Friday, May 31, 2024

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Does Biden reject Israel’s right to self-defense?
The most basic function of all governments is to provide for the collective defense of the governed. The most basic foundation of sovereignty is a state’s right to defend its country from aggression. Take away a state’s right to self-defense, and you’ve effectively transformed it into a non-sovereign state.

Six Biden administration actions and policies subvert Israel’s right to self-defense. Whether analysed separately or all together, they make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the administration’s ultimate end is to undermine to the point of ending Israel’s right to self-defense, and so end Israel’s sovereignty, for all intents and purposes.

The six policies the administration is undertaking relate to the battle in Rafah, Gaza’s border town with Egypt; its posture vis-à-vis the International Criminal Court amidst the ICC’s stated intention of issuing arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders on false war crimes charges; the administration’s effort to coerce Israel into accepting Palestinian Authority control over post-war Gaza as a stepping stone towards the swift establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem; the administration’s policies in relation to Saudi-Israeli normalization; and finally, the administration’s determination to block Israel from taking any effective action to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal.

Rafah
Sunday, the IDF carried out an airstrike targeting two senior Hamas terrorists in Rafah. Some 45 people Hamas asserts were civilians were also killed in the bombing. Immediately after the incident, the administration harshly criticized Israel for the operation. Vice President Kamala Harris said “the word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe” the loss of human life in the incident. Other senior officials voiced similar revulsion at Israel’s alleged killing of innocent civilians as a result of its killing of two senior terrorists. The U.S. State Department announced it would investigate the incident, which it referred to as “heartbreaking.”

Within moments of the airstrike, IDF forces on the ground were reporting that the fire that caused the deaths of the additional Palestinians was sparked by a secondary explosion. Early assessments were that the explosion was caused by Hamas rockets hidden adjacent to the encampment.

It was also clear, immediately after the bombing, that the operation was not carried out in a humanitarian safe zone, as Hamas alleged. At Israel’s urging, in recent weeks nearly a million residents of Rafah fled to the zones, which the IDF set up to protect them from the crossfire of battle. The bombing was carried out in the war zone, where civilians had already left.

It was also known immediately after the incident that the Air Force used the smallest ordnance permitted to limit to the greatest degree the possibility of the attack causing additional deaths beyond the two terror commanders Israel targeted.

In the two days after the incident, the IDF released intercepted phone conversations between people on the ground who stated outright that the fire in the tents that caused the additional deaths was the result of a secondary explosion of Hamas munitions. Israel played no role in the carnage. Hamas was entirely responsible for everything that had happened.

Given the fact that Israel’s careful prosecution of the war has led to the smallest ratio of civilians to militants killed in the history of modern war, its ally, the United States, could have been expected to give it the benefit of the doubt and not rush to pile on international condemnations of the Jewish state based entirely on Hamas footage and propaganda.

But the fact is that for months, Washington did everything possible to block Israel from carrying out its vital operation in Rafah, knowing all along that Israel cannot defeat Hamas if it leaves the international border under Hamas’s control. The administration’s latest effort to delegitimize Israel’s operation in Rafah by embracing Hamas’s quickly discredited rendition of events follows the administration’s now-established pattern of undermining the operation.
Douglas Murray: International Criminal Court runs wild, threatening Israel and anyone who criticizes it
The ICC is not just threatening US senators. It is saying they are already criminals in the eyes of the ICC prosecutor. Making the ICC effectively impossible to criticize.

An almost divine institution.

Criticize the ICC and you become a war criminal-in-waiting too, apparently.

Well, the puffed-up prosecutor might note several things.

Not least that the USA is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

And so, threatening US senators with a statute that the US does not recognize is as scary as threatening someone with your imaginary black belt in karate.

But all this should be a reminder of a serious truth.

In recent decades, there have been repeated pushes to make America join the court.

There has been much international criticism of this country for not coming under the court’s jurisdiction.

But America was completely right not to do so.

And the response of the prosecutor to the senators is a fine example of why.

The ICC’s current case is being backed up by such luminaries as Amal Clooney, who has a career-long dislike of the state of Israel, and whose involvement in the case against Israel reveals that hatred.

If Americans don´t think that senators, soldiers or anyone else should be threatened by Amal Clooney and a couple of rogue foreign judges, they are right.

But our allies shouldn’t be subjected to this either.

I hope Americans continue to tell these pompous political judges where to sling it.
A Progressive Pogrom – Of Shani Louk, Jean Améry, and the anti-Zionist left
I cannot join the protesters on the barricades for the elemental reason that too many of them have explicitly sanctioned the murder of my friends. Pretty basic stuff really. If faced with Columbia student protest leader Khymani James, in fact, it would be as much self-interest as fraternal solidarity which caused me to run. For James would murder me, too. ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live,’ you see. James assures us that ‘I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill,’ but I am not much mollified by the thought that my end would be quick. The Columbia disciplinary panel to which James spoke these words was apparently rather less concerned than I, since they acted only when the clip went viral.

Show me a protest which hates the war and Hamas in equal measure; which seeks desperately a free Palestine alongside a secure Israel; which is possessed of a moral clarity and a belief in the sanctity of all innocent life: I will be there, placard in hand, in a heartbeat. There has been no such protest because there is no anti-war left presently capable of it. A note to them: if you want to see how it is done, follow the extraordinary exiled Gazan writer Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. Alkhatib has so far lost 31 members of his extended family to the war and manages to hate and protest it while also inveighing against the evils of Hamas, consequently making many enemies amongst other supposed proponents of the Palestinian cause who would justify 7 October. His is a truly moral position.

A LEFT THAT CAN ACCOUNT FOR SHANI
The road to this squalid reaction to 7 October has been a long one, with many a disastrous turn leading the far left into ever more dangerous and bankrupt territory. It is what happens when dogma becomes more fashionable than critical thought; when radicalism trumps reason; when the antidote to Orientalism is taken to be Occidentalism; when the counter to cultural imperialism is moral relativism; when it is ‘better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron’; when Foucault decides, for us all, that Iranian women and Iranian democrats can go to hell – the Ayatollah is, after all, just too damned exciting.

Yes, the present swamp was fed by myriad fetid tributaries. So too does it inevitably become more and more contaminated. Generations raised on blather masquerading as profundity and on nihilism masquerading as radical chic. This next generation has far exceeded Butler in both irrationality and the explicitness of its contempt for Israeli life. Butler at least offered a condemnation of 7 October, of sorts (though it was still ‘armed resistance’, not ‘terrorism’) only to find that the beast they have played a not inconsiderable part in creating now considered them rather a copout. And your sons and your daughters are beyond your command…

Yes, the left of the 21st century needed the children of Victor Serge and Sophie Scholl, of Dr King and Nye Bevan. In too many places has it received instead the children of Nechayev and Che, of Mao and Ulrike Meinhof. For many this treason has led to a self-imposed exile, an auto-excommunication from the left. For me, as for Améry before me, this is impossible. Whether we are capable of a consequential renaissance remains to be seen. It is a Sisyphean task and one which 7 October has shown us cannot be left to the gatekeepers. No, as Améry noted, ‘the answer must come not so much from those who hold positions of responsibility but primarily from those possessed of an actual sense of responsibility.’ Go with Orwell, if you prefer, and that the answer lies with the proles.

The wait may be a long one. In the meantime, I would encourage the emerging leftist who senses something wrong in all this but is not quite sure where to start, to begin by adapting the famous proposition of Rabbi Greenberg. After the holocaust, said the Rabbi, ‘No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children.’ Well, henceforth, brook no statement from the left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would not be credible if uttered on that truck with Shani. It is the best – perhaps it is all – you can do for her now.






















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  • Friday, May 31, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
Story 1:

The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival banned a Jewish artist on Saturday following backlash from anti-Israel activists about her participation in the exhibition due to her past service in the IDF.

VanCAF issued an “accountability statement” after Jewish nonfiction and autobiographical comics artist Miriam Libicki participated in the May 18–19 festival.

In 2008, Libicki published a graphic novel about serving in the IDF, which the festival described as recounting her “personal position in the said military and the illegal occupation of Palestine.”

“The oversight and ignorance to allow this exhibitor in the festival, not only this year but in 2022 as well, fundamentally falls in absolute disregard to all of our exhibiting artists, attendees, and staff, especially those who are directly affected by the ongoing genocide in Palestine and Indigenous community members alike,” said VanCAF. “This exhibitor will not be permitted to return to the festival.”

The festival assured that it would revise its policies and submission guidelines and adhere to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott [BDS] of Israel’s guidelines.

Story 2:

An incendiary device was thrown at the front doors of a Vancouver synagogue on Thursday evening, causing minor damage and no injuries, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver announced.

The Vancouver Police Department and Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services conducted a search of the Schara Tzedek synagogue after the arson attack damaged the building's entrance at around 9:30 p.m., according to the Federation, and the emergency services declared the site safe for use.

Law enforcement is reportedly still investigating the incident and has increased patrols around local Vancouver Jewish institutions. The Federation said that it was contacting and advising Jewish institutions to remain vigilant and follow security protocols.

 Nah, a complete coincidence that an epicenter of anti-Israel hate in Canada is also a scene of classic antisemitic hate.

(There were also two incidents of shooting at Jewish schools in Canada over the past week, in Montreal and Toronto.)





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  • Friday, May 31, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
This week, the Gaza health ministry issued its first report since early May. 

It shows both the number of fatalities that it "verifies" as well as the number with "incomplete data" that is issued by Hamas. 

Comparing this report with the one from a month ago, it counted 656 deaths in Gaza this month. But the Hamas figures show 1,517 - more than double the number with documentation, and 861 deaths that have no documentation at all. 

It isn't like there were any major airstrikes this month with hundreds of people under the rubble who cannot be identified. It is just that Hamas routinely makes up numbers and the ministry of health dutifully publishes them as fact.

Currently, 10,824 of the 36,171 deaths Hamas claims - 30% of them - do not have documentation. And this is after the health ministry has been trying to get Gazans to upload casualty information online, so if anything, the number of undocumented deaths should be decreasing, not increasing. 

Unlike previous reports, it does not break down the statistics of women, children and elderly, so we cannot know how much Hamas exaggerated those numbers this month. 

The report, which used to be 45 pages long, is only 8 pages long now. 

We have been seeing reports of particularly heavy fighting this month.  From news reports, one would think that the number of casualties in May have been higher than we've seen in months. Yet even according to the inflated Hamas numbers, fewer Gazans have been killed this month than for any month since the war started, and those numbers have been steadily decreasing.


If the fighting is heavier and the death toll is going down, that means that Israel is getting better every month at reducing the number of civilians killed in the most difficult type of urban warfare where the enemy deliberately places civilians in harm's way.





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  • Friday, May 31, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon

From AP:

Israel could have used smaller weapons against Hamas to avoid deaths in Gaza tent fire, experts say
...Even the smallest jet-launched munition may be too big when civilians are near because of how they explode and can send fragments far, defense experts said.

Based on images and satellite photos of the debris field, two defense experts said the bombs used were likely U.S.-made 250-pound (113-kilogram) GBU-39 small-diameter bombs.

Though they're smaller than many other weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel, these bombs can still create a wide swath of damage. The entire 250-pound shell and components are designed to spew fragments that can travel as far as 2,000 feet (600 meters).

“You essentially have two bombs they use that the fragments can travel 600 meters in a densely packed area. So that just doesn’t check out if they’re trying to limit casualties,” said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance demolition technician.

 The GBU-39 is known as the SDB - Small Diameter Bomb. As far as I can tell, it is the smallest bomb available for deployment by fighter jets. It was designed specifically to minimize collateral damage.  It carries only 17 kilograms of explosives. 

I have no idea where this "expert" got the information that the GBU-39 can send fragments 2000 feet away. The blast radius for the bomb is generally known to be 26 feet, Videos I've seen show it is used to destroy objects the size of trucks, not ships. 

Perhaps some fragments can anomalously travel a couple of hundred feet, but to say they are "designed" to spew fragments 2000 feet is an out and out lie. 

To give perspective, the "kill radius" of a modern hand grenade is 16 feet. That means that the GBU-39 blast radius is about equivalent to three hand grenades (2,200 square feet.)  

If the GBU-39 is the smallest bomb possible to launch from the air, then what else could Israel do to eliminate Hamas leaders?

One expert answers:

Israel, for example, in this strike could have used a smaller anti-personnel weapon called the mini-Spike, which would not have created as wide an area of debris, if it was targeting specific Hamas leaders, Cancian said.

I do not pretend to be a military expert by any means. But the mini-Spike is a weapon carried by a soldier on the ground and has a range of only 1,200 meters. Were there IDF soldiers, equipped with mini-Spikes, within 1,200 meters of the target, ready and waiting to deploy? Doesn't that seem improbable? 

When intelligence comes in about high value targets that can move, an army prioritizes killing them while they know where they are and doesn't have the luxury to come up with elaborate alternative plans that might have a slightly lower chance of collateral damage.

This armchair quarterbacking is absurd. These "experts" know next to nothing about what the actual, in the moment battlefield conditions were that made Israel apparently choose a GBU-39 as the best weapon at that point in time. 

Maybe the people interviewed are experts in explosives, but they know nothing about real-time targeting decisions. Real military experts praise Israel in that arena.

From everything we know, the civilians nearby were not killed by debris from the bomb but from the fire that was ignited by secondary explosions of Hamas munitions. The people were killed by a fire ignited by Hamas explosives, not Israeli bombs!  This is not even mentioned in the AP article. Anticipating such a result is the domain of psychics. The actual facts of the incident destroy the entire premise of the article. After all, even a single bullet could have accidentally set off Hamas explosives, too. 

Beyond that, the entire article is written with the implication that if there were a couple of civilians "scattered" nearby then Israel should not have shot the Hamas leaders at all. Yet under international law, if the value of the target is high enough, the attackers are absolutely allowed to target it even with civilian casualties. AP and the "experts" are demanding a standard for Israel than no army in history has ever achieved, and that no army in history has ever been expected to achieve. 

To write an entire article like this applying double standards to only Israel is not analysis - it is antisemitic libel.




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Thursday, May 30, 2024

From Ian:

Israel’s Great Strategic Failure
It has become conventional wisdom after Oct. 7 that Israel for years had the wrong policy toward Gaza. While the unfathomable catastrophe of that day has rightly forced a critical examination of all the factors that led to it, it’s arguable that Israel’s broad pre-Oct. 7 policy toward Gaza, in contrast to its strategic conception and military preparation, was at least understandable, if not correct. In contrast, there has been less criticism of Israel’s policy toward Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past two decades. Not only does the policy toward the northern front raise even more troubling questions than Gaza, but also, now more than ever, it looks like a major strategic failure.

Ever since Hamas took control of Gaza by force in 2007, Israel has fought several small wars with the genocidal terrorist organization, in response to rocket attacks from the Strip: in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021. There were also shorter Israeli military campaigns against the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in 2022 and 2023. In each of these conflicts, Israel would have been justified to enter Gaza and destroy Hamas in self-defense, but never felt so compelled—until Oct. 7.

It has been frequently reported that Israel, or at least its military intelligence agency, had a faulty strategic conception, the so-called “konceptzia,” that Hamas was deterred for now and more focused on governing Gaza than on attacking Israel. Many pundits in the Israeli and American media, who are overwhelmingly hostile to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, contend he was driven to prop up Hamas over the years with the help of Qatari money in order to divide the Palestinians and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Netanyahu, who has waged several wars against Hamas, has repeatedly denied this claim. While there have been plenty of leaks in the media already, Israeli military and government probes are expected to reveal what the military intelligence’s konceptzia was, what was motivating Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders, and what contributed to the IDF inadequately preparing for, and/or ignoring signals of, a major Hamas attack.

In the meantime, it’s worth exploring why Israel did not invade Gaza and uproot Hamas from power years ago, based on the premise that Oct. 7 was not inevitable.

The threat from Gaza, however challenging, appeared increasingly manageable to most Israeli military and civilian leaders, despite the short wars with Hamas and PIJ. This misplaced confidence appears to have been partly driven by an overreliance on technology and missile defense. The 2011 deployment of Iron Dome, Israel’s 90%-plus-effective, short-range air defense system, seemingly minimized the rocket threat. With Iron Beam—a laser version that will be at the very least a powerful supplement to Iron Dome—soon to be deployed, Israel believed it was poised to have an even better counter to rockets fired from Gaza. One Israeli military expert told me a few years ago that once Iron Beam was deployed Israel won’t care what happens inside Gaza.

Hamas’ subterranean (tunnel) threat, which already seemed significant a decade ago, was thought neutralized with the installation along the border of underground sensors and barriers. Israel also believed it had neutralized the threat of a land invasion by installing an expensive fence with sensors and cameras. Moreover, the Israeli Air Force continued to operate at will in Gaza, often successfully killing Hamas and PIJ commanders and destroying terrorist infrastructure with precision strikes.

Secure in the belief that these measures had militarily neutralized the Hamas threat, Israel’s civilian and military leaders were mostly averse to destroying Hamas and removing it from power in Gaza.

Israel remained loath to reoccupy Gaza, which it occupied in 1967 and from which it withdrew in 2005, out of concern that any attempt to do so would result in significant Israeli military casualties. Worse, it would bog Israel down in an unwanted occupation of Palestinians in what was viewed as a secondary or tertiary theater compared to the far more potent and immediate threat of Hezbollah to its north and Iran’s nuclear program. Also, Israel had tried its hand at shaping domestic Arab political arrangements in Lebanon in 1982, where it failed spectacularly, and its leaders opposed trying it again ever since. Further, Israeli leaders understood that such an effort in Gaza would be met by fierce international opposition. Indeed, it faced such opposition every time it launched a military campaign in retaliation for Hamas or PIJ firing rockets.

Moreover, when it comes to who could or would responsibly rule Gaza post-Hamas without threatening Israel, there simply never were serious candidates. Egypt did not want Gaza back after losing it to Israel in the 1967 war. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wisely sought every inch of Sinai and not one inch of Gaza in Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel four decades ago. After the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) spectacular rout at the hands of Hamas two years after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli governments increasingly doubted they could rely on the PA to govern the Strip. The PA’s endemic mismanagement, corruption, and radicalism helped spawn overwhelming support for Hamas among its West Bank populace, and its financial rewarding of terrorism is especially anathema to the Israeli political right.
Live by the Law or Die on the Cross
Israel must stop pretending it is a nation like any other

The Jews do not venerate the image of a more-divine-than-usual human who achieved an abstract victory for all of humanity by dying horribly. And because we do not, we cannot accept the Western exhortation to be suicidally gentle with our enemies in order to receive a Christian burial on their “moral high ground.”

There are many things about the Jewish state, both as it currently is and as the Torah imagines it could be, that meet the loftiest ideals of the liberal, crypto-Christian West. Jews by and large love living in the liberal, secular West because our culture has great intuitive affection for freedom of speech and conscience, as well as the need for each unique individual to be given the freedom to discover his God-given purpose.

But as a reflection of the oneness of the God described therein, the Torah is obstinately balanced when it comes to simple principles. It insists on justice, but makes room for mercy. It cherishes human life, but acknowledges deadly violence can be correct. It sees all people as created in the image of God, but it commands the nation of Israel to play a unique priestly role, through example rather than through world-dominating force, in leading the world to greater knowledge and service of God.

Put into practice in 2024, this means that Israel must stop pretending it is a nation like any other, begging to be judged fairly by whatever standards the current hegemon has decreed we all agree upon. We need to look for standards from within our tradition to set a moral example for the whole world, while making it more practically possible to defend our homeland.

Instead of bragging about the extra danger our soldiers experience for the sake of sparing enemy noncombatants, we should reject the premise that we Jews bear any responsibility for protecting the human shields employed by our enemy.

Instead of threatening Jews with arrest for praying on the Temple Mount, we should take a hint from the “Al-Aqsa” moniker our attackers gave to their day of savage invasion and let kohanim up there on the hill to slaughter lambs for Passover.

And above all—given that land is nearly all that matters to this death-worshipping foe—instead of repeatedly withdrawing troops from areas we have just taken over so we can deny having unchristian territorial ambitions, we should conquer, annex, and resettle parts of Gaza so that Jews and friendly gentiles both can live there safely.

If our own, unsurpassably subtle ethical tradition guides us to these policies, then it is only our lingering ideological subjugation to the Western tradition that makes them seem scandalous. Like the Jew among nations, Israel constantly struggles with its half-successful attempt to blend in with the crowd and pretend to be a member like any other, and it is time to put an end to this paralyzing charade. We did not stick to our Law through 3,000 years of human civilization to continue national life as the perpetual defendant. It is our job to know that Law, to teach what we know—and, most of all, to live by it.
UNRWA Head Demonstrates Moral Bankruptcy in Whiny New York Times Op-Ed
How do children react when they are caught red-handed? They blame someone else and cry.

Which is exactly what the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) did on Thursday (May 30), in an op-ed published by The New York Times.

In the article, titled “Israel Must Stop Its Campaign Against UNRWA,” Philippe Lazzarini whines that his organization is under attack by the Jewish state, which has accused it of having links to Gaza terror groups.

The gist of his over-simplistic argument, that omits Hamas as the real target of Israel’s war effort, is as follows: UNRWA is attacked by vicious Israelis for no reason, and the world must do something about it.

Related Reading: Media Outlets Continue To Conceal the Appalling Truth About UNRWA

In his own dramatic words, it sounds like Israel’s war aim is to target and harass innocent UNRWA employees and not Hamas terrorists:
As I write this, our agency has verified that at least 192 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza. More than 170 UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed. UNRWA-run schools have been demolished.
Israeli officials are not only threatening the work of our staff and mission, they are also delegitimizing UNRWA by effectively characterizing it as a terrorist organization.
How can this be possible? Where is the international outrage? Its absence is a license to disregard the United Nations and opens the door to impunity and chaos.
While Israel has long been hostile to UNRWA, following the abhorrent attacks of Oct. 7 it unleashed a campaign to equate UNRWA with Hamas and depict the agency as promoting extremism.


All of the above allows Lazzarini to deflect criticism and avoid holding himself and his organization accountable in the face of Israeli allegations.

While he refers to the dozen UNRWA employees who have been accused by Israel of participating in the October 7 massacre, he treads lightly: He says that UNRWA investigates Israel’s allegations but at the same time creates the impression of a false dichotomy between the organization and its employees.

In fact, he ignores evidence suggesting that UNRWA has become a Hamas front:
Israel has said that 190 UNRWA employees, including teachers, have doubled as Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists.
Israel uncovered a Hamas facility under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
The IDF regularly releases data showing that Hamas terrorists use UNRWA schools in Gaza.
UN Watch exposed that 3,000 UNRWA teachers were in a Telegram group that celebrated the October 7 attack.

Why does Lazzarini not address these allegations head-on in an apologetic op-ed?

Interestingly, in his frenzy to attack Israel, he seems to admit that Hamas uses UNRWA facilities in Gaza.
  • Thursday, May 30, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.




I'll Testify At The ICC That Israel Killed Me By Starvation  
by Muhammad al-Masri, Gaza resident

Rafah, May 30 - Sometimes life surprises you with opportunities on a scale you never thought possible. I thought my little self could never contribute in any significant way to a larger cause, but that has changed: I can form an instrumental piece of the world-changing criminal proceedings against Israeli leaders if called as a witness to the proposed charges against their prime minister and minister of defense. I hereby offer to be called as just such a witness in The Hague, to the effect that those men and their military knowingly and by design deprived me and my family of food until we died.

My family will also testify, if necessary. We're waiting here in an Israeli-made refugee safe zone outside Rafah, in case you need to reach us.

It was horrible! Starting long before October 7, when Gaza was an open-air prison under harsh blockade, we had plenty of access to all the food and luxury restaurants the heart desires. But now Israel has destroyed that paradise, and only allows in hundreds of trucks per day, meaning that the quantity of food that enters the territory now is a paltry 1.5 times the amount we had before the genocide.

We died in late November. Then again in January and April. It was horrible! Local independent media can confirm this in multiple video clips that made their way around social media. Please ignore any lack of resemblance between the skeletal corpses in the images and our appearance in other, concurrent materials, and any non-skeletal appearances we have in those other media.

Also please disregard the parts of the videos labeled "Syria," "Yemen," or "Sudan." We had a hard time cropping them out during post-production, being dead of starvation and all.

Not that the application for an arrest warrant addresses this specifically, so my testimony in its regard might not prove strictly necessary, but I am also willing to testify that the IDF fatally shot me and three of my sons during the Gaza border demonstrations a few years ago. My sons might be unavailable, though, come to think of it. Something about "Sabaya" women. the point is, they might be busy. But my wife will testify she was raped by Israeli soldiers, which is why I had to have her killed to preserve the family's honor.

Her brother Anas did it, but then he, too, fell victim, crushed under the rubble of an Israeli bomb. He was also burned to death after that, by white phosphorus, He can testify as well. Just call us!




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

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From Ian:

Why we fight
It would appear that Hamas’s amen chorus is worried about having to face the truth of their evil deeds and intentions. The recently released horrifying video of the confessions of a Hamas father and son, who on Oct. 7, together with a cousin, gang-raped a woman and murdered her is nearly impossible to watch. So is the video depicting a group of handcuffed young women kidnapped on Oct. 7 being referred to as sex slaves by their disgusting Hamas captors. But these videos ignited the moral conscience of many.

To the hideous Oct. 7 deniers and others suffering from the Goebbels Syndrome: Watch these videos and end your moral malaise.

Efforts to propagate false narratives are failing because the truth is coming out and it will triumph. The overwhelming majority of the American people are not buying into the propaganda generated by Hamas and American supporters.

The good people of America are waking up and rejecting the evil that is Hamas and its repugnant sponsor the terrorist Iranian regime. Some 79% of Americans polled in the latest Harvard-Harris poll rightly support Israel in the war started by Hamas. 69% correctly believe Israel is seeking to minimize civilian casualties. 78% agree that Hamas must be eliminated. 74% favor Israel proceeding with its Rafah operation and finishing off Hamas. The poll also showed a nuanced understanding of what a ceasefire means to the American people. 66% oppose a ceasefire unless the hostages are released and Hamas is removed from power.

Interestingly, even the International Court of Justice didn’t wholly buy Hamas’s propaganda. It didn’t outright order a halt in military operations in Rafah. Its order stated that Israel should “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.”

Thus, the order was qualified and may be interpreted to apply only to those military operations in Rafah that may inflict such “conditions of life” on the Palestinians. In essence, Israel can continue with military operations so long as Israel complies with international law, which Israel is doing anyway. It is reported that a number of the ICJ judges support this interpretation.

It’s time for Israel to enlist a prominent Hollywood director like Steven Spielberg to make a documentary that uses documentary footage of the horrible events of Oct. 7 to explain why Israel is fighting the evil that is Hamas.

Israel is winning its just and legal defensive ground war against Hamas. It can win the PR war, too.
Melanie Phillips: The Rafah blood libel
Israeli jets had used two small bombs to minimise civilian casualties. The IDF said it had taken steps ahead of the attack to ensure that no women or children were in the Hamas compound. The strike took place more than 100 metres away from the shelters that caught fire.

So what actually happened?

Earlier, Israeli officials told the Biden administration that shrapnel from the strike may have ignited a nearby fuel tank. Further information that has come to light, however, suggests that the tents were actually ignited by Hamas munitions.

This video footage, reportedly filmed by a Gaza resident in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli strike and obtained by the website Abu Ali Express, features an onlooker saying that what was hit was a Hamas Jeep “filled with ammo and weapons,” and he expressed a worry that “any moment a [Hamas] rocket can fly at us…”

The IDF says it now suspects that ammunition, weapons, or some other inflammatory material was stored in the area of the strike, causing a secondary blast and the fire that spread to the civilian tents.

The IDF has released an intercepted conversation between two Gazans suggesting that an ammunition store in the area had ignited. The first speaker says:
… and they say that they (the Hamas terrorists that were bombed) sat in a meeting and that there is a facility and in addition they had ammunition because all of the ammunition that started exploding. Bags of money were flying in the air, Abu Rafiq.

Second speaker:
These (the ammunition that exploded) were really ours?’

First speaker:
Yes, this is an ammunition warehouse. I tell you it exploded….I mean the Jewish bombing wasn’t strong, it was a small missile because it didn’t create a large hole.

Second speaker:
And afterwards a lot of secondary explosions.

The IDF has also released a satellite photo of the area indicating that there was at least one Hamas rocket launcher near the compound that was bombed.

So since this was not the designated humanitarian area, why were any civilian tents in this danger zone? Possibly these Gazans had been forced to remain there by Hamas; we don’t know. And we don’t yet know all the details of what actually happened, which await an Israeli military inquiry.

What’s now clear, however, is that Hamas was once again using Gazan civilians as canon fodder and human shields by situating amongst them terrorist leaders, rocket launchers and ammunition — incorporating civilians into what international law regards as legitimate military targets.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the fire as “a tragic mishap”. Not, note, a “mistake”, as some media outlets have wrongly reported him as saying — which would have meant Israel erroneously bombed civilians. This was an event that was as unforeseeable as it was terrible. It was not Israel’s fault.

But of course, it has been turned into yet another weapon with which to demonise Israel by those wishing for its destruction, including the western media which promotes murderous blood libels about Israel as facts.
Seth Mandel: Israel Is Doing What Biden Asked of It
On Wednesday, however, one more piece of evidence came to light, like shrapnel flying into the debate. According to the New York Times: “Munition debris filmed at the strike location the next day was remnants from a GBU-39, a bomb designed and manufactured in the United States, The Times found. U.S. officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.”

So the strike was carried out by American weapons the Israelis were specifically directed to use because they are best able to avoid civilian casualties. Seen in this light, the administration’s lukewarm but disapproving tone—that Israel must do more to limit civilian casualties—isn’t quite as generous as it first appeared to be.

It turns out it’s very difficult to micromanage a war. Biden told Israel to come up with a mass-evacuation plan for Rafah. Israel did so. He demanded the Israelis expand humanitarian aid. They did so. He demanded the IDF use every piece of technology available to prosecute the Rafah incursion with precision instead of power. The IDF has done so.

The only question left is whether members of the administration, as well as our allies in Europe, really do support Israel’s mission to defeat Hamas. This is no longer an argument over means and methods to reach a shared goal. There are no more nits to pick. Israel has done everything we have asked of it. The president should say so.
  • Thursday, May 30, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon



Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei wrote to American student protesters. Here are excerpts:
Dear university students in the United States of America, this message is an expression of our empathy and solidarity with you. As the page of history is turning, you are standing on the right side of it.

You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government's ruthless pressure—a government which openly supports the usurper and brutal Zionist regime.

The greater Resistance Front which shares the same understandings and feelings that you have today, has been engaged in the same struggle for many years in a place far from you. The goal of this struggle is to put an end to the blatant oppression that the brutal Zionist terrorist network has inflicted on the Palestinian nation for many years.
....

The United States government and its allies refused to even frown upon this state terrorism and ongoing oppression. And today, some remarks by the US government regarding the horrific crimes taking place in Gaza are more hypocritical than real.

The Resistance Front emerged from this dark environment of despair, and the establishment of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran expanded and fortified it.

The global Zionist elite – who owns most US and European media corporations or influences them through funding and bribery – has labeled this courageous, humane resistance movement as "terrorism".

...The oppressive leaders of global hegemony mercilessly distort even the most basic human concepts. They portray the ruthless, terrorist Israeli regime as acting in self-defense ­– yet they portray the Palestinian Resistance which defends its freedom, security and the right to self-determination, as terrorists!

I would like to assure you that today the circumstances are changing. A different fate awaits the important region of West Asia. The people's conscience has awakened on a global scale, and the truth is coming to light.

Moreover, the Resistance Front has grown in strength and will become even stronger.

And history is turning a page.

...The Quran's lesson for us Muslims and all of humanity, is to stand up for that which is right: "So be steadfast as you have been commanded" (11:112).

The Quran's lesson for human relations is: "Do not oppress and do not be oppressed" (2:279).

The Resistance Front advances by a comprehensive understanding and the practice of these and hundreds of other such commands – and will attain victory with the permission of God.

My advice to you is to become familiar with the Quran.

Sayyid Ali Khamenei
People think this is an anti-Israel letter. It isn't. 

It is an anti-American letter.

Khamenei takes as a given that Israel is evil and that Jews control world governments and media. That part is not even up for debate. But he is trying to get the students angry at the US government for allowing itself to be hijacked by Jews, and urging them to fight the US - not Israel.

He says that by their uprising, they have already joined a much larger cause, the "Resistance," which means they are on the same side as the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria - which he calls "the right side" of history.

The Islamic republic's goal has always been global domination. It has tried to be seen as the leader of the Islamic world, but the Sunni Muslims have not generally gone along with that, and in fact regard hi, as the enemy. 

So Khamenei is trying a different tack: to influence students who are restless to appear like they are making a difference , that they are moral creatures, and that their anger at the establishment represented by university leaders and the US government is part of a larger, transnational project that they have already joined.

Everyone wants to feel that they belong to a group of like-minded individuals. Khamenei is trying to subvert the fairly aimless protest movement that is looking for leadership into becoming a branch of the Iranian "axis of resistance."

Khamenei understands what the protesters themselves insistently deny: that their movement is fundamentally antisemitic. He play the game of pretending he is against the "global hegemony" and only briefly mentions to the "global Zionist elite" - but by conflating Jews with the West altogether, he is both leveraging existing antisemitism and trying to spread it further. 

Antisemitism is a strategy for his own desire for global hegemony. 

And if he manages to attract even 1% to his brand of Islamic extremism, he is recruiting scores of domestic terrorists to destabilize the US.

There is one test, and only one test, that the leaders of the student movement will fail. If they really were against antisemitism, they would denounce the Jew-hatred that this letter is trying to spread, and they would respond that they are on the side of the protesters in Iran against their own autocratic, illiberal government where human rights are non-existent.

Their inevitable non-response - and probable quiet pride in this letter - is the real story that the media must expose. Because it would show that they indeed condone antisemitism in the name of anti-Zionism, and that they support the Iranian mullahs against the millions of Iranians who yearn to be free of their control.








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  • Thursday, May 30, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon


The New York Times has managed something remarkable. It wrote an entire article about Americans trying to leave Gaze without saying a single negative word about Egypt.
"Americans Raced to Get Their Families Out of Gaza. Then the Border Slammed Shut" says the headline. The border just slammed shut on its own, of course, nothing at all to do with Egypt. And the inability of the Americans to leave for the previous seven months also, amazingly, had nothing to do with Egypt.

The story, written by immigration reporter Hamed Aleaziz,  ensures that no one knows that a corrupt Egyptian businessman with close ties to Egypt's president has had the exclusive rights to allow Gazans to leave and he extorted millions in bribes to call the lucky few "VIPs" so they could leave.

Instead, the story blames the inability of some Gaza Americans and their relatives to leave on just some sort of unknown bureaucratic problems from - someone.

The criteria are strict: Only parents, spouses and unmarried, under-21 children of American citizens are eligible for the assistance. The United States gathers the names and provides them to Israeli and Egyptian authorities, who control the border, and ask that they be allowed to cross.

Since the start of the war seven months ago, more than 1,800 American citizens and their families have left Gaza with the assistance of the State Department, U.S. officials say. They are only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans desperate to leave as the already dire conditions there deteriorate.

...And then they wait. Families check a Facebook page run by the authorities in Gaza, which gets updated as people are approved to cross into Egypt. If their name appears, they are advised to go immediately to a border crossing.
Compare to how NPR reported on the story in March:

The border fee service, known as "coordination," is operated by a singular entity: Hala Consulting and Tourism, an Egyptian company with reported ties to Egypt's security services, whose sister company runs the business in charge of aid transportation into Gaza.

Hala provides a crucial service: registering names on the Egyptian list of travelers approved for entry from Gaza, and operating transportation from the border to Cairo.

Applying is complicated, fees have fluctuated and the rules often change. Palestinians in Gaza need a relative in Egypt to apply to the Hala company on their behalf. Hundreds wait outside the company building in Cairo to pay the fee in dollars, with cash. Some say they have paid thousands of dollars on top of the standard fees just to get in the door. Approvals can take months.
....Egypt's economy is struggling, inflation is high and the country is desperate for dollars to purchase wheat and pay off its mounting debt. Since the start of the Gaza war, Suez Canal revenue has tanked, as cargo ships avoid it because of Houthi missile attacks in the Red Sea.

The high fees also reflect Egypt's policy on absorbing Palestinians during the war, Hassanein says. Egypt does not want a permanent mass displacement of Palestinians, and does not want any Islamist militants to enter from Gaza.

"They are trying to condition mainstream Palestinians that coming to Egypt wouldn't be an easy option," says Hassanein.

Gazans wanting to leave has an arduous procedure to go through even before the war. From OCHA in 2022:

 Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza via Egypt must register with the local Palestinian authorities two to four weeks in advance. People may also apply directly to the Egyptian authorities, using the services of a private company. The procedures and decisions by both authorities lack transparency. Those that are approved exit through the Rafah Crossing, controlled by the Egyptian authorities, which operates from Sundays to Thursdays. The journey through the Sinai desert is often lengthy and includes multiple stops for checks by Egyptian security forces. 

Ask any Gazan. They know Egypt is the reason they cannot leave. Israel is supposed to approve the names, but that is automatic - no one outside known terrorists are being denied, and it sure appears that Egypt can allow Hamas terrorists to leave without Israel's permission too. 

This is a perfect example of lying by omission. Both before and after May 7, Egypt has been the single major roadblock on any Gazans leaving. Today, Egypt is not even allowing Gazans who need medical attention to leave. 

Egypt can open the border within the next hour if they wanted and allow not only Americans but every Gazan who wants to leave- and they refuse. 

Hamed Aleaziz and the New York Times do not want their readers to know this. 



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!

 

 

  • Thursday, May 30, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
Earlier this week, I described how NGOs and the New York Times have been twisting the statistics of goods being brought into Gaza by not reporting on two important facts: 

1. Aid organizations are refusing to cooperate with COGAT on coordinating deliveries of aid trucks that have already been brought into Gaza

2. Trucks bringing in commercial goods are not being counted in their statistics.

UN OCHA's latest report admits the last point, and buries it: "The amount of food and other aid entering Gaza, already insufficient to meet the soaring needs, has further shrunk since 7 May, with a daily average of 58 humanitarian aid trucks reaching Gaza between 7 and 28 May compared with a daily average of 176 aid trucks between 1 April and 6 May. These figures exclude private sector cargo and fuel. "

But that private sector cargo includes plenty of food. The amount of food going into gaza has increased, not decreased, since May 7. 

Here was my chart showing the number of trucks the NGOs and NYT are counting, and the actual number entering Gaza.



By refusing to count those thousands of trucks of goods being brought into Gaza, the media and the NGOs are deliberately misleading the world and demonizing Israel.

In fact, Israel has changed the paradigm of how to deliver goods to Gaza, and over the past month (after some initial speedbumps) things are more efficient than they were before.

The commercial trade is the key. 

Before, the only source for commercial trucks into Gaza came from a single Egyptian company that had a monopoly on commercial trade. Al Jazeera, in a report on the high cost of food in Gaza markets shortly before Israel took control of the Rafah crossing, quoted a seller saying "one company alone controls the items that enter, so it prohibits what it wants and allows what it wants, according to its interests. The presence of meat in all of Gaza became linked to [that company's] approval to bring it in, and the interruption of fruits came after that company banned its entry into the Strip."

Now, there are lots of commercial trucks entering Gaza, and the prices in the markets have gone way down.

The NGOs claim that they cannot deliver the goods already in Gaza because of how dangerous it is, or they claim that Israel is impeding them.  Yet the commercial trucks are successfully reaching all of Gaza, according to COGAT. 

Since reporters aren't interested in the story, we can only speculate as to why this is. 

I would guess that there is a combination of factors that account for this. The commercial traders have their own security. They have financial incentive to take risks. Their trucks are probably not marked with giant logos that tell Gazans that "here's the food you are supposed to get for free, come and get it."

It is also hard to escape the conclusion that Hamas was embedded in the old system where there was a bottleneck of all goods entering Gaza and Hamas could freely confiscate what it wanted and tax the rest. The NGOs worked well with the corrupt system which essentially ensured Hamas would maintain control indefinitely. It worked for seven months, and finally Israel decided to replace Rafah with its own crossings that have higher capacity and no corruption. Rafah could re-open anytime Egypt allows it to, but Egypt profited off the old system as well and has little incentive to support a system where it cannot skim off millions of dollars.

Notice that there has not been a single reported case of starvation since February even though the "experts" had predicted famine well before today. The commercial goods entering Gaza is one big reason. 

So the NGOs are pivoting from "food" to "medicine," saying that Israel is stopping lifesaving equipment. I have no idea if this is true - they appear sometimes to discuss specific hospitals that are in areas meant for evacuation - but the answer is, again, capitalism.

Instead of NGOs trying to do the very difficult logistics work, they can work with the private sector to arrange to bring in what they need, when they need it.

And it is not only my idea. The Gisha NGO made this demand from Israel in January:
Israel must allow the entry of commercial goods to the private sector in Gaza
Restoring private sector activity through Kerem Shalom is an essential step towards increasing residents’ access to commodities. It would enable aid agencies to resume purchasing from the private sector within the Strip, facilitate distribution of goods throughout Gaza, and allow aid agencies to provide aid in different ways, such as through distribution of vouchers for purchase of food and other supplies.
It would be much easier for the aid agencies to administer a voucher system than to try to do everything end to end, which as we've seen, they are ill-equipped to do. 

If they are offering money for medicine and equipment, the traders will be happy to do the logistics to bring them in. It is a much more efficient system and far less prone to abuse and corruption.

It is hard not to conclude that the aid agencies prefer the abuse and corruption.

Too bad the media is not interested in reporting about this and researching this further. If there is any consistency in reporting, it is that anything that benefits Israel and hurts Hamas is automatically considered bad.






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!

 

 

  • Thursday, May 30, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon

The Palestine Scholars Association, which is based out of Turkey,   issued a fatwa in March mandating that all Muslims boycott Israeli goods.
  The economic boycott is one of the most powerful weapons of pressure. It is an effective weapon in confronting the Zionist enemy and its supporters, and it is one of the forms of insulting him and rejecting him that God Almighty has commanded His servants to do. ...One of the most obligatory duties for Muslims is to boycott this criminal entity, its companies, and the companies of its supporters, and to boycott them economically, and to prevent goods from reaching them, or to disrupt their arrival to them, or to target them by any means of jihad imposed specifically on every Muslim. Economic boycott is nothing but a type of jihad with money for the sake of God. ...

Naturally, the fatwa must find a precedent for boycotting Israel, and it finds one - from Mohammed himself!

The Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, used the weapon of economic warfare against the Jews after they broke the covenant. After the incident of the Jew’s attack on the Muslim woman in the Bani Qaynuqa market and the killing of the companion, he boycotted them economically before besieging and expelling them. 
Today's BDS advocates claim that BDS is only against Israelis, not Jews. This fatwa helps prove that it was always about Jews, for over a century.





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!

 

 

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

From Ian:

Eve Barlow: All Eyes On Rafah!
Rafah is a horrible situation because it’s war. An explosion happened. Civilians died. It wasn’t Israel, but as per usual, everyone blamed the Jews. Even the Jews jumped the gun this time. All the Jewish advocates blamed themselves, so accustomed to being gaslit. The IDF strike happened outside the humanitarian area, and then a Jeep packed with explosives inside the humanitarian area mysteriously set fire and ripped through the tent village. Awful. Hamas are awful.

You know what is more horrible than even Rafah? Selective outrage. So everyone is upset about civilian deaths in Gaza (reminder: caused by HAMAS). I get it. I see them. In droves. They’re so loud. Where were they on October 7? Oh they were drinking mimosas. Where were they when we released video footage of our young women being taken captive by rapist terrorists? Oh they were in the streets chanting for Free Palestine. They are the problem. This isn’t about them and their selective outrage and their Instagram stories proving they’re a good person. This is about life and death, and they are marching both Israelis and Palestinians to death at the hands of Hamas.

This here is for the morally bankrupt after the worst day online since October 7. Israel is uncovering all the evidence of a genocide on October 7 from the depths of Rafah in Southern Gaza, and guess what - the world is working overtime to stop it. And they have a new slogan to be spread across all forms of social media:

ALL EYES ON RAFAH
“All Eyes on Rafah” but the Red Cross didn’t find the bodies of the dead hostages underneath the UN buildings. Israel did.
“All Eyes on Rafah” but the UN never revealed that a tunnel system hid beneath the ground that goes into Egypt. Israel did.
“All Eyes on Rafah!” but nobody spotted the Jeep packed with Hamas explosives in the civilian area that caught fire and killed 45 people.
“All Eyes on Rafah!” but everyone is blinded by propaganda.

This is the propaganda. It appeared on everyone’s Instagram account today. I’m sure none of you escaped seeing this monstrosity in your stories. Behold, the snow-capped AI mountains of Gaza.

Yes that’s 35.3 million shares of this image. The faces in this post are people I used to be friends with. No more.
What is the ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ graphic and who is behind it?
“All eyes on Rafah” is a phrase that’s been shared more than 40 million times on Instagram in less than 24 hours. The giant text, superimposed over an AI-generated image of Gaza has been posted by major celebrities, world leaders, and activists across the world.

The graphic, which depicts an endless sprawl of tents in a dusty landscape, can be reshared onto Instagram ‘stories’ with just one click. Users can see which of their friends have shared the post and can add their names to the list, which neared 40 million on Wednesday morning.

The story remains on a user's profile for 24 hours.

Numerous celebrities including model sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid, Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan, singer and presenter Michelle Humes, Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein and actress Suranne Jones, have all shared the graphic.

The viral AI-generated graphic appears to come from a Malaysian/Singaporean photographer and content creator who goes by the usernames @shahv4012 and @chaa.my on social media.

Most of Chaa’s posts are snaps of daily life in Singapore, including photos of his wife, animals, and cars.

His other posts about Gaza include an AI-generated image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a blood-stained prison uniform and the name “Satanyahu”.

Another of Chaa’s “shareable” posts shows a map of Israel with the country's name crossed out and replaced with Palestine. It has been reshared over 15 thousand times.
The All Eyes on Rafah Instagram post is another vapid, lazy way to say “I care”
I understand that there is outrage at the way Israel is conducting its war. The images coming out of Gaza often feel indefensible. As those of us who care about Israel know only too well, every mistake Israel makes puts more lives at risk both in Israel and outside. Every Jew feels the anger of the world towards Israel every day. We don’t need to be reminded to follow this war; we have no choice. That is not to say that well-meaning people from the safety of London or Berlin or wherever else can’t voice their anger. If they feel passionately, they should. That’s what makes the West different from places like Gaza under Hamas, for example.

But what does sharing an AI image that looks nothing like Gaza actually do? Does it improve the material conditions of civilians in Gaza? Does it make Israelis and Jews feel more likely to compromise, to accept a version of the future that ends in peace for both sides? No, it doesn’t. Just like the BLM squares before it, and the myriad “explainers” before that, the All Eyes on Rafah post is another vapid, lazy way to say “I care”, not “I care about bringing the conflict to an end with as little human suffering as possible”, not even “I care about all civilians killed”. It says nothing productive. Which is presumably why so many people have shared it.

To learn about the conflict and to formulate an opinion that maintains dignity for all sides is something that cannot be accomplished by sharing an Instagram post. The learning that so many people on and off line refuse to do will not happen with an Instagram post. All it does is make Israelis, who will have to be involved in any future peace process, feel, yet again, that the world doesn’t care about their suffering. That their pain is meaningless. There was no “All eyes on the Nova festival”, there were no eyes on Kibbutz Be’eri, people didn’t want to see Jewish pain, it didn’t fit the simplistic narrative they’ve concocted.

So while the All Eyes on Rafah sharers may feel like they’ve done something powerful, the truth is they don’t really care because their interest in the story will die when it drops out of the headlines. And the rest of us will have to live with the consequences.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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