Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Miriam Kresh: Israeli food writer and online cooking coach (Judean Rose)

Miriam Kresh was 17 when she learned to make rice by her mother’s side, in the style of Latin America. Producing the perfect bowl of rice, each grain separate and with the right amount of bite, was for Miriam a revelatory process. The cook needs only to follow the age-old steps, step by step, for flawless results. Miriam did just that, following the steps as she stood alongside her mother, cooking rice. It was in those moments that Venezuelan-born Miriam Kresh, a food writer, cook, and cooking teacher, first encountered kitchen magic.

In the years following that first pot of rice, Miriam, now 70, moved from place to place, living in the United States, Venezuela, and Brazil before making Aliyah in 1976. Today, Miriam Kresh makes her home in Petach Tikvah, Israel. The food she cooks, the recipes she develops and teaches, all reflect her journey, and all of it is delicious.

You don’t have to imagine it—tucked into the following Q&A is a mouthwatering recipe from Miriam’s Kitchen. Miriam Kresh is gracious like that.

Varda Epstein: What can you tell us about your background? You come from an intriguing mix of cultures.

I was born in Venezuela, of an American dad and Nicaraguan mom. I lived in the States for ten formative years, during which English became my most important language. My parents were cultured, cosmopolitan people who enjoyed cooking and eating foods from many different cuisines. Mom had a fine palate and a fine hand in the kitchen. While cholent and chicken soup were Shabbat standards, she would occasionally produce a sumptuous dish like duck a l’orange. She set a high standard in home cooking, and I’ve done my best to keep it.

Varda Epstein: Who taught you how to cook? How do those early cooking adventures impact on your cuisine and your methods, today? I remember you once telling me that you always have to have a tomato in there, somewhere!

Miriam Kresh: Yes, I love a juicy tomato, but I was probably talking about garlic. I love garlic, to the point where my family and friends make fun of it.

My mother taught me the first dish I ever cooked, when I was age 17. It was rice, Latin American style. Mom taught me to first toast the rinsed, drained rice in a little oil, then add salt and crushed garlic. Next, to stir in boiling water, and cover the pot tightly. Cook at very low heat for 20 minutes until all the water has been absorbed and each grain is separate and tender. Rice made this way goes through frying, seasoning, and steaming. This taught me multiple lessons, not only about flavor, texture, and timing, but also about focus. The essential lesson was to pay attention. Cooking has taught me a lot about mindfulness.

Once I understood that cooking involves a flow of successive stages, learning other dishes was natural. As I became more confident and discovered a certain culinary talent, I made a point of learning from other cooks whose food I admired. Having kept kosher now for 50 years, I’ve learned to adapt certain well-loved dishes from treif to kosher. One example is Brazilian feijoada, a stew of beans and about four kinds of pork. I found substitutes and developed a kosher feijoada that’s pretty darn good, if I say so myself. The recipe was published on the Forward and picked up by the NY Times, who linked to it.

I’ll talk to anyone about food and cooking, and shamelessly solicit recipes. As a food writer and reporter, I’ve had great opportunities to learn from professional chefs.

Eggplant Stuffed with Bulgur and Herbs (photo: Miriam Kresh)

Varda Epstein: I remember you won the contest for the cooking column at “Green Prophet.” Do you still write there? Where else have your cooking columns appeared?

Miriam Kresh: I still write for Green Prophet. At the moment, I’m working on a review of The Eucalyptus Cookbook, by Moshe Basson, chef of the famous Jerusalem restaurant bearing that name. The review should appear in Green Prophet by the end of this month (September 2024). My first food writing was self-published: a blog I used to run named Israeli Kitchen. An online magazine called “From The Grapevine” bought the blog – domain, content, and all. I was ready to move on anyway and welcomed the opportunity to sell it. Subsequently, they sold their content to a different online magazine, Jewish Unpacked. My recipes are still online there, and I still get fan mail
from there. I understand that some individual now runs a blog under the name Israeli Kitchen; they never asked permission to use the name.

I’ve had recipes and articles published across the English-language Jewish spectrum, from left-leaning the Forward to the Haredi HaModia. I wrote a chef interview column at the Jerusalem Post for several years, besides features on non-cooking-related issues. Many of my freelance articles appear across the Net. Sometimes I Google my own name and am surprised to find my work copied onto sites I had no idea existed. That’s the way it is.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Shallots and Parmesan (photo and recipe: Miriam Kresh)

RECIPE: Roasted Butternut Squash with Shallots and Parmesan
You can easily make this recipe vegan by omitting the cheese and adding 1 tablespoon Balsamic vinegar to the olive oil indicated in the recipe.
Some prefer to eat butternut squash with the peel on. It’s perfectly edible, with a crisp/tender texture.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients:
·        4 cups butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 1″ cubes
·        3 medium shallots or 1 large red onion, peeled and cut into medium-sized chunks
·        3/4 cup white flour
·        1/2 teaspoon baking powder
·        1 teaspoon finely chopped dried rosemary, or dried thyme, or za'atar
·        1/2 teaspoon salt
·        1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
·        1/3 cup grated Parmesan, Kashkeval or other aged cheese
·        2 large garlic cloves
·        1/3 cup olive oil
Directions:
1.      Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C).
2.      Put the flour and dry seasonings, except the cheese, in a large bowl.
3.      Dredge the vegetables in the flour/seasoning mixture. Place the pieces on a parchment- lined baking sheet, leaving a little space in between the pieces.
4.      Sprinkle the cheese over the vegetables.
5.      Crush the garlic. Scrape it into a bowl with the oil (and the Balsamic vinegar, if doing this vegan). Drizzle the garlicky oil over the vegetables.
6.      Bake for 30-40 minutes. The butternut squash should be soft and caramelizing slightly.

Varda Epstein: You’re also a dab hand at descriptive writing, with an ongoing series on Substack. Tell us about that, if you would.

Miriam Kresh: I write fantasy fiction, something I’ve always wanted to do, and now have time for. The stack is named Fantastical Fiction. I do my conscientious best to write quirky stories about strange people and strange events…but can’t seem to keep food out of them. Recently I published a short story where a woman goes out to buy butter and meets the Mad Hatter from "Alice in Wonderland."

Varda Epstein: Why did you make Aliyah? What is your general philosophy about Aliyah? Is it something you feel every Jew should do?

Miriam Kresh: My family are Zionists from way back. My Dad, as a youth, did fundraising among American Jewry to buy weapons for the Hagana. My family weren’t 100% religiously observant, but there was always Shabbat, chagim, Hebrew lessons, shul: we were part of the Jewish milieu, wherever we lived.

I made Aliyah from the conviction that Israel is the place where a Jew should live. I was living in Caracas, Venezuela again, in my early twenties. It was a peaceful and prosperous country then. No noticeable antisemitism. The Jewish school had functioned for decades and was still going. Chabad had established a kindergarten and a Kollel. One building in a middle class part of Caracas housed the various youth groups, the Jewish Agency and the Israel National Fund. There was a Jewish social center, a handsome building in a good part of town. A Jewish bookstore, two kosher butchers, at least three shuls that I can remember.

All that’s gone now, under a communist dictatorship. But I couldn’t know that would happen. Nobody could.

What I did know was that I was out of place. The Jewish kids my age were away at university, often abroad, or were getting married. I was a footloose single, feeling empty. I became religiously observant in a search for meaning; became close to other religious families. But I wasn’t fitting in, either too old to be with the cool kids or too young to be comfortable among the marrieds. The more I looked around, the clearer it became that I needed to live not just with Jews, but in Jewish society. To prepare for Aliyah, I read up on Jewish and Israeli history and closely followed current events in Eretz Israel.

Then Entebbe happened. I made a bargain with God: get those Jews home safe, and I’ll make Aliyah. As we know, Yonatan Netanyahu tragically lost his life in that rescue mission; somehow it hardened my determination to get to where being Jewish matters most.

So here I am, all those years later. Now, should every Jew make Aliyah? Historically, Diaspora Jewry has supported Jews in Israel since ancient times and until today. We still need that support. What I say is, yes, send us all kinds of support, we need it – and send your children.

I hope the time comes when every Jew will live here. But doubt it’ll happen in my lifetime. On the third hand - who knows?

Swiss Chard Stuffed with Potatoes (photo: Miriam Kresh)

Varda Epstein: What made you choose Petach Tikvah as your home? What do you like about this city?

Miriam Kresh: I lived for years in Jerusalem, then in Safed. I moved to Petach Tikvah with my late husband and youngest daughter because my aging parents lived here and needed me. My tsadik late husband promised we’d move to be near them when the time came, and it came. Now my folks are gone, and I comfort myself knowing that we were there for them till the end.

Petach Tikvah is a butt for jokes around the country, regarded as an industrial town with no night life, sort of a drab suburb of Tel Aviv. But there are important schools and hospitals here, and between my parents’, my husband’s, and my children’s needs, not to mention my own, I’ve been well served here.

There’s city development with a new eco-consciousness going on all the time. There’s a big movement of hi-tech businesses to Petach Tikvah. The shuk (open-air market) is open every day. The mayor, Rami Greenberg, is accessible and menschlicht. And transportation is good. Don’t mean to sound like a promotional brochure, here… But Petach Tikvah has been good to me.

Varda Epstein: Aside from writing about food and cooking, you’ve also taught classes. I remember you teaching virtual cooking classes during the pandemic. It was so chill and pleasant. A really lovely break from the fear and isolation. Can you describe how that worked for our readers? What are some of the menus you cooked in tandem with your students?

Miriam Kresh: I began the Israel Cookalong with a clutch of international participants - friends, and friends of theirs. We were all so lonely and bored, being stuck at home. We cooked together in real time, via Zoom, every Sunday. It was safe and fun, like having a party in the kitchen every week. And each had a delicious fresh dish by the end of the session. That version of the Cookalong had a good run of three years. Some people came and went, but a core group formed. We’re all still good friends and stay in touch.

My focus is on Israeli/Mediterranean/North African dishes like humus and majadra (spiced lentils and rice), expanding to fancier foods like artichoke bottoms stuffed with meat and pine nuts, and baklava. I teach a lot about Israeli foodways. My students enjoyed learning about typical culinary herbs and spices - like za’atar, the fresh herb, and za’atar the spice blend, which is based on it.

There was one month when I taught classic Ashkenazi cooking. Blintzes, knishes, kugel, cholent. The week we cooked cholent, my Japanese-American student in Ohio served it to guests. She said they loved it! You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy cholent.

I’m proud of having taught the group a different world of food. But I’m happiest that one nervous participant who thought she’d never master cooking gained the confidence to cook, and cook well. I love knowing that she gained an important life skill through the Cookalong.

Varda Epstein: Tell us about your latest foray into the world of cooking and sharing about food. What are you cooking these days, and with whom?

Miriam Kresh: My new project is a Cookalong for English-speakers in Israel. It’ll be via Zoom, twice a month, on Thursdays. The sessions will be one hour long, sometimes an hour and a half if we’re cooking more than one recipe, or if the recipe is more elaborate than usual.

By popular request, this Israeli Cookalong will be vegetarian, at least in the beginning. That might change, according to the wishes of the group.

The sessions are for pay, but you don’t subscribe to X number of sessions. You just choose which Thursday’s menu appeals to you, and register ahead of time. I send out the monthly menus the first week of the month, and email the recipes by Sunday to give participants time to shop.

I also give private cooking classes, via Zoom. These one-on-one sessions are great, because you get 100% of my attention, and cook the recipes in your own kitchen with me coaching.

Tajine of Sweet Potatoes and Prunes (photo: Miriam Kresh)

Varda Epstein: What’s your favorite food/dish?

Miriam Kresh: Now that is a question. There are foods I’ll gladly eat every day, like black beans and rice as my Mom used to cook them. Then I have a weakness for lamb. I’d say my favorite is a festive tajine of lamb cooked in the Moroccan way, with dried fruit, and funky spices like saffron and cumin. But I couldn’t eat it every day! Or even every month. That’s a dish for birthdays and holidays.

Miriam Kresh

Varda Epstein: What’s next for Miriam Kresh?

Miriam Kresh: The new Israeli Cookalong! Can’t wait to begin. Spoiler alert: the first class of the year will be salmon baked in coconut sauce. While the fish is in the oven, we’ll cook turmeric rice.

I also teach a floating class where participants make homemade condiments, relishes, dips and spreads. That’s available on demand either privately or as an extra session for a group.

Betayavon (bon appetit)!

Contact Miriam Kresh at miriamkresh1@gmail.com for full details about the Israeli Cookalong, or to book a private class. Or WhatsApp Miriam at 050-786-7211. Outside of Israel, it’s +972 507-867-211.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The media in Lebanon and Iran are filled with chaotic reports as people don't know what is going on. Today, they are reporting, not only Hezbollah walkie talkies exploding but also car batteries, fingerprint machines, smartphones, intercoms and solar panels, attributed to Israel Moreover, there are rumors advising people to remove their smart watches.

It seems unlikely that any of these besides the walkie talkies are true, and they are mostly just either coincidental or secondary explosions from the exploding walkie talkies today.

There were also reports of explosions at an Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitary group in Iraq.

One rumor is more interesting than most.

Iranian website Raja News, which is close to the hardline camp, claimed that a company named Iran Cell, a leading telecom company in Iran, was involved in the deal to purchase pagers for Hezbollah.

According to the report, Iran Cell recommended the specific pagers to be used by Hezbollah, and they checked them out before distribution to check for any potential problems.

As soon this report was published, Iran Cell issued a vehement denial, saying "Following the publication of an article about the advisory role of Iran Cell managers in the process of providing pagers for Lebanon's Hezbollah, this issue is fundamentally false and the mentioned article is denied."

That denial leaves some wiggle room. They might be denying only one detail. I have no idea if they were involved, but Iran Cell is definitely close to the Iranian regime.

Seeing paranoia among terrorists and their supporters is quite satisfying.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The EU issued this press release today:

Today, the European Union (EU), Germany, and the Palestinian Authority signed a €6 million grant agreement to build 12 new social and public infrastructure projects in Area C of the West Bank. This initiative is part of the European Union's ongoing Area C Development Programme, which aims to improve essential infrastructure and services for Palestinian communities.

This latest funding package marks the seventh phase of the EU’s Area C Development Programme and will benefit over 33,000 Palestinians living in 12 localities across the West Bank. The projects to be implemented include the construction of a school, roads, sewage and water distribution networks, a water reservoir, and the rehabilitation of electricity networks. With this new contribution, the total investment in the programme rises to €23.2 million, covering 73 infrastructure projects in 59 localities. The European Union Area C Programme is funded by the European Union and its Member States.

The statement then includes this interesting phrase: "All EU activity in the West Bank is fully in line with international humanitarian law."

If the EU decided that illegal immigrants to America have the right to live in Yosemite National Park and would fund building houses and schools for them there, it would not violate international humanitarian law. But it would certainly be illegal.

Even if you consider Area C to be under occupation, the laws Israel must implement there - under international law - would be the laws that existed in that area under Jordanian, British and Ottoman rule. Israel does this - and even anti-Israel activists admit this, arguing that those laws are "outdated" but unable to say that there is anything wrong with enforcing those laws.

When the EU builds structures on Area C lands against the laws in place under the British Mandate, they are violating international law. They know this quite well, which is why they use that curious expression that they are not violating humanitarian law.

Here's the game: The EU builds illegal buildings, Israel properly dismantles them under the laws that it must follow, the EU then condemns Israel for following the international law of belligerent occupation. Areas that were empty since time immemorial are now being populated, with Palestinians encouraged to move to Area C to pressure Israel.

And they have.

When Area C was first defined, there were less than 100,000 Arabs living on that land. By In 2008, that went up by 50% to 150,000. In 2014, that doubled to 300,000. It is probably higher now. That is a much more dramatic jump in population than the much derided Jewish "settlements" in Area C.

EU policy is clear - Jews must not live on their ancestral lands of Judea and Samaria. But when they invoke IHL to justify their manifestly illegal activities, the only conclusion is that their insistence that Israel follow international law is pure hypocrisy.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The New York Times can't resist:

Israel’s attack on pagers belonging to Hezbollah on Tuesday was a tactical success that had no clear strategic impact, analysts say.

While it embarrassed Hezbollah and appeared to incapacitate many of its members, the attack has not so far altered the military balance along the Israel-Lebanon border, where more than 100,000 civilians on either side have been displaced by a low-intensity battle. Hezbollah and the Israeli military remained locked in the same pattern, exchanging missiles and artillery fire on Wednesday at a tempo in keeping with the daily skirmishes fought between the sides since October.

We've seen this in the past - the media makes up a goal and then say Israel didn't achieve it.

We of course don't know the details of the attack. Reports that Israel decided to explode the devices now because they were about to be discovered sound plausible, because the timing does not seem to be optimal.

But whatever Israel's plans were, the attack accomplished a great deal.

Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran spend a lot of time on psychological warfare. They have correctly identified public opinion as no less important than physical strength, and in many ways it is more important. Hamas' October 7 strategy was based in great part on expected world pressure to stop any Israeli retaliation. Similarly, its release of hostage videos and use of social media bots also points to a strategic goal of dividing up and weakening Israeli society.

This operation, if nothing else, had a profound psychological effect on Israel's enemies and others.

It increases paranoia. Israel must have infiltrated multiple layers of Hezbollah in order to pull this off, as well as its other assassination operations. Every Hezbollah member must spend more time looking over his shoulders and wondering whether the person they work with is a spy - and less time planning attacks on Israel.

More importantly, it destroys an important part of Hezbollah's C3 (command, control, and communications) network. If Hezbollah cannot use electronic means to communicate, it is a major blow to their operations.

It sends a message to all of Israel's enemies. They like to claim that they are planning "surprises" against Israel, but this was a real surprise no one could see coming.

It sends a message to the Arab world as a whole. While Iran and Hezbollah make daily threats of massive imminent attacks, Israel quietly and without taking responsibility actually does them. It causes fear among Israel enemies, but respect among the larger Arab world.

Do not underestimate the psychological effect in the Arab world of Israel effectively castrating hundreds or thousands of its enemies.

And on the flip side, Hezbollah and Iran look weak, disorganized, and to be liars, something that the larger Arab community notes and remembers.

People like to say that "Hamas is an idea, you cannot kill an idea." Besides being false to begin with, do you think that an attack like this will encourage more recruits to Hezbollah and Hamas or scare more of them away? Do they want to risk their testicles?

Hezbollah's vows of revenge do not have much of a bite now.

On a larger scale, this attack increases Israel's prestige in the larger Arab world. You can be sure that Gulf nations are more likely to want to be allies with Israel after this, and less likely to want to be enemies.

Moreover, the attack proves that Israel only targets terrorists, not civilians. Hezbollah is trying to release propaganda to claim otherwise, but everyone sees through that.

Perhaps Israel intended to time this attack in an initial invasion of Lebanon. But even without perfect timing, this was an unqualified success whose benefits will be seen in the months and years to come.

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!

Hamas losing popularity, especially in Gaza, but is still by far the most popular political party for Palestinians

The latest PCPSR poll has been released. It finds that although Hamas is losing popularity, especially in Gaza, it is still far more popular than any other political party. Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah has very little support among Palestinians.

For the first time, most Gazans now say that Hamas' decision to attack on October 7 was a mistake, although it still receives overwhelming support in the West bank.

When asked which political party or movement they support, a plurality (36%) said they prefer Hamas, followed by Fatah (21%), 6% selected third parties, and 29% said they do not support any of them or do not know.

Similarly, in a head to head election between Mahmoud Abbas and Yahya Sinwar, for voters actually participating in the elections, Sinwar receives 74% and Abbas 24%.

The entire world and all the "experts" say that the only possible solution is two states where the Palestinian side is controlled by Fatah. The Palestinians don't want Fatah to rule them and even today still prefer Hamas. The supposed experts simply ignore that inconvenient fact, and blame Israel for no peace. As they always have.

The PCPSR poll is the one that a Hamas memo found by Israel was said to be manipulated. PCPSR says it mounted an investigation and their conclusion is that it is highly unlikely that their Gaza polling is incorrect, and it is possible that the Hamas member who wrote the memo was just trying to get money from his commander (which he explicitly asked for) and made up the whole claim.

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!

09/17 Links Pt2: Bad News for the Jews; Beware distinguished professors rewriting history; Fetterman rips NYTs for spreading Hamas propaganda

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Bad News for the Jews

What ought an American Jew think when reading the news every day? It is a discouraging way to start a Monday morning. But we are way past that. Because this type of news consumption is also a Tuesday morning thing, and a Wednesday morning thing, and on and on. If you spend Shabbat offline, it is getting difficult not to wince when turning the phone back on each Saturday night.

Which is, I think, a point that goes ignored outside the Jewish community. There isn’t a particularly outrageous story that has singularly instilled fear in the Jewish community. There is, instead, an unlifting smog blanketing public life. It’s ugly, it’s unhealthy, and it narrows a person’s scope of vision.

It’s also selective. Take tomorrow’s congressional hearing on hate crimes. Republicans in the House hold the majority, so they have been able to hold House hearings exclusively on outbreaks of institutional anti-Semitism, such as those that occurred at universities around the country. GOP senators would like the upper chamber to follow suit, but Democrats hold the Senate majority so any focus on anti-Semitism must be watered down to an insulting degree.

“Tuesday’s hearing is a first for the Senate since Oct. 7 and the proceedings are not shaping up as a bipartisan effort,” reports Jewish Insider. “Judiciary Committee Republicans have been urging Democrats for months to convene a hearing on how the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses is violating the civil rights of Jewish students — similar to their House GOP counterparts’ hearings with embattled university presidents earlier in the year.”

You’d think it would be a no-brainer, but you’d be wrong. Every single instance of anti-Semitism listed above is the result of progressive ideological activism, and therefore Democrats have decided to make the hearings about the “rise in hate incidents across the country, particularly targeting the Jewish, Arab, and Muslim communities.”

There is no trend of hate crimes against any community that is comparable to what the Jewish community has been experiencing. Jews and only Jews are seeing their civil rights come under relentless attack on campus. Tomorrow, thanks to Democratic leaders such as Dick Durbin, the United States Senate will invent a false equivalence between the victims of anti-Semitism and the perpetrators, so that criticizing anti-Semitism itself will be seen as a violation of Americans’ rights.

So that’s where we are: Monday’s news was full of reports of Jews being attacked with little or no concern expressed by the authorities. Tuesday’s news will be about the Senate making a public mockery of Jewish concerns. What’s the forecast for Wednesday? Expect more smog.

It’s absurd that anybody would be comfortable with this being Jews’ daily experience in America for even a week. It’s now been that way for nearly a year. Let’s not get used to this.

Why Bernard-Henri Lévy thinks supporting Israel is a matter of human rights

Despite the sobering title of his new book, Israel Alone, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy does not truly believe the Jewish state is lacking in friends. In fact, he thinks all democrats — with a lowercase “d” — should be aligned with Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks as the Jewish state stares down an increasingly tangible Iranian threat.

“It is not only the Jews who are concerned. It is really in the existential interest of the West. But not only the West — the Global West,” Lévy told Jewish Insider in an interview on Monday amid a spate of public appearances in the United States to promote his new book’s publication in English.

That’s not because Lévy expects people around the world who support democracy to reflexively back Israel. He knows that would be naive. Instead, he thinks supporting Israel is needed because Hamas’ murderous incursion into southern Israel last year represents a turning point for the cadre of anti-democratic forces gaining ground around the world.

“I knew that there was a constellation of forces which were aligning with each other — Iran, China, Russia, Turkey, radical Islam like the Taliban and [the] Muslim Brotherhood. But I was not sure that the process was so advanced,” Lévy explained. By “Global West,” he means supporters of democracy anywhere, even those living under authoritarian regimes.

Israel’s battle against Hamas in Gaza is more than a small regional fight against a terror group, Lévy argues. It’s an existential battle for all of the West against Iran, and the other authoritarian nations with which Tehran aligns itself.

“I think of my friends, Iranian women who go to Tehran and Isfahan with fire in the wind, if I think of my friends — lawyers in jail in Turkey — I’m really concerned for them if Iran wins,” said Lévy. “If Israel happens to lose, it will be a disaster for all of them, for all the militants of human rights all over the world.”

Israel Alone is a relatively slim volume, using sparse prose to describe the horrific events of Oct. 7 and their world-shattering impact on Israelis and Jews and, Lévy hopes, for democrats the world over. Lévy, who first traveled to Israel in 1967, flew to Israel on the morning of Oct. 8. At the time, he didn’t know that a book would come from it; that decision came a few days later, after visiting Kibbutz Be’eri and, later, a meeting with Yoni Asher, whose wife and two young daughters had been taken hostage. (They were freed in November.)

“I realized with a chill that the world had just witnessed an event whose shockwaves and blast effect would change the course of all our lives — including my own,” Lévy wrote toward the start of the book.

The book raises several questions stemming from the Oct. 7 attacks: Why Israel? What to make of the settler-colonial narrative targeting Israel? Why has there been such fierce denial of the attacks? And, most painful for Lévy, how should Israel’s backers make sense of the innocent Gazans killed in the ensuing war? Lévy attempts to answer them with a philosophical precision, placing the events of the past year in a broader historical context.

This moment, Lévy argued, should be one of moral clarity. “Even during the Cold War,” he stated, “we have never been in such a critical situation, we democrats.”

$1M offered to LGBTQ advocacy groups to host Pride parade in Gaza, West Bank

A watchdog group that aims to expose hypocrisy announced Monday that it would donate $1 million to “Queers for Palestine” or any US LGBTQ advocacy organization to host a gay pride parade in Gaza or the West Bank.

Anti-Israel groups such as “Queers for Palestine” have surfaced across America since the Hamas terror group attacked Israel on October 7, but homosexuality remains deeply taboo in the Palestinian territories.

Gay and transgender people in Gaza and the West Bank face a significant level of persecution and are often subjected to horrific acts.

New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) President Gregory T. Angelo, who is gay and the former president of Log Cabin Republicans, said the campaign is a “wake-up call” to anyone who identifies as part of the “Queers for Palestine” or “Gays for Gaza” movements.

“I don’t want people to just shrug off this campaign as some kind of publicity stunt or something that is supposed to be comical. It actually is a legitimate offer,” Angelo told Fox News Digital.

“This campaign emerged to call out these purported advocates of LGBT equality and put our money where their mouths are,” he continued. “I think that this is a real opportunity for these groups to legitimately step up and host an event that would either highlight the fact that the Palestinian territories are not indeed a good place for LGBTQ individuals to be living, or it could be a breakthrough moment for pluralism and peace in the Middle East.”

The New Tolerance Campaign said it secured commitments for the $1 million prize and will begin publicizing the offer with mobile billboards circulating around Columbia University in New York City, the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. and UCLA in Los Angeles.

“Obviously, the $1 million prize is something that is flashy. It was designed to get attention; it was designed to turn heads. But the greater drive behind this project is one of equality and broad human rights,” Angelo said.

09/17 Links Pt1: Paging Hezbollah.....Lebanese authorities raise death toll in pager blasts to 11, 4,000 injured; Hezbollah has no idea what hit it

From Ian:

Lebanon pager blast: Hezbollah has no idea what hit it

Tuesday’s events occurred only hours after the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that Hezbollah had tried to assassinate a top Israeli ex-defense chief. Shortly before the explosions, there were reports of a special meeting between Mossad director David Barnea and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Given the juxtaposition in the timing and the last few hysterical hours in Israel about a security situation with Lebanon, is it possible that Israel carried out its second attack on Hezbollah in Beirut? And, could this be in direct retaliation for Hezbollah’s failed assassination attempt, or rather, on the heels of nearly a year of the origination firing at Israel?

The last time the Jewish state attacked Beirut was on July 30, when it assassinated Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr in retaliation for the Majdal Shams rocket attack, which killed 12 Druze children.

This nearly exploded into a full-scale war between the sides on August 25. Still, the IDF managed a preemptive strike that substantially reduced Hezbollah’s ability to fire more than a fraction of the rockets that it had intended to direct at Israel, including at northern Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has pledged that any attack on Beirut would be met with a massive counter-strike.

Will he keep his promise, or will Hezbollah back down, given that it started this round with an attempted assassination, and given the IDF’s success against Hezbollah on August 25?

Another question that remains is: What is the endgame for the entity standing behind the explosive devices incident in Beirut? Will this be a knock-out punch on its own, or will this be a bloody hit that will leave Hezbollah still standing, the dilemma of war between Israel and Lebanon still reaming up in the air, though possibly closer than ever?

Seth Frantzman: Hezbollah’s worst nightmare: Chaos in its ranks

In essence, Hezbollah is a more successful military structure, even though it is a terrorist army in Lebanon, than many Arab armies in the region. This is evident from how it has not only been able to confront Israel but also stockpile more rockets, missiles, and drones than many armies in second or third-world countries. Hezbollah has pioneered drone threats against Israel and carried out numerous attacks in this war, for instance.

The chaos that will follow the exploding pagers is already evident in Lebanon. Reports say the Iranian-backed terrorist group is scrambling to tell its members not to use communications devices. Hospitals have numerous injured men. The group will have to scramble to put its organization back together.

Effective groups, whether militaries, terrorist groups, cartels, gangs, or corporations, need to have good communication. A group like Hezbollah needs this to mobilize people and coordinate attacks. It can’t coordinate the launch of large numbers of missiles if it can’t get men to the launchers. Hezbollah requires a way to get in touch with its fighters. It will need to scramble now to replace its pagers or other devices.

It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hezbollah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes. This reminds us of the story of the penetration of the KKK in the film Mississippi Burning. It took time for the FBI to cause the “rattlesnakes to commit suicide,” but in the end, the KKK was defeated. Similarly, when the US-led coalition defeated Saddam’s army in Iraq in 1991, it set about destroying its command and control nodes. This is how terrorist groups and militaries are defeated.

Hezbollah faces a difficult challenge now. It is in chaos. It may want to lash out and strike back. But it has suffered a major setback. This is also an embarrassing setback. Hezbollah rests on its allure, its sense of being an elite group that is not vulnerable. Now, it feels vulnerable.

Pager explosions hint at shift in strategy against Hezbollah

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said months ago that Israel has new capabilities that will surprise Hezbollah and Israel’s enemies. This comment was lost among endless other “we-will-send-Lebanon-back-to-the-stone-age” threats he has issued since Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8.

Yet this attack, if carried out by Israel, shows that Gallant’s words about surprises were not empty.

The level of pre-planning involved is also significant. Given that this war of attrition has dragged on for months and the government has now declared its readiness to go to war to change the situation in the North, Israel has lost the element of surprise in any conventional attack on Hezbollah.

In other words, if the IAF were to strike Beirut tomorrow or tanks rolled into southern Lebanon, it would neither be surprising nor preemptive. The enemy is expecting something.

Tuesday’s pager explosions, however, show that there are other, non-conventional ways to surprise the enemy and gain a tactical advantage. And this leads to a third lesson: the next war is never fought like the previous one.

Following the security cabinet’s declaration Tuesday night, the mind immediately went to tanks moving into Lebanon like they did during the First Lebanon War in 1982, or planes bombing Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut as they did in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. And all that still might materialize if a full-blown Third Lebanon War now erupts. But those are both elements of yesterday’s war.

Monday’s action shows that the next war with Hezbollah will be fought differently and in an innovative and creative way: two traits with which Israel has been amply blessed.

Hezbollah pagers explode all over Lebanon; Hezbollah claims they were used by "civilians"

From the Wall Street Journal:

Pagers carried by hundreds of Hezbollah operatives exploded Tuesday, leaving many of them injured in an unprecedented event that struck across Lebanon.
The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said. A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to heat up and explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

Some potential victims said they felt the pagers heat up beforehand and got rid of them before the explosion.

So far, according to Lebanese health authorities, is 8 killed, 200 critically injured and 2,750 injured to some degree. 7 more were said to be killed in Syria.

When I first saw the story, I assumed that "somebody" had found a vulnerability in the pager software and fond that a set of commands could cause them to heat up and explode. But the WSJ report makes it sound more like a supply chain attack -"somebody" knew about this shipment and sabotaged it, perhaps even installing small explosives inside the devices that could be triggered by commands or heat, or more likely replacing the batteries with versions that would explode when exposed to a certain stimulus like a series of signals.

Almost certainly, and ironically, Hezbollah demanded that its many members communicate only with pagers because they felt that they were more secure than cell phones that could be hacked or eavesdropped on. One can be certain that everyone who had one of these pagers in their pocket or their belt was a Hezbollah member, making this attack as perfectly aligned with international law as is possible.

Hezbollah predictably is pretending that they were killing civilians - as if normal people would walk around with pagers instead of phones.

Hezbollah is only claiming that civilians were killed - claiming the death of a girl. What they don't say is that her terrorist father with the pager was next to her at the time, or whether he is alive.

Other details are coming out - a Hezbollah MP who was killed, a son of a Hezbollah leader said to have been killed.

One can be certain that the only people using that brand of pager in Lebanon are Hezbollah members. While there are still some some pager manufacturers, they re only for niche markets.

Like terrorists.

Here are two videos apparently of explosions.

And photos of victims:

To no one's surprise, every photo and video that have been published show the victims are military aged males. Not nurses.

This may be the first truly fatal cyberattack.

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We reported in March about a number of people in Gaza who pretended to provide Gazans with food or medical supplies, with no proof whatsoever that they did anything at all.

There is another scam going on as well using GoFundMe - people asking for money to leave Gaza via Egypt even though Egypt hasn't allowed anyone to leave since May.

Many GoFundMe fundraisers were created well after Egypt closed the Rafah crossing, yet they still claim that the money would go towards paying (exorbitant) Egyptian fees.

"Lana" from Gaza started her GoFundMe in August, asking for money to leave via Egypt, and raised $20,000.

"Mosbah" started his GoFundMe in September, saying, he wants his family to escape Gaza. He's already raised $6,500.

Mahmoud Jehad says, "Your generous donations will assist me in leaving Gaza to pursue my education." he started the page in August. He's raised $3,700 so far.

Nareman is a fashion designer did manage to escape Gaza early in the war but now wants to bring the rest of her family - which she knew was impossible when she started her fundraiser in August. She raised $5,600 so far.

Mohran listed out why he was asking for $90,000 CAD in July after Rafah was closed - knowing these are not possible:

- $25,000: Travel expenses to Egypt for my family – The high cost is detailed in these sources: [VOA News](https://www.voanews.com/amp/egyptian-firm-offers-escape-from-gaza-for-5-000-a-head/7572715.html) & [Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/the-price-of-freedom-the-company-making-millions-from-gazas-misery-13081454).
- $5,000: GoFundMe's fundraising fees.
- $5,000: Bank transfer fees for relocating to a new country.
- $7,000: New Mac device including assets needed for work.
- $24,000: Egypt allocation cost for 6 month~$4000 per month for 5 family members at least—contains food, medicine and rent and schools for the children’s.

If they were asking for money to survive in Gaza to buy food or rent a place to stay, there would be no problem. But they are telling donors that the money is going towards a goal that cannot happen because Egypt closed the crossing and has no plans to re-open it.

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Iranian media: Peaceful in English, warmongering in Farsi

The Iranian Defa Press site, associated with Iran's military, gives quite different messages in English and in Farsi.

Yesterday, it featured a story in English about Iran's president saying Iran is a peaceful nation:

"We are not warmongers"

Pezeshkian during a news conference said that Iran does not seek war. He continued that we are and will be subject to international laws.

Iran's President said: The Zionist regime is the only one who wants to start a war not us. We are not even in the idea of having a nuclear bomb. If you want peace in the region, then firstly disarm the Zionist regime because they want to light the fire of war in the region.

The Farsi site didn't even report on this "news conference" as far as I can tell. Instead, it featured stories like this promise to attack Israel:

Chief of Staff and Deputy Coordinator of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, Amir Dariyadar Sayari...pointed to the operation of "Sadiq's Promise" [Iran's attack on Israel in April] and the support of some countries in the region and the Western allies of the Zionist regime to neutralize the operation of "Sadiq's Promise" and said: "Operation Sadiq's Promise is only to show Iran's ability to harm Israel. But America, France, Germany, England and Jordan all came and used their air defense systems to help the Iron Dome of the Zionist regime and resist Iran's attack. But can they always be prepared to deal with surprise attacks? They can't."

Admiral Sayari further discussed Iran's definite reaction to the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh, the former head of Hamas's political office, and stated: "The reaction to the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh is definite, but this time, it will not be announced. After the martyrdom of Haniyeh, more than a dozen messages came from the West and the United States, demanding that Iran not react, but the answer to martyring Haniyeh is certain, but the timing will be completely in our hands. This answer should be prudent and wise."

Other stories emphasize the importance of Iranian proxies in Iraq and Lebanon for attacking Israel.

Iran understands the importance of propaganda that they can feed to the West. In fact, Defa has a story about exactly that topic:

The CEO of the Islamic Revolution Publishers Association emphasized that the narrative of Palestine is of great importance and stated: "After the field and struggle of the brave and heroic fighters of Gaza, nothing is as necessary as the narrative of Gaza and the narrative of Palestine. ...If we can strengthen and intensify the narrative of Gaza, we have dealt a more deadly blow to the Zionist regime, and this is more effective than the weapons of the resistance groups."

If we learned anything since October 7, it is how easily the Western world can be played by anti-Israel propaganda.

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The All-In podcast is a popular video series hosted by four venture capitalists who generally talk about technology and the economy, but they deal with other topics as well.

They did a live show recently where they interviewed two Israel haters, John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs.

In a venue like this, these academics can spout out any nonsense without any fear of the hosts knowing enough to push back. And the audience is treated to a one-sided narrative without realizing they are being played.

Both Sachs and Mearsheimer live in a world where there was no second intifada, where there have been no barrages of rockets for the past 15 years onto Israeli population areas, where there was no October 7, and where Hamas barely exists.

In that world, Sachs can start off by saying that he often speaks to ambassadors around the world and everyone agrees that Israel must be forced to allow a terror state to be created on the 1949 armistice lines and every Jewish holy spot must be under Palestinian control. This is, he assures the audience, "international law." Only the evil Israelis and the US are standing in the way of this wonderful world where Hamas and Islamic Jihad don't exist and Israel lives in peace with Palestinians who will give up on terror (just as they claim to have done in 1993). In Sachs' world, Iran doesn't exist either.

Later, with just as much assurance, he says Israel is guilty of genocide and that the ICJ will certainly rule that way.

Then Mearsheimer goes on his own fantasy journey where the only aggressor is Israel, which is doing everything it can to entrap the US into a war with Iran. The only solution, he says, is for the US and Iran to collude against this plot. Because both of them would benefit by opposing Israel, in Mearsheimer's world.

Sure, Iran is on the cusp of nuclear weapons, but that is not a concern at all. Hezbollah is not a problem. The Houthis are not a problem. Only warmongering Israel.

It doesn't appear to be a coincidence that they chose a podcast with people who aren't Middle East experts. Sachs has charged Israel with genocide on another podcast - that specializes in Bitcoin.

Both of them claim not to hate Israel; on the contrary, they know what is best for Israel better than Israelis do.

Sachs and Mearsheimer create a framework where there is not even an option to question the many false assumptions they make. But they choose venues where no one who knows they are full of rubbish is available to push back.

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!

09/16 Links Pt2: Britain and the BBC are partners in terror and antisemitism; The transparent mob attack on theJC; Greta Thunberg named ‘Antisemite of the Week’

From Ian:

Britain and the BBC are partners in terror and antisemitism

Why, at a time when Israel is engaged in a war with Hamas, and while terrorists are committing war crimes and continue to hold hostages, is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer abandoning Israel?

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson directed this pointed question at Starmer in light of the suspension of 30 licenses for arms exports to Israel, including essential equipment such as components for helicopters, fighter jets, and drones.

A partial answer to Johnson's question can be found in the words of Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who stated that Britain saw a "clear risk" that the military equipment might violate international humanitarian law.

Lammy is considered a controversial politician. Many believe he was wrongly appointed, given a series of past statements and misdemeanors.

When he was shadow foreign minister, Lammy claimed that the International Criminal Court's (ICC) request for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated war crimes had been committed.

The current British government has changed its stance, relying on left-wing parties that are, to say the least, not as supportive of Israel as the conservative governments of Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

Without the votes of Muslims, who make up about 7% of British citizens, Starmer’s party would not have been elected.

Mr. Starmer needs to understand that he must continue to support Israel, which is fighting a terrorist organization that, alongside Iran, threatens not only the sole democracy in the Middle East but also the free world of which Britain forms an important part.

Just as Britain waged a heroic battle against Nazi Germany in World War II, it must prevent terrorist organizations from carrying out their plans to destroy the Jewish state.

Are U.S. Airlines Effectively Boycotting Israel?

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, defines his campaign against Israel as being won as much through economics and psychological coercion as through victories on the battlefield. And nearly a year into the Jewish state’s war with Hamas, Iran’s military proxy in the Gaza Strip, Khamenei’s strategy appears to be advancing—with an assist from the U.S. airline industry.

For most of the past year, none of the three major American carriers—United Airlines, American Airlines, or Delta—have flown to Israel, citing the Gaza war and the security threats posed by Tehran and its military allies. And none of these airlines have offered definitive time frames for when their flights might resume. This has left Israel’s national carrier, El Al, as the only direct connection between the country and its closest ally and economic partner on the other side of the world, and has sent airfares between the U.S. and Israel skyrocketing.

In recent days, the cost of a round trip economy flight to Tel Aviv from New York on El Al is around $2,500, according to Israeli travel agencies, up from around $899 before October 7, 2023. United, American, and Delta previously all had at least one daily flight to Israel from New York or Newark, and together served Israel three times a week from Boston, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, and Washington D.C.

The suspension of the American flights is feeding into the economic and diplomatic isolation that Iran’s leaders are seeking, according to Israeli political and business leaders. “The American carriers are playing into Iran’s game,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as national security adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, from 2021–2023.

Jerusalem’s allies in Washington are urgently seeking to establish clearer U.S. government guidelines for when U.S. airlines should halt traffic to Israel, and when it can resume. If not, they warn, American carriers risk bolstering, even unwittingly, the economic coercion that Iran and Israel’s critics in the West are pursuing, often under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS.

“In my view, unless there’s an objective process put in place to prevent the politicization of air travel, I predict that in the future the BDS movement will try to weaponize air travel as a new means of boycotting Israel,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York) told The Free Press. “And a travel ban has the potential to be the most potent weapon in BDS’s war against the Jewish state.”

Torres wrote the presidents of American, Delta, and United in August asking them to map out the guidelines they followed in deciding to suspend their routes to Israel. None of the three airlines issued an official response to Torres’ letter, and his staff says they have communicated with the U.S. carriers’ government affairs teams, but didn’t disclose the result of these discussions.

Current and former Israeli officials told The Free Press they’re particularly confused by the U.S. airlines’ decisions as a number of Middle Eastern, African, and European carriers are currently flying to Tel Aviv despite these security threats. That includes three airlines from the United Arab Emirates—Etihad Airways, FlyDubai, and Wizz Air Abu Dhabi—whose government only normalized diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords. These pacts seek to integrate Israel economically and diplomatically into the wider Arab world.

Bari Weiss bullish on Jewish allies: ‘Our job is to show up for them, so they can show up for us’

When the world saw a swell of support for Hamas after the terror organization attacked Jewish communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, it was a “secondary catastrophe,” the journalist Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press, told about 3,000 people at an event in Toronto.

“You’ll see some of the most educated, prestigious, elite members of our society standing on the side of the terrorists,” Weiss, 40, a Jewish native of Pittsburgh, said at the Sept. 11 event, during which the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto launched its 2024 annual fundraising campaign.

The elite siding with terrorists has been “the major transformation to understand that we’re living in an age of just unbelievable moral confusion,” Weiss told attendees. “The most basic case for our civilization—and its fundamental goodness—has to be made.”

Weiss added that one could never imagine something “so morally depraved” as people supporting Al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“The gift of the darkness of this year has been the clarity of that—the absolute clarity of this moment,” said Weiss, who hosts the podcast Honestly, and who formerly was an opinion editor at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times who caused a national stir after she resigned from the Times in 2020, claiming an antisemitic backlash in the workplace. “Clarity about what it requires from us and a sense of purposefulness in the fight that we’re in.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles and a former member of the antisemitism advisory group at Harvard University; and Israeli actress Shira Haas, of the popular three-season series Shtisel and four-part docudrama Unorthodox, also spoke at the event.

“The year made me much more binary,” Wolpe told attendees. “It’s like, if you’re a non-Zionist or an anti-Zionist, you’re in a different category in my Marvel kingdom.”

“The year was, in fact, both painful and clarifying, which are two things that often go together,” the rabbi added.

It is essential for Jews and for Israel to have allies in the battle between good and evil, he said.

“We have more friends than we think, and when you see any public figure standing up for Israel or standing up for Jews, all I can tell you is try to find out how to send them a note of appreciation,” he said. “We have a lot of building to do with other people who really are well-disposed towards us, and it’s incredibly important.”

09/16 Links Pt1: For lasting peace, Hamas must be destroyed; Iran using Houthis’ Yemen as weapons ‘testing ground’; Trump defiant after 2nd assassination attempt

From Ian:

‘The world will respect Israel when it respects itself’

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s new book, One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, currently being launched and distributed, presents a coherent political doctrine aimed at shifting approaches and perceptions.

In it, he argues that Israeli rule over the entire territory not only aligns with Israel’s historical, biblical right to the land but will also benefit all parties involved, both Jews and Arabs.

Friedman has drawn on his years of policy experience, which played a significant role in key actions such as relocating the American embassy to Jerusalem and securing U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, to write his book addressing a wide range of political, security, civil and economic issues. Friedman is well aware of the multifaceted challenges involved in such a political plan.

We held a three-way conversation about this topic with him and Knesset member Ohad Tal, a key figure in advancing President Donald Trump’s plan within the Israeli political arena.

At the outset, Friedman summarizes the main points of his plan, which views the application of sovereignty as a step towards achieving the political goal of securing two things.

“No. 1 to bring stability, safety, security, prosperity for the State of Israel. No. 2 is to be faithful to the will of God with regard to the way in which the Jewish people should hold the Land of Israel. These are achieved through sovereignty. But it’s not about achieving sovereignty. It’s about achieving these two goals.”

Friedman outlines the path to his goal in several stages. “I don’t think it can happen overnight. The most important thing is for the State of Israel, by a meaningful consensus, to decide this is the right thing for the State of Israel before any other country gets involved. The State of Israel has to decide that. And I think the State of Israel should decide that through a process, which is deep and robust and thoughtful. I mean, I think people really need to discuss it.”

Friedman cautiously adds that while he doesn’t mean to offend anyone, the discussion around such a move needs to be approached somewhat differently from the hasty manner in which the judicial reform was promoted “by a narrow majority that created a lot of dissension. This issue is much bigger and if it’s going to go forward, it must do so with the support of a significant majority of the people in Israel.”

For lasting peace, Hamas must be destroyed

Decisive victory is the breeding ground for lasting peace and stability. Take, for example, the end of World War II. When the war was over, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were utterly crushed, their regimes disbanded, and their capacity to wage war and genocide obliterated. When Allied forces released German and Japanese prisoners of war, there was no concern that they would rise again to rebuild the military might of their former nations. Why? Because those powers had been completely defeated. There was no Nazi war machine left to restart. Imperial Japan no longer had the resources to continue its brutal campaigns. It is unthinkable to imagine, say, a negotiated agreement with Nazi Germany where their army was left intact or their weapons were untouched.

This brings us to Gaza. Thousands of Hamas militants currently sit in Israeli prisons. If any number of those prisoners were released without the utter decimation of Hamas’s capacity to wage terror against Israel, what would stop them from rearming, regrouping and reigniting the same bloody cycle of violence? How could negotiating a settlement with Hamas in this stage of the war ensure that Israel can live without fear of Hamas terrorism? For there to be any hope of peace in Israel and Gaza, Hamas must be thoroughly dismantled and their infrastructure of terror obliterated so that they no longer have the means to fight.

In fact, Israel may need to go even further. A portion of Gaza itself may need to come under Israeli control for a set period—think of China ceding Hong Kong to the British for 99 years in the aftermath of the First Opium War, which ended in 1842. This model could allow for a new generation in the coastal enclave to grow up free from Hamas’s tyranny and radicalization, paving the way for a society that values peace, culture and economic prosperity.

Another historical model is that of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Rome, recognizing Carthage as a continuous existential threat, ultimately decided that Carthage had to be destroyed. While the level of destruction used by Rome is not appropriate today (the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the ground), the lesson remains: Existential threats must be defeated so completely that they can no longer pose a danger. Gaza, under Hamas, remains a threat to Israel’s existence, and only through Hamas’s defeat can that threat be neutralized.

Additionally, we must understand the cultural dimension at play. In the Arab world, shame and honor are powerful forces. A thorough and humiliating defeat of Hamas would bring shame to the movement in the eyes of the Arab people—much in the same way that Germans still carry the weight of the Nazi era. Hamas must become an emblem of failure and disgrace, not resistance and heroism.

If Hamas were to be defeated, Gaza itself could have a future of prosperity. There’s no reason it couldn’t evolve into a cultural and economic beacon in the Middle East, akin to Tel Aviv. The people of Gaza deserve the chance to build a future free of terror. But for that to happen, Hamas must first be removed from the equation entirely.

In the end, wars end with victory or defeat, and for peace to flourish in Gaza and Israel, Hamas needs to be soundly, unequivocally defeated.

Trudeau Liberals buying Hamas 'lies': author/soldier John Spencer

John Spencer, the world’s foremost expert on urban warfare, has choice words for the Trudeau government: “Do your homework.”

At a lecture at a Toronto synagogue late last week, he said that the federal Liberals, “believe lies” coming from Hamas, and “base their policies on them,” including withholding weapons from Israel needed to fight the terror group. (Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced on September 10 that Canada suspended about 30 permits for arms shipments.)

A 25-year veteran of the U.S. Army, Spencer has been on fact-finding missions in Gaza three times since last December, where he was embedded with the Israel Defense Forces.

He claimed that “you have national leaders just repeating the talking points of Hamas,” including their casualty numbers, and the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza City on Oct. 17, 2023, that turned out to be an errant rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Contrary to the reports coming from Hamas – believed by NGOs and many world leaders – Israel is not exercising disproportionate or excessive force, and takes “every step possible” to avoid civilian casualties, he said.

Their enemy is doing the reverse: “That’s called human sacrifice, not human shields, when Hamas wants its entire population getting in the way of battle.”

When asked by moderator Amir Epstein, director of Tafsik, whether there was a genocide in Gaza, Spencer’s simple answer: no.

The International Court of Justice, which called on Israel to “take all measures” to prevent a genocide of the Palestinians, “did not make a ruling to tell Israel, in the meantime, stop the operation,” Spencer said. The UN’s definition of genocide, he continued, includes a list of specific criteria – including intent to systematically erase a culture, identity, nationality and people – which Israel is not guilty of. This is clear, to him, everywhere from the aid flowing in, “a flood of vaccinations,” and Israel “doing everything it can to avoid innocent casualties,” he said.

The Associated Press has reported that Israel’s offensive following the Oct. 7 attack has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, forced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, AP reports.

South Africa last year accused Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention. Israel has strongly rejected the claim and has argued that the war in Gaza is a legitimate defence against Hamas for the attack that killed around 1,200 people and took 250 hostages.

Spencer served two tours in Iraq, advised four-star generals and Pentagon officials, and serves as a colonel in the California State Guard as director of urban warfare training. He is also chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

It is his belief that “international pressure had caused Israel to slow down,” the counteroffensive, similar to past campaigns in Gaza, where the Jewish State was “not allowed to win wars.”

But once Hamas is defeated, the next step is deradicalization, that could take “a decades-long” process. “But it cannot start until you get the radicalizer out.”

One of those purges should be United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), that to his mind is anti-Israel. “There is enough data” to show how the NGO and Hamas have a symbiotic relationship. “You can’t have someone working in Gaza without Hamas accepting it,” he said, also noting how UNRWA schoolbooks preach incitement against Jews.

With the discovery of Hamas tunnels beneath UNRWA facilities, including a substantive data centre, “that alone – UNRWA has to justify it. Explain how a number of employees were involved in Oct. 7. Explain the number of UNRWA facilities where Hamas has turned into military headquarters.”