Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Bambie Thug and the Jew-Hating Ire of Ireland (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Bambie Thug represented Ireland at Eurovision, one might even say admirably so. The singer’s hatred for the Jewish people and their state indeed typify the Jew-hating sensibilities of Irish society. Ireland only yesterday in fact, announced that it would recognize a terrorist state run by Jew-hating rapists and baby killers on sovereign Israeli soil. So one can’t really blame Thug, who prefers the pronouns “they” and “them,” if they cried when Israel qualified for the Eurovision finals.

“I cried with my team,” they said.

@newstalkfm “I cried with my team" - Ireland 🇮🇪 Eurovision finalist, Bambie Thug's reaction to Israel qualifying for the Eurovision Grand Final #eurovision2024 #eurovision #eurovisionsongcontest #bambiethug #ireland #israel ♬ original sound - Newstalk

How exactly did Bambie Thug use the Eurovision song contest to express their hatred of Jews?

The non-binary singer took an aggressive anti-Israel stance, including calls to remove Israel from the competition, wearing a keffiyeh, smuggling a watermelon-shaped plushie to the grand final, and attempting to go on stage with the word "ceasefire" written on their face.

Oh, well. Perhaps Bambie Thug felt a bit better this week when the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it would be issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Of course, the singer’s relief would have been tempered by the knowledge that arrest warrants would also be issued to Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif. But Thug would understand why drawing a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas was important. Which is why the intention of the court was first broadcast to the media by ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, and sensationalized by CNN’s own Jew-hating Christiane Amanpour.

Bambie Thug would be feeling better still when three countries, including Ireland, announced they were to recognize Palestine as a state, only two days later. “Recognition is an act of powerful political and symbolic value,” said Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris at a special news conference in Dublin.

Israel understands that symbolism quite well. Ireland is rewarding Gaza for the October 7 massacre by gifting it with Israeli territory. Or put another way, symbolically stealing Israeli territory for Hamas, archenemy of the Jews. Think of it as an Irish, Spanish, and Norwegian love note to the terrorists who gang rape and torture Jews and burn Jewish babies alive.

Back in March, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar paid a visit to the U.S. At his first stop, in Boston, he spoke at the JFK Library, and used the occasion to accuse Israel of imposing “collective punishment” on Palestinians, and reacting in a manner that he claimed was out of all proportion to the October 7 massacre. These events prompted a short piece in Mosaic Magazine on Why Ireland Hates Israel:

[Retired Jewish Irish politician Alan] Shatter cited the close relationship between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the IRA, which dispatched its operatives to the Middle East for military training in Palestinian camps, as a key factor. “Their strong bond, which still exists, was reflected in these huge murals in nationalist areas expressing solidarity with the Palestinians,” he said. . . . Central to this position was the refusal of the IRA and Sinn Fein, its political wing, to recognize that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. . .

. . . Anti-Semitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious,” Shatter said. There is little sympathy for the right of the Jews to national self-determination, despite the fact that “Sinn Fein fights for exactly this for the Irish,” he noted. Although he is a storied writer who has published several books, Shatter’s latest manuscript—provocatively titled So You Have a Problem with Jews?—remains unpublished, with one imprint informing him that he was being turned down because “there’s no interest” in Ireland on the topic of anti-Semitism.

Perhaps the greatest irony in Irish antisemitism is that there are also almost no Jews in Ireland. According to the Institute for National Security (INSS), “Ireland has a small Jewish community, numbering about 2,700 (of which close to 500 are Israelis who have moved there in recent years) and totaling about 0.05% of the country’s total population.”

Such a tiny community to be the target of so much Irish hate. No wonder Ireland has to look farther afield at Israel to get its Jew-hating jollies. Bambie Thug, for example, had to travel all the way to Malmö, Sweden. But Thug could have just as well stayed home, permeated as Ireland is with hate for Jews and Israel.

What drives all this Irish hate, and how does it manifest? David Collier wrote an investigative report on antisemitism in Ireland. The report begins with an executive summary of Collier’s conclusions:

➢ In Ireland, anti-Jewish racism spreads within the corridors of power and unlike in the UK or US, appears to be as much driven from the top down as the reverse.

➢ Some Irish politicians are obsessed about attacking Israel and Zionism, treating it in a manner different from the way they treat all other international issues.

➢ Irish politicians share material that is clearly fake and that comes from social media accounts that are blatantly antisemitic.

➢ One TD even liked a post that seems to suggest Hitler ‘may not have been too far wrong’.

➢ The argument that allegations of antisemitism are about stifling ‘criticism of Israel’ is used to shield some of the most horrific anti-Jewish racism imaginable.

➢ The problem stretches across politics and NGOs and spills onto the street. There is little political will and few voices to counter it. This has led to a proliferation throughout the Irish mainstream.

➢ In almost every town analysed, many of the key ‘activists’ have a history of sharing antisemitic content or giving voice to antisemitic ideology. There is even little or no reaction to activists sharing Holocaust Denial.

➢ Antisemitism is a key motivator in anti-Zionist activity. The people who share antisemitic ideology are often those handing out leaflets, organising the protest and starting groups in their local areas.

➢ These anti-Zionists view Zionists as ‘global manipulators’, ‘thieves’, ‘bloodsuckers’ and as people ‘intent on destroying the world to fulfil their own evil agenda’. It is undeniably antisemitism.

➢ Traditional Christian antisemitism plays a significant role in compounding the problem in Ireland and Christian NGOs facilitate the spread of antisemitism there. ➢ In anti-Zionism, far-right and far-left merge. The report confirms the findings of previous research. It establishes beyond doubt the indivisibility of anti-Zionist protest and antisemitism. Antisemitism in all its guises must be called out. It has no place in public discourse

I asked Collier what he thought about Ireland’s recognition of Palestine as a state, and of Bambie Thug’s tantrum. “For years Ireland has been the most visibly antisemitic nation in Europe, and it comes as no surprise they would be leading the charge to recognise Palestine as a state – even after the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Ireland is now a country whose two most recognisable exports are antisemitism and Bambie Thug – and this says far more about them than it does about Israel."

There is a hugely ironic backstory to Bambie Thug’s obsessive Jew-hate, and it comes by way of “their” name. Some believe that the storybook, “Bambi: a life in the woods,” first published in 1922, by Felix Salten, is meant to be read as an allegory for Jewish persecution.

Screenshot from Instagram

Jack Zipes, a professor of German and comparative literature wrote a new edition of Bambi for its centennial birthday, “The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest.” He stresses that Salten’s story was not meant to be the children’s classic we know from the silver screen. It was not even meant to be read by children:

Zipes explains that the original story was “’a book about survival in your own home.’ Disney's adaptation washed out much of the original meaning, he said.”

“All the animals have been persecuted. And I think what shakes the reader is that there are also some animals who are traitors, who help the hunters kill.”

In the book, Bambi does not suffer the same fate as in the Disney film. He ends up completely alone. In reality, it is a tragic story of the loneliness of Jews and other minority groups in early 20th century Europe.

Salten, the son of a rabbi who worked as a journalist in Vienna, changed his birth name from Siegmund Salzmann in his teens to obscure his Jewish identity.

"I think he foresaw the Holocaust," Zipes said.

Felix Salten at a young age

A later portrait of Felix Salten

The first edition of Bambi

In “Bambi Was Jewish” Judy Gruen writes that Salten was a Zionist:

The antisemitism he endured growing up and its growing menace during that era drew him to the writings of Theodore Herzl, particularly his pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). He viewed Herzl as a symbol of resistance and began contributing articles about Jews and anti-Semitism for Die Zeit as well as Herzl’s own weekly, Die Welt. He eventually traveled to Palestine to investigate how Jews were managing to realize the Zionist dream.

His professional success brought him wealth, and he summered with his family near Austrian forests, intensifying his lifelong affection for animals. He later owned a hunting preserve, but as his daughter, Anna, wrote, “Only very rarely did he fire a shot—and then only when the principles of game keeping demanded it.” His stories and novels about animals emphasized their powerlessness, a theme he continued for the rest of his life.

But his own assimilation was no help once the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938. The following year, Salten and his wife fled to Zurich, after the Swiss extracted a promise from him to stop writing about cultural politics. This limited him to writing far less marketable animal stories.

Salten had already realized that the assimilation he embraced would not protect him from rising antisemitism. He reveals this through the character of Gobo, a childhood pal of Bambi but much weaker physically and emotionally. Long assumed to have been killed, Gobo shocks the forest population by returning, very much alive, and bragging about having been rescued by “Him,” whom Gobo insists is not the evil threat everyone else imagines. Gobo wears a braided ring around his neck, placed by Him, which the deer believes is a special mark that will immunize him from any further danger.

After Bambi and the others scoff at his claims, he tells another friend, “He (Bambi) still can’t deal with the fact that I’ve become someone different. . . There’s no danger for me on the meadow! . . . What does he mean by danger? He means well enough and cares for me, but danger is something for him and the likes of him, not for me.” His confidence that his assimilation will protect him will soon prove as tragically naïve as that of Jews throughout the generations who made similar bargains.

Zipes writes that based on the author’s life experiences with antisemitism, “Bambi is indeed Salten, and Salten is Bambi. . . Just as Bambi becomes an intrepid roebuck, Salten rose to fame and then was belittled and alienated from Austrian and German culture. He was treated just like all the other European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Felix Salten with his children

Salten's books were banned by Nazi Germany in 1936. But his allegory for Jewish persecution lives on, not least of all in the form of Bambie Thug.

A thug whose lifeblood is "their" hate for the Jewish people.

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!

05/22 Links Pt1: Hostage families release horrifying footage kidnapped female soldiers on Oct 7; Ireland, Norway, Spain to recognize Palestinian state; Moral Cretins at the ICC

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The Ugly Lessons of October 7

The lesson for aspiring ethno-religious terrorist groups, then, is not that they would be assured recognition if they can only match the gruesomeness of Oct. 7. Uighurs and Kurds: Don’t try this at home. If you’re not the IRGC, an Iranian proxy, or a Palestinian group, don’t bother applying.

The flip side of this equation is even more obscene. Washington rewards Iranian and Palestinian terrorism under the moniker of “de-escalation.” That is to say, Iran and the Palestinians get to have their cake and eat it too: Their barbarism advances their agenda, and any attempted retaliation against them is condemned and constrained.

Which leads us to the heart of the matter, namely what Iran, Hezbollah, and Palestinian terror groups all have in common with each other and not with ISIS. By itself, the specific identity of the perpetrators of gruesome violence does not account for Western advocacy on their behalf. That is explained only by the specific identity of the victims: Jews. This is the common thread that ties together support for Palestinian barbarism abroad and for antisemitic mobs at home.

This brings us to the Biden administration’s diplomatic program, which aims to start the countdown for a Palestinian state in time to take credit for it in November. Much of the professional diplomatic and political class that has pushed for this outcome for three decades remains fully committed to it. As with the term “de-escalation,” the Biden administration uses Orwellian doublespeak to justify its push to establish a Palestinian terror state, like, “peace,” “security,” and “stability.” But what the pattern of the past eight months has doubtless conveyed to the Palestinians and their Iranian patrons is that more slaughter of Jews, especially those that will provoke a strong Israeli response, is the surest way to obtain more of what they want.

Supporters of Palestinian statehood have long maintained that if such a state were to attack Israel, the international community would support decisive Israeli actions to neutralize the threat. But the U.S. response to the Oct. 7 attack from Gaza, as well as to the subsequent attacks from Lebanon and Iran, which are states, shows the opposite. The atrocities a Palestinian state could inflict on an Israel reduced to the 1949 boundaries would make Oct. 7 look like a bar fight. The current U.S.-led international posture shows quite definitively that Israel will face pressure to make even more territorial and security concessions, until the Jewish state is no more. That has been the explicit goal of the Palestinian national movement since its inception, and it remains so today.

A reasonable observer can only conclude that the goal of “a Palestinian state” for both the Palestinians and their Western partisans has never been about achieving peaceful coexistence with Israel, which has been eminently achievable at every point in time beginning with the U.N. partition plan, which Israel accepted and the Palestinians and their Arab state backers rejected. The only “Palestinian state” that is acceptable to its partisans is one that replaces Israel on the map. When the White House, European governments, progressive NGOs, academic boycotters, the U.N., and other august bodies announce their support for Palestinian statehood, that is precisely what they are supporting.

Brendan O'Neill: Rewarding fascism

Whatever subjective spin the three PMs put on their heedless act of global virtue-signalling, the objective consequence is the legitimation of Hamas. Indeed, Hamas has warmly welcomed their recognition of Palestine, describing it as ‘an important step towards affirming our right to our land’. I’m not into guilt by association, but seriously – when an army of anti-Semites starts singing your praises, you’ve messed up. Badly.

It was completely predictable that Hamas would interpret the recognition of Palestine as a recognition of Hamas itself. What exactly is this ‘State of Palestine’ that Ireland, Spain and Norway are welcoming into the international fold? There’s the West Bank, semi-governed by the corrupt, collapsing bureaucracy of Fatah. And there’s the Gaza Strip, dominated by the frothing extremists of Hamas. Palestine, sadly, is not a functioning state. And right now it shows no meaningful capacity to become a functioning state. That Hamas and its suicidal cheerleaders among the Western influencer set view today’s support for Palestine as support for Hamas and its war on Israel is the least surprising thing I’ve heard in a long time.

The historical illiteracy of the preening PMs really is something. Taoiseach Harris compared his recognition of Palestine with Ireland’s plea for recognition in 1919. That was when the revolutionary Irish Republic issued a ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ asking them to acknowledge its independence from Britain. This is mad. There is no comparison between the historic movement for Irish independence and what’s currently happening in Palestine, with exhausted oligarchs on one side and radical Islamists on the other. Ireland sought to create a free republic – Hamas wants to turn Palestine into an outpost of an unforgiving caliphate in which freedom would be notable by its absence. That Harris cannot distinguish between national liberation and Islamist depravity is chilling. He should listen to Salman Rushdie, who wisely counsels that Hamas-ruled Palestine would be a ‘Taliban-like state’.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the infantile posturing of the three PMs and their dearth of consideration for what might happen if we further isolate Israel and embolden Hamas. Because in a way, such self-involved moral blindness sums up the entirety of ‘Palestinian solidarity’. So much of the supposedly pro-Palestinian sentiment – in politics, on campuses, on the streets – is fundamentally a displacement activity. Politicians and activists bereft of ideas for how to improve their own societies instead seek sanctuary in the moral glow of Palestinianism. Hence you have a figure like Harris, unpopular, unelected, directionless, devoid of ideas for how to fix Ireland’s housing crisis or its migrant crisis, who can nonetheless feel briefly important and even statesmanlike by standing before the cameras to say: ‘I recognise Palestine.’

This is what ‘Palestine’ has become for the cultural elites of the West: a moral balm, a source of fleeting meaning, a soapbox from which they can grandstand on faraway affairs, having zero vision for closer-to-home affairs. That’s what’s most unforgivable about today’s reckless act of unwitting Hamas emboldenment – that these three leaders seem to value their own 15 minutes of virtue more than the pressing task of bringing peace to the Middle East by bringing to an end the racist army that started the current war.

Seth Mandel: Pierless

Finally, the UN official’s explanation for this disaster is one for the books. “They’ve not seen trucks in a while,” so they mount the trucks. This sounds like the description of a spacecraft landing on an alien planet. Moreover, it appears the UN… expected this response?

In fact, it sure sounds like the UN thinks this whole circus is a waste of time and money, and that they told the Americans as much: “The U.N. agreed to assist in coordinating aid distribution from the floating pier, but has remained adamant that deliveries by land are the best way to combat the crisis.”

That is certainly true: The pier has a far more limited capacity than the traditional overland crossings. It’s also expensive: The U.S. paid over $300 million to build what sounds like a pop-up pier ordered from IKEA. The Defense Department, via Ryder, is describing every cent of that $300 million as wasted. After all, the aid disappears into the mists of time as soon as the Americans hand it over to the UN’s version of Uber Eats.

Ironically, on paper this still makes the pier a complete success. America does its job quite well. The pier is built, food is delivered to it, and nary a boot is on the ground. Promises made, promises kept. Truly, this is the quintessential government project.

Years ago, there was a TV commercial for a security system that went something like this: We see a security breach reported, an alarm sounds, sector 13’s guard chases an intruder while radioing for help. The guard chases the intruder all the way to a line on the ground that marks where sector 13 ends and sector 14 begins. When the perp crosses that line, the guard radios triumphantly: “Sector 13, all clear.”

The Pentagon sounds an awful lot like sector 13’s security guard. Once the handoff is made, the rest is sector 14’s problem. According to Ryder, about 570 metric tons of aid has been delivered to the pier since its grand opening. Apparently, Americans should be proud that we are doing our part.

And in a way, we are. Statistically, it is highly likely that at least some of those stealing the food aid are its intended recipients. They’re just cutting out the middle man. In a way, hijackings and lootings make the process more efficient.

More dangerous too, sure. But not for Americans, and therefore not for the president’s reelection chances. Sector 13, all clear.

The pattern is a little too consistent.

If you get your news from mainstream non-Israeli news sources, you wouldn't know that:

* Israel is transferring more aid into Gaza every day than was sent in before the Rafah operation

* Egypt has refused to send over 650 truckloads of aid via Kerem Shalom, instead letting it rot on the Egyptian side.

* Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah border crossing has stopped hundreds of Palestinians from getting medical help.

* Even beforehand, Egypt blocked thousands of Gazans who needed to go abroad for medical attention

* Egypt took in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen and elsewhere. It only refuses Palestinians.

* The only Gazans who have managed to flee are those who have paid exorbitant bribes to a shady organization with ties to Egypt's president, plus well over a thousand injured Hamas terrorists. (I've seen this covered in Arabic media far more than in Western media!)

Why don't most people know these facts? Why is the media treating Egypt with kid gloves?

It isn't like the news media loves Egypt. Egypt is a serious human rights violator and gets criticized in other contexts.

It must be that Egypt controls the media!

How else do you explain that the only place that this story was published was in Israel:

A senior Biden administration official briefing reporters offers very rare criticism of Egypt over what they said was Cairo’s withholding of UN humanitarian assistance from Gaza.

“What should be going into Kerem Shalom is the UN assistance, which is now in Egypt. Egypt is holding that back until the Rafah crossing situation settles out,” the senior administration official says.

“We do not believe that aid should be held back for any reason whatsoever. Kerem Shalom is open. The Israelis have it open. And that aid should be going through Kerem Shalom,” the official adds.

There were reporters, plural, hearing this. Not one, outside Times of Israel, evidently felt this was worth reporting on.

Egypt must control the media!

Or, just maybe, the news media has a narrative of unparalleled Israeli evil, and reporting on how Egypt is abusing Gazans while cynically pretending to care about them takes away from that story.

We are all being misled by news sites, NGOs and politicians who are eager to criticize Israel and reticent to say anything negative about Egypt (or Jordan and the PA, both of whom also refuse to accept Gaza refugees.)

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!

For months, I've been calling out the hypocrisy of human rights organizations not calling for Egypt to allow Gazans to take refuge there. They are vocal about the rights of refugees in every other context, but silent about Gaza.

Perhaps to avoid being called hypocritical, a director at HRW did write an article in The Hill last month that almost apologetically asked Egypt to accept Gaza refugees (while also demanding Israel allow Gazans to "return" to Israel:)

Neighboring Egypt’s borders are mostly closed, too. Only a relatively few Gaza residents have been allowed to enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, including foreign passport holders, the wounded and their companions, and some who have paid exorbitant sums to flee via Egypt. Not wanting a wave of refugees flooding into his country, especially given the prospect that the Israeli authorities might bar them from returning, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi declared Egypt’s “vehement rejection of the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai.”

But what about Palestinians in Gaza who feel their only chance to survive is to leave Gaza? How much longer can Israel and Egypt block desperate people from fleeing?

Palestinians in Gaza should be allowed to remain in dignity in their homes and to exercise the right to return, but they also have other treaty rights that must be respected by all states: the right to leave a country, the right to seek asylum, and the right of nonrefoulement, that is, not to be pushed back or returned to face persecution or other serious threats.

Palestinians, like everyone everywhere, have the right to live in dignity in their homes. They also have the right to leave for their own security and to return in safety and dignity. Stopping forced displacement and other atrocity crimes from occurring is the top priority at this moment. But when all other human rights are denied, the right to flee is the last remaining option. That option cannot be closed.

This is as mild a criticism of Egypt as possible. There is no demand or call for Egypt to open its border; only the passive voice that Gazans have the "right to flee." The word "Egypt" is not in the headline. Obscenely, he also insists that Israelis who live in communities that were ravaged October 7 allow Gaza rapists and murderers and those who cheered them to move in next to them.

Notably, this article was not written by HRW's ,Middle East Director Lama Fakih, or by Ahmed Benchemsi, its Advocacy and Communications Director for the Middle East. No, it was written by Bill Frelick, HRW's refugee rights director who looks at the world through a refugee rights prism, not the obscene anti-Israel point of view of HRW's dedicated Middle East personnel.

As such, this article was buried. The media amplifies other HRW criticisms of Egypt, but no one picked up on this article,.

HRW did not turn this into a campaign. Frelick's tweet about the article does not even mention Egypt by name. HRW itself did not tweet this article at all, as they normally do when their directors publish articles in major media.

It seems that the issue of Palestinian rights to leave Gaza to save their families is seen as the lowest possible priority for HRW.

More likely, they only want to use the article as a shield they can point to when their hypocrisy is noted, but they really believe that Egypt should not allow Gazans to flee there.

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, Norway and Ireland said on Wednesday that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state.

It's literally beyond parody.

Every poll of Palestinians for the past seven months shows strong support not only for the massacre and orgy of violence, but also of Hamas altogether.

In the most recent poll, 71% of Palestinians support Hamas' decision to attack on October 7. 63% want to see Hamas restored to power in Gaza. Hamas is using the entire civilian population of Gaza as human shields, but 72% of Palestinians are satisfied with how Hamas is waging war. A plurality of 49% believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today, triple any other option. 55% support terrorism against Israelis. Most oppose a two state solution next to Israel - they want everything.

These polls do not get much publicity in Western media. But any democratically elected leadership of a Palestinian state would share Hamas goals of making the Middle East Judenfrei.

There is no way that the leaders of Ireland, Norway and Spain do not know this. Which means that they tacitly support the same goals.

In the name of "peace."

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!

IDF: 1250 truckloads of aid this week to Gaza, 200 to the UN. UN: Almost zero. The media only reports UN figures, not Israel's.

There have been many, many articles about the problems of bringing aid into Gaza.

Reuters reported on Tuesday:

Food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza are piling up in Egypt because the Rafah crossing remains closed and there has been no aid delivered to a U.N. warehouse from a U.S.-built pier for two days, U.N. officials warned on Monday.

Senior U.N. aid official Edem Wosornu said there were insufficient supplies and fuel to provide any meaningful level of support to the people of Gaza as they endure Israel's military onslaught against Hamas militants.

"We are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza. We have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on earth. It is all of these, and worse," she said.

The New York Times adds:

The temporary [US] pier is one of few remaining entry points for aid shipments after Israel’s incursion into Rafah, in southern Gaza, earlier this month in response to a Hamas rocket attack that killed four soldiers on May 5. Israel not only seized the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt but also closed the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel. Those were the two main entry points for truck convoys carrying aid overland.
Though Israel has since reopened Kerem Shalom, only 69 trucks have entered Gaza through it in the past two weeks, according to U.N. data. That is far fewer than the number of aid trucks that were entering through the two southern border crossings before Israeli troops went into Rafah. That number peaked at 340 trucks a day.

Here is UNRWA's chart showing the number of trucks that entered Gaza through the two crossings since May 5:

But for all the coverage of the supposed shortage of trucks going into Gaza, international media completely ignores what the IDF's COGAT unit is saying is happening.

According to COGAT, 451 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Tuesday, 403 on Monday and 422 more on Sunday.

If that is true, Israel is bringing in more trucks now than ever before since October 7.

Isn't that sort of important?

UNRWA's statistics do not include any aid that arrives through the newer crossings Israel opened, Erez West, Erez East and Gate 96.

And COGAT says that it transferred 200 trucks of aid to the UN on Monday:

The stories are not only inconsistent, they are seemingly contradictory. If the UN is receiving and distributing aid from the northern Gaza crossings, then UNRWA is being deceptive in implying that the UN is not receiving anything.

But what is really insane is that the media is not mentioning COGAT's claims at all. Which indicates that COGAT is telling the truth, and the truth contradicts the holy Narrative of Israel blocking aid to Gaza. You could be sure that if COGAt were lying, there would be reporters all over the place to expose how evil the IDF in misleading everyone.

And we see that in the news coverage all the time. Look again at the New York Times article above, implying that Israel closed Kerem Shalom for an extended period. Yet it was only closed for three days. Egypt has refused to send some 650 truckloads of aid rotting in the hot sun in Egyptian Rafah through Kerem Shalom. Even a US official gingerly noted that on Tuesday:

A senior Biden administration official briefing reporters offers very rare criticism of Egypt over what they said was Cairo’s withholding of UN humanitarian assistance from Gaza.
What should be going into Kerem Shalom is the UN assistance, which is now in Egypt. Egypt is holding that back until the Rafah crossing situation settles out,” the senior administration official says.
“We do not believe that aid should be held back for any reason whatsoever. Kerem Shalom is open. The Israelis have it open. And that aid should be going through Kerem Shalom,” the official adds.

We all know this but it took weeks to for any official to mention what everyone knows and barely criticize Egypt. And the media has been all but silent on Egypt's refusal to send aid.

The news media is well aware of COGAT. They quote them for other information all the time. Their refusal to report COGAT's statistics that show that not only has aid been entering Gaza, but more aid than before the Rafah invasion, can only be because the media doesn't want the world to know anything but anti-Israel lies.

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!

05/21 Links Pt2: Biden NSC Advisor: We Can't Go Against Israel until Reelection; VDH: The Disgrace and Fall of the American Elite Campus; The BBC is spreading dangerous lies

From Ian:

Israel Doesn’t Need Better ‘Hasbara’ It needs better friends

None of this is to suggest that pro-Israel Democrats should all jump ship and become Republicans. If an individual finds himself on the political left for whatever reason, he can be a good ally by pushing the Israeli cause within the Democratic Party. Figures like John Fetterman, Ritchie Torres, and Eric Adams have been important allies throughout this conflict. Democrats like these will always be facing somewhat of an uphill battle going forward given the basic moral and intellectual commitments of the modern left. But political parties generally aren’t known for always being logically consistent across all issue areas, so to the extent that a pro-Israel left can still exist, we should hope that it does.

All of this is to say that the best thing individuals can do to shape public opinion in Israel’s favor is to be more confident and assertive allies.

This involves not granting the premise of moral equivalency between Israelis and the Palestinians. A nation defending itself and inflicting collateral damage is not the same as a movement with exterminationist goals, which seeks to slaughter innocent people as an end in itself. And it is fine to say, based on everything else we know, that the Israeli government is more credible than Hamas when the truth about an incident or aspect of the war, like whether Israel is targeting innocent journalists, is in dispute.

From a broader perspective, friends of Israel must push back on any ideology that emphasizes Western wickedness and identity politics, of which hostility to the world’s only Jewish state must be a byproduct, made all the more powerful in international forums due to the way it resonates with the Third World. Join the struggles against DEI bureaucracies, fake academic fields based on an oppression-centered view of the world, and a far-left takeover of the Democratic Party. These larger battles will, more than any hasbara operation narrowly focused on Gaza, ultimately determine whether Israel can in the coming years continue to count on the United States as an ally.

The war in Gaza has captured the attention of the world because Israel, due to the kinds of tragic choices it must make, has emerged as the main avatar of Western civilization. This is one thing that the campus left gets correct. Throughout human history, most peoples have accomplished nothing most of the time, sulking in poverty, stagnation, tyranny, and sloth. Just as the United States forged a new civilization out of a wilderness, 75 years ago a people that had been stateless for over two millennia took over a small strip of land that had practically no natural resources, all the while being surrounded and outnumbered by hostile neighbors. Yes, in both stories, atrocities and injustices were committed along the way. But this is fundamentally less important than what these nations have accomplished and the necessity of making sure they continue to survive and prosper. As recent campus protests have made clear, the left sees these connections and knows what the stakes are. Israel and its allies must similarly understand that the real public relations battle is a struggle over the metanarrative of Western civilization.

In the Wake of October 7: Reflections on the American Jewish Community

Since Oct. 7, American Jews are experiencing a fundamental repositioning of not only how they see themselves but also how others perceive them. It includes seismic shifts in their relationship to Israel, how they form political alliances, and their way of being Jewish in a world that feels scarier, lonelier, and, in some surprising ways, more Jewish than ever.

This spring, American Jews awoke to a coordinated assault on American universities as pro-Palestinian groups orchestrated a set of demonstrations and demands designed to remove U.S. involvement with Israel and to disengage higher educational institutions from any academic or financial connection with the Jewish State. With their distortions of Zionism, misrepresentations of Judaism, and outright dismissal of the Jewish people, these players are attempting to rewrite the Jewish narrative concerning who we are and what we represent.

These activists seek to deny both our presence in the land of Israel and our historic connection to this holy space. Our opponents in this moment are calling for our genocide, comfortably aligning themselves with those in prior periods who were committed to seeking our demise.

American Jews Overwhelmingly Support Israel in a War Imposed upon It by Genocidal Forces Seeking Its Destruction

Liberal Jewish voters consider President Biden a longtime friend. At the same time, they are troubled by the growing influence of anti-Israel forces in the Democratic Party. They view Mr. Biden's freeze on sending some weapons to Israel as evidence of capitulation to a radical fringe.

American Jews overwhelmingly support Israel. Most consider the Jewish state an important component of their identity. They distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and hatred of the Jewish state. Contrary to the impression the media often gives, anti-Zionist Jews are few, a marginal part of the American Jewish community.

Judaism hates war and American Jews share the world's concern for Palestinian civilians. Revenge is for God, not human beings. We are prohibited even to rejoice in the deaths of enemy combatants, let alone civilians. Still, most American Jews understand that the West's nearly exclusive focus on Palestinian casualties - the result of a war that Gaza's own government launched - distorts reality.

This war was imposed on Israel by genocidal forces seeking its destruction. Oct. 7 revealed what is in store for Israel if these forces win. If Hamas defeats Israel, its Islamist supporters will come for us in Europe and America. Most Americans understand this and support Israel over Hamas by huge margins.

Since Oct. 7, American Jews understand much better the nexus between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. With the explosion of antisemitism in America, it is clearer to us than ever why there must be an Israel. We now realize that in most cases anti-Zionism constitutes, or leads inevitably to, antisemitism.

New poll shows Americans - including young Americans - support Israel in Gaza more than the White House and the media do

A new Harvard/Harris poll asks a number of questions about the current Gaza war and the day after, and even the youngest voters are much more pro-Israel than the media would have us believe.

62% of 18-24 year olds think Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.

This is a surprising result from the 18-24 crowd ; 61% say Israel should move forward with an operation in Rafah to finish the war with Hamas, doing its best to avoid civilian casualties even though there will be casualties.

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05/21 Links Pt1: Courting infamy; A judicial pogrom; Benny Gantz’s Big Gamble; Poll: Americans Continue to Strongly Support Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Courting infamy

So why did such a man trash what was left of the court’s reputation by turning a court that is a supposed bulwark against tyranny into a weapon to punish a democracy for defending itself against genocide?

The answer is surely that Khan, a former member of a “human rights” barristers’ chambers in London, subscribes to “human rights” culture. And in recent years international “human rights” law — which, when it was developed in the middle of the last century to protect powerless minorities, some presciently warned would turn into a politicised weapon against the Jewish people — has indeed developed into a weapon to demonise, delegitimise and destroy the State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. “Human rights” culture today is suffused with hatred of Israel and has thus played a major role in poisoning the progressive west against it.

Defensively, Khan says he has consulted a panel of “impartial” lawyers. Yet this panel contains a number of radical “human rights” lawyers who are no friends of Israel.

One of them, Danny Friedman KC, is a barrister at the radical Matrix Chambers. On November 18 last year he wrote:
Israel’s response to the attack on its territory has involved catastrophic mass fatality and untold human suffering of Palestinians — not only as a result of aerial and ground bombardment, but through, among other features, cessation of basic sustenance and amenities, destruction of medical facilities, and forced movement of populations within the blockaded geography of the Gaza strip. These are also grave war crimes… it is difficult to see from a legal point of view how the continuation of military action in Gaza at this time would be concordant with international law.

In a speech he gave to a fundraising dinner for Medical Aid for Palestine, he said a ceasefire was now “a matter of legal imperative”. These were hardly the views of someone who brought an open mind to the ICC’s deliberations.

Another panel member was the veteran barrister Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws KC. Her website says she is president of Medical Aid for Palestinians. Last October, she warned against “collective punishment” by Israel and referred to Gaza “being reduced to rubble”. She said only token amounts of aid were being allowed in and accused Israel of cutting off Gaza’s water supplies.

In a speech on genocide in the House of Lords in March, she said:
The current conflict between Hamas and Israel follows decades of terrible conduct, by both the IDF and Hamas, before, during and after 7 October.

Rub your eyes. In the view of this doyenne of “human rights,” Israeli soldiers who died in great number as they desperately tried to fight off the Hamas stormtroopers even while they were continuing to perpetrate that depraved and barbaric pogrom against Israeli women, children and men, were guilty of “terrible conduct”.

This “impartial” panel is actually a hanging jury from the Salem school of law: verdict first, evidence nowhere.

Khan’s attack against Israel — with the panel of lawyers he assembled serving as his human shield against criticism — represents yet another onslaught of defamation, demonisation and delegitimisation mounted by the apparatus of international law against the Jewish state, a unique and malicious double standard applied to no other country on earth.

Far from restoring the ICC’s reputation, Khan’s move will now bury it in the eyes of all fair-minded and decent people.

It will also hammer a nail into the coffin of human rights law, the legal instrument of the international “humanitarian” establishment of the UN and anti-Israel non-governmental organisations for which this kind of “lawfare” has become a principal weapon aimed at Israel’s destruction.

Doubtless under enormous pressure from both the UN and his former chums in Britain’s radical barrister sets, Khan’s preposterous move is part of the agenda for Israel’s destruction through a pincer movement of genocidal terror, brainwashed street insurrection and “human rights” lawfare.

The beneficiary will be Hamas; the victims will be Israel, the rule of law and civilisation itself.

Arsen Ostrovsky: The ICC has perverted the very meaning of justice

Yesterday was a dark day for justice.

The announcement by the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant alongside the leaders of Hamas is an egregious and unconscionable perversion of the law, and a gift to the murderers and rapists of October 7 - one which Yahya Sinwar could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.

That Khan would even utter Israel and Hamas in the same breath is simply unfathomable.

There is absolutely no comparison between a genocidal terrorist organisation like Hamas and a democratic state like Israel, seeking to defend its citizens and rescue its hostages, following the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

To draw such equivalence, which is no different to equating Churchill and Hitler, is abominable and morally repugnant.

The ICC was established in 2002 as a “court of last resort” to end impunity for the perpetrators of the most heinous of crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - not the Orwellian circumstances of arresting Israeli leaders for responding to the pogrom of October 7.

Notwithstanding the heinous crimes inflicted upon the Jewish state, which continue to this day with the holding of 128 hostages in Gaza and ongoing rocket attacks, the IDF has gone to unprecedented lengths - not seen until now in the history of modern warfare - to abide by the laws of war and avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.

As a court of last resort, the ICC is governed by the principle of “complementarity”, meaning it may only assert jurisdiction in circumstances where a national legal system fails to act, or to do so in a bona fide manner.

Khan himself stated during a visit to Israel after the October massacre that “Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders and a robust system intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law.” How quickly has Khan forgotten his own words.

Brendan O'Neill: A judicial pogrom

The Clooney vision of the ICC and its brainy advisers as gallant defenders of decency is a grotesque lie. Clooney, in her statement, says ‘I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s’. Big words from a barrister who’s advising prosecutors for a court that is notoriously selective in which wars it investigates and which wars it leaves alone. So Israel is threatened with being dragged to The Hague, but Bashar al-Assad was not, despite overseeing a war that killed hundreds of thousands. Neither were Saudi leaders over their killings in Yemen. And this isn’t to mention Western leaders – in the US, Britain, France – whose warmongering has caused far greater death and destruction in the Middle East than Israel ever has. I would really like to ask all those legal eagles why killings by the Jewish State seem to cause them greater angst than killings by ‘white’ states.

The ICC is infamous for its disproportionate targeting of the leaders of black Africa. To see a map of ICC investigations is to behold neo-imperialism in all its shameless pomposity. Most of its investigations have been in Africa, with a smattering in Latin America and Asia. No wonder the African Union has advised African states to cut ties with the ICC on the basis that it is a ‘neo-colonial force seeking to further empower Western political… interests in Africa’. That ‘anti-racist’ leftists are now cheering a court, riddled with racist double standards, because it has lumped the Jews in with the blacks is a testament to how fried their brains have become as a result of Israelophobia. Even the neo-colonial powers of the postwar globalist order are treated as allies by the woke left, as ‘good guys’, if they make moves against Evil Israel.

There’s a special cruelty to the seeking of arrest warrants against the Jewish State. The ICC has its origins in the postwar discussion about the need for ‘international law’ to deal with criminals like the Nazis. So grave were the crimes of fascism against the Jews that new legal systems are needed to punish such crimes, the argument went. Eventually, the ICC emerged. Fast forward to 2024 and this court that was founded on the principle that fascistic murder must never again go unpunished now threatens to punish a state whose only crime was to fight back against fascistic murderers. The postwar ideal of protecting the likes of the Jews is now weaponised against the Jews. The seeking of arrest warrants against Israel is a grotesque betrayal of the promises and principles of the entire postwar era. It is the self-negation of everything the modern, liberal West claims to represent.

I see it as a judicial pogrom, to go alongside the militant pogrom launched by Hamas and the intellectual pogrom pursued by Hamas’s apologists in the West. Militarily, politically and now legally, the Jewish State is under attack. We are fast reaching a situation where it isn’t only Israel’s military actions that are viewed as crimes against humanity but Israel itself. The Jewish homeland itself is this close to being redefined as a crime. This should be intolerable to anyone who believes in nationhood, self-determination and the equal right of Jews to go after the armies that butcher their people. Screw the ICC. It should enjoy no jurisdiction over Israel or any other independent nation.

Eli Lake: Israel Is Not Equivalent to Hamas

In the coming weeks there is a very good chance that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be pursued by the International Criminal Court as a wanted man. On Monday, the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, applied for an arrest warrant for Israel’s leader and its defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

That Netanyahu and Gallant’s warrant applications were announced alongside warrants for three Hamas leaders responsible for the October 7 massacre is the first of many flaws in this disgraceful case. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was right when he called the equivalence of Israel with Hamas “shameful.”

Then there’s the fact that Israel is not a party to the treaty that created the International Criminal Court, or ICC. Blinken said that “the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter.” Finally, Blinken noted “deeply troubling process questions.” Israel has said it was willing to cooperate with the court and that Khan had been due to visit Israel next week. Instead he abruptly announced his application for a warrant, which “call[s] into question the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation,” Blinken said.

But even assuming Khan is waging a credible, legitimate prosecution, there is another problem with the case. Khan’s central accusation against Israel is that the Jewish state has “intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.” That is a crime under international law. And Khan argues in a press statement that Israel has used “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” to collectively punish Gaza’s 2.3 million people and to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it captured on October 7.

We have heard many accusations of starvation over the course of this war, but there has been scant evidence. (According to The Wall Street Journal, over the past seven months Hamas claims that 31 Gazans have died because of malnutrition and dehydration.) More, the ICC ignores abundant evidence that Hamas is hoarding the food and medical aid meant for the population it purports to govern. As the U.S. military was building a pier in Gaza to deliver aid last month, Hamas fired mortar rounds at the construction area. The Israel Defense Forces have posted many videos and photographs of Hamas gunmen commandeering aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). On May 2, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller acknowledged that Hamas was diverting aid.

Avraham Shalev at the Kohelet Forum makes a very good point:

Since Prosecutor Khan has re-entered the fray, he has made several statements indicating that he intends to put the burden of proof on Israelis to demonstrate their innocence against any allegations. Speaking in Cairo on October 30, 2023, Khan claimed it is the responsibility of Israel – which as he knows does not accept the Court’s jurisdiction to
“demonstrate that any attack, any attack that impacts innocent civilians or protected objects, must be conducted in accordance with the laws and customs of war, in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.They need to demonstrate the proper application of the principles of distinction, precaution and of proportionality. And I want to be quite clear so there’s no misunderstanding: In relation to every dwelling house, in relation to any school, any hospital, any church, any mosque – those places are protected, unless the protective status has been lost. And I want to be equally clear that the burden of proving that the protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
Khan’s statement implies that Israel is guilty until proven innocent. It also flies in the face of the principle that decisions by military commanders are evaluated based on the (often-limited) information available to them at the time of decision. Due to the difficult circumstances and intense pressure (“fog of war”), courts worldwide are reluctant to second guess the decisions taken by commanders.

In the same speech, Khan noted that Israel has “military advocate generals and a system that is intended to ensure their compliance with international humanitarian law. They have lawyers advising on targeting decisions.” Given that Khan acknowledges that the Israeli army has built-in mechanisms to protect civilians, it is unclear why Khan ascribes to Israel malicious intent until proven innocent. Khan has not demanded such a standard in any other conflict.

This is exactly right. The standard of determining proportionality, to calculate whether an attack would justify the expected amount of collateral damage, is whatever a "reasonable military commander" would do given the information available to him or her at that point in time (not in hindsight.) That standard was originally noted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and has been used by sources as disparate as Israel's High Court and Human Rights Watch as normative law.

The principle of distinction between military and civilian objects is similar. As I wrote in 2014:

It is ultimately up to the commander to determine the nature of the specific, fluid situation. Everything hinges on his or her intent - not on the judgment of other observers and not on finding out better information in hindsight. As stated by Rüdiger Wolfrum and Dieter Fleck in The Handbook of International Humanitarian Law, "The prerequisite for a grave breach (of IHL) is intent; the attack must be intentionally directed at the civilian population or individual civilians, and the intent must embrace physical consequences."

In order to find that the commander has committed a war crime, the bar is set quite high. ICRC commentary on art 85 of the Additional Protocol states:
The accused must have acted consciously and with intent, i.e., with his mind on the act and its consequences, and willing the ("criminal intent" or "malice aforethought"); this encompasses the concepts of "wrongful intent" or "recklessness"....
As long as the IDF did not deliberately attack civilians, and the local commander had a military purpose for each target based on the best information available at the time, there is no violation of the principle of distinction.

The ICC prosecution turns these well known legal concepts on their heads. Israel is assumed to be targeting civilians unless proven otherwise, it is assumed not to be concerned about civilian casualties unless proven otherwise.

It is assumed guilty and must prove its innocence, a much, much higher standard for the law than is applied anywhere else.

One can assume Hamas' malicious intent and desire to attack civilians. It admits it (ironically, by claiming that every Israeli man, woman and child is a military target.) No one can roam through the devastation of the Nova music festival and think otherwise.

But as even Khan admits, "Israel has a professional and well-trained military. They have, I know, military advocate generals and a system that is intended to ensure their compliance with international humanitarian law. " But instead of using this as a reason to assume that Israel's army regulates itself to adhere to international law, he uses Israel's professionalism as a liability, requiring it to prove each individual attack out of thousands of them adhere to its own policies - something that no army has ever been required to do.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that he's looking for reasons to find Israel guilty. If Israel proves its military decisions were proper 99.9% of the time, that remaining 0.1% will be enough to convict the prime minister and defense minister.

Based on his own words, Khan is showing that the ICC has turned into a kangaroo court.

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Why Did Chief Prosecutor Khan Of The ICC Back Out Of His Meeting With The Israeli Government? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On Monday, Karim Khan -- the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court -- announced he was going to seek arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in addition to the top three leaders of Hamas: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.

Netanyahu condemned the implied comparison of Israel with the Hamas terrorists, calling it part of the "new antisemitism" appearing on college campuses and now apparently making its way to the Hague. Biden called Khan's decision "outrageous." In Europe, opinions were divided.

Chief Prosecutor Khan took the unusual step of first announcing the charges on CNN. In an exclusive interview with Christiane Amanpour, he laid out the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant:

o Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
o  Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
o  Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
o  Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
o  Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
o  Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);
o  Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).

Announcing the indictments that way seems unusual. Globes reports that Khan has a sterling reputation:

Khan is very highly respected in the international legal community, and is considered professional, serious, and fair. He made his decision together with two advisers with high reputations whom he co-opted to his team in the past few months: US lawyer Brenda Hollis, and Andrew Cayley, formerly the chief military prosecutor in the UK.

But his appearance on CNN was more than an issue of a lack of professionalism.

According to Barak Ravid, Khan backed out of a planned trip to Israel to discuss the investigation with the Israeli government:

The Times of Israel also quoted Blinken, who referred to Khan's pulling out of the pre-arranged meeting without prior notice as provoking "deeply troubling process questions." Blinken continued:

Fundamentally, this decision does nothing to help and could jeopardize, ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would get hostages out and surge humanitarian assistance in, which are the goals the United States continues to pursue relentlessly.

This goes beyond international law and jurisdiction.

The Jerusalem Post suggests that either Israel's entry into Rafah or the harsh words from the US precipitated the actions of the ICC. But if so, why didn't the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 240 hostages cause Khan to spring into action?

One of the issues surrounding whether the ICC has jurisdiction is the concept of complementarity, that the ICC is the court of last resort. Only when a nation's authorities are unwilling or unable to prosecute alleged war crimes can the ICC step in.

Khan addressed this directly:

Complementarity, however, requires a deferral to national authorities only when they engage in independent and impartial judicial processes that do not shield suspects and are not a sham. It requires thorough investigations at all levels addressing the policies and actions underlying these applications.

Is he claiming that Israel is failing to investigate these issues?

But Khan himself has admitted:

Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders and a robust system intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law.

The State Department's May 10 report to Congress also pointed out:

Israel’s own concern about such incidents is reflected in the fact it has a number of internal investigations underway. At the same time, it is also important to emphasize that a country’s overall commitment to IHL is not necessarily disproven by individual IHL violations, so long as that country is taking appropriate steps to investigate and where appropriate determine accountability for IHL violations. As this report notes, Israel does have a number of ongoing, active criminal investigations pending and there are hundreds of cases under administrative review.

Is Khan claiming that such investigations only meet the complementary criteria if the country leader himself is being specifically investigated?

Regardless of his "professionalism," Chief Prosecutor Khan has already created questions about his objectivity in this case and whether he can rise above politics.

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Normally, any country that decides to accede to the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute has to weigh the benefits of such a move with the risk that it could itself be subject to prosecution under the system.

But when the "State of Palestine" acceded to the ICC in 2015, it carried virtually no risk to itself - only potential reward.

As Nimrod Karin wrote at the time in Opinio Juris:

The question therefore becomes just how risky the Palestinian ICC bid really is, and how risky the Palestinians thought it was when they made it, and we can only speculate with regard to both of these questions. My educated guess here is that the ICC bid isn’t that much of a risk for the Palestinians, or at least that it’s not perceived as such by the Palestinians, least of all by the relevant decision-makers, i.e. Abbas and his concentric power circles of PA-PLO-Fatah. I think that by now it’s more than obvious that for that side of the Palestinian internal conflict the best possible scenario is an international cop stepping in to take care of Hamas. If Hamas leaders ever get indicted by the ICC, Abbas would be finally free of the whole unity charade, and at absolutely no internal political cost for him, because Abbas wouldn’t face the dilemma of whether or not to extradite suspects or accept external investigation – Abbas has no de facto authority or control whatsoever over either the suspects or the actual “scene(s) of the crime(s)”. This means that the “Abbas side” is not only strategically superior in this respect, but a free-rider;....this might not have been so easy for the “Abbas side,” if the new ad hoc declaration had stuck to the July 1, 2002 date for retroactive temporal jurisdiction – because this might have put some PA/PLO/Fatah leaders in the path of the ICC due to their activities during the Second Intifada.

The "State of Palestine" still tried to stack the deck even further of its accession against Israel. It granted the ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of "Palestine", including East Jerusalem, only since June 13, 2014.

Why that date? Because on June 12, 2014, Palestinians kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah in Gush Etzion, and the "State of Palestine" that the ICC claims to control that area didn't want that event to be subject to ICC prosecution where they might have had to detain and extradite the murderers.

That date itself is proof positive that the entire application to join the ICC was a sham. It is all to add rights to the Palestinian Authority leadership with zero responsibility; to give the impression of respecting international law while subverting its very purpose of treating everyone equally.

There was no justice involved - it was pure politics. There was no downside for the Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas. It should have been recognized as such by the ICC and rejected at the time for its transparently hypocritical nature.

But it wasn't.

And that brings us to today, where an autocratic, corrupt ruler can act like a statesman who cares about justice while celebrating terror attacks and using international law not only to hurt Israel but also to hurt his internal enemy Hamas as well.

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