Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 06, 2024

Everyone knows Hamas has been stealing aid to fund its operations. No one - not the NGOs, not the governments, not the Palestinians they ripped off, not the media - seem to care.

The Washington Post discusses how Hamas was able to successfully build itself up as much as it did before October 7 last year.

The article goes into detail about how Hamas built a "war machine" with extensive tunnels and home-grown weapons manufacturing. And it mentions, almost as an aside:

The group relied on outsiders for money and advice. It raised tens of millions of dollars, some of it from Iran, but much of it siphoned from aid money, charitable contributions, tax revenue and — after Oct. 7 — shareholder deposits stolen from Gazan banks.

Later in the article it adds:

Hamas is believed to have socked away hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and cryptocurrencies before Oct. 7, much of it from tax revenue collected from Gazans as well as financial aid given by Qatar — with the tacit approval of Israeli leaders — in recent years to keep the enclave’s economy from collapsing.

Aid money to Gaza comes from sources as diverse as UNRWA, the EU, Save the Children, Islamic Relief, IHH from Turkey, and Oxfam, besides Iran and Qatar. (Hamas also reportedly made hundreds of millions by selling Israeli stocks short before October 7.)

Cash found in Hamas home in Gaza

So where is the outrage from these donors? The article doesn't go into details but it makes it seem like everyone knows that Hamas has always taken part or all of incoming funds meant for aid to build its terror network, its tunnels, its weapons. October 7 was funded to a large extent by these international donors.

Yet we haven't seen any articles demanding answers, or better oversight, or investigations into exactly how Hamas stole these funds from aid agencies, from international donors, and from Gazans themselves.

And if no one is interested in finding out the truth, that means that they really don't mind funding Hamas.

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!

10/05 Links: Murray: Israel was right to ignore the West; The Year American Jews Woke Up; Wilders: Why Western Patriots Should Support Israel; Al Jazeera: Propaganda or Journalism?

From Ian:

Israel Takes the Gloves Off

October 7 showed why Zionism is necessary. As the attack, the worldwide celebrations, and the ongoing genocidal rallies reveal, hatred of Jews has not abated. The Holocaust shamed most anti-Semites into silence. Hamas's depravities, however, enthuse them.

But now, the Jews can fight back. As one father remarked at his son's funeral, without Israel, "the image engraved in our collective memory would have been the photograph of that helpless Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto holding his hands up in the air with Nazi rifles pointed at him." Instead, "the Jewish people are no longer helpless in the face of our enemies." Whoever heard of a pogrom where the dead murderers outnumber the murdered?

Few sights are more inspiring than a free people defending their homeland, and the Israelis are hammering Hamas, Iran, and Iran's other minions who joined the fight. Hamas planned to rule a captive Israel, but instead it skulks beneath the ruins of Gaza. Nearly all of Hezbollah's leaders are dead, and Israeli forces recently entered southern Lebanon to protect northern Israel's besieged communities. For the second time this war, Iran launched hundreds of missiles at Israel to little effect.

There are still 101 hostages in Gaza, 7 Americans among them. Israel recently recovered the bodies of six murdered by Hamas just before they could be freed. One of them, Ori Danino, was only there because he left safety to save lives and was taken. Amazingly, these hostages—emaciated, half-suffocated, kept in a pitch-black tunnel so cramped that they could not stand—fought back when their tormentors became their murderers.

The cost of October 7 has been too high, both for the Israelis and for the innocent Arabs whom Hamas and Iran have cynically and systematically thrown into the line of fire. No one wants to see this suffering—including the Israelis, who routinely expose themselves to danger to warn Gazan and Lebanese civilians. This is the price for years of American appeasement, and the Lebanese are the latest to pay it.

In Shakespeare's Henry V, the king tells his men before a desperate battle, "This story shall the good man teach his son." Like Henry's men, the Israelis are winning a famous victory. But they do not fight for the dubious claims of some king, or even for their own gain. They fight for the right to live in peace. All people of good will should help them.

The lesson of October 7 is that even in the face of enormous cruelty, there are few forces more tenacious than a free people defending the ones they love. And when the battle comes, it is no longer the Jews who should feel afraid.

Douglas Murray: Israel was right to ignore the West

There are sources in the Jewish tradition that warn against exultation at the downfall of one’s enemies. But I am not Jewish, and so I have exulted greatly these past two weeks.

If you follow most of the British media, you may well think that the past year involves the following events: Israel attacked Hamas, Israel invaded Lebanon, Israel bombed Yemen. Oh and someone left a bomb in a room in Tehran that killed the peaceful Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Of course all this is an absolute inversion of the truth. Hamas invaded Israel, so Israel attacked Hamas. Hezbollah has spent the past year sending thousands of rockets into Israel, so Israel has responded by destroying Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen – now so beloved of demonstrators in the UK – sent missiles and drones hundreds of miles to attack Israel, so Israel bombed the Houthis’ arms stores in Yemen. And Hamas leader Haniyeh, who was born under Egyptian rule and died in Tehran, never brought the Palestinian people anything but misery.

On 7 October last year Israel was surprised by a brigade-sized invasion of terrorists into its territory. These terrorists raped, murdered and burned their way as far inside Israel as they could get. How this intelligence and military failure was possible is something that Israelis still have to work out. But the first answer is because they face a fanatical, ideological opponent which wants to destroy them. Hezbollah joined in the action on 8 October. All these attacks were funded and orchestrated by the Revolutionary Islamic government in Iran, which as I write this is sending hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel from Iran – strikes that have so far proved a failure.

Hamas still holds a hundred Israelis hostage inside Gaza, but the Israeli government has managed to bring half the hostages home already. For many people in the first days of the war, it seemed impossible that even one hostage would be able to come back to their families alive. So this is no mean feat in itself. Aside from saving the hostages, the other most important thing for Israel has been to strike and destroy the proxy armies of Iran who wish to make the whole of Israel unlivable for Jews.

All this time the governments in Britain and America have given the Israelis advice which mercifully they did not listen to. Earlier this year, Kamala Harris warned that the IDF shouldn’t go into Hamas’s Gaza stronghold in Rafah. As she wisely said: ‘I’ve studied the maps.’ Fortunately the Israelis did not listen to Kamala’s beginners’ guide to Rafah. They went into the Hamas stronghold, continued to search for the hostages, continued to kill Hamas’s leadership and continued to destroy the rocket and other ammunition stores that Hamas has built up for 18 years.

Bret Stephens: The Year American Jews Woke Up

After Oct. 7, it became personal. It was in the neighborhoods in which we lived, the professions and institutions in which we worked, the colleagues we worked alongside, the peers with whom we socialized, the group chats to which we belonged, the causes to which we donated, the high schools and universities our kids attended. The call was coming from inside the house.

It happened in innumerable ways, large and small.

The home of an impeccably progressive Jewish director of a prominent art museum was vandalized with red spray paint and a sign accusing her of being a “white supremacist Zionist.” A storied literary magazine endured mass resignations from its staff members for the sin of publishing the work of a left-wing Israeli. A Jewish journalist scrolled through Instagram and recognized an old friend from Northwestern gleefully tearing down posters of Hamas’s hostages while saying “calba” — dog in Arabic — to the pictures of kidnapped infants and elderly people. A leading progressive congresswoman was asked during a TV interview about Hamas’s rapes of Israeli women and called them an unfortunate fact of war before quickly returning to the subject of Israel’s alleged perfidy. An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor petitioned the Berkeley City Council to pass a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation in light of the resurgence of antisemitism and was heckled by demonstrators. An on-campus caricature depicted an affable Jewish law school dean holding a knife and fork drenched in blood. A Columbia University undergraduate posted on Instagram: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Tucker Carlson platformed a Hitler apologist. Trump warned Jews that he is prepared to blame them should he lose the election.

All these stories became public, but what could be at least as upsetting were the stories you heard about only over meals with friends and acquaintances. A publishing executive who wanted to promote a novel set during the Holocaust but faced internal resistance from staff members who saw it as “Zionist propaganda.” A college freshman with a Jewish surname being the only person in her dorm to have anti-Israel leaflets pushed under her door. A student who suggested to me, during a give-and-take at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, that Israelis should heed the words of the Book of Matthew and turn the other cheek. It reminded me of Eric Hoffer’s quip that “everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”

At some point, an awakening of sorts occurred. Perhaps not for every American Jew, but for many. I’ve called them the Oct. 8 Jews — those who woke up a day after our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust to see how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited. It was an awakening that often came with a deeper set of realizations.

One realization: American Jews should not expect reciprocity.

Few minorities have been more conspicuously attached to progressive causes than American Jews: Samuel Gompers and labor unionism; Betty Friedan and feminism; Harvey Milk and gay rights; Abraham Joshua Heschel and civil rights; Robert Bernstein and human rights. A proud history, but whatever we poured of ourselves into the pain and struggle of others was not returned in our days of grief. Nor should we expect much understanding: In an era that stresses sensitivity to every microaggression against nearly any minority, macroaggressions against Jews who happen to believe that Israel has a right to exist are not only permitted but demanded.

A second: “Zionist” has become just another word for Jew. Anti-Zionists deny this strenuously, because a vocal handful of Jews are also anti-Zionist and because outright antisemitism is still unfashionable and because they’d like to believe — or at least tell others — that their objection is to a political ideology rather than to a people or a religion.

But when the wished-for dire consequences of anti-Zionism fall directly on the heads of millions of Jews and when the people the anti-Zionists seek to silence, exclude and shame are almost all Jewish and when the charges they make against Zionists invariably echo the hoariest antisemitic stereotypes — greed, deceit, limitless bloodlust — then the distinctions between anti-Zionist and antisemite blur to the point of invisibility.

And a third: This isn’t going to end anytime soon.

It won’t end because anti-Zionism has a self-righteous fervor that will attract followers and inspire militancy. It won’t end because politics in America are moving toward forms of illiberalism — conspiracy thinking and nativism on the right, a Manichaean view on the left that the world is neatly divided between the oppressors and the oppressed — that are congenial to classic antisemitism. And it won’t end because most Jews will not forsake what it means to be Jewish so that we may be more acceptable to those who despise us.

10/02 Links Pt2: Kassy Akiva: Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew; The West's True Enemy Is Clear; The New York Times' Hizbullah Terrorist Worship

From Ian:

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis: What is Zionism?

Sadly, Israel’s history has been plagued by war and violence, as hostile surrounding countries sought to deny Jews the right to live peacefully in their national homeland within a vibrant democracy.

That conflict has frequently been painful, often unbearably so, and the challenge of reconciling the destinies of two peoples in the same land has become ever more intractable with each passing decade. It is important to understand that Zionism is not an obstacle to that reconciliation – indeed, the chance to realise it was offered to both Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the land by the United Nations in 1947. Whereas the Jewish population grasped the opportunity to establish a state with both hands, the Palestinian Arab leadership and neighbouring Arab states firmly rejected it, preferring to wage war. Ever since that time, it has not been Zionism that has created conflict. Israel has endured and thrived despite the repeated attempts and the enduring desire to wipe it off the map.

The fallacy that Zionism and, more specifically, the existence of Israel, is fundamentally incompatible with the well-being of the Palestinian people has become increasingly pervasive over recent years, and its prevalence serves only to harm the cause of peace. We must have no truck with the narrative that Zionism is somehow inherently prejudiced. Zionism advocates self-determination for Jews. It does not agitate against the welfare and well-being of Palestinians. Consequently, I can, at one and the same time hold Zionism at the core of my Jewish identity whilst simultaneously feeling deep pain in seeing the suffering of numerous innocent Palestinians.

Zionism transcends the politics and policies of the day. Israel is a vibrant democracy within which there is healthy and often intense debate. Indeed, the most impassioned critics of any Israeli government are found within Israel itself, but their Zionism remains undimmed. This deep religious, historic, covenantal and emotional bond between the Jewish people and Israel does not mean that every Jewish person plays a role in nor is supportive of every decision taken by any given Israeli government. That is why the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism correctly identifies “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel” as being manifestly anti-Semitic. This is not the same as acknowledging or celebrating the unarguable collective Jewish relationship with Israel – a case often made by some to suit their flawed narrative that Israel and Judaism are totally separate from one another. Diaspora Jews may be deeply connected to Israel, but they cannot be held responsible for it.

Sadly, there is an increasing tendency to single out Israel, the Jewish state, and by extension, Jewish people, for special treatment in a manner that is inconsistent with how other countries or global conflicts are viewed. In 2023 alone, the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Israel on a total of 14 occasions, while over the same period it condemned countries in the rest of the world put together just seven times . In such forums, the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence is challenged and undermined in a manner not found with respect to any other people or country. A hateful cocktail of singular scrutiny and demonisation is now being routinely used as a tool of delegitimisation. That tool has a name: anti-Zionism.

According to data from the UK’s Community Security Trust, a charity that protects British Jews, the first six months of 2024 saw the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents ever recorded in the UK. Our synagogues and schools have needed to be protected by more guards and higher walls. In May it was reported that police had thwarted a plot to attack a Jewish community in north-west England with automatic weapons. What happens in Israel has a direct impact on the everyday life of Jewish communities around the world. The simplistic thinking that underpins the knee-jerk reaction in holding all Jews to account for everything that takes place in Israel must be refuted at every turn.

It is extremely sad that the existence of a Jewish state in a land within which the Jewish people were indigenous long before the dawn of both Christianity and Islam should be seen as controversial in any way. Zionism, which upholds this right of the Jewish People to a national home in their ancestral homeland, is undoubtedly best served by a peaceful future for both Israelis and Palestinians.

I am a Zionist because I believe that alongside the world’s 157 Christian-majority countries and 49 Muslim-majority countries, there is a vital need for a single Jewish country. I am a Zionist because I am committed to the idea that even in a place where conflict has reigned for centuries, peace is achievable and worth fighting for. I am a Zionist because I have inherited a language, culture and faith from the indigenous people of Judea. I am a Zionist because over thousands of years, my ancestors recommitted daily to holding Israel at the heart of their faith. I am a Zionist because I am a Jew.

Kassy Akiva: Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew

‘If you finish your conversion to Judaism, are you prepared to deal with anti-Semitism?”

This was the question posed to me by a rabbi during my second meeting with the Rabbinical Court of Massachusetts, which was considering me as a candidate for conversion to Judaism.

The gravity of the question was not lost on me, especially as it came from a man whose early years were spent in a Nazi concentration camp, and who now had the authority to make others—and their descendants—vulnerable to evil by accepting them into the Jewish tribe.

“There is a man sitting in federal prison right now who threatened to kill me because he thought I was Jewish,” I answered. When I was just one year out of college and working as a journalist for the Daily Wire in Los Angeles, I had my first real scare from a truly disturbed person who said he wanted to rape and kill me because he believed I was a Jew. Although he was eventually sent to prison, I learned how dangerous it could be as a semipublic figure with a great love for Judaism—and I wasn’t even a Jew yet.

Since I converted to Judaism in April 2023, the months have been packed with the joy of finally joining the Jewish people and falling in love with my now-husband, contrasted with the tragedy of October 7 and the work I’ve done documenting the massacre sites and anti-Israel protests in its aftermath. Though this is not how I expected my first year as part of Am Yisrael to be, I was oddly well equipped and prepared to encounter the anti-Semitism visible in America’s cities. In fact, anti-Semitism deserves partial credit for leading me to God, His Torah, His land, and His people.

During college, I also encountered hateful trolls who harassed me and questioned whether I was Jewish because of my pointy nose, despite having Irish, English, and French lineage. When I began traveling to Israel on both secular and Christian group trips, I received Jew-hating messages and tweets, complete with images of Hitler and concentration camps. However, things escalated significantly when I started working for Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire. A well-known white supremacist even labeled me “Ben’s philosemitic flying monkey.”

It was as though the anti-Semites had sensed something Jewish about me, but they were confused by my identity—and so was I. The truth is, I was just beginning my journey to understand who I was and my relationship with God. The more anti-Semitic hate mail filled my inbox, the more I became interested in learning about what drove these correspondents to attack Jewish people, and me.

10/02 Links Pt1: Is this the death rattle of Iranian tyranny?; Let Israel Win the War Iran Started; Israel declares Guterres persona non grata

From Ian:

Bredndan O'Neill: Is this the death rattle of Iranian tyranny?

It is such self-satisfied cant. How easy it is for Biden officials who live in leafy DC, and Britain’s liberal scribes who rarely venture from their East London bubbles, to insist that Israel patiently deter Iran rather than clash with it. Missiles paid for by Tehran are not dropping on Shoreditch or Martha’s Vineyard day in, day out. Militants backed by Iran did not recently swarm London or New York City to rape, kidnap and kill civilians. There aren’t Iran stooges mere miles from our towns threatening to excise our ‘cancerous’ presence from our own lands.

7 October changed the game. It made it clear that Iran’s proxies are not just a threat to be carefully monitored but a fascistic menace capable of killing thousands of Jews. Not just something to be deterred but something to be destroyed. I’m going to go out on a limb and say protecting Jewish life is more important than propping up Washington’s clapped-out Middle East policy. What is really ‘troublesome’ is not Israel’s just reaction to Hamas’s mass murder of its citizens, and to Hezbollah’s ceaseless firing of missiles since 7 October, one of which butchered 12 children, but the haughty indignation of pampered Westerners who are lucky enough never to have experienced the existential threat of a pincer movement of racist armies. They should spend more time counting their blessings and less begrudging Israel’s right to defend itself.

The soft sympathy for Iran that we’ve seen on social media these past 24 hours, and even in corners of the mainstream media, is bizarre. Iran is the imperial player in this tale. For all its self-regarding bluster about Hezbollah and Hamas being part of an ‘Axis of Resistance’ – bluster that some Western leftists shamefully embrace – in truth these movements are tools of Iranian expansionism. Iran has bent the entirety of Lebanon to its jealous regional ambitions, by continually boosting Hezbollah there. It has hijacked Palestinian politics and Palestinian life in its deranged crusade to land blows on Israel via its stooges in Hamas. It has cursed Yemen with years of war with its arming and goading of the Houthis against both Saudi Arabia and Israel.

To Iran, these are not free nations, but lowly outposts for its own political ambitions and religious ideology. Israel, in countering Iran’s pitiless exploitation of various states to prop up its fundamentalist worldview, is behaving far more like a ‘resistance’. It is resisting Iran’s proxy war on the Jewish nation and its bending of vast swathes of the Middle East to its theocratic will. That many Western leftists sympathise more with the religious hysterics who use and abuse less powerful states than they do with the democratic state of Israel tells us all we need to know about their moral disarray and their drift from reason. They masquerade as anti-imperialist while openly empathising with Iran’s imperious creep through supposedly sovereign lands.

Few things in politics are simple. One should always tease out the complexities, embrace the nuance. But to my mind, what is happening right now is pretty straightforward. You are either on the side of a barbarous theocratic regime that oppresses and murders women, workers and minorities and whose allies recently carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, or you are on the side of Israel. It’s time to choose.

Eli Lake: Let Israel Win the War Iran Started

The last time Iran launched a barrage of missiles and slow-moving drones at Israel, in April, Israel and her regional allies also defeated the attack. But Israel limited its retaliation to a radar system near Iran’s nuclear sites, after Biden publicly urged America’s ally to “take the win.” As Iran’s escalation Tuesday showed, April’s “win” was more of an invitation.

After much hemming and hawing over Rafah, Israel proved Harris wrong. In May it helped evacuate nearly 1 million people from the small city and began to deal the final blow to Hamas as a military organization. Last month, Israel’s defense minister announced that Hamas no longer existed as a military force. So much for that talking point.

The Rafah incursion marks Netanyahu’s defiance of his ally’s restraints. Israel has had a new approach to its war for survival ever since. Last month, it launched a series of operations that eliminated the entire senior leadership of Hezbollah—the Iran-sponsored terror army that was pointing more than 100,000 missiles at Israel. This series of strikes and attacks has already destroyed half of Hezbollah’s missile stockpiles, according to Israeli officials.

And yet, despite the success of Israel’s military operations against Hezbollah, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris still warned against further escalation of a war that has been regional since Iran’s proxies started it on October 7 and 8.

And this brings things back to the American policy of restraining Israel. One can never get into the minds of the madmen who run Iran, but it’s quite possible the mullahs believed that America would continue to restrain Israel to deescalate the regional conflict that Iran—through its proxies—initiated nearly a year ago.

But what does it tell us about what comes next? Thus far, the Biden administration is playing its cards close to the vest. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that he and the president were consulting with Israel on how to respond to the Iranian attack. He gave no specifics, but said one of the factors would be to “promote stability to the maximum extent possible as we go forward.”

If Sullivan means that the U.S. will continue its policy of hoping to deter Iran by restraining Israel, then he is inviting further Iranian escalation. With two of Iran’s proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah—reeling, now is not the time to return the Middle East to an inherently unstable status quo. Real stability demands the ending of Iran’s nuclear blackmail of the region.

In other words, if Sullivan and Biden are serious, now would be the time to take off the handcuffs. Israel has vast capabilities—as it has shown in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and Iran over the last year. But it’s even more capable when its chief ally supports its mission.

So why not give Israel the green light and help it defang the chief cause of regional instability, the Iranian regime? Through pluck, daring, and ingenuity, Israel changed the dynamics of the war last month. Iran is wobbling. The win is there if the president takes it.

Bonnie Glick: Time to Cut the Cord in Lebanon

Don’t pop the champagne corks yet. While there is certainly reason to cheer for the termination of the bloody terrorist leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel’s military strikes in and around Beirut only addressed part of the problem. Israel’s approach, using airstrikes, beeper strikes, and walkie-talkie strikes, is nothing short of miraculous. But the disease that spreads from Lebanon is not solely driven by Hezbollah and its paymasters in Tehran.

Certainly Iran’s most recent launch of hundreds of missiles at Israel “in retaliation” for the successful hit on Hassan Nasrallah in his Beirut bunker is an important and highly escalatory move by Iran, but it also is not the whole picture in Lebanon.

Lebanon is driven by corruption that runs throughout the entirety of its elite government structures, military and civilian. For decades, government officials, skilled in the French art of the bon mot, have snookered America. Hezbollah is always the problem, far be it for the downtrodden Lebanese to address the cancer in their midst head on.

Now is the perfect moment to reevaluate US assistance to Lebanon, starting with military aid. The Biden-Harris administration’s move in 2021 to more than double American contributions to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to $236 million. In 2023, the Biden-Harris administration contributed additionally over $70 million to pay the salaries of members of the LAF in the form of direct cash transfers. If Americans knew that their hard-earned tax dollars were going to pay the salaries of a foreign army that is formally still at war with Israel, a treaty ally, they might have some concerns. With good reason.

May this be a year of happiness, security, and peace.

I will not be blogging until at least Saturday night.

K'tiva v'chatima tovah!

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!

Every year, the St. Petersburg Jewish community holds a Holocaust memorial on the first Sunday of October. It commemorates the 800 Jews of Pushkin who were murdered by the Nazis in 1941.

But not this year.

The deputy head of the St. Petersburg district administration, Vladimir Lvov, banned the annual event, using the excuse of coronavirus restrictions.

However, the ceremony was held in 2022 and 2023.

One news site notes that St. Petersburg authorities routinely use Covid-19 as an excuse to ban political expression that they oppose.

So it sure appears that they are now sanctioning antisemitism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Iran is mourning the death of Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, the Deputy Commander of Operations for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He was really evil. And not only about Israel.

Two years ago, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested by the Iranian moral police because of an "improper hijab" and was killed by the police.

Large protests erupted, and the Iranian security forces responded with lethal force, killing over 550 protesters, including 68 children and 49 women,

Abbas Nilforoushan was one of the key figures in the crackdown on freedoms.

As a result, Nilforoushan was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department. After he justified the deaths by saying “for subversion, one must pass through a sea of blood,” he and 17 others were added to the European Union’s sanctions list.

Anyone who cares about women's rights should cheer his death.

Nilforoushan said that "America's retreat from Afghanistan was a major victory for the region's nations." He also showed sympathy for the Taliban, saying, “I believe the Taliban have now understood that Afghanistan is made up of various ethnic groups and sects, and together, they form Afghanistan. I think the Taliban have reached a proper understanding of this and can no longer ignore the role of ethnic groups or women in Afghanistan.”

This is besides his hateful rhetoric about Israel and the West.

During a ceremony mourning Qassem Soleimani, he said, “Soleimani’s followers will soon bring the Zionist criminals out of their hiding places in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and avenge the blood of the Palestinians.”

In 2023, he said, "We warn the West not to repeat past mistakes. Don’t make us put our boots from the 1980s back on, or you’ll find yourselves begging again. We settle accounts with our enemies, and we don’t leave debts unpaid; you can ask the Zionist regime about that."

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!

This video of some of the missiles shot from Iran towards Israel was reportedly taken from a British Airways flight to Dubai.

At 0:26, you see a large flash. Which looks a lot like one of the ballistic missiles exploded soon after launch.

Iran is proud of its domestic arms industry. But this looks more like a ballistic version of Hamas' home manufactured rockets - of which some 10% tend to fail - than the type of weapon you can export.

The video shows another shocking piece of unprofessionalism from Iran: it didn't warn airlines not to fly in the area (a NOTAM, Notice to Airmen.) According to the tweet with this video, the airline immediately turned around after seeing these missiles, but they are obviously a hazard to any airplane in the vicinity.

News reports show that there was infighting between Iran's IRGC and its president about whether to strike Israel. The IRGC does not report to Iran's army - meaning there are two, independent armies. The IRGC is a designated terror group. These missiles belonged to the IRGC, which characterized the strike not as deterrence or defensive but as "revenge."

This is not how a professional army acts, or how a professional army speaks.

Being unprofessional does not mean Iran isn't dangerous. It is a nuclear threshold state with an advanced military. This makes its unprofessionalism even more frightening: if ballistic missiles could explode prematurely, maybe a nuclear bomb could as well.

Regime change would make he world - and Iran itself - a much safer place.

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!

During last night's vice presidential debate, the first question was asked by CBS' Margaret Brennan:

Earlier today, Iran launched its largest attack yet on Israel. But that attack failed thanks to joint U.S. and Israeli defensive action. President Biden has deployed more than 40,000 U.S. military personnel and assets to that region over the past year to try to prevent a regional war. Iran is weakened, but the U.S. still considers it the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it has drastically reduced the time it would take to develop a nuclear weapon. It is down now to one or two weeks time. Governor Walz, if you are the final voice in the situation room, would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?

Walz' answer was very telling, in more ways than one:

Well, thank you. And thank you for those joining at home tonight. Let's keep in mind where this started. October 7th, Hamas terrorists massacred over 1400 Israelis and took prisoners. Iran, or, Israel's ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental, getting its hostages back, fundamental, and ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there. You saw it experienced today, where, along with our Israeli partners and our coalition, able to stop the incoming attack.

Walz' response is a mess. Walz twice mixed up Iran and Israel. Imagine the headlines today if Trump or Vance did that. And even if he had accurately said Iran in the second highlighted sentence, his answer sounds just as muddled and nonsensical as the worst of Joe Biden's performances.

Once you decode what he is saying, though, the answer is even worse - and it reflects current mainstream Democratic policies. Israel can defend itself and the US will help, but Israel cannot go after its enemies. It must remain in defensive mode and do nothing to actively deter those who are sworn to destroy it.

Which means, under the Harris/Walz administration, Israel's enemies can keep attacking with impunity with no fear that the war might end up on their territory.

This has been the mantra from Democratic administrations since Obama - "Israel has the right to defend itself" does not mean Israel has the right to deter attacks. On the contrary, nearly everything Israel does when it goes on the offensive is criticized, either publicly or behind closed doors.

Vance's answer, once he got past his personal history and his claim that Trump brought peace through strength, was straightforward and refreshing:

Now, you asked about a preemptive strike, Margaret, and I want to answer the question. Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys. I think that's the right approach to take with the Israel question.

The contrast is clear. Vance said his administration would support whatever Israel decides is in its best interests. Walz emphatically did not say anything close to that.

On the contrary, in the Harris/Walz administration, as with the Obama administration and to a large extent with Biden, they would tell Israel what is best for Israel.

Both of them claim to be "pro-Israel." But only one side treats Israel as a partner, while the other treats her like an unruly child who must be taught the proper way to act.

One side treats Israel with respect and the other with condescension. In no way can he latter be considered "pro-Israel."

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10/01 Links Pt1: A Headless Superpower In a Time of War; Iranians Kill One Palestinian in Missile Assault on Israel; Six killed in Jaffa terror shooting

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: A Headless Superpower In a Time of War

The only time we see Harris acknowledge her current status as the incumbent is when her debilitating fear of social interaction kicks in. This week she had to make a choice: preside over a photo-op FEMA meeting about the devastation Hurricane Helene is visiting upon the American Southeast, or actually visit North Carolina or Georgia. She chose the bloodless and rather weird FEMA option, which didn’t involve possibly unscripted interactions with the public.

The combination of Harris’s social anxiety and her self-seriousness has made her distant when she is reading from a teleprompter and unintelligible when she isn’t, so she relies on preloaded canned lines. The result is that the rest of the world is moving too fast for her to be anything but a spectator.

Which means national-security imperatives are being handled by Cabinet secretaries who will soon be out of a job, like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The latter, you might remember, disappeared without explanation for a couple weeks at the beginning of the year to get treatment at Walter Reed without telling the president. The Pentagon appeared to be running on autopilot and yet Biden didn’t fire Austin, making them both look absurd.

Here’s what’s happening in the Middle East today: Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel while the IDF sent ground troops into South Lebanon to dismantle the terror infrastructure Hezbollah built to launch an attack similar to the one launched by Hamas on Oct. 7. Israel is being attacked by Iran or its proxies now from five separate countries.

Today alone, just before that missile barrage, a shooter killed six Israelis in Jaffa and injured about ten others. A couple rounds of rockets were fired from Lebanon at Israeli population centers. Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked two ships in the Red Sea, one with missiles and the other with drone boats.

It has been quite the afternoon in the Middle East so far. Yet it wasn’t unusual. Every day seems to bring this amount of news from the conflict in one form or another. And that’s without zooming out to the ongoing land war in Europe thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or China’s militaristic stunts in which Beijing’s coast guard ships have been swarming and ramming Philippine boats and most recently a Vietnamese fishing craft.

It’s not a good time for the American superpower to be rudderless, but here we undeniably are. Let’s hope the damage can at least be contained until we have a president.

Caroline Glick: Israel, ignoring Biden’s gripes, does the job the UN won’t: Beat back Hezbollah

For 10 months, Hezbollah launched up to 20 projectiles at Israel every day. They killed scores of Israelis, including 10 children killed by a missile while playing soccer on a Saturday afternoon.

Hezbollah’s missiles destroyed hundreds of homes, devastating farms and livestock. They have torched forests and nature preserves, causing environmental devastation. And they targeted and hit sensitive military installations along the border.

Over the summer, Hezbollah escalated its assaults. The number of projectiles increased, reaching 50 to 120 per day. The range expanded to the lower Galilee and the Gulf of Haifa.

Clearly, Iran had decided to transform Lebanon into the new center of gravity in its multifront war against Israel after Israel successfully decimated most of Hamas’ military power and seized control over the international border between Gaza and Egypt, preventing Hamas from rebuilding its forces.

Instead of waiting to be invaded again, Israel chose to win the war.

And for the past two weeks, it has been doing just that.

Instead of discussing another cease-fire that will leave Hezbollah intact on the border and in control of Lebanon, Israel has begun to destroy the most powerful terror army in the world — an army controlled by Iran with tentacles that extend throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

If Israel wins, not only will it secure its own borders and citizenry, it will secure the stability of the region and protect the entire world from the scourge of Iranian-backed Islamic terrorism.

If Israel falters, if it wobbles under US pressure and accepts a premature cease-fire, it will remain in mortal danger.

The region will be destabilized and the infrastructure of American power in the Middle East will crumble as every Arab state rushes to make deals with Iran — and with its allies, China and Russia.

It’s obvious why Israel needs to win. Its survival and the lives of its 10 million citizens are on the line.

What is hard to understand is why the Biden administration refuses to back that existential victory.

Seth Frantzman: Israel and its Western allies should now strike back against Iran

Iran must be deterred from more attacks. It is time for Israel and Israel’s partners and allies to strike back. The strikes on Iran should not just be a quiet operation because a quiet small precision strike will leave Iran feeling it has still won because it can pretend the incident didn’t happen. What this means is that a “cyberattack” or some kind of small explosion somewhere, is not enough. Iran needs to feel a setback to its ballistic missile program or to its energy facilities or some other kind of strategic infrastructure.

The Iranian people, most of whom oppose the regime, should see the response. This will threaten the regime more than any attack on a regime S-300 battery or on some regime bunker in a mountain somewhere. When Iranians see that their regime is a paper tiger they will be emboldened. This means a response to the attack should involve something that doesn’t harm Iranian civilians but which civilians can see. Israel retaliated against Houthi missile attacks by striking a port in Yemen. Israel has retaliated against Hezbollah by eliminating Hezbollah commanders in Beirut. Israel was also blamed for exploding pagers that harmed thousands of Hezbollah activists. This is how Lebanon sees that Hezbollah is a menace and also a weak organization that cannot protect its own.

The Iranian regime is a menace to the region. Its use of long range missiles has threatened the Gulf and many western allies. Iran even got China to broker reconciliation with Saudi Arabia over the last two years. Iran is on the march in the region with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps precisely because most countries are afraid of Iran and don’t think the west or others will protect them. For instance, anyone sitting in a Gulf country today can see videos of the ballistic missile attack on Israel and imagine such an attack on the gleaming towers of the Gulf. They know Iran can lay waste peaceful cities. They also see that Iran is conducting a joint military drill with Oman, according to a report at Iranian state media on October 1. They know that Iran’s president is flying to Qatar. They see how Iran is on the march. For this reason the region needs to see a response to the Iranian attack on Israel. They need to see that Iran can no longer get away with attacks on every country in the Middle East.

Iran’s ballistic missile program is now a major threat to the region and the world. Iran is working with Russia to export military technology and drones to Moscow. Iran is threatening the Gulf and the US. Iran’s missiles could one day carry nuclear weapons. Iran has shown its strength and likely hides more surprises in its missile facilities at home. It is time for Iran to receive a response.

10/01 Links Pt2: BHL: Israel Acts Alone; The choice was between civilisation or barbarism; UN has betrayed its founding principles; The racist protocols of Ta-Nehisi Coates

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Israel Acts Alone

In short, the free world, the real one, the one that stretches from New York, Paris, and Rome to the crowds that, from Tehran to Ankara and from Moscow to Beijing and Kabul, do not resign themselves to living under imbecilic and bloody dictatorships, can breathe a little easier and see the signs of possible change.

Of course, nothing is yet decided.

Hezbollah still has tens of thousands of missiles pointed at Israel.

And history having, as Marx said, to remain in the same metaphorical register, more imagination than man, the “five kings” that are Iran, Russia, the Islamist International, Turkey, and China are not without recourse, far from it.

But the Israelis have delivered a lesson in determination and courage.

They did the opposite to what the European and American Munich Agreement cheerleaders were repeating like broken records: “De-escalate! De-escalate!” After all, according to the theories of just war, and after that, according to Clausewitz, there are situations in the world where, alas, escalation is necessary and the only option.

And the Israelis reminded the world that there are moments in history, when your (Israel’s) survival is at stake, when entire peoples (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds) are taken hostage and threatened, when the strategy of compromise is taken by the enemy (formerly Nazi Germany, today the Islamic Republic of Iran) as an invitation to hit even harder—moments, then, where one of those strong acts that the cowards call “escalation” can turn the tide, redraw the power map, and save lives.

The IDF acts alone because that is, today, its situation.

But it acts—contrary to what armchair strategists castigating an “Israel now out of control” repeat everywhere—with measure and without hubris.

It breaks the operational capabilities of a state within a state that terrorized the world. And it does this, as always, while trying to do everything it could to spare innocent civilians.

And, as we all now know since the fall of the great empires and, more recently, of the USSR, dictators fear, not just failure, but the external humiliation that leaves them naked before their internal opposition—such that Israel may well be in the process of fulfilling in Iran itself the great dream of Western republics, moderate Arab countries, and, again, heroines of democracy who have courageously paraded for two years now in Tehran to the shouts of “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

For these reasons, Israel’s allies must urgently regroup to support it, not just in defense, but for victory.

Melanie Phillips: The choice was between civilisation or barbarism

For decades, the West said nothing while Hezbollah assembled its 150,000 rockets pointing at Israel from civilian areas of southern Lebanon in flagrant disregard of UN resolution 1701. It said nothing for the past 12 months as Hezbollah bombarded northern Israel with missiles every single day. It said nothing for more than 20 years while Hamas fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza to kill Israeli civilians, forcing them to all but live in bomb shelters and their children to suffer enduring trauma.

But when Israel finally defends itself, the West suddenly finds its voice and tells it that it mustn’t do so.

Why is this? Several reasons. There’s the way left-wingers and Islamists unite in an attempt to wipe Israel off the map. There’s the endemic Jew-hatred, whose latest mutation is the wish to eradicate the collective Jew in Israel. There’s the liberal article of faith that all conflicts can be ended through negotiation and compromise, so the notion that sometimes war may be unavoidable to defeat fanatics with non-negotiable agendas is simply never acceptable. And there’s the destruction of the West’s moral compass under the impact of ideologies aimed at destroying its identity, values and culture.

Now we understand how the Holocaust could have happened. It’s not just that there are people who want to exterminate Jews. They can only do so with the active connivance or indifference of the rest of the world.

October 7 presented the West with a clear choice: civilisation or barbarism. It has not chosen to defend civilisation. But as the West disintegrates under the weight of moral bankruptcy and collapse of self-belief, iron has entered the Israeli soul. Israel made a different choice. It said never again would it allow its people to be invaded, slaughtered, raped, beheaded and burned alive. This would be the last war in which it would have to fight for its existence.

The Israelis are deeply traumatised. Their grief and anxiety are off the scale. At the same time, their spirit is unbroken. Yes, many deeply dislike Benjamin Netanyahu and there are large demonstrations aiming to get him out of office. But Israelis are remarkably united in their determination to inflict total defeat upon the enemies who want them gone.

Yet there’s more. The astonishing, heroic commitment of the young conscripts at the front derives from their belief that they aren’t just fighting for their nation and for those who were slaughtered or kidnapped on October 7, but also for all those Jews who came before them and kept the Jewish people alive despite the centuries of such slaughter.

Israel will win this terrible war – whatever the cost – because it knows what it is, loves its Jewish identity and is proud of it. As a result, it is determined to live. The opposite is true of the West that has abandoned it.

Melanie Phillips: The Hamas Broadcasting Corporation

This is not just a question of the BBC failing to discharge its charter obligation to be fair and balanced, serious as that dereliction of journalistic duty is in itself. The vicious media coverage in the west, produced by Hamas and its fellow travellers in the Palestinian cause and consisting of serial falsehoods, malicious distortions and blood libels designed to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel, is an absolutely essential weapon in the Hamas armoury.

Through the totally false narrative of Israeli interlopers in “Palestine” who first drove out the “indigenous Palestinians” and are now illegally and oppressively occupying their land — every part of which is untrue — the western public was softened up during many decades for the big lie that’s been pumped out for the past year that the IDF has been wantonly killing and starving civilians in Gaza.

That is the very opposite of the truth. This lie has helped incite hysteria and violent hatred against both Israel and diaspora Jews, and ramped up pressure on western governments to dump on Israel while giving Hamas an easy ride. And while much of the media has been complicit in this — Sky News has been particularly disgusting — the most influential and powerful media outlet that has led the pack in this incitement has been the BBC. whose coverage of this terrible war has been, in general, utterly monstrous.

As Cohen and Deech write:
Military analysts and experts across the world will tell you that Hamas cannot win the war it started with Israel by force of arms alone. Anti-Israel propaganda isn’t merely a tactic for Hamas; it is integral to its war effort. Indeed, it is a war aim in and of itself. Hamas must convince the world, through media outlets like the BBC, that Israel is brutal, indiscriminate, and unjust; that the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians are something that Israel wantonly pursues, rather than a tragic consequence of Hamas turning the Palestinian people into human shields.

Hamas has embedded its terrorist infrastructure amongst civilians, including in former school buildings (often mistakenly described as working schools in news reports), hospitals and mosques. With an iniquitous disregard for the truth, Hamas even lays the false charge of ‘genocide’ against Israel in responding to the attack on 7 October - the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust and an indisputably genocidal act.

Through these tactics, they seek to claim that Israel is actually fighting a war of aggression, rather than taking necessary defensive action in an existential fight against Iran and its proxies.

As this report comprehensively demonstrates, the BBC all too often accepts Hamas’s distortions as fair framing or fact. Worse than that, it then sells them on to a credulous world as news burnished by the BBC’s authority and reputation.

Among the examples the report lists:
On the day of the October 7 pogrom itself, while the rest of Britain’s media were detailing the brutality of Hamas’s attack on Israel and before Israel went to war in Gaza, the BBC led its coverage with a headline about “Israeli revenge attacks”.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 pogrom, it broadcast interviews with Hamas apologists who used this platform to make comments which the BBC was forced to admit were “offensive”.
It reported that an “Israeli strike” killed “hundreds” at the Al Ahli hospital: thereby repeating, legitimising and reinforcing entirely false claims that directly caused unrest in some European and Middle Eastern countries, including serious arson attacks upon synagogues in Germany and Tunisia.
It failed to remove articles suggesting the same hospital blast may have been caused by the Israeli military, even after the BBC admitted it got its reporting wrong.
It reported that Israeli soldiers had been “targeting” medical teams and Arab speakers as they hunted Hamas terrorists in a hospital, when instead they actually had brought medical teams and Arab speakers with them to help the patients during the military operation.
It published an article that wrongly claimed a UN report had warned “half of Gaza’s population is starving” and peddled a false Hamas propaganda line that Gaza had become a “polio epidemic zone”.
At the height of the conflict, BBC Arabic was forced to correct articles on average every 48 hours, including copy that referred to Hamas as the “resistance”.
BBC Arabic platformed one guest who had previously referred to the October 7 massacre as a “heroic military miracle” and another who described Hamas atrocities against innocent Israelis as “necessary”.
It failed to remove graphs from its website that purported to show that 70 per cent of Gazan fatalities were women and children – after those figures were shown to be inaccurate.
It routinely quoted figures produced by the Hamas Health Ministry without highlighting it as a terrorist-run organisation, and routinely failed to stress in reporting that Hamas fatality figures are unverifiable and include thousands of Hamas terrorists.
It repeatedly reported Israeli strikes on Hamas command centres based inside school buildings as “strikes on schools” and repeatedly failed to explain the terror group’s use of innocent Palestinians as human shields.
It used freelance journalists and eyewitness reports without due diligence on their social media accounts which would have revealed clear anti-Israel bias.
A senior BBC executive admitted inaccuracies had “real world consequences” for British Jews but were inevitable because of the “fog of war”.

I mentioned that, as of Saturday, the Lebanese health minister said he was only aware of 11 victims of the massive airstrike that destroyed four buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

It has not increased since then.

How could that be?

Lebanese newspaper L'Orient le Jour (French) looks for the presumed hundreds of victims, and cannot find them.

But they do find a number of people who say that the entire neighborhood was already empty before the airstrikes.

Following the attack, the site was sealed off by Hezbollah security services as they searched for their leader. ...Most of the neighborhood’s residents had reportedly left the area the week before the attack, in a “natural evacuation,” according to the rescuer. “As the airstrikes (against the southern suburbs in recent days) increased, people fled. When the Maamoura neighborhood was bombed, there was no one there, and it was the same in Jamous and Kafa’at,” he said, referring to the strikes that took place throughout the night of September 27.

The deadly strike came after a week of unprecedented attacks on Hezbollah, including the detonation of thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies that killed some 30 people and wounded thousands more across the country. In response, members of the Shiite party went door-to-door in the southern suburbs and advised people to leave their homes and seek shelter elsewhere.

Rukaya, who has lived for 40 years in Burj al-Barajneh, the neighborhood beside Haret Hreik where Nasrallah was killed, told L’Orient Today that people knew the place was vulnerable to attack from the Israelis and had started to leave earlier that week. "You could hear crickets across the Burj" she said.

Twenty-four hours after the strike, the Health Ministry announced that 11 people had been killed and 108 wounded in the Israeli strikes the previous day, but it did not specify where or when the deaths occurred, or whether Nasrallah and other possible Hezbollah victims were included in the death toll. The enormity of the damage caused by the strikes raised fears that the death toll could be much higher. The day after the attack, outgoing Health Minister Firas Abiad said at a press conference that the death toll could rise.
Saad el-Ahmar stressed that on September 30, the search operations were almost over. The teams continue to clear the roads and sweep the area "to make sure that no bodies have been forgotten," the rescuer explained. However, he believes that the toll provided by the ministry should not increase significantly, given that it seems that very few people were present.

The airstrike the previous week that killed some 15 members of Hezbollah's Radwan unit was in the same neighborhood, so that might have prompted residents to flee.

At any rate, Israel's airstrikes killed far fewer people than anyone expected - seemingly less than 15 civilians - - making any claims of indiscriminate bombing ludicrous. Clearly Israel knew the buildings were empty, and possibly the timing was specifically meant to ensure a minimum of civilian casualties.

If Israel's claims that over 20 Hezbollah members were killed are true, that means more terrorists were killed than civilians! And Israel named at least five of them, besides Nasrallah himself and the IRGC general who was there.

I'm wondering if those Hezbollah party members going door to door urging people to leave were really Israeli spies who wanted to minimize casualties.

This small detail makes an amazing operation even more impressive. Too bad most media hasn't reported on this, preferring to leave people with the impression of a huge civilian death toll.

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Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the head of the Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said today "Surely, after the martyrdom of Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leadership of Hezbollah will continue with a more open hand and with the support of God, and the heroic Hezbollah will shine more than before. "

This is what everyone expects.

Last night, Israel started the limited ground invasion of Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon. Interestingly, Hezbollah denies this is happening.

So why haven't there been thousands of rockets from Hezbollah into Israel since Nasrallah was killed?

There have been dozens of rockets to the north, as had been the case every day for months. And Hezbollah sent a few medium range rockets to the center of Israel. But the expected attack of swamping Iron Dome with hundreds or thousands of rockets has not happened yet.

Maybe the IDF has caused far more damage to Hezbollah's weapons inventory than we knew.

Yesterday, Israel destroyed a large cache of surface to air missile launchers near Beirut's airport.

כחלק מגלי התקיפה הנרחבים בלבנון, בתקיפה מדויקת של חיל האוויר, מטוסי קרב תקפו תשתית משגרי טילי קרקע-אוויר שהוצבה בסמוך לנמל התעופה הבינלאומי של ביירות תשתית זו, כמו תשתיות נוספות של מערך ההגנה האווירית של חיזבאללה>> pic.twitter.com/S1Uq7AzcYl
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) September 30, 2024

Or maybe Hezbollah does not have as many missiles at experts have assumed for years.

Or maybe Israel destroyed Hezbollah's command structure, and the communications infrastructure, so thoroughly that a response cannot be panned or coordinated.

Or maybe Hezbollah is still holding back, for some reason, knowing that a major attack would be met with an even more major response. Meaning - Israel has re-established deterrence.

Honor would demand that Hezbollah hit back hard after Nasrallah's death. People who respect or idolize Hezbollah are seeing this lack of response and it is affecting them. More and more of them are almost certainly becoming spies for Israel.

We don't know how much we don't know. But it seems apparent that the IDF and Israeli government know exactly what Hezbollah can do to respond to Nasrallah's assassination, and they included that in their calculus of whether it was worth attacking.

So far, it looks like it is Hezbollah that is the paper tiger.

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New @UNRWA report says Israel attacks "education" in Gaza, does not mention Hamas teachers or terrorists using schools

UNRWA issued a press release last week:

The ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatised Palestinian youth, a new study warns.

The report, by a team of academics working in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is the first to comprehensively quantify the war’s toll on learning since it began in October 2023. It also details the devastating impact on children, young people and teachers, supported by new accounts from frontline staff and aid workers.

The study was a joint undertaking involving UNRWA and researchers at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge, said: “Palestinian education is under attack in Gaza. Israeli military operations have had a significant effect on learning.”

The 51 page report is titled "Palestinian Education Under Attack in Gaza," making its bias clear from the outset, suggesting Israel is deliberately attacking schools for no military purpose.

The entire report does not mention Hamas once.

It does not say a word about Hamas using schools for military purposes - to hide weapons, for meetings to plan attacks. it does not mention that civilian facilities used for military purposes become legitimate targets under international law. Even the word "militant" is not to be found.

Moreover, it does not mention once that many teachers in Gaza were and are also terrorists.

Someone reading this report would think that the entire war is Israel attacking Gaza schools and civilians for no reason whatsoever.

Seth Frantzman at FDD detailed Hamas' use of schools over a two month period over the summer. Excerpts:

On July 6, the IDF struck terrorists at the Al-Jaouni school in central Gaza and on July 4, the IDF also said that it “struck terrorists who operated from UNRWA schools in the area of Gaza City – the Alqahirah school in Al-Furqan and the Musa School in Daraj Tuffah.”

In June, the IDF [said], “As part of operational searches of civilian structures converted into terrorist infrastructure, the soldiers raided a UN school that the terrorists of the Shejaia Battalion were using as a hideout and a warehouse.”

Hamas was operating a compound that the IDF said was “embedded” inside the UNRWA school in Nuseirat. Furthermore, the IAF also “targeted Hamas terrorists operating from a container inside the grounds of the Asmaa UNRWA school in Shati.”

Then, on June 4, the IDF also said that it “struck a Hamas compound embedded inside UNRWA’s Abu al-Hilu school in El-Bureij, located in the central Gaza Strip, from which Hamas terrorists operated and planned numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops operating in Gaza.”

On May 30, the IDF said that a terrorist fired an anti-tank missile from a UNRWA school in Rafah.

On May 22, the IAF targeted “a compound located inside a UNRWA school where Hamas terrorists, including an anti-tank missile operative and a Nukhba terrorist, were operating,” the IDF said.

In another incident on May 14, the IDF declared that it carried out a precision strike “on a central Hamas war room commander embedded inside a UNRWA school in the area of Nuseirat. The war room was used by terrorist operatives in Hamas’s military wing. The strike was carried out using precise munitions in order to minimize harm to uninvolved civilians.”

Yet Hamas is not at fault in this report. Hamas doesn't even exist.

Beyond that, the report includes unattributed quotes of claims that are demonstrably false.

A pull-quote says, “Since October 7, all educational materials and stationery have been rejected by the Israelis. We need to lift restrictions on needed materials and required stationery as soon as possible."

UNRWA's detailed reports on aid to Gaza shows that shipments of notebooks (and toys) were delivered to UNRWA in Gaza on April 16, and UNRWA also received stationery in July as well as September.

Clearly Israel is not rejecting stationery and school materials. UNRWA is just not requesting them very often.

This report is just another of endless examples of how anti-Israel propaganda works, disguised as serious research. Everything is seen through a prism of assumed unrelenting Israeli evil, so the authors can't even imagine checking facts that agree with their prejudices.

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Mahmoud Abbas remains solidly on the side of the terrorists

According to Lebanese reports, Israel tried but failed to assassinate Major General Munir al-Maqdah in his home in the camp of Ein al-Hilweh in Lebanon. He was not at home at the time of the alleged raid.

Al Maqdeh is not Hezbollah or Hamas. He is the head of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Lebanon.

They are part of Mahmoud abbas' Fatah party.

Munir al-Maqdeh has been smuggling weapons from Iran to terrorists in the West Bank. His brother was assassinated by Israel earlier this year. Munir has cooperated with both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Fatah in Gaza has also been active. Its Telegram channel is filled with attacks it claims on Israeli soldiers, curiously always using a 107mm mortar.

Abbas pretends to the West that he is a man of peace and against terror, while his own Al Aqsa Brigades are his terror wing.

Of course, after Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated, Mahmoud Abbas sent condolences to Hezbollah.