Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 02, 2024

07/02 Links Pt1: Why Does the UN Coddle Iran?; Noa Argamani's mother, Liora, passes away from cancer; LA Deputy DAs allege antisemitism under Gascon

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Why Does the UN Coddle Iran?

Threats to annihilate Israel emanate daily from the Iranian political and military leadership. The Charter of the United Nations in its preambular paragraphs calls on all its members "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors." Above all, member states commit to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."

But UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres shamefully ignores Iran's blatant violations of the UN Charter. While Guterres and his staff regularly demonstrate alarming alacrity, enthusiasm, and efficiency in rushing to condemn Israel, even by relying on false, inaccurate, and questionable data provided by UN bodies openly hostile to Israel, as well as on slanted media reporting, they turn a blind eye to Iran's behavior in openly abusing the UN Charter.

Is it not high time that serious world powers rethink the entire concept of a world organization, in light of the fact that the UN has been utterly hijacked and taken hostage by those bent on destroying the international community rather than enhancing its effectiveness? Is that what the founding fathers of the UN intended?

Israel’s Two Big Lies

Last week, Amit Segal, one of Israel’s finest journalists, revealed that the military prosecutor’s office has instructed the IDF not to target Gazan civilians who actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, including those who reportedly kidnapped the Bibas babies and their parents. The IDF’s legal eagles, members of the country’s caste of empowered jurists, argued that because the international laws of warfare permit targeting only individuals who belong to a fighting force, the thousands of Palestinians who reportedly executed, raped, and kidnapped Israelis but do not officially belong to Hamas or Islamic Jihad are considered civilians and are therefore out of bounds.

“This direction was given even though, after October 7, the government promised that Israel will hold accountable anyone who participated in the massacre,” Segal said on Channel 12 News. “Despite this fact, if the IDF or the Shin Bet learn of the location of Gazan individuals who murdered, pillaged, raped, or kidnapped Israelis, there will be no legal authorization to target them.”

Israelis barely had a moment to digest this absurdity when a second one hit even harder: Earlier this week, Israel released 50 Palestinian terrorists, including Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director general of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital. At the time of his arrest, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit released a statement saying that it had concrete evidence that Abu Salmiya assisted the terror group in using hospital resources to maintain a vast network of tunnels underneath Al-Shifa and to use the hospital as its headquarters. It’s unclear why Israel would release Abu Salmiya, especially as Hamas continues to flaunt basic humanitarian codes of conduct and refuses to allow the Red Cross access to the civilian hostages it still holds.

The decision to release Abu Salmiya unconditionally is, alas, a perfect embodiment of the second big lie Israeli elites tell their charges: namely that they’re doing everything they can to win this war. Because while a democratic and law-abiding nation is beholden to a host of rules even—or especially—when fighting a war, it also has a duty to assure its own survival and the well-being of its citizens.

To argue that the Bibas’ kidnappers deserve a pass because their particular group, the grimly named Lords of the Wilderness, was not considered a terror organization at war with Israel prior to Oct. 7 is a bit of maddening sophistry. To allow such intellectual self-pleasuring to dictate military strategies when a five-year-old and a one-year-old are held captive is nothing short of national suicide. Ditto for releasing terrorist masterminds mid-war with no conditions and no returns.

Again, truth must be told: Even under the strict ethical constraints it rightly imposed on itself while fighting a genocidal enemy hell-bent on its destruction, Israel is still failing to understand precisely which war it is fighting and how it must fight if it has any chance of winning. What we’re seeing in Gaza and, increasingly, on the Lebanese border, isn’t merely the latest skirmish in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it’s the first battle of the Israeli-Iranian war, one likely to last years, if not decades, and have significant, even existential, outcomes.

And while Israel has registered some undeniably impressive tactical achievements since October, its leaders seem remarkably confused, if not outright dishonest, about the long-term strategic shifts this realization requires. The idea that the United States, for example, is Israel’s ally despite the Biden administration’s adherence to Obama’s disastrous and Tehran-centric realignment policy; the idea that one can achieve anything of any worth by negotiating with Hamas; the idea that Israel must refrain from seizing and holding on to territories it clearly needs to maintain the safety and security of its citizens; the idea that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens from their homes due to terrorism is a painful but ultimately acceptable price to pay—these are all lies. All must be abandoned and replaced, posthaste, with a renewed commitment to the reality of the region, one in which we win nothing and lose everything by futzing around with preening, one-sided humanitarian gestures.

Israel’s new judge in ICJ case is a law professor who blasted UN court as manipulative

Israel has decided to appoint Prof. Ron Shapira as Israel’s ad hoc judge in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case, accusing the country of genocide in Gaza, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office tells The Times of Israel.

Shapira will replace former chief justice Aharon Barak, who had been a member of the 15-judge panel at the top UN court until he stepped down last month, citing “personal family reasons.”

Shapira, an attorney, is the rector of the Peres Academic Center in Rehovot and a lecturer on law at Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, though his judicial credentials are nowhere near those of Barak.

In January, when Barak was announced as the judge, Shapira wrote on Facebook that the former Supreme Court chief was being sent to “a body that almost all residents of Israel think is unworthy of any level of trust.

“The consensus in Israel is that this entity embodies and takes to the extreme all the flaws of legal discourse in existence: intellectual dishonesty, manipulative use of ambiguous definitions, overly cumbersome tools for fact-checking and lie-debunking, and concealment of ulterior motives of the judges themselves via wording that falsely poses as neutral,” he wrote.

While expressing respect for Barak, Shapira concluded that post by stressing that sending such an esteemed legal expert “does not stem from respect we have for such decision-making.”

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Robberies, Revenge Killings Send Gaza Deeper Into Chaos
Wartime breakdown in public order sets off a crippling crime wave

When thieves in central Gaza stole the battery out of Muhammed Abu Karsh’s car in March, he chased them down a dark road and was shot dead in the head.

Relatives called the police, who inspected the crime scene in rural Deir al-Balah, but that was about all they could do.

“They said they don’t have a prison anymore and that if they find the perpetrator, his family might attack them as well,” said his cousin, Mahmoud Fuaad. “We see fights between families on a daily basis. People know that they won’t be punished for anything they do.”

Nearly nine months into the war between Israel and Hamas, crime and violence among Gazans is on the rise, from robbery and killings to smuggling and protection rackets. The trend is taking more Palestinian lives, endangering already fragile international aid operations and drawing warnings from American and Arab officials who worry Gaza could suffer a complete failure of governance for years to come.

Gaza is hardly alone as an area that is riddled with crime when there is a power vacuum. Humanitarian workers have been the victims of crime in South Sudan, Mali, DR Congo, Syria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But why is there so much crime in Gaza? Why don't the people pull together to help each other rather than victimize each other?

In short, why do Gazans treat each other worse than the world treats them?

Can you even imagine a crime wave in Israel of people looting houses left vacant for months while under attack from Hamas and Hezbollah? When tens of thousands of Israelis became homeless, others eagerly offered their homes and hotels for shelter. Grassroots organizations sprung up to provide food and other basic goods.

People think that crime is a result of poverty, but this is not close to true. Some of the poorest areas of Israel are the ones filled with haredi religious Jews, and the crime rates there are low.

Palestinians like to present themselves to the world as being generous, treating guests wonderfully, and steadfast in their patriotism and ties to the land. So why haven't we seen to many grassroots, self-governing groups sprout up in Gaza where people can find a safety net of advice and services?

It is hard to know for sure, but part of the reason appears to be that Palestinian society has little sense of communal responsibility, unity and collective pride.

In other words, Palestinians aren't - and never were - a real people.

A people care about each other. A people work together for a common goal. A people would have strong social taboos against those who break the social covenant.

When you think you are part of a greater whole, you want to work together with your fellow members. When you have no sense of community, of peoplehood, then it is every person for themselves.

In 1947 and 1948, the supposed leaders of the Palestinian Arabs were the first to flee. They set the stage for the larger exodus in the months that followed. Similarly, Arab communities rarely went to defend their neighboring villages - they had no sense of "Palestinian" peoplehood, or responsibility for each other.

Since then, I would say that there is a weak national consciousness among Palestinians, but instead of being based on the positives of wanting to build their own nation, it is based on hate of Jews and Israel, which is not a very strong basis for peoplehood or nationalism.

The international community helps foster the Palestinian sense that they are not responsible for their own welfare. After all, the world spends billions on aid to Palestinians, and instead of them using this help as a means to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (which was the original intent of UNRWA,) they expect it to go on forever and they demand more and more. Instead of centering their lives on responsibility, they center it on their supposed "rights." They care very much about what they deserve, and very little about what their society demands of them.

In a way this decades-long dependence on international aid is what gives Palestinians the idea that they have no responsibilities, only rights. When they can no longer get what they want for free, they will take it by force.

Crime thrives in places where there is no sense of responsibility to, and pride in, one's own people. Generations of children being taught that the world owes them happiness inevitably results in people who will steal what they think they deserve - from both their own neighbors and from the organizations that want to help them.

The breakdown of law and order is a reflection of the absence of Palestinian peoplehood.

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!

Yoni Ben Menachem writes in Israel's Epoch magazine website that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is very afraid that Israel will eliminate him.

According to sources, Nasrallah received a warning from Iranian intelligence that Israel intended to kill him. Nasrallah responded by moving moved his hiding place from the A-Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut.

Lebanese sources said that Nasrallah believes that Israel would try to eliminate Hezbollah's entire top command hierarchy at the very beginning of the next war, through a preemptive airstrike. At the same time, it would hit s hitting the organization's precision missile reserves, which pose a threat to strategic targets inside Israel.

Nasrallah fears that Israel aims to eliminate the command pyramid of his organization at the very beginning of the campaign, which will be a severe operational and moral blow to Hezbollah's ranks.

It certainly makes sense. It would shorten the war, certainly.

Notice that Nasrallah was, and probably is, hiding underneath Beirut - meaning that he is using Lebanese citizens as human shields to protect himself. What a brave man!

The Lebanese should be the ones trying to assassinate Nasrallah. He's the one willing to fight Israel down to the very last Lebanese civilian.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

It isn't as if Hamas' strategy of using Gaza civilians as military assets ha only started last year. It's been a major strategic objective of Hamas since it took over the sector.

A report from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence published in 2019 analyzes the Hamas' use of its human shield strategy between 2008-2014. It explains - and understates - the importance of putting civilians in harm's way to Hamas.

Hamas' playbook is explained in detail:

From a diplomatic perspective, Hamas uses human shields as a military practice to earn points in the global and regional arena (as well as in the Palestinian one). This is used to weaken Israel’s ability to justify its claims regarding the Palestinian problem, to create continuous political pressure through international institutions (e.g. the UN and the EU) and NGO groups, and to support and promote sanctions and prosecution by international tribunals. Hamas records most incidents in which civilians are killed and injured by the IDF, and then uses this “evidence” to demonstrate the IDF’s alleged lack of legal and moral standards. This also serves Hamas in the diplomatic theatre, as any collateral damage caused by the IDF usually yields harsh criticism from the UN and its institutes, Israel’s rival countries (e.g. Turkey), and sometimes even friendly countries (e.g. UK, Germany, France, Sweden).

Hamas' military tactics are spelled out:

The populated areas are the main battlefield, in which Hamas conducts uncompromised fighting while blending in with the local population. Hamas thus responds to the IDF’s military and technological supremacy by creating an asymmetric equation, leveraging terrain advantages and using civilian populations to protect their military assets.

The paper underscores how this strategy was vindicated and further encouraged by the 2009 Goldstone Report:

A UN fact-finding mission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone was established in April 2009 following the [2008-2009] war, and published its 574-page report in September 2009. ... The final report criticised Israel harshly for attacking civilians and civilian facilities. It disputed Israel’s claim that the Gaza War was initiated as a response to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, claiming that, at least in part, the war was targeted against the “people of Gaza as a whole.”

...The mission found no evidence of Palestinian armed groups placing civilians in areas where attacks were being launched, or engaging in combat in civilian dress, or using a mosque for military purposes or to shield military activities. This statement contrasted with both Israeli and international media reports that Hamas fighters wore civilian clothes and concealed their weapons. Despite placing the blame on both sides, the mission de facto rejected Israel’s claims that the IDF had only attacked Hamas’ targets, and that civilian casualties were caused mainly due to Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields. This was a severe diplomatic blow to Israel. In fact, the international community barely distinguished between the activities of a terror organisation and those a sovereign state.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights endorsed the report ...UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged “credible” investigations by both sides into the conduct of the Gaza conflict “without delay.” The European Parliament passed a resolution endorsing the Goldstone Report in March 2010. ....These declarations, as well as others, demonstrate Hamas’ triumph in controlling the narrative. Hamas’ ability to control the narrative limits Israel’s strategic choices, and in doing so it causes reputational damage that limits any claim Israel might have regarding the fact the Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation. Pictures of dead civilians have the immediate and short-term impact of limiting Israel’s freedom to exercise retaliatory military power. As a further consequence of the use of such evocative images the international community places pressure on Israel to cease fighting (even if they did not initiate the conflict or if Israel’s national and military objectives were not achieved).

Hamas' lawfare playbook for the current war is predicted with clarity:

Hamas aspires to exploit its rival’s commitment to normative and explicitly defined international law. Acknowledging Israel’s military and technological supremacy, Hamas’ use of human shields is one aspect of its asymmetric response, utilising another form of warfare: lawfare. In practice, Hamas employs the best of both worlds: if indeed the IDF uses kinetic force on a massive scale, and the number of civilian causalities surges, Hamas will be able to use that as a weapon in the lawfare it conducts. It will be able to accuse the IDF (and Israel) of committing war crimes, which in turn could result in a wide array of sanctions. On the other hand, if the IDF limits its use of military force in Gaza in order to avoid collateral damage, Hamas will be less susceptible to Israeli attacks, thus protecting its assets, while continuing to fight.

If anything, the paper soft-pedals Hamas' human shield strategy. Its 15 authors were not aware of the extensive military tunnel infrastructure under Gaza cities, only briefly mentioning the smuggling tunnels under Rafah. Placing civilian directly between IAF planes and the terrorist tunnels is as explicit a human shield strategy as possible.

The only suggestion it has for states confronting similar threats (which is the point of the paper) is weak. They mostly recommend better messaging and psy-ops. But even the authors know this won't work:

However legitimate a targeted strike may be from a legal perspective, first impressions frame the narrative, and public opinion tends to be influenced more by images of horrific tragedies than by well-thought-out legal arguments

Hamas continues to use human shields because the international community has vindicated that strategy.

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!

EU official tweets false graphic of limited aid to Gaza. COGAT corrects it. Media silent.

Janez Lenarčič, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, who is in charge of humanitarian aid, tweeted this graphic about aid coming into Gaza.

As reported by our humanitarian partners, the access to #Gaza remains severely constrained. Aid is piling up at the borders. Safe and unimpeded access for humanitarians and goods is a matter of life and death. It must be granted at scale to address the ongoing catastrophe.

The IDF COGAT unit responded with an accurate version:

Here, @JanezLenarcic, we fixed it for you.

In the future, we'd appreciate it if you don't spread falsehoods about humanitarian crossings.

Perhaps you don't know you shared falsehoods. Perhaps you shared @UN information and #TheUNCantCount.

The most egregious lie was for Kerem Shalom, where Lenarčič apparently got his numbers from UNRWA, which admits that it is not counting all the trucks, only those meant for the UN. COGAT does not issue detailed daily statistics, unfortunately, but they did specify on June 24 they facilitated 240 trucks through Kerem Shalom and an additional 264 on the 28th. Which is a lot more than 5 per day.

The EU official claimed 0 trucks through Erez West during that week, but COGAT said there were 47 on the 24th and 51 on the 28th.

This is part of a bigger problem. Political officials and the media are well aware of COGAT but they simply do not believe what COGAT says, even though it is the only organization that knows every single truck that enters Gaza. They have never disputed specific numbers from COGAT or said they were wrong. Moreover, NGOs meet with COGAT to coordinate activities every day, and they never complained about these figures being wrong.

As we've seen throughout the war, nothing that Jews say is believed without corroboration, but everything Hamas says is repeated without skepticism - unless it is so obviously a lie, in which case they simply don't cover those statements, since they don't want people to think Hamas figures aren't trustworthy.

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!

07/01 Links Pt2: Progressive Except for Palestine; Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism; Kontorovich: Is Israel Occupying the West Bank?

From Ian:

Progressive Except for Palestine

I have been excommunicated.

I am a Jewish academic physician at the University of Toronto. Since Oct. 7, I have been cut off by over a half-dozen younger progressive colleagues who considered me a mentor, and with whom I previously had regular or periodic contact. All because I am a Zionist.

It matters not that for a half-century I let my name stand with and energy flow to refugees, torture victims, gun-violence victims, people with HIV/AIDS, sex-trade workers, the LGBTQ2S community, people who are homeless, drug users, the poor, and victims of police brutality.

Nor have I been quiet over the decades about my support for Palestinian self-determination. In 1974, I published a letter in my local Winnipeg newspaper calling for an independent Palestinian state. It did not endear me to the Jewish community. Since then, I have publicly called for full civil and political rights of Palestinians in Israel, and opposed Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2013, I instigated a campaign by Canadian doctors to press for the release of a Palestinian Canadian doctor who had been detained in Egypt on his way to Gaza. During the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, I signed a petition to bring in 100 injured children from Gaza to Canada for medical treatment.

Still, I have been referred to as a PEP: progressive except for Palestine.

Despite being the physician for and fighting alongside people who have been persecuted by every level of government and their institutions, the only thing that matters now is my being Jewish—with Zionism being as primary to my Judaism as the Torah and Jewish cultural traditions.

Zionism is Jewish self-determination, and independence from the authority and yoke of regimes that mostly tried to annihilate Jews for millennia. Zionism is the right and the necessity of the Jewish people to survive, and it is the need for a Jewish state to ensure that very survival.

I support Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international standards of warfare and consistent with those applied to other countries. In the minds of my anti-Zionist colleagues who yell “intifada” at protests and the dozens who have signed petitions denouncing Israel, I am therefore a Zionist. That is about all we agree on.

Zionism, as I define it, is central to my identity as a Jew.

As a Zionist, I have been public about my views on the response in Canada to the war in Gaza, the double standard inherent in the denunciations of Israel, and the antisemitism embedded in some of the anti-Israel protests. I denounced a National Day of Action called by the Health Workers Alliance for Palestine for health care workers across Canada to engage in direct action; the natural targets for such a group would be health care facilities and institutions. The alliance’s 33-page toolkit provided detailed instructions on how to establish sit-ins, occupations, and blockades, adding: “were you to break laws in this moment where a fascist settler-colonial government is ruthlessly murdering children, killing entire families … then we would absolutely understand why you or any human being with an iota of moral conscience would choose to do so.” After media coverage of the proposed National Day of Action, including comments from me, no action in fact took place.

I have decried the failure of the university’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine to openly repudiate antisemitic pronouncements by faculty, and have bemoaned the near absence of empathy from non-Jewish colleagues for Jewish and other victims of the Oct. 7 slaughter and the effect on the Jewish community in Canada. And I have derided the denials of antisemitism by pro-Palestinian activists after a 15-to-20-minute protest (which was part of a much larger demonstration) with screams of “intifada” at Toronto’s major Jewish hospital. This all has resulted in the suspension or termination of my relationships with colleagues, manifested through silence and noncommunication. This after regular lunches, coffee dates, emails, phone calls, and even a wedding invitation.

Will the Law Protect Jewish Places of Worship From Antisemitic Mobs?

Violence generated by an anti-Israel protest outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles on June 23 has produced cries for more protection of places of worship. A piece by Forward senior columnist Rob Eshman has suggested that protests “in front of houses of worship” be restricted, if not prohibited. Sen. Tom Cotton and Congressman Steve Scalise have demanded investigations of the protesters by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. CNN pundit Van Jones has declared that the protesters were “trying to start a fight,” and noted Israeli writer Hen Mazzig has tweeted that he hasn’t “seen any Jewish people in America running up on mosques with Israeli flags.”

None of these learned and influential commentators mentions that a federal court recently penalized a member of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, synagogue $158,721.75 for trying in litigation to protect access to a synagogue from comparable deliberate antisemitic harassment. Professing dedication to “free speech,” the nation’s foremost defenders of religious rights chose to be silent when the congregant asked the federal Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to overrule this patent injustice.

In September 2003 a cadre of antisemites had devised an ingenious style of harassing Jews who came on Saturday mornings to worship at Ann Arbor’s Beth Israel Synagogue. They chose to gather only at the hours of Sabbath services on the grassy sidewalk sections in front of the synagogue and brandish signs with mottoes like “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “Resist Jewish Power,” “Stop Funding Israel,” and “End the Palestinian Holocaust.”

Civil libertarian synagogue members opined that this was only free speech and that the harassment would have to be tolerated. So the synagogue never went to court, and the Ann Arbor government, including its police, coddled the once-a-week demonstrators.

After many years, two of the congregation’s members, represented by a volunteer attorney, filed a lawsuit requesting that the protest be moved at least 1,000 feet from the synagogue. The federal trial judge assigned the case dismissed it because the congregants could assert no greater personal harm than “extreme emotional distress.” This, said the judge, was inadequate “standing” to initiate a federal lawsuit.

The congregants’ lawyer appealed this decision to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose chief judge is Jeffrey Sutton. He is a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Law School who clerked on the Supreme Court and argued many cases there. One of his wins was the 1997 decision that invalidated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Sutton, who was born in Saudi Arabia, wrote the decision that reversed the lower-court judge’s decision on the adequacy of the congregants’ legal interest. Instead of then remanding the case for additional proceedings, Sutton went on to reject the legal claim altogether and directed that the complaint be dismissed (Gerber v. Herskovitz, 14 F.4th 500). He said that “the content and form of the protests demonstrate that they concern public matters: American-Israeli relations.” He failed to explain how “Resist Jewish Power” and “Jewish Power Corrupts” expressed an opinion on “American-Israeli relations.”

Fearing that this ruling endangered all American synagogues, I wrote a piece dated Sept. 20, 2021, for the Jewish News Syndicate titled “The Court Decision That Is a Clear and Present Danger to America’s Jews.” I observed that the Sixth Circuit had 16 active circuit judges, six of whom were Trump appointees, and that they could request a rehearing of the appeal by the full court. None did so.

Daniel Greenfield: Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism

Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.

Somewhere there is an oppressed group to be liberated. And he, she or they is the one to fight for their liberation.

And then people die. Sometimes it's those he considers the oppressed or the oppressors. Usually both. The humanitarians become terrorists and their revolutions lead to tyranny.

Leftists genuinely do care a lot. They care about rising oceans, polar bears, women in hijabs, men in dresses, drug dealers in the ghetto and eco-terrorists in prison, racist highways and dead terrorists, and if you think of something that they don't care about yet, they will soon.

As long as it fits the larger agenda of asserting their will over society from a moral high ground.

That is why they also don't care about the horrifying death toll among young black men from crime, how many Muslims are being killed by Muslim governments or the state of the gay rights movement in Marxist dictatorships. If the state of oppression does not conform to the narrative of external social oppression to be overthrown by a liberation movement it is useless to the political movement and to the individual ego of the aspiring freedom fighter.

To a genuine humanitarian, the oppressed are an end, but to a leftist they are a means. A leftist cares a great deal about a coal miner until he votes for Trump or a black man until he runs as a Republican. Or until, even through no fault of his own, like the coal miners and steelworkers for whom leftists once bled, he is replaced by a new pathway to the ultimate revolution.

Really fixing anything robs him of his motivation. That is why the standard leftist position is that black people are as oppressed today as they were under segregation. If they were to admit that black people were equal and free, what would they do with their time?

Given a large enough palette, the leftist can vandalize art, bomb events and assault people because he's trying to save millions, billions and the entire planet.

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.

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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.)

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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.