mainstream media outlet.

Israeli actions are put under a microscope and things that are absolutely legal under international law are elevated to crimes against humanity, while recognized terrorist groups get a pass when the evidence is in their own videos.

All it would take would be a single report by Human Rights Watch or Amnesty to point these things out and Hamas would be shamed into changing its tactics. They know all of this. And they deliberately decide not to write about it.

Because they are on Hamas' side.

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Egypt's Meliha Ramadan TV series says Judaism supports murdering children

Each episode of the Egyptian Meliha Ramadan series being shown now begins with a short Arab history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. These short videos are being discussed in Arab media.

The version I am seeing with English subtitles feature a Netflix logo, but I have not confirmed they are indeed shown on Netflix in Arab countries. The directors is being careful not to place any explicit antisemitism as other Ramadan series have traditionally had, so they keep their platform. But they slipped a little in anyway.

In episode 4, the grandfather tells his grandson that Israel murdered hundreds of civilians in Gaza in 1956. The grandson then asks, "Don't they care about children? Don't they care about elders?"

The grandfather answers, "That's their belief, my son.. A religious and military belief."

That is a blood libel, no different from the classic "Jews drink the blood of gentile children" libel. But it was said subtly enough to make it past Netflix oversight.

The series also tries to make Egypt look like it was a defender of Palestinians throughout the decades, which is not at all true. Gaza was originally Egypt's open-air prison for all Palestinians in Egypt, and Egypt used Palestinians as cannon fodder for fedayeen attacks into Israel.

Just like today, Egypt did everything it could to bar Palestinians from entering Egypt proper.

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Lebanese nun tells dozens of children that not supporting Hezbollah is traitorous

From Naharnet:

The nun stood in front of a group of young students at a Lebanese Christian school and asked them to pray for the "men of the resistance" in southern Lebanon who she said were defending the country.

The men to whom nun Maya Ziadeh was referring are members of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has been clashing with Israel across a volatile border for nearly six months, becoming a critical regional player as the Israel-Hamas war persists in Gaza.

A video capturing Ziadeh's comments was widely circulated online earlier this month, outraging some who accused her of "brainwashing" the children and imposing her political views. Others rallied to her support, commending her stance as courageous and honorable.

Ziadeh called for praying for the "children, people and mothers of the south and ... for the men of the resistance," describing those who fail to do so as "traitors," a characterization that many found troubling, especially given the young age of her audience.

Blog Baladi reports that she lost her job, and that this is the proper response:

We should never wish harm on other Lebanese or side with any foreign power over our own, but that doesn’t mean we should agree with each other’s political choices or else be labeled as traitors. No one in his right mind should support a military group ruling the country, imposing its decisions on us all and taking us on deadly adventures without bearing any of the consequences.

The video shows that she was speaking in front of around 80 children.

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