Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 01, 2024

07/01 Links Pt1: ADL, victims sue Iran, Syria and North Korea over Oct. 7; The peace campaigner who came to kill; Biden ‘effectively withholding 7 weapon systems’ from Israel

From Ian:

‘Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war,’ Netanyahu tells JINSA delegation

The first thing that the Jewish state must do is to defeat Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a delegation of retired U.S. Jewish military leaders at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv last week.

“People who do this thing to us are not going to be there. We have a long battle,” he told the delegation from the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “I don’t think it’s that long, but we’ll get rid of them.”

Netanyahu added that “Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war: Obviously, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, the militias in Iraq and Syria, Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Iran itself.

“They’d like to topple Jordan. Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from various fronts, coupled with a combined missile bombardment,” he said.

Netanyahu added that Israel must “deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis.

“But we have to deal with the axis. The axis doesn’t threaten only us. It threatens you,” he said. “It’s on the march to conquer the Middle East. Conquer the Middle East. Conquer. That means, actually, conquer. Conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian Peninsula. It’s just a question of time.”

ADL, victims sue Iran, Syria and North Korea over Oct. 7 support

The Anti-Defamation League filed a federal lawsuit on Monday, alongside more than 100 American victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and their family members, accusing Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing material support for the attacks.

The lawsuit ultimately seeks compensation for the victims and their families, which would likely be paid out from the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism fund. It accuses the three rogue states of providing military, tactical and financial support to Hamas.

“Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of antisemitism and terror — along with Syria and North Korea, they must be held responsible for their roles in the largest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “We are doing everything possible to hold Hamas terrorists and those who support them accountable, including putting all of ADL’s weight behind this effort.”

Greenblatt said he’s hoping that the case will “bring justice” for some of the victims and “create a record” of the Hamas atrocities, as supported by foreign states.

One plaintiff, Nahar Neta, whose mother, Adrienne Neta, was a U.S. citizen who immigrated to Israel in the early 1980s and was killed in Kibbutz Beeri, said, “While nothing will ever undo the unbearable pain Hamas caused our family or recover the brutal losses we’ve suffered, we hope this case will bring some sense of justice.”

“It’s important for us to be able to tell our stories so the world can hear how Hamas has terrorized Israel, the Jewish people, and many American citizens,” Neta continued.

ADL filed the case with law firm Crowell & Moring. It’s the first such case filed since the Oct. 7 attack and the largest of its kind, the ADL said in a statement. James Pasch, ADL’s senior director of national litigation and the group’s lead counsel on the case, noted in a statement that Iran, Syria and North Korea have all been held responsible in U.S. courts for their support for attacks harming U.S. citizens, and adding that there’s “clear evidence” that each supported Hamas. Crowell & Moring has been involved in terrorism cases relating to the UTA flight 772 bombing and bombings of U.S. embassies in Beirut and Nairobi, Kenya, and said it has won $18 billion in judgments.

The peace campaigner who came to kill

Eight months before Machmud arrived at Batia Holin’s home to kill her, the two had jointly launched an exhibition aimed at promoting peace and unity between Israelis and Palestinians.

After connecting through a Facebook group for residents on the Israel-Gaza border, the pair spent months sharing pictures on WhatsApp of daily life from both sides of the fence. This seemingly heartfelt exchange blossomed into a poignant exhibition entitled Between Us, dedicated to bridging the divide. Due to the dire risks involved, they never spoke directly. ‘Normalisation’ (interacting with Jews) is the most serious crime a Gazan can commit.

“We didn’t discuss politics,” Batia tells me as we walk along the Gaza barrier fence on the outskirts of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Machmud – who told her he was a 28-year-old photographer from the Gazan town of Shuja’iyya – was one of 300 Hamas terrorists who breached the border on the morning of October 7 and entered her kibbutz.

The 71-year-old, who has lived on the kibbutz for more than 50 years, has dedicated her life to coexistence. The idea of collaborating with a Palestinian across the border, someone who experienced the same sights and sounds yet lived a vastly different reality, deeply resonated with her sense of purpose.

“Machmud and I wanted to show the world that, despite the circumstances in which we live, we share the same hope for a brighter future. That despite the obstacles, most people on both sides of the fence just want to live in peace.” Batia Holin beside a banner displaying pictures of hostages from Kibbutz Kfar Aza that remain in captivity.

Their exhibition opened in Israel on 4 February 2023 in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz (where 14 people were killed and seven abducted), with plans for it to tour the United States. One of its most striking exhibits was photographs of the Mediterranean Sea, showing the same beach border from opposite perspectives: one looking north, the other south.

Machmud was, of course, unable to be there in person, so he wrote Batia a touching email: “I hope this project will influence and improve understanding, quality of life and security on both sides of the fence. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society and the whole world will know that the Gaza Strip is not only a place of rockets and missiles but a place worth living in. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society will see that in Gaza the people are simple, love life and are not fighters and terrorists. This exhibition, for me, is hope for a peaceful life.”

Today, in the wake of such unimaginable brutality, Batia’s dreams seem heartbreakingly naïve. Her faith has been so profoundly shattered that she fears there may not be a single adult in Gaza who shares her vision of peace. “The hardest feeling is the sense of total betrayal,” she tells me.

“The sense that everyone in Gaza was involved, even those who claim to oppose Hamas. I realise how awful that sounds. It truly is awful. But I cannot think anything else today. The past 17 years since Hamas took over Gaza have been difficult and it’s got worse over time. Before the attack, people called life here 90 percent heaven, 10 percent hell. Now it just feels like hell.”

Batia heard Machmud’s voice for the very first time at 10am on October 7 when she received a phone call from an Israeli number she did not recognise. He told her he was inside the kibbutz and asked if Israeli soldiers were nearby.

“I was so confused,” recalls Batia with a shudder. “At first, I thought Machmud must have heard about the attack and was calling out of concern. It didn’t take long to realise he had a different reason. He wanted to cause me harm. I didn’t speak to him. I just hung up. I didn’t have time to think about the call until two days later. Terrorists were everywhere. My husband and I were just trying to survive. Later, I gave all the details I had about Machmud to the army. His phone number, personal information he’d shared, screenshots of our chats. I have no idea what happened to him.”

From the Washington Post:

When Israel launched its war against Hamas, Cairo was adamant: It would not accept Palestinian refugees. Yet more than 115,000 Gazans have crossed into Egypt since October, the Palestinian Authority’s embassy here estimates.

Most remain in limbo, with no legal status and nowhere else to go. ..Once in Egypt, nonmedical evacuees have largely been left to fend for themselves. Tens of thousands have illegally overstayed their 45-day tourist visas, making them ineligible for public education, health care and other services.

The U.N. agency responsible for Palestinian refugees doesn’t cover those in Egypt. And the United Nations’ broader refugee agency said it can’t help new arrivals because Cairo doesn’t recognize its mandate for Palestinians.

This means that Egypt does not recognize Palestinians as refugees because they are covered by UNRWA, and UNRWA is not allowed to have a presence Egypt. So the UNHCR has no ability to help them

This is one of those situations where Palestinians having their own refugee agency doesn't help them at all - in fact, it hurts them. Because UNRWA is only allowed to operate in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan and nowhere else. Refugees who are of Palestinian descent are treated differently and cannot get normal refugee services that every other refugee can.

In general, this works out well for them - as long as they stay in those five areas, they get much more than other refugees get. They get free food, free housing, free medical care, and the cost to maintain their permanent standard of living is far higher than for all other refugees worldwide. But once they leave, they have nothing, because very few of them are ever recognized as refugees.

Here we see Egypt refuses to give them refugee status, because UNRWA exists. UNHCR is not happy about it but this is a byproduct of treating Palestinians differently than other refugees.

It's just another reason why UNRWA should be dismantled. And beyond that, this is another case where the world should be pressuring Egypt to accept the Gazans who desperately want to escape - but it doesn't.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Return to Ziyon (Michael Lumish)

Return to Ziyon

Well, I haven’t been around these parts in awhile.

A few of you guys may recall my name, I suppose... maybe.

I wrote something like 170 opinion pieces for the Elder between 2014 and 2020. 170. I can’t even believe it, myself.

I got dragged into the legal process because of one of them.

I started the H-Net group "H-1960s" when I was graduate student at Penn State University. I participated on Daily Kos and Maryscott O’Connor’s defunct My Left Wing as “Karmafish,” as well as my own little joint, Israel Thrives.

Those blogs were not so different from this one, actually.

They came up around the same time, just as the political blogs were coming into vogue, and all got overshadowed by the big social media sites.

It was the Golden Age of Blogdom before the Giant-Corporate-Evil-Mega-Blogs like Facebook and Twitter / X and TikTok sucked the heart and soul out of the baby… while strangling it in its crib!

It represented the transitionary period between the widespread introduction of the internet to the mainstream, in the early-mid 1990s, until domination by the big social media sites.

But what to make of that initial period of the small, transitional political blogs in the history of social media has yet to be written, as far as I know, but for me it basically lasted from about 2004 until I joined Facebook, maybe 5 years ago.

I knew joining Zuckerberg’s thing was probably a bad idea, but naturally I did it anyway.

I liked the early blogs, prior to the rise of the Techno-Spider-Borg, because there was a level of intimacy, community, and discussion that you almost never see on the giant platforms.

There was also a strong sense that one no longer needed to be a member of the mainstream media to have a say in the public discussion. The possibilities seemed wide-open and to my eyes, at the time, like a step forward in the history of the western progressive-left.

The Rise of Progressive-Left Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

But, sadly, the main thing that I got from the leftwing blogs, on places like Daily Kos, was an introduction to progressive-left grassroots/netroots antisemitic anti-Zionism. That is to say, I became intimate with the primary form of contemporary Jew Hatred which, today, just oozes out of the Democratic Party and its progressive-left base.

This had a distinct influence on my thinking.

I was a very leftwing guy, a graduate of San Francisco State University, and a member of the Green Party in the early 00s.

Since then a number of former friends have wondered aloud, "What the hell happened to Lumish?"

The answer is that I became aware of the toxic anti-Zionism masquerading as "social justice" at the heart of the Democratic Party which seemed to grow in inverse proportion to the erosion of its core liberal values.

The liberal values eroding before our very eyes in the Democratic party are obvious.

They include urinating all over the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement by honoring biological race over individual character.

They include a disregard for the essential ideal of freedom of speech as Antifa and BLM brownshirts threatened violence toward Milo Yiannapolis and Ben Shapiro at UCAL Berkeley.

Correlation does not imply causation, but it doesn't suggest mere happenstance either.

As progressive-left and Democratic Party antisemitic anti-Zionism seemed to grow, so the core liberal values seemed to erode.

Daily Kos under Markos Moulitsas, back in the day -- prior to the rise of woke-cultural Marxism in the United States -- was an up-and-comer in Democratic Party politics. We squabbled among ourselves, but many of us supported candidates like Howard Dean and Ralph Nader and Hillary Clinton. Almost all of us supported the street activists years before the rise of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Many of us championed the ridiculous idea that defunding the police would make lives better for the urban poor.

We helped lay the semi-psychotic groundwork for the violent and ignorant frenzy that swept the country following the suicide of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street in the Spring of 2020.

Daily Kos represented the base of the party and was, to use the cliché, like a mansion with many rooms. The signs on the various doors as you walked down the hallway read “Feminism” or “Environmentalism” or “Racial Justice” or “Economic Justice” or “Anti-Colonialism” or “Veganism” and on and on and on.

But there was one door down the hall and around the corner that had a rather unpleasant smell coming out of it. This door, hanging from its hinges, with rats scurrying to-and-fro and cockroaches climbing on the walls, was a problem for Markos and it was a room he almost never entered.

The sign on that door read “Israel-Palestine.”

It was there that I really came to learn the nature of contemporary-left antisemitic anti-Zionism. I was working on my dissertation at the time and had never come across this level of anti-Zionist fervor before.

Certainly, nobody in the real world ever said to me, “Heya, Mike, you’re a Jew, right? A Zionist, maybe? Well, Jeez, don’t you know that Zionism is a white, racist, colonialist, imperialist, oppressive system of oppression on land brutally stolen from the indigenous Palestinians by Euro-Jews? Huh? Dontcha know that?”

Jeez, if only I had known that’s what we are.

The Question of Indigeneity

So, it was through my experience with social media that I came to learn the extent of antisemitic anti-Zionism crawling the hallways and houses of the progressive-left and the Democratic Party.

Anyway, I’ve been on sabbatical, so to speak, for the last year and dropped off social media almost entirely. There are a number of trends in the current conversation around the Long Arab / Muslim War that I hope to discuss in these pages going forward.

The first of these is the question of indigeneity.

The hatred directed at Israel from left-leaning social media, as you guys are well-aware, is grounded in the idea that the Jews are interlopers on the land of the “indigenous Palestinian” population.

This false and toxic notion lurks behind virtually every contemporary anti-Zionist argument despite the fact that it is an obvious ahistorical fantasy. We need, remarkably enough, to always remind people that in the history of humanity there has never been a “Palestinian” nation. We need, remarkably enough, to always remind people that in the history of humanity there has never been a “Palestinian” state.

We need to remind them that the very words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” are Euro-Roman colonizer terms that refer to an Aegean seafaring people, the Philistines. We need to remind them that the very word “Palestine” was not created by Arabs nor did it refer to Arabs and, until after the ’67 War, it was not even accepted by the local Arabs to refer to themselves.

However, if we are to now accept that there is a newly-created “Palestinian” nation -- as conjured by Arafat and the Soviet Union in the early-mid 1960s – just how does this “Palestinian” nation or ethnicity or people differ from the rest of the Arab world?

If they share the same religion, language, and culture of all the other Arabs in the neighborhood, what is it that makes them a distinct ethnicity?

The answer is that they represent the spear-point in the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East.

And that is also why no one will allow the Gazans to flee the war. They are needed where they are. Their entire reason to be, from the Nazi-like perspective of the Palestinian-Arab national movement, is to be flung upon the Jews.

They are there so that their “friends” in the Arab world, and throughout the western-left, can lap their blood while pointing the trembling finger of blame at the cruel "Zionists."

1,200 of our brothers and sisters were slaughtered on Oct 7 and 250 taken captive. On that day I noted in my journal that the western-left was going to blame Israel -- i.e., the Jews -- for that attack upon our people.

What I did not understand was the intensity with which they would do so.

This is a very scary moment.

I have zero intention of making aliyah, but every intention of looking into it.

As Twain famously is said to have said, history doesn't repeat itself... but it sure as hell rhymes

(Cross-posted at Israel Thrives.)

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!

If something bad happens, you know that people will blame the Jews.

Jordan's Assawsana reports that the myna bird has been an highly invasive species in the Middle East that has threatened other native birds and are responsible for a steep decline of the population of native birds.

That part is true.

But how did the myna birds get to Israel to begin with?

The Jordanian paper claims that Jews brought the birds with them from Europe as pretty songbird pets in the 1930s. The message is clear: the myna is a foreign, external pest that arrived along with other foreign, external pests, the Jews.

I cannot find anywhere else that this is what happened. The most common explanation of the explosion of mynas in Israel is that they escaped from a bird sanctuary in the late 1990s and then established themselves in urban parks, especially around Tel Aviv, and spread from there.

However, the bird was also documented to have been deliberately introduced into Lebanon, Italy, Turkey and Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia, possibly to get rid of other pests.

The spread of the bird into Jordan indeed came from Israel, but at least one academic paper about that just can't bring itself to say the dreaded word Israel: " The common myna was first recorded in Jordan in 2010, in the Jordan Valley just north of the Dead Sea, as a result of secondary expansion of an invasive population from a neighboring country."

One other antisemitic reference to the myna comes from none other than a 2017 article in the Jerusalem Post by an Israeli, Jan Van Mil, who - like the Jordanian paper - likens the myna to Israeli Jews:

It is a new immigrant that thrives extremely well in almost all areas of Israel. It is very noisy, very rude, and very aggressive, it is intensely busy with harassing the original inhabitants, killing their offspring, destroying their nests or occupying them by themselves and it will not allow anyone but their own to settle the land.

I vote for the Myna as the New National Bird of Israel.

There is literally nothing that people hate that cannot be twisted to be blamed on the Jews.

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!

One thing we've learned from this war: Israeli military intelligence is incredible (when it is analyzed correctly)

During this war, we've seen some amazing examples of Israeli intelligence - how Israel knows the location of nearly everyone above ground in Gaza, how it analyzes huge amounts of information it receives and acts quickly to use it. The rescue operation is only one of hundreds of examples of how intel is a critical part of the war.

I admit that I worry sometimes that Israel is too confident in its intel capabilities - after all, that overconfidence helped it not put together the signs of October 7 being planned. Military intelligence also requires actual intelligence to put all the pieces together, and hubris does not mix well with intelligence gathering and analysis.

Nevertheless, the sheer amount of intel and the ability to make quick decisions based on it has been very impressive.

Another possible example comes from Hezbollah.

Lebanon24 reports that Hezbollah has changed the format of its videos showing attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah used to include voices of the people firing the drones or rockets or missiles, but now Hezbollah has edited those voices out. The reason? The voiceprints "could be exploited by the Israeli enemy and thus identify party members or fighters to target either through specific assassinations or bombing of operations rooms."

I have no idea whether Israel has the voiceprints of every Hezbollah member - or even everyone in Lebanon - that it could identify. But it is certainly plausible.

And if Israel can do this, so could other major world powers.

Which brings up the question: What does China know about you, today?

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!

"Dykes Against Genocide"march: Hating "Zionists" is the "in" thing

The annual "Dyke March" in New York City this year had a therme: "Dykes Against Genocide."

The official text fo rthe protest march mentioned real or imagined genocides in

In recognition of the ongoing violence faced by millions of persons across this world and of what our community has experienced this last year, we, the New York City Dyke March (NYCDM), are proud to stand against ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization, and shed light on the multiple atrocities that are happening concurrently. We will approach the work this year, united in our mission, and come to the table willing to fight for the humanity of all people in this world. As of May 2024, the degradation of lives has been more rampant than ever. Currently, there is mass violence in:
● The DRC or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where over 6 million have been
killed; more than 6 million have been displaced. (Council of Foreign Relations,
International Rescue Committee)
● Ethiopia, where violence in the Tigray region continues and has now spread to the
Amhara region, which has taken upwards of 600,000 lives (Council of Foreign
Relations) and internally displaced more than 3.45 million people. (International
Organization for Migration)
● Haiti, where more than 6,500 persons have been killed in the last two years (UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights); additionally, more than 300,000 persons have been
internally displaced, which is a vast undercount. (International Organization for
Migration)
● Myanmar, where the death toll has been at least 50,000 since 2021, including at least
8,000 civilians (Action on Armed Conflict); with approximately 2.3 million people
internally displaced. (United Nations)
● Palestine, specifically in the Gaza Strip, where more than 35,000 have been killed
and more than 77,000 have been injured (CNN); more than 1.8 million persons have
been displaced, and more than half are children. (United Nations)
● Sudan, where more than 15,000 have been killed; more than 9,000,000 have been
displaced, and more than half are children. (The Washington Post)
● Ukraine, where there are more than 30,000 civilian casualties and nearly 3.7 million
internally displaced people. (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights)

It is pretty obvious that the real target of the protests is Israel, and the other millions of people killed and displaced is window dressing to not be accused of double standards. But the march itself had lots of signs about Gaza - and, from what I can tell, next to none about any of the other issues mentioned..

Pretending to support "Palestine" is the "in thing.".

And while there were lots of signs about love, hate is encouraged - against a tiny group of people who happen to be largely congruent with Jews.

And that hate for most Jews could be seen in this sign that praised "OCT" in a not-so-subtle support for Hamas atrocities.

"Dykes for Rape" is a punchier slogan than "Dykes Against Genocide." Maybe next year.

Proud Jews who support their people and their self-determination in their homeland are being bullied, hounded and despised, publicly, by a group of people who have themselves been bullied and marginalized in years past.

Antisemitism is not just resurgent. It is trendy and fashionable.

The good news is that some marchers stood up to the hate.

(h/t Phyllis)

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!

Algeria trying to regain the title of Most Antisemitic Media

Here's an illustration of an article in Algeria's El Ayem News:

It shows a vicious dog attacking an elderly Palestinian lady with a vampire-like Netanyahu watching on.

(The graphic is based on a false story that is all over Arab media, from Al Jazeera, of supposed footage from an Israeli army dog attacking a woman in bed. In fact, Hamas kidnapped the dog before killing him and booby-trapping his body to kill any soldiers attempting to retrieve him.)

The Algerian article accompanying the includes a short essay that says:

These are the roots of Jewish arrogance.

Written by: Abdullah Al-Mashoukhi - Palestinian Academic

The arrogance of the Jews is deeply rooted in their souls throughout their history. They see themselves as superior to humans, as the sons and beloved of God, and that Paradise is exclusively theirs, without the rest of the people. God has chosen them and favored them over all the worlds. Therefore, they look at others with contempt and disdain.

Because of this superior view, they have no problem in making permissible the shedding of the blood of others, including women and children, and dealing with usury with non-Jews. Rather, they permit stealing from them, as Israel Shahak mentioned when he said: “Jewish law has permitted the Jew to steal the property of non-Jews.”

This perverted superiority was not linked to a generation, but rather it is deeply rooted and inherited across all generations, and the secret behind that is its connection to corrupt doctrinal texts from their distorted holy books; therefore, it is not surprising that the Jews view the Palestinians as animals who do not deserve life ....

Algeria, which has a long history of antisemitism in its newspapers, is in the lead this week for most antisemitic media.

But there are plenty of days to go.

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!

06/30 Links: A Committed Zionist and a Lapsed Progressive; The Jewish Trump Vote; Israel Struggles Against Global Amnesia; U.S. to Support Israel in Defense but Not Offense

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: ‘I Will Not Fail Thee Nor Forsake Thee’

This central lesson of our civilization seems to have been forgotten—particularly by Reagan’s successor in the White House today. Joe Biden argued in late May that a death cult that burned families alive, raped women, beheaded babies, and continues to announce its intentions to seek Israel’s annihilation is capable of embracing peace:
Indefinite war in pursuit of an unidentified notion of “total victory” will not bring Israel in—will not bring down—bog down—will only bog down Israel in Gaza, draining the economic, military, and human—and human resources, and furthering Israel’s isolation in the world. Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.

Whether they really mean it? It was seemingly in response to such thinking that Reagan at Arlington spoke:
Peace also fails when we forget to bring to the bargaining table God’s first gift to man: common sense. Common sense gives us a realistic knowledge of human beings and how they think, how they live in the world, what motivates them. Common sense tells us that man has magic in him, but also clay. Common sense can tell the difference between right and wrong. Common sense forgives error, but it always recognizes it to be error first.

“We endanger the peace,” Reagan reflected, “and confuse all issues when we obscure the truth; when we refuse to name an act for what it is.” Only after making this clear did Reagan refer to the American obligation to those who had died; only then did he invoke the Ridgeway story:
Peace fails when we forget to pray to the source of all peace and life and happiness. I think sometimes of General Matthew Ridgeway, who, the night before D-day, tossed sleepless on his cot and talked to the Lord and listened for the promise that God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”… Let us make a compact today with the dead, a promise in the words for which General Ridgeway listened, “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

The point, then, is that neither to fail nor to forsake those who died is not merely to bear their memory, but to ensure that the earlier mistakes that necessitated their sacrifice not be repeated. It is this attitude, Reagan reflected, that must be made manifest in American leadership: “Peace fails when we forget what we stand for. It fails when we forget that our Republic is based on firm principles, principles that have real meaning, that with them, we are the last, best hope of man on Earth; without them, we’re little more than the crust of a continent.”

Eighty years after D-Day, we may well wonder how many leaders are still willing to give war a chance.

John Podhoretz: The Jewish Trump Vote

If this were to hold, Trump would receive the highest level of Jewish support of any Republican presidential candidate in modern history. Jonathan Sarna, the dean of American Jewish historians, notes that the Jewish vote in presidential elections became a Democratic possession as early as 1928, when Jews cast ballots overwhelmingly for their governor, Al Smith, against Herbert Hoover. Over the nine decades following, only Dwight Eisenhower (in 1956) and Ronald Reagan (in 1980) got as much as 40 percent of the Jewish vote.

This potential sea-change will likely not hand Trump a victory in New York in November, but here’s the deal: The state that may decide the election is Pennsylvania. It just so happens Pennsylvania has nearly 300,000 Jewish adults. Jews are said to vote in huge numbers, somewhere around 80 percent.

That would mean 240,000 Jews voted in Pennsylvania in 2020. If 70 percent of them chose Biden, he received about 170,000 Jewish votes. If that were to drop to 50 percent in 2024, Biden would receive 120,000 Jewish votes—a decline of 50,000 from the previous election. Pennsylvania went for Biden by 80,000 votes in 2020 after going to Trump by 45,000 in 2016.

This could be the game right here. The decline in support for Biden among Jews is real, and if that decline is dramatic, it could make the difference in the key(stone) state. I leave it to you to figure out why Jews are deserting Biden. OK, I won’t leave it to you. Had he continued with the steadfast and unambigous support of Israel he showed in the first two months of the war in Gaza, Jews would likely be garlanding him today. Instead, he sent wild and confused signals about the morality of the conflict and stood mostly mute as campuses were lit aflame and anti-Semitism became a daily factor in Jewish lives across the country.

His people feared the wrath of Arabs in Michigan. They forgot Jews can get mad too. They forgot it because they took the Jewish vote for granted at a time of existential peril. And also because, if I’m right about all this and the Siena poll is accurate, they are just as boneheadedly stupid as they appear to have been when they decided it would be a good idea for Biden to debate. Or when Biden himself decided he needed to debate.

Haaretz: A Committed Zionist and a Lapsed Progressive

In many progressive circles, the only acceptable stance is to bash Israel and its citizens, regardless of whether those citizens are concerned for Palestinians.

There is little recognition that Hamas and its allies play any role in the conflict and are able to end the war now.

While progressive values are still my North Star, I no longer have a progressive community that shares my principles. I have become a "lapsed progressive."

The current state of the progressive community has left me no choice but to withdraw from it. These days one cannot be a committed Jew and Zionist and be welcomed in the progressive community.

I am no longer considered an ally, but rather an imperialist to be eradicated.

This evaporated for me on Oct. 7 and the resulting actions of the progressive community.

As has been well-documented, Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization committed in its charter to genocide of all Jews and the annihilation of Israel, rampaged through southern Israel, killing, raping and torturing Israeli and other nationals.

Yes, I support Israel's right to respond and defend itself. I also understand that Israelis are traumatized by Hamas's savagery on Oct. 7 and the world's fleeting memory of it.

I am appalled by progressive organizations, especially Jewish ones, who pressure Israel and the U.S. for a ceasefire, but make no demands of Hamas.

The progressive community should be pushing Hamas to release the hostages and better the lives of Palestinians by ending the war.

The progressive world is seemingly unwilling to hold Hamas accountable or put any onus on it to stop the death and destruction.

A first-hand account of anti-Israel media bias (Real Jerusalem Streets)

Guest essay by Real Jerusalem Streets:

After October 7, the mainstream media picked up anti-Israel stories and flew with them, the truth left languishing in the dirt.

The story of the twelve spies sent by Moses to view the Promised Land shows that ten men's opinion against two is nothing new. Ten professional photographers work on an event, ten different albums will be produced. Each observer has a subjective way of viewing the same scene. Two journalists may attend the same event and publish very different stories.

I began walking the Jerusalem March/Flag Parade. Every time what I saw did not match what media outlets were publishing.

How many saw that this year Reuters Fact Check put out a correction two weeks after they published stories of Jews chanting death to Arabs? Two little too late; the damage was done. I saw no corrections in other media.

Though proven to be not true, the false claims coming from Gaza are consistently revived by anti-Israel pundits. The exaggerated death count in the Gaza hospital story is one glaring example. Readers of Elder of Ziyon are well aware of bias in reporting from sources coming from the UN agencies relying on Hamas.

One recent piece from the BBC, "Why 800 people fled a sun-kissed Mediterranean Village," related the woeful tale of Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon just over a kilometer from the Israeli border. "Since October last year, it has been caught in cross-border fighting between Israeli forces and "Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim organization which is politically influential and in control of the most powerful armed force in Lebanon."

BBC didn’t bother to state that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization which, since October 7 has bombarded northern Israel with rockets, missiles, and deadly drones, forcing close to 100,000 Israelis to find refuge for safety. Those thousands, homeless for nine months, are not worth a mention by the BBC.

At least BBC's Ali Abbas Ahmadi admits, "Hezbollah and its allies fired waves of rockets from Lebanon into a disputed area along the border in an apparent show of support for the armed group." Northern Israel is not a “disputed area." The BBC ignores UN Resolution 1701, which requires “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon,” which Ahmadi and Hezbollah both ignore.

BBC news anchor Helena Humphrey asked former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus why the army didn't warn Palestinians before the rescue of the four hostages in Gaza. After years of dealing with hostile media, Conricus kept his composure before responding. His even temper and his eyes opening wider did not get the same attention as Eylon Levy's eyebrows when asked a similarly outrageous question.

Over the years I have witnessed bias against Israel from journalists, not only online but also on organized international media tours.

November 2016, with Arafat staring down from a larger-than-life photo on the wall, we sat in the Silwad community center to hear the emotional retelling of an old Arab woman's story.

She remembered her young days on her father's land. Not one of the international journalists asked to see a deed or any proof of her tale. It was accepted. It fits the narrative. The group leader had tried to convince me not to get on the bus leaving from Jerusalem. He warned me to keep a low profile after I insisted on coming using my US passport and identification.

After safely leaving, I researched the deed. It appeared to be a flimsy piece of paper the size of an index card from a manual typewriter issued in Jordan in 1964 by some office for tax purposes. Israeli families were forced to move in part because of her testimony. Their homes and community were destroyed.

Contrast this with the October 17, 2023, media presentation in Jerusalem where journalists insisted on seeing photographs of the death and destruction described by the ZAKA volunteers fresh from the horrors of southern Israel.

In October, the world did not want to believe the horror stories of burnt bodies. No matter the evidence, there is still denial from Israel haters.

On another occasion, from a scenic lookout on an international media tour, there was a carefully detailed presentation of illegal Arab construction with diagrams, charts, and Google map images by the NGO Regavim. Moving away to the next destination, three men were walking.

I overheard the one in the middle say to his friends, "That was a good presentation.

"But we are journalists. We know it's all lies."

There lies the problem.

On October 12, 2023, the tone of the British journalists' repeated questions caused President Herzog to lose his temper in responding. The number of nationalities involved in the 250 people kidnapped in southern Israel and held hostage was not of interest. His call for their immediate release was ignored.

Image - October 11, 2023, shown to the international journalists at Bei Hanasi

On Day 257, Rachel Goldberg Polin and Jon Polin were interviewed on CNN. She said in the US people still do not know after all these months that 8 US dual citizens are still held captive and 24 nationalities were involved.

Journalists have a right and obligation to question. However, they also must present factual information, not their opinions as facts.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) wants a dynamic journalist for its Jerusalem bureau to cover news in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The deadline for applications was June 23. Journalists with a perfect command of Hebrew and French, a strong grasp of social networks, and a deep understanding of Middle Eastern news, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were invited to apply.

It will be interesting to see who fills the position.

Actress Sharon Stone was quoted: "We see terrible things about Israel on TV, but when you come here you realize that what they broadcast is not true, this is a wonderful country!"

After making aliyah and living in Jerusalem, Israel, the scenes I saw daily were not what I saw in the media, prompting the creation of The Real Jerusalem Streets. After posting close to 14,000 photos, it is still hard to believe how different the real streets are from the fake narratives and how easily the fake news is shared.

Thank you, Elder of Ziyon, for posting multiple Real J Street blogs over the years, to share what's really happening and what the mainstream media ignores.

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!