Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 04, 2024

Biden Administration gave $50 million to a virulently antisemitic, pro-Hamas, anti-American "climate justice" group

Here is a December press release from the Climate Justice Alliance:

NATIONAL – Today the EPA announced $600 million in grants through the 2023 Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking (EJ TCGM) Program. The EJ TCGM Program was created to reduce barriers to the application process and increase the efficiency of the awards process for environmental justice grants.

Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) was selected to receive a $50 million grant for its UNITE-EJ (United Network for Impact, Transformation, & Equity in Environmental Justice Communities) application and to serve as a National Grantmaker for EJ TCCGM to provide support to the Western United States (EPA Regions 8-10).

(The $600 million is only a small part of the windfall the EPA received from the Inflation Reduction Act.)

The Climate Justice Alliance explains what they want to do with the money:

In this role, UNITE-EJ will provide technical support to regional grantmakers and grassroots organizations, as well as serve as a regrantor of tens of millions of dollars in public funds to environmental justice communities over the next three years. As firm believers that those closest to the problems hold innovative and visionary solutions, we trust in the wisdom and leadership of EJ communities to effectively deploy these resources to the projects that need them most.

On the very top of the CJA webpage is a link to a section called Free Palestine.

What does Gaza have to do with "climate justice"? Nothing at all. But millions of taxpayer dollars dollars are going towards creating that link.

It gets worse. Climate Justice Alliance is actively pro-Hamas.

That webpage encourages people to download "Palestine Art for Protests." One of the posters they want people to use glorifies the October 7 massacre with a depiction of the Hamas bulldozer breaking the fence in Gaza to allow thousands of people to murder, rape and kidnap Israelis and Jews.

One of the organizations that CJA is passing millions of dollars to in the name of "environmental justice" is the NDN Collective, whose mission statement does not even mention the environment. They are explicitly antisemitic, claiming that Israel is an exercise in Jewish supremacy identical to white supremacy.

We should not treat the struggles we face against zionism, white supremacy, and imperialism as separate from one another, because they act as one to oppress and eliminate us. Only through solidarity and fighting for justice, can we create change for our people and Mother Earth. Understanding that the zionist settler project requires the elimination, removal, banishment, and identity theft of Palestinians on their homelands is the same formula that u.s. settlers use in our communities. zionism has a few founding narratives: the idea that those who develop the land own the land; claims that israel is a superior nation granted by God and ordained by a higher power to Jewish people alone; and that Palestine was barren just seven decades ago.

In fact, NDN Collective's slogan is "Defend. Develop. Decolonize." They spent money to send members to the various anti-Israel encampments nationwide.

The "decolonize" part means to dismantle the United States itself, especially the military. And they want to do it with US funding.

Another grantee from CJA ia the Fund for Frontline Power, one of whose own grantees is the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which calls President Biden a racist, Zionist imperialist. "President Biden and his administration have had the power to stop this genocide at any point in the last 9 months. Whether driven by commitments to U.S. imperialism, by his own racism or Zionism – or all three – Biden’s words and deeds aid and abet a fascist genocidal regime. "

The Biden administration is giving tens of millions of dollars to groups that are actively trying to dismantle and both Israel and the United States.

Some of this was highlighted by U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito in a press statement two weeks ago, and the media ignored it.

I'm afraid this may be only the tip of the iceberg on how antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American organizations are leveraging US funding and grants to actively fight against what America stands for. There seems to be little accountability for the direct recipients of the Inflation Reduction Act and the EPA, and there is no oversight whatsoever as to who they give their own grants to in turn.

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!

A month ago, the UN said there is a "full blown famine" in northern Gaza. AP described the situation:

According to the IPC, an area is considered to be in famine when three things occur: 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or essentially starving; at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height; and two adults or four children per every 10,000 people are dying daily of hunger and its complications.

In northern Gaza, the first condition of extreme lack of food has been met, senior WFP spokesman Steve Taravella told The Associated Press. The second condition of child acute malnutrition is nearly met, he said. But the death rate could not be verified.

.... “The bottom line is that people are practically dying from a lack of food, water and medicines. If we are waiting for the moment when all the facts are in hand to verify the final conditions to scientifically declare a famine, it would be after thousands of people have perished,” Taravella said.

In January, the UN said that 378,000 Gazans were at the IPC5 stage. In March, they said that 677,000 Gazans were at IPC5. And they predicted that by July the number would be 1,107,000 people.

Using the January numbers, we should expect - according to the IPC's own definitions - 75 adults or 150 children dying every day in Gaza from malnutrition. Using the March numbers, those statistics should be 136 adults or 272 children a day. According to their projections for a month from now, there should be 220 adults or 440 children dying every day in Gaza.

The actual number is zero.

According to the Hamas health ministry, 28 people - all children - died of starvation by the end of March. Many of the children who died were given large amounts of coverage by the media.

But since then we have not heard about a single additional death from starvation, when the numbers were supposed to accelerate - not from the media and not from the Gaza health authorities.

If dozens or hundreds of Gazans were starving to death every day, you can be sure that the health ministry would be shouting this from the rooftops - which in fact they did when the number was 28. Al Jazeera reporters who have unusually excellent access to all Gaza hospitals would be taking lots of videos of emaciated, wasted children dying or dead in hospitals. It would be hard to hide hundreds of deaths a day if Gaza authorities wanted to - and they certainly don't want to.

If no one is dying, then half of Gaza cannot be in IPC5.

What can explain the huge disconnect? If a large percentage of children have measurably thin arm circumferences, why aren't we hearing about them dying?

I'm not seeing any of the experts who wrote the IPC report in mid-March issuing any clarifications about their predictions. Their prediction of 1.1 million Gazans in IPC5 remains on their dashboard today.

Either the raw data on family access to food and measurable factors of severely underweight children is being falsified, or there is a lot more food in Gaza than we are being led to believe.

Either way, we are not being told the truth. And that should concern every consumer of news and NGO reports. Because if something that is supported by so many scientists and data analysts who do not have obvious biases is proven to be so incredibly wrong, how can anyone believe anything that they are hearing about Gaza?

To add another absurdity, th AP article tried to answer the question of why there is so little data on people starving to death, and its answer shows the hypocrisy of the media:

[Verifying the death rate from starvation] is difficult. Aid groups note that Israeli airstrikes and raids have devastated medical facilities in northern Gaza and displaced much of the population. Along with restrictions on access, they complicate the ability to formally collect data on deaths.

So let's get this straight: the Hamas authorities are believed when they say exactly how many Gazans are killed by the war, but when it comes to deaths by starvation the data gathering is suddenly neat to impossible?

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!

6-3-2024 Linkdump (much abbreviated):Shin Bet says it foiled Hamas suicide bombing plot directed from Turkey; Queers for Palestine,' Like 'Minks for Fur Coats;' Israeli Women's Soccer Team Harassed by pro-Palestinian Protesters; The Biden Policies That Are Killing Israeli Soldiers

Ian seems to be under the weather. Here are some of the articles I've been tweeting and reading today; the linkdump won't be nearly as extensive as his are every day. Ian does an incredible job, day in and day out.

I'll start with one of my memes this weekend:

Here's the roundup:

Shin Bet says it foiled Hamas suicide bombing plot directed from Turkey

Israel says it foiled a recent attempt by Hamas to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Israel, directed by members of the terror group in Turkey.

The Shin Bet says that as part of the plans ahead of the attack, the would-be suicide bomber filmed a last will, took motorcycle lessons that he would have used in the attack, and received funds and instructions to carry out the bombing, including where to collect the explosive device from a hidden location in the West Bank.

The large fragmentation bomb, weighing some 12 kilograms, was seized by the Shin Bet from a spring in the West Bank, the agency says. Next to the bomb, the Shin Bet says, it found written instructions on how to carry out the attack.

7th OCT: Hamas Strategy, Military Drills, Weapons Capability & Infiltration Monograph by Noor Dahri

Entire generations over the last 75 years have been indoctrinated by Palestinian Jihadist organisations in the name of land, race and religion and it will take decades to de-radicalise the young generation. The State of Israel and the regional and international peace-seeking communities should take serious steps to save the entire nation from political and religious extremism that has ruined three generations of Palestinians – from Freedom generation to Intifada generation to a Hamas generation in Gaza and the West Bank. Ultimately, Israel cannot stop the constant domestic and cross-border terrorist attempts against their people from different angles and tactics, and it is only a matter of time until the next one

ICC prosecutor Khan co-authored essay saying defendants can’t get fair shake at world court: report

The British chief prosecutor Karim Khan for the International Criminal Court (ICC) published an academic essay in 2013 that suggested his own current effort to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be a travesty of justice because the court cannot provide due process to defendants.
Khan’s academic paper places big question marks over whether defendants, who are hauled before the world court, can secure a fair trial.

In one telling example of the cards allegedly being stacked against the defendant at the ICC, Khan wrote "[ICC procedures] allow[s] the prosecutor to submit and rely on anonymous summaries of witness evidence that may be significantly lacking in substance, coherence, or both..."

With respect to heightened publicity and media buzz, Khan argued in his essay that the defendant faces another obstacle to a fair judicial process at the ICC. "In the case of a client suspected or accused of committing international crimes, the public perception of the client's guilt is often further magnified by the assistance of well-financed civil-society groups, nongovernmental organizations, and international media pushing a narrative that becomes accepted as the ‘truth’ even before the client appears in court."

The Policies That Are Killing Israeli Soldiers

Biden Administration policies have put Israeli soldiers in greater danger.

To understand why the White House bears some responsibility, we need only look back upon U.S. Gaza policy over the last three months.

On the eve of the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan, in March, the White House warned Israel to halt its military advance on Rafah. The Israelis had removed Hamas from the vast majority of the Gaza Strip. The IDF was on the cusp of destroying the terrorist group, defying the predictions of most Middle East experts. The U.S. warned that war during Ramadan could lead to a multi-front conflict the Israelis wanted to avoid. These warnings resonated with the Israelis, who had had first-hand experience with Ramadan-inspired conflicts in recent years. So they agreed to halt for a month.

But when that month was over, and the Israelis readied for a renewal of the war, the White House moved the goal posts. The U.S. immediately began to warn of a potential humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The State Department went so far as to suggest that Israel could be guilty of war crimes in Rafah. The White House even threatened to halt the provision of ammunition to Israel, as a result of these purported fears. Never mind that Israel had kept the civilian to militant casualty count lower than any of America’s previous engagements in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Israel wanted Gazan clan to take over after war – but Hamas beheaded it

Secret plan derailed when Doghmush group’s leader was executed

A secret Israeli plan to persuade a powerful Gazan clan to take power from Hamas was derailed when the terror group executed its leader, The Telegraph can reveal.

The plan to install Gaza’s Doghmush clan – the most powerful in the enclave – failed after the group’s leader and several of its allies were assassinated, an Israeli intelligence source with knowledge of the plan said.

The intelligence source said an attempt was made two months ago to encourage the notorious Doghmush family to take control when the fighting ends.

“We offered the Doghmush control over Gaza,” the source said. “It ended disastrously.”

“The short attempt ended with Hamas entering the clan’s compound, beheading its people, and the next day all the clans jointly announced support for Hamas.”

Acre in Firing Line as Hezbollah Targets Northern Israeli Towns

Hezbollah targeted multiple areas along the northern Israeli coast on June 2, setting off sirens and forcing Israeli civilians to seek shelter. Alerts sounded in the cities of Acre and Nahariya and other areas in northern Israel. Acre’s mayor, Amihai Ben Shlush, told Ynet News on June 2, “We’re prepared and have implemented emergency guidelines. Acre is another front in the war, and we need the full cooperation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Home Front Command.”
On June 1, the Israeli military reported that 15 rockets targeting the Golan Heights were launched from Lebanon. The rockets caused several fires around the Katzrin area. Additionally, two drones crashed into open areas in the Golan Heights and started a fire. “Sirens also sounded in Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Kfar Blum and other northern Israel communities after a suspected hostile aircraft infiltrated Israeli airspace,” Ynet News reported.

Top NYC private school devolves into ‘hotbed of Jew-hate’ as parents detail teacher flipping off rabbis, group trying to ‘cancel’ Holocaust survivor

One of the top private schools in the country has “devolved” into a “hotbed of Jew-hate,” parents charge.

A Jewish student who graduated from the Ethical Fieldston School in the Bronx was tormented by classmates calling him an “ethnic cleaner” and a “colonizer” and even witnessed a teacher give rabbis the middle finger at an assembly, according to his mom.

“Fieldston is a hotbed of Jew-hate and these terror-supporting students are the epitome of the ‘trigger warning’ generation,” Dr. Logan Levkoff said in an Instagram post.

University of Michigan regent’s law office vandalized with pro-Palestinian graffiti

Pro-Palestinian graffiti spray-painted on the exterior of a Michigan law firm is being investigated as a hate crime, police in suburban Detroit said Monday.
University of Michigan regent and attorney Jordan Acker calls the vandalism “antisemitic” and says staff at the Goodman Acker law firm’s Southfield headquarters discovered it this morning.
Splotches of red paint were left on the “Goodman Acker” sign above the building’s doors. “FREE PALESTINE” was spray-painted in black upon the building’s walls, while “DIVEST NOW” and “U-M KILLS” — a reference to the University of Michigan — were spray-painted in red upon at least one window and a sidewalk.

Israeli Women's Soccer Team Harassed by pro-Palestinian Protesters at European Championship

The Israeli women's national soccer team faced surveillance, harassment by hosts and rival players and a threatening atmosphere on the part of pro-Palestinian protesters at the European Championship qualifier between Scotland and Israel on Friday.

The Israeli team's 4:1 loss to their superior Scottish rival will likely lose its sports-related significance in light of what the players experienced during their stay in Scotland.

When the Israeli players left the airport, a number of cars followed the team's bus, forcing the driver to engage in various maneuvers to try to shake the tail. The effort was unsuccessful, and the location of the team's hotel was ultimately discovered.

Dozens of demonstrators arrived to the hotel, some of whom managed to break into the building itself, photographing one of the players – who was forced to flee and hide in a bathroom stall along with one of the female staff members.

Tessa Veksler Stands Up to the Hate

After Oct. 7, the first Shabbat-observant president of University of California Santa Barbara received a barrage of threats and intimidation. Armed with Jewish pride, she’s not backing down.

Tessa Veksler is the first Shabbat-observant Jewish Student Body President in the history of the University of California Santa Barbara. Before October 7th, she was just another President who happened to be Jewish. After October 7th, everything changed. A day has not gone by without Tessa getting harrowing threats. But she is determined to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors who were also persecuted for being Jewish, and is standing her ground.

The new anti-Zionism among American Jewry explained - opinion

WHAT IS a particular Jewish trait, it would appear, is the extreme necessity of all the non-Zionists and anti-Zionists to constantly and loudly declare their orientations. It is as if they are possessed of a psychological need to declare “I’m not with them.” To parallel Descartes, their life’s principle is nego, sic existo – I deny, therefore I exist. Which recalls one of Pinsker’s complaints in his above-mentioned work: “How pitiful do they appear. Their homeland – the other man’s country; their solidarity – with the battle against us.”
Their acts and words of denial highlight just how deviationist they are. Judaism has known apostates who aided persecutions of the Church as did Johannes Pfefferkorn in his anti-Talmud efforts – or those, like Karl Marx, who adopted the memes of antisemitism. Nevertheless, the adoption of a denial of Jewish ethno-nationalism combined with what I term “transposed inversion” is a unique phenomenon.

The Washington Post Makes Hamas Claims Appear and Disappear

Hamas, like other totalitarian rulers, invests heavily in propaganda. The Gaza-based terrorist group maintains strict control over the flow of information and counts on its propaganda ministry to disseminate its views. But Hamas can rest easy; the Washington Post is on the job.

The Post, like far too many other media outlets, has shown a propensity for treating Hamas claims like gospel. For example, the newspaper has frequently repeated casualty statistics supplied by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas has both a clear incentive to lie and a history of doing so. Moreover, Hamas’s own stats don’t include combatants. According to their “Health Ministry” everyone killed is a civilian.

Yet, the Post has been undeterred. Not only has the newspaper insisted on treating the terror group as if it were a credible source they have defended doing so. It is clearly an editorial decision.

The Post’s faith in Hamas was on full display in a May 27, 2024 article entitled, “Israeli strikes on Rafah safe zone kill at least 35, Gaza officials say.” Those “officials” are Hamas. And unsurprisingly they lied.

News site editor’s ties to Iran, Russia show misinformation’s complexity

Recently unearthed documents reveal that leaders of an online news site aimed at Americans have received money from both Russian and Iranian government media outlets, showing how widening geopolitical alliances are making it harder to identify and trace foreign influence operations.

Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television and once accepted a trip to Moscow for a celebration of Russian state-controlled video network RT that featured Vladimir Putin.

The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid a Washington-based reporter for occasional contributions to its programming in 2020 and 2021 while he was working as a correspondent for Russia’s Sputnik news outlet.

That reporter, Wyatt Reed, had nine bylines in the online publication Grayzone in 2019 and 2020, followed by a gap of 2½ years. He has had 24 more Grayzone bylines since mid-2023, when he was identified as managing editor.

Grayzone posts content on the web, X and YouTube and has been highly critical of Iran’s regional enemy Israel and its supporters in the United States. Reed did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Grayzone top editor Max Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment.

Amazing how they suddenly are against transparency...

How the UN Got Away With Wildly Inflating the Casualty Numbers in Gaza—and the Media Bought It

Even if one pores over every bit of publicly available data, it is difficult to estimate the true number of deaths in Gaza. The latest update from the Ministry of Health puts the figure at 36,379, of which 10,866 are based on "incomplete data." Unless the ministry can cite more than "reliable media sources" to document these fatalities, neither the U.N. nor the media should include them in their tallies. The ministry claims to have "complete data" for the remaining 25,513 individuals, yet the economist Michael Spagat, an expert on civilian casualties, found that the ministry lacked a valid I.D. number for more than 4,000 of the dead. Furthermore, the ministry says the list of records with complete data includes 3,715 cases where no body was recovered, but relatives reported the death in question.

An educated guess of the actual number would reflect that the ministry has documented in the neighborhood of 20,000 deaths, while remaining silent about how many thousands are Hamas fighters.

What we know for sure is that the U.N., the media, and the White House should stop treating data from Hamas-controlled sources as credible in the absence of independent verification.

ADL files federal elections complaint against Jewish Voice for Peace

The Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint against Jewish Voice for Peace with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, charging that JVP’s political action committee repeatedly failed to comply with federal elections law.

Steven Sheinberg, the ADL’s chief legal officer, said that the U.S. agency had to hold the anti-Israel group accountable for its campaign finance violations.

“Simply put, JVP PAC’s numbers do not add up, and despite repeated warnings from the FEC, the PAC has failed to correct the record,” Sheinberg said.

'Queers for Palestine,' Like 'Minks for Fur Coats,' Support Those Who Want to Slaughter Them

"When it comes to Queers for Palestine, what's richly ironic is that many LGBTQ Palestinians seek asylum in Israel – the same country these stateside protesters are rallying against," noted Billy Binion, associate editor at Reason, where he writes about criminal justice and government accountability.

"At the heart of this contradiction is the tendency within social justice movements to pick a clear protagonist and antagonist, the oppressed and the oppressor, and to proceed from there in one-size-fits-all fashion. Some progressives decided long ago that Palestine is the former and Israel is the latter, which is the seed from which everything must grow. Palestine, then, stands not only for anti-colonialism but also LGBT rights and reproductive rights, despite that those rights, in any meaningful sense of the word, do not actually exist there...

"'Queers for Palestine' is about as convincing as 'minks for fur coats.'"

Palestinians possess a national identity, lack civil society

The inclination toward victimhood, complete dependency on the international community, and evasion of responsibility and self-criticism have supplanted a viable national strategy and replaced a coherent and actionable national strategy. Palestinians describe a tragic historical cycle imposed upon them, yet they avoid acknowledging that this cycle results from strategic choices made by both the public and their leaders. Within this framework, there's a notable refusal to recognize the connection between cause and effect (such as the opposition to the 1947 partition plan and the massacre on October 7 that triggered the current war). Instead, there is a persistent portrayal of Palestinians as eternal victims and Israel as the "absolute evil." This narrative persists while avoiding introspection and adopting passivity and fatalism in the face of disasters resulting from national decisions.

Amazon workers: Co discouraged action for abducted colleague

Amazon has come in for criticism since the start of the Swords of Iron war because of its silence over the fact that one of its employees in Israel, Sasha Troufanov, was abducted to the Gaza Strip on October 7. Troufanov works at the Annapurna Labs division of the company, which is responsible for development of the artificial intelligence chips of its cloud servers. Since October 7, apart from internal mail from the head of Amazon Israel to employees in Israel, the company has not officially commented on the abduction and has not publicly called for his release, as, for example, Nvidia did in the case of its abducted engineer Avinatan Or.

It now emerges, from correspondence that has reached "Globes", that behind Amazon’s maintenance of a low public profile lies a policy. In the first weeks of the war, members of a Jewish Affinity group of Amazon employees outside of Israel were advised by the group organizers not to hang posters expressing identification with Troufanov, at the request of senior human resources people at Amazon.

"The golden age of Jews in America is cracking"

He was among Amazon's first 100 employees, and served in senior positions in US tech companies, but the October 7 attack prompted Joshua Burgin to switch to a young Israeli startup.

Israel in Space

In the shadow of October 7, the story of Israel’s rapidly growing space industry is easily overlooked. But it holds many of the keys for the nation’s future survival.

New Rule: Gender Apartheid | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

This could be the official motto of the anti-Israel movement.

They should inscribe it on their flags, scrawl it on their posters, etch it on their foreheads.

"I ain't reading all that. Free Palestine."

Activism driven by willful ignorance. How perfect. https://t.co/q7u9nuqmh4
— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) June 2, 2024

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!

Too many American Jews are Jewishly - and Zionisticly - ignorant

There was a very depressing poll of American Jews released by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs last week.

The most concerning finding was that about 30% of American Jews either strongly agree or somewhat agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Are 30% of American Jews that ignorant?

The answer is, unfortunately, yes.

The percentage of Jews who identify as being of “no religion” was 27% in 2020, according to Pew surveys. Enrollment in even the cursory Jewish education from after-school Hebrew school programs has been plummeting. 42% cannot read Hebrew even phonetically. 28% do not consider Israeli Jews to be metaphorically part of their extended family. 55% never visited Israel. More than half could not identify Israel's first prime minister in a multiple choice question.

In other words, between one third and half of American Jews have no Jewish or Israel education to speak of. And most of the ones who think they do, don't.

If they don't know the first thing about Israel, and they get all of their news from news outlets that are hostile to Israel, what do you expect?

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!

While the purportedly "pro-Palestinian" protesters in the US and Europe are careful not to demand that Egypt do anything to help out Gazans who cannot escape, student protesters in Egypt and Lebanon have no problem making those demands.

The New Arab reported on May 1:

Egyptian security forces have reportedly detained six activists in the northern city of Alexandria over public support for Palestinians, local media reported on Tuesday.

The detainees, some of whom allegedly raised a pro-Palestine banner, were apprehended on Sunday, according to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), which named one of the individuals as Ali Mohamed, a labour activist and founder of the Popular Committee to support the Palestinian Cause.

The rare protests in Egypt have called on Cairo to indefinitely open the Rafah border crossing in North Sinai, Gaza's only connection to the outside world, to allow in more humanitarian aid and for injured Palestinians to leave for treatment.

Egypt has been criticised for only allowing critically injured Palestinians and dual nationals to enter the country from the besieged coastal enclave.

That was even before Israel took over the Gaza side of the crossing. But AP reported last week from Beirut:

Clashes erupted on Monday between pro-Palestinian university students and riot police outside the Egyptian embassy in Beirut.

Dozens of university students gathered outside the embassy, holding Palestinian flags and calling on the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing and allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city, is on the border with Egypt.

Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to the Palestinians.

Now, why would university students in Egypt and Lebanon want to see Egypt open the Rafah crossing - but the ones in the US and Europe don't?

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!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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)

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