Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 03, 2024

Whose Ceasefire Is It Anyway? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On Friday, President Biden announced a ceasefire plan that would end the fighting in Gaza, release all the hostages, ensure Israel's security, and create a better Gaza after the war without Hamas.

Biden's plan has three phases:

Problems With The Proposal

There are some potential sticking points in just in Phase One alone:

o The release of Hamas hostages would be "in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners" -- that alone could break the plan since these would likely be terrorists and Hamas would insist on the release of terrorists with blood on their hands.

o Humanitarian assistance would surge with 600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza every single day -- no mention of the need for Hamas to stop interfering with the aid, but then again Biden is not going to point fingers.

o According to Biden, "if the negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue." On the one hand, this effectively ties Israel's hands as long as Hamas drags out negotiations, as Biden says, "There are a number of details to negotiate to move from phase one to phase two."

The Part Biden Leaves Out

The only thing that Biden leaves out is where Hamas gets to declare victory--after all, even though Biden claims at the outset that this proposal "creates a better 'day after' in Gaza without Hamas in power," he never addresses how that works. Instead, Biden claims that continuing the war "will not bring an enduring defeat of Hamas. That will not bring Israel lasting security."

What will?

According to one US official:

We have to work to reform the PA in the West Bank, which is ongoing and to having an interim administration in Gaza that can help with stabilization and pathway forward th

What kind of "reform" he is talking about is anybody's guess. Is Hamas going to step aside and relinquish power? Like Hezbollah?

More likely Hamas will continue to have power in Gaza. Back in March, Hamas assassinated the head of the Doghmush clan, one of the most powerful in Gaza, to keep them from vying for power in a reconstructed Gaza.

Hamas is not going anywhere. So the best that Biden can offer in his public statement is to claim that Israel can go forward:

without any further risk to their own security because they’ve devastated Hamas forces over the past eight months. At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7th, — one of the Israelis’ main objective in this war and, quite frankly, a righteous one.

No longer "capable"? Isn't that what they once said about Al Qaeda and ISIS?

Biden cannot guarantee Israel's security with a proposal like this.

Whose Ceasefire Is It Anyway?

Can it be that Israel offered a plan that allows Hamas to likely stay in power and live to fight and kill and kidnap another day--as they have already promised?

It seems that though Biden talked about "my efforts," "my negotiators," "my team," and "my many conversations," he does admit that "Israel has offered a comprehensive new proposal."

But on Twitter, Obama supported Biden's plan:

Today, President Biden put forward a clear, realistic and just plan to establish an immediate ceasefire and end the war in Gaza - a plan that ensures Israel’s security, returns hostages taken on October 7th to their families, increases aid into Gaza and relieves the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and engages Israelis, Palestinians, Arab countries and the broader international community in the process of rebuilding Gaza...I am deeply encouraged by the steady, tireless efforts of President Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and our diplomatic team to bring this awful war to an end.

Obama supports the plan and Biden's efforts.
So it's Israel's plan and Biden gets to take a victory lap.

But maybe it's not really Israel's plan after all. CNN reports:

Israel’s four-and-a-halfpage proposal was submitted to Hamas on Thursday evening, a US senior administration official said, and matches closely a deal the group itself recently proposed.

“It’s nearly identical to Hamas’ own proposals of only a few weeks ago. So if that’s what Hamas wants, they can take the deal,” the official said.

So maybe it's both of their plans? According to Nadav Eyal of Yediot Ahronot, it's Israel's plan, but with one major change:

So it is Israel's plan, or at least one they both agree to, except that Netanyahu never agreed to indefinite negotiations.

And that is why Netanyahu "reiterated that Israel would not agree to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza as long as Hamas still retains governing and military power."

So all the pressure is on Israel to allow for a ceasefire that likely keeps Hamas in power, while the terrorists who slaughtered and kidnapped Israelis and have promised to keep doing exactly that, make no promises, no concessions, and get to claim victory as they continue to rule in Gaza.

When you put it like that, it kind of sounds like Biden's deal after all.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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New York Times calls Israel Day rally "mostly peaceful," the same language they use for anti-Israel demonstrations filled with violence, incitement and hate

The New York Times coverage of the "Israel Day on Fifth" parade yesterday in New York City has a jarring sentence.

While the headline says, "Intense Security at Peaceful Parade for Israel in Manhattan," within the article it says, "The event was mostly peaceful and drew very few protesters."

"Mostly peaceful"? That phrase has become a euphemism to minimize the violence, intimidation and incitement seen at the thousands of anti-Israel demonstrations worldwide since October 7.

Yet there is a world of difference between anti-Israel and pro-Israel demonstrations. Even yesterday's rally attracted anti-Israel protesters with violent messages that the NYT doesn't want to cover, but the New York Post did, showing this protester with a "Kill Hostages Now" sign.

The Times minimized the peacefulness of the pro-Israel protest and ignored the hate from the anti-Israel demonstrators.

This is par for the course for the media.

The Black Lives Matters demonstrations in 2020 that often devolved into looting and burning areas of cities were also described as "mostly peaceful" by the media, a characterization that was much derided. Yet we see the same misleading language being used in anti-Israel demonstrations.

Not to say it is strictly inaccurate. Most demonstrators are not violent, and most demonstrations are people marching without causing damage. But the word "mostly peaceful " is a meaningless term. By the expansive definition of "mostly peaceful" in the media, they could accurately say that war is "mostly peaceful" as well, since the amount of time soldiers are actually shooting is only a small percentage of their day.

You hardly ever see the phrase "mostly peaceful" to describe right-leaning demonstrations. It is not a description - it is propaganda that indicates the the bias of the reporters and editors.

When the NYT uses the same phrase to describe pro-Israel and anti-Israel rallies, it is equating the two. And there is no equivalence.

The pro-Israel rally in New York, as with virtually all pro-Israel rallies, was entirely peaceful, not "mostly peaceful"

Compare two London demonstrations this past week, The massive rally to bring the hostages home on Sunday, with 40,000 participants, went off without any incident. Four days earlier, however, an anti-Israel rally in London was described by the BBC this way:

Three police officers have been injured during a demonstration in Westminster organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other groups.
One officer suffered a serious facial injury after she was hit with a bottle thrown from within the crowd, the Metropolitan Police said.
40 arrests related to assaults on emergency workers, obstruction of the highway and public order act breaches were made, the force said.
Police said the "vast majority" of protesters - between 8,000 and 10,000 people - left without incident at the scheduled time.
A group of about 500 remained and continued to protest.

See? It was mostly peaceful, too!

There is no comparison. The anti-Israel rallies, usually falsely described as "pro-Palestinian," include vandalism, intimidation, blocking access, antisemitism and property damage. A study that claimed that 97% of the college demonstrations have been "peaceful" considered spray paint vandalism as peaceful as well, yet that vandalism has cost universities millions of dollars.millions of dollars.

It is also illegal.

But beyond that is the difference in messages. People chanting to "globalize the intifada" or "resistance by any means necessary" are inciting violence against Jews. Characterizing their demonstrations as "mostly peaceful" is beyond dishonest - they are glorifying violence.

No one can say that the "Kids' Intifada Corner" at the University of Waterloo last week was violent - but it was most certainly the most horrific kind of incitement, teaching innocent children that killing Israelis is legitimate resistance, and fun, too.

An April op-ed in the NYT by a reporter covering the protests showed the bias clearly. She admitted that there were some big problems with the anti-Israel demonstrations, but then justified them: "While reporting on the protests up close gave me insight into how unsettling some aspects of activism can be, it doesn’t mean the protesters’ actions are misguided. These young people seek a worthy cause: to end what may be the most brutal military operation for civilians in the 21st century."

Here we have the problem with left-leaning journalists in a single sentence. The violence and antisemitism in the protests are swept under the rug; it is praised as being worth it for a good cause, a righteous war in Gaza meant to destroy Hamas and minimize civilian casualties despite Hamas' human shield strategy is framed as being unmitigatingly evil, and a it spreads an absurd libel about this being the most brutal war for civilians this century, ignoring Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Congo, which the students were silent about.

That is the problem with "mostly peaceful." The phraseis meant to justify anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement, and even to praise it. And using it to describe a completely peaceful event on the other side means to equate the two sides, when there is no equivalence - they are polar opposites.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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The Gaza ministry of health published another abbreviated report of the situation in Gaza, dated June 1, and they summarized the news of the previous day.

Here's one of their accusations:

• The World Health Organization coordinated a medical team to arrive in the Gaza Strip carrying life-saving medicines, but unfortunately the occupation confiscated all the medicine bags in a new crime that clearly reveals the occupation’s intent in undermining the Palestinian health sector.

Wow, that's big news! WHO must have strenuously protested this confiscation of medicines and gone to the media to pressure Israel to release them for their patients in Gaza, right?

I cannot find a single story in English or Arabic that says that this happened. The WHO didn't post anything about this on their social media that I could find. The Arab media outlets like Al Jazeera who are quick to repeat every outlandish accusation against Israel haven't said anything about this.

On the contrary. On May 29, WHO announced that for the first time since May 13, it was able to reach northern Gaza to deliver fuel, equipment and medicine to Al-Ahli Hospital, It brought in 15,000 liters of fuel for the hospital’s generators, 14 medical beds, medicines, and medical equipment to treat injuries, covering the needs of 1,500 people.

Assuming there isn't a bizarre coverup of this important story, it is apparent that the Gaza health ministry made it up.

But I invite any anti-Israel reporter to prove me wrong. Contact WHO and ask them if Israel confiscated medicine from the doctors. (Not delayed delivery because of fighting - the MoH says "confiscated.")

Yet even if reporters did do their jobs and verified that the story was made up - as the MoH has made up outlandish stories before - it will not hurt the ministry's reputation one tiny bit. They will still be quoted as authoritative.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Nearly every news article in Canadian Jewish News is about antisemitic incidents in Canada

Here are some of the recent headlines in the Canadian Jewish News:

These are just from May!

Whether this reflects a general increase of hate for Jews in Canadian society at large or not, it certainly indicates that the antisemites are now much more open and willing to act against Jews in public than in the past.

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!

On May 2, Turkey announced it would cease all trade with Israel.

On May 14, the US Department fo Commerce Bureau of Industry & Security issued a memo aimed at US companies in Turkey:

All United States persons, wherever located, are reminded that, with respect to their activities in United States commerce, the Export Administration Regulations prohibit taking certain actions in furtherance or support of an unsanctioned foreign boycott maintained by a country against a country friendly to the United States and require reporting of receipt of a boycott-related request to BIS. U.S. companies operating in Türkiye, in particular, are cautioned to be alert to their receipt of any requests to refrain from importing or exporting goods to or from Israel or to provide certification that the goods are not of Israeli origin or do not contain Israeli-origin components or materials.

It then links to a website showing dozens of examples of where various countries tried to add anti-Israel language to their contracts with US companies, including:

Prohibited Boycott Condition in a Purchase Order:

"In the case of overseas suppliers, this order is placed subject to the suppliers being not on the Israel boycott list published by the central Arab League."

Reportable boycott condition in an importer’s purchase order:

"Goods of Israeli origin not acceptable."

Reportable boycott condition in a letter of credit:

"A signed statement from the shipping company, or its agent, stating the name, flag and nationality of the carrying vessel and confirming ... that it is permitted to enter Arab ports."

Prohibited Boycott Condition in a Contract:

"Israeli Clause: The Seller shall not supply goods or materials which have been manufactured or processed in Israel nor shall the services of any Israeli organization be used in handling or transporting the goods or materials."

Some of the contract language shows which countries are behind them. Strangely, Bahrain is listed, so I don't know how recent this example is:

The Contractor shall comply in all respects with the requirements of the laws of the State of Bahrain relating to the boycott of Israel. Goods manufactured by companies blacklisted by the Arab Boycott of Israel Office may not be imported into the State of Bahrain and must not be supplied against this Contract.

But other countries are mentioned in other contracts:

"All goods to be supplied as a part of this order must comply with the Israel boycott rules stipulated by the Royal Oman Police"

"The Contractor whether an Establishment or Company, National or Foreign, shall not import or enter into Agreement with any Foreign Company or Establishment as Sub-Contractor particularly if such Company did not have previous dealing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, except after contacting the Regional office of the Arab Boycott to Israel, or one of the two Sub-Offices of the Ministry of Commerce at Jeddah or Dammam, to ensure of the status of the said Foreign Company, in light of the Rules and orders issued by the office of the Arab Boycott of Israel."

(h/t Irene)

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!

Emmanuel Macron was "outraged" over Rafah attack. Yet France's manual for the laws of war says the airstrike was perfectly legal!

Reuters reported last week:

French President Emmanuel Macron voiced outrage on Monday over Israeli strikes on a tented camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah that Gaza officials said killed at least 45 people and demanded an "immediate ceasefire."

"These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians," Macron said on X in English.

"I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire."

Let's look at the relevant sections of France's main source for interpreting the laws of war, the 2022 edition of Manuel de droit des opérations militaires.Manuel de droit des opérations militaires.

Under the section on the Principle of Distinction:

The destruction, capture, or neutralization of the property must offer, in the circumstances of time and place, a specific military advantage. It is contrary to IHL to launch an attack which offers only indeterminate or possible advantages.

A successful targeting of two major Hamas leaders certainly qualifies as providing a specific military advantage.

From the principle of distinction comes the prohibition of carrying out indiscriminate attacks. Here are three [examples] of these: attacks which are not directed against a specific military objective, such as example a soldier who fires in all directions without aiming at a specific military objective; attacks in which combat methods or means are used which cannot be directed against a specific military objective, such as for example long-range missiles which cannot be directed at their target with precision; and attacks in which combat methods or means are used whose effects cannot be limited, such as the use of a bomb of particularly high power in relation to the limited military gain expected to destroy a building in an urban area and heavily populated.

Notice "particularly high power" ("puissance particulièrement élevée.") Israel used the smallest bomb possible for an airstrike, the GBU-39, which was designed to give as little collateral damage as possible.

And what about proportionality?

The principle of proportionality targets the incidental effects of attacks on civilians and civilian objects. These incidental (collateral) effects can be linked to multiple factors: proximity to a military objective, precision of the weapons used, nature of the military objective targeted, etc. All these factors must be taken into consideration before each attack. Thus, collateral effects on civilians must be taken into account, whether direct or indirect (or cascading), provided that they are predictable.

The proportionality of an attack is assessed on a case-by-case basis, by comparing the foreseeable damage of the attack and the concrete and direct military advantage expected from this attack, in light of the information available at the time of the decision-making. The ICTY held that to determine whether an attack was proportionate, it was necessary to assess whether the person had sufficient knowledge of the situation and whether he judiciously used the information available to him at the time of the attack, so that he could have predicted that the attack would cause excessive losses among the civilian population.

No one in any army in the world, current or future, could possibly have predicted that the target was near a secret weapons cache that would explode and spark a fire that would kill civilians.

This isn't only for France - similar language is in every single Western military manual worldwide. Nobody can point to a single international law that Israel is violating in Gaza unless they lie about the facts, as South Africa has at the ICJ.

The conclusion is that the world - including the United States - is publicly applying standards to Israel that no one expects any other nation, and certainly their own nations, to reach.

For example, France killed dozens in Mali during Operation Barkhane, including a strike on a wedding party that probably killed more than the incident in Rafah (Hamas typically exaggerates death tolls in major incidents by a factor of 3 or 4; none of the videos of the camp fire showed more than 12 bodies.) Even today, years later, France has not admitted to any wrongdoing and claims that all the people killed were terrorists. The world demands Israel publish instant, accurate and transparent investigations; every other Western power routinely covers up their own incidents. And even when Israel provides tons of evidence that it was right in these investigations, the world assumes that it is lying - an antisemitic trope that has been around for centuries.

But it is even worse than double standards. The fictional international law that the world is demanding that Israel adheres to would ensure that no army in the world could ever win a war where civilians are remotely nearby. Real international law does not reward combatants who deliberately use human shields, but the supposedly enlightened West has created a framework where every two-bit terror group can protect itself by hiding among civilians - if they apply the standards they insist upon for Israel uniformly.

Which means that the antisemitism that underlies the outrage over Israel acting within the bounds of international law may paradoxically result in the erosion of those laws altogether, which puts the entire free world at risk.

(h/t UR)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Jews are being bullied out of professions. The days of routine antisemitism are returning to the US.

Every week we are reading about professions that are pushing out Zionist Jews from their fields.

In the field of international law:

...The professor saw a trend among the topics Israeli and Jewish colleagues were pushed to pursue. Those who continued their academic work in international law either wrote about Palestinians as victims or Israel’s violations of humanitarian international law. “Israelis would either write about IP law or business law, or about how Israel is being awful, violating human rights and all of that.”

This stood out because the professor noticed their colleagues from Latin America and China weren’t expected to work on topics that criticize their home countries as a condition for receiving faculty support. Yet when it came to Israelis, it was “clear to us this is what we need to deliver on.”

In the professor’s discussions with the senior faculty, especially the progressive liberal Jewish faculty, it came through clearly that support for Israeli students was conditioned on being the right type of Israeli, “and there were fellowships and scholarships and grants available to students who are willing to do that. In Hebrew we say that a person knows which side of the bread is buttered, right? So it’s pretty clear what pays off is to distance yourself from a mainstream Israeli kind of discourse.”

Understanding who holds the power and influences decisions is important in any profession, the law included. “You need to have the support and the mentors to advance in your career,” the professor explained, “and for that, you look for cues on what should I do, how do I make these people like me. Why would you bother, why would you take the risk of saying something that is controversial or put yourself in the position of protecting Israel or speaking on behalf of Israel when there is only a price to pay for that?”

“For example, there is an institute that gives out scholarships to doctoral students who are writing dissertations about Israel. I was advised not to take their money because then it’s going to be on my CV and people will interpret that as if I don’t have the right kind of politics. So even when there are economic incentives to write different kinds of scholarship,” under the current academic incentives, the professor concludes, scholarships and point-interventions will not work “because it’s more about selection and authority and networks and connections and less about economic incentives.”

Mental health professionals:

The anti-Zionist blacklist is the most extreme example of an anti-Israel wave that has swept the mental health field since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the resulting war in Gaza, which has seen the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. More than a dozen Jewish therapists from across the country who spoke to Jewish Insider described a profession ostensibly rooted in compassion, understanding and sensitivity that has too often dropped those values when it comes to Jewish and Israeli providers and clients.

At best, these therapists say their field has been willing to turn a blind eye to the antisemitism that they think is too rampant to avoid. At worst, they worry the mental health profession is becoming inhospitable to Jewish practitioners whose support for Israel puts them outside the prevailing progressive views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Authors:

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

It feels like history is repeating itself.

Jews founded the Jews' Hospital in New York in 1855, now known as Mount Sinai Hospital, partially as a response to the need for a place that Jews could be treated without feeling like outsiders, as every other hospital at the time was aligned with various Christian groups. It followed the founding in 1850 of the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati. When Mount Moriah Hospital Mount Moriah Hospital opened in New York in 1908, the Forward reported that Jews "can open the door and enter as if to your own home without a racing heart and without fear."

Brandeis University was founded in 1948 "at a time when Jews and other ethnic and racial minorities, and women, faced discrimination in higher education."

Jews who were facing discrimination formed professional associations and schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for physicians, scientists, and trades, like the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York and the Kehillah which attempted to be an umbrella of professional and educational associations in New York (and that the antisemite Henry Ford railed against.)

It appears that it is time for Jews in the professions where they are being blacklisted must start to form Jewish professional organizations, educational networks and institutions anew, where Jews can network and publish as they want without having to please the "progressive" crowds.

But the arc of history is going backwards, and this is only a Band-Aid. The problem is with America and the world itself, and Jews cannot solve this problem alone - the dangers of the progressive bigots are a threat to the free world and that needs to be addressed at the macro level.

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!

France hands BDS its biggest victory ever. Here's how Israel should respond.

From Times of Israel:

French authorities have banned Israeli defense firms from exhibiting at a trade show next month near Paris, organizers said on Friday.

“By decision of the government authorities, there will be no stand for the Israeli defense industry at the Eurosatory 2024 fair,” organizers Coges Events said.

Coges did not offer an explanation, but France’s defense ministry released a statement saying that “the conditions are no longer right to host Israeli companies at the Paris show, given that the French president is calling for the cessation of IDF operation in Rafah.”

The announcement came days after an Israeli strike targeting two top Hamas terrorists in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah sparked a fire in a complex housing displaced Palestinians, killing dozens of civilians and triggering international outrage and protests in France.

An Israel Defense Forces probe into the strike found that a hidden store of weapons may have been the actual cause of the deadly blaze, and that the airstrike that targeted an adjacent area had used small munitions that would not ignite such a fire on their own.

Responding to the fatal blaze, in which Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza said 45 civilians were killed, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” and demanded an “immediate ceasefire.”

This has nothing to do with Rafah. French officials already started creating new rules, just for Israel, back in March, as Calcalist reported:

In the shadow of the ongoing war in Gaza, France is taking an unusual step to toughen conditions for the participation of defense companies from Israel in the Eurosatory arms exhibition scheduled for Paris in June, Calcalist has learned.
Companies intending to participate in the exhibition, showcasing new developments and central weapon systems, have been informed in recent days that the equipment they wish to reveal must obtain an import license granted in advance by the French Ministry of Defense. Without this license, they will not be able to present their products on French soil. According to a source in one of the companies, the French Ministry of Defense will have the authority to prohibit the presentation of Israeli weapons at its discretion.
Senior officials in the defense industries, in conversations with Calcalist, have expressed resentment towards the new French demand, calling for an in-depth investigation at the political level. Many of them have extensive experience participating in security exhibitions worldwide. France hosts two of the most prestigious and respected arms exhibitions globally, the Paris Air Show at Paris–Le Bourget Airport and the Eurosatory military exhibition, held in rotation once every two years.
"I have participated in many exhibitions like this, and there has never been such a demand, which simply diminishes Israel's status," an executive at one of the companies told Calcalist. "Requiring prior approval from authorities to bring exhibits to the exhibition is humiliating and cannot stand."

This is outrageous on so many levels.

Israel is fighting a war to destroy Hamas terrorists. There is no more righteous war that exists. The incident in Rafah happened despite Israel doing everything possible to minimize collateral damage when striking an undisputedly high-value, legal military target.

And the French government is not only punishing Israel for being more conscious of civilian casualties than France ever was, but also is penalizing dozens of Israeli companies that have nothing to do with the war. All the time, meanwhile allowing Turkey, which has killed thousands of Kurdish civilians, and Saudi Arabia, which has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians, to promote their own weapons.

The decision is another example of antisemitic double standards that apply only to Israel.

Israel should forcefully protest using diplomatic channels this insult.

Beyond that, the banned Israeli companies should contact their international customers, asking them to express their displeasure that a major portion of the show has just disappeared.

And the Israeli exhibitors should immediately rent out a space as close as possible to the show, and set up their own independent exhibition there, allowing free access to those with Eurosatory badges. And they should hand out flyers at the entrance of the Eurosatory show to let all the attendees know where to go to see the latest, cutting edge Israeli defense industry products.

Beyond that, there is blatant hypocrisy from France itself. There were many civilians killed in the US-led coalition fighting against ISIS, but unlike Israel, there was no transparency as to who was responsible for airstrikes that killed civilians. France took credit for many airstrikes but never release the dates of those strikes so no one knows how many civilians it was responsible for killing.

If anyone could compare the care that France took in airstrikes in urban areas compared to Israel, the results would probably be embarrassing to France. But they won't tell you, and no one angry at France for this opacity. Yet the world blames Israel for incidents that Israel wasn't even responsible for, it demands Israel adhere to standards that no other Western nation ever approached, and it demands instant investigations and transparency that no army in world history has ever done.

The hypocrisy of Israel's Western critics cannot be starker.

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!

05/31 Links Pt2: Hamas as a Millennial Movement; Make Hosting Terrorists Illegal; Amnesty had a booth at the pro-terrorist Detroit conference

From Ian:

Richard Landes: Hamas as a Millennial Movement

This is post-colonial rhetoric at its most threadbare. The perspective he formulates in the least attractive way possible, has nothing to do with real racism since all the players involved embody not race but ideological and cultural phenomena. Calling it by the inflated term ‘racist’ impoverishes the historical debate and crams our vision into 75-year old struggle for Palestinian rights, not an 85-year old marriage of Nazi and Palestinian Muslim eliminationist antisemitism. If such accusations were carry weight (and apparently they do), it would forbid us from discussing the role of Hamas since 1988 in carrying the millennial aspiration of that hadith into an active apocalyptic phase, where the first order of business is to kill a Jew, and barring that, get a Jew to kill a Palestinian.

In what historical seminar studying movements such as these, say, of the Annales school of mentalités, would someone analyse a case where two such unusually dangerous movements appear two generations apart, and share such striking similarities, without discussing the many connections and parallels? Who would begin an historical reconstruction of the later movement in the three years after the defeat of their predecessors and allies in 1945, and begin with (their own failure to commit genocide in) 1948 when Israel ‘deprived Palestinians of their rights,’ rather than the late 1930s, when Jihadis and Nazis first joined forces? What historian of mentalités would discuss the rise of multiple, genocidal Jihadi cults in the Muslim world in the subsequent generations, without examining their relationship to the double genocidal failures of the 1940s? Not any seminar I or Omer attended back in the early 1970s, the years before Orientalism took over.

If ‘civilisation’ arises from the organisational treasuring of life, then is this conflict not a civilisational battle with a death cult, which even Muslims find alarming? And is that cult not showing alarming strength? There are historical cases when an active cataclysmic apocalyptic movement ‘took’ inside a given civilisation. And none have happy endings.

And just as it is appropriate to see the two world wars of the 20th century as one ‘thirty-year’s war’ with a brief respite, how much the more likely, in the perspective of an historian, is it to see this battle over the land twixt river and sea as the only, still active, battle front of World War II? Or, worse, the opening of the next round of a global struggle with totalitarian cults of hatred and death that is, apparently, far from over.

Back in the 1990s, when people began to warn about Caliphators (Jihadis, Islamists), about a religious war brewing between the agnostic West and the zealous Middle East, most of us who heard that these true believers were fighting to take over the world and create a global Caliphate, dismissed it as ludicrous fantasy, or, especially after 9-11, dangerous ‘Islamophobia.’ And the only way a millennial historian could respond to that incredulity was to point out that in millennial movements, wrong does not mean inconsequential. Look at the damage done by twelve years of the Tausendjährige Reich.

Now, a generation later the landscape looks more menacing. While we slept…

One of the key moments in the history of all movements that, as millennial analyst Henri Desroche put it, ‘take’ like a forest fire, is the moment they show their real face in public. In most cases, the public gaze repels them and their radical, impossible ideas, sometimes violently. But in the rare and famous cases where ‘going public’ sparks excitement and enthusiasm, the movement gains public authority and a path to taking and exploiting power.

7/10 was the day of revelation. Faced with the savagery of their brethren, the civil-society, human rights Palestinian community cheered. And they were joined by people who, in principle, supported them according to their progressive claims. What is the meaning of these demonstrations on our campuses and around the country. These celebrations of savage sadism, with their attendant cries of ‘revolution’ and accusations of ‘genocide,’ bode ill for the liberal societies in which they appear. They hail a death cult. Why on earth would progressives jump for joy?

Elliott Adrams: American Jewish Anti-Zionist Diasporism: A Critique

Go to enough anti-Israel protests in the U.S., and you’ll inevitably see a few members of the stridently anti-Israel haredi group Neturei Karta, which has taken to mimicking the slogans of radical leftists and Islamists. Elliott Abrams observes that left-wing Jewish anti-Zionists share with these religious opponents of Israel the basic assumption that “a Jewish state cannot exist until the messianic age arrives because the one we have, built by men and women, is not pure enough.”

This view exhibits what Abrams calls “moral blindness,” which he illustrates with an anecdote about the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertesz, told by the Jewish activist Andres Spokoiny:
During a visit to Israel, a foreign journalist, aware of Kertész’s humanist and pacifist leanings, asked him, “How does it feel for you to see a Star of David on a tank?” “Much better than seeing it on my concentration camp uniform,” he answered.

For Kertesz, moralizing about the existence of a Jewish army made little sense when the alternative was the mass murder of Jews. But for today’s generation of American Jews, who share the liberal leanings of their parents and grandparents and face anti-Israel sentiment of unprecedented ferocity, Kertesz’s straightforward answer will seem anything but obvious. And they will have to make difficult choices, especially since, as Abrams writes, the principles of liberalism are themselves changing:
we have seen the many efforts to redefine them on American campuses since October 7. No doubt this was a joyous moment for many leftist Jews, as they watched tent encampments built, classes disrupted, and Israel defamed. But for other American Jews, not quite so far left, it was no doubt painful. Among Jewish students themselves, many had to choose between supporting the Jewish state and the Jewish people—or being ostracized by former friends, excluded from clubs and cliques they had happily joined, and even facing physical danger.

The American Zionist movement dates back to the end of the 19th century and the Zionist consensus dates back over 80 years. The anti-Zionist efforts now underway to shred it are the most energetic, the best financed, and the most dangerous American Jews have experienced. . . . Will younger American Jews see a model for how to live as a Jew and a moral human being in their behavior—or in the siren song of the left as it maneuvers to undermine the Jewish people and the Jewish state?

Mob Education at the Ivies

The developments at Princeton, Brown, and Harvard demonstrate that these institutions of higher learning have lost sight of why they exist in the first place—educational excellence.

Education—especially an Ivy League education—involves acquiring values and priorities that will carry over beyond the four years within the walls of any university. These values are meant to shape young students, who enter college in their late teen years and emerge as adults.

Being an adult means internalizing that actions have consequences and that accountability is vital for the functioning of civil society. On campuses across the country, students are taking away a very different message—a message of entitlement. You can interfere with the learning of your fellow students, trespass on private property, and blatantly disobey direct orders without fear of serious repercussions. In fact, if you double down on the path of obstinacy, intimidation, and harassment, the world will accede to your demands.

What I have found most troubling these last seven months is that this ethos, which represents an inversion of the values an American university ought to impart to its students, has been mainstreamed.

This is the same message that the world has long sent the Palestinians and that our own government has broadcast since Oct. 7. Hamas brutally murdered, raped, mutilated, and burned alive innocent Israeli civilians. In return, they received hundreds of millions in aid, a U.N. General Assembly resolution urging the Security Council to grant Palestine member status, and the U.S. prioritizing the creation of a Palestinian state. Today’s college students are learning the lesson Hamas has internalized: Violence brings rewards.

05/31 Links Pt1: Glick: Does Biden reject Israel’s right to self-defense?; Murray: ICC runs wild, threatening anyone who criticizes it; Gaza famine report cited by UN, ICJ has systematic flaws

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.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Two stories from Vancouver, completely unrelated to each other. (Well, except antisemitism.)

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.)

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!

In May, Hamas reported 861 fake deaths , inflating the MoH verified death number by 131%

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.

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!