Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

09/24 Links Pt2: A Survivor’s Last Day; Biden makes valedictory UNGA speech; The Disgraceful and Disgraced Robert Malley; How Harvard Divinity Teaches Hate

From Ian:

‘The center has held’: Biden makes valedictory UNGA speech

U.S. President Joe Biden delivered his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, describing to world leaders the “sweep of history” he has seen over the course of his career as an elected official.

The 81-year-old touted his accomplishments in office while noting that his half-century of involvement in American foreign affairs was drawing to a close.

“I was first elected to office in the United States of America as a U.S. senator in 1972,” Biden said. “Back then, we were living through an inflection point, a moment of tension and uncertainty.”

“I truly believe we’re in another inflection point in world history,” he said.

Biden devoted about three minutes of his nearly 25-minute-long speech to the Middle East, Israel and Gaza.

Speaking just days before the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, he called on world leaders not to “flinch from the horrors” of that day.

“Any country would have the right and responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again,” Biden said. “Thousands of armed Hamas terrorists invaded a sovereign state, slaughtering and massacring more than 1,200 people, including 46 Americans in their home and at a music festival. Despicable acts of sexual violence. Two-hundred and fifty innocents taken hostage.”

“I’ve met with the families of those hostages. I’ve grieved with them. They’re going through hell,” he continued. “Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell. Thousands and thousands killed, including aid workers. Too many families dislocated, crowding in the tents, facing a dire humanitarian situation. They did not ask for this war that Hamas started.”

Biden called on Israel and Hamas to accept the ceasefire-for-hostages that he first outlined in May and that has stalled ever since. He said that the deal would ease suffering in the Gaza Strip and result in greater security for Israel, a Gaza “free from Hamas’s grip” and bring an end to the war.

The terms of the deal that the administration has previously outlined do not include removing Hamas from power.

Biden added that a diplomatic solution was “the only path” to resolve the Israel-Lebanon border crisis, and he also pressed for the creation of a Palestinian state.

“We must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution,” the president said. “Where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition and normalized relations with all its neighbors. Where Palestinians live in security, dignity and self-determination in a state of their own.”

He claimed that progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians would make it easier to confront the threat posed by Iran and said that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon.

King of Jordan Rejects Harboring Palestinian Refugees in U.N. Speech: ‘That Will Never Happen’

King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned the international community for allegedly failing their “moral duty” to protect Palestinian civilians during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, but took a moment to categorically reject the possibility of Jordan taking in Palestinians fleeing war.

The king dedicated the entirety of his speech to condemning Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terror organization Hamas. Israel launched a sweeping anti-terrorist initiative in Hamas-controlled Gaza following the invasion of the country by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. On that occasion, Hamas jihadists stormed residential neighborhoods in Israel, killing entire families in their homes, engaging in gang-rape and torture, and taking hostages. The Israeli government believed 101 people remain in Hamas captivity at press time, while approximately 1,200 were killed on the day of the attack.

King Abdullah did not mention Hamas by name during his speech, though he mentioned “October 7” on several occasions – not as the date of an unprecedented slaughter by jihadists, but as the start of what he claimed was a massacre of Palestinians. Absent recognition of the October 7 attack, the king made the Israeli military operation appear to not be prompted by anything.

“This Israeli government has killed more children, more journalists, more aid workers, and more medical personnel than any other war in recent memory,” the king claimed. “Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 – so is it any wonder that many are questioning how can this war not be perceived as deliberately targeting the Palestinians?”

“The level of civilian suffering cannot be written off as unavoidable collateral,” he added.

The alleged death toll of 42,000 people appears to be a reference to numbers published by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” a Hamas entity.

King Abdullah continued to declare that world nations must act to protect Palestinians – except Jordan, which would not accept Palestinian refugees in the name of rejecting “forced displacement.”

Hamas Superfan Erdogan Compares Netanyahu to Hitler at U.N.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent over half of his very lengthy address to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday criticizing Israel for its war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Erdogan accused the Israelis of genocide, compared them to Nazi Germany, and demanded the U.N. authorize “coercive measures against Israel” to halt the war in Gaza.

“The international community, and all of us in the human family, must fulfill our obligation to the Palestinian people without further delay,” Erdogan demanded.

Turkey’s Islamist leader claimed the U.N. has “failed in its founding mission” and become a “dysfunctional structure” because it has done nothing to stop “the massacre that has been going on in Gaza for the last 350 days.”

“They shredded the charter of the United Nations from the rostrum of the United Nations and shamelessly challenged the whole world,” he said of the Israelis.

“In Gaza, not only children are dying, but also the United Nations system. The values that the West claims to defend are dying. Truth is dying. The hopes of humanity to live in a more just world are dying, one by one,” he declared.

Erdogan blamed the U.N.’s inaction on Israel and its most influential supporters, although he never quite got around to calling out the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, by name.

“‘The world is bigger than five’ is my motto. International justice cannot be left to the will of five privileged member states of the Security Council,” he said.

Erdogan extensively regurgitated Hamas propaganda about the war in Gaza, absurdly insisting that almost all of the casualties were “women and children” deliberately targeted by Israel in a campaign of genocide.

“I call out to the United Nations Security Council: what are you waiting for to prevent the genocide in Gaza, to put a stop to this cruelty, this barbarism? What are you waiting for to stop Netanyahu and his mass murder network?” he asked.

Erdogan tried intimidating the “countries supporting Israel in an unconditional manner” by asking how long they could “carry the same of witnessing this massacre.” Later, he suggested all of the countries supporting Israel should be held accountable as accomplices to its alleged crimes.

Erdogan accused the Israelis of “disregarding basic human rights,” “trampling on international law,” and “practicing ethnic cleansing–- a clear genocide against a nation, a people, and occupying their lands step-by-step.”

“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity,” he declared, asking the UNGA to authorize the use of force against Israel.

Colombian President Urges 'World Revolution' Against U.S., Israel at U.N.

Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro declared that neither Israel nor the United States are “the children of God” and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “criminal” in an unhinged speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Petro, who called for a “world revolution” and for an artificial intelligence “global public authority,” accused the “richest one-percent of humanity, the powerful global oligarchy” of allowing bombs to fall in “Gaza and Sudan,” and denounced free market ideas for allegedly bringing about “the maximization of death.”

The bombs, according to Petro, are allegedly being brandished by “racists, supremacists, those who stupidly believe that the Aryans are the superior race.”

“The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction and its demonstration is Gaza. When Gaza dies, humanity will die,” Petro said. “It turns out that God’s people were not Israel, nor the United States, but the whole of humanity and the children of Gaza were just that, humanity, God’s chosen people.”

“[Benjamin] Netanyahu is a hero for the richest one percent of humanity because he is able to show that peoples are destroyed under bombs,” he continued.

Petro, an ardent communist and member in his youth of the M19 Colombian Marxist guerrilla terrorist organization, cut diplomatic ties with Israel in May in response to Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorists of Hamas. The rupture followed Petro publicly comparing Israel to Nazi Germany for entering Hamas-controlled Gaza to prevent the terrorists from repeating the atrocities of the October 7 attack against the country.

The far-left president ranted that “no one listens” to governments such as his that demand an end to the “genocide” in Gaza, the “decarbonization” of the world, and his proposal of debt forgiveness in exchange for climate action. Petro claimed that governments with “the power to destroy life” are the ones that are heard instead.

09/24 Links Pt1: The West’s reckless dishonesty over Lebanon; U.S. Diplomatic Magical Thinking; Proof the Gaza Death Toll is FAKED

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The West’s reckless dishonesty over Lebanon

Another thing that gets redacted in the facile sermonising of Israel’s haters is the question of who Israel is targeting. It’s Hezbollah, the soldiers of that anti-Semitic army that views the Jewish State as a ‘cancerous growth’ that must be excised from the Middle East. You wouldn’t know it from the MSM’s pained and infantile coverage, but Hezbollah has named more than 500 of its members who’ve been taken out by Israel in recent months. That’s not a slaughter of innocents – it’s payback for terrorism. Last week’s pagers attack was expressly targeted at the Hezbollah militants who use such archaic devices. And the strikes on Lebanon in recent days have eliminated many Hezbollah operatives, including a top commander: Ibrahim Aqil.

No one denies the horror of civilian casualties. But it is a flagrant lie to call Israel’s actions in Lebanon a war on civilians. It’s a war on terrorists, and it’s been a year brewing, ever since Hezbollah chose to bombard Israel to rub salt in the wound of Hamas’s pogrom. In more normal times, the French president, and the US president, would be thanking Israel for its removal of a terror commander like Aqil. After all, Aqil is widely suspected of assisting in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed 241 US and 58 French military personnel. It is a testament to the moral disarray of the West’s elites, if not their outright moral collapse, that they’ve responded to the just killing of a West-hating mass murderer by tut-tutting at those who brought him to justice. So where Macron bemoans Israeli aggression in Lebanon, Joe Biden’s America is ‘like a deer in the headlights’, says one DC think-tanker. Way to commemorate your servicemen and women that Aqil helped to butcher, France and America.

The media’s ruthless decontextualisation of the Israel-Lebanon clash is a kind of war censorship. It might not be as brutal as war censorship of old, when stuffy officials would simply starve the public of inconvenient facts. But in failing to situate this war in the post-7 October persecution of Israel by the anti-Semitic proxies on its borders, and in failing to give an honest account of the numbers of Hezbollah militants successfully injured or killed by Israel, the media give us a warped, borderline fraudulent take on these tensions. They turn a war on terrorists into a war on people, whitewash Hezbollah’s culpability and further inflame the fashionable Israelophobia of the graduate elites. It is a reckless dishonesty. And it is motored by a patrician urge to feed the people a pre-approved moral narrative rather than the truth.

As to the noisy left, for whom Israel is pursuing yet another ‘slaughter of innocents’ in Lebanon, where were you when Hezbollah’s missiles forced 60,000 civilians to evacuate their homes in northern Israel? And when Hezbollah’s missiles started fires that destroyed thousands of acres of land in Israel? And when a Hezbollah missile killed the Druze children? If you said nothing about all of that, we don’t care what you think about what’s happening in Lebanon. If you had told me a few years back that one day the self-styled anti-racist left would be silent when tens of thousands of Jews were forced into internal exile by militant anti-Semites, but would fume and rage when the Jewish State fought for the right of those Jews to return home, I’d have struggled to believe you.

The terrible truth is that Israel has little choice but to seek the weakening of Hezbollah. Both economically and spiritually, Israel cannot tolerate the wholesale evacuation of the north of its country. Nor can it risk ‘another 7 October’, which Hezbollah had been mulling. Back to Macron: what would he do if tens of thousands of French civilians were driven from their homes and many French children were slaughtered by a foreign-sponsored army across the border in Belgium? I wager he would take action, and that he would expect his allies to at least name the terror group that menaced France in such dire fashion. That’s all Israel wants too, M Macron.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s quandary: Can it afford to win in the face of international opprobrium?

International law turned on its head
And this brings us to the second half of the screen. As Israel fights the free world’s fight against Iran and its terrorist forces, the nations of the world have congregated at the U.N. General Assembly for their annual diplomatic lynch mob against the lone Jewish state. The General Assembly opened last week by passing a resolution demanding that Israel remove 800,000 citizens from their homes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria within a year and transfer their communities to the Palestinian Authority, which shares the goal of Iran and its other proxies to annihilate Israel.

If Israel fails to abide by the U.N. dictate, or even if it does, the resolution calls on the U.N. member states to enact an arms embargo on Israel. António Guterres, the U.N.’s Israel-hating secretary-general helpfully proclaimed that he will use his powers of office to enforce the resolution.

It was all downhill from there. At the United Nations, in Paris, in Washington, policymakers and lawmakers have spared no effort to demonize Israel. President Joe Biden and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, met in Washington on Monday. Rather than congratulate (or thank) Israel for systematically removing the gravest threats to the stability and security of the Middle East, including to the UAE and the United States, Biden and MBZ focused their statements on demanding that Israel move to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria—and Jerusalem.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his fellow progressives in Congress responded with rage to the simultaneous detonation of Hezbollah’s pages and walkie-talkies that took out thousands of terrorists in one fell swoop. They called it international terrorism and demanded a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Even Leon Panetta, former secretary of defense, also called the strike that decimated the leadership of the most powerful terror army in the world a terror attack.

All of those clamoring to declare Israel the enemy of all that is good, and Hezbollah and Hamas as the good guys, predicate their condemnations on an entirely imaginary version of international law that turns morality and the very concept of legality on their heads to punish defenders—or one specific defender, Israel—and reward aggressors.

The dissonance between the reality on the ground and the diplomatic assault on Israel—now joined by nearly every nation on earth at the United Nations—presents Israel with an epic quandary.

Obviously, it cannot scale back the level or nature of the assault with reason. People cannot be reasoned out of positions they weren’t reasoned into. The international community’s hostility towards Israel owes to a poisonous mix of political expedience, greed, opportunism and prejudice.

And so, we come to the quandary. Can Israel afford to ignore these forces and just fight to victory or not?

Can Israel afford not to ignore them?

The Biden administration and its comrades at the United Nations are betting that Israel will decide that it cannot afford to ignore these voices. But in reaching this conclusion, they ignore the one overriding factor that has informed Israel’s actions since Oct. 7.

This is a war for Israel’s survival. Israelis back this war because they understand that the lesson of Oct. 7 is that the can has been kicked to the end of the road. Claims that we can stop and pick up where we left off in a year or so fall like artillery duds. No one will accept them because no one can accept them. It is literally now or never.

And so the United Nations and the United States, and their diplomatic lynch mob, will be ignored. Maybe the diplomatic chips falling today can be picked up at a later date. But this war must be won. And after the stunning successes in Lebanon, more and more Israelis are reinforced in their conviction that it is being won.

Seth Mandel: The Post-Ceasefire Phase of the War?

Meanwhile, the fallout from Israel’s successful pager plot continues as Iran has become predictably paranoid about communications. Senior Iranian security officials told Reuters that Tehran has ordered its scattered foot soldiers to keep their distance from electronic devices, and that “a large-scale operation is underway by the IRGC to inspect all devices, not just communication equipment.” (One can picture a tech support operator asking Ayatollah Khamenei if he has tried turning Iran off and back on again.)

But the key to Sinwar’s ability to stay low-tech and remain effective is that other people in the chain use phones and electronic devices. Last week the Wall Street Journal described it this way: “A typical message from Sinwar will now be handwritten and first passed to a trusted Hamas member who moves it along a chain of couriers, some of whom might be civilians, the mediators said.… The note might then reach an Arab mediator who has entered Gaza or another Hamas operative who uses a phone or other method to send it to the U.S.-designated terrorist group’s members abroad.”

One top commander can operate this way, but entire armies cannot. The Pony Express is not cut out for modern warfare.

In order for Sinwar to use this communications process, he must have someone to pass notes to—and his couriers must then have someone to pass those messages along to. Does Sinwar even know who in Hamas and Hezbollah’s senior command—at least as it stood when he developed the note-passing system—is still alive? Because Israel has been picking them off with astonishing efficiency.

If this is indeed the state of play, then politicians can say they’re working toward a ceasefire but they will increasingly look behind the times.

This has been a problem for Kamala Harris all along. Her comments on civilian casualties and Israel’s need to shift strategy and weaponry, for example, have remained identical even as Israel shifted strategy and weaponry according to the Biden-Harris administration’s own directives. But she will look completely lost in the woods if she continues talking about negotiating a ceasefire when everyone knows there’s no one on the other end of the line.

There are bleak implications to this new phase, if that is indeed where we are. First and foremost, the fate of the hostages: It was widely believed that Sinwar kept some hostages in proximity as human shields; if he has been harmed, it might mean they have been harmed as well. If Sinwar is incommunicado, it’s possible not even senior Hamas officials abroad can say who is still alive and who isn’t.

Which means the worst thing Western governments—and especially the Biden White House—can do is try to pull Israel’s foot off the pedal here. Nobody should be waiting to hear from Sinwar. Furthermore, the administration must stop framing any action taken by the Israeli government as if it were coming at the expense of a ceasefire and hostage deal. (Yes, this should have been the case all along.)

If Hamas is on the threshold of defeat, holding Israel back would be an even bigger mistake now than before. Politicians involved in the negotiations genuinely wanted a ceasefire. But we may have left the era in which getting a deal was difficult and entered a post-ceasefire phase altogether. If so, everyone in a position of power in this war must act accordingly.

New batch of TEN EoZ cartoons

Still behind but hopefully catching up.

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!

They don't even hide their hate for Jews behind "Zionist" rhetoric. From Jordan's Al Bosala:

His Eminence Dr. Muhammad Khair Al-Adwi, through a lecture in the Councils of Faith, who specializes in the fundamentals of religion and the history of the Children of Israel, said in this council:

Throughout history, the Jews have never tired of plotting against the Islamic religion and its people and trying to repel them or confuse this religion for them or incite people against them, up to our days and until the end of time because they are the nation whose memory will remain present and they will remain alive because they are mentioned in the Holy Quran. There are many nations that existed, but they perished and ended and some of them were overcome by Islam and their power was broken and Islam spread among their people such as the Persian nation and the Roman nation and the like, except for the Jews who will remain until the end of time until the miracles of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and his prophethood are fulfilled in them, then the verses of the Holy Quran that mentioned their demise and how this demise will be, then to remain a witness to all nations throughout history that these are the enemies of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

They always claim that Israel is starting religious war. But these people are literally telling their people to start a religious war - not because Jews have something they want, but because Jews are Jews and they are Islam's eternal enemies until the end of time.

Whenever Muslims claim they are against Zionists and not Jews, ask them if they think this person is wrong.

This is what reporters should be doing but are too afraid to ask.

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 keeps referring to Hezbollah's "military wing" as if it is separate from the organization itself. The implication is that when there is an attack on their pagers, for example, it is an illegal attack on non-military targets and that Hezbollah's presence in the Lebanese parliament gives it immunity from attack.

But Hezbollah says otherwise.

Its 2009 manifesto speaks about how it has evolved politically, but in no way does it distinguish between politics and terrorism. They are both aimed at the same goals, under the euphemism of "resistance."

The Resistance project has grown from a liberation power to a balance and confrontation power and then to a defense and deterrence one besides its political internal role as an influencing pillar in building the just and capable state.

(The entire document is hardly ever read even by "experts." But it is a blueprint for turning Lebanon into Iran.)

Since then, Hezbollah officials have been crystal clear that there is no "political" or "military" wings to Hezbollah. Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mousawi has said, “Hezbollah is a single, large organization. We have no wings that are separate from one another.”

"Each of us is a combat soldier when the call of jihad demands it," Hezbollah has said.

Hassan Nasrallah himself reacted to the European declaration of its "military wing" as terrorist by responding, "The story of military wing and political wing is the work of the British."

Yet the media still insists that there is a separate military wing, independent of the organization.

Wishful thinking is not a substitute for reality. Hezbollah is terrorist, period.

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!

Here is a sample timeline of Iranian threats to attack Israel since August 1. Note that the rationale for not actually attacking Israel as promised keep morphing, first to say that it will be a surprise, then to say that Iran wants to give negotiations with Hamas a chance, then to say that it might not be a traditional military response at all.

(All text from Institute for the Study of War daily Iran Updates.)

August 1: "Senior Iranian security officials, including Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian, suggested that both Iran and the Axis of Resistance will retaliate against Israel"

August 4: " Iran told unspecified Arab diplomats on August 3 that it does not care if its retaliation triggers a war, according to the Wall Street Journal. This report comes immediately after Iranian Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Bagheri Kani held his multiple phone calls with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts, during which he emphasized Iran’s “serious determination to hold [Israel] accountable.”

August 7: "Acting Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani defended Iran’s impending retaliatory strike against Israel while signaling that Iran seeks to avoid a regional war during an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on August 7. Bagheri Kani argued that Iran “has no choice” but to exercise its right to self-defense and restore deterrence against Israel.

August 11: " Iranian armed forces-run outlet Defa Press claimed on August 11 that Iran is conducting a 'flawless psychological war' against Israel by drawing out its retaliation.."

August 13: " Three anonymous senior Iranian officials speaking to Reuters on August 13 claimed that Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah would refrain from attacking Israel if it reached a ceasefire-hostage agreement with Hamas.[1] One of the senior Iranian officials claimed that Iran and Hezbollah would attack Israel if ceasefire-hostage talks fail or if Israel delays negotiations."

August 15: "An IRGC-affiliated outlet published a graphic on August 15 boasting that the ambiguity surrounding the timing of the attack is just as harmful as the strike itself will be"

August 20: "IRGC Deputy Commander Brigadier General Ali Fadavi warned on August 20 that Iran will 'definitely' retaliate against Israel 'at the suitable time and place.'

August 28: "Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri restated on August 28 the Iranian intent to attack Israel in retaliation for killing Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.["

September 1: "IRGC-affiliated media indicated on August 31 that some elements of the Iranian regime are likely continuing to try to delay a retaliatory strike on Israel until the ongoing ceasefire-hostage negotiations conclude. Basirat claimed that Iran’s response to Israel killing Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh will be “strong, decisive, and deterrent,” but noted that Iran does not seek to derail the ongoing ceasefire talks"

September 4: "Senior Iranian military officials have continued to signal that Iran will attack Israel directly in response to Israel killing several senior Axis of Resistance leaders.... Armed Forces General Staff Coordination Deputy Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi Ali Abadi claimed on September 4 that Israel “must bury [its] dream that Iran will not respond” to Haniyeh's death. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Operations Deputy Brigadier General Mohsen Chizari separately warned that Iran will “definitely” give a “crushing response” to Israel

September 9: "The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander said on September 8 that Iran would take “revenge” for Israel’s “evils” in a “different” way. IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami said that Israel is "shaken" by the "nightmare of Iran's decisive action" and that "Israelis will taste the bitter taste of revenge.""

September 19: "Iranian officials stated that there will be a response to the Israeli operation that detonated pagers belonging to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon on September 17. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami vowed a “crushing response” from the Axis of Resistance in a message to Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on September 19. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated his condemnation for the attack in Lebanon and stated on X (Twitter) that “God...takes revenge and [Israel] will definitely be punished justly”

Now, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has changed the narrative yet again, claiming that Iran's failure to attack is really because it loves peace and was practicing amazing restraint and wants to put down its weapons, contradicting literally everything said beforehand - including by Pezeshkian himself:

Pezeshkian considered that the Israeli occupation state assassinated the elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran, with the aim of “dragging Iran into a regional war, but we exercised the utmost restraint.”

He stressed that Tehran has sufficient capability to strike the Israeli occupation state, explaining that the response to the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran "will be at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner."

The Iranian president expressed his country's readiness to "work to reduce tensions in the region," but "Israel does not want that and is escalating and expanding the war," he said.

He also expressed Iran's readiness to "put aside all its weapons," considering that "the question is to what extent Israel is prepared to do the same."

In other words, Iran and Hezbollah are losing and Iran is pivoting from "we'll destroy the infidel Jews" to "don't attack us! Please!"

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!

09/23 Links Pt2: NGO Warfare: The Arms Embargo Campaign vs. Israel; The New Rules of Western Journalism; US Jews and Israel’s future; Tucker Screwtape

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: NGO Warfare: The Arms Embargo Campaign vs. Israel

For more than 20 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some with links to terror groups, have engaged in a long-term BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions) campaign against security assistance to Israel. Their targets include military funding to Israel, Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, and other defensive systems.

In the aftermath of the barbaric Hamas massacre of October 7 and attacks by Iran and its terror proxies (Hezbollah, Houthis, the IRGC Quds Force, Iraqi Shi’ite militias) on Israel, rather than use law and international justice frameworks to support the victims of the atrocities, political advocacy NGOs have only intensified this lobbying. The NGO network initiated lawsuits and called on governments around the world to impose a full arms and fuel embargo on Israel and halt military assistance.

The majority of these campaigns have ignored the blatant Palestinian, Iranian, and Iranian-sponsored violations against Israeli civilians and the constant firing of UAVs, rockets, and missiles at Israeli population centers from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. The NGOs also neglect the massive flow of offensive weapons and explosives, including drones and ballistic missiles, from Iran and Syria into Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. These groups also ignore the state sponsorship of Hamas by Qatar and Turkey that also buy billions of dollars in weapons from countries where they are seeking embargoes against Israel.

Gerald M. Steinberg: The World Peace Foundation's Propaganda War

The World Peace Foundation (WPF) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is a very visible example of exploiting the facade of peace to fuel conflict and promote false accusations that contribute to hatred and violence.7

WPF has joined the intense propaganda war accompanying the Gaza conflict.

Its head, Alex de Waal, has amplified the accusations that Israel was deliberately using starvation as a weapon against Palestinians in Gaza.

However, as the evidence was carefully examined, it became clear that there was and is no famine or food shortage in Gaza.

Despite the ongoing attacks by Hamas and the devastating torture and point-blank murder of hostages, Israel has maintained a steady flow of vital supplies.

The New Rules of Western Journalism

There’s an increasingly vague line between journalism and terrorist propaganda coming out of the Gaza Strip, where terrorists often masquerade as journalists. This is a distinction that you’d hope and expect would be easily discernible to seasoned media professionals like the heads of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) or the editors, if that’s still a thing that meaningfully exists, of Time magazine, which was once the flagship of objective weekly news reporting. But unfortunately, the distinction between news reporting and simple-minded propaganda is no longer a meaningful one to America’s self-appointed political commissars who think that they know better than the facts.

In late July, NATAS nominated a Gazan journalist and apparent member of a terror group, Bisan Owda, for a news and documentary Emmy Award for her AJ+-produced It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive. The docu-short, which has already clinched Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards, is up in the “outstanding hard news feature story: short form” category. The documentary presents the harsh realities experienced by the people of Gaza in the early days of the Israel-Hamas War, which was initiated when Hamas massacred 1,200 people 11 months ago in southern Israel and took 250 others hostage.

Remarkably, Bisan’s eight-minute documentary makes no mention of the medieval horrors inflicted upon innocent Israelis that terrible Oct. 7 day that started the war. Instead, Bisan presents her unsuspecting Western audience with a sanitized version of history in which Hamas and Gaza’s other terror groups are nonexistent, even inside the Hamas stronghold of Shifa Hospital, and in which she is somehow an objective journalist caught up in horrors being inflicted on innocents by Israeli “occupiers,” rather than an apparent adherent of a terror organization that deliberately murders innocent people, and helped bring about the events she depicts.

The distinction between news reporting and propaganda is no longer a meaningful one to America’s self-appointed political commissars.

Even more troubling than the bizarre absence of Hamas in Bisan’s documentary and the subsequent episodes released by AJ+ from the standpoint of basic journalistic ethics and practice, is what she does choose to show. Interspersed throughout the footage of the immense and genuine human suffering in Gaza is propaganda straight from the Hamas media office. By deliberately mixing truth with lies, such as the assertion that “women, children, and the elderly make up 73% of the dead in Gaza,” numbers that several experts have referred to as “statistically impossible,” Bisan’s content is purposefully designed to sway the hearts and minds of millions of viewers who don’t know better toward the terrorists.

Bisan takes an even less nuanced approach, however, when uploading short videos to her Instagram account for her 4.7 million followers. There, she veers into outlandish antisemitic territory, such as the grotesque allegation that Israel is stealing the organs of dead Palestinian children of Gaza—which comes straight out the pages of age-old antisemitic blood libels. In a video from Oct. 18, the day after an explosion infamously rocked Gaza’s Al Ahli Hospital, Bisan filmed herself in tears over the “800 people killed” by Israel (300 more than Hamas’ number). In a now-infamous twist, the explosion turned out to be caused by an errant rocket fired by the Islamic Jihad terror group. European intelligence later placed the likely death toll at 50—or 93.75% less than the total Bisan claimed.

The fact that this propaganda is only thinly veiled as journalism is less surprising once you take a deeper look at Bisan’s background. Bisan appears to be a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that has American blood on its hands and openly gloated about its participation in the mass slaughter in southern Israel on Oct. 7. In 2018, the PFLP confirmed Bisan’s membership in the organization when it referred to her as part of the Progressive Youth Union, which the PFLP explicitly acknowledges is its “youth framework.” Two years prior, Bisan hosted a PFLP event honoring Palestinian terrorists injured or killed in confrontations with Israeli soldiers, which included Sami Shawqi Madi, who was the head of the PFLP’s media committee at the time of his death. In 2015, Bisan was one of the speakers at a rally celebrating the 48th anniversary of the founding of the PFLP, where she addressed the crowd while wearing a full PFLP military uniform and stated that “the people of Gaza, the people in the West Bank, and in Jerusalem ... will not back down at all from their cause and their revolution.” Bisan also served as the “master of ceremonies” the following year at the 49th-anniversary rally. In a since-deleted article published in Al-Hadaf, the PFLP’s official newspaper, Bisan is lauded as “a symbol of resistance journalism.”

Despite Bisan’s open affiliation with a terrorist organization, and reporting that violates every norm of ethical journalism, NATAS has defended the nomination. Bizarrely, NATAS President & CEO Adam Sharp stated that “NATAS has been unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able, to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP” and that the “content submitted for award consideration was consistent with competition rules and NATAS policies.” Sharp’s response completely ignores the ample evidence of Bisan’s terror ties (including her own confirmation that she participated in the PFLP rallies) and her propensity for spreading antisemitism and openly lying in the service of terrorist propaganda campaigns. In reality, multiple Gazan journalists working for Al Jazeera (which owns AJ+) have been linked to terror groups, while the PFLP and Hamas have been openly training journalists in the Strip for over a decade—some of whom participated in the Oct. 7 terror attack as combatants and even held Israeli hostages in their homes.

09/23 Links Pt1: Sorry, Israel Won’t Be a Sitting Duck; The Democracies Betray Israel at the UN; Israel’s dangerous bet on deradicalization

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Sorry, Israel Won’t Be a Sitting Duck

Terrorism, according to some of America’s esteemed defense officials and intellectuals, is when you jump out from behind a bush and yell “BOO!” at an unsuspecting passerby. Campfire ghost stories, snake-in-a-can, rollercoasters—terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.

All these things make people afraid, maybe even momentarily terrified, and are therefore terrorism—it’s right there in the word!

“This is going right into the supply chain,” former CIA chief and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said about Israel’s targeted pager plot against Hezbollah soldiers in Lebanon. “And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, What the hell is next?”

Philosopher Michael Walzer has a slightly different, but equally ridiculous, objections: “Yes, the devices most probably were being used by Hezbollah operatives for military purposes. This might make them a legitimate target in the continuous cross-border battles between Israel and Hezbollah. But the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands of others, came when the operatives were not operating.”

The first sentence in that quote establishes that the operatives were, by definition, operating. So when Walzer then states two sentences later that the operatives were not operating, one wonders why an editor at the New York Times would not have saved Walzer from himself at his moment of greatest need.

Since such objections to the pager plot are no longer merely coming from figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we must ask: Why are folks making imbecilic, self-refuting arguments in public, where people can see them?

The answer is that we are witnessing the latest chapter in a long-running attempt to delegitimize any offensive military act carried out by Israel. And as absurd as these recent arguments may seem, they are quite dangerous if they catch on. They are being deployed for the express purpose of disqualifying Israel’s policy of targeted attacks, very much including targeted assassinations.

Put simply: They are defending a random Hezbollah operative today to prevent the death of Hassan Nasrallah tomorrow.

There’s a long history of forcing Israel to be a sitting duck, pressuring it to not defend itself unless there are enemy forces on Israeli territory.

Ruthie Blum: News flash for DC: Diplomacy gets you slaughtered

On ABC’s Sunday program, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby acknowledged sheepishly that Hamas is holding up a deal with Israel that would see the end of the war in Gaza and the release of at least some of the hostages.

The fact that something so obvious requires repeating is beyond outrageous. Nevertheless, it’s made necessary by the choir of voices blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu for the absence of an arrangement with Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar and his army of mass murderers.

Asked by Stephanopoulos whether it’s true that the “Gaza ceasefire talks have gone cold,” Kirby replied: “I would say that we are not achieving any progress here in the last week to two weeks; not for lack of trying. But it doesn’t appear like Mr. Sinwar is prepared at all to keep negotiating in good faith, especially after he murdered six hostages in a tunnel … execution-style. So, it doesn’t appear as if he’s willing to move this forward.”

As they always do when someone in the American administration fingers the real culprit, Israelis on the side of the spectrum that believes in the government’s war goals promptly highlighted this admission. It’s one of the arguments they use to counter claims by the “anybody but Bibi” protesters that Netanyahu is at fault for not playing ball with the so-called “mediators” in Washington, Cairo and Doha.

In their enthusiasm to illustrate, once again, that even U.S. officials are accusing Hamas of being the stumbling block, these pundits failed to focus on the language of Kirby’s interview—and on the rest of its disturbing content.

Let’s start with his referring to this bloodluster, famous for killing Palestinians with his bare hands, as “Mr. Sinwar.” Talk about an ill-deserved honorific, to put it mildly.

Worse, it indicates utter cluelessness about the character of the Middle East, in general, and Sinwar’s identity, in particular. He’s not a “mister.” He’s a monster who revels in being hailed as such. It’s the source of his power over the people he terrorizes, both his own and Israel’s.

Then there’s Kirby’s delicacy in describing how “it doesn’t appear like Mr. Sinwar is prepared at all to keep negotiating in good faith—especially after he murdered six hostages in a tunnel … execution-style.”

When, one wonders, did he ever negotiate “in good faith?” Executing the starved, abused hostages his operatives and “civilian” supporters tortured, raped and kidnapped on Oct. 7 was par for Sinwar. Kirby’s use of the word “especially” constituted an apologetic clarification for the mere suggestion that the Hamas chief might not be as reliable a partner for powwows as the U.S. government had imagined.

Into the fray: Inverted morality, the eclipse of good by evil

A perverse concern
Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that Hamas’s position on how Israel should respond to the pernicious procession of war crimes perpetrated against it—and how to redress them—would be irrelevant, especially for those who profess to subscribe to a credo of sanctifying “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yet astonishingly, what we are seeing is just the reverse: A perverse concern for Hamas’s demands—and the welfare of their malign adherents—is now not only dominating the debate on the fighting in Gaza but also largely determining attitudes toward the negotiations on the release of the abductees held in captivity by the Islamist thugs.

The treatment of the illegally kidnapped Israelis has been bestial, and the conditions they are being held in are below sub-human. They are denied even the most minimal levels of sanitation, nutrition and medical treatment and have had no access to, or care by, international humanitarian organizations such as the (hopelessly biased and inept) Red Cross. They are being incarcerated incommunicado deep in dank, damp dungeons, cut off from any contact with the outside world, certainly from family and friends.

Given the heinous nature of Hamas and its utter disregard not only for international law and elementary norms of human decency but for any semblance of accepted behavior in civilized circles, no merit can or should be ascribed to their demands.

Grotesque endeavors
The organization and its aberrant adherents must be hounded mercilessly—hellfire and brimstone relentlessly rained down on them. The grotesque endeavors to justify its barbarism should be repudiated and ridiculed.

Any sign that its inhumanity could be accorded any gains will only induce further inhumanity.

That is an outcome that cannot be countenanced.

The Washington Post has an article on the pager operation. Within the article comes this piece of complete stupidity:

In interviews, current and former intelligence officials marveled at the complexity of the plot, though some questioned its strategic significance. One former U.S. intelligence official said that Israel’s decision to rig the devices with explosives rather than with sophisticated espionage equipment reflected a “cult of the offensive mindset” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, prioritizing displays of kinetic power that may not achieve Israel’s broader aims in an escalating regional conflict.

Maybe this "former intelligence official" supervised the janitors at the NSA, because this is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

Let's go through what would be necessary to outfit the pagers with "sophisticated espionage equipment ."

The pagers used by Hezbollah were not connected to any public communications infrastructure like the phone system. They were an independent ecosystem, with a server sending one-way instructions to thousands of devices. There was no communication going back.

Israel couldn't piggyback on the existing communications to get information back. It would have to build an entirely new two way network. Maybe, maybe they could put a GPS receiver there and monitor where people were that way; I've seen that claim, but they certainly could not install microphones and transmitters inside what is already a very small device. And they would have to place receivers throughout Lebanon - any such device would have a limited range, as pagers themselves do, of only a few miles. So Israel would also have to build reception equipment and antennas inside an enemy state.

If they did, Hezbollah would have found them quickly. Inside sensitive areas there is no doubt there are devices meant to eavesdrop on all radio frequencies to see if anything is being leaked.

So this unintelligence official is saying Israel should have done something much more difficult and much more expensive with a much higher likelihood of failure.

I hope he or she didn't use that logic on planning their own operations.

This person does not know what Israel's aims were, but he or she knows better how to achieve them than Israel does. Because they know that the people who planned the most sophisticated espionage in world history are not subtle enough to think it through.

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The UN issued a press release:

These atrocities must end

Statement by Principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

NEW YORK/GENEVA/ROME/WASHINGTON – As world leaders gather in New York for the 79th United Nations General Assembly, and as the threat of a wider regional escalation looms, we renew our demand for an end to the appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

We mourn the loss of innocent life everywhere, including those killed on October 7 and during the 11 months of conflict since then.

We urgently call for a sustained, immediate and unconditional ceasefire. This is the only way to end the suffering of civilians and save lives.

All hostages and all those arbitrarily detained must be released immediately and unconditionally.

This is the tone of the entire piece. The UN equates Hamas with Israel and it cannot write a full sentence to condemn Hamas actions alone without also condemning Israel. But there are plenty that only condemn Israeli actions, like:

More than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza – the majority of them civilians, including women, children, older persons and at times entire families – have reportedly been killed, and more than 95,500 have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. ...The risk of famine persists with all 2.1 million residents still in urgent need of food and livelihood assistance as humanitarian access remains restricted.....

And then, in case you weren't sure this was a anti-Israel screed, it adds a gratuitous sentence about the West Bank and "settlers" that doesn't mention a word about Palestinian terror attacks over the past year that originated there.

Unnecessary and disproportionate force unleashed in the West Bank, combined with escalating settler violence, house demolitions, forced displacement and discriminatory movement restrictions, have caused increased fatalities and casualties.

This one sentence shows how little the UN cares about international law and how eager it is to bash Israel while pretending to be objective:

The parties’ conduct over the last year makes a mockery of their claim to adhere to international humanitarian law and the minimum standards of humanity that it demands.

Only one party claims to adhere to IHL - and it has lots of evidence that it is doing so. It is Hamas that has a strategy of putting civilians in danger, not Israel.

The statement does not mention Hamas' human shield strategy. It does not mention how, exactly, Israel is expected to fight the most bloodthirsty terrorists without hurting some civilians.

Actually, it does: unconditional cease fire where Hamas will be free to mount another October 7.

Sorry, UN, but your pretense at "both sidesism" is transparent. You want the status quo where Jews are in danger from a terrorist organization and you want to stop Israel from fighting back.

That is not international humanitarian law. That is an invitation for more terror.

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Israel has changed the "deterrence" calculus, and it is about time

For years, Iran and its Hezbollah proxy have been presenting themselves as deterring Israel's nonexistent aggressive and expansionist plans into Arab states. They've put together powerful armies and used their threats of all out war to only limit Israel's options of retaliating at their ever increasing attacks but also to use that power to leverage the West into stopping Israel from properly responding in the interests of maintaining quiet.

Before October 7, Israel enjoyed quiet, and as a result so did Lebanon and Gaza. Lebanon had other problems to worry about and Gaza was steadily improving its economy - more trucks were entering, more goods were being exported, more Gazans had relatively lucrative jobs in Israel.

The "Black Shabbat" pogrom changed Israel's viewpoint, although it didn't change that of the West. While the US and other ostensible allies said that they supported Israel, that support was for Israel defending itself and not so much to go after Hamas and certainly not Hezbollah or Iran.

While Israel was methodically dismantling Hamas' military capabilities, it mostly allowed Iran to dictate what happened on the Lebanese - and Iranian - fronts. Iran and its proxies chose their moves based on the idea that their powerful armies were deterrence against Israel's doing anything major to hurt them.

Israel has changed that calculus.

It has now been over seven weeks since Iran promised an imminent and devastating multi-pronged attack on Israel in response to the assassination of Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Over time, that promise has evaporated, into a "we'll get to it when we decide to." And during that time period, Israel seized the initiative rather than wait to be forced to be in a defensive and fearful position.

It pre-emptively blunted Hezbollah's own promised response to the assassination of Fouad Shukr. It mounted the most impressive supply chain espionage attack in history without firing a single bullet. It successfully took out the Radwan Force leadership meeting in a sub-basement of a residential building with a minimum of civilian casualties. It has severely damaged Hezbollah's entire communications infrastructure, and reportedly Iran is reeling as well in fear that the same thing would happen to it. It has turned Hezbollah and Iranian forces against each other as they suspect their comrades of being spies.

Suddenly, the deterrence equation has changed, and it is the terrorists who are being deterred from mounting their promised major escalation, at least for now. But Israel is keeping the pressure on so that they know that if they follow through on their rhetoric, they would be hurt far more than Israel would. Also, they are no longer dealing with an Israel that craves quiet, because Israel has seen that quiet is preparation for attack, not detente.

Israel's response has been risky but brilliant. The only thing I think is needed is a warning to Iran that even if its proxies mount a successful attack - whether an assassination, or a fatal attack by Houthis with Iranian missiles - that Israel will respond in a way that Iran's economy will be severely hurt. The fiction that the Houthis and Hezbollah are independent must end.

October 7 proved that quiet does not mean safety or security. Israel is now telling its enemies that "quiet" has gone way down on its list of priorities, along with pleasing its Western allies who aren't facing these levels of terrorism. Iran and its proxies have more to lose than Israel has, and that message is one that is belated but finally here.

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

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Arab news site: "The plan of global Zionism is for the Jews to rule over the goyim," quoting a non-existent rabbi

One feature of antisemitic conspiracy theories is their resiliency. They pop up, they get debunked, they are resurrected a couple of years later, over and over again.

Here's one that comes from 1952.

Arab site Al Shiraa has an article by Abdul Hadi Muhaisen titled, "The plan of global Zionism is for the Jews to rule over the "goyim", i.e. the non-Jews."

It starts off this way:

On 12/5/1952, Chief Rabbi Emanuel Rabinowitz delivered a secret speech before the extraordinary conference of the Emergency Committee of the Rabbis of Europe, in which he said: “Greetings to you, my sons... I must inform you that the goal for which we have been working for three thousand years has now become within our reach... And I can assure you now that it will not be a few years until our people regains the first place which is its natural right that has been usurped for many generations, and then things will return to normal and every Jew will become a master and every goy (non-Jew) a slave..."

The entire speech is a fabrication, as is "Chief Rabbi Emanuel Rabinowitz." Wikipedia has an entry on the subject, noting that the speech was created by a well-known white supremacist and Holocaust denier of the 1950s named Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr. (In that same year of 1952 he penned an article called "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation.")

One reason this forgery keeps getting believed is that someone sent this fabricated speech to the CIA, where it was dutifully archived and is now available for everyone to see when the archives were made public. Since it is at the real CIA site, it is getting more credibility today than it did at any time before this century.

Arab sites love right wing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

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09/22 Links: I Survived Hamas Captivity, but I’m Not Yet Free; Netanyahu: Hezbollah dealt ‘blows it couldn’t have imagined’; Disagreement over Sinwar's possible death

From Ian:

I Survived Hamas Captivity, but I’m Not Yet Free

The last time I saw my husband, Keith, was on November 26. He was lying on a filthy mattress on the floor of a darkened room and could barely look at me. We had spent 51 days together as Hamas’s hostages after being violently abducted from our home on October 7. I had been told earlier that day that my name was on the list; I was to be released and sent back home to Israel. Keith was to be left behind.

My long journey out of Gaza was filled with fear and sadness. I was sure our son had been murdered on October 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where we lived. The Hamas terrorists had been telling us throughout our captivity that Israel had been destroyed; I didn’t know what I would find. When I finally arrived at the border, I was told that all four of my children were waiting for me in the hospital. The attack on Kfar Aza had killed 64 people, and another 19 had been taken hostage, but my son had miraculously survived. I looked up and saw the moon for the first time in 51 days and screamed with joy and relief that he was alive and I was free.

I spent my first night of freedom in the hospital with my three daughters. I slept for perhaps an hour—I was in shock, and adrenaline was coursing through my body. I had lost 20 pounds and was weak and sick. I could not get my head around the fact that I had been separated from Keith, my husband of 43 years and my constant companion. Every day since—for nearly 300 days—I have been fighting for his release with every ounce of my being.

I think about Keith all the time, but I feel a particular pang whenever I drink water, when I take a shower, when I eat something delicious. As a hostage in Gaza, these are not things I could do. The most frustrating part is that I don’t know anything about Keith’s condition: Is he alone? (I’d love for someone to tell me that he’s not.) Is he sad, or crying? Is he in a tunnel with no oxygen? Is he sick or being tortured? Has he eaten any food at all today? Is he alive?

Keith is an American citizen. He was born and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina—also the hometown of James Taylor, his favorite singer. In his early 20s, he moved to Israel, where we met and started a life together. I was a nursery-school teacher, working with the children of the kibbutz, and Keith was an occupational therapist who was working for a pharmaceutical company. Our entire lives centered on supporting each other and our community, nourishing the next generation with family time and instilling the values of respect, integrity, and acceptance of the other in our four children and five grandchildren.

Keith is the kindest, most gentle man you could ever meet. He makes friends wherever he goes and is universally loved by people and animals. Thirty years ago, Keith learned Arabic so that he could talk with the Palestinian workers on the kibbutz, whom he swiftly befriended. A lifelong vegetarian, he held fast to his values in captivity. He wouldn’t even eat a few tiny morsels of chicken when the terrorists gave us more than our standard daily rations of half a pita or a few bites of plain rice.

We are both lifelong peacemakers and activists. That’s one reason what happened to us and to our community was so shocking.

Melanie Phillips: A most ungodly church

Did Welby and his four clerics make the slightest attempt to discover the truth of this story? Did they consult the Israeli court records? Did they even ask the Israelis for their side of the story? Of course not. As usual, they believed the claims of those who routinely defame Israel in order to destroy it — just as the International Court of Justice’s opinion was based on exactly the same kind of lies and distortions.

The church hierarchy’s venom towards Israel — as in secular liberal circles — goes beyond reason. For years, clerics have blamed Israel for the flight of Christians from the once-Christian majority town of Bethlehem, even though a) the town is run by Muslims who are actually responsible for oppressing and terrorising the town’s Christians; b) not even Israel’s worst enemies claim that Israel has a particular animus against Christians anywhere, so why should Christians flee Bethlehem while the Muslims remain? c) Israel is in fact the only country in the Middle East where Christians are safe and thriving.

The deranged nature of the church’s attitude has been illustrated by the bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek — one of the four signatories to the Guardian letter. In July, she called Israel an “apartheid state” and said she stood “boldly” with people who compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to how black people were treated in apartheid South Africa.

Since Treweek doesn’t even appear to understand that the Palestinian Arabs of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria aren’t Israeli citizens because these areas aren’t part of Israel — which means that the situation of these Palestinian Arabs is entirely different from the black citizens of South Africa who were disempowered and denied their citizens’ rights under apartheid — she clearly doesn’t even understand what apartheid was. The depths of her ignorance thus exceed even her bigotry.

And on that last point, as I have written on many occasions the church’s bigotry towards Israel is underpinned by theological antisemitism — the revival of the ancient, murderous Christian heresy of supersessionism, now turbo-charged by cynically substituting the Palestinian Arabs for the Christians who, according this heresy, inherited all God’s promises to the Jews who were accordingly denounced as the party of the Devil.

This heresy caused the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in pre-modern Europe. Now it has been re-purposed and re-weaponised to incite murderous hatred of the Jews of Israel.

This most ungodly church has long horrified and embarrassed Christians of integrity who are faithful to the Bible and to the truth. The falsehoods about Israel that the church has has been promoting have played a key role in knocking the west off its moral compass.

In Britain and elsewhere in the world, decent Christians should now rise up and publicly denounce the antisemitism of the church hierarchy and the lies about Israel that it is constantly promoting, and demand that it immediately stop perpetrating such murderous evil.

Waving Flags, Telling Lies

On Friday, October 6, 2023, I was just another well-meaning left wing guy who sympathised with the Palestinian people, who felt that Zionism was an ugly 19th-century invention of evil colonisers, and cared about the plight of refugees. I was definitely not "woke," in contrast to most, but I was certain that I knew how wicked the State of Israel was. Then, on October 7th, I awoke from my delusional thinking and re-examined my terribly flawed preconceptions. Here’s what I found.

The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th 2023 were a stark wake-up call to the world - or at least, they should have been. A bloodbath, an orgy of violence motivated by hate that defied any semblance of humanity, nearly 1000 women and children were raped, murdered in their beds, butchered in the streets, or taken hostage by violent, ideologically driven men full of hate for Jews. This was not a battle for freedom. But in the aftermath, as the world watched in horror, an equally grotesque spectacle took place: social media profiles with Palestinian flags on them, protests where people chanted "From the river to the sea" as though it were a call for peace rather than a barely disguised threat of genocide, or, as was the case in Sydney, Australia, just "Gas the Jews."

There is no way to justify this madness; individuals who fly the Palestinian flag in public or from the comfort of their social media bubbles are not supporting humanitarian causes. Whether they realise it or not, they are allying themselves with the most sinister forces in history. To march with a keffiyeh around your neck, shouting slogans of Palestinian liberation, is to goose-step through history, chanting "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" with every step. Though the slogans themselves may have changed, their hateful meaning has not.

Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of historical fact, as undeniable as the existence of Rome or the pyramids of Egypt. As historian Paul Johnson reminds us, “No people has ever been so continuously identified with one small piece of earth over such a long span of time as the Jews with their land.” To deny this is to engage in the same kind of historical revisionism that Holocaust deniers revel in. However, the anti-Zionist movement, which is frequently supported by those who criticise colonialism, ignores this truth in a twisted mockery of the indigenous rights that so many of these people claim to support.

Imagine if contemporary Britons decided that the history and culture of the Scots, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish should be suppressed and their people banished from their homeland, believing it to be a product of colonialism. The world would rightly react with horror and condemnation. However, when it comes to Israel, the Palestinians—whose unique identity is a 20th-century invention—are celebrated as the rightful owners, while the real indigenous people are written off as invaders. It’s a narrative so absurd that it belongs in the pages of a dystopian novel, not in the discourse of supposedly enlightened societies. Who, in reality, do people believe persecuted Jews and forced so many to escape during the diaspora out of fear for their lives? History, as they say, is written by the victors, but in the case of Israel, it’s being rewritten by the losers - those who lost their moral compass somewhere along the way. After centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, Jews returned to their historical homeland, a land from which they had never truly been absent. Compare this with the European settlers in Australia, who brutally displaced Aboriginal peoples and declared themselves the rightful rulers. Today, Australia wrestles with its colonial past, striving for reconciliation. However, when it comes to Israel, the same people who support justice for indigenous populations at home actively campaign to deny the Jewish people's historical existence and right to their own land.

This morning, Israel shut down the offices.of Al Jazeera in Ramallah.

Here was the reason given:

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi confirmed that security forces raided the news organization’s main West Bank offices to “shut down the station” and enforce a closure order. In a statement on X, he accused the Qatari government-backed network of being a “mouthpiece” for Israel’s enemies and said Israel was acting to protect the safety of its soldiers.

From the first moment of Hamas starting its orgy of rape, kidnapping and murder on October 7, Al Jazeera has been solidly on the Palestinian side in their war against Israel.

This is not hyperbole, or Israeli hasbara. This comes from a major Palestinian leader.

Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Hassan Khreisha said that Al Jazeera has been part of the Palestinian people's battle since the beginning of the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa.

MP Khreisha added in a written statement today, Sunday, that Al Jazeera was the voice of our Palestinian people and provided them with a lot in order to convey their just narrative to the world, spread awareness of our Palestinian cause, prove the truth and correct the narrative of a war of extermination against our Palestinian people.

In English, the media is defending Al Jazeera as one of.the few objective media sources for Gaza. But in Arabic, they are a lot more honest.

Khreisha is not Hamas. He is deputy speaker of the Palestinian Authority Legislative Council, under Mahmoud Abbas.

Which means that he is also saying that the "moderate" PA has been solidly on Hamas' side since October 7 as well.

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!