Bellingcat and Scripps News published a video report on the destruction of "heritage sites" in Gaza during this war.
Using satellite images and videos taken in Gaza, they identified over 150 such sites that have been either damaged or destroyed in Gaza.
The well-known anti-Israel group Forensic Architecture has a prominent role in creating 3-D graphics of some of the sites, showing evidence of Israel using bombs, bulldozers and other equipment. The report suggests that Israel may be violating international law by deliberately targeting these sites.
It is nothing short of antisemitic libel.
Pretending to be even-handed, the report briefly shows that Israel has found weapons caches and tunnel entrances in mosques.
Tunnel shaft in mosque
But it immediately dismisses that as saying that IDF "claims can't be verified for every mosque." As if the IDF would publish videos of blowing up mosques for no reason.
The report doesn't mention Hamas using cemeteries as rocket launching pads. In fact, it only mentions Hamas twice, and one of those times was to complain that Israel had tested out flooding Hamas tunnels which is considered, of course, an ecological disaster - but Hamas actually building the tunnels under Gaza mosques, cemeteries and hospitals doesn't merit a single disparaging word.
War crimes require intent. The evidence that Israel intends to target Gaza heritage sites is exactly zero. Hamas brags that it has built hundreds of miles of tunnels under an area that is only 25 miles long and less than 8 miles wide, and Israel has uncovered literally thousands of tunnel shafts in mosques, cemeteries, hospitals and children's bedrooms. The idea that Israel is targeting the mosques and bedrooms, and not the tunnels and weapons caches and Hamas terrorists, is simply libelous.
Beyond that, it makes no sense militarily. Targeting is not a casual activity - it requires multiple levels of oversight, legal advisors, and approvals. To think that that all levels of the IDF are secretly scheming to destroy Palestinian heritage during a war, using expensive bombs whose supply is not guaranteed to last forever, is nothing less than an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The clearest proof that this is nothing less than antisemitism can be seen in the report itself, when they describe how Hamas builds on top of archaeological sites, destroying them (a point I made when Forensic Architecture made the same absurd charges in 2022.) That is justified - because Gaza is under "occupation" and it is somehow Israel that forces Hamas to build on top of ancient Roman ruins. (See 5:40-6:20.)
Israel attacking heritage sites that have become military sites is terrible. Hamas using those heritage sites as military sites is justified, because where else can they do it - Gaza is so crowded!
Here's video of the IDF uncovering rocket launchers in a cemetery from January.
This wasn't shown in this report, because that violates the holy narrative that only Israel desecrates cemeteries, not the religious Hamas members.
The military attorney's office ordered not to eliminate Gazan citizens who participated in the Sheva massacre in October. The reason for this: they are not defined as Hamas terrorists, as we published this evening (Tuesday) for the first time in the "Main Edition".
From the interpretation of the military attorney's office for the laws of war, it is claimed that only those who belong to the fighting force can be killed intentionally in war. Targeted elimination is a preventive measure, not a punishment, and therefore, since the "civilian" is not part of the fighting force, he cannot be killed in retaliation.
This order was given despite the fact that after October 7 the government promised that Israel would bring everyone who was involved in the massacre to account. Despite this, if the Shin Bet and the IDF learn of the location of Gazans who have murdered, looted, raped or kidnapped Israelis, they will not have legal authorization to eliminate them.
The terrorist organization "Lords of the Wilderness", which holds the Bibas family hostage, is not defined as a group in a state of war with Israel. Therefore, if intelligence is discovered about the whereabouts of the kidnappers of the Bibas family - it will not be possible to eliminate them on this basis.
More than five sources in the army, at the field levels, claim that there have already been similar cases in practice: at the end of April, intelligence information was received about the participants of the massacre and it was not translated into their elimination due to the legal prohibition.
The army denies this report. Defense Minister Yoav Galant is expected to respond next week to Knesset member Amit Halevi's question on the subject.
An IDF spokesperson said: "The policy is to act against all participants in the massacre, regardless of their membership in a terrorist organization. To this end, an orderly operational process is carried out in accordance with international law. The IDF is not aware of an incident in which it was possible to attack a participating terrorist and did not do so."
Srugim clarifies the report, saying the legal department of the IDF "imposes a prohibition on the IDF to eliminate [October 7 attackers] out of revenge if they are found. The only reason they would be able to eliminate them is if intelligence is received showing Their intention is to carry out further terrorist attacks."
The report is, unfortunately, quite believable. Even though the world doesn't believe it, the IDF follows international law strictly - and often too strictly, beyond the letter of the law.
Customary international humanitarian law defines civilians as "persons who are not members of the armed forces. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians." There is no doubt that when the civilians are actively engaged in fighting that they lose civilian status.But if they are not members of an armed group, and they are not actively carrying arms during the fighting, their status appears to revert to that of civilians."In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian or not, that person must be considered to be a civilian."
Instinctively, this is horrifying. I suppose that the IDF could snatch the participants of October 7 and put them on trial, which is not a reasonable possibility on the battlefield in most cases. But their hands are tied because international law does not deal well with a situation where "civilians" are eager to join in terror acts themselves while not formally members of the terror group.
While this is sickening, it also is proof that the IDF is above all an army that adheres to international law. The law is the problem, not the IDF.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
This is the language of pogromism, of turning anti-Semitic incitement into an ideology all its own.
The fact that nothing in the Tlaib/Turner op-ed is truthful is beside the point. I don’t think anybody expects honesty out of either of these women. But the lies they choose to tell are still important. “If our elected leaders will stand by and allow American police to brutalize Black and brown people in our communities,” they write, “it makes sense that they also excuse the Israeli forces that train many of them.” This rhetoric was part of the belief system of the perpetrators of the deadly anti-Semitic shooting spree in Jersey City in 2019. It has become many left-wing figures’ favorite blood libel. When you want violence against Jews, you stick with what works.
Another Squad member, Missouri’s Cori Bush, has been pushing that line for years. Bush explicitly linked the racial unrest in Ferguson to Israel and suggested police brutality was an Israeli export.
The interesting thing about Bush’s competitive primary race with challenger Wesley Bell is that it isn’t specifically about Israel or Jewish voters, yet the candidates’ respective attitudes toward Jew-baiting and incitement is a key part of their political personas. Bush has Jews on the brain—like Jamaal Bowman in New York, she can only be made interested in issues local to her district if they can be connected to Israel. Bowman’s opponent George Latimer, and Bush’s opponent Wesley Bell, have structured their campaigns around serving their actual constituents. The anti-Zionist obsessives in Congress are far too busy with Israel to take care of the people they represent.
Bell was elected as a reform-minded county prosecutor in the wake of the Michael Brown riots in Ferguson. But he broke with the left on the movement to “defund the police.” He was seen as a strong Democratic contender to take on GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, and Bell jumped at the chance to do so. But in November, Bell changed course and elected to challenge Bush in the House primary instead. Bell said the district needed a representative willing to stand with our allies and stand with President Biden.
It wasn’t about Israel per se but about the district and the people of St. Louis. A progressive operative and ally of Bush’s shot back that actually it’s just like the Bowman-Latimer race because it’s all “one big fight.”
Tlaib and Turner clearly agree, as do Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left. Latimer and Bell want local-focused public service. Their opponents have drafted them into the Squad’s forever war.
It’s worth noting here that one of the places J Street took Bowman to chip away at his belief in Israeli legitimacy was Hebron. The Jews of Hebron go back to biblical times, to Abraham purchasing land for the Cave of the Patriarchs nearly 4,000 years ago. The ancient Jewish character of the town was ended violently in 1929 when an Arab pogrom broke out and the Jews there suffered one of two fates: violent death or expulsion.
The brief interlude of Judenrein Hebron was ended in 1967, and ever since then, the Jews returning to Hebron have had to live under Israeli military protection.
All of which is to say: If you manage to use Hebron as an example of Jewish illegitimacy, you must be well-practiced in the arts of deception and propaganda. The argument over the concept of indigeneity begins and ends with Hebron. You have to really try, in other words, to make the expelled and murdered Jews of Hebron into the bad guys.
But J Street knows what it’s doing, and Bowman was convinced of Jewish villainy.
The fact that J Street is trying to drive a wedge between Democrats and Israel is important. Last night, after Bowman lost his primary to Latimer, Ben-Ami sat by the waters of Babylon and wept: “It’s a mistake to read Jamaal Bowman’s defeat as a victory for pro-Israel Americans,” he posted on X. “In fact, turning Israel into a wedge issue in Democratic Party politics is actually a major loss for those who hope to promote a bipartisan US-Israel relationship.”
As many people pointed out on social media, this is demonstrably incorrect. The result of the Latimer victory was a more bipartisan U.S.-Israel relationship, by definition. Democrats last night improved the party’s relationship with Israel and with pro-Israel voters, even if modestly, and signaled that not only can it still be safe to support Israel and be a Democrat but that there are times when it may noticeably benefit your intra-party campaigns.
Ben-Ami’s message, then, contradicts his organization’s stated mission. But it does not contradict his organization’s actual mission, which is to turn Israel into a wedge issue in Democratic Party politics.
When reality is too frightening to contemplate, often the response is either to deny it or to assert that what’s staring at you in the face is merely a facade. Hence, it’s common to see progressive and seemingly liberal movements that endorse anti-Zionism dismissed as fringe or fleeting phenomena. The result is the further obfuscation of an increasingly obvious political reality: The Democratic Party is openly courting the most antisemitic forces in America and the world.
This mystification also helps affirm Zionism’s own authentically liberal, even progressive identity: On one side are the prestigious and glamorous Western forces of liberalism, equality, and progress, of which the liberal Jewish establishment is part; and on the other, the forces of religious fascism, exotic fanaticism, and foreign barbarism on which the anti-Israel activists live.
Young American Jews have often shied away from facing the prospect that other liberal Americans of their generation—increasingly indoctrinated into left-wing ideologies and seeking a “leftist organizing space” for the struggle against racism, colonialism, and imperialism—are much more likely to align with pro-Palestinian activism than with Jews. One of the reasons is that many young Jews go to the same schools, where they are indoctrinated into the same ideologies, and are often unlikely to critically question whether there is something inherently distorted and dangerous in them.
Cries of “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are not bugs in the new politics; they are features. There is no “version” of “social justice” politics without them. And as long as American Jews persist in ignoring that reality, they will continue to feel shocked and alone. The American Jewish establishment’s hope that it could overlook this reality and instead impress its erstwhile friends with “allyship” and stories of its contributions to the civil rights movement, feminism, and other progressive causes was a profoundly mistaken strategy that squandered whatever communal power they might have retained within the Democratic Party. The result is that the American Jewish establishment is increasingly disposable, both to Jews and to those who hate them.
The researchers argue that “the window of opportunity for transformation and rehabilitation is short,” meaning a few years. As such, the work towards changing Gazan society must start immediately after Hamas’ defeat.
This “requires civilian management, and the urgency of the timeline means that we must immediately start planning and establishing an effective and agreed-upon system for managing the Palestinian population in areas under Israeli control,” the paper states. The local governing apparatus in this initial stage would need to build trust with the local population and treat them in a dignified manner, which is necessary for the rehabilitation of Gaza to succeed. The paper suggests partnering with moderate Arab states.
The authors of the paper describe a delicate balance by which “successful transformation requires the creation of a positive horizon for the defeated nation,” while “the option of Israeli military rule must float in the background.”
Independence of some kind – avoiding the political debates about Palestinian statehood, the paper says only “an autonomous Palestinian entity” – would come only when concrete and measurable goals are met, including education for peace, distancing itself from violence and terror and effective governance.
However, if Israel makes clear that it will leave Gaza at some point regardless of its progress — similar to the U.S. setting a date to leave Afghanistan — Gazans will have less of an incentive to come up with an alternative to Hamas. As such, the goals Gazans need to meet must not have a rigid schedule attached to them.
Physical rehabilitation of Gaza is not enough; the paper calls to build its spirit as well by “eradicating jihadist ambitions” through overhauling the education, religion and media systems, including reforming the schools’ curriculum.
This would include “purifying the education system” of extremist educators and current textbooks, and establishing bodies to supervise school content and media to ensure they do not include radical content.
In that vein, the authors call to “take advantage of the acts of rebuilding to push UNRWA out of the [Gaza] Strip,” referring to the embattled U.N. body responsible for aid to Palestinians. According to Makor Rishon, they were told by the IDF higher brass that this is unrealistic.
The new narrative created for the Palestinians in Gaza would “lean on Sunni Muslim Arab tradition … in its moderate versions in education and culture and grant the Palestinians a concrete, positive vision to latch onto for demilitarized Palestinian self-rule at the end of the process.”
“It would be very bad for Israel to do that directly,” Barak-Corren said on Senor’s podcast, and suggested that the UAE, Saudi Arabia or Egypt be involved.
The paper discourages Israel’s leadership from setting a goal of democratization for Gaza, saying that this is “a move that has failed in every place it was tried in the Arab world. The goal should not be turning Gaza into a Western democracy, but an Arab-Muslim entity that is moderate and not jihadist.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will present a new position on Palestinian statehood during his speech in Washington in July that will allow normalization with Saudi Arabia to progress, according to a Tuesday evening report.
Senior aides to the Israeli leader have told the White House that Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress will contain elements that back United States President Joe Biden’s grand vision for the Middle East, Channel 13 news reported.
That plan includes a ceasefire-for-hostages deal to end the fighting in Gaza, a diplomatic solution for the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, a pathway toward a Palestinian state, and diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Jerusalem.
Biden’s Middle East vision takes on additional urgency as presidential elections loom in November. According to a Tuesday New York Times poll, Republican challenger Donald Trump leads Biden in seven key swing states, and would triumph by 312 electoral votes to Biden’s 226 according to the current polling.
Engineering a Saudi-Israel normalization deal would be a diplomatic masterstroke, one that could blunt criticism of Biden’s policies in Gaza and in Ukraine.
The Prime Minister’s Office pushed back on the report in comments to The Times of Israel, saying that Netanyahu “opposes a Palestinian state and will not change his position in his address to Congress.”
At the same time, the PMO response did leave some maneuvering space for Netanyahu to offer rhetorical support for a vague process that leads toward increased Palestinian autonomy short of a state.
Last month, the US and Saudi Arabia discussed a “semi-final” version of wide-ranging security agreements between the countries. The agreements are considered a major part of Washington’s efforts to bring Riyadh around to recognizing Israel for the first time. Saudi Arabia and the US have been clear that movement toward Palestinian statehood is a condition for an agreement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed a surprising stance in closed-door discussions, stating that the collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was not in Israel's interest at that time. This revelation came ahead of a crucial cabinet meeting that approved a series of sanctions against Palestinian officials and countries that recognized a Palestinian state.
In a confidential conversation reported by N12, Netanyahu emphasized the importance of the PA's activities for Israel, despite his usual public criticism of the organization. "We cannot ignore the activities and actions of the PA; they have significant benefits for Israel," Netanyahu said, as cited by N12.
He further elaborated on the potential consequences of the PA's collapse. "The collapse of the Palestinian Authority is not in Israel's interest at this time. There is a need to promote actions that stabilize the Authority to prevent escalation in the area," he added, according to N12.
The collapse of the PA
The cabinet convened to finalize sanctions that targeted Palestinian officials and implemented economic measures against the PA. Additionally, the sanctions extended to countries that had formally recognized a Palestinian state, N12 reported. This came amidst a backdrop of a severe financial crisis for the PA, which had seen a drastic reduction in clearance revenue transfers and a significant drop in economic activity. The World Bank warned that the PA's fiscal situation had "dramatically worsened," with a financing gap projected to double to $1.2 billion within months.
According to the report, during the discussion, ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich pushed for increased Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, aligning with their longstanding political agendas. This development followed previous cabinet decisions to penalize the PA for its support of terror and actions against Israel on the international stage.
I SERVED ON TWO PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAMS in Iraq and Afghanistan, which provided hundreds of millions of dollars in projects throughout Diyala, Kapisa, and Parwan. Some of my troops paid the ultimate price to give reconstruction projects to Iraqis and Afghans. It was important work, and I’m very proud of what we did. I remember those smiling Afghan children’s faces very well.
However, most of the time, it didn’t work. In Afghanistan, the Taliban intimidated our contractors, took our money, and then used it to kill our troops. In Iraq, it was a little bit different. When I served in 2010 in Diyala, the surge provided stability, which allowed some of our reconstruction projects to do some actual good. But all that good went out the window when we voluntarily left, allowing the Islamic State to destroy all that we had built.
This is the second reason to greet Hamas’s overtures with suspicion: If they aren’t using misdirection to gain time to rearm and improve their military odds in the current conflict, they are trying to secure an agreement that will make it possible for them to prepare to launch the next one. War with Israel is the only reason they exist. Count on it: If Hamas were to sign any deal allowing them to survive, they will take all the reconstruction money and turn it into a way to kill more Jews. They will rebuild their army. They will also emerge from the tunnels as conquering heroes among the jihadist community—both al Qaeda and the Taliban have already praised Hamas for their October 7, 2023 pogrom—and they will attack again.
Americans want quick fixes, and our enemies are counting on us to play to type. That’s because jihadists don’t have the same conception of time that we do. There’s an old Pashtun proverb, “The Pashtun who took revenge after a hundred years said, ‘I took it too quickly.’” The Taliban’s patience, combined with resilience, persistence, and willingness to die, made them formidable opponents. Hamas takes a similarly long view. They don’t need a first-world military to defeat the West. Instead, aided by their deep study of Western values, they will continue their cynical guerrilla war until we grow tired, relent, and retreat.
We’ve seen scenes like this play out before, and we’ll see them again. Since the Israeli government removed every Israeli from Gaza at gunpoint in 2005, Israel and Hamas have fought major battles in 2008–2009, 2012, 2014, and now since October 7, with sporadic rocket fire and airstrikes in between. The result of every previous ceasefire has been more terrorism. There’s a reason governments don’t negotiate with terrorists.
And if you think what Hamas did in Gaza is shocking, wait until the world sees what is in store in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al Qaeda are building a similar terror state.
WAR IS A HIDEOUS THING. I’ve experienced it up close and personal. The trauma that it inflicts scars generations. I bear those scars. But sometimes the enemy must be killed, especially when the enemy repeatedly tells you he just wants to kill you. The destruction of Hamas, pursued while striving to minimize civilian deaths, is the only realistic hope of preventing many more civilian deaths in the future. If Hamas can be defeated, the prospect of a future peace, however distant, may become real once more.
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of
the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
John Kirby, though someone I don’t like, is a darned sight better
at presiding over a White House presser than is, for instance, KJP. That’s
about the best I have to say about him. But the way he sneered at Fox News
Chief Legal Correspondent, Journalist Shannon Bream, in an April interview, literally
turned my stomach.
Ugh. It was like he
was saying, “Listen little Lady, you stay in your corner, and let the big boys
handle this.”
Well, like I said, this was back in April, but the subject
of that interview,
covert US support for Iran, remains relevant to our current news cycle, with
Israel looking at a face-off with the evil Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. Biden’s
support of Iran was relevant too, in
November, when I wrote about the money
trail that led to October 7. It irritated me, the way the Biden administration
kept saying that Iran can’t possibly use its own money to fund its war machine.
I hear that stuff and say out loud, squinting my eyes at my computer screen, “You
know darned well that money is fungible, you blankety blank blank.”
Fungible. It’s not that difficult a
concept. When one anticipates money coming in, they risk taking it from
somewhere else. Some not of my religion might call this “robbing Peter to pay
Paul.”
You don’t need to be a lawyer to
understand any of this, right? Yet here was Shannon Bream, a lawyer, polite, refined,
asking a reasonable question, and all John Kirby does is sneer and leer at her.
You can practically hear Kirby rolling his eyes.
Here's how the conversation went:
Shannon Bream: There are a number of critics, most of them
on the GOP side of the Hill, who say, “We shouldn’t be in this position.”
That there are things that were done by this administration,
that let Iran think it had an opening here, or others that want to go after
Israel. Senator Marsha Blackburn among those, posting on X last night, she
says,
“Under President Trump, Iran was broke.
“President Biden gifted them billions of dollars and then
naively said, ‘Don’t.’
“‘Don’t.’ is not a foreign policy.”
Under President Trump, Iran was broke.
President Biden gifted them billions of dollars and then naively said “don’t.”
“Don’t” is not a foreign policy.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) April 13, 2024
Shannon Bream: You know the conversations about unfreezing assets, about
waivers on sanctions . . .
John Kirby: Yeah, Yeah. (laughs)
Shannon Bream: Could this administration [have been] tougher on Iran?
John Kirby: (shakes head) It’s hard to look at what President Biden has done
with respect to Iran and . . .
Shannon Bream: (interrupts) but we’re also leaving
sanctions.
John Kirby: . . . say that he hasn’t been tough on Iran, that we haven’t put
pressure on them, that we haven’t—an additional 500 sanctions, additional
resources in the region and let’s take a look at that ballistic missiles—okay,
so they launched more than 100 ballistic missiles, and how many got through?
And the reason they didn’t get through is because President Biden made sure
that we pre-position forces in the region to help Israel—will shoot them
down—so this vaunted ballistic missile program of theirs, last night (stutters)
didn’t turn out to be so vaunted last night.
Shannon Bream: (interrupts) But why not support something
that would have stopped that program or at least contained it in some way, so
it’s not launching at Israel, so that we aren’t having to get involved
defensively?
John Kirby: Again, Shannon, let’s look at the sanctions we
put in place with Iran, the resources in the region ... it’s hard to take a
look at what President Biden has done and say that we’ve somehow gone soft on
Iran. It was the previous administration that promised, that promised to get us
out of the Iran Deal and now Iran is so much dramatically closer to a potential
nuclear weapon capability than they were before, uh, before, uh, before Mr.
Trump was elected. (sneers)
Shannon Bream: Is it not fair to say though, that there have
been moves by this administration that have opened up cash and other
opportunities for them which we know are fungible, in ways that are not helping
the Iranian people (Kirby laughs) but are benefitting the elites and people there
who chant “Death to America.” And “Death to Israel.”
John Kirby: You and I have had this fungibility argument,
eh, (stutters) before em, um, I obviously take a different issue, uh, take an
issue with that characterization. The (gestures), the sanctions relief that has
come about. . . or it’s not even
sanctions relief, but eh, (stutters) the eh, eh, additional funds which have
been made available to Iran, due to the sanctions relief program that the Trump administration put in place. (shakes head) It can only be used for humanitarian
goods; it doesn’t go to the regime. And the idea that the regime was somehow .
. . felt like they were freed up to support these proxies because of that it
just doesn’t comport with the facts that they have been supporting these
proxies for many, many years.
Shannon Bream: And it comports with their language though,
saying, we will use this money in the way that we want to use it.
John Kirby: They can’t (shakes head, laughs, sneers). They
can’t! They physically can’t do that.
It’s upsetting. Bream is pretty, but
that doesn’t mean she is empty-headed. Rather she is fiercely smart, and a
lawyer to boot, and should not be treated with so little regard. I was sickened
by his insulting manner toward a lady, and an intelligent one, at that.
Aside from this, Kirby never answered
her question—never managed to explain why the fact that money is fungible is
something to dismiss. Why would Iran not take advantage the fact that
money is fungible to build its war machine? Bream has a good question, and
deserves a good answer from this administration. We all do.
But there is no good answer. The
Biden administration knowingly assisted Iran in building up its nuclear
arsenal, and also gave Iran the power to fuel the October 7 massacre, and the volcano
about to erupt in Northern Israel and Lebanon. Shannon Bream knows this, and so
does Kirby—every time he stutters, you know he’s concealing something. In spite
of this, John Kirby treats Shannon Bream as though she were a simpleton. This
was profoundly disturbing to me, both as a woman and as a human being.
The silky words tripping off Kirby’s
tongue, brought to my mind nothing so much as the snake who used cunning words
to goad Eve on to eat the apple.
In this case the snake was just another
Biden hack who’d sold his soul to the highest bidder.
I think Bream did a great job of exposing
Kirby for what he is, for anyone who saw the interview and noted his demeaning
manner toward his host, Bream. I cannot see how any woman, Democrat or
Republican, can sit through that interview and not see how slimy he is.
And now, as June comes to a close,
the United States has let slip, by way of US Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown, that America will not be
helping Israel fight Iran/Hezbollah this time around, not necessarily because
America doesn’t want to, but because, it claims, the US doesn’t have the capability.
“From our perspective,” said Charles Brown, “based on where
our forces are, the short-range between Lebanon and Israel, it’s harder for us
to be able to support them in the same way we did back in April.”
In other words, those over 100 ballistic missiles Kirby
referenced back in April were one thing, but not this. “Sorry,” says America to
Israel. “We can’t help you with this one. Now, you’re on your own.”
Here is the logical—the only—answer to Bream’s question,
solid proof that money is always fungible, even in the case of Iran. The
lifting of sanctions by the Biden administration has directly led to the
current existential threat to Israel and, one might add, to Lebanon.
The Biden administration has enabled Iran, all the while
doing what it can to stymie Israel. The president feeds the enemy with fungible
funds while starving his ally of promised weaponry and other assistance.
Some speak of a coming world war, while people like Kirby,
continue to sneer and laugh and lie to intelligent people like Shannon Bream,
who see right through them. At some point, John Kirby’s act will grow old—he
was never meant to be anything but mid-level management. Not to worry—they’ll
find a use for Kirby somewhere. Like I said, he gives a mean White House
presser.
Or perhaps they can bury him in mounds of paperwork behind a
desk, hidden away from public view.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
In his absence, Ella
Ben Ami apologizes to her father for being emotionless. She’s not without
emotion, on the contrary – the problem is too many emotions.
Ella had to close off her heart to keep functioning, to
retain her dignity during the fight of her life: liberating her father from
Hamas captivity in Gaza.
As if that is not enough, Ella is also caring for her
mother, who was held hostage in Gaza for 54 days. Raz had a serious
pre-existing health condition and was denied treatment while in captivity. By
the time she was released in the hostage deal made with Hamas, her health had
deteriorated to a frightening extent.
The knowledge that Ohad, her beloved husband, is still in
Gaza does not help her heal - her beloved Ohad who proposed to her every single
day.
Now Ella wears his wedding ring on a necklace to feel him
close to her heart.
It was Ella’s voice
that, on October 7th, made me finally comprehend that something
unspeakably horrific was happening.
That Saturday, the Red Alert app on Lenny’s phone woke me
up. Mine is set to go off for alerts in Haifa, where we live. Alerts are now
very location-specific to avoid unnecessarily traumatizing people, but Lenny
says it’s unacceptable not to know when our people are being bombed. That’s why
his alerts are set for the entire country.
The warning of incoming missiles was going off non-stop.
Missiles from Gaza, aimed at the south and even towards the center of the
country. So many, that he turned off the alerts on the phone and turned on the TV
to see what was happening.
I assumed it was another “round” like so many others before.
Horrible but not something that meant I had to get up. But then he said: “Wake
up! Look! There are terrorists in Sderot!”
Groggily I looked at the TV and saw the now infamous image
of terrorists piled up on a white pick-up truck driving into Sderot. Six or
seven terrorists? Terrible! But they would soon be eliminated… that’s what I
and so many others thought. At the time no one understood that we had been
invaded.
I began to understand when Ella called the news station.
Ella had already been trapped for hours in the safe-room of
her house in Beeri. Frantic with worry for her parents, and because no one else
was responding to her requests for help, she called the news station, hoping
that at least there, she would be heard.
The invaders were in the kibbutz, butchering people, and
burning homes. Ella’s parents were messaging her, describing the terrorists'
rampage in their neighborhood, their home, breaking into their safe-room and
then… silence.
And then Ella saw her father’s image on a Gazan news site,
being dragged into Gaza in a t-shirt and boxer shorts.
It was 11:48 when she
called. The invasion had begun around 6:00 am.
Ella told Danny Kushmaro, the newscaster, that her father
had been taken hostage, to Gaza. Shocked, he carefully tried to clarify the
details of what was happening. It was incomprehensible to imagine that this was
happening.
“How old are you?”
“23. My father was taken hostage to Gaza.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
It was Ella who explained to the reporters and to all of
Israel that not only were our people being slaughtered but that they were also
being taken hostage.
The first time I met Ella was in the Knesset. She had come
with many other family members of the hostages to explain to the Members of
Knesset what they needed and ask for their help. This has unfortunately become
a heart-wrenching weekly ritual because the hostages are still not home.
Exhausted but with great dignity, Ella told the MK’s and
everyone else listening, most of whom were at least double her age that the chasm
between the processes set in place to help victims of terrorism and the reality
she is forced to deal with.
“Yes, I know there are ways for victims of terrorism to
get help but there is a lot of paperwork to fill out. I can’t focus on forms. I
can’t think about what happened to me... I was trapped for 15 hours and evacuated under fire. I had to
walk over bodies. I was almost killed three times… but my mother is sick, and
my father is still in Gaza.”
Ella isn’t alone. She has two sisters, her mother, extended
family. She has her friends and a new family – the children, brothers, and
sisters of other hostages. They credit her with many of the ideas on how to
keep the hostages in the public eye. They find themselves looking to her, for
ideas and motivation because although she is younger than them, she is a
natural-born leader.
And that is just the thing – she’s not alone but what
23-year-old wants to lead this terrible battle? All she wants is to have her
father back. Only then her family be able to begin to heal. Only then will she
allow herself to think about herself.
Only when her father comes home Ella will she be able to
begin imagining a future. What place she will be able to call home? Be’eri
where she grew up and was happy? The place where she had to step over bodies,
run past burned cars, and breathe the stench of death? Where every path, every
house is a reminder of friends and neighbors who are supposed to be there and
are not? How will she create her own family, knowing that the State didn’t
succeed in protecting hers or even, after this disaster occurred, succeed in
fixing the problem?
We have to fix this.
Liberating Ella’s father isn’t enough. Every hostage is more
than their individual story, more even than their family left behind, sick with
worry or broken by grief. The Nation of Israel is one family. We argue and we
don’t always like each other but we are still family.
Every living hostage must be liberated. Our dead must be
buried. Our future must be protected. We must prove to the world that we meant
it when we said NEVER AGAIN. If we do not, this will happen again and again and
again. Our enemies promised us that.
Every day is October 7th until we fix this.
And Ella? Every time
I see her my heart goes out to her. Not with pity, but with pride in her
eloquent dignity, her unbending determination, and love of family and friends.
I don’t know how I would cope were I in her shoes (and any of us could be).
Frankly, worry over my soldiers, and worry for friends and family is enough to
make me physically ill.
I wish I could lift the burden from Ella’s shoulders.
It was her words that began this war for me. I hope for the
day that I will hear her say words that prove we are on the right track, words
that will give us all hope: “My father is home. The hostages are home.”
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
For World Refugee Day, UNRWA issued a press release describing how older Gazans were being displaced and murdered by the evil Jews yet again.
The writing has all the hallmarks of propaganda, heavy on emotion and with the authors almost certainly telling their interviewees what to say:
Abu Kefah Qadih, is an 81-year-old Palestine Refugee from Khan Younis. He has weathered forced displacement not once, but twice in his lifetime. As a child, he endured the horror of the Nakba – the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Now he has been forced to witness the dispossession of his own grandchildren. Together they are currently living through the same ordeal he knew too well as a child. This heart-wrenching reality leaves the elderly man profoundly shaken, shattering any hope he may have held that his family could be spared such a cruel fate.
"The scenes I witnessed as a child are being repeated with my own grandchildren," he laments, his voice trembling with raw emotion. "Watching helplessly as people flee from death, forced to live in tattered tents, clinging to the desperate hope of one day returning home - it shatters my heart to witness this horrific cycle unfolding all over again, this time impacting my own family," Abu Kefah says.
His aged eyes reflect the weariness of a lifetime burdened by unrelenting displacement and loss. "Many have been killed, their homes reduced to rubble, but still we remain steadfast, accepting God's will," he affirms as a tear escapes from his eye, a potent testament of the profound sorrow etched into his weathered face.
Does any normal person speak this way?
But the next "witness" is even more unlikely:
Hajjeh Zainab, 88, is another al Nakba survivor from Beersheba. Her family fled the once peaceful grazing land they called home for the Maghazi area of southern Wadi Gaza in 1948.
Before the Nakba, her family cultivated the land and lived off the livestock they raised, such as sheep, goats, and camels. Hajjeh Zainab recalls, "We used to honor guests and welcome them into our homes and on our lands from which we were forced to flee. We always used to say, 'May God grant us a guest before the sun sets,' such was our love for honoring guests. These are the traditions of the Bedouins in the tribes of Beersheba, and we, the good people of this land, lived a simple life filled with love, harmony, and happiness,” she says. “But in one night and one day, gangs attacked us, killed us, slaughtered our children, families, and men, and forced us to leave our homes under the threat of fire, killing, and massacres,” she laments.
While I see that Benny Morris describes how Zionist troops did expel residents of Beersheba in October 1948 as part of Operation Yoav against the Egyptian fighters embedded there, most of them fled beforehand. I cannot find any description of a massacre of women and children near Beersheba in 1948. (I see reports of one alleged massacre of fourteen farmers in Al Araqib in September 1948, all of them adult men.)
This old lady is saying what she wants us to hear, not what actually happened.
And UNRWA, with a budget paid for by our taxpayer dollars, is not publishing what actually happened in 1948, but antisemitic lies about Jews deliberately massacring innocent men, women and children - to promote the lie that this is what is happening now as well.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
These two paragraphs in an op-ed by Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times are Exhibit A in how antisemitism has been normalized and accepted in today's America by the Left.
Goldberg wrote, ahead of yesterday's New York primary that saw George Latimer easily defeat Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary:
It was always going to be hard, after Oct. 7, for Bowman to bridge the gulf between his convictions and the expectations of many of his Jewish constituents. His district, which includes a small slice of the Bronx as well as the suburbs of southern Westchester, is among the country’s most Jewish, and many of his voters, traumatized by Hamas’s attack on Israel and by increasingly visible antisemitism in America, wanted someone who would stand resolutely with the Jewish state. Bowman was never going to do that; he was horrified by his encounter with Israel’s occupation during a congressional trip in 2021, and he’s been anguished by the mass death and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, where he believes Israel is committing a genocide. There is something deeply admirable about his refusal to subordinate his values to political expediency.
But Bowman has also been reckless in stomping on ideological land mines. Among his greatest unforced errors was claiming that reports of Israeli women being raped on Oct. 7 were a “lie” used for “propaganda.” (He later apologized.) Though he says he continues to support a two-state solution, he’s fallen into the left-wing habit of using “Zionist” as an insult, such as when he referred to the “Zionist regime we call AIPAC.” Speaking to Politico, he complained about the “decision” some Jews have made to segregate themselves, which many saw as an insult to the Orthodox communities in his district. I suspect Bowman didn’t know that the idea of Jews as clannish is an antisemitic trope, but when you have lots of Jewish constituents, understanding their sensitivities is part of the job.
Calling Israel's actions in Gaza "genocide" is antisemitic.
Denying that Israeli women were raped and claiming that it is a propaganda lie is antisemitic.
Using the word "Zionist" as a pejorative is antisemitic.
Complaining that religious Jews live in their own neighborhoods, when they must all be walking distance to synagogues, is antisemitic.
Later in the same article, Goldberg also mentions that Bowman has called Israel a "settler-colonialist project" and privately promised the far-Left to support boycotting Israel from Congress, aligning himself with those who want to see Israel destroyed.
Doing all of this while representing a large Jewish community is not simply an oversight, or reckless, or a series of unforced errors. It is an indication of Bowman's embrace of antisemitism as a key component of his own political stance.
What, exactly, is "deeply admirable" about resolutely refusing to change his antisemitic positions? (And does that make his belated "apology" for denying October 7 atrocities less admirable?)
Goldberg remains perplexed but still admiring at the end of the article despite her own listing of no less than six antisemitic positions that Bowman has taken:
After the rally on Friday, I asked Bowman about choices he’s made that seemed to me like political malpractice. He rejected the idea that he should cater to those who’ve already decided that he’s antisemitic, emphasizing all the other communities in the district that he’s accountable to: “The community living in poverty, the community that can’t afford housing, the community that can’t afford child care” and those who want to see the war in Gaza end. But he can’t represent those communities, I said, if he loses. “If we lose, we lose,” he said. “It’s not about that. It’s bigger than that.”
Would Goldberg say that far right politicians who refuse to change their racist positions when criticized are "admirable"?
Publicly espousing antisemitic positions is acceptable and even praiseworthy as long as it is couched as anti-Israel rhetoric. And we can see it in the pages of the New York Times.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
A week before the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel, Daniel Pipes, a longtime respected foreign policy expert, a former board member of the United States Institute of Peace and the president of the Middle East Forum, had turned in his manuscript for his new book.
What emerged in the final months of 2023 was Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated. The foundational thesis of Pipes' work, that Israel had spent far too much conciliating the Islamic terrorist groups that dominate Gaza and the West Bank, offering them the promise of peace and prosperity, emerged from the rubble more relevant than ever.
"Israeli leaders seek to improve Palestinian economic welfare: I call this the policy of enrichment," Pipes writes in Israel Victory, criticizing Israel for not adopting "the universal tactic of depriving an economy of resources, but on the opposite one of helping Palestinians to develop economically."
The quintessential liberal fallacy also at the root of America's failures in the War on Terror held that wars were fought against regimes, not people. Even when Israel achieved its victories on the battlefield, it still believed that peace would come through mutual prosperity and befriending foes. This vision is alien to the region and rather than bringing peace has only perpetuated generations of war.
In the months before Oct 7, Arab Muslim workers from Gaza were allowed in increasing numbers to work in Israel. And in the months since Oct 7, Israel, under political pressure, has flooded Gaza with aid. The pre-10/7 appeasement failed to prevent the massacres, rapes and kidnappings and the post-10/7 benevolence only convinced Muslims in Gaza they would win.
Israel Victory contends that Israel can't win through conciliation, it can only win by winning and that furthermore, victory is ultimately the best possible outcome for both sides. Israel's reticence to achieve a conclusive and decisive victory, and then to act like winners infused generations of Arab Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza with the conviction that they can destroy Israel if they transform their societies into killing machines and turn over political power to terrorists.
It is as if instead of defeating Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, the Allies had left a core regime and population intact and free to plot war for another 50 years. That is what happened in Israel.
The dynamic in which we try to win over the Muslim world, only to have it reject us, to which we respond with even more concerted efforts to win it over has become all too familiar to most of us. And it's the dynamic that "Israel Victory" places at the heart of the conflict. The combination of relentless international pressure and the conviction that peace can only be achieved by winning hearts and minds, rather than by winning wars, has created a doom spiral of 'rejectionism' and 'conciliation'.
"Rejectionism, however, will not collapse on its own. It must be broken. Only one party, Israel, can achieve this. Doing so will require major changes, indeed, a paradigm shift," Pipes writes. "That means abandoning conciliation and returning to the eternal verities of war. I call this Israel Victory. More negatively but more accurately, it consists of Palestinian defeat."
Dr. Daniel Pipes is an academically elegant as well as a bold and strategic thinker. He is the founder and President of the Middle East Forum and an historian. Pipes’s new book is titled “Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated.”
Pipes’s knowledge of Middle Eastern history and of the Israel-Palestine issue is impressive. Whether or not his carefully considered suggestions will be heeded remains to be seen. I certainly hope that leaders everywhere read this volume.
Pipes argues that Palestinian “rejectionism” can only be defeated if Israel is victorious, if Palestinians finally understand that their obsession to exterminate Israel can never be realized. They must first lose this self-destructive “hope” before they can begin to create a more stable and viable society. (READ MORE from Phyllis Chesler: Immigration of Cultures Hostile to the West Must End)
“The role of hope among Palestinians, actually inspires intransigence, extremism, and violence. Hope that the Jewish state can be destroyed keeps rejectionism alive, inspires continued murderous attacks, and motivates the international hate-campaign.”
He further notes that the massive aid donated to Hamas and to the “Palestinians fuels terror, not peace.”
Pipes is a common sense realist. He understands that “ending the conflict means that one side wins, the other loses.” Israel’s policy of “conciliation” towards Hamas and the Palestinian Authority has led to countless deaths and to the savaging of Israel’s reputation in the world. The deep funded and long-term campaign of “slander” against Israel has worked; but that is also due to Israel’s refusal to fight back or to even engage in the cognitive war. He writes: This form of anti-Zionism (that Israel is the world’s most horrid and bellicose country) poses an existential threat to Israel no less than Iran’s nuclear weapons. Indeed, just as lawful Islamism poses greater danger than Muslim violence, so the Palestinian delegitimization threatens Israel more than their violence.
I agree. With sadness, based on my own experience, I can confirm that for more than 50 years, both American Jewish organizations and the Israeli government were indifferent to the importance of hasbara, “messaging,” setting the record straight, countering the Big Lies.
Violence appears to be a feature, not a bug, of the anti-Israel movement in California. Recently, an anti-Israel group claimed responsibility for acts of arson committed on the University of California, Berkeley campus. In November, brawls broke out when anti-Israel activists attempted to disrupt a screening organized by Israeli actress Gal Gadot of the 43-minute video documenting the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7.
It is no coincidence that the one Jewish person who has been murdered so far in the eruption of antisemitism that followed the Hamas massacre of October 7, Paul Kessler, was murdered in Los Angeles.
The death of Paul Kessler did not serve as a wake-up call to the police or the politicians. Nor did any of the violence that followed. At some point, it was decided that it was ok for antisemites to target synagogues, something Mayor Bass and the LAPD would never tolerate if it was a mosque that was targeted instead.
Why shouldn’t antisemites engage in violence and target synagogues if the message coming from authorities is that violence is "protected speech"?
Amazingly, antisemitism appears to be even worse in Los Angeles than it is in New York, which has seen some of the worst antisemitic incidents and rallies in its history in recent weeks. There is also anti-Jewish violence in New York, as the assault on a Jewish woman’s family at a 5th grade graduation ceremony in Brooklyn proved, but a lower percentage of antisemitic rallies turn violent. So far.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvan Bragg’s decision not to prosecute dozens of rioters who violently took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and who held a janitor hostage threatens to make New York just as bad as LA by proving that antisemitic violence goes unpunished.
The most shocking part of all of this isn’t the hate or the violence. It’s that there are those who are shocked that people who openly support Hamas, people who cheer the horrors of October 7, people who openly call for violence against Jews, might actually be violent themselves and put their rhetoric into action.
As long as antisemitism is consequence free, as long as violence is tolerated, hate and attacks on Jews will continue and will grow in intensity and severity. This tolerance for the intolerable has made Los Angeles the antisemitism capital of the United States, the place where Jews are most likely to be killed by Hamas supporters, the place where the supposedly ‘peaceful protests’ of the modern day Nazis are most likely to turn violent.
If LA loses its title as America’s antisemitism capital, it will probably not be because its leaders and police woke up and began treating antisemitism like the bigotry it is, but because people like Alvan Bragg made other cities safer to attack Jews than to be one.
Some 50 people delivered a simple plea on Monday to Manhattan’s top prosecutor, who opted not even to bargain for pleas from antisemitic protesters who occupied buildings at Columbia University.
“Bragg, Bragg, punish crime. Make sure criminals do their time,” chanted those who protested outside the office of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney. He appeared to be in the building during the protest, as his car awaited outside.
Shai Davidai, an assistant management professor at Columbia Business School who has been one of those leading criticism of his employer for tolerating Jew-hatred, told those assembled that he was appalled as a father, a Jewish man and a taxpayer.
“We pay for that guy to do his job, and he refuses to do it,” Davidai said at the rally, organized by the grassroots movement End Jew Hatred.
The Israeli native believed two reasons to be behind the fact that Bragg dropped charges against 31 of the 46 people who occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall illegally, and whom police subsequently arrested after breaking into the building dramatically.
“He gets to decide for himself: He’s either a coward or an antisemite,” Davidai said of Bragg.
Bragg’s office stated last week that there was insufficient evidence to charge the dozens of protesters in question even with criminal trespassing and that they had no criminal history. The district attorney’s office also noted that there was limited video evidence since the masked protesters covered up cameras.
‘A denial of our most basic rights’
The Manhattan district attorney had visited a Holocaust center just a week before deciding to drop the charges against most of the protesters and declined to prosecute the offenders on the same day that he signed a pledge to prosecute hate crimes fully amid rising antisemitism, according to Alan Mindel, chairman of the board at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Long Island.
“The next day, to not prosecute trespass, claiming a lack of evidence when the individuals were literally arrested in the location of their trespass, is on its face, ridiculous,” Mindel told rallyers, who tended to sport American rather than Israeli flags.
“We all know this,” he said. “It’s a denial of our most basic rights, and these rights, they’re not just for us.”
In the ongoing dispute over weapons shipments between the United States and Israel, two possibilities emerge: either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lying, or the Americans are being dishonest. After careful examination, the latter seems more likely – the Americans are obscuring the truth.
Multiple shipments of various types of ammunition to Israel have been delayed since February – that is four months. This far exceeds the single weapons shipment President Joe Biden mentioned regarding operations in Rafah.
The delayed shipments include artillery, tank and air combat ammunition – weapons Israel has already paid for – as well as thousands of JDAM kits that convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions. Netanyahu, not always known for strict adherence to facts, accurately describes the situation.
His unprecedented move – releasing a video directly criticizing Washington. – became necessary after months of quiet diplomacy failed to resolve the issue, effectively freezing weapons deliveries.
The actual delays stem from State Department officials who are not processing the required export permits for these shipments to Israel.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's trip to the US will address this issue, which highlights Israel's significant military and diplomatic dependence on America, as revealed during the ongoing war.
The benefits of US support for Israel are clear: $4 billion in annual military aid, continuous ammunition supply during war, and international backing against hostile entities like Iran, Russia and the United Nations. However, the drawbacks are less discussed: Israel's limited freedom to act according to its own judgment, both operationally during the war and diplomatically in its aftermath.
The logical goal is a dramatic increase in domestic production – both in volume and variety – and liberation from contractual restrictions that prevent Israel from independently developing additional weapon types.
While dependence on the US won't disappear overnight, efforts to reduce it should have begun yesterday. Israel has already taken some steps to increase its future autonomy.
Team Obama, still playing strong in Washington, pulled out several plays when Israel was confronted with another Gaza war. At first, they embraced Israel, and then they dragged out the game and called penalties as the Jewish state took the offensive. “Don’t throw the heavy bomb! Stay in bounds!”
It’s a shame the Israeli team hadn’t viewed the 2014 game films.
In early May 2024, President Biden told CNN in an interview that he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel - which he claimed had been used to kill civilians in Gaza - if Netanyahu ordered a major invasion of the city of Rafah. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah - they haven’t gone in Rafah yet - if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem,” he said. Biden says he will stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launches a major invasion of Rafah.
A coordinated media campaign against the supply of “heavy bombs” to Israel was launched in December 2023 by The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. It was as if a political echo chamber was activated. Targeted explicitly by the publications were 2,000-pound bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits that provided “dumb bombs” with precision guidance, ostensibly something critics should approve of.
The latest scheduled shipment was supposed to consist of JDAM kits, eighteen hundred 2,000-lb bombs, and seventeen hundred 500-lb bombs.
Svengali Rhodes
One name was missing from the 2024 “Obama Team” still at work in the White House: Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national security advisor and anti-Israel play-caller during the tempestuous Iran Deal and Gaza weapons episodes. Rhodes was a political Svengali, the creator and director of the infamous Washington “Echo Chamber.”
Last week, “Svengali” stepped out from behind the curtains with a pre-election essay in Foreign Affairs titled “A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is: Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy.” According to Rhodes, Israel was a core problem.
He griped that the US administration “criticizes Russia for the same indiscriminate tactics that Israel has used in Gaza” and that “Washington has supplied the Israeli government with weapons used to bombard Palestinian civilians with impunity.”
What caused the current conflagration, according to the former White House speech writer? What lit “a fuse that detonated” the war? Rhodes lists the pro-Israel actions of the previous Trump administration as catalysts:
“Moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, and pursuing the Abraham Accords.” Rhodes continued, “The Palestinians were cut out of Arab-Israeli normalization, [and] Israel’s far-right [were] emboldened, lighting a fuse that detonated in the current war.”
Elliott Abrams, who served as a senior official in previous Republican administrations whose last role was enforcing sanctions on the Iranian regime during the Trump administration, opposes delays in US arms shipments to Israel.
"I don't know what and how much has been held up, but it shouldn't have happened. The level of delay should be zero," Abrams tells Israel Hayom in an exclusive interview in the wake of the recent clash between the Biden administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"At the end of Trump's term, Iran was facing bankruptcy. The Biden administration's abandonment of the sanctions policy led to a significant strengthening of the Islamic Republic." He added, "If Trump had received four more years, the regime would have faced a choice between economic collapse and mass uprising, or halting the nuclear program. But then the Biden administration came and essentially stopped enforcing the sanctions, to the point that today Iran's currency reserves stand at about $50 billion. Therefore, what needs to be done is to return to the sanctions policy and enforce it."
He emphasized that "America's closest friend in the Middle East suffered a terrible attack, so we should never stop transferring weapons to her." Abrams currently serves as chairman of the Tikvah Fund and will participate in the 21st Herzliya Conference at Reichman University.
According to Abrams, "At the end of Trump's term, Iran was facing bankruptcy. The Biden administration's abandonment of the sanctions policy led to a significant strengthening of the Islamic Republic." He added, "If Trump had received four more years, the regime would have faced a choice between economic collapse and mass uprising, or halting the nuclear program. But then the Biden administration came and essentially stopped enforcing the sanctions, to the point that today Iran's currency reserves stand at about $50 billion. Therefore, what needs to be done is to return to the sanctions policy and enforce it."
Q: In your opinion, will sanctions be enough? After all, this has been tried for many years, and it has never stopped Iran.
A: "I think we need to start with enforcing sanctions. Also, Britain and France need to activate the snapback mechanism [eturning the UN Security Council sanctions that were lifted under the nuclear deal], but this needs to be backed by a credible threat of force. All recent US administrations, including Joe Biden's and Barack Obama's, said they would not accept a nuclear Iran and threatened to use force if necessary."
According to Abrams, Iran has indeed halted the advancement of its nuclear program on rare occasions. "This happened when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, and when Trump eliminated Qassem Soleimani in 2020. The US needs to be ready to use force in Iran, but credibility is critical here. Only if they are convinced that the US is willing to act will they stop."
Q: What is the significance of the Hamas attack and everything that happened afterward from an American and global perspective?
A: "For many in the US, particularly on the Republican side, this is a wake-up call that Biden's policy has failed, and he's trying to push off the problem and quiet it until the elections."
Abrams claims that the US president tried for two and a half years to revive the nuclear deal with Iran until he realized they weren't interested. "Iran has benefited from this situation, and everyone outside the administration sees it as a failure. Moreover, for the last hundred years, the US has viewed keeping the Red Sea shipping lanes open and safe as one of its most important missions, and the Houthis have pretty much managed to end that. The Suez Canal is almost completely closed, as is the Red Sea. The US is currently in a defensive posture. We're intercepting the Houthis' missiles, but we've come to terms with them doing what they're doing. In my opinion, the US needs to punish the Houthis and Iran for this."
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Elder of Ziyon
