Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Thoughts on watermelons, seeds, and viral Internet memes

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a meme that was not one of my better ones. It did not make the point I meant to make very well.

The intended point was that if the "State of Palestine" is represented by a watermelon, it would not be the type of watermelon anyone would enjoy. It would be a corrupt, terror supporting, misogynist, gay bashing, antisemitic dictatorship and probably an Islamist fundamentalist ally of Iran. I wanted to create an unappealing watermelon picture.

But for some reason, anti-Zionists went crazy, convinced that the seeds represented Palestinian children that I was advocating to murder. Some went much further, looking at the history of seedless watermelon breeding and tying it to racism. The amount of analysis in some responses took more time than I did in creating the meme to begin with.

That insane interpretation made this tweet the most popular thing I have ever posted, by far. It gathered over ten million impressions, with thousands of angry responses.

Yes, more people were exposed to this failed watermelon meme than the number of people who live in Israel altogether.

Now that the furor has died down, I have a couple of thoughts.

While the meme itself was not an extreme opinion by any measure, people's antisemitic assumption that it called for genocide drove its going massively viral. Which means that the reverse is true: extreme opinions and hate generally tend to attract more attention than the types of more cerebral, thoughtful and fact-filled posts I try to create. Even my usual cartoons and memes are meant to highlight irony and hypocrisy to make people think,, not to bash people over the head with blunt messages.

I can see how the desire to get posts to go viral can prompt people to post extreme opinions, and they get rewarded for doing so. If I accepted ads on X, I would have made a tidy sum of money from that post alone. (I typically get about 2 million impressions a month.)

When money, fame or egos are involved, objectivity suffers. This applies to even the most prestigious newspapers. Whether they are conscious of it or not, the choice of stories to cover and the wording in the stories, whether in a newspaper or TV show or social media post, affects the amount of attention one gets, and attention for most people leads to either a psychic or monetary reward. This is what drives what we see online and in print far more than any desire for true objectivity and truth.

There is a reason that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty build so many "human rights" campaigns around anti-Israel themes - because they attract more donations than fundraisers for Rwanda.

Money, and fame, make the world go 'round. And they are both the enemies of objectivity.

I learned two other things from this episode.

One is that I wa unaware of trypophobia, the fear of repetitive patterns of holes. Several commenters mentioned that the picture triggered them. For that, I'm sorry.

The other (mentioned by columnist PreOccupied Territory) is that watermelon was originally grown not for its flesh but for its seeds, which would be toasted and eaten. If I had known that, I would have never made the meme since it no longer would make any sense even by my original intent.

So, I ordered some toasted watermelon seeds from a Florida company called Yossef Roasting/IL Nuts, although the products themselves do not seem to be from Israel.

I really wanted to like them, but I'm sorry to say that watermelon seeds are not to my taste. The flavor was OK but I don't like how they felt in my mouth as I was chewing them.

Live and learn.

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!

La Croix reports:

Just a handful of pilgrims attended the first day of the Jewish pilgrimage at Djerba’s El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia, where ceremonies were kept to a minimum due to security concerns fueled by the Gaza conflict. Normally, thousands of pilgrims worldwide, especially from Europe and the United States, flock to Ghriba, Africa’s oldest synagogue, for three days of festivities marked by several processions beginning this year May 24. According to legend, the temple's construction dates back to the escape of Jewish religious dignitaries from Jerusalem after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by Babylonian armies in 586 BC.

“The international situation does not allow us to organize a pilgrimage of such importance,” explained René Trabelsi, one of the event’s organizers, referring to the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

This year, the ceremonies were limited to religious rituals (prayers and candle lighting) without the festive procession behind the large Menorah, a Jewish candelabrum mounted on wheels and decorated with colorful fabrics. According to Trabelsi, “between 30 and 50 pilgrims are expected May 27, compared to 6,000 to 7,000 normally.” However, “the most important thing is that we are here” to convey “the message that Djerba is a land of peace and tolerance,” he said.

Last year a guard killed four people at the pilgrimage.

The public celebration was canceled this year not by the Jewish community, as the article implies, but by the government of Tunisiathe government of Tunisia itself,

This occurred after a Tunisian group that purports to be pro-Palestinian threatened to attack any "Zionist" who arrives, or any Tunisian Jew who helps bring in any "Zionists."

After the decision, one writer was happy that Tunisian Jews could not celebrate. "Because we are an Arab Muslim people, we do not accept that the Jews rejoice over our precious land while they kill our people in Palestine, and the Zionists must understand that things have limits, and that the Islamic and Arab peoples boil like a pot boiling over a quiet fire..."

This is the pattern we are seeing worldwide. Jewish events are blocked, ostensibly because of "security considerations," but the security issue isn't from the Jews but from the antisemites who threaten the Jews. Then the antisemites celebrate their successful banning of Jews.

These threats are a form of terrorism. Terrorism, after all, is the use of fear for political purposes, to force people to act in certain ways to avoid potential injury or death. And in Tunisia, as elsewhere, the threats accomplish what they set out to do: to limit the human rights of Jews.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

During a web interview, rock guitar legend Eric Clapton showed that his "anti-Zionism" and antisemitism are the same thing.

He spoke about his enthusiasm for the anti-Israel protests at US universities but then how awful the Congressional hearings were, asking the presidents of universities about antisemitism on campus:

I was so enthused about what was going on in Columbia and everywhere and then I saw - what I couldn't believe, because it freaked me out, was the Senate hearings they would have, which were like the Nuremberg trials, you know the Senate committee would be asking pointed questions to the presidents of the universities saying," I just want a yes or a no! Don't talk to me about context! Yes or no, are you promoting antisemitism in your college? Yes or no?" and I thought., "What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?" And it is! Yeah, it's AIPAC, it's the lobby.... for a while, well, Israel's running the show, running the world! Except for the BRICS."

The Nazis illustrated Clapton's opinion about ~~Jews~~ Zionists 80 years ago.

BRICS is, of course, the coalition of human rights paragons like Brazil, Russia, China and Iran.

Clapton has a history of outright racism. Already in 1976, Clapton - clearly drunk - said his opinions to his audience at a concert (very offensive language):

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands … So where are you? Well, wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country … I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white … The black wogs and coons and Arabs and f*cking Jamaicans don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man … This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for f*ck’s sake? … Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!

He since apologized and has given to anti-racist causes, but we know how that works. He didn't change his opinion, but he didn't want to hurt his career. (Clapton also admitted to raping his wife whenever he wanted to. What a hero!)

Clapton tried to make the best of the situation, but in the end he finally went insane.

Clapton's embrace of antisemitic tropes of Jews (sorry, "Israel") running the world shows that he is still a bigot and a disgusting person through and through, but now he tries to cloak his hate as righteousness.

It doesn't take a PhD in psychology to realize that his opinions of Blacks, immigrants and Jews, 48 years apart, are two sides of the same bigoted coin. And it is a perfect case study of how modern anti-Zionism is a fig leaf for antisemites to be openly bigoted - and be cheered for it by their fellow bigots pretending to be moral.

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!

05/28 Links Pt2: Soloveichik: Hamilton’s Hallmark; Sharansky: The 500; Civilization is from the Jews; Seinfeld on the Rules of Comedy—and Life

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Hamilton’s Hallmark

As a mob of Columbia students and other anti-Semitic agitators violently entered and occupied the University’s Hamilton Hall, only to be valorized by members of the media and the academy, my thoughts turned to the man for whom the building was named. Alexander Hamilton had overseen the transformation of the institution once known by the royalist name “King’s College” into the American institution called Columbia, and he had also placed a Jew—the New York spiritual leader Gershom Mendes Seixas—on Columbia’s board. This was the first time in the history of the West that a Jew was so honored, a sign of how Hamilton understood the uniqueness of America and the place of the Jews within it. Hamilton would vindicate this worldview in a moment in a New York court case that has long since been forgotten, but that deserves to be remembered in the season in which we find ourselves.

The tale is told by the historian Andrew Porwancher in his remarkable work, The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton. After leaving George Washington’s government, Hamilton earned a livelihood by returning to his legal practice in New York. One of his clients was a local merchant by the name of Louis LeGuen, whose case had worked its way through New York’s legal system and was heard by the State’s “Court of Errors.” This, as Porwancher tells us, was no ordinary court; it was a large tribunal that included not only judges but prominent politicians, including the president of the state senate.

The legal teams on both sides included some of the most famous names of American history. Hamilton was joined by Aaron Burr in representing LeGuen. Opposing them was another father of the American Constitution, Gouverneur Morris. Given that several witnesses for LeGuen were Jewish, Morris chose to focus on the veracity of their testimony. As Porwancher tells us, this was a reaction to the mellifluence of the lawyer on the opposing side:
After Hamilton delivered a forceful closing argument spanning six hours, Morris knew he could not compete with Hamilton on legal grounds. Instead, Morris told the court that he had no intention of referencing law books and alternatively would “appeal to the principles written on the heart of man.” Morris’s flowery address soon degenerated into a base attack on Hamilton’s two witnesses of the Jewish faith. Alluding to them as “these Jew witnesses,” Morris sought to impugn their credibility on the basis of their religion. “Jews are not to be believed upon oath,” he insisted bluntly.

Thus did Morris adopt a strategy that was abhorrent but not insensible: to act on the assumption that anti-Semitism was very potent and that the “heart of man” was vulnerable to it.

There is, of course, enormous irony to this, given that Morris had been the one who had suggested that the Constitution begin with the three words “We the people,” an enduring and eloquent expression of democratic equality. Hamilton, as Porwancher tells us, had already delivered his own argument but chose to speak again—and to respond to the anti-Semitic allegation, attempting in his own way to address the heart of man. One might even suggest that Hamilton sought to influence what another great American would later call the “better angels of our nature.”

What is remarkable about Hamilton’s response is that it not only denounced Morris’s bigotry; it also made a case for American philo-Semitism. Hamilton utilized language that was less legal than theological, asking the tribunal about Morris: “Has he forgotten, what this race once were, when, under the immediate government of God himself, they were selected as the witnesses of his miracles, and charged with the spirit of prophecy?” It was, in other words, the Jews who served as the medium of the very scripture that had inspired American republican government, and who observed that “pure and holy, happy and Heaven-approved faith.” Hamilton further linked Jewish suffering to the destruction of Jerusalem, referring to the Jews as “the degraded, persecuted, reviled subjects of Rome…in all her resistless power, and pride, and pagan pomp.” As Porwancher puts it, Hamilton not only emphasized the equality of all before the law; he also stressed that Morris was “perpetuating a dark history of antisemitism that had plagued Jews since antiquity.”

Natan Sharansky: The 500

In the furor over America’s campuses, it was easy to miss the letter that 500 of Columbia University’s Jews penned and signed to present their position in their own voice. Yet it was this letter, quietly distributed and far less aggressive than some of the other events that overshadowed it, that may prove to be the turning point in the struggle for American Jewry’s future. This is why.

Twenty years ago, just after the second intifada, I went on a tour of American and Canadian campuses. Shaken by what I saw and heard, I told (then) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the major battle for the future of American Jewry will be fought on campuses. So disturbed was I by this visit, that I titled the article I wrote about it in the Hebrew press “a journey into occupied territory.”

The “occupiers” in my metaphor were the centers for Middle East studies that had sprouted like mushrooms in American universities to spread anti-Zionist propaganda. Their influence was palpable, not only in events they organized, but also in their effect on the Jewish students I met. While many expressed deep solidarity with Israel and support for its struggle against terror, a few young men and women told me that for them, as liberal Jews, it would be better if Israel didn’t exist. “Then,” they told me, “I won’t be perceived as responsible for such awful crimes.”

Such statements, which foreshadowed attempts by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace to dissociate themselves from Israel, didn’t concern me as much as yet another, and far more alarming, set of statements. People who wish to fully sever their association with Israel neither reflect nor sway the sentiments and opinions of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. No, the statements that concerned me and led me to speak of occupation and battlefields were the many variations I heard on one young woman’s quietly spoken and regretful admission that she would very much like to speak against divestment and other anti-Israel measures, but she couldn’t. Her professors won’t like it, she told me. It would harm her future career.

The ideological regime of antisemitism that has entrenched itself in America’s universities will only collapse when enough Jews stop being afraid and stop unwillingly aiding it by hiding and self-censoring.

Dear Lord, I thought, when I first heard these words. We are not in the Moscow of my youth, where one’s career depended on pretending to buy the Soviet credo hook, line and sinker! Yet the more students I met, the more I heard of similar, stifling concerns. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I knew very well how catching and pervasive self-censorship can become. No one will need to “occupy” the campuses physically if the Jewish students will carry out their own occupation themselves by growing too afraid to speak their own truths.

Totalitarian societies survive by relying on a core of true believers to frighten even those who don’t buy the ideological party line into becoming “doublethinkers”—people who adhere to the party line in public regardless of their private thoughts—rather than outright dissidents. In the normal course of events, the percentage of doublethinkers is always on the rise, as more and more people grow disillusioned with the false promises of the regime yet continue to pledge allegiance to it out of fear instead of faith. The regime controls them not through their own convictions but through the power its institutions hold over their lives, livelihoods, and safety. In other words, it controls them by frightening them into censoring themselves on the regime’s behalf.

Of course America is a free country and not a totalitarian regime. However, it was impossible to miss the resemblance between the culture I encountered in the American academy 20 years ago and the Soviet worldview of my youth. Like the Communist party (following Marx), more and more people started dividing the world into oppressors (read: always bad, always in the wrong) and oppressed (read: always in the right), and claiming that whoever belonged to the first camp wasn’t worthy of the same rights, freedoms, and protections as the latter. Since Israel and successful “white” Jews elsewhere were a priori classified as oppressors, hating and indeed abusing them became less and less taboo.

Eve Barlow: The body keeps the score

So Wednesday. I’d spent a day in Jerusalem, a day in the South, and a day in the North by this point and on Wednesday I was on the bus coming back into Tel Aviv and I received word from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to post a video (3 minutes in length) from the Nahal Oz IDF base on October 7. And the publication was requested by the families of five female hostages - Na’ama Levy, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag and Karina Ariev. These girls are all teenagers. The video, which you can find on my Instagram account, but be warned, is perhaps the worst three minutes of footage you will ever watch. They’ve been there for over 230 days. This is just three minutes of these girls at their base when they woke up on October 7.

In the video, you see that the girls are surrounded by the bodies of their dead friends, while they are carted around by Hamas terrorists. Na’ama Levy with blood all over her face, attempting to negotiate with the terrorists by telling them “I have friends in Palestine”. Liri Albag pleading “anyone speak English?” Agam Berger with pools of blood dripping from her mouth. Daniella Gilboa being dragged outside, unable to walk properly, limping from pain. Karina Ariev cowering in a corner, looking petrified. And Hamas terrorists telling the girls that they have now referred to as sex slaves: “You are so beautiful”. Every girl knows what that feels like. To be powerless in an uncomfortable situation being told that you’re nothing but a piece of meat. Except to the world outside, these girls are not human. They can’t possibly be. Because here’s the reality: Not a single feminist, or celebrity, or non-Jewish activist posted this video. Not a single one. Nobody shared it. Nobody watched it. Nobody talked about it. Nobody acknowledged it. And once the press did, they printed that the Arabic translation was wrong. That the words used may not suggest that “these are the girls who can get pregnant” but instead the word meant “sex slave”.

Sorry what? What hairs are we splitting here? Use your eyes. We can see very clearly what has happened to these women in this video. It’s crystal clear what’s going on. And yet, no. No the mainstream media gaslights us. And then Jews started squabbling over this, which is exactly what the Islamic regime wanted. The terrorists who raped our girls are being given more grace in the mainstream media than the women they raped, who are STILL in captivity, god knows where. Keeping your sanity is an act of resistance these days. Imagine that.

Anyway the video arrives. I had seen this footage before, but it was never made public. And as I started to watch it again, something happened inside me. From my feet to just beneath my chin, I had this surge like an electrical charge go through me, and I felt like every single one of my nerve endings was on fire. This feeling didn’t leave me. When I got back to Tel Aviv, I had several calls that I missed from a dear friend who follows this newsletter and supports me in ways only a real one does, but never reads a word I write (LOL). This friend was punching a concrete wall with bare fists - such was the rage and the pain and the terror, and I spent hours just trying to soothe and calm and minimize whatever damage could result from this anguish. It wasn’t until I was on my own much later that I could sit in my own impossible feeling. A feeling that the world has failed us. Abandoned us. Sold us out for a psychotic terror regime.

Humanity demands that when terrorists invade and burn down houses and brutally murder innocents and gang rape women and children and steal hostages for more than 200 days, there is a unified global response to condemn and do everything to salvage. I have lost faith in humanity. I am no longer an atheist. I now believe in God. Not people. People are useless. Hashem, dude. You’re up.

I look at those five girls and I see me, I see my friends, I see my family. The pain and exhaustion in me at the moment is on a par with victims who suffer the most appalling abuse. Not only must I process all of this and that evidence thru the lens of my womanhood, I have to process it as a Jew carrying a fate on my shoulders that took millions of our lives including my own faceless ancestors while facing the same brand of terror in 2024, all in the knowledge that anyone of those women could have been me. And the world would line up to spit on them if they were released. I advocate knowing that the world would do the same to me if I was in their position spending unfathomable hours in a situation we can’t fully understand. I haven’t been able to take a second to myself in over eight months because there’s not enough I can do. So yes I cracked. The day after the video was released, the international courts (the ICC) attempted once more to delegitimize our efforts to safeguard our entire people from this thousands-year-old bullshit, and the key to it all is to try to drive us into such a state of psychological exhaustion and dismay that we cannot survive it.

These below taken last week on my delegation are the images you don’t see in the mainstream media. Over 100,000 Israelis displaced. Villages destroyed beyond repair. Over a thousand successful attempts at genocide. Hundreds taken hostage. A country in the throes of extreme trauma. An unimaginable devastation that was achieved in a matter of hours using the highest grades of weaponry to cause total annihilation and erasure. The first four images are taken at the car graveyard just outside the location of the Nova festival. Hundreds of people were burned alive in these cars. Imagine if this was the parking lot at Glastonbury. It will be if the chants for intifada succeed. The latter six are from kibbutz Be’eri where 10% of the community were brutally murdered in the early hours of the morning of October 7; men, women and children. And their homes looted and incinerated, not by terrorists but waves of subsequent Gazan civilians. No Palestinian state should be rewarded for these evil and inhumane acts of barbarism, but the day that video of Nahal Oz base was released: Spain, Ireland and Norway decided to recognize a state of Palestine. For shame. For shame.

The second to last image is of the medical centre in Be’eri where the medical staff were murdered protecting the injured. Similarly there’s an ambulance in the image of the parking lot, where the remains of SIXTEEN dead bodies were found — can you imagine the desperation of those festivalgoers to hide that they crammed themselves in that ambulance, sixteen of them? Did you hear these stories? No. But you did hear about claims that Israel bombed Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, which turned out to be a totally erroneous fib. The victims of October 7 were the Israelis who beleived in coexistence the most. Never ever forget that.

Usually Iranian media tries to differentiate between Jews and Zionists. But the International Quranic News Agency - only in Arabic, not in their English or Farsi editions- - goes whole-hog antisemite:

The Holy Qur’an refers to the characteristics of a group of Jews, which are characteristics that can be classified into four categories: religious, social, economic and political.

The Holy Qur’an separates between the frugal Jews and the immoral Jews. God Almighty says in verse 66 of Surat Al-Ma’idah, “Among them is a frugal nation, and many of them are evil in what they do.” Then He refers to the second category of Jews that had many negative characteristics throughout history.

The first type of negative traits are religious traits, as 26 traits can be counted according to the Holy Qur’an, including: rebellion and disobedience to the teachings of God, distortion of divine teachings, turning towards magic, disbelief in God, turning away from the path of God, killing the prophets (may God bless him and grant him peace), and other negative actions carried out by the Jews throughout history against religion.

The Holy Qur’an refers to 17 negative traits among Jews in the social sphere, including: racism, immorality, spreading corruption, hardness of heart, refraining from jihad for the sake of God, misleading Muslims, pretexting, sarcasm, hatred, and other negative traits.

As for the economic field, the Holy Qur’an described the Jews as being careful and collecting money from forbidden things and usury.

In the political field, the Holy Qur’an enumerates 18 negative characteristics of the Jews, including: provoking wars, breaking covenants, injustice, arrogance, spreading division, cowardice, and other characteristics.

That's the entire article. No caveats, no "buts," no exceptions.

In English they usually distinguish between "good Jews" and "bad Jews," but this Arabic article only divides them into different categories of bad.

So why only in Arabic?

Clearly, Iran wants to use antisemitism as a weapon against Israel, and they look upon the Arabs as the best target audience for that aim.

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!

05/28 Links Pt1: Netanyahu decries false accusations, vows victory; Is the genocide accusation antisemitic? Yes; UNRWA Is in Trouble

From Ian:

In Knesset speech, Netanyahu decries false accusations, vows victory

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday responded to attacks against the Israel Defense Forces operation in Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza.

“In Rafah, we have evacuated about one million civilians. Tragically, despite our immense efforts to avoid harming non-combatants, an incident occurred yesterday,” Netanyahu said in reference to a mass-casualty event in the city that caused international outcry.

“For us, any noncombatant hurt is a tragedy; for Hamas, it is a strategy. That is the core difference,” he added, during a speech from the Knesset rostrum.

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

The targets of the strike were named as Yassin Rabia, head of Hamas’s Judea and Samaria headquarters, and Khaled Nagar, a senior official in the terrorist group’s Judea and Samaria wing.

The IDF spokesperson said earlier that the strike, based on intelligence and executed using precision weaponry, was carried out in accordance with international law.

In his speech, Netanyahu also pushed back against allegations that he is preventing a deal that would see the return to Israel of the 125 Israeli and other nationals—dead and alive—in exchange for a pause in fighting.

“The repeated false claims that we are the obstacle are not only harmful to the families—that much is obvious, and I sympathize with them,” he said. “But it goes beyond that: It delays the release of the hostages and undermines negotiations. Instead of focusing pressure on [Hamas chief in Gaza Yahya] Sinwar, who holds the hostages in his dungeons, the pressure is misdirected at the Israeli government.”

Netanyahu continued, “Israel is constantly asked to make concession after concession. So why would Sinwar feel any pressure? He sits in his bunker, rubbing his hands in satisfaction, delighted that others are doing the work for him.”

Seth Frantzman: All eyes are focused on Rafah as IDF moves forward

Rafah itself is divided into several areas. There is a refugee camp and another densely built-up area in Rafah city itself which is kind of fans out from the border. That means that as the IDF proceeds it gets close to the center of this fan, and beyond the center it will then face the dense Rafah camp area and only after that the less densely populated area closer to the sea. All eyes are on the IDF now because it is in a complex urban area, possibly at the height of the battle for the city.

The airstrike on May 26 that led to a fire that killed Gazans in Tell Sultan took place northwest of Rafah city and overlooks the Mediterranean. It consists of several planned neighborhoods. The area closest to the sea was built over formerly Jewish communities that were evacuated in the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza.

Rafiah Yam existed near the sea on the Egyptian border. Most of the area is now used to shelter displaced people, adjoining the Mawasi safe zone where Israel has encouraged people in Gaza to relocate throughout the war.

As the IDF advances along the frontier area it will secure most of the Gaza-Egypt border. This will cut off Hamas which has used the Rafah border to control and steal humanitarian aid reaching Gaza from Egypt.

When the battle began, Hamas was thought to have four battalions of fighters in Rafah, but it appears that many have dispersed to Khan Yunis or have retreated slightly from the border.

All eyes are on this area now. The deaths of civilians on May 26 and a clash which killed an Egyptian soldier on May 27 have increased concern about what may come next. The defeat of Hamas is key. However, even when the corridor is taken, there will be a lot more areas in Rafah that may need to be cleared.

Because the IDF is focusing on the corridor itself, and some urban areas, it is conducting an operation similar to the 2003 operation. The built-up areas of Rafah city and Rafah camp are both difficult to fight in and Hamas has likely festooned homes with threats.

In Rafah the border challenge is hard enough because of the matrix of tunnels and rocket launchers. Hamas had installed the rockets fired at Tel Aviv on Sunday a while ago, and launched them apparently because the IDF had reached a few hundred meters from the launch site.

IDF vows full probe into Rafah strike, shows evidence it was not in designated safe zone

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in an English-language press conference, says the military is investigating the possibility that Hamas munitions stored in the area of a strike in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Sunday night caused a fire to spread and kill civilians.

“On Sunday, we eliminated senior Hamas terrorists in a targeted strike, on a compound used by Hamas in Rafah. The strike was based on precise intelligence that indicated that these terrorists, who were responsible for orchestrating and executing terror attacks against Israelis, were meeting inside this structure we targeted,” Hagari says.

“Sadly, following the strike, due to unforeseen circumstances, a fire ignited, taking the lives of Gazan civilians nearby. Despite our efforts to minimize civilian casualties during the strike, the fire that broke out was unexpected and unintended,” he continues.

Hagari says the deaths of the civilians in the strike is a “devastating incident, which we did not expect.” According to health authorities in Gaza, 45 people were killed.

“We are investigating what caused the fire that resulted in this tragic loss of life. An investigation is ongoing,” he says.

Showing imagery from the site, Hagari says the IDF “targeted a closed structure away from the tent area. There are no tents in the immediate vicinity.”

“Despite our efforts to minimize civilian casualties during the strike, the fire that broke out was unexpected and unintended...Our investigation seeks to determine what may have caused such a large fire to ignite.“

Watch the full statement by IDF Spokesperson RAdm. Daniel… pic.twitter.com/fzaRSnpgbE
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 28, 2024

Moses Mendelssohn Faced 18th-Century Wokeism (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

A few weeks ago, I came across an article, The Logic Puzzle You Can Only Solve with Your Brightest Friend.

I was not interested in the puzzle, but the image illustrating the article caught my eye.
It was this painting:

There was no explanation of the painting, but I recognized the person to the left, Moses Mendelssohn, the German-Jewish philosopher and theologian who lived during the 17th-century Enlightenment. He won a prize offered by the Berlin Academy for an essay on the application of mathematical proofs to metaphysics, beating out Immanuel Kant, who came in second.

According to Google Gemini, there are some points of comparison between the Enlightenment then and Wokeism today.

o Critical examination of power structures: Both movements challenge existing power structures and dominant ideologies. The Enlightenment questioned the absolute authority of the church and monarchy, while wokeism critiques social inequalities and systemic biases.

o Emphasis on equality: Both movements promote ideas of equality and justice. The Enlightenment stressed universal human rights, while wokeism focuses on social justice issues like racial equality and LGBTQ+ rights.

And, of course, there are differences:

o Universality vs. Identity: Enlightenment thinkers often believed in universal values that applied to all people. Wokeism often emphasizes identity politics and the experiences of marginalized groups.

o Tone: The Enlightenment emphasized optimism and progress. Wokeism can sometimes be seen as more critical and focused on dismantling existing systems.

You can get a sense of the Enlightenment by looking at the two other people in the picture.

Here is the complete painting:

It is by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim and is a rendition of an imaginary conversation between
Mendelssohn, Gotthold Lessing, and Johann Lavate, who were all contemporaries.

Lessing (standing in the background) was a German philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic. He was a friend of Mendelssohn and was the author of the play, Nathan The Wise, which expressed his views in favor of religious tolerance.

Johann Lavater was a Swiss poet, writer, philosopher, physiognomist, and theologian. As a physiognomist, Lavater wrote that Jewish features were a sign of “neither generosity, nor tenderness, nor elevation of mind.”

So much for enlightenment.

Lavater was, however, an admirer of Mendelssohn, and described Mendelssohn as “a companionable, brilliant soul, with piercing eyes, the body of an Aesop—a man of keen insight, exquisite taste, and wide erudition...frank and open-hearted.” I

He admired him so much that Lavater decided to convince Mendelssohn to convert to Christianity.

In 1769 Lavater read a book by the Swiss scientist and philosopher Charles Bonnet, Palingenesis. Bonnet intended his book for Christians, to strengthen their belief in the immortality of the soul. But Lavater saw the book as a proof of Christianity addressed to non-Christians. Lavater translated parts of the book from French into German and published it as Investigation of the Proofs for Christianity.

He went further and wrote a dedication to Mendelssohn, challenging him to either refute Bonnet’s argument or do “what Socrates would have done if he had read [Bonnet’s work] and found it irrefutable.”

That put Mendelssohn in a bind, comparable to what the Ramban faced in 1263 when he was required to defend Judaism in a public debate with church officials. In that debate, Ramban had to win without at the same time denigrating Christianity. But for Mendelssohn, winning would require refuting the proofs in Bonnet's book and by definition could be seen as an insult to Christianity. And just refusing to respond to the challenge would be just as bad as a loss, calling the sincerity of Mendelssohn's commitment to Judaism into question.

In the end, Mendelssohn wrote an open letter to Lavater:

In the letter, he turns the tables on Lavater by contrasting Lavater’s intolerant Christianity with tolerant Judaism. For Mendelssohn, while Christianity is a missionizing religion, according to which the only way to go to heaven is by believing in the divinity of Jesus, Judaism does not seek converts. Instead, it holds that anyone can go to heaven who observes the universal laws of rational morality, called the “Noahide laws.”

At the end of the letter, Mendelssohn notes that although he has avoided responding to Bonnet’s arguments out of concern for the deleterious effects of such a critique—both to himself and to society as a whole—he had written a response to Bonnet’s arguments in the form of a document called “Counter-Reflections to Bonnet’s Palingenesis,” which, if pressed, he would publish.

That was the end of the matter. A few years later, in 1775, when the Swiss-German Jews faced expulsion, Mendelssohn was able to intervene by turning to Lavater, who secured their stay.

Lavater's plan was mild compared with what Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev had in mind a century later. A Russian statesman and jurist, Pobedonostsev was famous for his formula for how to deal with the Jews of Russia -- and conversion was not one of the options:

One-third will die, one third will leave the country, and the last third will be completely assimilated within the Russian people.

Just as anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and mirrors it, today enemies of Israel have taken up the advice of Pobedonostsev and applied it to Israel --

Some enemies of Israel seek to attack and kill Israelis, seeking a two-state solution to facilitate that.
Others claim that the Jews of Israel should leave and return to Poland.
And then some suggest a one-state solution under which Israel would cease to exist.

In his day, Mendelssohn faced challenges presented in the name of enlightenment.
Those pale in comparison to what Jews face today in the name of wokeism.

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I really don't like Nazi analogies, but..it sure feels like 1935

Before the current war, I had always resisted analogies between today's flavor of antisemitism to the 1930s. But now when I browse old newspapers, I cannot help but feel that the events today are echoes of what happened then.

Here is the top of page 7 of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 16, 1935.

Each of those three stories has its own "rhymes" today in the supposedly enlightened West.

The first story, "Fight on Jews Will Continue, says Streicher" starts off with

Julius Stretcher, spearhead of Germany's anti-Semitic drive, bitterly assailed Jews tonight and announced the Nazi fight against them will “continue until all humanity understands the problem"

The same crazed hate that Nazis have for Jews is the hate we are seeing throughout the world for "Zionists." As in 1935, anti-Zionists feel an almost mystical obligation to convert the world to their noxious viewpoints.

Just as the campus encampments physically blocked Zionist Jews from approaching, and blacklists are now being created of writers and celebrities celebrities who are not sufficiently anti-Zionist, Streicher railed against German women who slept with Jews and supported publicly shaming and "canceling" them to discourage any interaction with Jews.

His widely heralded speech was a rambling one. It was wildly applauded by 23,000 listeners in the huge Berlin Sportspalast while Jews remained in seclusion.

Stretcher said “If we lead a woman who has forgotten her racial obligations through the city, the wife of the American ambassador gets exalted about it." His reference was to an incident In Nurnberg when a woman was led through the streets with a placard announcing she was a “racial traitor"

“Present at the time this incident occurred,” Streicher said, “was I believe the wife of the American ambassador who was shocked. The American press said that in Nurnberg Jews and girls were led through the streets dth placards ‘racial traitor' on their breasts. "

“God created different races so they would not mix," Streicher shouted ,“else he would have created one mixed race In the beginning." Legal steps, he warned, will be taken to end mixed marriages, branding any German girl who “gives herself to a Jew” as "lost to the German race.

The Jewish question, he asserted, is so serious it is a millennial question. "If humanity can't solve it humanity will decay."

I cannot find any difference in the level of hate and vitriol between Streicher's hate of Jews and today's "progressive" opinion of Zionists. Both go way, way beyond criticism, but both frame themselves as logical and reasonable protection against a global danger.

The second story is even more similar to today. It was written by Henry Haskell about how the Nazi party destroyed German universities by imposing its own racial theories on all scholarly fields.

Before the war Germany was supreme In the realm of scholarly research. It was the ambition of every energetic young American looking forward to an academic career to get his PhD from a German university. Naturally the effects of the pressure of the Nazi regime on scholarship are of concern to the world.

Briefly, free scholarly research in important fields of German universities is dead.

The faculties have been purged of many distinguished scholars wpo were objectionable personally to the regime. A few Jewish professors are left, but most of them have followed Einstein into exile. Known liberals, especially those affiliated with the liberal or radical parties, have been displaced.

...At last year's session of the great German conference of psychologists the papers read discussed such subjects as “National Socialist Ideology" and “The Structure of the Aryan Folk State.”

Haskell asked a German expert on about what was happening, and how all fields are affected.

"...Naturally there la little room for the sort of free scholarly research we have had In the past... Medical research, anatomy and physiology, must be concerned with the science of breeding a pure race and with investigating the effects of race mixtures The field of comparative religion must be investigated from the new viewpoint. Leadership as you know it a fundamental party principle and so in theology ws have lectures on ‘The Leadership Principle In the New Testament,’ The Leadership Idea in Early Christianity,' ‘Christianity and Race ‘Leadership Figures in Church History’

“Philosophy and psychology musi reconsider all their fundamental principles and you yourself have mentioned the Aryan and non-Aryan conflict in mathematics The relation of literature to the Aryan idea is obvious."

We are seeing this being played out today. No subject is too far afield for an anti-Zionist perspective to be included, and this is done deliberately. And not only in academia, but in places like children's books, recipe books, poetry, plays - the list is endless.

The third article discusses a pro-Nazi conference that was to be held in New York City but was moved when the hotel refused to display the Nazi flag.

The organizers ridiculed the idea that they are antisemitic, because, they said, they had "plenty of Jews" as members.

Just as today's antisemites can point to "Jewish Voice for Peace" to pretend that they don't hate Jews, so did the German Americans who were proud of the Nazi government.

No analogy is perfect, but the feeling one gets when reading these articles is that we are in danger of this happening all over again.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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