Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Buried in a UN report: Gaza aid workers forcing women into prostitution for food

A UN report buried the information that some Gaza women are being forced into prostitution by aid workers to get food.

This fact did not even merit an entire sentence in the context of a much larger report.

Palestinian men have been sexually abusing Palestinian women and children every day for decades;. And in Gaza, things are worse than ever.

The fact is that sexual abuse has always been rampant in Palestinian areas. You just have to dig deep to find anyone willing to talk about it.

A UN report last year said:

An estimated 1.9 million people across the gender spectrum in OPT are vulnerable to and/ or experiencing GBV [Gender-based violence] , 80 per cent of whom are women, and 65 per cent in Gaza. Violence against women, particularly by intimate partners, remains at an alarmingly high rate. Palestinian women face multiple layers of discrimination within the legal system. According to the 2019 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistic (PCBS) survey on violence, which was updated in July 2022, 59 per cent of married or previously married women between the ages of 15 and 64 experienced violence by their husband in the 12 months preceding the survey – 70 per cent in Gaza and 52 per cent in the West Bank.

But as bad things were before, they have gotten worse in Gaza since October 7. Instead of pulling together, Palestinians are allowing predators to rape and abuse women and children.

And the UN knows it.

The latest UN Protection Cluster report from this month says quite clearly that the danger to women from the war comes from their fellow Arabs:

The scale of the conflict has a multidimensional impact on all people in Gaza, and this has very significant consequences for gender-based violence. A report on the gendered impact of the conflict, published in January 2024, demonstrates the degree to which women and children are now affected by the war.

...The GBV risks for children have dramatically risen with the external protection threats and the increase in negative coping mechanisms. This includes increased reports of child marriages within shelters, and incidents of sexual violence. Girls with disabilities are at higher risk of violence and exploitation.

...Insufficient and unreliable aid, distributed under conditions of insecurity that do not allow adequate targeting, expose vulnerable groups to violence, exploitation and abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, including by aid workers. Specific risks observed in Gaza associated with aid include the presence of unofficial humanitarian workers without identification [in] mixed distribution lines for men and women. There are reports of individuals adopting harmful coping mechanisms, such as reducing food and liquid intake, to minimise such risks.

There are several classes of major crimes being barely mentioned here that would be front page headlines anywhere else:

- Aid workers are sexually abusing women, presumably in exchange for food, and even forcing women into prostitution.

- Women are too frightened to stand in line together with men for food, because they know they will be sexually harassed, so much so that they would prefer not to eat at all.

- Young girls are being raped and married off to older men in the camps.

- Disabled girls are especially vulnerable to being raped in shelters.

Notice how hard the UN tries to minimize and obfuscate the incidents. Instead of saying that women ar preferring to go hungry out of fear of being abused while waiting for aid, the UN says "individuals" are "adopting harmful coping mechanisms, such as reducing food and liquid intake, to minimise such risks."

Does this sound like an organization that fights for the rights of women in Gaza? The UN cares more about avoiding shaming Palestinians than protecting women.

These incidents are clearly well known, enough that the UN is aware of them - but I do not recall seeing a single article on these topics in eight months. Even here, the UN is trying as hard as possible to bury these issues in much larger reports that are on more familiar anti-Israel territory.

The UN and other NGOs, when they mention this at all, usually speak elliptically, even though this is a well-known phenomenon among the aid workers themselves. For example, in a website that invites interns to work in Palestinian areas in the West Bank, the applicants are told, "We meticulously search for families that our female participants feel comfortable with during their stay in Hebron." Why would that concern even occur to anyone if it wasn't well known that pro-Palestinian activists have been raped and sexually abused in the past?

There is very little interest in Palestinian human rights when Jews cannot be blamed. This applies to the media as well as to NGOs, but the NGOs on the ground actively try to cover it up and even pressure women victims not to report the incidents.

The reason is because they don't want to expose stories like this.

(h/t Irene for internship article)

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The deaths of civilians in Rafah on Sunday night apparently came from Hamas explosives that were ignited by the Israeli airstrike.

JNS reports:

Shrapnel from an Israeli strike in Rafah on Sunday night may have ignited a fuel tank, starting a fire that engulfed tents housing displaced Gazans and leading to dozens of noncombatant deaths, Israeli officials have told the Biden administration.

A U.S. official told CNN that according to the Israelis, a precision munition was used in the strike.

“We can’t confirm that but it’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said, adding that “we assume we will learn more once Israel completes its investigation.”

ABC News cited a U.S. official as saying that the fuel tank was located around 100 meters (330 feet) from the area targeted in the airstrike.

How could shrapnel travel the distance of a football field when Israel is careful to calibrate its airstrikes to avoid peripheral damage?

This video of the vehicle that was targeted, discovered by Abu Ali Express, explains it all.

The attached video, captured by a Gazan resident in the immediate aftermath of the attack, provides crucial insights. The speaker claims that the IDF targeted a Hamas jeep loaded with ammunition and weapons. Starting at 00:21, secondary explosions can be observed, indicating the presence of additional weaponry. The speaker voices his fear of a Hamas rocket flying at them, implying the presence of rockets at the site.

You can see the secondary explosions at 0:21, 0.24 and 0.31.

It appears that the Hamas leaders were transporting munitions near the camp. A rocket or mortar from the jeep could easily travel 100 meters.

If true, the immediate assumptions that this was Israel's fault is yet another example of the world rushing to judgment, despite a track record throughout the war of the IDF telling the truth and Hamas lying and exaggerating about every single incident in Gaza.

The only mistake that the IDF made was not knowing the precise contents of the weapons in the vehicle.

The fact that the jeep was a valid and important military target is indisputable. The fact that it was a significant distance away from civilians is indisputable. Would any other army in the world have avoided the strike because of the small chance that the terrorists were transporting weapons? That is a standard that no fighting force could possibly live up to.

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05/27 Links Pt2: Brothers in harms; ICJ judges showed they can't even get grammar right; The Politics of Joe Biden’s Fear; Tlaib Crosses a Bright Red Line; Norway's malevolent myopia

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Brothers in harms

Whatever was in these judges’ minds, the charges against Israel brought to the ICJ by Hamas’s ally South Africa bore no relation to reality whatsoever and the court should have thrown them out in the first instance as malevolent and vexatious. Whether as an act of celebration or defiance, Hamas reacted yesterday to the ICJ ruling by unleashing a volley of rockets from Rafah towards Tel Aviv and other parts of central Israel with the aim of killing yet more Israeli civilians, an aim thwarted once again only by Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield.

Those who haven’t been paying attention over the years might well wonder how it can possibly be that Israel is the only country singled out by international bodies as not being entitled to defend itself adequately against exterminatory attack.

The answer, bizarre as this may sound, is that the entire global humanitarian and “human rights” establishment has been fashioned into a weapon of extermination against the one state in the Middle East committed to upholding democracy and human rights.

This is because “human rights” culture is not what it says on the tin.

'‘Human rights” doctrine provides what purports to be the defining creed of the modern world in a promise to perfect humanity. Its values are thus deemed to rise way above laws devised by mere mortals and to enshrine instead supposedly universal values.

But these aren’t universal at all. Most countries don’t subscribe to them; for every “human right” there is a contrary one; and they are adjudicated by courts which bring to bear subjective views about where the balance between competing rights should be struck.

Rights derive from obligations, without which rights are philosophically and intellectually incoherent. Detached from obligations, rights become demands.

Law derives its legitimacy from expressing the boundaries of behaviour agreed by a sovereign nation in accordance with its culture and rooted in the consent of the people channelled through democratically elected parliaments. Universal human rights law is rooted in no such national culture and democratic consent. Radically deracinated from any national jurisdiction, it was always going to turn into an instrument of politics and ideology rather than justice and the protection of the innocent.

As the supposed “conscience” of the world, it has consequently been hijacked by a global community dominated by tyrannies, gangster states and terrorist regimes and turned into their instrument of destruction targeted at Israel, the one nation that stands in the way of the rest by refusing to lie down and die.

The “human rights” culture has now revealed itself to be intellectually and morally corrupt — even as western liberals cling to the fig leaf it provides for the attempt finally to drive Israel and the Jewish people out of the liberal world, its mind and its conscience forever.

Ruthie Blum: No, Israel didn’t ‘pave the way’ for ‘pariah’ status

Way to go, Jerusalem Post. In the midst of an existential war, you opted to engage in the very kind of Jewish breast-beating that’s music to enemy ears. And, as you know, Hamas and its patrons in Tehran are listening.

But you’ve taken rhetorical acrobatics to new heights. In your Sunday editorial—as its title reveals off the bat—Israel bears responsibility for “becoming a pariah state.” According to your assessment, “While it’s true that the world’s smug, sanctimonious attitude towards a just war that Israel has every right to fight is ludicrous and a disgusting double standard, our leaders made decisions that paved the way.”

If readers were wondering what, in your view, spurred the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to push for arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel must halt its moves in Rafah that will harm civilians, you provided an answer that would have pleased both bodies.

“[W]hen Israel began its military operation, it didn’t do enough to give off the impression that it was concerned with the Palestinian population at large,” you asserted, using the example of “statements by government officials who said that basic needs will be cut off.”

Your failure to specify the “government officials” highlighted in January by the ICJ in its hearings on South Africa’s antisemitic “genocide” case against Israel was probably purposeful. Naming them would have put a damper on your argument, after all.

While you were suggesting that “right-wing extremists” were the culprits, the court’s statement indicates otherwise. Referring to “comments made by senior Israeli politicians that contained inciting and dehumanizing rhetoric,” the ICJ didn’t even mention National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir or Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

No, the kangaroo tribunal pointed the finger at Gallant and President Isaac Herzog—the former for saying “that Israel is ‘fighting against human animals,’” and the latter for claiming “that Palestinians are collectively responsible” for Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, on the grounds that “they could have risen up [and] and fought against that evil regime.”

Given the nature of the massacre on that Black Sabbath nearly eight months ago, with Hamas terrorists committing the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, the above remarks were not only justified; they were perfectly reasonable. Indeed, the only problem with Gallant’s calling them “human animals” is that actual beasts are instinctual, not sadistic, creatures.

Ben-Dror Yemini: International courts: a terrorist's last line of defense

Ironically, these very states and their sponsored entities show a blatant disregard for international tribunals. Instead, they manipulate these courts to accuse those who combat terrorism. The ICJ and ICC, conceived in response to the horrors of World War II and Nazism, now paradoxically serve entities like Hamas—a terrorist organization calling for the annihilation of Jews and embodying modern-day Nazism. Whom do these courts protect? Hamas. Whom do they target? Israel. This is the tragic paradox of international law. A forthcoming report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) highlights a disturbing reality: "South Africa serves as a crucial operational hub for Islamic terrorist groups, facilitating connections with terror networks across Africa... Entities linked to terrorism continue to operate freely within South Africa, evading international oversight." Essentially, South Africa acts as the enforcement arm of oppressive blocs, particularly Iran and Hamas, within the ICJ.

Julius Malema, a prominent South African politician who serves as the president of a group called "Economic Freedom Fighters", openly pledges to bolster support for terrorism and arm Hamas if he gains governmental power (with elections imminent). He also advocates for the murder of white people. Alarmingly, 27,494 murders occurred in South Africa last year alone—surpassing the inflated UN estimates of casualties in Gaza. Yet, this terror-supporting, violence-ridden state exploits the ICJ to wage its campaign against Israel. The ICJ’s recent decision is a significant setback for Israel. It implies that no democratic nation can effectively combat a terrorist organization embedded within and backed by civilian populations. According to the logic of the ICJ judges, Britain committed crimes against Germany, the U.S. against Japan, and similarly in Iraq, Afghanistan and against ISIS. If this reasoning holds, injunctions should have been issued against all these nations.

Historically, before the establishment of the ICJ and ICC, actual war criminals faced trial in special courts, as seen in Nuremberg and Tokyo post-World War II. Today, however, there is no practical mechanism to hold Hamas accountable, even if an international tribunal ruled against them. These criminals could still traverse the oppressive bloc, from Ankara to Doha, Beijing, Johannesburg, and Moscow. What value does international law hold if it cannot punish the perpetrators of terror and oppression but might impede democratic nations from targeting these power centers? This is the essence of the recent rulings by the ICJ and ICC against Israel.

For Israel, the ICJ’s decision is a blow to its global image, particularly when paired with ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants against top-tier Israeli politicians. Although the ICJ’s ruling technically permits continued fighting, global media are broadcasting headlines claiming, "the court issued an injunction against Israel regarding the continuation of the war."

This narrative appears to favor terrorism over justice. Unsurprisingly, Hamas quickly lauded the decision, which serves their interests. An organization dedicated to the destruction of Jews, akin to a modern Nazi entity, benefits from an international tribunal established to combat Nazism and its genocidal agenda. This is not the International Court of Justice; it is the International Court for the Support of Terrorism and Extermination.

ICJ: The Madness To Their Method -- Why They Can't Write In Plain English (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

In January, the International Court of Justice gave its first decision regarding the Gaza War. The Media headlines tended to declare something like this one (still) on the NPR website:

But did the ICJ really hand down a ruling that Israel was likely guilty of genocide?
Not according to Joan Donoghue, the President of the ICJ from September 13, 2010 till February 6, 2024:

Led by the Palegandists, the enemies of Israel and their useful idiots in the world media have skillfully and deliberately misinterpreted the ICJ ruling with the libel that the “ICJ found a plausible case of genocide in Gaza.” When in reality, that's not what the court found at… pic.twitter.com/lhBragllxw
— Chaskel Bennett (@ChaskelBennett) April 26, 2024

So according to Donoghue:

[The ICJ] didn't decide that the claim of genocide was plausible. It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide. But the shorthand that often appears which is that there is a plausible case of genocide isn't what the court decided.

Let the lawyers -- the real ones, not the ones who play them on social media -- break down the implications of that formulation. But the fact remains that the ICJ did not find Israel guilty of genocide.

Last week, the ICJ handed down a second ruling, this one addressing Israel's military operation in Rafah.

Again, the media had a field day, with headlines like this one from The New York Times:

But again, the question is what did the ICJ actually rule?

The key issue is paragraph 2(a) of the operative clause, where the Court declared that Israel must:

Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

For all the fanfare in the media headlines, some argue -- including among the ICJ judges themselves -- that the ICJ in fact did not rule that Israel must stop its operations in Rafah:

🧵Understanding the ICJ Ruling on Israel's Gaza and Rafah Operations

1. ICJ DOES NOT ORDER HALT ON RAFAH OPERATION, ACCORDING TO 4 ICJ JUDGES

Four judges, including those who voted in favor of the new measures, highlighted in their dissents that the ruling addresses actions… pic.twitter.com/gB044ZVmIC
— Leslie Kajomovitz (@lkajomovitz) May 24, 2024

This raises a question: considering the ambiguity we saw in the ICJ's first decision about whether Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide and now in this second decision where there is ambiguity in the ruling whether Israel must stop what it is doing in Rafah -- why can't the ICJ speak in plain English?

After all, the ICJ was crystal clear when it gave a ruling about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In an article about this lack of clarity, the group UK Lawyers For Israel pointed out that this current ambiguity

is further underlined by comparison with the unqualified Order made in the Ukraine/ Russia case on 16 March 2022, which directed:
“The Russian Federation shall immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine”.

That seems straightforward enough, and we had none of the disagreements over the intention of the ICJ that we see now.

So what is going on?

Juliette McIntyre, a lecturer in Law at the University of South Australia, offers a possible explanation. She writes that the equivocation of the ruling is not meant to help Israel. Quite the opposite:

the Court may have been driven by a desire to convince as many Judges as possible to vote in favour of the Order, at the cost of issuing a clearer and more straightforward directive. Quite possibly, the Court has deliberately adopted a phrasing which can be interpreted more than one way in order to get the decision across the line. [emphasis added]

The vagueness of the language was deliberately used to get as much of a consensus as possible among the judges so that a judgment could be made:

Israel can argue that it has complied with the Order if it continues military operations in a way which does not inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. But equally, South Africa can argue that Israel has failed to comply with the Order if it continues its military operation in Rafah at all...

But this hardly qualifies as a decree of Solomonic proportions. This is a question of law, and not law of a theoretical nature either. It is not a question of inches as in other cases in which the ICJ has been called upon to rule:

this is not a maritime boundary delimitation where equidistance can be imposed in pursuit of impartiality. This Order is a demand, of Israel, to take certain concrete steps. It is unfair to Israel to be unclear in what is expected of it, and it is potentially ruinous for the people of Rafah should interpretation A be applied when interpretation B was intended.

In other words, because of the ICJ's insistence on consensus at all costs -- the ICJ has failed and everybody loses.

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05/27 Links Pt1: The principle of no victory for Israel during the war; Israeli airstrike on Rafah kills 2 top Hamas commanders; Knesset bill to designate UNRWA a terror group

From Ian:

Yisrael Medad: The principle of no victory for Israel during the war

To grasp the machinations of President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, one first needs to understand that a fundamental aspect of the US policy toward Israel, since its founding, has been to prevent Israel from gaining as complete a victory as possible over its enemies.

A review of the past 76 years and research from the FRUS archives of the State Department make that obvious.

The second aspect is that since the Carter administration and with an extra Oslo Accords boost from the Clinton administration, and now being pushed by the Obama clique, the Biden Administration’s goal is to have Hamas survive this war victorious and to achieve the lost-but-now-found two-state solution in the post-war period.

As the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal noted on May 22, the Biden Administration for months opposed an Israeli invasion of Rafah. The United States doubts Israel

Their spokesmen asserted there was “no credible plan” for civilian evacuation. The brief arms embargo was based on that assumption. President Biden said, “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.” Secretary of State Blinken also doubted Israel had a good enough plan.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “We still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah.”

Now that over 900,000 Gazans have been safely evacuated and the operation is proceeding well, like the story of the insect on the elephant’s ear, the US Administration is claiming credit.

“[Israel] incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed,” a senior US official told reporters and added, that the operation might create “opportunities for getting the hostage deal back on track.”

However, the underlying current of maliciousness remains.Already on March 19, Blinken falsely accused Israel of “causing a famine” in Gaza, leaving out Hamas’ role in all this. He joined the “starvation chorus,” adding that “100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity.”

On April 11, David Satterfield, US humanitarian envoy, remarked “There is an imminent risk of starvation for the majority, if not all, the 2.2 million population of Gaza.” Gaza, in fact, receives food supplies. However, much of the aid is stolen by Hamas or by crime families who have killed Gazans in the process.

Additionally, Biden’s $320 million floating pier is not that much of a success. Although completed and working, the Pentagon admits now that very little aid, if any, has been delivered to the general Gaza population via the pier. The US and the UN are still trying to fix safe routes.

Was Hamas lambasted after crowds looted aid trucks coming from the port and one Palestinian man was killed?

JPost Editorial: Israel's government has failed and must do more

After more than seven months of war in Gaza, mediators in the ceasefire talks have struggled to secure a breakthrough while the military is working to locate and return the hostages.

The protests followed on from last week’s news that several hostage bodies had been recovered from Gaza. The IDF located the bodies of three additional hostages on Thursday night that Hamas had taken to Gaza on October 7, the military announced on Friday morning.

November’s hostage deal feels like a distant memory in terms of this war. We are now almost in June, and Israel says around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of at least 39 more, while 17 bodies of hostages have been recovered.

The numbers reflect the stark reality that efforts to bring all hostages home have not been successful enough, and the situation remains dire.

For 232 days, the hostages have been in captivity. That’s 232 days that Israel’s military has failed to bring them all home. The longer the war drags on, the less chance there is of getting them back alive.

One of the significant factors Israel claimed in the need for a military operation in Rafah was the return of the hostages.

The operation that Israel launched earlier this month has been limited for the time being. If Israel wants to succeed in its stated goal of bringing home the hostages, perhaps it is time to consider doing more.

There are many things for the IDF to take into account, not least the welfare of its soldiers and minimizing Gazan civilian deaths. However, the political and military leadership of Israel needs to consider what would make the Rafah operation a success.

While we should commend the IDF for successfully bringing back seven bodies in the past week to Israel for a proper burial, time is of the essence now more than it has ever been.

Israel’s government has failed the hostages and their families. Israel’s military has failed the hostages and their families. At some point, they need to be held responsible.

For now, all we are doing is viewing kidnapping videos from October 7, watching more dead bodies being returned to Israel, and absorbing the pain and anger of the hostage families.

A special forces hasbara unit: Eylon Levy's strategy for turning the narrative war for Israel

Before he became a government spokesman, Eylon Levy participated in anti-government demonstrations. As a government spokesman, he became a media star because the combination of his quick mind, glib tongue, and expressive eyebrows appealed to English-speaking people around the world.

But then his past political activity came to haunt him, and as good a job as he was doing for Israel, it wasn't sufficiently impressive in some circles for his past to be ignored.

Of course, it would have been more to Israel's advantage if the people who dismissed him had demonstrated greater faith in the national slogan, 'Together we will win.'

But Levy is not the least bit bitter because he can now be completely honest. Not that he wasn't honest before – at least in matters that he believes to be true, but Israeli journalists frequently have to report on issues and incidents about which they have doubts – and it's beginning to irk them. Only a few days ago, KAN 11's political and diplomatic reporter Gili Cohen, in an angry monologue, declared that it was time to tell the truth.

Finding balance
A major problem that has confronted Israeli journalists for 75 years is finding a happy medium between patriotism and professionalism.

If Israel did not face an existential threat on many fronts, Israeli journalists could afford to be less circumspect.

But when national security is at stake, they have to censor themselves and repeat material contained in government press releases in which there are sins of either omission or commission.

Levy did not stay idle following his dismissal. He's busy interviewing and broadcasting on his podcast State of a Nation, which is a mix of politics, news, and rebuttals of lies told about Israel by antisemites and ignoramuses.

But Levy isn't content with just what he's doing on the podcast; in his view, that is simply not enough.

He's gone a step further and launched the Israel Citizen's Spokespersons' Office, a voluntary team of well-informed ordinary citizens (mostly immigrants) who speak in their native languages and advocate for Israel and the Jewish People.

"You don't have to be an official spokesperson to speak up for Israel," he says. "The Jewish People and Israel are under attack all around the world." To counter this situation, Levy is building a team of citizen spokespeople to share the facts, truth, and messages needed to fight against the lies that are being disseminated.

Daily updates are provided Sunday through Thursday on all social media platforms at 3 p.m. Israel Time, 8 a.m. Eastern Time.

But now, he envisages an even broader horizon. He shared his views this week at the annual B'nai B'rith World Center Awards ceremony for Excellence in Diaspora Reportage.

List of Jewish, kosher and Israeli restaurants attacked since October 7 (YeahThatsKosher)

The (very useful) website Yeah That's Kosher is keeping a running list of Jewish-linked restaurants worldwide that have been attacked since October 7.

Name of Restaurant	City	Country	Date of Incident	Link to Story	Status
Pita	London	UK	October 9, 2023	Independent	Kosher
Shalom Japan	New York, NY	USA	October 20, 2023	NBC	Not Kosher
2nd Ave Deli	New York, NY	USA	October 21, 2023	Jpost	Not Kosher
Canter’s Deli	Los Angeles, CA	USA	November 2, 2023	Jpost	Kosher
Effy’s Café	New York, NY	USA	November 6, 2023	Jerusalem Post	Kosher
Café Aronne	New York, NY	USA	November 7, 2023	JTA	Kosher
Taste of Tel Aviv	Houston, TX	USA	November 7, 2023	JTA	Kosher
Pita Grill	New York, NY	USA	November 25, 2023	JTA	Kosher
Goldie	Philadelphia, PA	USA	December 3, 2023	Inquirer	Kosher
Sushi Tokyo	New York, NY	USA	December 8, 2023	Jerusalem Post	Kosher
Hummus Kitchen	New York, NY	USA	December 16, 2023	Algemeiner	Kosher
Nana’s Kitchen & Catering	Narbeth, PA	USA	March 10, 2024	CBS News	Kosher
Zizi	New York, NY	USA	May 6, 2024	amny	Not Kosher
Falafel Bar	New York, NY	USA	May 10, 2024	ADL Tracker	Kosher
Rothschild TLV	New York, NY	USA	May 15, 2024	Forward	Kosher

But, hey, nothing antisemitic about this, am I right?

(h/t JW)

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

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Explaining the huge disconnect between what the @NYTimes is reporting on Gaza aid and what @COGATonline reports

I have been trying for weeks to understand the huge differences between how aid agencies are reporting the number of trucks entering Gaza and how many Israel's COGAT is reporting.

The New York Times published an article, "Access to Aid in Gaza Was Dire. Now, It’s Worse," claiming that the number of trucks entering Gaza has been reduced since May 7 when the IDF took over the Rafah crossing. But COGAT has been reporting that on the contrary, more trucks of goods are entering Gaza.

Here is the Times' graphic:

I superimposed that over the number of trucks COGAT has documented in their social media since May 16.

The differences are huge:

(May 24 figure comes from the difference between COGAT's numbers for the entire week week and the total of the daily reports.)

If you believe the New York Times, the number of trucks never went above the minimum number needed for Gaza. If you believe COGAT, that number has been exceeded most days recently.

The NYT gave this methodology:

Daily truck counts were compiled from multiple sources, including the U.N. dashboard for southern border crossings, meeting minutes from the inter-agency Logistics Cluster, World Food Program reports and updates from COGAT, the Israeli military agency coordinating aid delivery. The counts were cross-checked with multi-date aid truck totals from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Office of the Spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General.

Daily averages were calculated for the northern crossings from May 12 to May 15, as only a total count for that span of dates was available. Trucks carrying commercial goods are excluded.

That bolded sentence may account for some of the differences, but COGAT sometimes breaks down the categories of imports, and it still doesn't add up. On May 20, COGAT said that it facilitated 376 food trucks alone, and 27 more of water. A similar number wa brought in on May 22. Either there is a huge commercial business of importing food, or something else is going on.

It appears that the answer is buried in the latest UN OCHA-OPT report:

These figures do not include commercial trucks, as the UN has been unable to observe the arrival of private sector cargo through Kerem Shalom crossing due to insecurity. Supplies that are dropped off at the crossing without safety or logistical viability for humanitarian organizations to pick them up are also not included in these statistics.

This explains it. Israel is bringing in plenty of aid, but the aid organizations are not taking them from the crossings to the people.

This makes sense - because COGAT has been begging the aid agencies to work with them, saying that they want to coordinate with any and all aid agencies but they - especially UNRWA - are the ones not cooperating!

Now, why didn't the New York Times mention this? Clearly they are aware of COGAT's statistics, and they know how many actual trucks are entering Gaza. Yet their infographic makes it appear that the aid trucks are not entering Gaza at all.

I could understand if the Times reports on the specific dispute and shows both sets of numbers. But this is all it says, way down the article:

COGAT, the Israeli military agency coordinating aid delivery, has said that increasing the amount of aid going into Gaza remains a priority. It reports daily that it has inspected hundreds of trucks and coordinated their transfer to border crossings, though the figures are often higher than those reported by aid organizations, which track the number of trucks that have collected goods for entry into Gaza and exclude trucks carrying commercial goods.

Neither set of figures accounts for difficulties in distribution that can prevent aid from getting to Gazan civilians. Israel says enough aid is entering Gaza and has blamed aid groups for not distributing it faster to civilians — a characterization the aid groups dispute, saying Israeli forces have made distribution extremely difficult.

By not reporting on the hundreds of trucks being brought into Gaza daily and waiting to be picked up, the New York Times is effectively saying that Israel is not trustworthy. Their claims of hundreds of trucks being brought into Gaza are not even worth counting. Even though it makes no sense for COGAT to go to so much effort to bring in aid and not want to see it distributed, the Times accepts the aid agencies' claims and does not even try to find out the truth.

Beyond that, the commercial goods that no one wants to count are a story in themselves that also contradict the narrative of things getting worse for Gazans since Israel took over the Rafah crossing. This Gaza journalist says that prices in the markets that had been sky high beforehand have gone down dramatically since Israel now controls all imports into Gaza. He says the high prices were the result of Egypt and Hamas controlling the border crossing. If the shortages are getting worse, how can the food be getting cheaper? It is another story the New York Times doesn't want to cover. (h/t Abu Ali Express)

I cannot say for sure that COGAT is not at fault for aid distribution delays. I do not have the information of what is happening between the trucks entering and the aid being distributed, and I do not know details about the commercial imports. But this is exactly what the New York Times should be doing - and it instead already decides who is right and doesn't bother to report on the other side, except perfunctorily.

The idea that Israel is just dumping aid trucks at the crossings and doesn't care what happens afterwards, which is what the aid agencies and the NYT are pretty much saying, is not much better than a blood libel.

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Reuters reports:

Spain's foreign minister condemned as "scandalous and execrable" a video posted by his Israeli counterpart suggesting Hamas would be grateful to Spain, in a growing spat between the two countries over the Gaza war.

Spain last week announced it would recognise Palestine as a state and in recent days two Spanish government ministers referred to a genocide in Gaza.

A short video posted by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on the social media platform X on Sunday says "Hamas: Gracias España" ("Hamas: Thanks Spain").

The video shows the Spanish flag then a couple dancing to flamenco music. Film of Hamas fighters is interspersed including people fleeing during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

"We are not going to fall into provocations. The video is scandalous and execrable," Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told a news conference in Brussels.

The video is indeed provocative. But it is far less outrageous than Spain's actual recognition of "Palestine" in the wake of October 7, as well as calling Israel's actions in Gaza a "real genocide" as Spain's defense minister said on Saturday. Spain's condemnation of Hamas in October is rendered meaningless when the only reason that it is now recognizing "Palestine" is Israel's legal actions to destroy Hamas.

But what the media fails to report is that the video's message is also accurate.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stated to his Parliament that the decision was not "against Israel, against the Jews or in favor of Hamas." Yet nothing he said was against Hamas at all - he didn't stress that any government of "Palestine" must not include Hamas, he did not include any condemnations of Hamas in his statement, he did not acknowledge that Hamas is holding Gazans hostage as human shields as well as Israelis, he didn't state that Hamas must be destroyed if there is to be any chance for the peace that he claims he wants to see so desperately. If he would have said any of that, then perhaps one could believe that he is just naive in thinking that recognition would help bring peace.

But Hamas listened to what he and the other heads of state said, and didn't find anything objectionable. On the contrary, Hamas felt that this decision was entirely consistent with its own desire to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East.

Hamas really did thank Spain, along with Ireland and Norway.

The Hamas "Government Media Office" wrote:

We welcome the decision of Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognize the Palestinian state, which is a step in the right direction, and we call on all countries of the world to adopt and consolidate this entitlement.
We welcome the recognition of the Palestinian state by Spain, Norway, and Ireland, and we affirm that our Palestinian cause is a just cause, as Palestine has been occupied by “Israeli” occupation gangs since 1948 AD, after a terrible historical mistake committed by Britain, followed by the United States of America and other countries.
... This recognition came as a result of the enormous sacrifices made by our great Palestinian people during the genocidal war and over the course of long decades of struggle and resistance to the presence of the occupation on our Palestinian land.
The historic and bold decision announced today by the countries of Spain, Norway and Ireland is a decision in the right direction, and we call on all countries of the world to recognize the Palestinian state on the grounds that it is an important international entitlement that cannot be bypassed, and that there is no stability in the region except with the end of the occupation, the return of rights to their owners, and the establishment of the Palestinian state with full sovereignty, with Jerusalem as its capital.

In this message, Hamas reiterates that it considers all of Israel to be "occupied" and it threatens more terror attacks until Israel is destroyed.

If Spain had condemned this statement immediately afterwards, then perhaps - perhaps - it could credibly claim that it was not supporting Hamas terror. But its statements, along with those of the other countries, did not mention any abhorrence of Hamas' antisemitic purpose for existing and its genocidal aims.

So in the end, the video posted by Israel Katz may have been impolitic but it is entirely accurate - Hamas did thank Spain, and feels that nothing that Spain said was inconsistent with support for Hamas murder and rape. If the messages from those three countries allows Hamas to thank them, then they should apologize for not clearly condemning Hamas instead of complaining to Israel for pointing out something that is absolutely true.

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60% of all bias incidents in New York City are anti-Jewish

The New York Police Department has statistics for bias incidents for the first quarter of the year in its Hate Crimes Dashboard.

60% of all hate crimes are against Jews.

81 confirmed incidents victimized Jews, way ahead of the next categories, Black and Male Gay who had 11 incidents each.

That Islamophobia we hear so much about? Only 6 such crimes.

If you only count anti-religious hate crimes, antisemitic crimes climb up to a frightening 88% of them.

Here is a chart of all hate incidents confirmed in the first three months of the year:

When you break down the incidents by crime category, Jews are again the top victims in almost every category - robbery, criminal mischief, burglary, miscellaneous penal law, third degree assault. The only exception was felony assault, where gay males had 6 incidents compared to 2 for Jews.

In the first three months of 2023, there were 126 total incidents of which 61 were anti-Jewish, a 48% rate. While anti-Jewish hate crimes went up by 33% compared to a year ago, all other bias crimes went down by 15%.

When antisemitic hate crimes are increasing while the others are generally decreasing, there is a much larger problem here.

The increase is clearly the result of increased so-called "anti-Zionism" that goes way beyond speech.

Every schoolchild in New York public schools learns about the dangers of racism. How many of them know that over the past 15 month, there have been six times as many antisemitic hate crimes than anti-Black hate crimes in their city. How many New Yorkers realize this?

Very few. . And the reason is as obvious as it is sickening: the increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes comes from the political Left that champions diversity and equity, and they do not want to include antisemitism as being as dangerous as racism, because they teach that Jews are the oppressors, not victims.

The self-proclaimed anti-racists are part of the problem, not the solution.

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PA to control Rafah? The devil is in the details

Khaled Abu Toameh tweeted: "Palestinian official: 'The Rafah border crossing will be controlled by the Palestinian Authority.'"

There are no details as of this writing. Egypt has stated that they would only open the Rafah crossing on their side if the PA is on the other side.

But I would hazard a guess that Israel only agrees to this with the same security parameters that were at Rafah in the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas' takeover in 2007.

The Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing at the time were:

Rafah Crossing was to be operated by the Palestinian Authority on its side, and Egypt on its side.
Only people with Palestinian ID, or foreign nationals, by exception, in certain categories, subject to Israeli oversight, were to be permitted to cross in and out. The PA should notify the Israeli authorities 48 hours in advance of the crossing of a person in the excepted categories.
Rafah would be used for export of goods to Egypt, subject to rigid control. Imports must be cleared by PA customs officials at Kerem Shalom under the supervision of Israeli customs agents.[1]

The crossing activities were supervised by the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Rafah (EUBAM-Rafah) Israel had a video feed of everything happening there.

We'll see if I am right soon enough.

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