Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 21, 2024

Arabs and Muslims come up with new unhinged "Zionist" conspiracy theories about Pepsi (and Coke)

A short look at how Arabs and Muslim s create and spread rumors about Pepsi - and Coca Cola - reveals that their "anti-Zionism" is completely, irreversibly unhinged.

Here is a TikTok video from a Lebanese influencer upset over the change of Pepsi bottlecaps in Lebanon to being blue and white. (He's not the only one making videos of their anger at Pepsi for the bottlecap.)

Part of his "proof" that Pepsi is "Zionist" comes from a clip of a video at a wedding of a Hasidic Jew dancing with a Pepsi bottle on his head, which he calls a "Pepsi dance."

In fact, a Turkish media outlet posted this "Pepsi dance" - which is just a Jewish bottle dance often seen at weddings* - as a celebration of a fictional billion dollars given by Pepsi to Israel.

For years, Arabs and Muslims have been claiming that "Pepsi" stands for "Pay Every Penny to Save Israel." An Arab political candidate even made that claim in 2011, and Hamas leaders have said the same.

One researcher decided to see if this is true. He "discovered" that Pepsi was founded only two years after Herzl published "The Jewish State" - and he discovered that the creator of Pepsi was a Freemason and buried in a cemetery that has a Jewish section, which makes him practically Jewish!

Anyway, back in Lebanon, people are so upset over Pepsi's bottlecaps that they are dumping the soft drink in the sea and on the street. (Which means, of course, that they bought it.)

They are physically blocking Pepsi delivery trucks from arriving at Baalbek-Hermel and Qasr.

And one Pepsi truck that overturned on the highway prompted lots of "God is great!" responses.

And this is only the beginning.

Pepsi started an advertising campaign in Egypt, "Stay Thirsty" (which, my own fevered research has confirmed, is a ripoff of Dos Equis "Stay Thirsty My Friends" tagline that was spoken by Jewish actor Jonathan Goldsmith.)

The campaign angered Egyptians who said it was insensitive while Gazans are suffering "genocide." Counter campaigns started, telling Pepsi to "stay lost, I'm not thirsty."

Do you think all this negative publicity helps Coca Cola? Oh, please. It has been the target of conspiracy theories over the year as well.

For example, did you know that Coca Cola's cursive logo shown backwards resembles "No Mohammed, No Mecca"?

Which was clearly the intent when the logo was trademarked in 1892.

But what about recently? Well, when Noa Armagan drank Coke with her father, it prompted a campaign to boycott Coke (and create ugly caricatures of Argamani.)

The Pepsi boycotters falsely claim her father was drinking Pepsi.

None of this is normal political criticism. It is animated by hate of Israel, not support for Palestinians. This crazed hate is never seen in any other political context - but it has seen plenty by Jewish victims of antisemitism over the centuries.

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*Most sources say that the choreographed Jewish bottle dance was invented for the play Fiddler on the Roof, based on the director's witnessing a performer at a Jewish wedding pretending to be drunk and staggering around while balancing the bottle on his head. It only then became a staple at Jewish weddings.

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 Thursday, Islamic Jihad proudly published a video of them shooting rockets at a civilian Jewish community near Gaza.

They are very proud of their accomplishment of being able to still fire rockets from Gaza.

The story was not covered in the media, evern Hebrew-language media, except for the red alert. No one was hurt from the rockets. There are a lot of more important stories out there.

But this is a story must be told.

Islamic Jihad didn't pretend to be shooting rockets at a military base, which used to be the lie that Gaza terror groups would claim in years past. They said they aimed at a "settlement." They are directly and deliberately targeting civilians. It is a war crime.

They call all of Israel "occupied" and every Israeli town a "settlement." When Israel-haters use the words "occupation" and "settlements" they choose their words carefully, knowing that they mean all of Israel but leftists who want a two state solution choose to believe that this is what they are saying.

Which community did Islamic Jihad target?

According to the Code Red alerts, the only alarm in the south on Thursday was aimed at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha.

On October 7 attacks, about 90 terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz, killing four civilians, looting, shooting, and burning houses. The 320 residents of the kibbutz, including 92 children, evacuated to hotels in Eilat for five months, and then returned home in March.

Islamic Jihad is not targeting an empty community. They chose to target a place where the residents - all civilians, including 92 children - have returned.

One of the residents murdered was 63 year old Marcelle Taljah, who came to visit her newborn granddaughter the day after she was born.

Another was 80-year old Silvia Mirensky, who was burned alive when errorists threw a firebomb into her home.

A third was 43-year old Noa Glazberg who was shot eight times by terrorists in her home.

The Jew-hating Palestinians of Islamic Jihad want to terrorize the residents anew, only eight months after four were murdered. They want them to flee. The message is that Israelis near Gaza will never feel safe - as long as Gaza is run by Jew-hating terrorists.

This is a message Israelis understand loud and clear.

The residents, for their part, are used to this. They are only 2 miles/3 kilometers from the Gaza border. They have only five seconds to seek shelter when the red alert is sounded. And this is where they choose to live, and where they chose to return.

This is a story of everyday heroes in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, and the disgusting Palestinian terrorists who want every one of them dead of fled.

It is a story that isn' tbeing told because it is so common. Yet that is exactly why it must be told, over and over, to the world. Because these everyday heroes and the everyday Jew-haters are the norm, not the exception.

It is easy for people, even well meaning people,who are ignorant of this reality, to say that Israelis must live with a certain level of terror, as part of the price of choosing to live in that region. Ein Hashlosha shows that there is no such thing as an acceptable level of terror, an acceptable number of 5-secon warning, an acceptable level of knowing that millions of people who live a few miles away cheer every dead Israeli civilian and harbor hopes of more October 7ths.

This unreported reality illustrates why Israel must defeat Hamas and the other terror groups completely and thoroughly. A ceasefire that leaves the terrorists in charge is simply not acceptable, and no country in the world would tolerate what the residents of Ein Hashlosha and their neighbors have to live with,

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!

06/20 Links Pt2: Ben Stiller on the Israel-Hamas War and the Need for Peace; The AOC AIPAC Freakout; The Evisceration of Mehdi Hasan

From Ian:

Ben Stiller: Why I Can’t Stay Silent About the Suffering in Israel and Gaza

Like so many Jews I grieve for those who suffered in the barbaric Hamas attack on October 7 and for those who have suffered as a result of those atrocities. My heart aches for the families who lost loved ones to this heinous act of terrorism and for those anxiously waiting these long months for the return of the hostages still in captivity. It’s a nightmare. I also grieve for the innocent people in Gaza who have lost their lives in this conflict and those suffering through that awful reality now.

I detest war, but what Hamas did was unconscionable and reprehensible. The hostages have to be freed. Terrorism must be named and fought by all people of conscience on the planet. There is no excuse for it under any circumstances.

I stand with the Israeli people and their right to live in peace and safety. At the same time, I don’t agree with all of the Israeli government’s choices on how they are conducting the war. I want the violence to end, and the innocent Palestinian people affected by the humanitarian crisis that has resulted to receive the lifesaving aid they need. And I know that many in Israel share this sentiment.

I believe, as many people in Israel and around the world do, in the need for a two-state solution, one that ensures that the Israeli people can live in peace and safety alongside a homeland for the Palestinian people that provides them the same benefits.

I also see a troubling conflation in criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with denunciations of all Israelis and Jewish people. And as a result, we are seeing an undeniable rise in global antisemitism. I am seeing it myself, on the streets of the city I grew up in. It isn’t right and must be denounced.

Antisemitism must be condemned whenever it happens and wherever it exists. As should Islamophobia and bigotry of all kinds. There is a frightening amnesia for history in the air. We must remind ourselves that we can only manifest a more hopeful, just, and peaceful future by learning from the past.

Obviously I am no politician or diplomat. I have no solutions for these world conflicts and claim to offer none. I think I, like so many people, am struggling with how to process this all. But as an advocate for displaced people, I do believe this war must end. As I write this, there are about 120 million people all over the world who have been displaced by conflicts. In the Middle East, in Ukraine, Sudan, and many other countries. They all deserve to live in safety and peace. The human suffering must end. We must demand this of our leaders. Peace is the only path.

Europe: Nazis' 'Do Not Buy from Jews' 2.0

Since October 7, when Iranian proxies Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad committed unspeakable atrocities against men, women, children and babies in Israel, large parts of the international community have been in a frenzy over the Jews' puzzling inclination to defend themselves.

This is the same French government [which banned Israel from participating in Eurosatory 2024 defense industry trade fair] so obsessed with appearing inclusive and non-discriminatory that it recently supported a bill that outlaws discrimination based on hair texture, length, color or style.

Meanwhile, the French government did not think it necessary to ban the participation of China, presently indulging in two genocides – against Tibetans and against Uyghurs – from participating in Eurosatory. China's representation at the trade fair counts around 61 defense companies.

The French government also did not ban... Turkey, which has been taken to the International Criminal Court for committing crimes against humanity against hundreds of thousands of opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruthless regime...

When there are no Jews to blame, evidently, crimes against humanity, genocide and human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable.

Since October 7, more than 19,000 rockets have been launched into Israel, a country smaller than New Jersey, primarily by the terrorist groups ruling Gaza, as well as from another of Iran's terrorist proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon

Never mind that John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, determined that Israel has consistently implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any military in the history of warfare.

"The Middle East does not need more weapons, it needs more peace," said Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares. The remark, oddly, did not appear to be addressed the entities that started the war: Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Qatar.

Iran, the Middle East's warmonger par excellence, and -- along with major funding from Qatar, which seems never to have met an Islamic terrorist group it did not finance or promote -- was the originator of the current war in Gaza.

Man Thinks Group With ‘Crazy’ Safeguards To Prevent Sins, Try To ‘Trick God’ With Technicalities (Preccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Los Angeles, June 20 - A self-proclaimed opponent of "Rabbinic Judaism" repeated his contention online today that the orthodox followers of the religion, who adhere to strictures specifically imposed to prevent even inadvertent transgression of certain Biblical precepts, also care so little for those Biblical precepts that they engage in sophistry and employ technicalities to avoid upholding those precepts.

An X user with the handle "Truth Bomb" reacted this morning to a post about the Jewish Orthodox lifestyle that showcased several devices that the religiously observant use to facilitate somewhat normal living on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, to avoid violating Jewish law while still accomplishing at least some of the result of the acts that, if a Jew performed them on the Sabbath, would violate Jewish law. He called the phenomenon "trying to trick God," a remark he made not ten minutes after characterizing ancient augmentations that Jewish law mandates to avoid violations of core Biblical prohibitions as "ascetic extremism."

"These people think they can trick God, but God can't be tricked," stated Truth Bomb, to the echoes of approval from at least eighty other posters who "liked" his comment. Only seventy users liked the post he made before that one, in which the Jew-obsessed man decried Jews for refraining from any mixture of meat and dairy products, when the Bible only specifies a prohibition on cooking a young goat in its mother's milk. "These people want to be more religious than God," he spat.

Truth Bomb refused to entertain alternative understandings of either phenomenon; one user attempted to explain to him that the invocation of "technicalities" represents not Jews trying to circumvent the spirit of the law, corrupting it, but a manifestation of close, loving dedication to understanding the precise parameters and purpose of each commandment, a scholarly and devotional pursuit that the person behind the Truth Bomb account dismissed as "woo-woo."

A similar attempt to explain the intricacies and assumptions behind the exegesis behind the meat-dairy separation in Jewish law fell on deaf ears. "I don't need any of these apologetics, I know what the text *really* says," asserted the man, who elsewhere has acknowledged he has no knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish hermeneutics, or Talmud, the last of which he simply knows is a repository of Jewish treachery, supremacism, and perversion, since that is what the sources he prefers to consult call it.

Truth Bomb also left unanswered another user's question how the man's Christian faith, which promises salvation through Jesus even for the most depraved, sadistic person, simply by accepting Jesus as savior, does not also qualify as "tricking God."

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!

06/20 Links Pt1: There is no Gaza famine, so why is the pro-Hamas media silent about this great news?; Blinken Keeps On Rocking As The World Burns

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: There is no Gaza famine, so why is the pro-Hamas media silent about this great news?

Of course, President Biden (and his minions) also echoed the lie as he sought to show he “cares” in order to appease the “When Jews defend themselves it’s genocide” crowd.

Which raises the question of why the USAID-backed network cooked the books to suggest famine was coming.

And of why so many “news” organizations swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

It’s rank media bias: An “honest mistake” by reporters and editors eager to paint the Jewish state as monstrous, to buy propaganda slamming Israel’s allegedly cruel restriction of food-aid entry into Gaza.

Again, any such blockage of food aid was thanks to theft by Hamas.

The Biden team’s unseriosness and incompetence here is summed up by the emergency pier the prez demanded in his State of the Union speech, which took months to construct, almost instantly began to fall apart and is about to be decommissioned after managing to unload only a bare pittance of aid — all of it apparently seized by the terrorists.

So when the media’s terror-lovers next begin to scream about some supposed Israeli atrocity — don’t worry, it won’t be long — remember their utter silence about this tremendous piece of good news.

And understand that the shouters don’t love Palestinians, they simply hate Jews.

Melanie Phillips: The ‘Gaza famine’ myth

It’s worth remembering that USAID, the parent body of FEWS NET, is run by Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.

In 2002, Power suggested in a “thought experiment” that America might have to invade Israel to prevent an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. She also suggested that the only people who might be alienated by this would be American Jews, who she said exercised tremendous political and financial power over America.

Other research has also exploded the “Gaza famine” claims. At Columbia University, two professors have said the evidence shows that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied to Gaza.

They told The Jerusalem Post that it was “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza” and suggested that the International Criminal Court and U.N. had joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war.”

Yet there are no signs that these rebuttals of the “Gaza famine” claim are having any effect on the Israel-bashing crowd. A few days ago, The New York Times was still referring to “starving civilians” and blaming deaths from malnutrition on “restrictions on aid and commercial goods entering Gaza.”

BBC News reported this week that “warnings of famine are looming once again in northern Gaza,” broadcasting distressing footage of infants said to be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition caused by restrictions on aid at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

Other than Fox News, it seems that no mainstream media outlet has reported the Famine Review Committee’s findings that the claim of famine in Gaza cannot be justified. Nor have the anti-Israel humanitarian organizations, although the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has now subtly adjusted his rhetoric by talking about “famine-like conditions.”

Famine is not the only anti-Israel falsehood whose debunking has been ignored. The mainstream media and humanitarian crowd are still using the Hamas figure of 37,000-plus civilians killed in Gaza, despite the fact that the U.N. itself revised its own casualty totals sharply downwards after it emerged that some of the claimed deaths had been drawn from media sources and were fabricated.

Jonathan Tobin: The Gaza famine that wasn’t is being used against Israel

Yet the egregious nature of the Oct. 7 assault and atrocities, as well as the clear justification for Israel’s counter-offensive to eliminate the genocidal terrorist movement that carried out those crimes, seems to have impelled those who hate Israel and Jews to new depths of mendacious reporting. The intersectional left-wingers who are convinced that Israel is a nation of “white” villains victimizing Palestinian “people of color” who are inaccurately analogized to American victims of racial discrimination have no compunction about spreading these smears. The worse the actual behavior of the Palestinians, who are bent on the destruction of Israel and its people, the more it becomes imperative to flip the narrative and accuse Israel of genocide.

Every death and all of the privations suffered by Palestinian Arabs since Oct. 7 is the responsibility of the Hamas terrorists who started this war and who take every opportunity to maximize the suffering of their own people to besmirch Israel’s image. That is not only the case for Gazans hurt or killed during the fighting but true for anyone prevented from receiving aid shipped into the Strip with Israel’s permission.

The mythical Gaza famine is just the latest instance of how the Palestinians are gaslighting the world as they deliberately spiral further into an abyss of unending conflict in which they themselves are the primary victims. Sober-minded Americans who by now ought to have learned better than to trust the corporate media on this and many other issues should not be influenced by this propaganda campaign, rooted in the age-old tropes of antisemitism in which the Jews are always accused of conspiring to harm others. Stripped of the emotionalism and partisan activism that colors so much of contemporary journalism, and especially the coverage of the Middle East, the claim that Israel is starving the Palestinians should be seen for what it is: a 21st-century blood libel.

It Took Only 150 Years To Revise The Reputation of General Sherman. How Long Will It Take For Israel? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

“Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things. We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt."
General William Tecumseh Sherman

General William Tecumseh Sherman was one of the most notable Union generals of the Civil War, famous for his "scorched earth" policy requiring destroying anything useful to the enemy. That was arguably Sherman's main claim to fame -- or infamy.

General Sherman's military career in the Civil War does seem to have some interesting parallels to the current Israel-Gaza War -- beyond the above quote about his view of the South's challenge to the North. His policy for conducting the war has been challenged over 150 years for being destructive and brutal. General Sherman was arguably responsible for committing war crimes:

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s actions after the capture of Atlanta and his subsequent March to the Sea are sometimes seen as anticipating the pattern of total war in the twentieth century. Some have claimed that Sherman was a war criminal, authorizing plunder and looting of civilian property. But the matter is more complex than either of these charges indicate. In fact, Sherman’s actions were the culmination of a Union policy toward civilians that evolved during the course of the war.

But his reputation appears to be going through a makeover. That redemption gained steam in 2014, as reflected by this marker:

The marker was erected by the Georgia Historical Society and the Georgia Battlefields Association:

On November 15, 1864, during the Civil War, U.S. forces under Gen. William T. Sherman set out from Atlanta on the March to the Sea, a military campaign designed to destroy the Confederacy’s ability to wage war and break the will of its people to resist. After destroying Atlanta’s industrial and business (but not residential) districts, Sherman’s 62,500 men marched over 250 miles, reaching Savannah in mid-December. Contrary to popular myth, Sherman’s troops primarily destroyed only property used for waging war – railroads, train depots, factories, cotton gins, and warehouses. Abandoning their supply base, they lived off the land, destroying food they could not consume. They also liberated thousands of enslaved African Americans in their path. Sherman’s “hard hand of war” demoralized Confederates, hastening the end of slavery and the reunification of the nation.

The media covering the marker at the time picked up on this revision of Sherman's reputation. We can only wonder if the analysis offered just 9 years ago would be made today:

Historians have increasingly written that Sherman’s plan for the systematic obliteration in late 1864 of the South’s war machine, including its transportation network and factories, was destructive but not gratuitously destructive. Instead, those experts contend, the strategy was an effective and legal application of the general’s authority and the hard-edged masterstroke necessary to break the Confederacy.

In other words:

o The force used by the general was proportionate.
o It targeted military -- not civilian -- infrastructure.
o And it did not contravene the law.

This is not to deny the inevitable excesses one expects in war but focuses on the intent of Sherman and his troops.

And what about the accounts of the deliberate brutality of Sherman's troops?

[Experts] have described plenty of family accounts of cruelty as nothing more than fables that unfairly mar Sherman’s reputation.

“What is really happening is that over time, the views that are out there are being challenged by historical research,” said John F. Marszalek, a Sherman biographer and the executive director of the Mississippi-based Ulysses S. Grant Association. “The facts are coming out.”

Family accounts?

Apparently, Hamas terrorists are not the first to recognize the effectiveness of the use of civilian accounts for blackening the reputation of its enemies.

But this is not to say that Sherman's redemption is complete. The South still is bitter over what they view as the war crimes of General Sherman.

Not surprisingly, the battle over Sherman can also be found on college campuses. A professor at the University of Georgia notes that there is a change in attitude where he is teaching:

“You all the time run into college kids who don’t know which side Sherman was on — and their parents and certainly their grandparents would be aghast to know that,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of education. It’s a matter of being the blank slate that younger generations present for revision or education that older generations don’t because they’re steeped in the mythology of their ancestors.”

Has there ever been a time when university students were not blank slates for those with an agenda?

Another interesting parallel appears in Wikipedia, quoting authors who believe that Sherman's conduct of the war influenced the Democratic Party and the elections:

Sherman's success caused the collapse of the once powerful "Copperhead" faction within the Democratic Party, which had advocated immediate peace negotiations with the Confederacy. It also dealt a major blow to the popularity of the Democratic presidential candidate, George B. McClellan, whose victory in the election had until then appeared likely to many, including Lincoln himself. According to Holden-Reid, "Sherman did more than any other man apart from the president in creating [the] climate of opinion" that afforded Lincoln a comfortable victory over McClellan at the polls.

The "progressives" of that time who parallel today's "Ceasefire Now" advocates did not push for a definitive victory over the South. Similarly, McClellan's position on the war is reminiscent of Biden's position on the Israel-Gaza War and the problems that is causing him.

According to ChatGPT:

[McClellan's] platform, as adopted by the Democratic Party, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. However, McClellan personally distanced himself from the more extreme peace elements of his party, asserting that any peace settlement must include the restoration of the Union. Despite this, his campaign was seen as an attempt to end the war through compromise rather than military victory.

But none of this helps Israel.

General William Tecumseh Sherman died in 1891. There have been over 130 years for the dust to settle, for some degree of objectivity to set in, and for a re-examination of Sherman and his actions to begin to be re-evaluated.

It will be a long time before analysis of Israel and its modern history approaches anything near objectivity.

(Hat tip: PreOccupied Territory)

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!

It is not only October 7 and hostages: Hamas violates many international laws that the UN, media and NGOs ignore

The New York Times publishes a backgrounder:

Note the subhead: "The armed Islamist group committed war crimes on Oct. 7, experts say, and continues to do so by holding hostages."

This is true. And it is enormously misleading.

When the media, the UN or NGOs accuse Hamas of war crimes, they limit their criticism to October 7 and the continued holding of hostages. This article is no exception.

But Hamas violates many laws of war that are not being even mentioned in the thousands of articles, reports and speeches about Gaza.

Here are some:

1 Misuse of Ambulances with Red Cross/Crescent markings- Hamas uses ambulances as limousine services to transport its fighters. Under Article 23(f) of the 1907 Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, which reflects customary international law, it is ―especially forbidden…[t]o make improper use of a flag of truce, … as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention.. Article 44 of the First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949) also provides that: ―… the emblem of the Red Cross on a white ground …may not be employed, either in time of peace or in time of war, except to indicate or to protect the medical units and establishments…"

2. Misuse of Medical Facilities - Hamas used hospitals and medical facilities as spaces for weapons caches. It used electricity and infrastructure from hospitals in tunnels underneath them. It fought battles from hospitals. Rule 28 of Customary IHL says, "Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy."

3. Staging of Attacks From Residential Areas and Protected Sites: The Law of Armed Conflict not only prohibits targeting an enemy‘s civilians; it also requires parties to an armed conflict to distinguish their combatant forces from their own civilians, and not to base operations in or near civilian structures, especially protected sites such as schools, medical facilities and places of worship. As the customary law principle is reflected in Article 51(7) of Additional Protocol I: '―The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or shield, favour or impede military operations."

4. Use of Civilian Homes and Public Institutions as Bases of Operation - Hamas has placed weapons caches in schools and mosques, it has put thousands of tunnel entrances inside residential homes. See (3) for citations.

5. Booby-trapping of Civilian Areas - Hamas has placed bombs in residential homes to kill IDF soldiers. See (3) for citations.

6. Blending in with Civilians - Hamas doesn't even pretend to wear uniforms. All their videos show them wearing civilian clothing. Since they positioned weapons caches all over civilian areas, they shoot weapons and then leave them so they can feign being civilians and enjoy protected status as civilians. Additional Protocol I defines perfidy as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence”. Perfidy includes "simulation of civilian status because civilians not taking a direct part in hostilities [that] may not be the object of attack ."

7. Use of Human Shields - As the ICRC rule states, "It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives." This is the basis of Hamas' entire military strategy. Gazans are literally used as shields - mere objects meant to protect Hamas military tunnels and bunkers from Israeli airstrikes.

8. Interference with Humanitarian Relief Efforts - Hamas has fired rockets at the Kerem Shalom crossing where humanitarian goods are brought into Gaza. It has diverted aid trucks for its own needs. It taxes the incoming aid meant to be given for free to Gazans. All of these actions violate the Law of Armed Conflict, which requires parties to allow the entry of humanitarian supplies and to guarantee their safety. Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires parties in an armed conflict to "permit the free passage of [humanitarian] consignments and shall guarantee their protection." Article 60 of the same Convention protects the shipments from being diverted from their intended purpose.

9. Using the uniform of the enemy - This was done on October 7. Additional Protocol I prohibits the use of enemy flags, military emblems, insignia or uniforms “while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations”.[3] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “making improper use … of the flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts when it results in death or serious personal injury.[4]

10. Hamas‘ rocket attacks directed at Israel‘s civilian population centers deliberately violates the basic principle of distinction. (Additional Protocol I, arts. 48, 51(2), 52(1).) It is well accepted in customary international law that ―[i]ntentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities constitutes a war crime. (Rome Statute, art. 8(2)(b)(i)).

11. Indiscriminate attacks - Besides targeting civilians and civilian objects, Rule 11 of the ICRC CIHL states flatly that "Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited." By definition, every rocket attack is by its very nature indiscriminate. Note also that the rockets are built to spread shrapnel as far and wide as possible.

12. Violence aimed at spreading terror among the civilian population - Rule 2 of ICRC's Customary IHL is "Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited." It quotes Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population”. Hamas rockets are aimed not only at killing civilians, but at spreading terror among Israelis. In addition, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuously attempting to mount terror attacks from the West Bank to terrorize Israelis.

13. Advance Warning - Rule 20 of the ICRC CIHL states "Each party to the conflict must give effective advance warning of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit." In the past, Hamas has used the media and SMS calls to threaten Israelis, so it is clear that they have the ability to warn before every rocket attack. Their failure to do so is a violation of IHL.

This is all in addition to the other Hamas violations against the hostages beyond keeping them in captivity - not respecting the dead and sexual abuse. Also, Hamas military strategy is to capture more hostages, an additional war crime even when done against soldiers.

There is also evidence of Hamas directly attacking its own civilian population, as well as the many rockets that fell short in Gaza in the first months of the war causing casualties.

I would also argue that Hamas' using of the Gaza health ministry as a propaganda tool to spread lies also is a violation of misusing medical facilities for military purposes.

While the media, including this NYT article, goes into great detail on alleged Israeli war crimes, they ignore virtually all of these Hamas war crimes. It is hard to escape the conclusion that they only mention the worst of the worst of Hamas crimes to pretend to be even-handed, but they have little interest in discussing the many other war crimes of Hamas. It is interesting to note that rocket fire was the fig leaf used by NGOs in the past to pretend that they are also criticizing Hamas, not just Israel, but even though Hamas continues to shoot rockets when it can, those war crimes are hardly even mentioned anymore.

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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This story, broken by UN Watch on May 29, did not get the publicity it deserves.

The Arab group of states today pulled their draft resolution condemning Israel at the WHO’s annual assembly after an amendment was adopted that called for the release of all hostages held in Gaza and condemned the use by armed groups of hospitals and ambulances.

The initial 4-page draft resolution, written by the Palestinians and Syria, and submitted to the 77th World Health Assembly by Iran, Syria, China, Russia, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar and others, accused Israel of “using starvation as a weapon of war,” “wanton destruction of the Palestinian health system,” and causing “forcibly internally displaced civilians.”

All of this was withdrawn by the Arab states, however, after Israel successfully amended the text to introduce a single sentence that “Calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held in Gaza, including children, women and older persons, and condemns the use, by armed groups, of health facilities, including hospitals and ambulances, that endangers the civilian population.”

The Israeli-backed amendment was adopted by a vote of 50 to 44, with 31 abstentions. All Western democracies voted in support — except for Belgium, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and Slovenia, which abstained.

Egypt then took the floor on behalf of the Arab Group to withdraw the entire resolution, in opposition to the amendment that called for the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Five Western democracies could not support a single sentence added to a virulently false and anti-Israel 4 page resolution that called for hostages to be released and condemns terrorists using hospitals.

In Belgium, the Jewish newspaper Joods Actueel reported,

Ambassador Pecsteen de Buytswerve, permanent representative for our country at the WHO, informed Joods Actueel by email that he did not act arbitrarily but followed the instructions of the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, “a normal procedure” according to him.

The spokesperson for the FPS Foreign Affairs then said that “Israel's text contains a political message and that Belgium will always continue to behave in accordance with the highest moral and ethical values. This Israeli amendment is contrary to international law,” it continues.

So the 24 European countries that voted to include this single sentence are acting against international law?

By not adopting this amendment, whether intentionally or not, these five countries are saying that they agree with Hamas that the hostages should not be freed and that Hamas has the right to hijack the Gaza health system.

Every Muslim-majority country voted against the amendment.

(h/t Rudi)

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06/19 Links Pt2: Conspiracy Theories About Israel Do Not Come From the Fringes; Learning from Menachem Begin; Eden Golan on Facing the Mob at Eurovision

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Return of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Last month, in an unprecedented show of support to the terrorists responsible for the current bloody conflict, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib gave a surprise speech at a Palestinian conference in Detroit that was endorsed and promoted by the PFLP, and for which the PFLP provided prominent speakers including the keynote. Tlaib’s enthusiastic embrace of a conference connected to a terrorist organization and celebrating the butchers of Hamas who currently hold American hostages turned surreal when she used her address to attack President Biden to the whooping and cheering crowd.

In truth, however, the PFLP’s big comeback was years in the making thanks to the secular canonization of two of its terrorists: Rasmea Odeh and Leila Khaled.

Khaled has become a left-wing icon in the manner of Che Guevara. She was involved in two hijackings, one in 1969 and one in 1970. She was captured carrying out the latter, a coordinated hijacking of four planes to be taken to Jordan, spurring a fellow terrorist to hijack a fifth plane a few days later in order to bargain for her release. The 1970 incident threw a lit match on the tinderbox of Palestinian-Jordanian tensions and led to what became known as Black September, when the Jordanian army was tasked with evicting the Palestine Liberation Organization from its territory. Outside the U.S., Khaled still draws crowds—and the occasional shoutout from progressive anti-Zionist academics like Marc Lamont Hill.

Rasmea Odeh, meanwhile, was still drawing crowds in the U.S. until she was deported in 2017. Odeh was convicted in Israel in 1970 for her participation in a bombing that killed two people. She was released in a PFLP prisoner exchange a decade later and eventually settled in the U.S. before her conviction for immigration fraud. Odeh was embraced by anti-Semitic activists like Linda Sarsour and in progressive and leftist spaces from The Nation to Jacobin to Harvard Law (and yes, of course, Marc Lamont Hill).

The PFLP was largely responsible for the strategic direction of the Palestinian national movement after 1967, when it argued that a long-term guerrilla war was the only way to offset Israel’s technological superiority. The PFLP’s approach, according to Palestinian intellectual Yezid Sayigh, was that “the Arabs should rely on their advantages of human and geographic depth to neutralize [Israel’s] superiority and drain its resources in a lengthy conflict.” That lengthy conflict continues, on American soil, to this day thanks to the progressive organizers, academic institutions, and members of Congress openly aiding the PFLP’s revival.

Eli Lake: Learning from Menachem Begin

Begin’s greatest triumph as prime minister was Operation Opera, the code name for Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. The parallels to Israel’s current efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program are striking. For example, the Mossad had begun to sabotage Iraq’s nuclear program as early as 1979, when it detonated a shipment of reactor equipment in France that was destined for Iraq. In 1980, Israel ordered the assassination of Yahya El Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear scientist who was working with Iraq — much like when Israel assassinated Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in a daring operation in 2020.

Begin knew, however, that such steps would only delay Saddam Hussein’s plans to acquire an atomic bomb. He tasked the air force with a secret mission to destroy Osirak. As today, Israel’s actions led to international censure and isolation. Even the United States, under President Ronald Reagan, voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution that condemned the Jewish state for its aggression.

History vindicated Begin. After the U.S. military drove Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney presented Israeli Ambassador David Ivri, who at the time of Operation Opera had been the Israeli Air Force chief of staff, with a signed satellite photo of the remains of Osirak. It said, “For General David Ivri, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi Nuclear Program in 1981, which made our job much easier in Desert Storm!”

The genius of Begin is that he understood himself and his country to be links in the chain of Jewish history. Begin was proud of that history. He lived his life by a code that traced back to ancient glory even though he was born into the perils of the European continent between the great wars.

American Jews today have had the good fortune of not knowing the misery of statelessness. We have not seen the same pogroms, blood libels, and dispossession that our forebears knew. This is why the solidarity with Hamas on college campuses, the double standards when it comes to acceptable speech, the stunning rise in antisemitic attacks, and the sudden need for security at every Jewish institution and event come to many of us as a shock.

Begin would not be shocked. He understood the persistence of Jew-hatred, and how to match it with hadar. We should do the same.

Seth Mandel: Stop Pretending This Isn’t Happening

In world affairs, the strategy of “just pretend it isn’t happening” has an extremely poor track record. Nor is it true that, as the chief of medicine on Scrubs once put it, “if you don’t look for a mistake, you can’t find one.”

Now that the world has been forced to admit that there is no famine in Gaza, it has been made clear that Israel is letting plenty of food aid into the strip. Which means it’s time to admit something is happening to that food, and it isn’t Israel’s fault. From the Wall Street Journal:
Officials from the United Nations, the largest distributor of aid in Gaza, say that people are looting trucks when they reach Gaza, making it unsafe for their employees to deliver aid. By midafternoon on Monday, no U.N. trucks arrived to pick up aid from the Kerem Shalom crossing, where on Sunday Israel began a daily pause to fighting from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. along a key north-south road used to deliver aid throughout much of Gaza. The Israeli military said 21 other trucks picked up supplies on Sunday.

“We need to keep people safe,” said Scott Anderson, the Gaza-based director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a key group tasked with managing aid distribution in the Strip.

An official with the World Food Program, another U.N. agency that delivers aid to Gaza, also cited looting en route to WFP warehouses as hindering deliveries.

So UN trucks are allowed into Gaza, it’s just that the UN drivers don’t want to go because they fear Palestinian violence.

There are two possibilities here regarding who is committing that violence, and neither makes the international community look very good. Indeed, Israel’s critics would have egg on their face—if only the UN would agree to deliver the eggs.

Either Palestinian civilians are looting the aid, or Hamas (and Hamas-aligned gunmen) are doing so. Which means, to the UN delivery drivers, there isn’t functionally any difference: It’s still not safe enough to go.

The foot-dragging by the UN, however understandable it might be from a safety perspective, is in fact what Israeli officials have been pointing to for months. And what the UN and the Biden administration and our European allies have been pretending isn’t happening. But it is happening. And it has been happening all along.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

It comes up every time someone wistful about peace discusses the two-state solution. “I have to believe” or “I must believe” they say in regard to two states for two peoples. When I hear another robotic pronouncement insisting they must or have to believe in the two-state solution, or peace itself, I always think, “Why must you believe? Why do you have to believe something so obviously false?”

There won’t be a two-state solution, because none of the actual players want this. The Arabs don’t want a two-state solution and neither do the Jews. By the end of October 2023, in fact, support for the two-state solution had dipped to 28.6% of Israeli Jews, while 24% of the Arabs Palestinians supported a two-state solution, down from 59% in 2012. By now, that support—on both sides—will surely have dropped even further.

That’s because two states for two peoples doesn’t solve anything. It is only a nonstarter idea imposed by people who live outside the arena where this longstanding war against the Jews is taking place. The Arabs don’t want two states. They want one state, Judenrein. The Jews don’t want two states, because why should they be required to give up sovereign Jewish territory at all, let alone to those who plague them? That would not be a “solution” but a form of capitulation and subsequent suicide.

Despite the polls and the nonsensical nature of the two-state solution concept itself, liberals continue to proclaim that they “have to” or “must” believe that peace is possible, and that only two states for two people can get us there.

Take the recent hour-long podcast “’I Was Wrong About Antisemitism.’ Sheryl Sandberg on Waking Up,” on Honestly with Bari Weiss. I found myself enthralled, listening to the conversation between these two liberal, intelligent Jewish women, as they discussed Sandberg’s documentary, Screams Before Silence, October 7, Judaism, antisemitism, and politics. The two women had clearly both undergone a sort of culture shock to witness their colleagues’ indifference to the plight of Israeli victims of sexual abuse. It was worse for them still, to hear allowances and excuses made for rapists, in the case where the raped are Jews:

No matter what you believe, we have to stand united against clear use of sexual violence, and then people were still not believing it so I helped organize a conference at the UN where we brought these witnesses who stood there and cried and said “Here's what I saw, what I saw with my own eyes,” and then I took those same witnesses to parliaments in Europe where I certainly think they need to do this, and then we still were having some denial and a whole bunch of silence and some people speaking out, “It's never so black and white.”

Sandberg had worked hard for women’s causes over the years, but now that Jews were the victims, all the women she’d supported and believed were turning their backs, and worse. Some of them were blaming the victims. The general consensus? Believe all women, except when they are Jews. It was a painful revelation for Sandberg. And it woke up something in her Jewish—and liberal—consciousness.

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A post shared by Sheryl Sandberg (@sherylsandberg)

But that consciousness, thus far, only goes so far. Bless Sheryl Sandberg, truly, for documenting sexual violence on and in the wake of October 7. You can see that something changed for Sandberg in the days and months after the massacre, that drove her to do the film. And still, and perhaps all the more so, she “has to believe” in a two-state solution—stubbornly persists in believing what will never be (emphasis added):

What I would say is I think it's made me realize how much harder it's going to be to get to the solution that I still have to believe in. I don't think there's another solution other than two states, but it has to be two states run by people who want their neighbors to live in peace and prosperity.

It flies in the face of all Sandberg has faced and learned since October 7, and yet she persists in forcing herself to maintain hope in a lie, a false dynamic. Why? How does it serve her?

But Sandberg is not unique in insisting on believing something that in reality is a nonsense idea. Ehud Olmert, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 2006-2009, and who served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence on corruption charges besides, also feels compelled to believe a fictional fairytale is true, or so he says. Rolf Dobelli, founder of WORLD.MINDS interviewed Olmert in 2023 for Politico, and brought up the subject of the two-state solution (emphasis added):

Dobelli: You’ve been a proponent of the two-state solution for a long time. Do you think the time has arrived to finally implement it?

Olmert: First of all, I think that it is the only real political solution for this lifelong conflict between Israel and Palestinian states. There is no other. Therefore, I have to believe that this is possible.

Olmert did more than pay lip service to the insane idea of a two-state solution. In 2008, he promised to give the Arabs up to 94 percent of the land they wanted for a state of their own. Naturally, the Arabs spurned Olmert’s attempts to woo them with land. For the Arabs it’s all or nothing. One state for one people, and they don’t mean Jews.

It doesn’t seem to matter how smart you are, or highly placed. People have this need to believe in what will never, and can never be, two states for two people living side by side in peace.

Take Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State at the time of Olmert’s temerarious 2008 offer. In 2011, looking back at that time, she wrote: “The conditions were almost ripe for a deal on our watch, but not quite. Still, I have to believe that sooner or later, there will be a two-state solution. There is no peaceful alternative.”

It wasn’t the first time Rice had said this. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of a meeting she had with President Mahmoud Abbas in 2005 (emphasis added):

Remarks With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas After Their Meeting
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The Muqata
Ramallah
February 7, 2005

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would just note that in the Palestinian national elections, President Abbas got numbers that would have made any American president extremely happy. It was a very strong vote for his program of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, of peace with the neighbor Israel, of democratic reform and of reconstruction and development to improve the lives of the Palestinian people. I have to believe that what the Palestinian people were responding to is the opportunity to have their children grow up in an environment of peace and opportunity and that is what the president won his election on. We are going to be supportive partners for him and for his leadership as they try and realize that vision for the Palestinian people.

Tom Phillips, British ambassador to Israel from 2006-2010, also pled to believe in a falsehood, in an undated article appearing in The JC:

“If you look at the Palestinian story and the depth of their sense of victimhood — ‘we lost our homes, we have a right of return’ — they must compromise as well. Each side must compromise on an issue that touches its identity. That is going to require great leadership on both sides. I have to believe there is the leadership to do that,” said the ambassador.

But why? Why does anyone “have to believe” there is Arab leadership with the will to make peace, when no such leadership exists?

On October 24, 2023, Jake Tapper of CNN, interviewed Roy Yellin, director of public outreach of the fifth column anti-Israel organization B’Tselem. Yellin too, is delusional, forcing himself to believe what can never be. It’s almost like he’s trying to persuade himself (emphasis added):

I have to believe that in order to stay here. And I do believe that, the only option is to find a way to live with Palestinians, as equal. That I do believe that only we provide people on the other side with full, complete human rights, future, equality, democratic norms. Only like that we can live together.

Academics, too—people you’d expect to be at least slightly intelligent—spout the mantra, resolved to believe a whopper. Here is Janet Freedman of the Brandeis University Women’s Research Center, writing on Feminism and Zionism in 2017 (emphasis added):

I have found that when I offer my definition of Zionism – the right of Israel to exist as a state – those with whom I am speaking usually agree with me. Yet in recent times, there are those who do not, and as eager as I am to embrace coalition politics on a wide range of issues, if a person or group does not support this basic assumption, I will seek others with whom to work toward a resolution of the serious, but, I must believe, still resolvable Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

In seemingly every sphere of society, you can find people pledged to believe something that is not true. Jared Stein, for example, a senior account executive with Customer.io, a "customer engagement platform for tech-savvy marketers" wrote a kumbaya-style essay for LinkedIn about how he chooses to perceive the post-October 7 anti-Israel protesters (emphasis added):

I have to believe that the people marching across the world want the same thing that I do for Israelis and Palestinians - self-determination. Security. Peace. We're all on the same team and should be marching together.

Just try it Bub, and see what happens. Presumably with a name like “Jared Stein,” you won’t last very long—and probably not long enough to realize the extent to which you are self-deluded.

Tova Leigh is a mommy blogger. Or at least she was until she turned 40. That’s when she released her first book, ‘F*cked at 40: Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks’ in which “Tova takes the reader on her journey of rediscovering who she is after motherhood and beyond the norms society forces upon women, whilst encouraging them to break free and just be themselves.”

Leigh, too, has fallen sway to the demented self-assertion that she really should believe something stupid and untrue (emphasis added):

There is distrust between these two people that runs so deep that sometimes I wonder if it will ever be bridged.
But I want to believe that the people who are ripping down posters of kidnapped babies or chanting "gas the Jews" do not represent the majority of Palastinians, just like I'd like to believe that the people chanting "make Gaza a cemetery" do not represent the majority of Israelis.

Why? Because I would rather believe that more people are good than bad, otherwise I can't function in this world.

Tova? Methinks thou dost profess too much.

But at least Tova Leigh is honest. She simply can’t handle the truth—her brain can’t take it in. Leigh needs to believe a lie in order to function.

There seems to be a lot of that going around. Even or especially now, when the two-state solution has never been less desired by the relevant parties, and has never been so far away. People need to and must believe what they don’t really believe, or they wouldn’t be working so hard to persuade themselves. But it takes more than a will to believe to generate any real hope for the future, or the promise of a better, more peaceful life for Arabs and Jews.

Belief, manufactured or otherwise, won’t cure the Arabs of the enmity they have for the Jews. Two states, ten states, one hundred states won’t slake the Arab lust for Jewish blood. In the end, peace can only come when we acknowledge evil, look it squarely in the face, and banish it from the world.

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

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