Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 24, 2024

"21,000 children missing in Gaza" - The newest, completely made up statistic from Save the Children @save_children

Up to 21,000 children [1] are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war in Gaza, many trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families, said Save the Children. The agency’s child protection teams are reporting that the latest displacements caused by the offensive in Rafah have separated more children and further increased the strain on families and communities caring for them.

How did Save the Children manage to make that estimate?

It is nearly impossible to collect and verify information under the current conditions in Gaza, but at least 17,000 children are believed to be unaccompanied and separated and approximately 4,000 children are likely missing under the rubble [2], with an unknown number also in mass graves. Others have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza, their whereabouts unknown to their families amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.

Ah, it is 17,000 "believed to be unaccompanied" plus 4,000 "likely missing under rubble."

Where did the 17,000 number come from? It came from a statement from UNICEF's "State of Palestine"spokesperson Jonathan Crickx in February: "UNICEF estimates that at least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip are unaccompanied or separated. ...Of course, this is an estimation since it is nearly impossible to gather and verify information under the current security and humanitarian conditions."

So there is no source for that number. It is completely - and I mean completely - made up. There is no methodology, no background on how this estimate was calculated, nothing.

How about the 4,000 children estimated to be missing under the rubble? That one comes straight from from Hamas plus an additional lie laundered through the UN:

More than 10,000 people are believed buried under the rubble in Gaza after nearly seven months of devastating conflict, UN humanitarians said on Thursday, citing the enclave’s health authorities.

Citing the Palestinian civil defence authority, OCHA said that the recovery of dead bodies from the debris is a huge challenge, owing to a lack of bulldozers, excavators and personnel.

The number of people supposedly missing under rubble is another completely fictional number made up by Hamas with no mention of how that estimate was arrived at. In addition, the estimate that 40% of those fantasy victims are children is a further lie, based on the idea that 40% of those killed in Gaza are children, when in fact the number is 32% according to the last detailed report from the health ministry in May. If you exclude boys from 15-17 who are of military age the percentage of children killed according to the latest dataset is 28%.

Save the Children adds up two wholly made up numbers to arrive at a third, and pretend that there is some sort of science behind it.

The old adage of "garbage in, garbage out" needs to be updated to "propaganda in, propaganda out."

The report goes on to add even more lies:

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 14,000 children have been killed since 7 October, roughly half of whom have not yet been fully identified, partially due to their bodies being harmed beyond recognition [3]. Children are also among those recently found in mass graves, according to UN experts, with many showing signs of torture and summary executions, as well as potential instances of people buried alive.

The 14,000 number is another absolute falsehood, and there are not 7,000 bodies of children who are unidentified. That was a weak attempt by the health ministry to explain to Western reporters why there was such a discrepancy between their "verified" statistics and the ones that Hamas made up. The "mass graves" libel are likewise Hamas propaganda.

Save the Children then adds an almost unbelievable afterthought in weak attempt to pretend to be evenhanded:

At least 33 Israeli children have been killed since October, while it is unclear if any children are among those still being held hostage in Gaza.

We know that there are still two children in Gaza, Kfir (1) and Ariel (4) Bibas. The language from Save the Children is shockingly inconsiderate and dismissive, either questioning whether the Bibas children were ever kidnapped or unconcerned over whether they are still alive.

This NGO dedicated to "saving the children" happily parrots Hamas lies about fictional children but cannot even say a single word of concern for the two unreleased children kidnapped by Hamas and now missing somewhere in Gaza.

Knowingly lying about the number of children missing and killed in Gaza is not "saving the children." It is repeating propaganda from a terror group that wants to kill and ethnically cleanse every single Jewish child in the Middle East.

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!

There don't seem to be very many women and children killed lately in Gaza, according to this site

A website dedicated to the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh has been trying to enumerate every single death in Gaza (and the West Bank) since October 7, with names, ages and even photos for the people it lists.

The database is in reverse chronological order. So far it has the names of 11,798 "martyrs", claiming that the remaining 26,317 that the ministry of health claims they do not have full documentation for.

While I am not going to claim that this is a complete list, it certainly should be a reasonably representative list of the total casualties. And it roughly tracks to the percentages of women and children that the ministry of health used to claim in its detailed statistics - 37% children under 18, 25% adult women.

But its most recent entries are overwhelmingly adult males.

Here are its photos for all the "martyrs" it lists since April 1:

Not only that, but a huge majority of the "children" are males 15 years and older as well.

I do not know their methodology of gathering these names. Since January they only have several hundred listed, and this includes many in the West Bank. But if these statistics can be used as an accurate sample of all the casualties, it sure looks like the IDF is hitting military age men far out of proportion to their actual numbers in Gaza.

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!

Veganism in Israel is considered racist against Palestinians. Of course.

The journal "Settler Colonial Studies" published this article and abstract earlier this year:

Vegan nationalism?: the Israeli animal rights movement in times of counter-terrorism
Hiroshi Yasui

ABSTRACT
In recent years, the movement advocating animal rights and welfare (animal rights movement), in parallel with the practice of ethical veganism, has become increasingly significant in Israel. Along with this trend, several studies examine and analyze the colonial aspects of the Israeli animal rights movement and its relevance to the Palestinian issue from the perspective of Critical Animal Studies. Critically examining preceding studies on veganism and colonialism, through analysis of the political discourses of leading activists and public figures within the newly popular Israeli vegan trend, as well as interviews with a sample of Israeli vegans, this article will demonstrate how veganism in Israel is associated with a narrative of Israeli national superiority. Such discourses may well be called ‘vegan nationalism'. Vegan nationalism is a discursive and regulatory framework in which veganism is considered proof of the moral superiority of a nation in a settler colonialist context, implicitly stressing the barbarism and backwardness of the ‘terrorists’. At the same time, as an article written by the Israel Defense Force indicates, in this framework, vegans present a welcome, appealing image that resonates even though it differs from the image of the stronger, more robust and powerful carnist traditionally favored by Zionists.

As we've seen with "pinkwashing," the accusation is that when Israelis do something that is aligned with the progressive movement's own pet causes, it must be interpreted as proof that Israelis are trying to hide their inherently evil personas.

I do not have access to the article, but I can see the footnotes. Not one footnote I saw supports his thesis.

So for example, I can see the two references to the IDF website where we are supposedly exposed to this Jewish moral supremacy narrative that demeans Palestinians as immoral meat eaters.

One was a 2017 article in an IDF journal that describes how the army accommodates vegans, both with food and clothing choices, and the other was a more expansive article about the difficulties of being a vegan in the IDF and how the army is working to make everyone comfortable. It even discusses the dilemma of a soldier who is killing people while being a vegan:

From time to time, the vegan warriors come across people who claim that their very role as warriors is incompatible with their aspiration for morality which is expressed in the vegan lifestyle. Maj. Friedman knows very well how to deal with these claims. "I just think it's not true. I enlisted in the army to be a fighter to protect our country. There are very clear orders in the army and our army is a moral army. If there is a soldier in the army who does something that is forbidden then he is punished," he responds. "I don't see a connection between sparing animals and sparing people who want to harm the country. Our army is not an army designed to kill, it is an army designed to protect."

But I cannot find anything from the IDF that even implies that it considers itself morally superior to meat-eating Palestinians. It would be absurd, since most soldiers still eat meat. But it is justifiably proud that it offers choices for vegan soldiers:

The closest example I could find of the IDF using animal rights to make a moral point was this tweet:

Hamas is killing animals every day. @PETA, do you condemn this? pic.twitter.com/NhBYc79ejv
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 14, 2018

Which is just pointing out Hamas hurting animals.

When PETA does it, that is moral; when the IDF does it, it is immoral.

Speaking of PETA, their blog published a fawning article about animal rights in Israel (not quoted by this paper: "When it comes to recognizing animals’ natural rights, Israel is leagues ahead of many other countries. Israel has long banned the sale of personal-care and household products that were tested on animals. It was the first country to ban horse- and donkey-drawn carts and carriages used for work purposes."

Another article referenced in the paper that disproves the author's attempts to demonize Israel is from Vegan Review:

Hailed as ‘Israel’s Angriest Vegan’, Tal Gilboa is an activist with a difference.

In 2019, following a decade of animal rights activism, she was appointed by the Israeli prime minister as his advisor on matters of animal welfare. Some saw it as a political manoeuvre on Benjamin Netanyahu’s behalf, but to Gilboa, it was simply “a historic day for animals”.

“There is no Left or Right in the fight for animals,” she explained. “If it advances animals’ welfare and alleviates their suffering, it is the right thing to pursue.”

Gilboa’s voice softens somewhat when speaking of the Netanyahu clan. “What Netanyahu’s administration did for animals is exemplary,” she says. “This should be happening all over the world — operating within a reigning government rather than waiting for small animal-rights niches to form; these niches do not work.”

Within four months in her new role, Gilboa has achieved more than she ever dreamt possible. Her wins for animals include the ban of the trade in fur and the hunting of certain species of birds. She also helped secure Kaya’s Law (named after Netanyahu’s own dog), where vaccinated dogs suspected to have bitten someone can be quarantined at home rather than being forcibly taken from their owners.

None of these sources even remotely fits in with the bizarre abstract. The author is reduced to blaming Israeli society when a deputy mayor of Jerusalem called terrorists "animals" as an insult.

Even if you do a general search for veganism in Israel, you find lots of articles but none of the ones I found make any reference to Palestinians one way or another.

While there is no evidence that Israelis use veganism to position themselves as being morally pure as opposed to Palestinians, vegans in general are well known to be insufferably smug about their own moral superiority over everyone else.

It is difficult to escape the idea that the writer of this paper is projecting his own idea that he is morally superior to meat eaters to Israelis and Palestinians. It is nonsense, but it is the only thing that explains this paper, whose own footnotes do not support the researcher's thesis.

By being published in "Settler Colonial Studies," the entire field of settler colonialist studies looks like a joke.

(h/t YMedad)

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!

06/23 Links: Biden’s whole-of-government hostility to Israel; Netanyahu cites ‘dramatic drop’ in US arms supplies; 6 dead, 13 wounded in shooting attack on Russian synagogue

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Biden’s whole-of-government hostility to Israel

The top U.S.-Israel story of the week is the prospect of a massive ground war in Lebanon.

The main question dominating the discourse is whether the Biden administration intends to provide Israel with the munitions it requires to prosecute such a war successfully. The White House says it has Israel’s back. But recent U.S.-Israel backstories indicate that Israeli anxiety about the U.S. position on munitions is well founded.

Two back stories that have generated minor splashes signal clearly that contrary to President Joe Biden’s oft repeated “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” his administration is implementing a whole-of-government policy of criminalizing Israel and its citizens.

The first story relates to stepped-up U.S. sanctions against Israeli nationals and organizations. The second is the reported change in U.S. policy regarding visa and immigration applications from Israeli citizens.

Immediately after the Hamas-led Palestinian invasion and slaughter of Oct. 7, the Egyptian government announced that contrary to the binding requirements of international humanitarian law, Egypt would prohibit Gaza residents from transiting Gaza’s international border into Egypt to seek refuge either in Egypt or in third countries through Egypt.

Far from opposing Egypt’s unlawful action, the U.S. administration supported it. Egypt was not responsible for protecting the residents of Gaza from the war their regime opened against Israel. Israel was.

Days after Oct. 7, the administration began demanding that Israel provide a constant and ever-growing supply of food, water, medicine and other goods to the residents of Gaza. As the administration routinely ratcheted up its demands, it cited wholly unsupported, and now discredited, claims from the U.N. that Gaza was on the verge of famine.

Although the Netanyahu government quickly folded under the administration’s barely disguised threats to accuse Israel of war crimes, the Israeli public has been all but united in its opposition to the U.S. position.

Videos from Gaza have emerged daily since November showing Hamas gunmen seizing the aid trucks and shooting civilians who try to seize bags of flour and other goods from the trucks. Last week, former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross reported on his X account, “A UN official told me lately that 80 percent of the humanitarian assistance going into Gaza has been looted by criminal gangs or Hamas.”

After Israel began permitting hundreds of truckloads of supplies to enter Gaza directly from Israel in late January, a Direct Polls survey found that 82% of Israelis believed that the trucks should only be allowed to enter Gaza if Hamas released all the hostages.

A near consensus view in Israel throughout the past eight and a half months is that the humanitarian aid undermines the war effort by keeping Hamas fully supplied; maintains Hamas’s grip on power by enabling the terror regime to control who gets fed and cared for; and endangers IDF soldiers on the ground in Gaza.

JPost Editorial: Human shields? UN, you’re blaming the wrong side

The recent accusations by a senior UN official against the Israel Defense Forces, in which she picked a little-known instance of the IDF supposedly using a human shield, shows that she has forgotten or is ignoring Hamas’s long-standing and pervasive practice of using them in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Such are the core tactics aimed at manipulating both military operations and international perceptions.

On Saturday, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused the IDF of using a human shield, citing a video showing an injured Palestinian civilian tied to a military vehicle in Jenin.

The IDF has not commented on the allegations, and the authenticity of the video could not be verified by the Post.

Hamas has used the human shield tactic at least since 2007: placing military assets and personnel in civilian areas to increase the likelihood of collateral damage – civilian deaths and wounded – during Israeli counter-attacks.

These are not incidental tactics but deliberate ones designed to exploit Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian harm and to gain international sympathy for the inevitable collateral damage to civilians.

During the 2014 Tzuk Eitan conflict in Gaza, it was reported that Hamas also used schools, hospitals, and densely populated residential areas to store weapons and launch rockets.

This included the use of the infamous Al-Shifa Hospital, which The Washington Post described as a “de facto headquarters” for Hamas leaders, who could often be seen crisscrossing hallways and taking over back offices.

Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinian people

On 7 October last year, Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Despite this demonstration of anti-Semitic barbarism, many Western anti-Israel activists continue to see Hamas as some sort of ‘resistance’ movement, fighting for Palestinian nationhood.

This view couldn’t be more wrong. As Italian journalist Paola Caridi shows in her largely sympathetic account of the group, Hamas: From Resistance to Government (originally published in 2009 but updated last year), Hamas is not and never has been a national-independence movement. It is above all an intransigent, religious movement set on the destruction of Israel. The exhaustion of Palestinian nationalism

To get to grips with the nature and development of Hamas, it’s important to understand the broader historical background. The central problem here for Palestinians and Israelis is that their national aspirations are irreconcilable.

Israel was founded in 1948, after Jewish people revolted against Palestine’s British rulers. (With a mandate from the League of Nations, the British took over from the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Palestine for over four centuries, at the end of the First World War.) During the 1920s and especially the 1930s, Palestine’s indigenous Jewish population was supplemented by refugees from Eastern Europe and later Nazi Germany. This growing and increasingly restive populace rebelled against British occupation, just as neighbouring Iraqis did in the 1920s and 1940s, and Egyptians did in the late 1910s and early 1920s. In doing so, these rebellions laid claim to new nations, which claimed descent from ancient civilisations.

Many Arabs, caught in the crossfire of the often violent Jewish struggle for an Israeli state in the late 1940s, fled to the neighbouring territories of the Egyptian-governed Gaza Strip and the Jordanian West Bank. In 1967, Israel defeated the Arab coalition of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War. Through this war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, complete with their Arab populations. These became the ‘occupied territories’.

As the Six-Day War demonstrated, the Arab world refused to accept Israel’s existence. Arab nations took Israel as an affront to their own independence. Yasser Arafat, born to Palestinian parents in Cairo in 1929, co-founded the paramilitary organisation, Fatah, in the late 1950s. Its object was to fight for a Palestinian state. In 1967, Fatah joined and became the dominant faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was then a national-independence movement. Arafat became PLO leader in 1969.

Israel’s leaders always understood that the national aspirations of Palestinians were irreconcilable with the existence of Israel. Hence, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir insisted in a 1976 New York Times op-ed that there were no ‘Palestinians’, only Arabs, living in Egypt, Jordan and Israel itself.

By Daled Amos

On June 19th, CNN's Jake Tapper interviewed the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of those being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas terrorists. One point is painfully clear in the interview. The apathy of journalists for Hamas captives is exceeded only by the indifference of the countries outside of Israel whose citizens are being held prisoner by the terrorists:

Their only son has been held hostage for 257 days
Watch the full video here: https://t.co/epcsXvwJ0h pic.twitter.com/NpNvyzCHGu
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) June 19, 2024

Tapper: One thing that I've always wondered about throughout this entire process since October 7th: there are eight hostages with dual American-Israeli citizenship, including your son. Five of them, including your son, are believed to be alive. Three of them, not. Are you surprised that more isn't made in American Media and by American politicians about the fact that there are five presumably living American hostages being held by a terrorist group in Gaza.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin: I definitely think it is shocking that the vast majority of Americans have no idea that there are eight U.S. citizens currently, right now, as we're speaking, being held hostage in Gaza. I feel so strongly that I have these memories when Brittney Griner was being unjustly detained. And of course, Evan Gershkovich who's still being detained. These for me are household names. The vast majority of Americans have no idea that these eight U.S. citizens are being held. It's already 257 days and I find it just shocking.

Mrs. Goldberg-Polin does not offer an explanation for the indifference of the media in the US to the American hostages in Gaza. Such apathy reminds us of the similar lack of enthusiasm the US media has for covering the story of Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro Massacre who lives as a celebrity in Jordan, where King Abdullah refuses to honor its extradition treaty to send Tamimi to the US to face trial.

The media's betrayal of its responsibility to cover important stories that affect the lives of American citizens enables the ignorance we see about what is going on and undermines popular US support for rescuing hostages and dealing with the threat of Hamas terrorists.

But as the interview makes clear, the countries whose citizens were kidnapped are no less apathetic:

Rachel Goldberg-Poline: People also aren't aware that of the 120 remaining hostages, that they are representatives of 24 different nations. They are Christians Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. I very rarely hear anyone advocating for the Muslim Arabs, who are being held, or the Thai Buddhists being held or the black African Christians being held. There are Nepalese, Argentinians, Germans, Polish -- you just don't hear it. They try and I don't know who "they" is, but the world is trying to create this monolithic, homogeneous group of people, and it's an absolute disservice and injustice, to those people being held.

How often do we hear that the hostages are from 24 different countries, and not just from Israel? What accounts for their apathy?

These are the 24 countries, aside from Israel, whose citizens are being held captive:

o Argentina
o  Austria
o  Brazil
o  Bulgaria
o  Canada
o  Colombia
o  Denmark
o  France
o  Germany
o  Hungary
o  Italy
o  Mexico
o  Netherlands
o  Paraguay
o  Philippines
o  Poland
o  Portugal
o  Romania
o  Russia
o  Serbia
o  Spain
o  Thailand
o  United Kingdom
o  United States

One would have expected a united, public outcry.

Actually, there was one, back in April: US and 17 other countries with hostages in Gaza call for their release in exchange for a ceasefire

The Biden administration released a call from the leaders of 18 countries with citizens held hostage in Gaza calling for their immediate release in exchange for “an immediate and prolonged ceasefire” that would lead to the “end of hostilities.”

One odd thing about this is that it took six and a half months for countries with such a common interest in rescuing their citizens to make a public statement.

Another odd thing is that there were countries that could not bring themselves to join in this public statement. Not mentioned in the list of participating countries:

o Italy
o  Mexico
o  Netherlands
o  Paraguay
o  Philippines
o  Russia

Here is the text of the statement, from the White House website:

We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas and Gaza now for over 200 days. They include our citizens. The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza who are protected under international law is of international concern.

We emphasize that the deal on the table to release the hostages would bring an immediate and prolonged ceasefire in Gaza, that would facilitate a surge of additional necessary humanitarian assistance to be delivered throughout Gaza, and lead to the credible end of hostilities. Gazans would be able to return to their homes and their lands with preparations beforehand to ensure shelter and humanitarian provisions.

We strongly support the ongoing mediation efforts in order to 'bring our people home'. We reiterate our call on Hamas to release the hostages, and let us end this crisis so that collectively we can focus our efforts on bringing peace and stability to the region," the statement concluded.

Why did 6 countries refuse to sign on?

One hint might be in the way Israel National News reported the statement in its subtitle:

The US and 16 other countries whose citizens were kidnapped by Hamas issued a joint statement blaming Hamas for prolonging war by refusing to release its hostages.

Take another look at the statement.
See what's missing?
There is no mention of Israel.

Israel National News is right. By putting the onus completely on Hamas releasing the hostages, this statement holds Hamas completely responsible. That goes against the party line that Israel has to accept a prolonged cease-fire in its war against Hamas first.

But countries who did sign off on the statement are not even demanding for the release of all of the hostages:

The deal on the table that would bring a ceasefire to Gaza simply with the release of women, wounded, elderly, and sick hostages is ready to go, a senior administration official said, and Hamas has rejected that.

It took half a year for those countries to get together and issue a united statement, and they cannot even demand all of their citizens be released.

Don't expect any show of unity in the UN, in some General Assembly Resolution calling for the release of the hostages. Such a moral condemnation of a violation of international law and moral decency is clearly beyond the United Nations.

No wonder Hamas feels like they can hold out indefinitely.

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!

Wikipedia finds the @ADL is "generally unreliable" but the Gaza Health Ministry is trustworthy. Here's proof it is wrong on both counts, and @Wikipedia editors are a joke.

Last week, Wikipedia said that it would not consider the ADL to be a reliable source, putting it in the same category as the National Enquirer.

Wikipedia’s editors have voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources.

An overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debate about the ADL also voted to deem the organization unreliable on the topic of antisemitism, its core focus.

[I]n a near consensus, dozens of Wikipedia editors involved in the discussion said they believe the ADL should not be cited for factual information on antisemitism as well because it acts primarily as a pro-Israel organization and tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

I have had my problems with the ADL's bias (towards the Left) in recent years, but its antisemitism studies use the same methodology (with some adjustments) that they have for decades.

This chart from their latest survey of Americans' attitudes towards Jews shows a significant increase in antisemitism in 2022 and 2024, now at the highest levels in 60 years:

The ADL has been asking fundamentally the same questions for six decades so they can compare the answers with each other fairly. The questions asked are all about people's attitudes toward Jews, not Israel. They are:

Jews stick together more than other Americans.
Jews are not as honest as other businesspeople.
Jews are not warm and friendly.
Jews have a lot of irritating faults.
Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.
Jews have too much power in the United States today.
Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.
Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street.
Jews in business are so shrewd that other people do not have a fair chance at competition.
Jews have too much power in the business world.
Jews do not share my values.
Jews always like to be at the head of things.
Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America.
Jews in business go out of their way to hire other Jews.

While the ADL in its latest survey found correlations between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes, the methodology of their questions on classic antisemitism have no methodological flaws - and none of the Wikipedia editors who decided to delegitimize the ADL found any such flaws.

Which means that Wikipedia made this decision without giving a single tenable reason.

Keep in mind that this decision made by anonymous people in the most opaque way possible; the campaign to delegitimize the ADL was spearheaded by someone who calls themselves "Iskandar323" who created the Wikipedia page on "Nakba denial," so their own biases clearly do not disqualify them from making such a decision.

Now, let's look at the Wikipedia page on the Gaza Health Ministry:

The health ministry's casualty reports have received significant attention during the course of the Gaza–Israel conflict. Its numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch.[1][2][3] In relation to the Israel-Hamas war, two scientific studies published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication.[4][5]

The page is riddled with bias. For example, here's how it reports on one source:

Professor Michael Spagat stated that GHM provides very detailed and real-time information about casualties in the war, that far exceeds the quality of reporting from conflicts such as Ukraine.[27] He did note that this quality has declined over time, due to Israeli attacks on hospitals, and thus the GHM is relying on first responders and media sources. Writing in April 2024, Spagat also noted the deteriorating quality of data with hundreds of duplicate, missing or invalid IDs, accounting for roughly 1/7 of the total.[27]

This severely downplays what Spagat actually wrote about the ministry's methodological problems:

The MoH has stated repeatedly that since mid-November it has supplemented its substantially disabled CTS with further deaths culled from “reliable media sources.” As hospital reporting has declined this supplementary data-capture channel gained importance and now accounts for more than 1/3 of the 32,845 total deaths that were claimed by the MoH through April 1.

Sky News reporter Ben van der Merwe pressed Mr. al Wahaidi to provide a database and methodology for this supplementary data collection but received neither. Instead, Mr. al Wahaidi asserted that the supplements integrate not just media sources but also reports from first responders.

Here are some tentative conclusions we may gain from observing this new data set.

First, the percentage of women and children killed does seem to be very high, roughly 60%, but the oft-cited claim [by the MoH - EoZ] that 70% of the Gazans killed in the conflict are women and children seems increasingly untenable. Indeed, in apparent disavowal of the 70% claim, Zaher al Wahaidi labelled this figure a “media estimate” that he could not explain.

Second, the announced total number of Gazans killed in the war, now exceeding 33,000, may seem plausible but it is not a documented fact. This figure includes roughly 13,000 deaths that have, apparently, been entered into an unavailable database using an unknown methodology.

This is not praise for accuracy. It is a description of a huge exaggeration of reported data. According to Spagat, who is quite sympathetic towards the health ministry, out of the total of 32,845 total deaths reported by the health ministry as of April 1, 44% - over 14,500 - are based on unreliable data (the numbers that the ministry attribute to "media sources" plus the ones that they released detailed data for but that had impossible ID numbers, duplicates or other data errors and omissions.)

And this is a source that Wikipedia uses to support the accuracy of the Gaza health ministry figures.

The Wikipedia entry on the health ministry mentions Abraham Wyner's critique of the ministry data, but then quotes others that criticize Wyner, including for only including data from early in the war, yet it quotes two Lancet studies that also rely on datasets from the first weeks of the war that do not stand up to analysis from later months.

Moreover, the Wikipedia article says in defense of the ministry,

Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed al-Kahlot, denied that the GHM was unduly influenced by Hamas' control, stating that "Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent." and "More than anything, we are medical professionals."[15]

It does not mention that Kahlot admitted to Israeli interrogators that Hamas was embedded in the hospital and many of the hospital workers were also part of the Hamas Qassam Brigades - including himself, making his earlier statements quite unreliable themselves.

Furthermore, the article does not mention the other criticisms, such as how the ministry claimed double the number of children killed, which the UN had to correct after relying on them. If they are unreliable about the number of women and children casualties, how can anyone consider the statistics reliable?

The problem isn't the ADL. It is Wikipedia.

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!

Last week, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said (and released a video emphasizing) that if Israel starts a war against it, the response would be "without constraints, without rules, without limits."

What, exactly, does that mean?

It means that Hezbollah is threatening to ignore international law - there are no other "rules" he could be referring to. It will not just target civilians but attempt to wipe out every civilian in Israel.

It is a promise to genocide that is far more explicit and encompassing than anything any Israeli official has said about Gaza.

And it isn't even the first time Nadrallah has said this.

The language was nearly identical to a speech he made in January, when he pledged "We will have no limits, no restrictions, no rules of engagement, or boundaries" - according to the official translation from Hezbollah-aligned Al Mayadeen.

He even said this in 2016 in a potential war with Israel "We will fight it without a ceiling, without limits, without red lines." This was shortly after Nasrallah threatened to bomb ammonia plants in Haifa which, he said, would have the impact of a nuclear explosion.

Just in case his genocidal intentions are not clear.

Here is the leader of a group that effectively controls Lebanon promising not only to wage war but also to break every international law in doing so - international laws whose main purpose is to protect civilians.

And the reaction from the international community, from NGOs, from the media?

Nothing.

No outrage, no protests, no op-eds, no attempts to bring Nasrallah to the International Court of Justice.

When even a minor Israeli official says something that can be taken out of context to sound violent, it is headline news and referred to as "proof" of genocidal intent for years afterwards. Yet here we have a leader of one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East promising to ignore international law in any war, and no one condemns him.

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!

06/22 Links: It's Springtime for Mahmoud Abbas; Netanyahu is right to reject vassal-state etiquette; The new anti-Israel right’s failure to launch

From Ian:

The world goes mad: Behind society's obsession with Israel

The past eight months have felt absurdly Kafkaesque. Our bizarre and disorienting reality defies any logical explanation. We feel utterly powerless in facing an angry mob which shrieks “Death to the Jews.” The world has gone mad.

That these malicious threats come from our Arab enemies is tragic but understandable. Our enemies in the Arab world have consistently opposed any Jewish presence in Israel. The issue for them isn’t borders, refugees, or the suffering of innocent Palestinians but rather their outright denial of the right of any Jew to breathe air in a sovereign Jewish Israel.

However, what is illogical and even dystopian is the odd coalition forged to support rapists and serial murderers. It is surreal to watch crowds of Asian college students blindly back mass murderers while vilifying the victims of savage brutality. It is appalling to witness African Americans, whose legitimate rights Jews have heroically defended, turn their backs on us while spewing venomous antisemitism. And amid this theater of the absurd, the most farcical scene is that of the LGBT community, known for its policy of unconditional embrace and tolerance, suddenly turn into a hate-filled assembly of bigots.

Why have members of Generation Z lost their minds and their senses? What is causing this wholesale insanity, and what does this say about our own culture?

The age of bewilderment
Often, when humanity experiences sudden and dramatic change, confusion sets in. When the old system is unceremoniously and swiftly swept aside, humanity is plunged into an identity crisis.

Sometimes this leads to healthy progress. The Renaissance period emerged in the aftermath of the black plague of the 14th century which wiped out up to half of the European population. Further cultural disruptions such as the invention of the printing press and the discovery of the New World prompted humanity to rethink its basic assumptions. The ensuing cultural reboot led to the empowerment of man, the unleashing of his human potential, and the dramatic modernization of the human condition.

However, rapid and unpredictable change can also cause cultural anxiety and societal vertigo. Prolonged cultural dizziness doesn’t often end well.

World War I completely washed away the existing world order, obliterating empires and redrawing the maps of Europe. Additionally, the transportation revolution shrank the world, while industrialization relocated populations into crowded cities. Newly discovered scientific theories altered the way we viewed ourselves. Instead of inhabiting a space cut to human size, we were now just an infinitesimally small part of “a billion years and a billion spheres.” Humanity felt incomprehensibly displaced from itself.

As Kafka wrote in his short story “The Hunter Gracchus”: “My ship has no rudder and no compass and no steering wheel; I am driven forward by the wind, which gives me no time to look around, not even a chance to consider where I am going.”

Inter-war Europe didn’t know what to do with itself. Its inner angst metastasized into incoherent rage directed at the perceived cause of this cultural displacement. Jews are always easy targets.

Generation Z is experiencing a similar maelstrom of confusion and anxiety. Like the printing press 700 years ago, the Internet revolution has radically transformed our lives, our communication, and both our communal and personal identity. The development of AI is just as revolutionary as the discovery of the New World and will be just as transformative. The world feels both larger than ever and smaller than ever. Once again, like a century ago, confusion and bewilderment are fueling rage and discontent.

Jonathan Tobin: Netanyahu is right to reject vassal-state etiquette

Pushing back pays dividends
The claim that Netanyahu’s outspokenness is damaging the alliance misses the point. Israel may be an American client state, but given the existential nature of the conflict that was reignited by the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, it simply cannot afford to behave like a docile vassal.

Indeed, if there is anything that Netanyahu has learned in his long tenure as prime minister it is that those who always counsel caution and silence in the face of American betrayal don’t succeed. It is only by speaking up and making Israel’s case to the world, and most specifically, the American people, that it can maintain the alliance.

Obama seethed when in 2011—with him sitting right there—Netanyahu lectured him about the unacceptability of a forced Israeli retreat to the 1967 borders at a public White House media availability a day after that was the substance of a presidential speech. Later, the Obama White House depicted Netanyahu’s 2015 address to a joint meeting of Congress in which he urged Americans to reject the Iran nuclear deal as an unprecedented insult to the United States, the presidency and Obama personally. In both cases, Netanyahu’s behavior was denounced as destructive to the relationship and beyond the pale.

But he was right to understand that talking back to Obama strengthened dissent against policies aimed at undermining Israel and strengthening Iran, both in the United States and abroad.

By demonstrating a willingness to defend Israel’s vital strategic interests, even at the cost of being depicted as an extremist or the dispute being a function of his own partisan interests and personal animus for Obama, Netanyahu achieved real results. Given Obama’s determination to make it his signature foreign-policy accomplishment, he couldn’t stop the Iran deal from being adopted. But his speech emboldened the GOP to move further towards Israel. It also showed the Arab world that while Obama was leaving them to the tender mercies of the terror-funding Shi’ite tyrants of Tehran, they could count on a strong Israel as an ally against it. In retrospect, Netanyahu’s speech must be seen as the first step in developing the 2020 Abraham Accords.

Who is playing politics?
Biden came into office claiming that he would be different from Obama and keep disputes with Israel private. That changed once Netanyahu won the November 2022 Israeli elections and returned to the prime minister’s office. Since then, the hostility that Biden and the rest of the Obama alumni running American foreign policy have for Netanyahu has not been kept under wraps. The administration has not merely undermined the Jewish state but has openly conspired with the Israeli opposition, and even members of the military and intelligence establishment, in an effort to topple Netanyahu’s government both before and after Oct. 7.

At this point, Netanyahu has nothing to lose by not allowing Biden to get away with slowing down the flow of arms to pressure Israel to stand down at its borders on the north and south.

There are plenty of cogent criticisms to be made about Netanyahu, including those involving Oct. 7 happening on his watch and the dysfunctional nature of his governmental coalition. Regardless of how long Netanyahu lasts in office—and right now, it is not the prime minister but Biden who, in appeasing the anti-Israel intersectional left wing of the Democratic Party, is playing politics over the war—or what you think of his character, policies or tactics, he needs to use every form of leverage to counter U.S. pressure that could ensure victories for Hamas and Iran. With so many lives at stake, client-state etiquette should be the last of his concerns.

It's Springtime for Mahmoud Abbas

For his part, Abbas is working hard to capitalize on the present moment. His government has announced that it is prepared to provide a “political solution” to the current situation in Gaza, post-ceasefire. And at the recent Gaza Emergency Humanitarian Response Conference in Jordan earlier this month, the PA proposed an ambitious three-stage recovery plan encapsulating its vision for the enclave.

That plan is extensive—and expensive. The first phase alone, focused on a six-month “emergency response” period, would cost a whopping $1.3 billion. The money, naturally, would come from international donors, and the PA would administer it to create “social protection and housing provision, as well as health, education and infrastructure programs”—things that the West Bank itself needs significant help with, and international oversight over.

In other words, the Palestinian Authority is asking the international community to empower one failed state to rebuild another.

Nevertheless, Abbas’ pitch might just end up working. The international community is increasingly desperate to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians by any means necessary. As international desperation has grown, what would ordinarily be something of a non-starter, given the PA’s abysmal governance record, has become more palatable to policymakers in Washington and beyond.

That is a shame, because the Palestinian Authority has proven itself thoroughly unfit to govern. “Under different circumstances—if the PA were a more effective, clean government, better trusted by its people—one might imagine it returning to Gaza when this war ends and leading the process of reconstruction and recovery,” Washington Institute scholar Ghaith al-Omari has observed. “But Palestinians have no confidence that the PA has their interests at heart; the international community does not trust it to administer funds on the scale of those that will be needed for reconstruction; and the PA anyway lacks the institutional infrastructure to do the job.”

Under these conditions, entrusting the PA with administering the “day after” in Gaza isn’t a workable solution, no matter how appealing Abbas’ current pitch might be at the moment. It is, rather, simply a surefire way to throw good money after bad.

Sadly, Washington and its allies seem more and more inclined to do just that.

06/21 Links Pt2: The lethal narcissism of Joe Biden; The roots of anti-Semitism in Europe; NYC has normalized anti-semitism; Let Them Fear Our Voice

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The lethal narcissism of Joe Biden

What is more important: Joe Biden winning the votes of America’s entitled coastal elites, or Israel protecting itself from an army called the Party of God that has sworn itself to the eradication of the ‘cancerous’ Jews from the Middle East? This would have been a no-brainer a few years ago. Most people – aside from Israelophobic hotheads on the far right and hard left – would have agreed that defending the Jewish State from fanatics who view Jews as ‘evil’ and ‘blasphemous’ is of greater moral import than a president’s longing to get back in the good books of woke voters. And yet today, such simple moral clarity is in alarmingly short supply.

Right now, nothing fills the Biden set with greater dread than the prospect of war between Israel and Hezbollah. And it’s not because they’re peaceniks. Biden voted in favour of the catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was vice-president to the drone-happy Barack Obama, who dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone. In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. If Biden is now of an anti-war bent, it’s been a recent conversion. No, it is self-preservation, not anti-militarism, that underpins Biden’s fear of an Israel-Hezbollah war. It’s the potential death of his presidency, not potential death in the Middle East, that keeps him up at night.

Tensions have exploded between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terror group whose name means Party of God. Unsurprisingly, the West’s ‘anti-war’ activist class has had little to say about Hezbollah’s blitz on northern Israel. Hezbollah, which is allied with Hamas, has been firing rockets into Israel almost every day since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October, with the aim of ‘pulling Israeli forces’ away from Gaza. That is, with the aim of aiding the anti-Semites of Hamas in their holy war against the Jewish nation. Entire ‘swathes of northern Israel’ have been engulfed by fire as a result of Hezbollah’s rockets. Tens of thousands have been evacuated.

Now, Israel is talking about taking decisive action against Hezbollah. You can almost hear the West’s activist class buffing their anti-Israel placards and rummaging around for their keffiyehs in order that they might hit the streets and damn Israel for plotting yet another ‘genocide’. In these people’s minds, fried by the binary moralism of identity politics, ‘white’ Israel is to blame for everything in the Middle East, while ‘brown’ Gaza and Lebanon are pure, sad victims, responsible for nothing. If Israel were officially to declare war on Hezbollah, they would rage and splutter, with not one thought for the rockets from Lebanon that have rained on Israel almost every day for the best part of eight months.

Even Hezbollah’s threats against Cyprus were not enough to rouse the concern of the West’s supposed peace lobby. This week, the leader of the Party of God – Hassan Nasrallah – warned that Cyprus would feel his wrath in the event of war between Israel and Hezbollah. It is presumably the fact that Cyprus has let Israel use its territory for military training that led to this outrageous threat against its sovereign integrity and social peace. Where are the peaceniks? Where are the anti-war activists who’ve been marching every week against Israeli militarism? It’s almost as if it’s not war they hate, so much as the world’s only Jewish state.

The roots of anti-Semitism in Europe

There is a debate among historians over whether medieval Jew hatred contributed to modern forms of anti-Semitism (a word which emerged in the late 19th century) which culminated in the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt held that medieval and modern Jew hatred are fundamentally different because of the significant change in religious context. Others point to common and longstanding anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as physical deformity and usurious greed, as the key connection between the periods.

Ivan G. Marcus argues that ‘a focus on stereotypes risks anachronism’. His riveting book, which concentrates on Ashkenaz (northern France, England and Germany), takes a structural approach to link medieval and modern anti-Semitism. Marcus thinks that medieval hatred has had long-lasting consequences through modern reinterpretations of ‘the binary of inverted hierarchy’ (medieval Christians and Jews thought the other group should be subordinate), the idea of the Jew as an internal enemy, and the concept of Jewish identity as unchangeable. To reach this conclusion, he challenges the widely held view of the medieval Jew as a passive victim and the most interesting sections in his book examine how Jews actively asserted themselves in the face of what they considered Christian idolatry. This stirred up Christian opposition towards them and gave them a more defined presence in European society.

Jewish assertiveness took some surprising, and in some cases smelly, forms. Marcus sets out the evidence for Jews using flatulence as a means of disrespecting Christian symbols at the time of the First Crusade. He recounts the story of Asher and Meir, who turned their backs on the cross in Trier and farted before being put to the sword. Christian statues were placed in toilets. Synagogues were built higher than churches and Jewish worship wasn’t toned down. In business contracts with their Latin-reading contemporaries, Jews wrote offensive things about Christianity in Hebrew. A new eucharist-like ritual, in which youths ate cakes and eggs inscribed with passages from the Torah, was created by pietist Jews to discourage conversion. Through an adroit selection of sources, both Jewish and Christian, Marcus brings the subject matter to life.

Medieval Europe created what Marcus calls ‘the imagined Jew’. While Jews were assertive, there was a limit, and even after they had been expelled fantastical myths and deep-seated hatreds continued. Some of England’s greatest writers must share the blame. Chaucer recounts a blood libel in ‘The Prioress’s Tale’; Marlowe casts Barabas in The Jew of Malta as a pantomime international financier. Then there is the most famous Jew in literature, Shakespeare’s ‘dog Jew’ Shylock. Marcus points out that Shylock’s ‘new and fantastic’ views on Christians and interest make him the Bard of Avon’s own imagined Jew. The reader is left feeling disconcerted by widespread versions of the imagined Jew, with ancient hatreds still being reinterpreted into modern ones.

Seth Mandel: Let Them Fear Our Voice

The reason anti-Semitism has been spiraling out of control is because there is no penalty to pay for it. A new report on anti-Semitism at Stanford University, prepared by a university committee that had been set up to study the epidemic of Jew-hatred on campus, is titled “In the Air.” It has simply become an unavoidable element in an increasingly large part of the country: “Some of this bias is expressed in overt and occasionally shocking ways.”

Perhaps what’s even more aggravating than the fact that anti-Semites see no need to hide their malign intent is the fact that when Jew-hatred rears its ugly head, society’s instinctive response is to apologize… to the Jew-hater. To give one very recent example: An anti-Semitic subway mob in New York included an employee of Weill Cornell Medicine. When this was pointed out to Weill Cornell, it released the following statement: “Today we became aware of a recent antisemitic incident on the NYC subway. We condemn antisemitism in the strongest possible terms. Hate speech or actions of any kind, whether antisemitic or Islamophobic, are not tolerated by our community.”

First sentence: fine. Second sentence: fine. Third sentence: what? With apologies to Meat Loaf, two out of three is bad. There was no “Islamophobic” incident or accusation. The only ones threatened were Jews. So why even mention “Islamophobia”? The answer is Weill Cornell is terrified of condemning anti-Semitism alone and therefore must also apologize, in the same breath, for condemning it. Anti-Semitism does not offend people; calling out anti-Semitism does.

Nothing changes unless this dynamic changes first. Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and others pretend this dynamic doesn’t exist. They pretend to fear us so their supporters will hate us. Nothing would be more poetically just than for the Squad to have made their own rhetoric a self-fulfilling prophecy—for them to have had no reason to fear Jewish voters until they lied about fearing Jewish voters.

A country that mainstreams the kind of ethnic incitement the Squad specializes in eventually turns into Radko Mladic’s Yugoslav hell. America, meanwhile, is pretty good at casting out such villains before they can become dangerous. Here, there is usually a price to pay for even attempting to become a monster. The ground of American democracy tends to open up and swallow such demagoguery.

If anti-Semitism costs Bowman his seat, he’ll only have himself to blame. But he’ll have given his anti-Zionist colleagues something to fear: the ballot.

06/21 Links Pt1: Biden’s Italian Strike; All eyes should be on Al Jazeera for being directed by terrorists; Israeli doctor who saved Sinwar's life repaid with nephew's murder

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: All eyes should be on Al Jazeera for being founded, funded — and directed — by terrorists

Considering how much attention the American media get, it’s amazing that one piece of actual, unbelievable subversion keeps going on.

That is the Al Jazeera network — founded, funded and directed by the terrorist-supporting state of Qatar.

Last month, The Washington Post reported darkly that the Israeli government had shut down the Al Jazeera network’s operations in Israel because of its coverage from Gaza.

WaPo portrayed this as a “dark day” for press freedom.

In fact, there were a lot of good reasons for the Israelis to stop the network from operating inside Israel.

Just one being that a number of Al Jazeera journalists reporting on Israel’s war against terrorists in Gaza were — er — terrorists.

Take Muhammad Washah, whom Al Jazeera presented as a stellar part of the press corps merely reporting the truth.

Unfortunately for them, their man is also a senior commander in Hamas.

He used to be in Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit, but since 2022 he has been in charge of research and development for aerial weapons.

Known to you and me as “rockets.”

It’s quite something to pull off.

On the one hand, Washah can spend his days making rockets to fire at Israel.

But in the evenings he can report on the terrible destruction in Gaza caused by the “Zionist entity.”

As though it is inexplicable that the Israelis could have any reason to strike any targets in Gaza.

He might have kept getting away with it if IDF soldiers in Gaza had not managed to get a hold of his laptop.

Something that proved the Al Jazeera man’s true loyalties.

Michael Doran: Biden’s Italian Strike

This gaslighting has successfully hidden the true nature of Biden’s policy from the public eye. To be sure, some press outlets, such as Politico, have poked holes in the administration’s cover story, but they have failed to recognize the Italian strike for what it is: namely, a coherent policy hiding behind the appearance of incoherence. Even while treating some of the details of the cover story with skepticism, the press has almost uniformly accepted the general framing of the administration, which presents the disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem as a fight over the Rafah campaign and how best to prevent civilian deaths.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in early May, referring to 2,000-pound bombs. “I made it clear that if [the Israelis] go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with … the cities.” But a close examination of the timeline reveals that the Italian strike began no later than last December, many months before the fight over Israel’s Rafah campaign had ever begun. What accounts for the early application of pressure?

For some clues to the answer, we might look to the Israeli delegation, headed by the director general of Israel’s Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, who traveled quietly to Washington in January to meet top administration officials and executives of defense industries. The trip received very little press coverage. Only the Israeli news outlet Walla reported on the trip, and the story was lost amidst the dramatic news from Gaza. Zamir, Walla reported, had two main goals: to shorten the time it takes to produce and supply weapons for the IDF and to increase “the scope of aid.” In other words, Zamir came shopping for more weapons, more kinds of weapons, and for a faster delivery of them.

The Americans responded by calling the Italian strike. The Biden team, according to Walla, disappointed Zamir and sent him away, saying “they would study the issue, but that no answer would be given before the [American] elections so as not to allow political considerations to influence the administration’s decisions.” The rationale was transparently bogus, but the message was clear enough. The Biden administration intended to keep the Israelis on a short leash. Why?

The Americans were undoubtedly seeking to counter the thinking that had brought the Israeli delegation to Washington in the first place. Gen. Zamir made clear to the Biden team that he had come shopping not for weapons to prosecute war in Gaza, but out of concerns, according to Walla’s report, about “the ongoing tensions with Hezbollah along the northern border and with other Iranian proxy forces across the Middle East.”

Hezbollah represents the most formidable direct military threat that Israel faces. A full-scale conflict with it will burn up an enormous amount of equipment and ammunition in a very short period, and it risks drawing Iran more directly into the war. The Israelis came to Washington to stock up, to be ready for the conflict should it erupt. The Americans, by contrast, seek to restrain them. The purpose of the Italian strike is to force the Israelis into dependence on the United States, to deny them the ability to make long-term plans—namely, plans regarding Hezbollah and Iran.

To the extent that the administration even admits it is withholding arms, it justifies its actions by expressing concern over civilian deaths in Gaza. The Biden administration sees a gauzy humanitarianism as a defensible explanation, before the American public, for its policy of restraining Israel. Almost all press outlets in the United States depicted Netanyahu’s protest over the withholding of weapons as the latest move in the fight over Rafah, but his video statement referenced Iran, not Gaza. “Israel, America’s closest ally,” he said, is “fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.”

The administration has little hope that the American people will understand why it is preventing Israel from defending itself against attacks from Hezbollah and Iran. Publicly, therefore, it has drawn the line in the sand in Rafah and screamed about civilian deaths. Privately, however, it has its eyes locked like a laser on the Lebanese-Israeli border. If a full-scale war kicks off in the north, the Obama-Biden policy of achieving “equilibrium” in the Middle East by integrating Iran and its proxies into the regional order comes crashing down.

From YNet:

Over 1,100 students studying technology, engineering, and mathematics from more than 120 universities across the United States signed a pledge on Tuesday not to accept jobs or internships at Google or Amazon until the companies cease their involvement in Project Nimbus, which provides cloud computing services and infrastructure to the Israeli government.

I, for one, refuse to be a star goalie for the Edmonton Oilers because of the harm to the environment done by fossil fuels.

See how much I sacrifice for my causes?

This is as pure an example of virtue signaling that one can imagine.

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!