Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 12, 2024

08/12 Links: IDF confirms 38 terrorists eliminated in Gaza school attack, The Dangerous New Iranian Nuclear Reality, All the Jewish 2024 Olympic medalists

Ian is off today. He will resume creating the linkdumps tomorrow. Here's my second-rate attempt to do about 20% of what he does every day. -EoZ

Iran update August 11 (ISW):

Iran has not retaliated quickly against Israel because Iran very likely seeks to ensure that its next attack restores deterrence with Israel while simultaneously avoiding a large-scale war. Iran previously attacked Israel on April 13, 12 days after Israel killed one of Iran’s senior-most military commanders in Syria on April 1.[1] Iran and its allies fired around 170 one-way attack drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel in its April 2024 attack.[2] The United States, Israel, and their allies intercepted most of the projectiles, and the Iranian attack did significantly less damage than Tehran intended.[3] Iranian leaders are therefore incentivized to carefully and slowly calculate their next attack to ensure that the attack inflicts serious damage on Israel, thereby restoring Iranian deterrence with Israel. Iran will likely also ensure that the attack will not trigger a major war. Western intelligence sources previously assessed that Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah may attack Israel on the Jewish holiday Tisha B’Av on August 12-13, although Iran might wait longer to conduct its next attack to ensure that the attack achieves its strategic goals.[4]

Biden saying 'Don't' and other threats seemingly fail to deter Iran as more US Mideast bases hit

The White House is facing withering criticism that President Biden’s "Don’t" attack warnings to Iran are not being taken seriously after Tehran-backed terror militias injured American military personnel at the Ain al-Asad air base in western Iraq on Monday and is suspected of another attack in Syria on Friday.
On Saturday, Biden once again issued a "Don’t" when asked by reporters what his message to Tehran was. Critics argue his Iran policy is adrift and his warnings to the Islamic republic and its proxies in October and April have not deterred them.

IDF confirms 38 terrorists eliminated in Gaza school attack

While the IDF announced on Saturday that 19 terrorists were eliminated in an attack on the Tabbayeen School in Gaza, the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence have confirmed that the number of terrorists eliminated in the attack is 38, according to a Walla report.

Security forces are continuing their assessments, and the number may increase, however, this contrasts with Palestinian claims that approximately 100 uninvolved civilians were killed in the attack.

Media Recast Hamas Terrorists as ‘Praying Palestinians’ in School Strike Reports

Did the media wait to verify the facts before reporting? Unfortunately, no. Instead, they quickly amplified Hamas’ claims, accusing Israel of targeting civilians who were “praying” or “seeking refuge” inside the school, as was claimed in some reports.
For instance, The Wall Street Journal ran a headline accusing Israel of killing civilians, without providing a credible source for the alleged death toll. Reuters followed suit, reporting that “officials” claimed at least 100 people had died—though which officials these were was left unclear.

Hamas Shuns New Talks on Gaza Ceasefire

The Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group confirmed in a statement on August 11 that it will not attend talks scheduled for this Thursday aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages in captivity. The United States, Qatar, and Egypt earlier announced that the August 15 meeting, expected to be held in either Doha or Cairo, would discuss jump-starting long-stalled negotiations on suspending hostilities in Gaza and recovering the hostages, presently believed to number 111 out of the more than 250 seized during the Hamas atrocities of October 7. While Israel agreed to attend the talks, the Hamas statement said it was calling “on the mediators to present a plan to implement what was agreed upon by the movement on July 2, 2024, based on Biden’s vision and the UN Security Council resolution.”

Everything you need to know about Tisha B'Av

The Tisha B'Av fast is a day of fasting and mourning commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. This day is considered one of the most difficult days in the Jewish calendar, and it includes five afflictions intended to stir the hearts and inspire repentance. Here is a detailed account of the main events that occurred on Tisha B'Av throughout Jewish history.

The Destruction of the Second Temple: A Concise History

Among the Jews of Roman Judaea, different views formed on how to respond to Roman cruelty and corruption. Three main factions emerged.
The Zealots believed that the proper response was an open war with the Romans. They were ready to take on the mighty Roman army and believed that they could win independence from the Roman Empire. Many of them were young and inexperienced in either warfare or politics.
The Friends of Rome, who were mostly the wealthy and powerful Jews, believed that the best approach was to befriend the Roman procurator and his representatives, and thus, avoid their wrath.
The moderate faction would have preferred to throw off the yoke of Rome, but they realized that such a goal would not have been realistic. Thus, they preferred to negotiate with the Romans in order to avoid violent confrontation. The majority of the population belonged to this faction, including the elders and the Sages.
The three factions had similar goals – they wanted to ensure peace and justice for Jews in Judaea. Unfortunately, they could not agree on how to reach these goals, and with time and increased oppression, the factions only grew farther apart.

The rabbis adding Oct. 7 to their Tisha B’Av lamentations

On Monday evening, Jews across the world will gather to hear Megillat Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, referring to the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and read Kinot, additional lamentations, including tragic events after the Second Temple was destroyed, the Crusades period and beyond.
Some congregations in Israel and the Diaspora will have new texts to read about more recent, tragic events of Oct. 7, the greatest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Information Warfare | Jonathan Conricus on Israel's 8th Front

Former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus joins Eylon for a deep dive into Israel's strategic challenges on the communications front. Conricus shares his inside perspective on Israel's approach to information warfare, public diplomacy, and the evolving military strategy against Iranian proxies. He candidly discusses the IDF's tactical successes, the shortcomings in Israel's strategic planning, and the urgent need for a more coherent national strategy against Iran's growing influence. Conricus also offers insights into how Israel can improve its international messaging and why it's crucial to prioritize global public relations in the ongoing conflict.

Kamala Harris’s pastor, Durban and worse

When Rev. Brown said, “America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?” he placed himself squarely in the camp of those who “blame the democracy” for the savage hatred of the jihadis in quest of a global Caliphate.
Under normal circumstances, the grown-ups would have shut him down and shunned him. But those were not ordinary times. On the contrary, the assembled crowd at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium cheered him on and the alleged grown-ups, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, spurred to act by a man whose friend had died fighting the jihadis on United Airlines flight 93, left in silent protest.

In Jish, an indigenous Christian minority defiantly stays in Hezbollah’s crosshairs

Like most of his neighbors, Khalloul has stayed in Jish despite frequent shelling, because he won’t be cowed by the Lebanese terror group.
His defiance is characteristic of Jish and its small but tight-knit community of Aramean Christians: a Catholic ethnoreligious group of just a few thousand people who threw their lot in with the State of Israel. They trace their heritage to the ancient Arameans who lived here 3,000 years ago.
Unlike most of their Jewish neighbors in neighboring towns, Jish’s 3,000-odd residents have largely stayed put throughout the current escalation of hostilities with Hezbollah, which led to the evacuation of some 60,000 people from communities near the border.

The Dangerous New Iranian Nuclear Reality

Iran is so close to a nuclear bomb that we need to rethink how we watch for it. That’s the conclusion of a new report by veteran nuclear inspector David Albright and fellow researcher Sarah Burkhard at the Institute for Science and International Security. Both are highly regarded and fact-based analysts.

Even as Iran increased its enrichment of uranium, the stance of U.S. intelligence—its “mantra,” in the researchers’ telling—had long been that weaponization has been paused. No longer. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s July report now says Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Man Is Charged With Hate Crime in Stabbing Near Brooklyn Synagogue

A 22-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with assault as a hate crime after the police said he yelled “Free Palestine” and “Do you want to die?” before stabbing a young man near a synagogue in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn early Saturday morning.

The 22-year-old man, Vincent Sumpter, was charged with second-degree assault as a hate crime in the attack, which occurred around 2 a.m. Saturday on Kingston Avenue, around the corner from the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement on Eastern Parkway. He had not yet been arraigned on Sunday.

‘Do Jews rule among you?’ Qatari Al-Jazeera leads yet another eruption of antisemitism

Earlier this week, another top Al-Jazeera commentator was responsible for spewing toxic antisemitism on his social media. This time, it was Jamal Rayyan, one of the channel’s most-known faces, who has served as an anchor and commentator at the Qatari mouthpiece for decades.

In a post that reached over 1 million views, almost 7,000 likes, and 1,500 reposts, and which has been deleted since, Rayyan uploaded a picture of Arab leaders convening in a past Arab League summit, adding: “What is this weakness and disgrace? What has gotten into you, Muslims, that you are so quiet? Are there Jews among you who rule?”

Parents' fury as pro-Palestinian mob interrupt children's science show at Wimbledon theatre with activists leaving young audience terrified as they screamed demands

The New Wimbledon Theatre descended into chaos earlier this afternoon when a group of 'Parents for Palestine' protesters stormed the venue and began chanting in front of an audience of terrified youngsters.

Children soon began 'crying their eyes out' while some were parents forced to cover their ears as the protest went on.

The activists were eventually escorted out of the venue by theatre staff, leaving the audiences filled with children as young as seven and their parents, in shock.

A great existential threat: A Harris presidency's impact on Israel - opinion

Vice President Kamala Harris should have been sitting on the dais behind Netanyahu at Congress that day to demonstrate her commitment to America’s top ally. But more importantly, she ought to have been there to listen to one of the world’s elder statesmen and learn from him.

Her decision to go, instead, to a sorority sent a message to Israel’s enemies that if she got elected, God forbid, they could do whatever they wanted to the Jewish state, and she would look the other way.

Francesca Albanese Under UN Investigation: Hillel Neuer on Channel 13 with Lucy Aharish

For Israel’s progressive elites, the real war is against the enemy within

All the Jewish medalists at the 2024 Paris Olympics

The 2024 Paris Olympics conclude on Sunday, and at least 21 Jewish athletes from the United States, Australia and Israel will return home with some new hardware: The tally includes six golds (with one athlete winning two), seven silvers and five bronzes. The medal total of 18 is more than all but 15 countries.

Israel in particular has racked up a historic medal collection, with seven total medals, its most ever in a single Olympics. Israel won three medals on Aug. 3 alone, its most medals in one day. The country now has 20 total Olympic medals, including nine in judo and five in sailing.

Einat Wilf:

Hi friends in the media, I know you’re tired so I did your job for you:

05:00- Israel target Hamas terrorists hiding at the Al-Tabeen compound.

05:20 - Hamas Health Ministry announce that 40 martyrs were killed.

05:40 - Hamas sees an opportunity to inflate the numbers and…
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 11, 2024

Mou'ein (Abu Ameer) takes baby Zein shopping at a convenience stall in Central Gaza Strip.
They are shopping specifically for goodies produced in Saudi Arabia for a YouTube review of the products by Tala, Ameer and Tulay.
Uploaded to YouTube yesterday, 11 Aug.#TheGazaYouDontSee… pic.twitter.com/6rDay3NkOE
— Imshin (@imshin) August 12, 2024

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!

To the pioneers of Judea and Samaria, "people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, and do" (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

“To me, you cannot say, that’s not realistic”

There are those who talk and there those who do. I deeply admire the doers. The people who make things happen, particularly those who, with unwavering determination, pull a new reality out of thin air. The stubborn ones who keep treading the long road, against all odds, despite being derided and denied, accused and despised.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

When Steve Jobs created the famous Apple ad honoring the misfits and troublemakers who have no respect for the status quo, the general public loved the romance of the idea presented. Public reaction is very different when it comes to real people who fit this description.

Few people have made, as Jobs liked to say, “a dent in the world”, like Daniella Weiss. She changed the map of Israel. Literally.

For the past 50 years, Daniella has been (and still is!) the most prominent woman in the settlement of biblical Israel – Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Daniella was a key member of Gush Emunim, a Zionist movement with the mission: “To bring about a major spiritual reawakening in the Jewish people for the sake of the full realization of the Zionist vision, in the knowledge that this vision’s source and goal in the Jewish heritage and in Judaism’s roots are the total redemption of both the Jewish people and the whole world.”

Basically, their idea was that Jewish identity is tied to our ancestral homeland and to fully actualize our identity, it is necessary to live in the land that gave birth to our People. Healing the divide between this land and her people, the people and the land, will not only heal Jews but will also heal the world.

To make this vision a reality, the leaders of Gush Emunim went to different areas of biblical Israel. Rabbi Levinger went to Hebron. Rabbi Chanan Porat went to Gush Etzion.

Daniella Weiss, with the core people of Elon Moreh went to Samaria. Her actions and mentorship led to the creation of 300 communities, 800,000 Jews living where, before 1974, there were none.

Between 1984 and 1988, Daniella served as the Secretary General of the Gush Emunim Movement. For 11 years Daniella was the Mayor of Kedumim. Since 2007, Daniella, together with others, including the late Rabbi Levinger, established The Nachala Settlement Movement.

When I was a child in America, the word “settler” meant “pioneer”, the people who braved the wilderness and built America with their own two hands. They were people to be admired and emulate. After the Six Day War, Israelis returning to their ancestral homeland, were treated as heroic miracle-makers. After the Yom Kippur War in 1973 many people, including Israelis, were not so certain about being the people physically actualizing a biblical prophecy.

As if settling down, and making yourself comfortable, in the land of our ancestors could be a bad thing. I can imagine Daniella would laugh and say: “Do you really think that Jews returning to their promised land is avoidable?”

People who believe in biblical prophecy are often derided. Those who take action to make the prophecies come to life are considered by many to be crazy. They are called extreme, hard-liners, messianic...

Jews living in their ancestral homeland, willing to defend themselves and their families, even when the government is unwilling (or due to international pressure, unable), to come to their aid are deemed by European governments, the US State Department, and even by some on Israel’s left to be “the obstacle to peace.” Recently different governments have sanctioned individual residents of Judea and Samaria, including Daniella Weiss, as if they are to blame for the lack of peace.

Jewish presence in the land makes it impossible to divide the land and that makes many people angry.

They forget that Judea and Samaria, not Tel Aviv, is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People. They refuse to look at the map and see how the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria protect the metropolitan of Tel Aviv from an October 7th-style invasion from Palestinian Authority-controlled territories, the same PA whose leaders promised more October 7s, whose people overwhelmingly support Hamas. For example, the PA city of Kalkiliya is 14 kilometers, 9 miles from the Mediterranean Sea – an easy stroll away from Kfar Saba. The outskirts of Kalkiliya and Kfar Saba are practically touching, closer than the distance between Gaza and Nir Oz. The only difference is that in Gaza there were no Jews and subsequently no IDF to prevent the invasion.

One doesn’t need to be “messianic” to recognize the importance of Jewish presence to establish Jewish safety. Bible believers, both Jews and Christians, will say that it is wrong to divide God’s land. Indigenous rights dictate that Jews have the right to live in their indigenous homeland. But even if only focused on the practicalities needed to create security, it is easy to understand that civilian life means homes and roads that remain open because they are in use by civilians. The IDF doesn’t occupy territory, it protects homes. Pulling civilians out of that area (like what happened in Gaza) creates a vacuum that the enemy fills – and when that endangers the nearby civilian population, it is necessary to use extreme military force.

The presence of communities actually keeps the peace, as much as peace is possible in this region.

Daniella Weiss’s Nachala Movement continues to support the return of Jews to our ancestral lands. She says: “I don’t need to be told that the people need to lead the government in making things happen. I teach others that idea.

She says 650 families have registered to establish communities in Gaza. Governments, organizations, and even many Israelis say that this is a wild, crazy, and dangerous idea. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “It’s not realistic.”

Daniella’s response? “To me, you cannot say it’s not realistic. Gaza is part of the historic land of the tribe of Judah and we are going to return to our land.”

For 50 years she’s been making the unrealistic real.

Steve Jobs said it better than I ever could: “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

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!

Australia Muslim group claim there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism, wants laws rewritter

From ABC News Australia:

An alliance of peak Islamic groups has called for Australia's terrorism laws to be changed, to remove the concept of "religiously motivated terrorism" from the legislation.

In a statement, the Australian National Imams Council, the Alliance of Australian Muslims and the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network said it was necessary to "avoid simplistic attributions that target specific communities".

The group's spokeswoman Ramia Abdo Sultan said terrorism was driven by political ideology and not religion.

"The presumption that terrorism is inherently tied to religion is not only inaccurate but harmful," Ms Abdo Sultan told a press conference.

This comes after a stabbing attack on a bishop in Sydney, which police say was done by a 16 year old. They didn't identify him as Muslim but it was pretty clear after the father spoke about it.

Police say the teen was part of a group of other teens who planned to attack Jewish targets as well.

So these teens, all Muslims, are really attacking Christians and Jews because of political reasons?

Was Osama Bin Laden not invoking religion when he said this?

In compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."

Political Islam is indistringuishable from religious Islam. Pretending that there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism is a sure way to increase Islamic terrorism. It doesn't mean all Muslims should be suspect, but it also doesn't mean that religion has nothing to do with the motivation of terrorists. Clearly they think so, and clearly the worst Islamic terrorists like Hamas have not been ostracized in the larger world Muslim community. The widespread support for Islamic terror attacks like 10/7 among Muslims measn that they condone, not condemn, terror - and as such their attempt to rewrite the laws to exclude the terrorism so many of them support is not ethical, but self-serving and supporting Hamas-style attacks.

(h/t Jill)

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 May, a planned exhibit at the Wing Luke Museum called “Confronting Hate Together” about how Seattles Jewish, Black and Asian communities confront hate was canceled because of anti-Jewish hate.

Progressive staffers walked off their jobs rather than open the exhibit, claiming that the section on antisemitism mentioned modern antisemitism that is associated with hate towards Israel.

Since then, the Washington State Jewish Historical Society worked hard with the new antisemites to clarify the Jewish part of the exhibit and make it palatable to the so-called progressive crowd. Of course, since their entire reason for existing is to hate while claiming to be against hate, the efforts were to no avail.

Hate of Jews closed the "Confronting Hate Together" exhibit.

The press release of the Washington State Jewish Historical Society and Seattle JCRC describes what happened, and it shows that the Jews of Seattle have every reason to be afraid for their wellbeing - unless they pass an anti-Isrsel purity test to the satisfaction of their tormenters:

It is with great disappointment, pain, and sadness we share that, due to circumstances out of our control, the Confronting Hate Together (CHT) Exhibit will not be presented jointly to the community in a public venue by the Black Heritage Society (BHS), Washington State Jewish Historical Society (WSJHS) and the Wing Luke Museum (WLM).

Throughout this process, the WSJHS has been open and responsive to feedback from partners, sensitive to the international climate and challenges, and we have leaned into honesty and transparency. We worked tirelessly for months to prepare for the CHT exhibit. Furthermore, since the initial launch on May 21st, we made adjustments and modifications to help people better understand the exhibit by clarifying language regarding the exhibition's intent to focus on confronting hate locally by three historically redlined communities.

Immense harm has been caused to the Jewish community by not being able to show the exhibit. The anti-Jewish ideas and attitudes that fueled the WLM employee walkout (whether conscious or not) have yet to be adequately acknowledged. And, at the same time, the greater Seattle community will be deprived of an important cross-cultural educational opportunity.

Antisemitism today is at its highest levels in over 40 years, and more allyship is needed to help meet the moment. We need partners who are stakeholders in the safety and well-being of the Jewish people and who stand with us even when it gets hard. Ironically, in an exhibit that was supposed to be about coming together to confront hate, hate has won. And, our community feels more alone as a result.

The Jewish community needs to hear from Seattle - from our elected leaders, from business leaders, and people of good conscience - that Seattle is still a welcoming and safe home for Jews and that antisemitism has no place here. The silence is harmful to all.

Next month, the WSJHS, and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle will host a special event to show the CHT exhibit to the Jewish community alongside our friends and allies. Stay tuned for more information on this showcase. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out the digital exhibit for CHT, which can be accessed on the Home page of our website. We look forward to continuing healing, education, understanding, and advocacy among our community and neighbors.

Here is the section of the exhibit that was considered "controversial." It shows how feeding the crocodile never works.

This is not even showing support for Israel or Zionism. On the contrary, instead of even hinting how central Israel is to the Jewish mindset, the WSJHS took pains to separate the Jews of Seattle from Israel's "right-wing government." Apparently they even tried to water this down further to "clarifying language regarding the exhibition's intent."

None of it worked, because the rules for Jews are different, even (and sometimes especially) from other minority groups.

The JCRC and WSJHS need to take a page from a editorial in the Spokane Press from October 1926, where they quoted the new Jewish Treasurer of Wisconsin.

(h/t JW)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

If Israel doesn't care about civilians, why is it killing so few in Lebanon and Syria?

The latest numbers I can find for casualties in Israel's north since October 7 shows:

In Lebanon, out of 516 deaths, 407 are militants: 79%

In Syria, out of 277 deaths, 256 are militants: 92.5%

But Hezbollah is not nearly as careful.

In Israel, out of f47 deaths, only 18 were active duty soldiers: 38%

The statistics from Lebanon prove what is happening in Gaza: Israel targets terrorists, period. When the terrorists hide behind civilians, many civilians die as well - and it is the terrorists' fault.

Just another statistic that the media doesn't highlight..

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!

08/11 Links: Israeli hospital documents damage to health of freed hostages; UK funding of UNRWA makes Gaza peace less likely; Israel’s 7 medals mark its best-ever Olympics

From Ian:

Israeli hospital documents damage to health of freed hostages

Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel in Petach Tikvah has documented the medical conditions of 26 women and children released from Hamas captivity in Gaza.

In the report, the details of which were published in Maariv for the first time on Sunday, experts at the hospital summarized the hard conditions suffered by those held captive by the terrorist group following the Oct. 7 attack on the northwestern Negev that killed some 1,200 people. The terrorists took around 250 people back to Gaza, 115 of whom remain there after 310 days.

Around 50 Israeli women and children were released in the November 2023 hostage deal; the study examined the medical records of 19 children between the ages of 2 and 18 and seven women between the ages of 34 and 78, who were all hospitalized at Schneider.

The findings
Ten patients, including a toddler, suffered from chronic constipation as a result of the prolonged hunger, thirst and the lack of food rich in fats and dietary fibers important for the digestive process.

Two women and nine children suffered from chronic diarrhea, with stool tests showing the growth of multiple fecal bacteria from the bad hygienic conditions.

All of the abductees suffered from starvation and poor nutrition. Fifteen of them displayed significant weight loss up to 15% of their body mass. According to the abductees, their diet consisted of a small amount of rice and white bread without vegetables, protein and fat.

Upon arrival, all of the patients received a nutritional regimen to avoid the risk of a severe syndrome known as “over-feeding.” All the patients were treated with multivitamins.

All 26 patients reported poor sanitation and poor hygiene conditions, including two women and six children who were kept underground in dark conditions for most of their captivity. Some suffered from a lack of vitamin D.

Most of the hostages reported limited access to running water. In six of the patients, head lice was found that required a haircut and the start of drug treatment. One woman and five children suffered from multiple insect bites and skin irritation.

Three of the children had a history of asthma and experienced attacks during captivity. It was unclear whether they were given inhalers. One woman and two children suffered from generalized muscle pain shortly after being hospitalized.

Lab tests showed high levels of the creatine phosphokinase (CPK) enzyme, indicating significant muscle damage, possibly from sitting for prolonged periods.

According to the blood tests, around half of the patients suffered from tick-borne fever, Q fever from inhaling dust or coming into contact with sick animals and murine fever caused by bacteria. These infections can cause neurological problems, breathing difficulties and damage to joints and muscles, and are sometimes life-threatening.

Einat Wilf: UK funding of UNRWA makes Gaza peace less likely

Remember Claude Rains’ Captain Renault in Casablanca protesting he was “shocked, shocked!” by the gambling going on under his nose?

Such was the reaction of UNRWA higher-ups to the finding that nine Palestinian employees were among the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre. Keeping up this façade is essential for the few non-Palestinians who work at UNRWA, their purpose to maintain the appearance of a respectable organisation paid for by international taxpayers – including the UK after its recent decision to restore funding.

The problem is, the façade is just that. UNRWA maintains the Palestinians as a people in waiting until they finally realise their vision of “return”. Anyone imagining that equates to innocent nostalgia for a great-grandmother’s long-lost home should look to the horrors of October 7 as a reality check. Since the 1950s, texts in UNRWA schools have portrayed “return” as bloody triumph over the Jewish body.

UNRWA’s few donor-facing Western managers will claim they are merely providing social services such as education and healthcare until the conflict is resolved. Palestinians are more straightforward, making it clear as far as they’re concerned they are owed those services until “return” is realised. A sign as you enter an area under Palestinian Authority control near Bethlehem, mis-labelled “a refugee camp”, reads: “UNRWA Services are our Right until Return”. The final purpose couldn’t be clearer.

Since its earliest days, UNRWA has been hijacked to become a purely Palestinian organisation devoted to “return”, nurturing violent groups determined to erase Israel. Almost all the terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics were graduates of UNRWA schools. From Black September, Fatah and the PFLP to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, UNRWA provided the ideological infrastructure of the forever war against Israel’s existence. UNRWA’s connection with violence against Jews is not a bug, but its defining feature.

How the West Bank became an ‘occupied Palestinian territory’

Shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, the United Nations asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – a private Swiss organization that is the official guardian of the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) – for its opinion on the legal status of the territories that Israel had conquered, including Judea and Samaria, known as the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Unilaterally, the ICRC decided that Israel had violated international law (meaning the FGC) and declared the disputed areas to be Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). This decision was adopted by the international community as law. The basis for the committee’s decision, however, was, and still is, secret – as are many things in Switzerland.

The ICRC later claimed that its decision was based on the Hague Regulations (1907), particularly Article 42, which defines occupation. It chose to ignore Article 43, however, which stipulates that occupation occurs when “the authority of the legitimate power... passe(s) into the hands of the occupier...” Since neither Jordan nor Egypt were the sovereign legitimate powers in the territories, Israel’s claims are not illegal.

In fact, earlier decisions of the international community, such as the San Remo conference (1920), which supported the idea of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine, validate Israel’s claims.

A Palestinian state did not exist at the time, nor has one ever existed.

The issue of "occupation"
The issue of “occupation” in The Hague Regulations and the FGC refers to states, not to “Palestinians.” The ICRC has never applied its criteria to any other “disputed territory.” Yet, because of its special “observer” status at the UN, the committee is considered the authority on what constitutes occupation and the law. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), refers to “territories occupied in the recent conflict,” but does not specify what those territories are, or to whom they belong.

Nowhere in the resolution is the term “Palestinian” used. Later, UN resolutions adopted the ICRC’s interpretation and referred to “the Palestinian and other Arab territories.” The committee decisions, therefore, have no legal standing; and cannot be accepted as long as their archives remain secret.

The bases for Israel’s claims were examined thoroughly in a study by former High Court justice Edmund Levy and others but have been ignored by the international community. ICRC’s rulings have distorted and confused the issue of Israel’s legitimate claims to the territories, and are used to condemn Israel. The committee’s goal was to deny Israel’s claims to the historical heartland of the Jewish people, by promoting controversial issues: the right of Palestinian self-determination; a Palestinian state; the two-state solution; and “ending the occupation.”

CNN says:

Gaza Civil Defense said people were performing dawn prayers at the Al-Tabi’in compound in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City when it was hit overnight into Saturday.

NBC says:

The strikes hit the Tabeen school in Gaza City, including the mosque inside it, during dawn prayers.

BBC says:

The building also served as a mosque and the Israeli strike hit during dawn prayers, witnesses said.

The Independent reports:

At just past 4am on Saturday, Palestinian families displaced from other parts of Gaza, gathered for Fajr prayers at dawn inside al-Tabaeen school that had turned into a makeshift shelter in Gaza City.

Just before prayers were about to begin, the Israeli missiles tore through the congregation leaving bodies of worshipers “cut to pieces”, witnesses told The Independent.

Wikipedia Arabic says that the airstrike happened after 5 AM, and quotes one person saying it happened after the dawn (Fajr) prayers.

Before the Fajr prayer? During? After? Which is it?

According to multiple sources, the Fajr prayer time would have been 4:37 AM on Saturday in Gaza. It is a short prayer, which only takes 10-15 minutes in a mosque, and about 3-4 minutes when praying individually.

If the strike was shortly after 4 AM or shortly after 5 AM, no one would have been praying. The Gaza media office, health ministry and "eyewitnesses" are lying.

The Independent seems to have used the wrong time zone or guessed at summer time, since the airstrike was around 5 AM, not 4 AM. The Fajr prayers, assuming that they were timed to start at the earliest and most favorable time, would have been over for at least 10 minutes at the time of the strike.

People were not praying then. Chances are there was a prayer session, it ended, most people left, the terrorists then gathered in the mosque to strategize, and Israel chose that moment to hit them.

That is the only explanation that makes sense. But the media isn't going to do something so difficult as looking up prayer times.

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Islamic Jihad's "denial" of terrorists killed at mosque airstrike yesterday may actually confirm their deaths

Yesterday we saw another example of a pattern we've seen way too often. Israel targets a group of terrorists in a civilian area, Hamas immediately claims a "massacre" and claims within minutes a huge and strangely specific death toll, Israel gives details of the terrorists killed, and the world media gives more credence to the Hamas version of the story (backed up by Hamas "health authorities.)

In this case, where the planes struck a mosque near a school, the IDF quickly issued a list of the 19 killed and their positions in Hamas and Islamic Jihad:

Six of the terrorists eliminated were members of Islamic Jihad.

Today, Islamic Jihad denied that there were any of their members in the mosque. Or at least that is how Arabic (and Turkish) media are reporting their press release.

But the terror group used unusual language in its denial.

Their press release said, "We categorically deny the enemy's claims of the 'presence of armed men' from the ranks or fighters of Saraya al-Quds in the Al-Tabi'in School where the enemy committed a horrific massacre yesterday."

Their use of quotes around "presence of armed men" makes it sound like they are quoting the IDF, but the IDF announcement used the term "terrorists," so the Islamic Jihad language is not a quote.

Moreover, whenever Islamic Jihad refers to its members, it calls them "mujahadeen," not "armed men" ("musalahun"). Doing a search for "musalahun" at their Palestine Today website, the term only refers to criminals (and Israeli settlers,) never their own members.

It seems possible that Islamic Jihad is denying that their people literally carried weapons into the mosque while not denying that they were mujahadeen/fighters. They wouldn't hesitate to directly deny that any of their members or fighters were killed if they really weren't; their use of unusual language of "gunmen" in their denial appears to be a deliberate attempt to avoid lying while pretending to deny.

It is also possible that they are translating the IDF's use of "terrorists" as "militants," which is the same word as "armed men" in Arabic, and therefore denying that their members in the mosque are terrorists without denying their presence.

Either way, they certainly didn't deny that these six members of their group were dead!

My impression is that Islamic Jihad is more sensitive to not explicitly lying than Hamas is (and much more than Fatah is.)

In this case, their carefully chosen language in their denial actually supports the Israeli claims more than they refute them.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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The real reason for medical supply shortages in Gaza: The world isn't paying for them!

There have been plenty of articles about shortages of medicines and medical supplies in Gaza, and invariably they all blame Israel for these shortages.

However, Israel is ferrying essentially every supply it receives into Gaza. According to COGAT, over 99% of shipments to Gaza are approved entry.

So what are the shortages?

The UN gives the answer: The world is not providing the supplies that the hospitals are requesting.

Here is a chart from the UN showing what percentage of specific Gaza health supply requests have been fulfilled by partners:

Add it up and you see that the world has only supplied 35.9% of what Gaza health care professionals say they need.

In specific categories of requests, the gap between what Gaza hospitals want and what's been ordered is huge. For example, most of the bandages of various sizes ordered have not been procured. (The last column is the gap.)

We see the same for disinfectants and other basics. It appears that a lot of countries are sending over medical supplies that are not needed, not working to provide what it needed.

This isn't Israel blocking aid. This is the hypocritical world who cries over Gaza but doesn't send over the supplies that Gaza says it needs.

There are other factors that rarely get reported as well. For example, the New York Times last week buried a little fact in paragraph 24 of an article that every medical professional in Gaza knows but none of them say on video:

Last month, Mr. Al-Qedra said he and his neighbors watched helplessly as armed gangs looted the nearby European Hospital. The crime was especially outrageous, he said, because it incapacitated one of the few hospitals still able to treat the constant flow of wounded.

“What if a thief got injured? Where will he be taken? How would he get treatment?” he asked. “This hospital served the community and displaced people for more than eight months, and that good deed was repaid by simply robbing them.”

The thieves, undeterred by onlookers filming them with their phones, dragged out loot like beds, stretchers and IV equipment, Mr. Al-Qedra said.

Where are the videos of the looting of this hospital? I don't remember seeing any of them in mainstream media, or even a story about them.

Politico, in an article about how evil the IDF is, even tried to spin the thieves as innocent, saying in a footnote to an article that "European Hospital is now empty, and has been looted by desperate people trying to survive."

The media simply refuses to cover anything in Gaza that doesn't demonize Jews.

(h/t Irene)

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08/10 Links: IDF: 19 terrorists killed in strike on Hamas HQ embedded in school; Lessons from the Taylor Swift terror plot; Remembering August 9, 2001

From Ian:

Lessons from the Taylor Swift terror plot

It’s very easy to ignore the bombs that never go off. But there are worrying aspects to this foiled plot that ought to capture the distracted attention of the UK’s own security services. For a start, Taylor Swift is due to perform at Wembley towards the end of August. London mayor Sadiq Khan may have said that the event can go ahead safely, but worries persist. After all, mass-casualty terrorist attacks on concert venues are something we in the UK are already sadly familiar with, following the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017. Perpetrator Salman Abedi killed 22 people, and injured over a thousand, many of them young girls.

Venue security was and still is a problem in the UK. The Manchester Arena Inquiry, which concluded last year, revealed myriad security failures around the Ariana Grande concert. Some of these are now the subject of civil claims, after survivors and relatives launched legal action against MI5 earlier this year. Indeed, the security arrangements at the Manchester Arena were so deficient that the then Tory government announced Martyn’s Law in 2022. Named after one of the victims of the Manchester atrocity, this law requires locations with a capacity of more than 100 people, such as places of worship and health facilities, to put certain counter-terrorism measures in place, from training to threat-mitigation processes. This legislation still has not been enacted.

There is further facet to the foiled Vienna plot that ought to concern us here in the UK. Austrian police have revealed that one of the alleged plotters had been hired only days earlier by a facilities company providing services at the concert venue – access which no doubt would have been exploited by the alleged terrorists to maximise casualties. This is a problem in the UK, too. The Manchester Arena Inquiry showed that concert support staff, including security staff, were inadequately screened and trained.

At Wembley, there are likely to be anywhere between 300 and 500 ancillary staff supporting the gig. Vetting people to screen out those with criminal records, or anything else that might make them unsuitable, is a time-consuming business in both the public and private sector. In commercial enterprises, the vetting process must compete with the bottom line. This means hiring temporary staff as cheaply as possible, often at the last minute with minimal training. In the public sector, the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) service has been described by consultants as the ‘worst government shared service’ because of its acute staff shortage and bureaucratic processes. The National Audit Office warned last year that dire and slow performance in clearing job applicants was putting UK national security at risk. In Vienna, a potential suicide bomber on a watchlist got a job as a cleaner with apparently no questions asked. It’s not difficult to imagine something similar happening here.

No doubt there is considerable preparation and intelligence gathering taking place in the UK to ensure the safety of those attending the London part of Swift’s Eras tour. But complacency and depleted police resources, even more so after this month’s riots, are not good companions to safety.

The decision to cancel all Swift’s Austrian tours will have disappointed tens of thousands of her fans. It can also be seen as capitulation to the Islamist threat posed to young people at concert venues – a threat that has come back into focus after Hamas massacred 260 youngsters at the Supernova festival in Israel on 7 October. Islamists, their misogyny rarely far from the surface, seem to have a particular rage against young women enjoying themselves.

As much as I’m against terrorists controlling behaviour and sapping morale through stoking our fear of what might come, we do need to be vigilant. Think it couldn’t happen here in Britain? It did and it can. The monsters are already inside the castle.

Arnold Roth: Remembering August 9, 2001

On this date in 2001, my life and the lives of all the members of my family underwent the kind of turbulent and violent reset of which nightmares are made.

That day, we lost a beloved child, blown up in a vicious bombing. But in meaningful ways we lost even more than that. And absolutely against our will, we were initiated into years of re-education about values we thought were the bedrock of the lives we lived until then.

Eleven years have passed since criminal charges were issued by a Federal judge in Washington, D.C. against the woman who murdered my sunny, lovely, empathetic 15-year-old daughter Malki. The fugitive remains free until the present moment. Understanding why requires confronting a string of decisions, acts and failures made by officials that have been systematically concealed by the news industry and disregarded by politicians.

The fugitive killer admits to her central role in the massacre for which U.S. have gone after her. And though she brags about her atrocity (“the crown on my head“) and even hosted a television show (it’s mentioned below), she lives the life of a media figure, inspiring others to do what she did, in Amman, Jordan.

Something is shocking, even confounding, about the fact that her ongoing freedom gets negligible-to-no attention in the news industry and public discourse—even in the US. By painful contrast, to the extent the Arab media report on her, it is overwhelmingly favorable and sympathetic.

It’s not hard to uncover the dry details of Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi’s long-thwarted prosecution. The mugshots, the biographical details and the charges can be accessed via three US government sites: The FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, the 2017 Department of Justice unveiling of the hitherto secret charges and the State Department’s 2018 post of a $5 million reward that is still unclaimed years after it was made public.

But who and what is behind Tamimi’s freedom? That’s harder to ascertain.

Those who know don’t talk openly, And those with a stake in her ongoing freedom are too often untruthful about it. Understanding this and conjecturing why it keeps happening is at the heart of the nightmare my wife and I endure years after our beautiful child’s life was extinguished.

No matter how bad the threats, this is why Jews won't flee Israel

How could I leave when my country needed me? How do I get on a plane when so many of my friends in Israel can’t because they don’t have a second passport? It might not have been the most logical move, but I stayed.

I wasn’t the only one. An estimated 330,000 Israelis, civilians, and reservists, as well as olim and Sabras (native Israelis) from all over the world, had rushed back to Israel to help the Jewish state in its time of need. There was a collective understanding that if the Jewish people don’t have Israel, then we have nothing.

Staying in Israel after October 7 meant I experienced more pain than I had ever felt in my life, but I also saw acts of kindness and unity that exist nowhere else in the world. The way Israeli society rallied and went above and beyond for one another was beautiful and made the whole situation easier to digest.

Volunteers would work together daily to gather supplies, pack them, drive them to bases, and feed and entertain soldiers. Individuals visited hospitals to entertain the wounded soldiers and victims of October 7. Dizengoff Square, where a fight over a mehitza (prayer partition between men and women) erupted on Yom Kippur, became a hub for anyone who needed to grieve. People who were strangers came together to sing, hug each other, cry, and heal.

At one point, I stood outside the apartment of a friend returning from the Lebanon border. He got 24 hours of leave, and he was letting me use his army vest and helmet, which, as a journalist, I was required to have to enter the Kfar Aza kibbutz, which was utterly devastated by Hamas. As we stood outside his building, I noticed an elderly lady staring at both of us but paid no attention to her.

My friend, still in uniform, was preparing the plates in the vest to make sure they were bulletproof, and out of nowhere, the lady grabbed my friend’s hand. I was initially alarmed by what she was doing and ready to pull her off, but then I noticed her eyes were filled with tears. She took my friend’s hand away from the vest, placed a 200 shekel note in it, kissed him on the cheek, the tears still in her eyes, and walked away.

It is a memory of this war that I will never forget.

There was collective trauma, but there was also collective healing, and I don’t think leaving Israel would have made me feel safer or better about what was happening to us.

AS I write this now, more reports are coming in about the impending attack from the Islamic Republic of Iran, stating that they intend to punish Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The reports keep getting more alarming, but Israelis are still going about their day, sitting in coffee shops, going to work, running errands, and seeing their friends.

Many are asking us why we would stay in a war zone, and it is a fair question. The answer might not be a logical one, but the reality is that Israel needs both its army and its civilians. I think about the War of Independence and how so many Palestinians fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to return after the war was over.

Maybe if they stayed, they would have had a real chance of a Palestinian state.

The Islamic Republic and its threats are just one of many in the long list of entities that want to eradicate the Jewish people. They will not succeed.

Those of us who choose to stay in Israel during these times do so because this is our home, and we have decided we will not allow terrorism to dictate our lives. I may not have grown up in Israel, but to me, there is nothing more Israeli than that.

08/09 Links Pt2: David Mamet: Jews for Kamala are living in denial; The Hippocratic Oath-Breakers; The Truth About the Red Cows In Israel

From Ian:

David Mamet: Jews for Kamala are living in denial

Today, the Democrats have become the party of antisemitism. Obama and Biden’s policies have given money and arms to Iran, and withheld congressionally mandated military aid to Israel — and yet Jews vote Democratic. Charles Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, is a Jew, representing a significantly Jewish constituency. He pointedly insulted Prime Minister Netanyahu, on his visit to Congress, refusing to shake his hand. For whom was Schumer performing his discourtesy? Who does he think he is, and what does he think might defend him, and his constituents, should the Caliphate come knocking?

Kamala Harris, as Vice President, is President of the US Senate. It was both her responsibility and her honour to preside over the Joint Session of Congress convened to hear Netanyahu. Instead, she chose to attend a reunion of her college sorority. Can one imagine a more appallingly calculated slight? Her absence announced that, under her administration, the United States will abandon Israel. And yet American Jews will support her.

I believe that a Jew who votes for the Democrats is a damned fool. I know that no one ever acts for any reason other than “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. What is the idea good enough to induce Jews to side with antisemites? It may be called liberalism, but it contains the unavowed fear of demonisation. The good news is that the Jew need not worry, as he has already been demonised.

As Rebecca West writes in her masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: “There are better things in life than fighting, but they are better only if their doers could have fought had they chosen.”

Seth Mandel: The Hippocratic Oath-Breakers

Of all the fields that have fallen victim to politicization, the damage will be felt most acutely in medicine and public health. That’s where the stakes are highest, especially in the education and training of the world’s future doctors and researchers. The latest trashing of medical norms and ethics comes in service of—what else?—rank Jew-hatred. Expect to see this more and more, since faddish left-wing politics increasingly govern global professional networks, and the litmus test of all litmus tests for that ideological cohort is anti-Zionism.

Hence, on Wednesday the Israeli branch of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) sent an email notifying interested parties of “IFMSA’s decision to suspend the Israeli medical students’ organization” for two years. IFMSA, launched in 1951, is a massive cooperative body of the world’s medical students. More than 100 countries participate in its conferences and student-exchange programs.

“This suspension can only be revoked by a two-thirds majority, which is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future,” notes the letter. “Despite our submission of letters from officials at the [World Health Organization], the IFMSA chose to ignore them and proceeded with the suspension without any proof of rule violations or a formal investigation. This decision directly contravenes the IFMSA’s constitution and bylaws, which were specifically suspended to facilitate our suspension.”

According to the email, a contingent of senior pro-Hamas members got particularly aggressive on Zoom calls and other shared spaces, and when the Israelis and some of their European counterparts called for an investigation, the Israelis were suspended. The Israeli association’s president, Miri Shvimmer, told Ynet that the vote was rushed through without proper advance notice. Prompted by the Palestinian observer group, Brazil’s association made the move, according to Shvimmer.

The suspension was made, according to the report, over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the country’s supposed “lack of morals and humanitarian values.”

Which is to say, the supposedly apolitical organization has now embraced politics at its most consequential. The suspension is an explicit national-origin discrimination, and IFMSA accepted the renunciation of its raison d’etre without blinking.

The Israelis are challenging the decision, of course. Israel Medical Association chairman Professor Zion Hagay made the obvious point in a letter to IFMSA president Evangelia Roubou: “The Israeli delegation is responsible for government actions just as the Palestinian delegation is responsible for Hamas terrorism.”

A New Approach to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated by Daniel Pipes

In his recent book Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated, Daniel Pipes makes the case that the strategies pursued by both the Jewish state and Western countries to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict will never succeed, and argues for a very different approach. Michael Mandelbaum writes in his review:

The people of Gaza have not—unlike the Israelis Hamas attacked on October 7—been targeted for massacre. Gazans have, however, lost their homes on a large scale. Hamas’s tactics have obliged the IDF to damage or destroy an appreciable proportion of the buildings in Gaza. That may diminish the commitment to rejectionism there.

In the West Bank, [Pipes] recommends that the fall of the Palestinian Authority be followed by “tough Israeli rule . . . along the lines of what exists in Egypt and Jordan,” which should be accompanied by a concerted, protracted campaign to change Palestinian attitudes toward Israel. This exercise in what was once called “winning the hearts and minds” of the target population forms the second component of the author’s formula for Israeli victory.

The prospects for the Pipes strategy’s success are uncertain. What is certain however—and what emerges from Israel Victory with a clarity that is either bracing or dismaying, depending on one’s point of view—is that the other, prevailing ways of ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict have failed.

08/09 Links Pt1: Dealing with the devil’s apologists; Hamas demands release of Marwan Barghouti; The unravelling of UNRWA: A crisis of credibility and conscience

From Ian:

US warns Tehran of ruinous response to major attack on Israel

The United States has cautioned Iran that it could face a devastating response from Israel if it carries out a major attack against the Jewish state.

A U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal that the message has been conveyed both directly to Tehran and through intermediaries, the paper reported on Thursday.

The Islamic Republic has vowed revenge for the targeted killing of Hamas terrorist chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week. Reports have surfaced this week that the mullah regime may be reconsidering the level of its response amid intensive diplomatic pressure and military force buildup by the Americans.

“The United States has sent clear messaging to Iran that the risk of a major escalation if they do a significant retaliatory attack against Israel is extremely high,” the official said.

Tehran is now aware “that there is a serious risk of consequences for Iran’s economy and the stability of its newly elected government if it goes down that path,” the official continued.

Arab diplomats have also pressed the Iranian government in recent days to de-escalate the situation, passing along a similar warning to that of the Americans, according to the Journal. At a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this week, members condemned the Haniyeh killing but stopped short of collectively supporting an Iranian attack on Israel.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, who entered office on July 28, has pleaded with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to avoid a direct attack on Israel, warning that it could threaten his presidency and lead to devastation of Iran’s infrastructure, energy and economy, the London-based Iran International reported.

Pezeshkian told the supreme leader that a harsh Israeli counterattack could lead to the collapse of the regime.

Iran’s new president battles revolutionary guard to stop all-out war with Israel

Iran’s new president is battling against the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in an attempt to prevent all-out war with Israel, The Telegraph has learned.

Tehran’s authorities are divided over how to respond to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, in the Iranian capital on July 31.

Top generals within the IRGC are insisting on a direct strike on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, focusing on military bases to avoid civilian casualties.

But Masoud Pezeshkian, the newly elected president and a comparative moderate who defeated the IRGC’s candidate in elections last month, has suggested targeting secret Israeli bases in Iran’s neighbouring countries.

Iran has previously targeted what it refers to as “spy bases” of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The IRGC has been trying to undermine Mr Pezeshkian in its pursuit of a more aggressive retaliation against Israel, aides of the president told The Telegraph.

Founded after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the new regime from domestic dissent, the IRGC has evolved into a sprawling organisation with significant influence over Iran’s military, economy and broader society.

The ultimate responsibility for deciding how Iran will respond rests with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

“Mr Pezeshkian fears that any direct attack on Israel would have serious consequences,” said a close aide to the president.

“He mentioned that we were lucky that Iran did not go to an all-out war with Israel last time and maybe not this time,” they added, referring to the April 13 attack when Iran fired more than 300 suicide drones and missiles at Israel.

Tehran’s attack came after a suspected Israeli strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate on April 1 killed seven high-ranking members of the IRGC.

On July 31 the tensions between the two arch-enemies escalated once again when Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political office, was assassinated in Tehran while attending Mr Pezeshkian’s inauguration.

The IRGC’s insistence on targeting Israel is “more about undermining his week-long presidency rather than covering the humiliation they have suffered,” said the presidential aide who spoke to The Telegraph from Tehran.

Ruthie Blum: Dealing with the devil’s apologists

In a statement released late Thursday night, the governments in Washington, Cairo and Doha performed a feat that’s been par for their course since Oct. 7: creating moral parity between Israel and the perpetrators of the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust.

“There is no further time to waste, nor excuses from any party for further delay,” the trio asserted. “It is time to release the hostages, begin the ceasefire and implement this agreement.”

Excuses. From any party.

This bit of chutzpah—signed by U.S. President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani—was characteristic of Hamas’s three stooges. Let’s look at this illustrious cast of characters.

First, there’s the cowering, absent leader of the free world, who’s been treating Benjamin Netanyahu as though he’s got the hostages chained up in the basement of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem—and who reportedly admonished Bibi to “stop bullshi**ing” about moving forward with negotiations for their release.

Then there’s the head of Israel’s longtime peace partner state that’s been turning a not-so-blind eye to the above-ground and subterranean transfer of construction materials and weapons to the terrorist enclave on the other side of its border.

Topping off the triumvirate is Hamas’s chief benefactor in the Gulf.

Their declaration began as follows: “It is time to bring immediate relief both to the long-suffering people of Gaza as well as the long-suffering hostages and their families. The time has come to conclude the ceasefire and hostages and detainees release deal.”

It continued, “The three of us and our teams have worked tirelessly over many months to forge a framework agreement that is now on the table with only the details of implementation left to conclude. This agreement is based on the principles as outlined by President [Joe] Biden on May 31, 2024, and endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2735.”

It was here that the “no excuses from any party for further delay” clause was inserted. As if to stress that fussing over the “details” was unreasonable, especially after the contingents in the United States, Egypt and Qatar had toiled so diligently over them.

However, it emphasized: “As mediators, if necessary, we are prepared to present a final bridging proposal that resolves the remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties.”

It concluded by “call[ng] on both sides to resume urgent discussion on Thursday, Aug. 15 in Doha or Cairo to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay.”

Netanyahu promptly accepted the invitation.

“Pursuant to the proposal by the U.S. and the mediators, Israel will—on Aug. 15—send the negotiations team to a place to be determined in order to finalize the details of the implementation of the framework agreement,” his office announced early Friday morning.

Lo and behold, Hamas suddenly came up with a new condition—or, at least, this is what Sky News Arabia reported on Friday after Netanyahu agreed to dispatch a delegation to Cairo or Doha in the coming week.

According to the broadcast, based on—what else?—anonymous sources, the terrorist group, now led exclusively by Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, has demanded the release from Israeli prison of arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, former head of Fatah’s Tanzim faction. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences for his role in the mass murder of Israelis during the Second Intifada.