Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

The pro-Israel side must strive for accuracy

Over the past couple of years, I have repeated the story of the death of Moshe Tamam by Walid Daqqa's PFLP cell in 1984.

The narrative that Tamam was castrated and his eyes were gouged out all came from a 2012 blogpost (I won't link) that said:

When the terrorists realized that they could not get him across the border into Syria, they decided to kill him.

First they gouged out Moshe’s eyes, and then they mutilated him by cutting off parts of his body starting with his sexual organs. Finally, they shot him in the chest, and dumped his body in an olive grove near Jenin. Moshe’s body, or what was left of it, was found on August 10th. The DFLP immediately claimed responsibility for the heinous murder.

It wasn't the DFLP but the PFLP, which should have been the first indication that this report was not accurate.

This story of Tamams' gruesome torture and mutilation spread, including in a Times of Israel blog last year and other normally reliable sites.

But it does not appear to be true.

People I know contacted the prosecutors in the case, and there is no evidence for either the castration or gouging accusations.

An Israeli government website says that Tamam's body was found with signs of trauma on his head and a bullet hole in his chest, without a word about mutilation.

Israel Hayom described Tamam's murder in 2021:

A year and a half after the attack, the circle was closed, and the four terrorists, residents of Bekah al-Gharbiyya, were captured. In May 1986, an indictment was filed against them that exposed the atrocity. The four, Ibrahim Razak Badasa, Walid Daqqa, Ibrahim Naif Abu Mokh and Rushdi Abu Mokh, all members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were tasked with kidnapping an Israeli soldier and transporting him to Syria. The four were looking for a soldier, and when they saw Tamam at the Netanya interchange they stopped for him and he got on.

While driving, two of the terrorists pulled out the guns they had, tied his hands with a rope and covered his eyes with a rag. They drove him to the squad leader's house and imprisoned him for two days, then they decided to execute him, because they were afraid they would be caught on the way to Syria. They drove near the settlement of Mevo Dotan, took out Tamam and placed him in an olive grove. Ibrahim Razak pulled out his gun and fired a shot at Tamm that grazed his forehead. After the soldier fell to the ground, Ibrahim leaned towards him and fired once more towards his chest. After that, Razak and Naif returned to the car where Rushdi was waiting for them.

Walid Daqqa deserved to die in prison for his role as the leader of the murderous PFLP cell. Amnesty's treating him like a hero is unconscionable. But we on the Zionist side need to be careful that what we say is accurate. The other side will accuse us of being liars no matter what, but our standards must be as high as possible - and higher than most of the mainstream media's.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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A group called the Joint Action for Palestine in Tunisia has issued a threat against any Zionists who will participate in the annual pilgrimage to the Djerba synagogue.

Thousands of Jews visit the site every year on on Lag B'Omer, which this year is on May 26.

The group issued a statement warning against "normalization with the Zionist entity."

It insists that the Jews in Tunisia must “confront the abnormal rhetoric issued by some Tunisian Jews who applaud the crimes of the occupation, especially those who hold Israeli citizenship and who are serving in the occupation army."

I doubt that a single Tunisian Jewish citizen has ever served in the IDF.

The group added that “this religious occasion has always been an opportunity for the lobbies for normalization with the Zionist entity to mix the Jewish religion with the Zionist issue and deliberately bring hundreds of people with Israeli nationality into Tunisia surreptitiously using Tunisian, European and American passports to blend in with the rest of the world’s Jewish visitors.” "These practices constitute blatant normalization with the Zionist entity that contradicts the national constants of the Tunisian people,."

The group further claimed that any Israeli who visits should be brought to trial for being a reservist in the IDF.

The came the real threat.

The committee called on the Tunisian state to “issue an official statement declaring its refusal to allow any holder of Zionist nationality to enter Tunisia on the occasion of the Hajj al-Ghariba,” holding it responsible for “each of them who infiltrates, for the legal and popular consequences that could affect them.”

To make it clear, they said they "will pursue everyone who brings a Zionist into Tunisia by all necessary legal and combative means."

But after claiming that some Tunisian Jews are really secret Israelis, the group made sure to say they have nothing against Tunisian Jews.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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04/09 Links Pt2: Surprised at anti-Israel hatred?; UNRWA is the opposite of the two state solution; The Psychological Obsession with Netanyahu

From Ian:

Surprised at anti-Israel hatred?

I cannot ignore the similarity between the smear campaign reaching new heights in the last four years against Israel abroad compared with the demonization of the Kohelet Policy Forum here in the past and still ongoing today. On a 16-hour break I had from fighting in Gaza, I got messages from people threatening to “settle accounts after the war” and accusing me of having the blood of the Oct. 7 victims on my hands. The people writing such things have not read a single Kohelet policy paper. One of the “Brothers in Arms” members attempting to scare voters in municipal elections about Kohelet influence repeated the lie about the “Kohelet civics textbook,” and another member affirmed in a TV interview that he does not regret their invasion and blockage of our offices. The fact that many of my Kohelet colleagues and I have been called up to serve in the war has not moved such haters to so much as wait for our return home.

Both the State of Israel and Kohelet Forum could have done more to fight for an image that aligns with reality. In both cases, however, a well-organized and well-funded smear campaign has succeeded in pushing decent people to take too firm a stance and avoid dialogue. Just this week, a lecture by a well-known, leftist Jewish-American professor who wanted to discuss “the two-state solution” was canceled in California, and a talk by center-left former Knesset member Tzipi Livni was transferred to Zoom for fear of disturbances. Even having a dialogue with someone defined as a “Zionist” is off the table.

And here?

In the past year, an established high school canceled a lecture by a law professor after discovering that he participated in a doctoral program at Kohelet Forum around eight years ago.

Perhaps we should be a little less impervious to other opinions and stop attributing ill intentions to the other side before we complain about the treatment Israel is getting on the world stage.

Horror and Humiliation in Gaza

Like the Nazis, Islamist terrorism weaponized horror to demoralize the West. Christianity has a soft underbelly: It struggles to reconcile belief in a God who so loved the world that He sacrificed Himself for its salvation with the suffering of innocents. That was the nub of Voltaire’s attack on theodicy after the Lisbon earthquake killed 12,000 in 1755, as well as Ivan Karamazov’s protest that “if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.”

The post-Christian world, which eschews the mystery of Divine Providence in favor of a squeamish urge for earthly salvation, is all the more vulnerable to the theater of horror. The post-Christian West has become paralyzed by the fear that the world is beset by forces hostile to humankind, which J.R.R. Tolkien called “the black breath.”

All too well have the Western-educated, multilingual leaders of Hamas gauged the spiritual state of the West, and invented an atrocious way of conducting war in order to psychically paralyze it. Hamas cannot win a war against Israel, but it has sufficient power to force Israel to fight a war that cost many civilian lives. Whether the civilian death toll is the 32,000 that Hamas claims or the 18,000 estimated by pro-Israeli analysts is of minor importance.

During the U.S. Marines’ siege of Fallujah 20 years ago, I wrote that the battle for that city brought into focus the vulnerabilities of both the Americans and the Sunni resistance. Horror—the perception that cruelty has no purpose and no end—is lethal to the West, which cannot endure without faith in a loving Heavenly Father. For the Islamic world, meanwhile, humiliation—the perception that the ummah cannot reward those who submit to it—is beyond its capacity to endure.

The Muslim world said nothing when between 9,000 and 40,000 civilians died in the 2016-17 campaign against ISIS in Mosul. That involved Muslims (the Iraqi Army with American support) killing Muslims. But Gaza is not merely a slaughter but also a humiliation, the reduction of Hamas, and the displacement of most of the Gaza population. Muslims can accept Muslims killing Muslims, but they can’t abide Jews humiliating Muslims.

This toxic combination of horror and humiliation poisons world opinion against Israel. There is no near-term remedy. Horror elicits irrational responses. Never mind that Hamas forced an urban war upon Israel through unspeakable acts of brutality against Israeli civilians, and that it embeds terrorists in hospitals, schools, and other civilian installations to maximize casualties among its own civilians. Never mind that Israel’s response has occasioned fewer civilian casualties in urban combat than any other fighting force on record. As West Point urban warfare expert John Spencer wrote in Newsweek:
The UN, EU, and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world’s most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

Russia and China denounce Israel simply because it is an ally of the United States, and many former colonies of the West, prominently South Africa, shoehorn the Gaza war into their own traumatic narrative of national liberation. That’s to be expected.

What’s new and dangerous is the extent to which the Hamas theater of horror has demoralized the remnants of the Christian world. Support for Israel in the United States has dropped to 36% in March from 50% in November, according to the Gallup Poll.

The Prophet of October 7?

In America and Western Europe, the progressive left’s response to the October 7 attacks has largely been one of hostility toward Israel. There are many reasons why this is so, but among them is the malign and outsized influence in intellectual circles of Frantz Fanon. Born in Martinique 1925, Fanon wrote extensively on race and the evils of colonialism, and did much to shape how both topics are thought about in universities. Fanon spent the last years of his life collaborating with the terrorists who liberated Algeria from French rule. He died in 1961, just before his comrades drove the Jews out of the country.

Reviewing a new biography of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz, Leon Hadar writes:
The fighting in Algeria radicalized Fanon. His writing about the colony and the meaning and utility of political violence was militant. “At the individual level,” he wrote, “violence is cleansing. It rids the colonized of his inferiority complex, of his passive and despairing attitude.” In other words, killing colonizers was not only tactically expedient, it was also therapeutic for the colonized. “The colonized man liberates himself in and through violence,” he wrote. What the colonized needed was not concessions granted by the master but “quite literally the death of his master.” . . . And readers of Fanon are left in no doubt that he believed attacks on civilians to be the “logical consequence” of colonial oppression.

Nor did Fanon express much interest in limiting what forms redemptive violence takes. Hadar observes that in a different work he posed the question: “Just as there are faces that ask to be slapped, can one not speak of women who ask to be raped?”

Shatz, Hadar notes, is an editor for the virulently anti-Israel London Review of Books, and is “an anti-Zionist polemicist who believes that Israel is ‘the world’s last settler-colonial state.’” And that may not be unrelated to Shatz’s “sympathetic” treatment of his subject:
Shatz has told a Ha’aretz journalist that he doesn’t know if Fanon would have supported the October 7 massacre. The point is moot, but since Fanon never met a murderous militant he didn’t like, it’s plausible that Shatz is simply being coy in his judgment. He does, after all, remark that Hamas’s terror operation on October 7 was a “classic example of Fanonian struggle.”

There can be little doubt that Fanon’s writing influenced and radicalized Palestinian nationalism. Shatz reminds us that the first Arabic translations of Fanon’s work, which appeared in Beirut’s bookshops in 1963, helped to shape the emerging Palestinian nationalist movement.

Daniel Greenfield: Swastikas Are Progressive Now

Flying a progressive swastika is the climax of making antisemitism into “something honorable”.

The path to the progressive swastika and the “honorable antisemitism” had plenty of stops that all involved mainstreaming antisemitism while swearing up and down that it was only anti-Zionism. The media mainstreamed hate sites like Mondoweiss where editors and contributors admitted that, “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, but I can understand why some are” and “Liberals like to deceive themselves about Jewish power.”

The DSA, which has led the campaign for Hamas, had invited a representative of Melenchon’s Communist allied party from France, who claimed that when a “man of the left” is “called an anti-Semite, it means he’s not far from power.” That same party became the only one to refuse to condemn Oct 7 and political figures from the party accused Israel of killing its own children.

In 2014, academia and the media were justifying antisemitism. By 2024, they’re rehabilitating the swastika as a progressive symbol. And this change is about more than the Jews.

Jews tend to be the canaries in the coal mine. Fanatics and totalitarian movements may start with the Jews, but they never end there. The Jews are just a convenient inciting incident.

Both the Nazis and Communists understood that the persecution of Jews would legitimize the worse crimes they intended to commit. When the Nazis began rounding up and killing Jews with no protest, it became easier to justify the killing of the German disabled and mentally ill, and later the larger eugenics program that would have wiped out the Slavs and many other peoples. And when the Communists began shutting down synagogues and executing rabbis, it became easier to justify the takeover of the church and to build a cult of personality around Stalin.

While there are single-issue antisemites out there, major movements that start waving fascist or progressive swastikas don’t intend to limit their plans to just killing Jews. The Jews are a symbol of the power they want, as Melenchon put it, and the justification for it, as Islamists contend.

Hamas, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, originally financed by the Nazis, claims that it just wants to destroy Israel. But other arms of the Brotherhood tried to seize control of the entire Middle East during the Arab Spring, have been integrated into Al Qaeda, and operate in America and Europe to aid Islamic terrorists around the world. When they brandish the swastika, it’s not cautionary, it’s aspirational. And the same is true of their leftist allies.

By defining the Jews as the new Nazis, leftist movements like the DSA justify the mass murder of the Jews, and the violent tactics they use to seize power to fight the Jews. But the DSA’s vision of totalitarian socialism, National Socialism one might say, will not end with the Jews.

The swastika, whether used as a banner or a symbol of reversal, mainstreams antisemitism, not just to call for the murder of Jews, but for the killing of all those who stand in their way.

The progressive swastika is a symbol of death for Jews and for everyone else.

Naharnet adds a crucial detail to the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Mohammad Reza Zahedi last week.

An Iranian general killed in a strike in Syria's capital was a member of Hezbollah's Shura Council, the powerful Lebanese group's decision-making body, a source close to the movement said.

The April 1 air strike levelled the Iranian embassy's consular annex in Damascus, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members, including two generals.

One of them was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, the Guards' foreign operations arm.

Zahedi was the only non-Lebanese on Hezbollah's eight-member Shura Council, the equivalent of the powerful Shiite Muslim movement's political bureau, led by secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the source said, requesting anonymity because the matter is sensitive.

Nasrallah in a speech Monday paid homage to Zahedi and his colleagues killed in the strike, which Tehran and Damascus have blamed on Israel.

Zahedi "lived with us for long years, away from the spotlight, and provided important services to the resistance in Lebanon and the whole region," Nasrallah said Friday during a televised address.

Zahedi was essentially a top member of Hezbollah, not merely an adviser. That might have tipped the decision to kill him in the Iranian embassy compound. It appears to have been a legal strike anyway, but this strengthens Israel's legal case, as they were attacking a member of a group that they are actively engaged in hostilities against.

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!

04/09 Links Pt1: Western Democracy's Future Depends on Israel's Victory; Are the American Hostages American Enough for Biden?; Hamas's failure to exploit Ramadan

From Ian:

Western Democracy's Future Depends on Israel's Victory

If the Biden administration forces a "ceasefire" that leaves our closest ally in the region short of victory over an enemy that seeks to destroy it, sooner or later we shall all pay the price.

Israel is battling, above all else, for its own survival. In a hostile region, it is also the sole standard-bearer of individual freedom, tolerant pluralism and self-rule. Contrast the condition of ethnic minorities, women, gays and dissidents in Israel with that of their counterparts anywhere else in the Middle East. We should give thanks every day for the sacrifices Israelis make at the fragile frontier of freedom.

Every Islamist terrorist Israel kills is one fewer threat to the rest of us. Every setback Israel can deal to the Iranian puppet masters of Hamas, Hizbullah and others inflicts a loss on the regime that is sworn to eliminate us, the "Great Satan."

There is no historical evidence that appeasing enemies committed to our extinction ever keeps us safe.

If Israel can somehow be bullied into forgoing victory over this enemy, our own capacity to wage wars inflicted on us will be dramatically diminished, setting a standard no nation taking necessary measures to protect itself would ever be able to meet, a standard to which our enemies will certainly never hold themselves.

If this is the way we fight modern wars, our enemies will have freedom to commit acts of bestial savagery on us, knowing that our own scruples will give them an insuperable advantage.

In World War II, the British political and military leadership decided on a strategy called "dehousing" German civilians: bombing cities to a level of destruction that would demoralize their inhabitants and make them turn on their Nazi government. The British people tolerated this morally doubtful approach because they had fresh in their minds the memory of the Blitz, when the Nazis successfully "dehoused" many British citizens.

Israel suffered an atrocity on Oct. 7 comparable to the Blitz, yet has worked with restraint to limit inevitable civilian losses. If it can't even be allowed to do that, we are placing impossible shackles on the fighting ability of democratic nations.

WSJ: Denying weapons to Israel in the middle of a war is betrayal

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board slammed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in an editorial on Tuesday for their signing of a letter urging President Joe Biden to stop the transfer of weapons to Israel.

"Denying weapons to an ally in the middle of a war is the definition of betrayal," the newspaper's editorial board wrote, labeling Pelosi a "sunshine ally."

The letter was signed by dozens of Democrats after Israel mistakenly killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers last week.

American hypocrisy?
In the editorial, the WSJ noted that the US was holding Israel to a standard that it, itself, had failed to meet.

"They ignore the Hellfire missile attack that killed seven children as the US sought to avenge the deaths of 13 Americans in Kabul as Mr. Biden pulled US forces from Afghanistan in 2021," the editorial said, adding that, unlike the US in that instance, "Israel has a history of accountability for such mistakes."

Are the American Hostages American Enough for Biden?

Joe Biden knows something about accusations of dual loyalty. In 2016, then-Vice President Biden delivered a speech at Dublin Castle heralding the “progress” Catholic Americans have made since John F. Kennedy made the trek to Ireland 50 years ago and was “attacked for being too close to a pope.”

Now, as five American-Israelis languish in Hamas captivity, Biden is turning his back on that progress.

This Sunday marked a grim milestone—six months since Hamas terrorists took hundreds of Israelis hostage on Oct. 7, including six American citizens—hopefully five still living—who remain in Gaza. But Americans can’t be blamed for forgetting. Joe Biden is more likely to call on Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire than to call on Hamas and Qatar to release our own citizens. We hear more about humanitarian aid for Gazans than about American citizens being killed and tortured in Gaza.

At a time when the president’s party insists we “Say his name!” or “Say her name!” Biden has not mentioned dual citizens Edan Alexander, Omer Neutra, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Sagui Dekel-Chen, or Keith Siegel. The president released a statement about Itay Chen on March 12, five months after the attack. This was only after his murder was announced, which supports Dara Horn’s poignant observation that dead Jews are more beloved than living ones.

The White House talks regularly about Evan Gershkovich (70-plus hits on the White House website), the Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter being held on false charges in Russia, as it did about Brittney Griner (more than 200 hits), a basketball player imprisoned by Russia until she was released in a controversial prisoner swap.

The six Jews whom Hamas kidnapped are as American as Gershkovich and Griner are, which raises the question: Why does the White House ignore these Jewish U.S. citizens?

It seems that Alexander, Neutra, Goldberg-Polin, Dekel-Chen, Siegel, and Chen are only half-American. One of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in history is that Jews are only in business for themselves and their homeland. They just pass through countries without any sense of loyalty. They weren’t European enough in the Middle Ages, not German enough to the Nazis, and not American enough for the Biden administration to “say their names” and move heaven and earth to secure their release.

In today’s society, we like to pretend these disgusting sentiments are a relic of a less enlightened time. Stop pretending. The accusation of dual loyalty is a go-to attack on both the left and the right.

“They forgot what country they represent,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote on Jan. 6, 2019 of those opposing the anti-Semitic boycott-Israel movement. Less than two months later, Tlaib’s sister-in-hate Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said about AIPAC, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

The SF Contemporary Jewish Museum debacle shows the hypocrisy of "anti-Zionist" Jews

This JTA story is a perfect representation of what is wrong in the American Jewish community today.

When the inaugural California Jewish Open exhibit opens at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in June, the gallery walls will have several blank spaces where works of art were supposed to hang.

The spaces will represent the “missing perspectives” of seven self-identified Jewish anti-Zionist artists who withdrew their pieces in a coordinated protest after museum officials said they would not meet several of the artists’ demands.

The artists, who are part of a group calling themselves California Jewish Artists for Palestine, had requested, among other things, that the museum divulge the names of its funders and divest from all funding sources associated with Israel. They also expressed concern about their art appearing alongside works that reflected different ideas about Israel from their own.

... {T]he artists sought extraordinary control over their artwork. They requested that the museum amend the terms they agreed to by giving them the ability to modify or withdraw their works from the exhibit at any time, and to have autonomy over wall texts, artists statements and other framing. (In their Instagram statement, the artists wrote that they were concerned about “potential curatorial both ‘sides-ism’” and about the possibility that their pieces would appear next to ones that “grieve Jewish deaths without acknowledging the genocide of Palestinians.”)

So these Jewish artists submitted their artwork to be included in a Jewish museum, and then refused to show their artwork alongside other artists who aren't as anti-Zionist as they are.

The CJAP statement included this:

Artists initially chose to make a statement to the @jewseum by submitting to the Open Call in a coordinated effort to bring visibility to anti-zionist Jewish artists in California, with anticipation that their works would be rejected by museum curators. While several of the pieces were accepted, the museum’s responses and inability to meet artists’ demands, including transparency around funding and a commitment to BDS, reaffirmed for artists the importance of adhering to and demanding PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) in the Arts. The artists call on all cultural workers worldwide to join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement to abstain from collaborating with institutions that continue to normalize genocide and Israeli Apartheid.

They are saying that they really never had the intention of exhibiting alongside any Jewish art that disagreed with their extremist anti-Israel positions. They wanted to be rejected and then blame the museum for "censorship."

When the museum accepted some of their artwork, they had to create unacceptable demands, like the museum supporting BDS and (implicitly) for the museum to censor any Zionist artwork as a precondition to exhibit theirs. This then gave themselves an excuse to withdraw with what they consider honor.

Yet, amazingly, they are still claiming that they are the ones being censored!

Look how hard the liberal Jewish curators of the museum tried to accommodate the people who hate them and wanted only to embarrass them. Indeed, the theme of the exhibition is supposed to be "connection." The only rules for artwork is that it not include "antisemitic, Islamophobic, or xenophobic tropes, sentiments, or undertones." The haters wanted to prove that the curators were hypocrites - and they only proved that they were.

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!

Spain Exemplifies Both The Spread Of Antisemitism And The Attempt To Fight It (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

There has been a huge spike in antisemitism following the Hamas massacre on October 7. The riots and chanting border on the bizarre, accusing Israel of deliberate genocide while attacking Jews around the world.

But of course, not all antisemitic claims are of recent vintage:

oh ok then pic.twitter.com/l8EWDyCiNp
— Affirm Reality 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱 (@MirabelleW18) April 1, 2024

The Holy Week referred to here is the week before Easter, where in Leon, Spain, it is popular to say, "Let's kill Jews!" but the actual meaning is supposed to refer to "drinking carbonated, spiked lemonade during Holy Week.”

How does that work?

According to UCLA's Jewish newsmagazine, Ha'Am, the history of the phrase goes back to the Middle Ages:

The strange usage is rooted in Middle-Age pogroms in Spain during Holy Week. Eventually, around 1320 CE, authorities decided to permit the consumption of a soft alcoholic beverage, overriding the usual prohibition against alcoholic drinks during Holy Week in the hopes that people forming mobs would drink themselves into a stupor and be unable to assemble against the Jewish communities. The drink evolved into carbonated lemonade and the original description of the traditional Holy Week practice was applied to the drink’s name instead.

Interesting solution.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely to help control the antisemitic riots we hear about on a nearly daily basis.

Another explanation ascribes the source for this custom to a 15th-century knight, Suero de Quiñones, who owed money to a Jewish merchant. In 1449, he incited a mob of his fellow knights to follow him into the Jewish quarter, where they murdered the lender and others on Good Friday.

But despite the bloody history behind the phrase, the phrase "Let's kill Jews!" is now merely a custom:

Today, residents say the phrase is a social custom devoid of any connection to murder, religion or real-life Jews.

“People are used to it here, it’s an expression that is not racist at all,” said José Manuel, who works at Vychio Cafe Bar. “It’s an expression from a time period of racism but now, no, it’s an expression out of custom.” [emphasis added]

The idea that "Holy Week" is an occasion for the 'custom' of calling for the death of Jews is reminiscent of the additional aspect of Ramadan. As The Christian Science Monitor pointed out in 2003:

For Islamic militants, Ramadan allows them not only to reaffirm their religious observance but to strengthen their political ideological convictions as well. "Ramadan is a month of commitment and renewal to their faith and also to their cause, whether by military or nonmilitary jihad," says Prof. Nizar Hamzeh, a specialist on political Islam at the American University of Beirut. "It is a month of martyrdom and commitment to one's Islamic ideology."

Throughout Islamic history, Ramadan has been seen as a time of victory for Muslim armies - and a period when those who are martyred have a greater assurance of a place in paradise. [emphasis added; hat tip: Elder of Ziyon]

Elder of Ziyon has written about Ramadan: The month of fasting, prayer, and murdering Jews where he points out numerous Palestinian terrorist attacks that have taken place during Ramadan.

The Ha'Am article lists other "popular" phrases of antisemitic origin. There is the "Wandering Jew" plant. The Kurds have a phrase, knishta Juhiya, (Jewish synagogue) describes a noisy, unruly gathering. The chant "Hip, Hip Hooray" is believed by some to be a corruption of the phrase "Hep, hep," which is an acronym for Hierosolyma est perdita -- "Jerusalem is lost," which was chanted during German Jew-hunts in the Middle Ages.

Sometimes, these antisemitic phrases and names are corrected.

Back in Spain, ten years ago they decided to change the offensive name of a small town:

The tiny Spanish village of Castrillo Matajudios — which means “Camp Kill Jews” — on Monday officially changed its name back to Castrillo Mota de Judios (“Jews’ Hill Camp”) following a referendum and regional government approval.

The village, with about 50 inhabitants, voted to change the name in 2014 after Mayor Lorenzo Rodriguez argued that the term was offensive and that the village should honor its Jewish origins. [emphasis added]

Apparently, the name of the town was changed to "Camp Kill Jews" in 1627 when a 1492 Spanish edict giving Jews the choice of either converting or leaving was enforced. Those Jews who remained faced the Spanish Inquisition and many were burned at the stake.

Others believe the antisemitic name was given by the Jews themselves. According to this theory, Jews who converted to Christianity wanted to emphasize their repudiation of Judaism and convince the Spanish authorities of their loyalty.

Another theory is that the name change from Castrillo Mota de Judios to Castrillo Matajudios was just a slip of the pen.

Although no Jews currently live there, the town reportedly has Jewish roots, a claim which is supported by the town's shield:

The article reported that the mayor was planning to open a center to promote the study of Sephardic Jewish culture.

In 2016, they "twinned" with the Israeli town of Kfar Vradim in the north and a delegation from the Castrillo Mota de Judios arrived in Israel for the official ceremony linking the two towns.

That's one small victory in the fight against antisemitism.
We badly need many more.

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!

"Human rights group" @Amnesty turns sadistic terrorist Walid Daqqa into a hero (UPDATE)

Amnesty International issued a press release on the death by cancer of long-time Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, saying that he should have been released on humanitarian grounds.

Daqqa was convicted of heading a PFLP terror cell that abducted, tortured, castrated, gouged out the eyes* of and murdered Moshe Tamam, a soldier who was on leave, in 1984. They intended to smuggle him to Syria as a bargaining chip but when that became impossible they chose to mutilate and murder him instead.

Amnesty doesn't mention that.

Instead, it casts doubt on Daqqa's guilt altogether:

On 25 March 1986, Israeli forces arrested Walid Daqqah, then 24, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. In March 1987, an Israeli military court sentenced him to life imprisonment after convicting him of commanding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-affiliated group that had abducted and killed Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. Daqqah was not convicted of carrying out the murder himself, but of commanding the group, an accusation he always rejected, and his conviction was based on British emergency regulations dating back to 1945, which require a much lower standard of proof for conviction than Israeli criminal law.

The PFLP's obituary of Daqqa, however, leaves no doubt that he was a member of that cell and was involved in the torture and murder:

[Daqqa] joined the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1983, and joined a military cell affiliated with the Front.
In 1984, he conducted military training at the Front’s military bases in Syria, and then he contributed to the formation of a secret military apparatus for the Front inside the occupied interior, whose mission was to collect information about Zionist leaders and officials who participated in committing massacres in the invasion of Lebanon.
The martyr Walid and his comrades within the military cell carried out a series of operations, including the kidnapping and killing of the Zionist soldier Moshe Tamam, as a result of which he and a group of comrades were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

There is no denial here that Daqqa was guilty. But Amnesty doesn't want you to know that.

Instead of elaborating on Daqqa's heinous crime, Amnesty unabashedly praises him and treats him like a hero.

During his time in prison, Walid Daqqah wrote extensively about the Palestinian lived experience in Israeli prisons.
He acted as a mentor and educator for generations of young Palestinian prisoners, including children. His writings, which included letters, essays, a celebrated play and a novel for young adults, were an act of resistance against the dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners. “Love is my modest and only victory against my jailer,” he once wrote.

Walid Daqqah’s writings behind bars are a testament to a spirit never broken by decades of incarceration and oppression.

To Amnesty, this sadistic murderer was a role model. They even chose a picture of the unrepentant terrorist to make him look like a smiling, friendly person who wouldn't hurt a fly.

Moreover, the human rights of Moshe Tamam are not even mentioned by this alleged human rights group.

Amnesty pretended to condemn the kidnapping in murder of Tamam in a previous press release (that also implied that Daqqa confessed under torture) but this supposed human rights organization did everything they could to downplay his crime:

Amnesty International condemns the killing of Moshe Tamam as a violation of the Geneva Conventions’ absolute prohibition on violence to the life and person of armed forces members who have laid down their arms, including those in captivity.

This is a conscious attempt to minimize the crimes of the PFLP cell while accepting without question the accusations of the terrorists.

It is against international law to kidnap anyone - even a soldier - for the purposes of bargaining.

It is against international law to attack or kidnap a soldier who is on leave.

It is against international law to torture anyone, let alone the extreme torture Tamam was subjected to.

The only crime Amnesty is willing to admit is the prohibition of killing prisoners of war - but Tamam was not a prisoner of war since he was not a combatant.

For the purposes of the abduction, torture and murder, his rights were identical to that of civilians - his status as a soldier is irrelevant but Amnesty highlights his being a soldier, again, to minimize the heinousness and illegality of the crime.

This is a consistent pattern with Amnesty.They always exaggerate Israeli actions into the worst human rights abuses possible based on thin evidence and ignoring all counter-evidence, while at the very same time minimizing Palestinian human rights abuses and discounting or ignoring evidence and international laws that prove it.

Which is proof that Amnesty is either not a human rights organization, or that is doesn't consider Jews to be human.

*UPDATE: The story that Moshe Tamam was mutilated, while widely repeated, does not appear to have come from a reliable source. It was apparently not mentioned during the trials of the terrorists.

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Another made-up statistic: "7,000 bodies under the rubble in Gaza"

The latest OCHA-OPT report on Gaza casualties includes a footnote that has been mentioned for months:

The source is GMO, the Government Media Office - which means Hamas.

The UN officially repeated that figure, along with other Hamas statistics, at a press conference in Geneva last week:

“Over 33,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, are dead, 75,000 or more are injured, and at least 7,000 are presumed dead under the rubble. .... Huge swathes of Gaza have been bombed into oblivion. The Gaza Strip has changed forever,” spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told the biweekly press briefing in Geneva.

That same 7,000 number has been quoted for months. As the New York Times wrote last month, "The most recent health ministry estimate for the number of people missing in Gaza is about 7,000. But that figure has not been updated since November. Gaza and aid officials say thousands more have most likely been added to that toll in the weeks and months since then."

Really? More bodies have been buried than found since November? The entire northern half of Gaza has thousands of bodies that have been under rubble for months?

One would have thought that during the humanitarian pause at the end of November there would have been lots of bodies found, reducing the total number. Similarly, since the number of airstrikes has gone down significantly in the past couple of months, one would think that the 7,000 number would be going down, not up.

It doesn't take much thought to realize that the 7,000 number was made up. There is no central Gaza office that tracks missing people or people presumably buried under rubble, so how can such an estimate be made or maintained?

Hamas published the number (as OCHA admits) and no one is going to disagree with them. And the UN and New York Times and NGOs all quote the figure as if there is a legitimate government organization in Gaza that is keeping track.

It is just another example where, at the same time every Israeli statement is treated as a potential lie or at the very least an unverified claim, every Hamas statement is assumed to be true.

And no one is held accountable for believing and repeating Hamas lies.

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04/08 Links Pt2: Biden would rather Israel surrender than defend itself; Hamas rejects ceasefire offer in Cairo; A paradigm for peace: Jordan as Palestine

From Ian:

Biden would rather Israel surrender than defend itself

President Joe Biden has tried to pretend that he supports Israel since the terrorist attack against it on Oct. 7, but he has made it clear he would rather Israel surrender than win its war against Hamas.

Biden is now telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “we won’t be able to support you” if Israel continues its war against Hamas, a terrorist group that slaughtered 1,200 civilians in Israel, is dedicated to destroying Israel completely, and is holding Israelis and Americans hostage. This comes after National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tried to claim that America’s support of Israel is “rock-solid and unwavering” even as Biden threatens to change U.S. policy toward Israel.

Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected yet another ceasefire deal. That makes at least three occasions since February that Hamas has rejected a ceasefire. In the meantime, Biden is calling on Israel to cease its plans to go into Rafah, where Hamas terrorists are again using Palestinian civilians as human shields to avoid being wiped out completely.

So Biden wants Israel to stop fighting and let Hamas survive, all while Hamas continues to refuse to stop fighting by rejecting ceasefire deals. What Biden is asking of Israel is to surrender, to let Hamas survive and regroup and continue to slaughter civilians and try to destroy the country. Biden is putting more pressure on Israel for trying to kill genocidal terrorists than he is on the terrorists who continue to hold Americans hostage.

Recognition of a Palestinian State Will Be a Victory for Iran and a Reward for Islamist Terrorism

The recognition of virtual Palestine is a victory for Iran’s ayatollahs and a reward for Islamist terrorism. A scourge controlled by the Iranian regime, which will soon have a nuclear arsenal, translates into a terrible calamity that will befall all the nations of Europe tomorrow.

In this tragic context, an official French confirmation to unilaterally recognize the State of Palestine will also confirm that France is no longer Israel’s ally and undoubtedly not a friendly country.

Biden’s America has the capability of preventing the creation of an Islamist terrorist state. The United States should stop publicly berating Israeli strategy and intervening in Israel’s political affairs. The American president should support Israel in its legitimate and existential fight against Hamas and Hizbullah and avoid, by all means, the creation of a Palestinian satellite of the ayatollahs in the heart of the Middle East.

Otherwise, the support of the United States for the European Palestine initiative will go down in the annals of modern political history as a great debacle of the West and a disgraceful cowardice about the Jewish State. It proves once again that Israel must rely only on itself and act according to its own national security interests.

A paradigm for peace: Jordan as Palestine

Recognizing Jordan as a Palestinian state, while maintaining its status as a monarchy, reflects the national identity of a majority of its population. Highly popular Queen Rania is considered to be a Palestinian (via her parents). Palestinians are a growing segment of Jordan’s political life and its parliament. The country east of Israel is viable with a relatively stable economic and political structure. And it has vast areas of unused land, but lacks sufficient people and water.

Jordan/Palestine can become an oasis. It needs water, which would allow it to extend its population centers eastward. Utilizing abundant water sources in Turkey and/or the Caspian Sea – the largest body of fresh water in the world – would enable it to provide agricultural products, develop business and industrial centers, and create regional stability.

Another population source to help develop its huge and basically empty eastern portion – besides its current citizens – would be those Palestinians who would either come from the West Bank voluntarily, or be sent there because, as mentioned above, they choose not to live under Israeli sovereignty or abide by its laws and ethos as a Jewish state.

This would also include any Palestinians wherever they may live, including those in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, as well as Arab residents of Israel proper. All of them would rightfully be citizens of this newly realized Jordanian/Palestinian state: the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.

The possibility that Jordan could become an economic trade center was recently given a boost when Israel proposed a rail link between it and Haifa, which would connect it to European markets, Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The recently rebuilt rail line between Haifa and Beit She’an is the beginning of this plan.

Jordan is a strategic partner of Israel and, hopefully, will continue to be. The Jordanians, however, have a responsibility to Arab Palestinians, and Israel should not be expected to bear the burden of providing them with a national homeland.

Recognizing Jordan as the Palestinian state is in the national interests of both countries. It will bring them peace and prosperity, and ensure their security and stability and the entire region. A Jordanian-Israeli confederation will replace failure and despair with opportunity and hope, and it will inspire creativity, cooperation and freedom – the raison d’être of nation-states.

Potential evidence that Hamas doesn't register terrorist casualties

I mentioned that the Gaza health ministry has been keeping track of the people who die in hospitals, or who arrive after they have already died. The demographics of those people are way different from the other set that come from "trusted media sources' - meaning Hamas itself, where nearly all the supposed deceased are said to be women and children, which is impossible.

But as I've noted, recently the health ministry has started asking families to register any deceased relatives who did not get registered in hospitals for whatever reason. They do some level of cross-checking against their citizen ID.

The demographics of the 2,367 who have been counted by this separate registration form are also wildly different from those that died in hospitals.

While 37% of the MoH casualties are military age males, over 56% of those listed on the forms are males between 18-65.

That is a significant difference.

This may indicate that Hamas has not been sending its dead fighters to hospitals at all, and just bury them (or leave them under collapsed tunnels.) Their relatives want them to be counted.

I have no evidence of this right now, but the fact that three data sets show such huge differences in the demographics of those killed makes it appear that none of them are truly accurate samples of the numbers of civilians killed in Gaza.

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Italian news agency ADN Kronos International has an Arabic language news headline claiming that a top Vatican official has compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

While the headline says this, the text does not seem to bear this out.

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, president of the Episcopal Conference of Italy and archbishop of Bologna, was interviewed - according to the article by Sky News, perhaps Sky News Arabia, although I couldn't find the article - and quoted him:

He is quoted as saying, “When we talk about genocide, it was a systematic extermination of the people of Israel, whose idea was unfortunately formulated and implemented by the Nazis" and then "What is happening in the Gaza Strip is a military operation that kills innocent people and children, which is something no one can accept.”

In response to a question about whether what is happening in Gaza can be defined as genocide, he responded, “We must, in any case, stop any action that causes many innocent victims."

It sounds to me like the reporter was trying to prompt the cardinal into making the comparison, and he didn't take the bait. But that didn't stop the reporter from putting his two statements together to imply that the cardinal was the one making the comparison, not the reporter him or herself.

This might be more a case of an unethical journalist than a religious figure saying something antisemitic. In October, Zuppi called Hamas "the worst enemy of the Palestinian people." Not that Zuppi is without blame - any decent person would immediately reject any hint of that comparison, especially one from a country that was a Nazi ally.

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04/08 Links Pt1: The Right Dishonourable Foreign Secretary; Germany Stands by Israel; Islamic Jihad spokesman admits taking over hospitals

From Ian:

In Six Months, Everything Has Changed for Israel

On Oct. 6, Israel appeared on the cusp of a new era of recognition from the Muslim world, close to a peace deal with Saudi Arabia that would move it to the center of a realigned Middle East after years on its fringes. The historic conflict with the Palestinians that had defined its existence for most of its 75-year history appeared to have finally receded into the background.

It all changed on Oct. 7.

Today, after a bloody attack that might have brought it the world’s sympathy, Israel is closer to being a global pariah than ever before. Its Saudi peace deal is on hold. The Palestinian question is again roiling its Arab neighbors. It is in open argument with its main ally, the U.S. And its physical living space has been shrunk by dangers on its northern and southern borders.

In six months, the world has turned upside down for this small nation. On Oct. 7—or Black Sabbath, as Israelis now call it—the Jewish state experienced a fundamental shock that upended its sense of security and belief in the strength of its military. It responded with a heavy-handed invasion of Gaza that in much of the world’s eyes left it the aggressor and its attackers the victims. The resulting isolation could be more of a threat to its future than the attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7. “Israel’s longevity is in question for the first time since its birth,” said Benny Morris, an Israeli historian. The only time Israel faced a similar existential threat, he said, was in its war for independence in 1948, when it battled five Arab countries and local Palestinian militias.

The outpouring of global sympathy on display after the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust has dwindled, having been replaced by images of starving and dead Palestinians in Gaza. Images projected across the world show swaths of the Gaza Strip turned into rubble. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

This week, the killing of seven aid workers trying to feed desperate Gazans appears to have punctured the notion for much of the world that the Israeli military isn’t running amok in Gaza and has caused a rethink by the U.S. about its support for Israel.

Normalization with Saudi Arabia is on hold, while ties with Arab allies such as Egypt and Jordan have frayed. Pro-Palestinian protesters have thronged the streets of Western capitals, at times calling for Israel’s demise. A surge in antisemitism has shocked and alarmed not only Israelis but Jews across the globe. It is all strengthening a feeling inside Israel that the country can only rely on itself.

Israel faces a dilemma where it wants to be loved by the West, but needs to be feared by its enemies in the Middle East to ensure its long-term existence, said Micah Goodman, an Israeli author and philosopher.

“That’s the catch-22 we’re in,” he said.

Melanie Phillips: The Right Dishonourable Foreign Secretary

Is Britain’s Foreign Secretary unaware that Israel has again agreed terms for a ceasefire that Hamas has again rejected? Can he really not understand that the only conditions under which Hamas would release the hostages would be Israel’s total surrender and the release of all its Hamas prisoners?

Does he really fail to grasp that the hostages with whom Yahya Sinwar has reportedly surrounded himself are the Hamas leader’s ultimate bargaining counter to protect his life, and so he will never voluntarily give them up? Is Cameron really so badly informed that he thinks a man like Sinwar would choose to go into exile rather than die the “martyr’s” death he craves if he is defeated, taking the hostages with him? Does he really imagine that the unconscionable threat posed by the psychopathic, religious fanatics of Hamas and its equally fanatical patron, Iran, can be solved by political means?

Surely Cameron, with his first-class degree from Oxford and reputedly stellar intellect, cannot possibly be so stupid and ignorant as to think like this? But the only alternative to that is that he is driven by profound malice towards Israel. And Cameron is an honourable man.

Then comes the article’s zinger. For it turns out that Cameron is indeed well aware that Hamas has refused a deal that releases the remaining hostages. So he says:
We all want to see an end to the fighting, but we must face up to the difficult question: what should we do if Hamas refuses a deal and if the conflict continues?

What indeed. And then he comes up with this astonishing answer:
We cannot stand by with our head in our hands, wishing for an end to the fighting that may well not come — and that means ensuring the protection of people in all of Gaza including Rafah.

As an occupying power, Israel has a responsibility to the people of Gaza. But it also means that the international community must work with Israel on humanitarian efforts to keep people safe and provide them with what they need.

Ordinary civilians must be safe and able to access food, water and medical care. We need the UN, with the support of the international community, to work with Israel to make practical, deliverable plans to achieve this in Rafah and across Gaza.

He doesn’t want a solution that ensures the protection of all the people of Israel. He want instead a solution to protect all the people of Gaza — while Israel, the victim of the monster born from the people of Gaza, has to produce it. The absolute and overriding requirement to protect Israel against further genocidal attack from Gaza is nowhere in Cameron's vision. His only gesture is a meaningless bromide about wanting
the people of Israel and the people of Gaza to be able to live their lives in peace and security.

Yes, Gaza’s civilians should be protected as far as possible from the war — but this cannot take precedence over the requirement to stop Hamas once and for all. It is Israel that is threatened with being wiped out, not the people of Gaza. They are the unfortunate casualties of the Hamas strategy to maximise the numbers who die in order to turn the west against Israel — an infernal manipulation of gullible westerners that has worked to the letter — plus the refusal by Egypt to open its border to the Gazan refugees, and indeed the refusal by every other Muslim state to allow any of them in.

Moreover, the majority of Gazans voted for Hamas, still support Hamas, and exulted over the October 7 pogrom. Untold numbers of “ordinary” Gazans took part in that pogrom, murdered Israelis, took them hostage and are currently keeping some of them locked up in their homes where they are reportedly using them as slaves. And the vast majority of Gazans, when asked, say they support the further killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

These are the people whose welfare Cameron is more concerned to protect than the lives of the Israelis who would continue to be subjected to genocidal attack if he had his way.

This is presumably what he means by Britain aiming to “exercise leadership in the region and at the United Nations”.

For Cameron is an honourable man.

Kurt Schlichter: Israel Is Risking Losing This War by Caring What People Who Hate It Think

Israel is risking losing this war because it is focusing more on avoiding criticism from its enemies than winning. I blame Benjamin Netanyahu in large part, but also our incompetent and loathsome alleged president. Now, I’m not one of those reflexive Bibi haters, and while I certainly don’t think the United States should have a say in who Israel chooses to lead it, I do believe in accountability. The disaster of October 7 happened on his watch, and he should’ve resigned the day after, but that’s not up to me or up to any American. What is up to me as an American is who our president will be next year, and it can’t be Biden again. But the desiccated old zombie aside, Bibi needs to go. He screwed up on October 7, and now he appears to be screwing up this war.

The problem is not that Netanyahu has been too harsh, as our idiot president claims. It’s that Netanyahu has been too gentle (Yes, I understand a war cabinet is leading Israel, but he is still the face of it.). And too slow. Joe Biden has betrayed every ally America has had, from South Vietnam to Afghanistan and Bibi somehow imagined that creep would not sell-out Israel? Speed was of the essence. Why was Rafah not glass months ago? Netanyahu waited, and that gave Biden the time to sell out Israel.

Restraining was a mistake. The fact is that Israel has, to a far too great extent, tried to fight this war on terms that would satisfy its leftist enemies in the United States and other anti-Semites around the world. That was an error from the beginning. Israel’s strategy should have focused on victory, not on trying to mollify its critics. They will cry no matter what. Let them cry over defeated terrorists. Do you know what mollifies critics most effectively? Winning. Israel should’ve done that, and fast. But it didn’t. Despite the courage and skill of the IDF, who are a credit to their great nation, Israel’s leadership chose to fight this war and is still fighting this war in a manner that allows others who do not have Israel’s best interest at heart to dictate its strategic and tactical prerogatives. That is a grave error. That is putting Israel in danger.

Israel has three main related strategic military objectives at the moment. First, Israel needs to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Second, Israel must eliminate Hezbollah on its northern border. This Jihadi militia is dug in inside Lebanon with enough Iranian-supplied rockets to devastate Israel’s infrastructure, as well as having the ability to launch October 7-style attacks. And third, Israel must destroy Hamas in Gaza. A surviving Hamas can launch more October 7-style attacks and has promised to do so if able.

Muslims don't just deny 10/7 - but every massacre of Jews

Over the weekend, the Daily Telegraph published the results of a poll by the Henry Jackson Society that found that only one in four British Muslims believe that Hamas slaughtered and raped Jewish civilians on October 7.

I'm not sure why that is surprising. we've seen polls done in Arab countries where the percentage of Muslims who considered the massacre legitimate was at 88% but almost none of them thought Hamas did anything criminal.

And there is a rich history of Holocaust denial among Arabs and Muslims as well. A 2014 ADL survey found that among the (minority) of people in the Middle East who had heard about the Holocaust, 63% said it was a myth or exaggeration.

Arabs and Muslims deny any Jewish suffering in any context.

Just today, a retired Jordanian Brigadier General Aref Salim Alzaben wrote a bizarre article that cast doubt over the Kishinev pogrom of 1903.

Writing in Ammon News, Alzaben is angry that the Jewish Star newspaper in the New York area had republished part of Haim Nahman Bialik's 1904 poem 'In the city of slaughter' in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre.

He cannot see any comparison between the Kishinev pogrom that Bialik wrote about where Russians killed 49 Jews and raped a number of women, and October 7. To him, it is a slander that a Jewish newspaper would refer to a Russian pogrom that no Arabs were involved with.

But a stray phrase that Alzaben throws into the article shows the real Arab and Muslim mentality towards Jewish suffering: "the truth of that massacre was questioned by many international writers."

Who? Maybe some neo-Nazi blogger in his pajamas?

It doesn't matter - this Jordanian general finds it hard to believe that any Jews were massacred in Kishinev, one of the most documented pogroms of all time, so we can assume that he - and many others - deny any Jews were ever killed for being Jews.

It is all antisemitism that animates what facts they choose to believe and what not to believe.

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