Friday, August 16, 2024

  • Friday, August 16, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon

PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas addressed the parliament of Turkey on Thursday. 

The speech was filled with lies like "Israel's real goal from the war of extermination in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem is to uproot the Palestinian presence from our homeland, and to forcibly displace the Palestinians from Palestine once again. " His text included the words "genocide" and "starvation." He received plenty of standing ovations during the speech.

Usually, when PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas speaks to international forums, he will be careful to say that his goal is a Palestinian state on the so-called "1967 borders" with Jerusalem as its capital. It is a template he has used hundreds of times.

He didn't say that in his speech to the Turkish parliament on Thursday.

There is one small line that was in his written speech (it is unclear if it was said exactly like this, around 6:55 in the video), where he mentioned how all of Jerusalem was Palestinian and non-negotiable. But he went beyond that:

For you and for us, it is a red line. There is no one among us, nor from us, who would give up an atom of the soil of Palestine or a stone of Jerusalem, which is the trust of religion and the trust of history.

These speeches are finely tuned, and every word is chosen carefully. His not mentioning a two state solution, or that Israel has any rights to the lands at all, is deliberate and significant. And his saying that Muslims will not give up an atom of the soil of Palestine - not Jerusalem, but Palestine - was equally deliberate. 

When he says no one would give up an inch of "Palestine" he is clearly not referring to the West Bank and Gaza. That was a purposeful message to Turkey that the ultimate goal is all of Israel, and any two state solution is merely a stage towards that goal.  Yasir Arafat famously said in 1974 that the entire land would be captured in stages, and nothing that Abbas has ever said has contradicted it. 

An Abbas advisor said this more explicitly last year.  That is certainly what Palestinians are taught in schools and told in mosques, and they've said that in public opinion  polls - any peace deal is meant to be temporary on the way to taking over all of Israel.

Now Abbas said it, a little ellipically, but in a way that the audience in Turkey and the Muslim world understood perfectly.



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Thursday, August 15, 2024

  • Thursday, August 15, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ian will remain out the rest of the week. Today's attempt by me to reproduce his linkdump is anemic, but, hey, I tried.


Iran is weaker than we think. It’s time to take advantage.
Between Israel’s demonstrated ability to send a missile through Iranian air defense in April and its more recent capacity to take out a high-level asset in Tehran under the regime’s protection, Washington defense and intelligence planners should understand the Islamic Republic is far more fragile than its information operations would suggest. 

The Haniyeh assassination is a window for the U.S. to seize. This is not a time for restraint or de-escalation. This is a moment to maximize pressure on Khamenei, increase support for the Iranian people and improve the odds that the Islamic Republic crumbles into the ash heap of history. 

Judge Orders 2 Defendants in LA Restaurant Hate Crime Assault to Pay $1.6 Million in Damages

 A judge ordered two pro-Palestinian protestors to pay more than $1.6 million in damages to a hate crime victim following a 2021 attack outside of a Los Angeles sushi restaurant.

The incident occurred in May 2021, following  Israeli airstrikes against Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip. The protestors approached the Beverly Grove restaurant with pro-Palestinian flags, shouting slurs at Jewish diners. A brawl then ensued with a victim being assaulted. 

 Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt Harris campaign event by throwing smoke bombs - report

Pro-Palestinian protestors in New York reportedly interrupted an event in support of Democratic US presidential candidate Kamala Harris by throwing smoke bombs at the scene, resulting in the arrest of dozens.

In footage circulating on X, formally Twitter, a video published by the unofficial independent news outlet FreedomNews shows police officers pulling what appears to be pro-Palestine protesters out of the crowd and arresting them. Additionally, the video shows a considerable amount of smoke, possibly from a smoke bomb allegedly being thrown.

Western Europe’s Hamas Networks Operate Openly

Gives open-source evidence of Hamas involement in various European organizations like the Palestinian Return Centre, Interpal, and the European Palestinian Council for Political Relations.


The official revocation notice of the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s charity status, published in the Canada Gazette on Aug. 10, caught many by surprise. Lance Davis, CEO of JNF Canada, says the venerable Jewish charity was “blindsided” by the Canada Revenue Agency’s move because it came so quickly, despite efforts to negotiate a solution. It also came only two weeks after JNF Canada said that, if no deal was reached, it would appeal the government’s “biased” findings to the Federal Court of Appeal.

Experts say losing the charitable status means JNF Canada can no longer issue tax receipts for donations; it has one year to wind down business, and dispose of all its financial assets or pay 100 percent tax on the millions in its accounts.

 America’s Persian fifth column (Melanie Phillips)

Is the Biden-Harris administration an Iranian fifth column?

The extraordinary situation has arisen, in the deadly game of geopolitical multi-dimensional chess that Israel is being forced to play in the war being waged against it by Iran, where the Jewish state has remarkably achieved checkmate — but as a result, America is trying to cancel the match.

 Can Josh Shapiro’s Party Forgive Him for Telling the Truth in 1993? (Ruth Wisse)

The damage antisemitism has done to the Democratic Party and the country isn’t best reflected by Kamala Harris’s rejecting Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Far more telling is the Pennsylvania governor’s apology for an opinion piece he published in his college newspaper.

On Aug. 2 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story titled “Josh Shapiro once wrote that peace ‘will never come’ to the Middle East. He says his views have changed over 30 years.” Whether intended as negative research or honest vetting of a prospective nominee, the newspaper treated Mr. Shapiro’s college op-ed as an indiscretion he has since tried to correct.

Actually, his article, published when he was 20, was so sound that it could have proved his qualifications for leadership. Its context, which the Inquirer usefully supplied, was the Sept. 13, 1993, signing of the Oslo accords, which put Yasser Arafat in charge of the Palestinian Authority and, territorially, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Recalling Neville Chamberlain’s proclamation of “peace for our time” after meeting with Hitler in 1938, the younger Mr. Shapiro found it “extremely difficult to trust a man with as much blood on his hands as Arafat, who was also on both the Israeli and American lists of international terrorists.”

As an advocate of peace and “realism,” Mr. Shapiro described Arafat as an “egotistical power-hungry tyrant” who didn’t represent majority Palestinian opinion and was unlikely to control other warring factions like Hezbollah. To his sorrow, Mr. Shapiro believed that “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully.” “They do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States,” he added. Once they tired of fighting among themselves, they would turn against Israel. Not satisfied with Gaza and Jericho, they would “demand . . . Jerusalem.”

Refuting the Common Campus Lies Told About Israel: "Settler Colonialism" (Andrew Pessin)

  Jews are not outsiders but the oldest surviving indigenous inhabitants of this land. Per Israel’s Declaration of Independence, “the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people”: the Jews formed their national identity there by about 1200 BCE, had sovereignty, autonomy, or dominant presence there for some 1400 years, maintained a continuous presence for the next 2000 years, and made relentless efforts to return in small groups and large. The establishment of Israel was in fact the first and perhaps only case where an indigenous people reclaimed (and thus “decolonized”) the homeland that others had colonized. Those promoting “decolonization” really should be siding with the Jews.

 The big lie of genocide & Gaza: Seven experts on Nazi genocide expose the canard of Israeli 'crimes'

In our work at the U.S. Department of Justice as prosecutors of Hitler’s henchmen, we meticulously investigated acts of genocide — and then we proved them in court. We feel impelled to declare that any fair review of the verifiable, publicly available facts shows that the accusation of genocide against Israel is false and indeed outrageous.

Simply put, we have seen no evidence of Israeli commission of genocide, and there is much evidence that disproves that charge — including the recent report that, since October, Israel has facilitated the entry of more than 870 metric tons of food and other humanitarian aid to Gaza’s two million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Hamas attacks or plunders food shipments, and it has denied Gazan civilians access to vast storehouses of food and medicines that it secreted in its tunnels before Oct. 7.

Genocide is defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as killing and other specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Israel has targeted only Hamas and its terrorist group partners, not the civilian population of Gaza. Hamas is not a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; it is a designated terrorist organization that itself engages in genocidal acts.

Israel has, in fact, done more than any other military has ever done to minimize civilian casualties during large-scale urban warfare, even sacrificing the lives of many of its own soldiers in the process. For example, Israeli forces drop warning leaflets, distribute maps, and place automated phone calls to civilians in Gaza to identify areas in which combat is planned, in order to enable civilians to evacuate in advance.

Avi Shlaim Falsifies Iraqi Jewish History (CAMERA)

 The thesis? That Jews are to blame for the wholesale flight of the Jewish community from Iraq. Four explosions set off by Iraqi Zionists, Shlaim insists, succeeded at terrorizing fellow Jews into emigrating.

Why is it untenable? Above all, because it defies the basic relationship between cause and effect. In truth, an overwhelming majority of those who would register to leave had already done so by the time of the first bombing Shlaim pins on Jews. The remaining three allegedly Jewish explosions were even less consequential, as they occurred only after the year-long period in which Jews could register to leave—and so after all 105,000 Jews who would ultimately register had already done so.

At best, then, Shlaim’s argument is incoherent. This isn’t science fiction. The future didn’t cause the past.

Worse, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the author misled his audience in bad faith. After all, an Oxford historian writing about the bombings and exodus should be aware of the chronology. One whose bibliography cites Professor Moshe Gat’s indispensable research on the topic surely would be. But the book doesn’t grapple with, or even hint at, the inconvenient truth that undermines its bombshell thesis.

More alarmingly, Shlaim changes the date of one of the bombings, an egregious falsification of history that, conveniently, makes his argument seem more plausible.

 Fringe comedian’s ‘joke’ drives couple from venue

American comedian Reginald D Hunter has been accused of going “far beyond the bounds of acceptable comedy” and “a sickening low” after an Edinburgh Festival Fringe audience told a couple to “f**k off” amid chants of “free Palestine” when they objected to his joke about Israel.

According to audience member Dominic Cavendish, chief theatre critic for The Telegraph, the “ugliest Edinburgh Fringe moment ever” then unfurled.

In a scathing review of the performance, he wrote: “The pair, who said they were from Israel, then endured their fellow audience members shouting expletives (‘f*** off’ among them), and telling them to go – with slow-hand claps, boos and cries of ‘genocidal maniac’, ‘you’re not welcome’ and ‘free Palestine’ part of the toxic mix.”

The couple eventually left the venue as Hunter is said to have “openly laughed” at them, while the audience continued to heckle as they exited the hall.

 The history of Hamas' lifeline: 20 years of broken Egyptian pledges along Philadelphi Corridor

The story of the Philadelphi Corridor spans over four decades of smuggling, broken promises, accusations and indirectly, numerous casualties. This has long been a problem for Israel, as the transfer of weapons, terrorists, infiltrators and goods beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt was a known and frustrating issue long before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and even before the disengagement in 2005.

However, only during the massacre of October 7 and the subsequent war did the extent of its impact on building a terrorist army in the Gaza Strip become evident.

 The Palestinian ‘Traitor’ Risking Everything to Speak Out (Free Press)

His story is one of setbacks, hardships, and discrimination, but also of hard work, perseverance, unlikely friendships, and in the end—against all odds—success. 

But then his life was ruined. . . by a social media post. On October 7, he woke up in his home in the West Bank to the news of the massacre happening inside Israel. While some people in his community celebrated, he was horrified. He posted online how he felt: “What sad and horrible news to wake up to and out of words and unable to digest what’s going on right now. I’m Palestinian and firmly stand against this terror. I pray for the safety of my friends, colleagues, their loved ones and everyone else affected.” He continued to post about how he felt—six posts in total.

Suddenly, he says, 500 people unfollowed or unfriended him on social media sites. People blocked him on WhatsApp and, in real life, people stopped speaking to him altogether. 

And then, people started calling him a “traitor.” And as he told me in this interview, the word traitor means something in the West Bank. “It means they are going to kill you.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in matters of public policy, today declared its support for the lawsuit brought by Benjamin Neel, MD, PhD, against his former employer, NYU Langone Health. A respected cancer researcher with an exemplary record and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Neel used his private X account to share political cartoons condemning Hamas and the brutal October 7 attack on Israel. NYU Langone Health then terminated his employment, accusing him of “insidiously sharing racially and ethnically offensive posts on social media without regard for the potential impact on others.” CJV is proud to partner with X and Dr. Neel to challenge his termination.

Iran's ring of fire surrounds Israel - Interview with Gadi Taub 



Here is one of the more bizarre takes I've seen on Iran's fear of striking Israel.








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Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Kibbutz Nahal Oz, August 15 - The Israeli Military Engineer Corps unearthed the cord for your device that you couldn't remember misplacing, an army spokesman announced today.

IDF soldiers working to widen the empty area at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt demolished twenty buildings in the last several days, in the rubble of which they found your phone charger, said unit spokesman Colonel Matt Ein.

"In the course of work to secure the buffer zone for the long-term safety of our troops, Corps engineers found the item in the ruins of a three-story apartment building," stated Col. Ein. He noted that it matches the description of the one you forgot where you put it last month.

"It will be available at the Kissufim Base starting tomorrow," he added.

Israel has entrenched its military presence along the Gaza Strip's frontier with Egypt as part of a strategy to eliminate the resupply of weapons and other materials to Hamas and the other terrorist organizations operating in the territory. The IDF has discovered dozens of tunnels, some spacious enough to accommodate small trucks. The long-term operations to locate and neutralize the tunnels may take years, during which time the IDF will need an area clear of potential sniper positions in which to conduct the work.

You claim to have last used your phone charger late last week, perhaps Thursday afternoon, and since then cannot recall where you might have placed it. In the meantime, you have borrowed substitutes from increasingly-annoyed siblings, coworkers, roommates, and erstwhile friends, each of whom hoped you would decide quickly to simply replace the missing charger instead of continuing to pester them when they were not the ones who could not keep track of a simple piece of technology.

This week's discovery throws a wrench into the works of that expectation. Relief showed on the face of your nearest coworker, which transformed into dread upon his realization that you will in all likelihood decide to retrieve your charger from the IDF when you get the chance, and not acquire a replacement, which means that until that unknown time when you finally get your act together to go pick the damn thing up, you will continue to rely on the chargers of those around you and those around you are already sick of your irresponsible, freeloading ways.

Colonel Ein also announced the unit has uncovered a tremendous number of house and car keys, single socks, and that ninth-grade homework assignment you completed but failed to hand in and no one believed you when you swore up and down you'd done the work.




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 Hamas is Perpetrating Genocide Against—Gazans

 There is no shortage of people claiming that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. That the allegation is not merely false but ludicrous has been established by, among others, military expert John Spencer, seven experts on genocide, and friend of the blog Andrew Pessin. An essential component of “genocide” is intent, and that, as Spencer puts it, “Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war,” is simply indisputable. These measures include the massive aid Israel facilitates to Gaza, the building of field hospitals, the existence of military units to minimize civilian damage, and the millions of leaflets and phone calls warning civilians, not to mention all the explicit statements made by Israeli political and military leaders that their war is with Hamas—and that the war ends immediately when Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages.

 In fact, as Pessin has noted, the only genocidal party to the conflict is Hamas, against the Jews:

Hamas, the [direct] descendant of the same Muslim Brotherhood that contributed to the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews, the organization whose charter openly endorses the genocide of all Jews, who attempted an act of genocide on October 7, and who has openly and repeatedly declared its intentions to “repeat October 7” as many times as is necessary to remove the Jews

But what hasn’t been appreciated is that Hamas is also guilty of genocide—against Gazans. They are in fact engaging in the genocide of their own people.

One of the definitions of genocide under the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." And this is exactly what Hamas has been doing to the Gazan civilian population.

Hamas initiated the war with its barbaric massacre on October 7, a massive escalation that they knew would bring a similarly massive Israeli military response. They know that they are the target of Israeli airstrikes whenever hostilities break out. Yet for nearly two decades, they have not built a single bomb shelter for the people, even as they dug hundreds of miles of tunnels and bunkers for themselves. They knew that Israel would attempt to kill them and then deliberately created an infrastructure where the civilians of Gaza would literally be in the way. For two decades they had every opportunity to move their military facilities away from the people. But they didn't. As a matter of deliberate strategy.

In 2014, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, admitted that sometimes Hamas fired rockets from residential areas, although he claimed they were "mistakes." Yet the evidence that Hamas fires from houses, mosques, schools, and “safe” humanitarian areas, and does on a regular basis, and has done so for years, is overwhelming. Just this week they released a video of themselves, in civilian clothes, firing two rockets from inside a tent in a humanitarian area. They do this knowing Israel will quite legitimately strike back—which means they are calculating actions that will bring about the physical destruction of Gaza, its civilians, in whole or in part. 

They expect huge amounts of damage and death of civilians. They create the circumstances for it to happen. And they do so deliberately, in full knowledge of the consequences.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg. They don’t merely fire from civilian buildings that should be “protected” by international humanitarian law but have fully militarized them, using hospitals, houses, mosques, and schools as command centers, to house their servers and fighters, to store weapons, to hide hostages in, and so forth, thus converting them into legitimate military targets. They have built those hundreds of miles of military tunnels under literally every building, booby-trapping buildings, making nearly every building a legitimate military target. Those booby-traps, and the extensive use of IEDs, have caused the deaths of numerous IDF soldiers in recent months; but unreported is how many ordinary Gazans may have been killed by Hamas simply trying to enter their booby-trapped homes or on the way.

They have turned all of Gaza into a life-threatening, legitimate military target.

And yet there’s more.

Numerous reports confirm Hamas’s efforts to prevent civilians from moving out of harm’s way, by blocking or blowing up roads or again by shooting them. Numerous reports also confirm that Hamas regularly steals the humanitarian aid that Israel helps deliver, often shooting Gazans who try to access the aid (or otherwise resist their rule). They have repeatedly attacked the very crossings that deliver the aid, shutting them down for days until Israel takes it upon itself to repair them and resume deliveries. In just one incident in May, 2024, Hamas killed four IDF soldiers in an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing, shutting down one of the largest aid-crossing sites. Just reflect on the absurdity of this situation: Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, kill Israeli soldiers to stop the delivery of aid to Gazan civilians, while Israel sacrifices its soldiers to continue the delivery of aid, to Gazan civilians—and yet Israel is charged with “genocide”!

Not only do they deliberately use civilians as human shields across the entire Gaza Strip, in other words, they murder them to prevent them from escaping the danger and undertake extensive actions to deprive them of humanitarian aid—to starve them, in effect, while turning their abodes and places of refuge into legitimate military targets and thus sites to be destroyed.

All of the above occurs, undeniably, deliberately, with the intent essential for “genocide”: Hamas repeatedly undertakes actions that either directly cause, or whose clearly foreseeable consequences are, conditions bringing about the physical destruction, in part or in whole, of the Gazan civilian population. Murdering people attempting to get to safety, and starving them by stealing their aid, are as direct as can be, while initiating the war in the first place with that barbaric massacre, after having turned the entire Strip into a military site, is only slightly less so.

Penultimately, consider this: During the past ten months, when Hamas and the world have been decrying the destruction of Gaza and (falsely) alleging Israeli genocide, it has been within Hamas’s power to end it all instantly by surrendering and returning the hostages. As simple as that, they could stop the destruction, and have had the power to stop it every day for ten months—and chosen not to exercise it. This is a deliberate choice to sacrifice the blood and treasure of Gazans to pursue their nihilistic aims. 

And finally, their own statements prove that they want to see the deaths of their own people.



In just one of many similar statements by various Hamas leaders, late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in October, "I have said this before, and I say it time again: The blood of the women, children, and elderly…...We are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens within us resolve, so it awakens within us the spirit of challenge, and [pushes us] to move forward."

Hamas is perpetrating genocide—against its own people.

(Originally this was a different article, but Andrew Pessin had reworked an earlier version, and then there was an editing catastrophe, so this is a combination of mine and Andrew's writings.)

  • Thursday, August 15, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
If you ask Microsoft's image generating AI, based on the DALL-E engine,  to draw a Star of David, you get an error message, saying that this is an "unsafe image." 


They say it violates their content policy which includes images of violence or racism. 

I can understand that people could use AI to generate antisemitic images based on the Jewish symbol, but just asking for the symbol itself with no other context should not ever be considered a problem. Asking for a Christian cross or a Muslim crescent is no problem.



Several hours after I tweeted this, another person tried it and did get a result. 


He didnt capitalize "star" so I tried it the exact same way he wrote it - and did get a result.


So this is not necessariy malicious, but DALL-E's attempts to be politically correct end up often discriminating against the people it is trying to protect.


When I tried to get around it by asking for a Jewish symbol, every response included a Star of David - but in a church-like setting.


"A Muslim symbol" generates these quite pretty patterns.


When I asked for "an angry Jew," "an angry Muslim" and "an angry Christian," Microsoft refused the first two, but enthusiastically responded to the third:


Most interesting was when I asked for a Jewish, Christian and Muslim protester.

Every single Muslim protester was calmly and smilingly seeking love and peace.



The Christian protesters all called to love thy neighbor, and the Jewish protesters called for justice or equality. (Misspellings are standard in AI, although that is improving.)






It would not draw "anti-Israel protestors" or "Palestinian protesters."

AI is not dispassionate. It is programmed to reflect the bias of its creators. But, like "fact checkers" and "experts" it is presented as being above bias. And that positioning ends up creating more bias than it combats. 





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  • Thursday, August 15, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon




Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza, according to senior American officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished.

With the Biden administration racing to get cease-fire negotiations back on track, a growing number of national security officials across the government said that the Israeli military had severely set back Hamas but would never be able to completely eliminate the group.
It then admits something else about these same US officials.
In many respects, Israel’s military operation has done far more damage against Hamas than U.S. officials had predicted when the war began in October.

Israeli forces can now move freely throughout Gaza, the officials said, and Hamas is bloodied and damaged. Israel has destroyed or seized crucial supply routes from Egypt into Gaza. About 14,000 combatants in Gaza have been killed or captured, the Israeli military said last month. (The U.S. intelligence agencies use different, more conservative methodologies to estimate Hamas casualties, though the precise number remains classified.)

The Israeli military also asserted that it had eliminated half the leadership of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, including the top leaders Muhammad Deif and Marwan Issa.

But one of Israel’s biggest remaining goals — the return of the roughly 115 living and dead hostages still held in Gaza after being seized in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — cannot be achieved militarily, according to current and former American and Israeli officials.
So these officials were completely wrong in October. They were also wrong about Israel's taking Rafah, which they now admit is exactly what destroyed Hamas' supply lines from Egypt - and cost far fewer casualties thna they had confidently predicted. 

But the US wants to send a message to Israel, and the New York Times is more than happy to do their bidding:

William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, is due in Qatar on Thursday. Brett McGurk, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, has headed to Egypt and Qatar. Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser, landed in Lebanon. One of the messages the officials are expected to deliver is that there is little more Israel can accomplish against Hamas.  
Which is the entire point. This article isn't reporting; it is a mouthpiece for Biden administration talking points. 

If you look at what Israel has actually been doing, you would see that its success is not diminishing, but increasing. As it gathers more intelligence from captured terrorists and taking materials it discovers, it is getting more and more accurate than when it started.

In October, Israel tried to bomb the tunnels from the air. At the time, their extent and depth were not known as well as they are now. The percentage of civilians killed was much higher.

Consistently, Israel has gotten better and better at targeting the terrorists. The entire reason that the Palestinians made up huge casualty lies about the airstrike on the Al Taabin school is becase it was a triumph of intelligence, taking out over 30 terrorists gathered in the mosque - a proportional attack by any definition of the term under international law. 

Andrew Fox describes how Israel's military accomplishents are incredible, and how patience is needed for an enemy like that. And he describes this NYT article before it was even written:

This is not, and never has been, a counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operation—It is a conventional urban war against an irregular but fully formed terror army, with their own underground citadel. Yet many Western analysts are incapable of seeing the conflict through anything but the lens of post-9/11 operations. The refrain, echoing official Biden-Harris administration talking points, is that Israel should be doing what the West tried and failed to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, Israel needs to make sure it follows our lead and lose.

Hamas will fight for as long as its commanders remain in control. The IDF’s operational plan at this point is to force them to crack when they understand their own lives are in danger. The IDF has its boot on Hamas’ throat and will keep pressing until it quits.

This, in turn, is why Washington’s unrelenting campaign to force a cease-fire is so pernicious: It attempts to ensure Hamas will survive and have a vote in the outcome of the war. So far, Netanyahu has resisted the pressure, allowing the IDF to continue tightening the vise until Hamas is forced to agree to Israel’s terms for a cease-fire. Israel does not accept the artificial Western separation of diplomacy from military force, as if they were opposite tools with conflicting objectives. It is leveraging both toward the same goal.

The IDF is only midway through a gargantuan task. The job is far from finished, but it is making progress. At this point, the only thing that can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and ensure the survival of the Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist group on Israel’s border, is Washington.
Biden wants the war to go away, and if that means leaving Hamas in place to rise another day, well, the Democrats have an election to win which is the real priority. 






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  • Thursday, August 15, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon









My first posts on this blog were on August 15, 2004.

At first my posts were just links to news articles, sometimes with a one-line intro. It took a few months before things evolved to my writing original articles. But on Day 2, I posted this series of photos I took and stitched together of Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. (There were no panoramic photo options on cell phone cameras then. In fact, I probably used an old digital camera, not a phone at all, to take these photos.)


As I note in my FAQ, I started writing about Israel a couple of years earlier in Yahoo message boards. I soon realized that my well-reasoned arguments were only visible to a few people for a few hours before they would scroll off the screen, and I started blogging to make them a little more permanent. 

Over the years, I've posted nearly 42,000 articles, essays, commentary, original analysis, many scoops, cartoons, memes, videos, song parodies, posters, at least one play parody, an original Haggadah, historical research, webcasts, original artwork, AI-derived artwork, awards shows and more on Israel, the Arab world, Judaism and more. Not to mention hosting guest posts and columns, as well as the best daily list of links on Israel and Jewish related topics anywhere on the web from the incomparable Ian. 

Elder of Ziyon gets millions of readers a year. It has also spun off a Twitter/X account with over 100,000 followers, as well as a Facebook, Instagram pages and a couple of YouTube channels. I've given lectures in the US and Israel, and  I've been quoted in many major media over the years. I've met with fellow online warriors and interviewed newsmakers. I've won awards, and articles have been written about me. 

Being anonymous - and using the name I use - limits my popularity to some extent, but EoZ is definitely influential. Many if not most of the popular social media personalities also follow me. 

I am humbled at the support I receive. I appreciate all words of support and, of course, donations and purchases of my book. 

Thank you to all my fans all my supporters, all my columnists and writers and contributors, and the community in the comments section. 

I never imagined I'd be doing this for twenty years. My wish is that one day the media would do what I do and this site would be utterly redundant. 

Until then, let's enjoy the ride. 





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!

 

 

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

  • Wednesday, August 14, 2024
  • Elder of Ziyon
It turns out Ian's situation (which is medical) has not improved, and it will be a couple more days at least. Sorry for the sub-par linkdumps.

I'm fairly fast at creating posts, and yesterday's - which was perhaps 25% of Ian's normal output -  took me about 90 minutes. Today's is at 2 hours and counting. 

Ian's daily efforts in creating these linkdumps day in and day out are nothing short of heroic. Even more than I had thought!
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The IDF’s Boot Is on Hamas’ Throat (Andrew Fox)

There is desperation in Western media to declare Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Operation Swords of Iron, a failure. Over the past several months, there has been a steady supply of analysis beating the same drum: Israel is not winning. Hamas remains intact. The Israeli government has no plan. The very notion of a military victory is illusory. And so on. It’s a genre unto itself—one which, unsurprisingly, tracks precisely with the official talking points of the Biden-Harris administration and other Western governments that have been trying to bend Israel’s operation against Hamas to fit their own failed paradigms.

Hamas, whether it still has cohesive battalions or not, has been unable to land a decisive blow against the IDF since the start of ground maneuver operations. The IDF has killed some 17,000 Hamas fighters, and Hamas’ senior leadership has taken significant casualties, including the group’s former head, Ismail Haniyeh, and before that, its top military commander Muhammad Deif. Those who are still alive are in hiding. The group’s battalion command structure is badly damaged. Their weapons manufacturing capability is diminished. They cannot launch a repeat of Oct. 7. The Philadelphi Corridor has been seized and the tunnels to Egypt are being dismantled. Importantly, Netanyahu’s office has stressed that Israel has no plans to cede control of the corridor.

At the start of the war, Western analysts and government officials told us that none of this could be done. In less than 10 months, this is an impressive achievement by the IDF, given the remarkable built-in defensive capabilities of Hamas. Finishing the job will take longer still.
The story of the Philadelphi Corridor spans over four decades of smuggling, broken promises, accusations and indirectly, numerous casualties. This has long been a problem for Israel, as the transfer of weapons, terrorists, infiltrators and goods beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt was a known and frustrating issue long before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and even before the disengagement in 2005.
However, only during the massacre of October 7 and the subsequent war did the extent of its impact on building a terrorist army in the Gaza Strip become evident.


In recent days, soldiers from the Givati Brigade operated in the Shabura area in Rafah under the command of the 162nd Division, where they eliminated approximately 100 terrorists, and numerous weapons and terror infrastructure sites were destroyed. 

Off grid: How does Yahya Sinwar lead Hamas from underground? - analysis

Recent reports have painted a picture of Sinwar on the run, leaving rooms in tunnels with the coffee still hot, as he has been pursued. This may be accurate, but it also shows that he continues to find a way to work behind the scenes to control Hamas. The fact that Hamas has elevated him now to its “political” leadership shows that there is no difference between the “military” and “political” wings of Hamas and that the mastermind of the October 7 genocide is firmly in control. He uses couriers to pass messages, the recent reports indicated.

 Who Is Ilan Goldenberg, Kamala Harris’s New Liaison to the Jews?

Goldenberg has longstanding ties to the anti-Israel group J Street and served as a foreign policy adviser to Elizabeth Warren’s failed 2020 presidential bid. Throughout his professional career, both in and out of government, he has served as a public defender of the Democratic party’s criticisms of Israel, a critic of the GOP’s efforts to strengthen ties with the Jewish state, and a proponent of deepening diplomatic relations with Iran.

Before joining the Biden administration in 2021, Goldenberg participated in a briefing organized by the anti-Israel group J Street in which he described President Joe Biden’s historically pro-Israel view as "old school" and said the United States must "publicly criticize the Israelis" in order to pressure them to accept a ceasefire.

Goldenberg was also a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s approach to the region, panning the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which he described as a "bad idea" that should only take place if the United States accompanies it with a "formal recognition of the state of Palestine."

China Is Now Goading Iran into Attacking Israel

 China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on August 11 told Iran's acting foreign minister that Beijing supports the Islamic Republic defending its "sovereignty, security, and national dignity." Wang said that killing Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist group's political leader, in Tehran violated Iran's sovereignty and threatened regional stability.

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.

Why would the Chinese foreign minister do that? Perhaps because Beijing believes that its proxy, Iran, is losing a war and has to act fast.

Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran's regime believes that it is no one's proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.

Whether Iran is China's claw or not, Tehran could not have launched the October 7 war without the direct and indirect support of the Chinese state.

 Report: Iran's central bank crippled in massive cyberattack

A major cyber attack has targeted the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and several other banks, causing widespread disruptions in the country's banking system, according to a report by Iran International.

Iran International, a news outlet aligned with the Iranian opposition, said the scale and impact of the attack suggest it could be one of the largest cyberattacks on Iran's state infrastructure to date. This incident occurs against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East and international pressure on Iran.

 For Lasting Peace, Keep the IDF in Gaza

Since Israel withdrew in 2005, Gazans have endured two decades of fanatical rule. They are now suffering from a war that Hamas began by killing 1,200 Israelis. What ails Gaza is not a lack of autonomy or even a government without popular legitimacy––Hamas received a majority of seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and most Gazans still support the October 7th massacre. The basic problem is misrule by a terror group too long unresisted by the IDF.

The West Bank since October 7 is altogether different. Although Israel has fought terrorist cells in the northern cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, nothing like Gaza-grade destruction has been visited upon West Bank Palestinians. West Bank terrorism is simply less threatening to Israelis, because over two decades of ongoing Israeli operations before October 7—sometimes assisted and sometimes opposed by Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian Authority—have kept terror networks from forming.

 Israel should finish off Hamas and resist the Biden-Harris demands for concessions to terrorists (NY Post)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned Mideast trip will mean more pressure on Israel to make concessions to Hamas, yet Jerusalem’s best course is to push on and finish off the terrorists.

At this point, Hamas’ central goal is simply to hang on long enough for Kamala Harris to win in November and then save it from final eradication.

Iran is helping out: Its officials now claim Tehran will shelve plans to retaliate against Israel for killing Hamas boss Ismail Haniyeh if Jerusalem engages in good-faith cease-fire talks.

Meanwhile, Hamas boss Yahya Sinwar is reportedly demanding Israel cease fire now as a precondition for cease-fire talks, which would give him immediate breathing room and let him stretch out the talks for months.

In fact, Iran actually wants an excuse to hold off: It fears losing face if it doesn’t respond to the killing of Haniyah in Tehran, but its last strike at Israel was an embarrassing bust. And if it escalates now, it risks an IDF counter-strike that could smash its oil industry, costing the regime big-time and potentially feeding mass unrest.

 The Secret War Behind the Exchanges of Fire in the North

The current war of attrition in Israel’s north is not just a series of reaction equations. It is a race to learn about the enemy and prepare for a battle in which both sides will try to overwhelm the opposing military force. The exchanges of fire are providing Hezbollah with an opportunity to study the Israeli air defense system in detail. This is a serious risk that deserves to be given its due weight. 

 Democrats have been trying to strike a balance maintaining the party’s traditional support for Israel while accommodating anti-Israel activists (Jewish Insider)

The [Harris] campaign, along with its Democratic allies, has gone out of its way to appeal to the anti-Israel voices in the party, without receiving much in return. The party still faces the specter of disruptive protests in Chicago.

The campaign appears to think it would be politically risky to draw a red line, and it’s more convenient to try and maintain a big tent that includes virulently anti-Israel voices. Tolerating extremes has certainly been a bipartisan trend lately in politics.

 Katherine Brodsky: The 'good Jews' trotted out to bash Israel (National Post)

Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJVC), which claim to speak on behalf of a subset of Jews, are frequently propped up by media as representatives of the “Jewish” community. They tokenize fringe Jews for political means. JVP, by the way, consists of many non-Jews as well, with one of its chapter co-founders being Ibraheem Samirah, a Palestinian-American politician.

They appropriate Jewish symbols, wear watermelon-themed kippahs and betray their ignorance by printing Hebrew words left-to-right, instead of correctly writing right-to-left. It’s obvious that the connection of many participants to their Jewishness is being over-exaggerated for effect, given that text direction is basic knowledge for even the most secular Jews.

Meanwhile, IJVC has promoted articles to its followers from white supremacist websites. One such article falsely claimed that no more than one million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and justified antisemitism as a natural response to Israel’s policies. (IJVC later removed the postings promoting the articles, and apologized for the “oversight.”)

Britain’s leaders have blinded themselves to the growing Islamist threat

The far-Right is a topic our leaders, and many pundits, enjoy talking and writing about because it is an easy subject to approach. Just as apple pie and motherhood (must we say “parenthood” nowadays?) are universally beloved, so fascists are, naturally and rightly, despised. No politician ever lost votes by decrying the far-Right.

But what if it turned out that the much bigger threat to life and limb in Britain came not from the skin-headed thugs who go on a looting spree every few years, but from Islamists? Statistics and facts, those unpopular and inconvenient irritants in politics, suggest that is indeed the case. Nearly 100 innocent UK residents have been murdered by Islamist terrorists since 2005. And yet the orchestrated and almost universal silence from parliament in response to this clear and present danger has been deafening.

The Palestinian Authority has made denial of Jewish history in the Land of Israel and denial of the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish history into cornerstones of its ideology. It denies all facts and historical evidence, calling Jewish history “fabricated,” “forged,” consisting of “delusional myths,” “lies,” “libels,” “legends,” and “stolen heritage.” It is the essence of the pot calling the kettle black, as it is the Palestinians who are guilty of claiming Jewish history as their own. Aspiring to create a state on land in which they have no ancient national or political roots, the Palestinian leadership feels very much threatened by thousands of years of well-documented Jewish history in the Land of Israel. The PA has thus made the rejection of any Jewish connection to the Temple, Jerusalem, or Israel into their recurring mantras.


The valuations of Israeli public companies are nearly 40% lower than global companies (as measured with both price to earnings and price to book). An efficient skilled-labor force full of ambitious entrepreneurs with startup expertise makes investment dollars go further than in other developed markets. Many Israeli companies are also bringing solutions to issues we care about such as healthcare, sustainability, green energy and food scarcity.

Investing in Israel today may seem counterintuitive, but it is resoundingly attractive. The case for Israel starts with high-quality companies at low valuations and extends to social and environmental progress along with the advancement of regional prosperity. Our ultimate goal is for Israel’s success not only to benefit our investors but to bring peace, freedom and prosperity to all residents of the Middle East.

Virtual speed-dating will take place August 20 at 9 p.m. Jerusalem time; and 8 p.m. New York time. The event will be run online via DateNight AI’s virtual platform. 
Young cocoa trees undergoing research in southern Israel were abandoned when the war broke out on October 7 and were stuck in a closed military zone. But some survived







Antisemite pro Palestinian protestor in London: "Hitler knew how to deal with these people"


Israeli comedian Uri Cohn encounters a pro Palestinian in Los Angeles


(satire) 






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!

 

 

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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