Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Metamorphika Studio: "You cannot mourn dead Jews without also condemning every other death in the world."

A London art gallery cancelled an exhibition by a Russian anti-Putin group on its opening day after one of its members who lives in Israel expressed grief for those murdered on October 7 shortly after the attack.

Metamorphika studio in London pulled a show by Pomidor - comprised of artists Maria and Polina - after receiving complaints about two of Maria’s Instagram posts made a month after October 7, in which she remembered the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack.

The gallery said their decision was not because of Maria’s Israeli nationality, but because she had not said anything about Palestinian deaths in Gaza and added that the gallery stands against “Israel Zionism”.

[The statement said, ]“As a coalition of artists, founders, and more, we believe in the freedom of occupied Palestine. And we ask our collaborators and artists to condemn oppression in its all geopolitical contexts without exemptions.

“As a team we have decided not to engage with artists who stay neglect the death of over 35,000 Palestinians, widespread of famine, water contamination, spread of diseases and more.”

They didn't claim that the artists supported killing Gazans. They said that they were guilty of mourning Jews and not at the same time mourning Gazans.

I went through Metamorphika's Instagram site, and cannot find a word about the tens of thousands of people who have been killed in Sudan over the past year, or about up to 2.5 million people potentially dying of hunger-related causes in Sudan by October. They didn't condemn the 100,000 killed in war in Ethiopia in 2022.

They are neglecting the deaths of countless people across the world. By their own stated standards, they must be shut down, because they clearly don't give a damn about the hundreds of thousands of people dying worldwide from war related causes.

Or, is it possible that they made up this rule just for Jews? Could it be that they have a different standard for Jews than for the entire rest of the world?

The real irony is that this exhibit was meant to publicize the evils of Vladimir Putin's censorship. Yes, this art museum censored an exhibit on censorship.

If you don't see antisemitism here, it is because you don't want to see antisemitism here.

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!

Yesterday, Columbia University announced it has removed three deans from their posts after finding they engaged in “very troubling” text messages that engaged in antisemitic tropes, like Jews only pretending to be upset over the Gaza war and campus antisemitism to profit.

The three will remain employed at Columbia, however.

Columbia's response proves that it cares more about firefighting for its reputation than actually addressing the problem of antisemitism on campus. The proof you need comes from the fourth participant in the text exchanges - Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College.

When the first set of messages were publicized, Sorrett's role in the thread was not known. He made a ham-handed attempt at tamping down the flames, writing an email saying “I have already spoken to each person involved and we understand that, as leaders, we are held to a higher standard.”

That sounds like he is saying it would be acceptable for students and even faculty to spout antisemitic tropes, but deans should be more careful.

Then, Sorrett whined that the initial photos of the texts were an "invasion of privacy."

This is not a serious response. This is a poor attempt to make the problem go away.

Only after the full threads were released, and his participation publicized, did he personally apologize. Meaning, Sorrett really doesn't feel he needs to apologize, but he was forced to.

This is not someone who should remain in a position of responsibility - but he has kept his job.

Which shows that Columbia is not taking this seriously, despite a pledge to increase education on antisemitism (which, we all know, will end up including "Islamophobia.")

Columbia and the Ivy League are not looking at this incident as a wakeup call of the new antisemitism being part and parcel of their faculty and administration, but as an embarrassing incident that must be managed. This isn't prompting them to take a hard look at the socialist radicals and how they have taken over campuses, how DEI and other philosophies go against the liberal principles that built this country, how hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries influence the curriculum.

No, they are looking at this as a small fire that must be stamped out and then things can get back to normal.

The reason, of course, is because the presidents and boards of these universities, deep down, agree with the texts of the deans at Columbia. They are upset that they were stupid enough to get caught, not at what they actually said and the thinking that led to that.

The rot at universities has been spreading for decades. The entire generation of university leaders has been infected with this virus of hate masquerading as "progressivism."

The deans are not the problem. They are a symptom. And I am not seeing any universities that have publicly recognized this sad fact, because fixing that problem cannot be fixed with a couple of mandatory Zoom sessions on antisemitism. .

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!

In March, Campus Reform reported:

The University of Pennsylvania Faculty for Justice in Palestine group has filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League institution in an attempt to stop documents from being sent to a House of Representatives committee investigating campus anti-Semitism.

According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the lawsuit was filed by two professors with the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine group and alleged that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce investigation into anti-Semitism at the institution threatens academic freedom.

“This nation is seeing a new form of McCarthyism, in which accusations of anti-Semitism are substituted for the insinuations of Communist leanings which were the tool of oppression in the 1950’s,” the lawsuit states.

Yes, the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" group is against investigating allegations of antisemitism. Because inciting violence against Jews on campus is free speech, but having third parties scrutinize those statements is un-American.

If their statements aren't antisemitic, they should welcome anyone reviewing what they say, right?

Luckily, the judge threw the case out:

A federal judge in Pennsylvania recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which attempted to prevent the University of Pennsylvania administration from complying with an ongoing U.S. House of Representatives committee investigation into the school regarding its efforts to combat anti-Semitism.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mitchell Goldberg in an opinion released on June 24... decided that “Plaintiffs lack standing to bring this lawsuit, and I will therefore dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint and deny their motion for a preliminary injunction.”

“I conclude Plaintiffs lack standing to bring this challenge,” he continued. “They have not alleged what information Penn will disclose or how it will harm them.”

There was other good news from the University of Pennsylvania:

The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has changed its protest guidelines to prevent students from forming encampments on campus following the recent pro-Palestine demonstrations at the university.

“To ensure the safety of the Penn community and to protect the health and property of individuals, encampments and overnight demonstrations are not permitted in any University location, regardless of space (indoor or outdoor),” the new guidelines state. “Unauthorized overnight activities will be considered trespassing and addressed.”

“Individuals and groups may not erect structures, walls, barriers, sculptures, or other objects on University property without prior permission from the Vice Provost for University Life,” the policy continues. “Any structure erected without permission is subject to immediate removal.”

And more:

The University of Pennsylvania suspended four students who were involved in an anti-Israel campus occupation in May.

According to an Instagram post from The Freedom School for Palestine, four undergraduate and graduate students received letters from the university stating they were placed on either a semester-long or year-long suspension for their involvement with the anti-Israel encampment.

Sometimes, there is a glimmer of sanity in the otherwise insane world of academia.

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!

The bearded Palestinian child martyrs

The UN ESCWA has, on its front page, a chart showing casualties in Gaza. It claims that there have been 15,882 children killed as of June 29.

Its source foe that figure is the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory.

The Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory is an NGO that has no accountability. It was founded only last year, it does not list the names of its founders, it does not list a methodology. It could be someone in his garage. We have no way of knowing.

But it is good enough for the UN.

Or is it? When I actually look for this statistic on the site, I cannot find it. Instead, it tries to list the names of known casualties in Gaza and the West Bank, and so far it has only counted 4,370 children in both Gaza and the West Bank since October 7 (out of 11,000 named "martyrs.".

The best part of the Shireen site is the photographs. It tries to find pictures of the dead. Here are nine of the "child martyrs" of the West Bank since October:

Ah, the innocence of youth!

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!

07/08 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism has exploded in British universities; Virginia Foxx, Heroine; Demythologizing the mystic belief in Palestinianism

From Ian:

Helena Ivanov: Anti-Semitism has exploded in British universities

In interviews, students recounted harrowing details of their campus experiences. One student at an unnamed university described being pelted with red juice and told that Jews are terrorists who should go back to Europe. This student also recounted a staff member who, during a webinar, claimed that no Israeli women were raped on 7 October. Due to security concerns related to the pro-Palestine encampments on campus, the student stopped attending university in person and felt compelled to relocate to a different city.

Another student from a different university explicitly stated they no longer feel safe on campus. Jews are steering clear of certain areas, while some opt to avoid campus altogether. The student told us how academic staff are increasingly involved in the encampments. Allegedly, some professors even participated in protests where calls for the deaths of Jews were made. Despite this, the university has failed to take any steps to address the problem.

It’s not just Jewish students who are being intimidated and harassed at their institutions, either. Jewish academics are also being silenced. ‘Unless a Jewish person disavows Israel’, one professor told us, ‘and explicitly states that it is apartheid and genocide, they are considered complicit… So much of academia is anti-Semitic that some training sessions will not help.’

Why are universities so reluctant to address the appalling treatment of Jewish staff and students? Some have cited concerns about curtailing the right to protest or limiting free speech. Of course, universities must not chill these fundamental rights. But these same institutions have rarely had qualms about censorship before, often standing behind students when they hound lecturers or speakers off campus for holding views they consider ‘problematic’.

Clearly, there is something else going on here. Universities have reached a critical point where they are failing in their essential duty – to provide education for everyone and to prevent significant discrimination against their students and staff.

Yes, pro-Palestine students have the right to protest. But when this crosses the line into action, into Jewish staff and students being harassed and intimidated, it must be stopped. Universities are allowing Jews in academia to feel increasingly isolated. It is unacceptable that this particular brand of racism has been completely normalised on campus. Anti-Semitism must not be allowed to fester in our places of learning.

Seth Mandel: Virginia Foxx, Heroine

In April, the New York Times sent a reporter to find out why Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican House education chair, was giving elite universities such a hard time.

Foxx was in the middle of uncovering a massive anti-Semitism scandal-in-waiting at these schools, and the Times couldn’t figure out why she cared. After all, the unspoken conceit of the piece suggested, it was only anti-Semitism.

Both the question and the answer were typical of the unwelcoming atmosphere after October 7 for Jews in blue metro areas of America and on elite college campuses. Why exactly, then, would the House education chair have to be motivated by a hidden agenda to investigate the highest echelons of education?

Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers, as the saying goes. The Times determined that Foxx, who turned 81 about a week ago, had been president of a community college thirty years ago, and was therefore carrying a chip on her shoulder when it came to places like Columbia and Harvard. “‘She is touchy about anything that implies community colleges are lower status institutions… Her loyalty to these institutions is real,’ said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law.”

So we have two explanations for why Virginia Foxx was doing her job as a member of Congress and a chairman of one of its committees. The first: She was carrying out a multi-decade vengeance plan, which required her to get to Congress, climb the ladder of seniority, hold the chairmanship when Hamas carried out the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, wait for campus radicals to react, then… pounce!

Or: She knows that anti-Semitism is bad, and its presence is almost always an indication of thorough institutional rot.

The answer, of course, is the latter. It’s true that you can reverse-engineer more cynical explanations for the Republican chair’s focus on anti-Semitism: for example, the issue divides Democrats and unites Republicans. Yet it also must be remembered that Foxx didn’t trick anyone. She simply subpoenaed college presidents, and the first batch of them put their own heads on the block. Nobody really understood how bad things had gotten in American academia until the heads of elite universities were asked questions only slightly more difficult than “what is your name” and they bellyflopped. One by one, they were unable to denounce mass-mob threats of genocide against Jews as harassment, a failing so spectacular it eventually led to Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill losing their jobs.

In other words if, as the Times theorized, Foxx was suffering from some sort of inferiority complex, she shouldn’t have: It turned out the supposed “elites” could barely tie their shoes.

But no institution’s self-engineered implosion would match Columbia University’s, which has now arguably crossed the point of no return. Last month, four university administrators were suspended when photos of some of their text messages mocking Jewish students were published. Now Foxx’s committee has published the actual text chain. You can read the texts here. You can’t do much better for a summation than this paragraph from JTA: “Columbia University administrators said Jewish students occupied a ‘place of privilege,’ called a Hillel official a ‘problem’ and wrote ‘Amazing what $$$$ can do,’ during a panel on Jewish campus life in May, newly released text messages showed.

NGO Monitor: Euromed Feminist Initiative’s board members celebrate October 7 Hamas Massacre

The Paris-based EuroMed Feminist Initiative (EFI)1 describes itself as a “policy platform” seeking “an egalitarian and demilitarized world where respect of human rights of women and men is a leading value and practice and where the principle of non- discrimination – based on gender, sexual orientation, age, class, ethnicity, disabilities – is social rule and life.” The EFI umbrella framework, with 16 members, receives significant funding from European governments, notably the European Union, France, and Sweden – as detailed below.

Individuals who serve on EFI’s board and a number of EFI member organizations have published statements justifying and celebrating the October 7th attack, calling to annihilate Israel, denying Hamas atrocities, and promoting antisemitic imagery. Additionally, in multiple statements, EFI itself has labeled Israeli operations “tantamount to the destruction of the population of Gaza” and joined the propaganda campaign falsely claiming that “today Gaza [sic] population is facing a large-scale massacre and genocide.”

EFI board members serve in senior positions at NGOs in several Middle Eastern countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, West Bank and Gaza, and Turkey). These local NGOs also receive funding from European governments and from EFI.

Furthermore, an EFI member NGO is “the women’s framework” of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), an Israeli-designated terror organization that participated with Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the October 7 attacks. This NGO regularly posts pictures of DFLP activists wearing military gear and DFLP paraphernalia.

Celebration and justification of the October 7th massacre by EFI board members and member organizations

Several EFI board members and EFI member organizations have publicly celebrated the October 7th massacre and engaged in atrocity inversion. Amal Khreishe (PWWSD)

EFI board member Amal Khreishe serves also as General Manager at Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), an EFI member NGO.

On October 7, 8, and 10 2023, Khreishe published several posts (see below) that celebrated Hamas massacre, describing the October 7th terror invasion as “A morning of glory and pride.” Khreishe further stated that “October 7th shall remain a unique symbol of a special step in the path of national liberation.”

- On October 7, 2023, Khreishe shared a video of what seems to be Hamas terrorists on a boat shooting at an Israeli navy vessel, and shared a text she published on Al-Wattan on the same day, “And the flood shall reach all corners of the nation and sweep away all the Oslo delusions from the Land of Palestine….Today, October 7th, the waves of dignity and pride will spread throughout the nation’s skies. Today, the flood of Jerusalem will sink the disorder that is called the occupation state which considers itself above international and humanitarian law and human rights law. Today, the resistance sends a message to all the men and women martyrs who have embraced the costly nation and that are still in the freezers of the Zionist government…October 7th shall remain a unique symbol of a special step in the path of national liberation. May the brains, hearts, hands and legs that drew the features of this day be blessed…Allah has truly commended you, the flood of Gaza, and we shall see it in time.”

- On October 8, 2023, Khreishe shared a video showing images in support of the Hamas-led attacks and featuring a man explaining that the events of October 7th present “a true victory…accomplished by the Palestinian resistance by occupying, or liberating, the [Israeli] cities adjacent to the Gaza Strip…” Khreishe posted, “A morning of glory and pride. A morning of our people’s rebellious will force to break free…A morning of resistance…[and of] voices which do not know political stammer and which call the consciences to wake up with resistance in its various forms. I want to paint all of my male and female friends’ day with rainbow from the Galilee to Rafah, throughout the skies of historic Palestine, so that joy and hope will spread in the hearts and entirely to the bottom of the souls as happened to me on this morning of October 8th after ‘the mighty October 7th.’ And [I wish well] to Gaza, the resistance forces that made the epic Jerusalem flood, which brought out history, geography and political conceptions in all their theories and interpretations, from the path of dullness, illusions, oppression and night blindness of the Zionist politicians, their followers and their allies in the region and the world.”

- On October 10, 2023, Khreishe shared an illustration of a Palestinian boy making the symbol of victory with the text “a morning of dignity and honor” and posted, “The resistance and its great flood which it unleashed in order to wash away the occupier’s vanity and disputed friends’ normalization and the racism of countries that call for democracy and respecting human rights day and night…This is a chance that shall not come again, to bring back the legitimacy of the political regime that rests on a revolutionary and liberation perspective…Allah has indeed told the heroes of Jenin, Nablus, Beita and Gaza and the camps, and the list goes on, the message of the men and women martyrs. This is because all the people shall not lose the combative compass, despite of the heavy fog of Oslo that has been going on for 30 years. Will you answer the heartbeat of the people?! The time of premises [about peace] has passed and the only things that are absolutely everlasting are the comrades and brothers [a euphemism for members of terror groups]. Today, the resistance rests on the blood and minds of the youth, revived by the oxygen of revolution.”

07/08 Links Pt1: Israel helped avert a famine in Gaza but gets no credit; What two months of Hamas use of UN sites tells us; Rafah through the eyes of int’l journalists

From Ian:

Israel helped avert a famine in Gaza but gets no credit

Once the IPC issued its warnings, influential leaders began to insist that a famine in Gaza had already begun. Samantha Power, the Biden Cabinet member who runs the U.S. Agency for International Development, testified before Congress that she had received credible reports of famine setting in. Cindy McCain, head of the U.N.’s World Food Programme and wife of late Sen. John McCain, announced in early May that Gaza was already enduring a “full-blown famine.”

Ironically, a surge of aid into Gaza had already begun by the time Power and McCain made their assertions. Israeli government data show this to be the case, but so do records kept by the U.N., a rare point of agreement between bitter opponents. Since the war began, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the body charged with aiding Palestinians, has made public how many truckloads of goods enter the Gaza Strip. In February, that figure fell to 2,874 truckloads, or fewer than 100 per day. That figure rose to 4,993 in March and 5,671 in April, close to 190 loads per day. There is no good U.N. data for May or June because fighting in southern Gaza disrupted its monitoring efforts. Israel contends the surge continued.

By the end of May, it was clear to those in Gaza that there was no famine, even in northern Gaza, where the IPC projected that conditions would be the worst. Yet a typical headline read, “Access to aid in Gaza was dire. Now, it’s worse.”

On June 25, the IPC released the main conclusions from its updated assessment — the full report is not yet available. The IPC presented facts but cloaked them in language that ensured the media would see only misery, not a catastrophe averted.

In terms of the IPC scale, the percentage of Gaza residents in Phase 5 has fallen from 30% to 15%, despite the IPC’s projection in March that it would increase to 50%. Likewise, the percentage in Phase 4, a rung below famine, declined from 40% to 29%. It would be an understatement to say that the IPC did not emphasize the inaccuracy of its forecast or seek to explain what had changed. Rather, it summarized its findings as follows: “Risk of Famine as 495,000 people face catastrophic acute food insecurity.”

The IPC’s findings received extensive media coverage, as they did in March. And that coverage dutifully echoed the IPC’s message. A sample of headlines includes “High risk of famine persists across Gaza, global hunger monitor says” from Reuters, “Half-million Gazans face ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels, U.N.-backed report says” from the Washington Post, and “Famine will loom over Gaza as long as conflict rages, report warns” from Politico.

In late May, when the surge of aid into Gaza was already having a substantial impact, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The first of their alleged war crimes is “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

No effort may be sufficient to get the ICC or the various arms of the U.N. to treat Israel fairly. But it is essential for Americans, from the president on down, to see through the critics’ sleight-of-hand, lest we abandon a loyal ally in its time of greatest need.

Dem Senator Turned Lobbyist Tom Daschle Pressed Biden Admin To Support Infrastructure Projects in Hamas-Controlled Gaza, Emails Show

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate leader who now heads his own lobbying shop, sought the Biden administration's help to pour massive amounts of infrastructure resources into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, internal State Department emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The effort would occur in collaboration with both Qatar's Hamas-friendly government and Israel's then left-leaning government, the former leader said.

Daschle—who represented South Dakota in the upper chamber for 18 years and led the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1995 to 2005—wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken's chief of staff in October 2021 to ask for Blinken's help transferring goods into Gaza. His email was subsequently "tasked" to the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs "for appropriate action" and forwarded to officials throughout the building.

"I understand that Tony [Blinken] will be having a bilateral meeting with Israeli FM Lapid," Daschle wrote, referring to Yair Lapid, who served as foreign minister at the time. "We are part of a U.S.-based consortium, which has been working with the governments of Qatar and Israel on infrastructure investments in Gaza and the U.S." The initiative, Daschle said, had broad support inside Israel's government.

"Lapid is aware and very supportive of this effort, as it fits neatly with his new vision for Gaza, which has infrastructure development in Gaza at its core," Daschle wrote. "If Tony were willing to raise this issue, FM Lapid could elaborate on its tremendous potential. As this seems to align with what they are planning to discuss, and Minister Lapid has specifically raised it with our team."

"I realize time is short," Daschle added, "but we would be happy to brief you, him, or someone on the staff."

The email sheds new light on the scope and key players behind the Biden administration’s early efforts to pour what would ultimately become hundreds of millions of dollars into Hamas-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip. The policy, the full extent of which has never been clarified, is the subject of significant domestic and international criticism in the wake of the Iran-backed terror group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel. The funding projects, critics say, allowed Hamas to steal aid resources and bolster its military capabilities ahead of last year’s attack.

The emails were first obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request by the America First Legal Foundation, a watchdog group that is suing the State Department over allegations it engaged in an "illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians." At least four pages describing Daschle's proposal—titled, "U.S, Israel, Qatar Strategic Initiative"—were fully redacted by the State Department, which declined to clarify if any action was ultimately taken in regards to Daschle’s request for support, or if U.S. officials pursued any of the proposals laid out.

Daschle did not respond to a request for comment.

Daschle’s note was designated "for appropriate handling" and quickly forwarded throughout the State Department and to several senior Blinken aides, including Hady Amr, now the Biden administration's special representative for Palestinian affairs.

"I wanted you to be aware of the email that Tom Daschle sent to [Blinken chief of staff] Suzy George about an infrastructure investment project in Gaza," one internal email states.

International organizations outdo Hamas in demonizing Israel

Hamas' Gaza Meia Office regularly publishes their statistics of how awful things are. To say that they exaggerate is an understatement.

But one of their data points still says that 34 Gazans have been "martyred as a result of famine."

Let's look again at the latest IPC report where they admitted that most of Gaza is not in famine as they had predicted earlier this year. Even so, they say, "over 495,000 people (22 percent of the population) are still facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5)."

And they helpfully define Phase 5:

Even if you say that they are only saying that Phase 5 is with "reasonable" evidence, and if they are saying it is only at a household level, we would still expect at least 2 deaths per ten thousand people under that classification.

Which would mean at least 99 adults or 198 children dying of starvation a day if 495,000 people are in Phase 5.

The latest Hamas Government Media Office statistics only claim 34 Gazans starving to death over nine months.

So IPC is outdoing Hamas.

I wonder if anyone is considering that the other metrics of catastrophe besides mortality - starvation and acute malnutrition - are being exaggerated by overenthusiastic anti-Israel doctors or Gaza health ministry employees. The disconnect between the other evidence and mortality is too large to be ignored.

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

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"Gaza babies could die within hours due to lack of fuel!" We've been hearing that for over a decade

From Al Jazeera:

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic say sources at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis are warning that babies in the facility’s neonatal department could die if generators have to be switched off due to a lack of fuel.

The news media also reported that babies were at risk from fuel shortages - in October. Gaza health officials warned that fuel would run out in 48 hours on October 24.

WHO warned that hospitals will run out of fuel in three days - in May.

Gaza health officials warned that hospitals will run out of fuel in 48 hours - on June 30.

But somehow, magically, the fuel always shows up.

COGAT sets the record straight:

We continuously facilitate fuel into Gaza for the operation of vital humanitarian infrastructure. Israel allows and facilitates fuel transfer through various routes such as Erez and Kerem Shalom as well as Crossing 96.
The UN handles the ordering and distribution of fuel inside Gaza. We have been urging the UN for weeks to expand logistics for fuel distribution for a continuous, optimal response to the health system. Yet, the UN continues to rely on UNRWA's collapsing logistical system.

Our ongoing dialogue with int'l aid groups and Gaza hospitals ensures the supply of fuel, generators, and other critical medical equipment. We are committed to collaborating closely with int'l partners to meet urgent humanitarian needs of civilians despite our war with Hamas.

International organizations are more interested in finger pointing than in working to ensure a consistent delivery of fuel to hospitals.

But they've been playing this game for years.

The UN warned that emergency fuel stocks at critical health facilities in Gaza will run out within days. On September 7, 2018.

"Babies will die without fuel!" Al Jazeera warned - in June 2017.

The Gaza Ministry of Health said fuel to seven hospitals in Gaza was expected to run out within three days - in April 2017.

Check out this incident, from February 2012.

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip rejected Egypt’s proposal to transfer fuel to the Gaza Strip power plant via Kerem Shalom Crossing. Ahmad Abu al-Amarin of Energy Authority in Gaza said that the proposal was rejected in light of Hamas’ past experience with Israeli control over goods entering the Gaza Strip. News of the Palestinian Authority’s rejection of Israel’s proposal to sell fuel to the Gaza Strip had been reported earlier. In the meantime, the supply of reserve fuel is running out. About 72% of the fuel supplies of all hospitals in Gaza have already run out and the minister of health in the Strip has warned that hospital generators were expected to stop working today. If this occurs, more than 400 kidney patients in the Gaza Strip will be in danger as their dialysis machines require a steady supply of electricity for many hours at a time.

The 2012 story shows that both Hamas and the PA are willing to risk the lives of patients because of politics. Hamas refused fuel from Israel; the PA rejected an Israeli plan to bring in fuel to Gaza.

It is more politics than reality. And it always was.

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The Palestinians signed a convention on equality of women in 2014 - and have not passed any laws to enforce it

In 2014 , the "State of Palestine" acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) without reservation.

According to UN documents, it maintains a set of laws that continue to enshrine the second-class status of women, and has not passed any laws to improve their status.

Here is a summary of their anti-woman laws are summarized here (taken from this document).

A UN ESCWA webpage tracks the passing and implementation of laws promoting women's rights per country. It shows that nothing has changed for Palestinian women since 2018 (the earliest date they track from.)

Notably, they are the only signatories in the Arab world that acceded to the convention without any reservations. In particular, most Arab countries expressed reservations about CEDAW's Article 16, which says women have equal rights with men within marriage including family planning, property ownership and occupations.

There is huge opposition to CEDAW in Palestinian territories and the larger Arab world, claiming that it goes against sharia law. Nevertheless, some Arab countries have passed laws to empower women. Tunisia banned polygamy and recognises a woman’s equal right to marry a non-Muslim spouse. In Egypt, women have been granted the right to divorce under some circumstances.

The claims that CEDAW is against sharia appears to be largely bogus. For example, while Islamic law may allow underage marriage, there is no reason to oppose laws that prohibit it - just as sharia allows slavery but there is little opposition nowadays to national laws prohibiting the practice.

It seems that the only reason the Palestinians accepted CEDAW was to help their case to join the International Criminal Court to press cases against Israel, but they had no intention of following through on that nor other international conventions that they signed. This was admitted by the editor of the Palestinian newspaper Ma'an, who said in 2019, "The government cannot implement CEDAW in its entirety in light of the existence of a societal system, and that the signing of the agreement is political and was not intended to undermine the Sharia, and had it not been for the signing of CEDAW and many other agreements, the International Criminal Court would not have accepted us."

As the chart above indicates, this is true. The Palestinian Authority signed all these conventions to use them against Israel, not to actually implement them. And when international agencies notice their foot dragging, it is blamed on internal pressures by Islamists or other technical reasons, but no one begins to think that there was never any intent to follow the signed agreements from the outset.

Which also shows another important fact about Palestinian leadership: their signed agreements are not worth the paper they are written on.

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

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The Lancet publishes a letter:

By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Ministry's figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.

As I've noted, the independent analyses based on extrapolating UNRWA data from the first several weeks of the war are bad science. It used bad assumptions, a poor sample and a demonstrably wrong conclusion. If you us the same methodology for later months in the war, you find that the proportion of UNRWA workers killed are far fewer than the numbers reported by the ministry of health. Science that is not reproducible is not science. Yet this study is still referred to as proof positive of MoH accuracy months after anyone can see that its conclusions were simply wrong with five minutes of math.

But the authors of this article not only claim that the ministry of health numbers are accurate, but they are an underestimate of wartime deaths. They wave away the incompatibilities between the two sets of numbers by the MoH. They ignore that the same MoH has been provably lying about women and children deaths and injuries.

Setting aside that absurd assumption, the main point of the article is this:

Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

The entire basis of this estimate of four indirect deaths for every direct death is a 2008 document called the Geneva Declaration: Global Burden of Armed Violence.

Yet even that paper, and studies since then, note that the most significant factor on estimating the number of indirect deaths is how developed the medical system is in the war zone - how well fed and immunized the children are beforehand.

A 2023 monograph describes the Geneva Declaration as being accurate for worldwide estimates, but not accurate in countries that had a relatively developed medical infrastructure:

For instance, a recent mortality survey in a high conflict region of the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries, documented that violent deaths accounted for about 13% of total mortality, as people were also dying at high rates from illnesses such as malaria and diarrhea and maternal and newborn complications. By contrast, in the 1990s war in wealthier Bosnia, evidence suggests that the majority, about 67%, of war-related deaths, were due to violence.

And later the paper says:

The author’s review suggests that a lower ratio may be accurate in Iraq, while a higher ratio is likely in today’s humanitarian crisis situations such as in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Gaza's health infrastructure before October 7 was more comparable in maturity to Iraq and Syria than to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. There was (and still is) far less malnutrition in Gaza then in the countries that had the highest death rates due to war, namely CAR, DRC, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The four to one ratio that the Lancet bases its analysis on is from an outdated paper, and even worse, it generalizes all conflicts to be the same ratio of direct to indirect death, when the reality is far more variable.

Which means that yet again, the Lancet is publishing biased data as if it is science, and referencing old studies that have been superseded as if they are accurate. Like social scientists, it is pretending to use the scientific method to publish anti-Israel propaganda.

Furthermore, the authors seem to be saying that the absurd estimate of 186,000 dead is the current amount, not the expected future amount of excess mortality from the healthcare crisis in Gaza - which is what the other studies concentrate on. In fact, based on previous Gaza wars, chances are very high that those who die from natural causes are being counted as part of the total war deaths. We would have expected that about 5,000 Gazans would have died over the past nine months without a war.

I'm not saying there will not be excess mortality of Gaza as a result of the war. There most certainly will be. But there are field hospitals being built as quickly as possible; thousands of Gazans have been able to exit the sector to get treatment abroad (something that had not happened to the same extent in other war zones,) and - most importantly, - there is a dedicated unit of the attacking army whose entire job is to protect and aid enemy civilians, something that is practically unprecedented in the other wars that the inflated statistics come from.

When it comes to Israel, the Lancet has a real problem with the scientific method, objectivity and reporting reality.

Where are the honest scientists and statisticians who are willing to expose the Lancet for consistently publishing anti-Israel articles that make a joke of the scientific method?

(By the way, I had emailed a couple of the prominent authors who wrote or referred to the Lancet UNRWA article justifying the MoH numbers, asking them to comment on my analysis showing the same methodology contradicts its conclusions for later months. Not one responded. Real scientists would care about the truth, either to refute me or to admit I am right.)

(h/t JW)

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07/07 Links: Heroes in flip-flops; Netanyahu sets red lines ahead of Doha summit; Federal court to enforce the Taylor Force Act; It’s time for a Gaza Buyout

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Heroes in flip-flops

The only thing giving away the theme of this makeshift amusement park—organized for weeks and funded by the attendees and donors—is an incessant loop of photos projected on two screens adjacent to a stage on which a live band is performing. The pictures show the above guys in full military gear: dusty helmets, ceramic vests and weapons.

These comrades-in-arms from a particular Israel Defense Forces company are in various poses, separately and together, alternately at a base in the south and in the Gaza Strip. There, they are battling Hamas. Here, they’re changing diapers. The contrast is both charming and jarring.

A master of ceremonies takes the mic, flanked by his young daughter and son. As he introduces the company commander, the men in the audience, children in their laps, burst into a chant familiar only to them. Like a secret handshake. But noisier.

“This is a different crowd from the one I’m used to addressing,” he says, referring occasionally to text he has written on his cellphone. “I’m used to talking to exhausted reservists questioning why they can’t postpone certain tasks until later, complaining, ‘We haven’t slept; we haven’t eaten.’ So, it’s moving to speak to this audience, all bright and beautiful.”

He goes on, “It’s important for me to begin by telling the women and children here, ‘Your husbands and fathers are heroes.’”

He then defines a hero as “someone who on Oct. 7 got up, left his house and headed south, putting on his gear and saying, ‘Here I am. What should I do?’”

But, he qualifies, “a hero isn’t only someone who arrived on Oct. 7; it’s someone who showed up for training in 2022, and in 2021 and in 2020 and in 2019 and in 2018 and in 2017 and in 2016. Even when it caused problems at home and at work. Even when it was hot and inconvenient. That’s what a hero is. Everyone in this company is a hero. And it was a privilege to have been called up on Oct. 7 to lead this company.”

Allowing the renewed cheering to subside, he continues: “I’m sure there are people present who’d be happy to report that I’m not an easy person. It’s true. I made life difficult for everybody in this room. But all you people did was ask what more you could do. That’s why this company earned the respect of the entire brigade.”

Turning to the wives, he says, “Now it’s time to mention the other heroes in this room—you women who took care of your households by yourselves with great strength of spirit, despite living in a state of major uncertainty. From our point of view, you fought alongside us against the enemy. Without you, we couldn’t have done any of it. And with you, we will keep winning.”

He concludes with a reminder and a request.

“There are still many challenges ahead,” he says somberly. “The fighting isn’t over. We’re preparing for the next phase of the war. So, I’m asking you to allow us to borrow your loved ones for another round.”

The battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel in a T-shirt and sandals, gets up to punctuate the speech with a similar sentiment about the importance of the home front and the inevitability of a third tour in Gaza. When he’s done, the M.C. announces that there is a Shabbat challah and bouquet of flowers waiting for everyone at the exit.

The reservists-on-furlough shuffle out, waving and slapping one another on the back. They know they’ll be summoned soon to replace their flip-flops with combat boots yet again.

These heroes of the IDF laugh as they leave the premises. I try not to let them see me crying.

Andrew Pessin: Anti-Israel Divestment Demands Demand a “Damn no!” Response

Executive Summary
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1. Background and Introduction
On October 7, 2023 Hamas massacred some 1200 mostly Jewish non-combatants in the most barbaric manner imaginable. Shockingly, many campuses responded in celebration of the massacre, with months of pro-Hamas rallies, culminating in encampments. Instead of shutting encampments down, many administrators negotiated, some making significant concessions. Among the activists’ main demands is that for divestment from Israel. I argue that administrators and trustees must forcefully resist, reject, and in fact denounce any such demands.

2. No Negotiations
There should be no negotiations with people breaking campus rules or the law, especially if they are aggressing toward other community members. The proper response is: “You must desist immediately or disciplinary proceedings, culminating in possible suspension or expulsion, will begin.”

Any other response normalizes and thus incentivizes the behavior. Once you capitulate to extortion, there will only be more extortion. Negotiations also immorally privilege those violating the mission and norms of the university over those actually manifesting them.

3.-4. Recent Precedents and General Arguments Against Divestment
The proposal to divest from Israel should be publicly rejected and denounced.

There are many arguments to this conclusion, both general “content-neutral” ones and others specific to the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict (IPJAMC). Through a study of recent precedents, including Penn, Williams, and Cornell, we extract these arguments:
(1) Divestment is inconsistent with academic freedom.
(2) It is discriminatory in nature, thus immoral and inconsistent with inclusivity norms.
(3) It may be illegal in many states.
(4) It is divisive, while consensus is a necessary (though not sufficient) prerequisite.
(5) It’s not particularly feasible, and even where feasible likely to have negligible if any impact at all on its targets.
(6) The institution can have a far greater impact by providing a first-rate education, funded by an endowment guided by maximizing returns rather than by political considerations.
(7) Divestment may have symbolic value, but (a) onerous changes in investment strategy should not be pursued for mere symbolic gestures and (b) that symbolic value is also one of hate and exclusion for many community members present and prospective.
(8) It may actually do more harm than good even in the political arena.
(9) Maximum investment “transparency” is disastrous for the endowment and the community.
(10) Divestment is inconsistent with the purpose of the university endowment, which is not to be an instrument of political and social power and advocacy but to support the educational mission of the university. It may also violate the ethical, legal, and fiduciary obligations of the trustees and their investment managers to the beneficiaries, and it directly harms and violates the rights of every stakeholder in the institution, thus making the university vulnerable to expensive litigation.
(11) Divestment is inconsistent with institutional commitments to diversity and equity. Endowments fund financial aid and other programs essential to any university’s commitment to “make the highest-quality liberal arts education available and affordable to a diverse population of future leaders.”

5. Institutional Neutrality
Inspired by the famous Kalven Report, recently enjoying new life as universities (such as Harvard, Syracuse, Stanford, and Purdue) have begun recommitting to “institutional neutrality” as essential to the nature, mission, and inclusive values of the university, we have the final general argument:
(12) Divestment is inconsistent with institutional neutrality.

6. Rebuttal, and “Damn No!”
The only argument anti-Israelists have is that their stance is morally correct. But even if so, it doesn’t matter: universally applicable, content-neutral considerations override it.

Every administration should recognize what is going on here: activists are hijacking the institution to advance their own agenda at the detriment of all other stakeholders and the institution itself. That is why these demands must be publicly, promptly, and harshly denounced.

Federal court allows action to enforce the Taylor Force Act

Astoundingly, the amended complaint mentions that the State Department has acknowledged in a non-public report to Congress that the P.A. had not ended the “pay for slay” program and that it could not therefore certify compliance with the act. Nevertheless, this did not result in a suspension of further aid payments, as required.

It is also important to note that the program is not a matter of executive fiat; it is embodied in P.A. law—an egregious violation of the Oslo Accords, which explicitly provide that “both sides shall take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against each other … and shall take legal measures against offenders.”

In essence, not only is the P.A. not preventing these horrendous acts, it is encouraging, rewarding and honoring murderers. In this regard, limitations on aid and other restrictions are also triggered under the Anti-Terrorism Law-PLO (22 USC 5201) and Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 (120 Stat. 3318) by a P.A. breach under the Oslo Accords.

The disdain for the law shown by U.S. government officials, seemingly without consequence, should be inconceivable; yet apparently, it is not. Under Article I of the Constitution, there is a separation of powers. The power of the purse was reserved to Congress.

The remedy for those in Government who may disagree with the law is to seek to change it, not to undermine or evade compliance with the law. It is unacceptable for those in the executive branch unilaterally to disregard the sacred responsibility of enforcing or complying because they think they know better and disagree with the law or the policies it promotes. This should be an issue of profound concern to everyone, no matter the party or affiliation.

Moreover, the effect of violating the law is odiously financing and promoting the murder of innocent Americans, Israelis and others. A policy of appeasement and virtuous-sounding pronouncements about a desire to promote peace has proven to be ineffective in practice. By funding evil, peace is not being achieved; it only emboldens the wrongdoers. Those acting to evade the law are, in essence, complicit in enabling despicable terrorist actions, including of Hamas and the terrorism rewarded by the P.A.

It’s time for Congress to employ its power of the purse to defund those who are violating or failing to enforce the law. Consideration should also be given to establishing an independent counsel position to enforce these laws.

Usually, Palestinians deny every Jewish holy site, claiming that they are really ancient Muslim holy sites. They've renamed Rachel's Tomb, the Temple Mount, and other holy spots to take them away from the Jews.

For Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, the usual claim is that it is really named after location of a local sheikh/miracle worker, Yusef al-Dawiqat, who died in the 18th century and was coincidentally also named the Arabic equivalent of Joseph.

Which is why I found this story in a Palestinian news site surprising:

500 settlers storm the tomb of the Prophet Joseph in Nablus

Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus at dawn on Thursday, under the pretext of performing their prayers, under heavy security guard from the Israeli occupation authorities.

No scare quotes around "Joseph's Tomb," no reference to Dawiqat. It appears that the news site accepts this as legitimately Joseph's tomb.

However, this is an old story, from 2013. \\

More recent stories in Palestinian media about Jews visiting the site make sure to add that they don't believe that it is really Joseph's tomb, indicated by not saying "Prophet Joseph."

If it is the real resting place of the biblical Joseph (which is far from clear,) then Palestinians have no reason to ban Jews from visiting. So it is easier to rewrite history than to allow Jews to do pilgrimages in an Arab majority town.

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Ramallah based Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics publishes very specific Hamas lies

For months, the Gaza health ministry claimed that 70% of those killed in Gaza were women and children.

But they stopped making that claim around the beginning of May.

The UN stopped making that claim around the same time, after looking at detailed MoH records that showed that the percentage was far lower for the "martyrs" that they claimed to have documented, and even if every one of the "undocumented" people were women and children the numbers still wouldn't add up.

But there is one Palestinian organization that still claims 70% of the dead are women and children: the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The PCBS still publishes specific statistics about women and children supposedly killed.

As far as I know, the only official place the Gaza health ministry publishes its information is its Telegram account. If it had these detailed statistics on women and children, it would publish them.

PCBS claims that its source for these numbers are the ministry of health and UN OCHA (which in turn gets its statistics from the same health ministry) - so why aren't the supposed sources reporting these numbers?

Where does the PCBS really get its information from?

There is only one source for these statistics: the Hamas-run Government Media Office.

They don't get their statistics from the health ministry - they give the statistics to the health ministry, which is forced to claim that the differential in the two sets of total "martyrs" is that they "don't have complete documentation" for the 10,000 they cannot account for.

The media office does not have researchers in the field to count bodies. It makes up the numbers out of whole cloth.

The Palestinian Authority's official statistics bureau acts as a mouthpiece for the Hamas terror group. Their entire reputation rests on accurate data, and they prefer to parrot Hamas propaganda - and lie about the source.

These are the "moderates" that the West believes can be trusted.

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