Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 10, 2024

10/10 Links Pt1: Biden-Harris should help Israel take out Iran's nuclear program; What’s With Biden’s Schizophrenia on Lebanon?; Police foil plot to topple Tel Aviv towers

From Ian:

Benny Morris: Iranian Escalation May Work to Israel’s Benefit, but Its Strategic Dilemma Remains

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:
The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:
An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.

Seth Mandel: What’s With Biden’s Schizophrenia on Lebanon?

President Biden was committed to Hamas’s defeat at the beginning of the war a year ago. Halfway through, his efforts became singularly focused on ending the hostilities in any way possible, leaving Yahya Sinwar untouched and consigning at least some of the hostages to permanent captivity.

The original plan was to rebuild Gaza after removing Hamas from the strip. That required putting together a regional coalition willing to stick its neck out and plunk down ungodly amounts of money while taking at least some responsibility for management of Gaza during a dangerous and chaotic transition period. The flaking-out of the Biden administration didn’t just give Sinwar a new lease on life; it put our Sunni allies out on a limb and then cut that limb down.

The amount of commitment it would take to “fix” Lebanon would dwarf Gaza reconstruction. This is the second problem with the administration’s new grand idea. In four weeks, America will elect Biden’s successor. That person, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will replace the Cabinet with their own. Harris’s national-security team is dominated by those who want the U.S. less, not more, entangled in the politics of the Middle East. Which is to say, Joe Biden’s chosen successor would shred Biden’s plan on her first day in office.

Without a commitment from the U.S., there won’t be a commitment from anyone else. Our allies have already been burned by Biden’s about-face on Gaza.

All of this reveals the wasted potential of U.S. policy in the Mideast. The Obama-Biden administration’s coddling of Iran enabled the Gaza and Lebanon crises to reach this point. Four years later, Donald Trump handed Biden and Harris the Abraham Accords and an ongoing set of negotiations with Saudi Arabia, which they promptly shoved in a drawer so they could try to revive a policy that privileged Iran. When that went nowhere, the fickle crew went back to Saudi Arabia, too late to secure an agreement.

Now they want an Iranian proxy to remain in Gaza but an international coalition to push out an Iranian proxy in Lebanon?

Their hearts are in the right place—for now. But they have mortgaged the American credibility that would be needed to follow this path. Such are the wages of indecision and strategic caprice. The legacy of this administration will be chaos and missed opportunities.

Ruthie Blum: 50 shades of ‘Don’t’

This was evident from Biden’s urging in April, after Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, that Netanyahu “take the win” and move on. The “win” to which he was referring was the successful interception of the projectiles. In other words, dodging a bullet is preferable to targeting and taking out a shooter.

Following Iran’s ballistic barrage last week, Biden’s main concern focused on Israeli retaliation. He went as far as to say that he opposes an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and oil fields. He then added the usual mantra about Israel’s right to respond, as long as civilians aren’t killed.

Which brings us back to the 50-minute phone call that was the first communication between Biden and Bibi in some 50 days. Apparently, the White House defines “having Israel’s back” as turning its back on the Jewish state—when not stabbing it in the back by withholding crucial weaponry and constantly calling for ceasefires, that is. You know, the kind of “peace deals” that benefit the very mass murderers engaged in the ongoing seven-front assault against America’s key ally in the Middle East.

Given the length of the chat, it’s obvious that much was omitted from the White House summation of it. But reading between the already despicable lines is sufficient to glean what must have been a far worse exchange.

The following excerpt is illustrative: “On Lebanon, the president emphasized the need for a diplomatic arrangement to safely return both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line. The president affirmed Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, while emphasizing the need to minimize harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut. On Gaza, the leaders discussed the urgent need to renew diplomacy to release the hostages held by Hamas. The president also discussed the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the imperative to restore access to the north, including by reinvigorating the corridor from Jordan immediately.”

The sole mention of Iran preceded the above passage; it was a short condemnation of the Oct. 1 ballistic-missile attack on Israel. No acknowledgement of Tehran’s being the head of the terrorist octopus. Not a word about nukes or Israeli plans for some major “October surprise.”

It’s not clear whether Netanyahu informed Biden of what Israel has in store for the ayatollahs. He probably didn’t reveal his whole hand, so as to avoid receiving a raspy presidential “Don’t.” But he certainly was right to save Gallant a flight.

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 is a message to the people of Lebanon: pic.twitter.com/btMQR0Xwtn
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 8, 2024

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a message directly to the people of Lebanon. Part of it said:

Now you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice.

You can now take back your country. You can return it to a path of peace and prosperity.

If you don’t, Hezbollah will continue to try to fight Israel from densely populated areas at your expense.

It doesn't care if Lebanon is dragged into a wider war. Christians, Druze, Muslims—Sunnis and Shiites—all of you are suffering because of Hezbollah's futile war against Israel.

Today I ask every mother and every father in Lebanon a simple question: Is it worth it? Because, it doesn't have to be that way. I know you want a better future for your children.

So I am speaking to all of you today.

There is a better way. A better way for your children, for your cities, for your villages, for your country.

You deserve to restore Lebanon to its days of tranquility; you deserve a Lebanon that is different. One Country – One Flag – One People.

Don't let these terrorists destroy your future any more than they've already done. Stand up and take your country back. You have an opportunity that hasn't existed in decades. An opportunity to take care of the future of your children and grandchildren.

You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn't have to be that way.

Each of you can take a step for your future.

Even a small step.

You can make a difference.

I say to you, the people of Lebanon:

Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.
Free your country from Hezbollah so that your country can prosper again, so that future generations of Lebanese and Israeli children will know neither war nor bloodshed, but will finally live together in peace.

Many Lebanese interpreted this as a call for a civil war in Lebanon!

“Netanyahu is calling on the Lebanese to kill each other, in a message clearly addressed to Hezbollah’s opponents,” said Ziad Majed, a political specialist at the American University of Paris. Indeed, he seems intent on inciting the anti-Hezbollah camp to take advantage of the latter’s degraded capabilities, following the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and the destruction of a large part of its military infrastructure, to finish it off domestically. Otherwise, Israel will do it, even if at the cost of destroying the whole country and killing many civilians.

I'm seeing the same interpretation all over social media.

It is absurd.

Netanyahu is saying what I have been saying for months: it is time for the Lebanese people to take a public stand against Hezbollah, in the form of protests, demanding that Lebanon not be ruled by an Iranian proxy.

Hezbollah claims to be defending Lebanon. As long as the Lebanese people remain silent, they can continue to use that lie for their own anti-Israel purposes. But if the Lebanese people tell the world that they would be better off without Hezbollah's pretense of defense, then Hezbollah has no leg to stand on.

The Egyptian anti-Muslim Brotherhood government protests of 2013 were largely peaceful. Why can't similar mass protests be mounted in Lebanon? Why can't there be protests insisting that Hezbollah and Lebanon adhere to UN Security Council resolution 1701?

If some Lebanese think that protests would lead to a civil war, that means they think that Hezbollah would counter peaceful protests with violence from their illegal militia. If they think that would happen, isn't that even more reason to try to get rid of Hezbollah's separate army, separate health system, and separate areas of control where the Lebanese army are not allowed to enter?

No one wants a civil war. The Lebanese people have the power to marginalize Hezbollah and eliminate Iran's control over them without anyone being hurt.

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!

Is Iran Zionist? By the definition of BDSers, apparently it is!

Yesterday, Brown University announced that its governing board had voted to reject a student proposal to divest from 10 companies that also sell to Israel.

The ten companies are Airbus, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, Motorola Solutions, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon and United Technologies), Textron, Safariland, and Volvo Group (AB Volvo).

The recommendation by Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resource Management (ACURM) that was accepted by the board states that there are no direct investments by Brown in those companies, and its indirect investments are not only minuscule but virtually impossible to avoid, since Brown has practically no influence over how their investment managers choose to invest on behalf of thousands of other corporations. (Their previous divestment from tobacco companies likewise did not block indirect investments.)

Yet Iran does not have any problem trying to make direct deals with at least some of these awful Zionism complicit companies.

During the time period after the JCPOA was signed in 2015 and before the Trump administration revoked the agreement in 2018, Iran signed contracts with Boeing, Airbus and Volvo Group to buy products and parts. In 2016, Boeing signed a deal to sell 80 aircraft to Iran Air; Airbus signed deals to sell 100 planes to Iran. Even companies like GE pursued deals with Iran in that time period.

Volvo had factories to assemble trucks in Iran. Volvo maintains some sales ties to Iran today and Volvo trucks are used to transport Iranian missiles.

At no point did Iran say we will not deal with these companies that supposedly, somehow, violate Palestinian rights.

Which means that, according to the tortured logic of Israel haters, Iran violates their sacred BDS Call of 2005 and is therefore complicit in Zionist crimes.

The student protesters are more antisemitic and hate Israel more than Iran does.

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!

According to L'Orient Today,

Between Sept. 23 and 30, with the sudden and dramatic intensification of Israeli bombardments, General Security recorded the passage of 234,023 Syrians and 76,269 Lebanese into Syrian territory. By Oct. 5, more than 400,000 people had fled to Syria, according to Lebanese authorities — around 300,000 Syrians and 100,000 Lebanese, but also some Palestinians, Sudanese and other nationalities as well.

That means about 20,000 have been fleeing every day to Syria, meaning the number is apprpaching 500,000 this week.

And that is just the overland route.

Middle East Airways, the only airline to still service Beirut, has sold out all its flights . They fly between 5-10 planes a day in peacetime with each one having a capacity of between 150-400 depending on whether they are using Airbus A320 or A330. So we can conservatively estimate that 2000 are leaving every day by air, or about 50,000 since the fighting intensified.

Not only that, but private yacht owners and ferry boat charters are bringing hundreds of Lebanese to Cyprus and Turkey daily at what they consider exorbitant prices of between $1,400 and $2,300 per passenger. Those prices have gone up about 50% from before the war, and the Lebanese ministry of transportation is taking advantage as well, taxing the boats far more than they did before and driving prices even higher.

Now, compare this with how much Gazans were charged to become "VIPs" and leave to Egypt before Egypt closed Rafah.

Instead of a yacht, they had to take several buses for hours - and pay between $5,000 to $10,000 per person for the privilege.

Arab and Muslim countries are welcoming Lebanese - but none of them wanted Palestinians unless they paid a huge amount for the privilege.

While Palestinian leaders were against Gaza receiving aid from Cyprus, fearful that some Gazans would hitch a ride on the return trips with the boats, no one has a problem with Lebanese leaving for Cyprus.

As I noted previously, the difference of how the world didn't want Gazans to flee to safety and how the world welcomes Lebanese under the exact same circumstances trying to save their lives could not be starker. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could have fled to Egypt and Syria and many lives could have been saved; those people would not be forced to keep moving away from where Hamas keeps following them and using their humanitarian camps as terror hubs.

The hypocrisy is stunning. It is even worse when you listen to the official reasons given by Egypt and Jordan and Palestinian leaders to oppose the resettlement of Gazans: it is for their own good.

No one even gave Gazans a choice in the matter. And none of the "human rights organizations" had a problem with that.

Even today, if, say, Qatar said that they would accept 30,000 Palestinians for a few months, the quota would be filled within minutes and Israel would cooperate to help the transfer, the same way it helps sever medical cases leave Gaza. But no Arab nation is saying that.

If they simply didn't want Palestinians, that would be bigoted enough. But the Arab and Muslim world is saying, quite clearly, that they would rather Palestinians die than be safe in their countries. Their deaths serve Hamas' purposes and are propaganda wins against Israel.

That is how little the Muslim world really cares about Palestinians.

And, incidentally, it is how Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority think about their fellow Palestinians 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!

10/09 Links Pt2: Oct. 7 Forever Altered Jewish Life Worldwide; The woke dehumanisation of Jews; The strange story of the Palestinian flag

From Ian:

Oct. 7 Forever Altered Jewish Life Worldwide

Oct. 7 and its aftermath forever altered the daily lives of every Jewish person around the world. For nearly a century, Jews in places like America, Canada, Great Britain and Australia took for granted their connection to and comfort within their homes and nations. Even if antisemitism still dwelt at the fringes of society, Jews in these places felt as though they had finally been woven into the very fabric of society and shared history. We found homes and places where we could let our collective guard down.

It took a single day last year for that comfort and confidence to shatter. Our homes, businesses and places of worship suddenly became targets of hateful acts, slurs, screams of "go home," graffiti, assaults, gunshots and murder. At no point since World War II have so many Jews in so many places felt so insecure and untethered from the Western democracies in which they live. We have lost our basic sense of normalcy.

Oct. 7 and its aftermath demonstrated to Jews around the world that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned effectively enough to prevent the replay of those very horrors. We learned that "Never Again" is not real.

We learned that blacklists of Jewish authors, musicians and artists can sprout up again; that Jewish businesses can again be targeted, vandalized and destroyed; that Jewish schools and institutions must yet again rely on their own security to keep their children and community safe, while Jewish university students fear walking across campus alone.

What 4,000 years of Jewish history have taught us is that if it starts with the Jews, it never ends with the Jews. It is an American, Canadian, French, British, Australian, Argentinian and South African problem.

The writer is a former senior vice president for international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League.

Brendan O'Neill: Now they won’t even let Jews grieve in peace

Remember the Westboro Baptist Church? They were the fundamentalist fruitcakes who would picket vigils for slain American soldiers with technicolour placards declaring ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Thank God for Dead Soldiers’. Well, there’s a new mob of grief-intruders in town. There’s a new gang of hateful trespassers on other people’s sorrow. They’re not quite as God-bothering, not so homophobic, but they’re every bit as ghoulish. It’s the ‘pro-Palestine’ set on university campuses.

This week, something truly appalling took place at Columbia University in New York City. A vigil for the 1,200 people butchered by the fascists of Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October was noisily interrupted by the Hamas fanboys of the cranky Columbia left. ‘Fanboys’ is not hyperbole. Some were chanting ‘Resistance is glorious!’. This was on Monday, on 7 October, the anniversary of Hamas’s pogrom. If you are singing the praises of a ‘resistance’ one year after that ‘resistance’ slaughtered more Jews in one day than anyone else has since the Nazis, then you are a Hamas fanboy, you are a fellow traveller of fascism.

Jewish students and their allies had gathered to pay tribute to the dead and stolen of 7 October. They prayed for the Jews murdered by Hamas and demanded the release of the Jews Hamas still holds captive. They assembled on Columbia’s South Lawn. They displayed giant milk cartons featuring images of the Israeli hostages and a collection of teddy bears covered in red paint symbolising those who were murdered. Their lamentations were soon interrupted, though. Their murmured grief was punctuated by the shrill cries of Columbia’s legion Israelophobes. ‘Israel go to hell!’, these radical Westboro Baptists screamed.

Hundreds of ‘pro-Palestine’ activists ‘took over the campus’, reports the Daily Mail. The ‘raging students’ hollered their hackneyed Israel-loathing slogans over the ‘vigil to mark the one-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-led attacks’, the Mail says. Some were masked, many were adorned in the keffiyeh, the uniform of the self-righteous, the must-have fashion item of every turbo-smug radical who wants the world to know how good and edgy he is. They played ‘loud Arabic music’ and it ‘drowned out the sound of Israeli music that was playing for the vigil’. Shorter version: pipe down, Jews.

In one especially disturbing scene, two young, mournful women, the Israel flag draped over their shoulders, were surrounded by the barking mob. They stood stone-faced as the keffiyeh set swarmed, their placards crying ‘Resist by any means necessary!’. Think about this: Jewish students marking the one-year anniversary of the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust were mobbed by students celebrating that violence, bigging it up as ‘resistance’. This was Jew-taunting dolled up as radical activism, the salt of Israel-hate rubbed into the wound of Jews’ grief.

‘Two brave Jewish girls stand proudly while a crowd of terror supporters surrounds them’, tweeted Eyal Yakoby, a student and campaigner against anti-Semitism. ‘Terror supporter’ is accurate. When the TikTok revolutionaries of the painfully privileged Columbia classes cosplay as Middle East militants, complete with masks and keffiyehs, and loudly swoon over the gloriousness of ‘resistance’, by which they mean 7 October, they are indeed indicating their support for terror. One side at Columbia was mourning a pogrom, the other was celebrating it. It was the West’s crisis distilled: a small group of students quietly standing with civilisation while a larger, louder, brutish group of students essentially swore their fealty to civilisation’s opposite – Israel’s barbarous foes.

Batya Ungar-Sargon: 7 October was a mask-off moment for the left

I first noticed it about three weeks after the massacre, though at first, I was so shocked by the feeling that it took me a while to admit it was real. Yet there it was, in between fits of grief and rage – something else making itself known: a creeping sense of euphoria.

Crazy, right? After the greatest Jewish bloodletting since the Holocaust in acts of depraved barbarism we had thought this Earth rid of, I was feeling a sense of elation.

It wasn’t, God forbid, about Hamas’s massacre or Israel’s response. No, I was feeling the euphoria of being in a fight of good versus evil after a life wrestling with moral ambiguity. It was the high of seeing the truth so clearly bellowed from the rooftops by one’s enemies – rather than masked with dissembling language about ‘justice’ and ‘equality’. It was the joy of being released from the gaslighting, the pretence that the left is more moral, more compassionate, more good – on the ‘right side of history’.

In ripping off the mask and going all in on their support of ‘resistance by any means necessary’, the left made itself morally irrelevant. In condoning calls for the genocide of the Jews, elite universities in the US made themselves objects of mockery for generations to come. In becoming Hamas’s cheering section, the left has made its claim to be the side of morality patently and obviously false. It was the largest act of moral self-marginalisation that I can ever recall witnessing.

After all, who cares what someone’s take on transgender medical treatments is when they cheer for Hamas? Who cares what someone’s take on women’s rights is when they deny the mass rape of Israeli women? Who cares what someone thinks about abortion when they don’t condemn the murder of Israeli babies? Who cares what someone thinks about the war in Ukraine when they can’t tell who is an ally and who an enemy? Who cares who someone is voting for when they can’t condemn the genocide of the Jews?

Indeed, anti-Semitism is not an accidental wrong turn for today’s left. The woke worldview replaces the foundation of Western civilisation – a worldview based on the distinction of right vs wrong, virtue vs evil – with the binary of powerful vs powerless, and then superimposes race on to that binary. Identitarians ascribe inherent virtue to those they see as powerless and evil to those they see as powerful. This is the source of 21st-century leftist anti-Semitism: every Jew is coded as white and is thus a powerful oppressor, and every Palestinian is coded as a ‘person of colour’ and thus is oppressed and inherently virtuous. Crucially, to the woke, the powerless have no moral agency and thus no moral responsibilities, and this includes Hamas. Abjection is the only virtue the left recognises, and this even applies for terrorists. Hence, by any means necessary.

If you’re an American, you have to have a college degree to believe this crap, although TikTok has been instrumental in popularising this ideology. In using the highfalutin justifications of the woke ideology to cheerlead Hamas, the global left has managed to reveal its thought process to be inherently, irredeemably flawed. And in so doing, it has released the rest of us from having to pretend the left matters.

This is the euphoria of the post-7 October world: it is a world in which the left’s moral badgering isn’t just irrelevant – it’s a joke.

No longer must we pretend this nonsense about the real threat coming from the right. No longer must we pretend that weakness is virtue and strength is vice. No longer must we absolve people of moral responsibility based on their skin colour. These views cannot be untangled from the hatred of Jews that permeates the left so deeply.

The good news is, we now know who our enemies are, which makes them much easier to fight.

The woke dehumanisation of Jews

That Jewish people are regarded as a hyper-white community was clear in March 2021, when the BBC’s flagship politics programme, Politics Live, featured a bizarre debate on whether or not Jews are an ethnic-minority group. Apparently, this was open to question because some Jews have reached positions of power and influence. Thus, in the eyes of some, Jewish people have joined the ranks of the oppressors. The message communicated by Politics Live was that Jewish identity and the way that Jews perceive themselves should not be taken too seriously because they have little claim to the status of victimhood. The historical experience of the oppression of Jews is viewed as trivial compared with other groups’ experiences of victimisation.

The spoiling of Jewish identity goes a long way to explaining the identitarian left’s response to the 7 October massacre. Numerous celebrities and cultural influencers appeared indifferent to the horrific acts of rape, hostage-taking and murder committed against Israeli civilians, including children. The American actress Susan Sarandon personified this callous sensibility. At a pro-Palestine rally in November 2023, she told the crowd that those people who were feeling afraid of being Jewish right now are ‘getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence’. Sarandon clearly had no idea that Jews had not only faced more than their share of violence in the past – they also make up a disproportionate share of hate-crime victims in the present.

The #MeToo movement, usually quick to ‘believe all women’ when they make allegations of rape, appeared to switch into silent mode in response to the scenes of barbaric sexual violence meted out by Hamas. For many feminist activists, the idea of sisterhood seemingly did not apply to Jewish or Israeli women. Some went as far as to outright deny what had happened, despite there being abundant evidence of these crimes. The director of the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Centre signed an open letter asserting that calling Hamas terrorists is ‘Islamophobic’ and denying that Israeli women were raped by Hamas fighters on 7 October. Such indifference to the plight of violated Jewish women shows how thoroughly dehumanised Jewish people have become in identitarian circles.

From the standpoint of identity politics, there is little room for empathy towards the predicament of the supposedly hyper-white Jew. As alleged possessors of so much power and privilege, Jewish people have no claim to the status of victimhood, even when they are brutalised in full view of the world. The sins committed by Hamas on 7 October are all too easy to wash away when its victims are no longer considered fully human.

10/09 Links Pt1: Those Darned Disobedient Israelis; Iran's attack was aggressive, our response will be a deadly surprise; Sinwar resurfaces, seeks guarantees for his life

From Ian:

Israel at war: democracy in action

This idea might come as a surprise to those who get their news about the Middle East solely from the mainstream media. The only Israelis who ever appear on the TV news here, in between the constant coverage of suffering Palestinians, are those protesting against the Israeli government and demanding an end to the war.

The mainstream-media narrative is basically that this is ‘Bibi’s war’, only kept going by Israel’s unpopular prime minister, ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, as a cynical ploy to save his own political skin, postponing his fall from power and possible imprisonment. They want to reduce Israel’s war to the level of just another sordid government scandal. But that could hardly be further from the truth.

It is certainly true that Netanyahu has many opponents at home. Prior to the Hamas massacres of 7 October, Israeli society was politically deeply divided. In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom, Netanyahu was bitterly criticised for leaving Israel open to attack. Those divisions have not gone away, and even Netanyahu has acknowledged that his government will be called to account.

Yet those issues have not undermined the consistently widespread public support for Israel’s counter-attacks against Hamas and Hezbollah. The one thing that most Israelis agree upon, apart from the urgent desire to return all of the hostages taken by Hamas, is the need to defeat Islamist terror. Indeed, in the wake of the recent attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, in response to the indiscriminate shelling of Israeli civilians, Netanyahu and his Likud party have enjoyed a resurgence of support in the opinion polls. Away from party politics, every poll shows strikingly high levels of public support and admiration for the IDF.

Israelis support the war because they appreciate that what’s at stake is the survival of their democratic state. Most are dismissive of the naive talk in the US and Europe of a two-state solution; they know that the Islamists are not really fighting to create a Palestinian state, but to wipe the sovereign Israel off the map – ‘From the river to the sea’ – and to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean.

In one remarkable recent poll by the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs, 68 per cent of Israelis said they supported a direct attack on Iran if its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, continues launching rockets at Israel. More than two-thirds of respondents opposed the notion of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after 7 October. And 92 per cent thought the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank – the Western powers’ preferred partner in a future Palestinian state – could not be trusted to prevent a repeat of the 7 October massacres. That is hardly surprising, given that some PA officials openly celebrated the attacks, while the leadership tried to blame Israel for staging the pogrom against its own citizens.

The anti-Israeli crusade in Europe and America has brought together all that is worst within our democracies, from the Western elites’ self-loathing to the merger of old-fashioned Islamic anti-Semitism with the new version of that prejudice spread by woke identity politics. Deserting Israel now means abandoning our own society’s democratic values, and siding with barbarism against civilisation.

By contrast, Israel at war is democracy in action, a beacon for us all. The people of Israel had to fight to establish the Jewish state in 1948 and have been fighting to defend it ever since. As citizens with an historic, hard-fought stake in their society, they have risen to the challenge despite their deep divisions. It is the common cause which the Israeli people have made in this war that has given the IDF the will to fight on, with more military success than many experts expected.

The link between popular engagement with a war and military success has been a feature of history, ever since the poor sailors of Ancient Athens, the ‘birthplace of democracy’, defeated the mighty Persian Empire at the naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. The Israelis are showing it once more. Reports suggest that many younger Israelis, of the peace-seeking generation that was dancing at the Nova music festival when Hamas murderers attacked, have since come round to the view that Israel must defeat its mortal enemies to survive.

Behind their empty words of sympathy for the 7 October victims, Western rulers’ retreat from fully supporting Israel in its wars against Hamas and Hezbollah reflects the elites’ loss of faith in fighting for national sovereignty and democracy at home. Those of us who want to stand up for our democratic civilisation, warts and all, should stand foursquare with the Israelis. To paraphrase the scriptural words Netanyahu used in his speech at the United Nations two weeks ago: Israel is a blessing, not a curse, in the war to defend Western democracy.

Seth Mandel: Those Darned Disobedient Israelis

Today’s New York Times carries a long reflection on Biden’s inability to control events in the Middle East over the past year, framing the problem as one of “influence” and its limits. “Even as the United States has continued to arm Israel, the administration has been repeatedly thwarted in reining in Mr. Netanyahu, who has sidestepped or dismissed entreaties from the White House to de-escalate the conflict and leave room for a postwar creation of a Palestinian state,” writes reporter Michael Shear. “And with Israel now poised to carry out retaliatory strikes against Iran, the wider war that Mr. Biden sought to avert is at hand.”

Apparently Biden and Bibi haven’t spoken since Aug. 21. The president feels defeated by his inability to solve two riddles, according to Shear: “How do you pressure an ally facing a threat to its existence? How far should you go if that ally ignores your advice?”

Biden, Shear writes, didn’t fulfill his intent to get all the hostages home. His humanitarian interventions in Gaza flopped. He told Israel not to give in to a rage similar to America’s own after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and yet “decisions by Mr. Netanyahu and his cabinet mirrored those of the post-9/11 American politicians who felt that only war would ensure long-term security.”

But there’s one specific category of failure that, if Biden looks closely enough at, he will discern the root cause of all the others. Shear writes: “Mr. Biden’s message then included a blunt warning to Iran and others in the Middle East not to use the fighting in Gaza as an excuse to attack Israel… In the year since, those warnings have proved ineffective. Iran has twice launched missile attacks directly against Israel, including last week, and Mr. Netanyahu is now weighing options for retaliatory strikes. Hezbollah’s near-constant barrage of attacks from Lebanon over Israel’s northern border has triggered a vast Israeli military response over the past several weeks, including the killing of Hezbollah’s leader.”

Biden’s problem, it turns out, isn’t Israel’s defiance—it’s Iran’s defiance. Israel resisted going into Gaza until Hamas got tired of waiting and invaded Israel instead. Israel didn’t go into Lebanon until Iran made clear that it would be the only way to return displaced Israelis to their homes in the north. Iran-backed attacks have continued also from Iraq and Yemen, as well as from Iran itself.

Nobody has been asking Biden or Harris why the Iranians don’t listen to them, perhaps because, outside of sanctions relief, we aren’t supplying them with foreign aid. But that doesn’t explain why these questions aren’t asked just as pointedly about Qatar. The U.S. is Qatar’s largest foreign investor and largest source of imports. In 2022, Biden designated Qatar a Major Non-NATO Ally, a status that brings with it economic benefits, usually in the areas of trade and loans.

It does not explain why these questions aren’t asked of Egypt, a recipient of U.S. aid that enabled this war in the first place by allowing Hamas to connect Gaza to Egyptian territory via underground tunnels and which has mostly declined to play any number of humanitarian roles in the past year.

Turkey is a recipient of US aid and a member of NATO. Does it take marching orders from Washington? How about the Palestinian Authority? Does the US have no sway over anybody? A major obstacle to getting an answer to the question about US influence is that we only seem to ask it about the one country under assault and surrounded by genocidal enemies: Israel.

WSJ Editorial: The Defeat of Hamas and the Iranian Axis Is the Real Peace Plan

Hamas's massacre last Oct. 7 has taught the West forgotten lessons about deterrence, political will, and the illusions of a liberal, peaceful world. The world should never forget the videos of Hamas's atrocities. The terrorists livestreamed as they slaughtered the defenseless. They killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 101 of whom remain in captivity. Hamas is proud of this handiwork and would repeat it if it could.

The reply of respectable liberalism has been to urge de-escalation, ceasefires and a two-state solution, and to blame Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when they don't materialize. It's as if Hamas, Hizbullah and their patron in Iran don't exist.

As long as Iran pursues war, Israel must defend itself aggressively to survive. Hizbullah fired on Israel for 11 months. After a week of Israeli success in response, Mr. Biden called for a ceasefire there too. But if Hizbullah remains entrenched in southern Lebanon, how can there be peace?

Israel's best option is to degrade the Iranian axis's capabilities and deny it safe havens. Israel will have a better chance at a durable ceasefire when its enemies know they will suffer more than Israel does when they attack. The only path to a ceasefire, and a broader Middle East peace, is an Israeli victory over Iran and its terror network. Iran is bent on America's destruction as much as it is on Israel's. The Jewish state is the frontline of the West, and we can't let it lose.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Joe Biden could not have chosen to end his statement commemorating the first anniversary of October 7 in a more inappropriate manner. “I believe that history will also remember October 7th as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”

A dark day for the Palestinian people? Really Joe? Really??

Of all the things to say on a day marking pogroms against the Jewish people so depraved and vicious it is an obscenity to describe them. October 7^th didn’t happen to just any people and it certainly didn’t happen to the “Palestinian” people. The events that took place on October 7^th happened to the Jews.* It was arguably the single darkest day in Jewish history, the darkest day the Jewish people have ever known.

But it seems Jewish tragedy is fair game for a crooked hack like Joe Biden to exploit for his own gain and/or nefarious pleasure. Because one thing cannot be in doubt. If we know the facts, Joe Biden knows them too.

And the facts are this: On that “dark day,” regular “Palestinian people” stormed the fence and came flooding into Israel just like the “real” terrorists, killing, raping, maiming, and burning Jews alive.

The Free Beacon’s Andrew Tobin wrote of this massive civilian assist to the terrorists on October 24, 17 days after that “dark day for the Palestinian people” occurred (emphasis added):

As Hamas terrorists carried out a highly choreographed massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, they received a source of support that amplified the horror that took place that day. A mob of ordinary Palestinians spontaneously joined in what became the deadliest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, according to videos, eyewitness accounts, and the Israel Defense Forces.

Whereas the Hamas terrorists wore uniforms and carried military-grade weapons, the Gazans who followed them into the Jewish state were dressed as civilians and mostly unarmed, two officials from Israel's devastated Gaza border region said. Young men with knives, overweight dads, and at least one elderly man on crutches were among those who exploited Hamas's rampage to create a second wave of carnage that rivaled the barbarism of the professional terrorists.

The IDF declined to provide details about non-Hamas Gazans’s involvement in the Oct. 7 attack. But IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that large numbers of Gazans who were not members of any terrorist group entered Israel and participated in the atrocities.

"They did what you say they did," Conricus said.

Gadi Yarkoni, mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council, which serves most of the Gaza border communities, told Tobin that there was no difference between the Gaza civilians who raped, burned, and murdered Jews and their Hamas “terrorist” counterparts (emphasis added):

"The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave. We saw that it was not only Hamas who came to slaughter us. It was all the residents of Gaza, including people who worked in our kibbutzim.

"I saw a scene where a Gazan civilian chopped off a man's head. It took him several attempts to detach the head from the body," said Yarkoni.

There is ample footage of these “ordinary” Gazans looting, killing, and assisting the “terrorists” in kidnapping Israeli civilians including women and children.

Security footage from 7/10 shows ordinary Gaza citizens entering Be'eri and mass looting the Kibbutz. pic.twitter.com/lvgaC05uxJ
— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 16, 2023

These “not terrorist” Gazans, including their “not terrorist” children, cheered, jeered, and praised Allah as Jews were brutalized and defiled in ways not seen before. They, the “not terrorists,” burned Jewish homes. “Not terrorists” kicked the dead bodies of the murdered Jews, and “not terrorists” spat on Jewish hostages as they were driven through the streets of Gaza.

If you can stomach it, take a look. (This is actually milder than much of what is out there.)

Tobin also spoke with an eye witness to the bestial acts of “Palestinian people” that day. (emphasis added):

Raz Cohen, a 24-year-old former Israeli commando, saw both Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans kill and rape revelers at the Supernova music festival in Re'im, where at least 260 people were slaughtered. After escaping the Hamas terrorists, Cohen hid in a bush with a group of friends for almost seven hours. He watched as a gang of Gazan civilians—men wearing Adidas and armed only with knives and axes—raped and murdered a young Jewish woman.
"While they were raping and killing, they always laughed. I can't forget how they laughed," Cohen told the Free Beacon.
Several members of Cohen's group later ran from the bush and were caught by the same gang of Gazans. He said he heard his friends' screams as they were tortured and stabbed to death.

"You know when you hear the screams of someone who is dying," said Cohen, who was eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers.

We’ve looked at the first part of Joe Biden’s appalling reference to October 7 as a tragedy shared by Jews and “Palestinians.” Now let us examine the rest. Here is the “dark day” comment again, this time with the emphasis on the second part of the sentence:

“I believe that history will also remember October 7th as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”

Joe calls the natural response to what happened that day as a “conflict,” as if there were parity between Israeli Jews and Hamas terrorists, Israeli Jews and Gazans. But the IDF is not targeting the “Palestinian” people. The IDF is not doing to the “Palestinian” people what the “Palestinians” did to the Jews on October 7th. Jews and “Palestinians” are not two kids in the sandbox who won’t stop fighting, and who share equal blame for the death and destruction. The Jews are not the aggressors, here.

Joes tries to distract from these facts, by using the word “unleashed.” Translated, Biden blames Israel for making Gaza pay for what Hamas started. It was Hamas that unleashed the violence.

But that’s not true, is it? The horrors unleashed on October 7 were unleashed on Jews by Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans alike. To compare the suffering of Jewish Israelis to the subsequent suffering of Gazans is therefore nauseating. The Gazan people support Hamas. They elected Hamas. They raped Jews and burned babies with and alongside Hamas on October 7. They are culpable.

Anyone who wanted to could and did take part in the barbaric cruelty of the “dark day” that was October 7 and that is exactly what the “Palestinian” people did, relishing every dark evil moment.

This is how Biden gives license to a Jew-hating world to hold the Jews responsible for Gazan suffering; to believe that it is somehow unfair for the Gazan people to be forced to bear the onus for the October 7 atrocities.

This is neither a fair nor true characterization of events as Biden well knows. No matter. His comments are all now nicely recorded for posterity.

On the one-year anniversary of October 7, and in the waning days of his demented presidency, Joe Biden still has enough cussed meanness in him to call October 7^th, a “dark day” for the “Palestinian people,” though the ordinary citizens of Gaza stood shoulder to shoulder with the terrorists and attacked the Jews with gusto.

Which leaves us with the question: Who is a terrorist if everyone is a terrorist?

From a moral standpoint, the answer is obvious. It makes no difference if the attackers are Hamas operatives or just plain old, regular “Palestinians.” Terror is terror. And the “Palestinian” people are now reaping the natural consequences of what they sowed on that very dark day for the Jewish people.

*As we know, there are a significant number of migrant workers who were also savaged and or kidnapped on October 7^th. Perhaps in the frenzy, the October 7^th rapists and killers got to a point where they didn’t care who they brutalized. Or perhaps these workers were considered tainted by association with Jews. None of this changes the fact that this day belongs squarely within the confines of Jewish history, alone.

Turkish media remains obsessed over Jews - and the thought that Israel will invade Turkey

A common theme in Turkish media is the absolute conviction that Israel is planning to attack and try to take over Turkey.

I had found two separate "proofs" of this:

1. A wacky Christian who hung around with Herzl suggested to him that the northern border of the Jewish state should be "the mountains facing Cappadocia." There is no indication that Herzl took him seriously.

2. The Torah mentions that Israel conquered the Hittites in Canaan, and some people in Turkey think that since at their height the Hittite empire reached parts of Turkey, Israel wants them..

Now, I found a third.

Abraham and his father lived in Haran before God told him to go to Canaan. Most people identify Harran with a town in southeast Turkey with that name. So, we are confidently told, "Harran is as important to Jews as Jerusalem."

To get to Harran, Israel has to take over Lebanon and Syria.

See? It all makes sense!

(I always thought Harran was Hauran in Syria, but it isn't - that is spelled differently in Ezekiel.)

Meanwhile, in another Turkish paper, the Quran Verse of the Day is one that is interpreted as saying that Jews "will be humiliated wherever they are, and they will incur Allah’s wrath and will be condemned to humiliation. This is because they denied the revelations of Allah and killed the prophets without cause.

This is because they rebelled and transgressed."

And just in case that wasn't explicit enough, they add a graphic quote from Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, a

Turkish poet and novelist:

The translation is, "Did you say Jews? They are the cursed ones who do not hesitate to set the world on fire to fry their eggs."

Turkish media is obsessed with Jews, and with inciting against Jews. I sure wouldn't schedule any flights through that country.

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 US has averaged over eleven anti-Israel protests A DAY since 10/7/23 - second only to Yemen(!)

The INSS has this interesting infographic:

It shows that through mid-August, there were 3,452 anti-Israel protests in the US - the second highest in the world, behind Yemen's insane 5,484 protests.

Third place is Morocco with 2,788, followed by Turkey and Iran.

Morocco is surprising because the protests in Yemen, Turkey and Iran are run by and promoted by their governments; Morocco (like other countries Israel is at peace with) has not been doing that at all to my knowledge. This is quite concerning.

The US is not in the most prestigious company.

But there are plenty of anti-Israel protests in the rest of the Western world 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!

The big news from yesterday:

BEIRUT, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem said in comments broadcast on Tuesday that his movement supports efforts to reach a ceasefire for Lebanon, but for the first time omitted any mention of a Gaza truce deal as a pre-condition to halting the group's fire on Israel.

Qassem said Hezbollah supported efforts by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, to secure a halt to fighting, which has escalated in recent weeks with Israeli ground incursions and the killing of some of Hezbollah's top leaders, including secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

"We support the political activity being led by Berri under the title of a ceasefire," Qassem said in a 30-minute televised address.

Berri is a Hezbollah lackey, so it is Hezbollah that is implicitly decoupling Hezbollah actions from Gaza, not the Lebanese government. Qassem wants to save Hezbollah, and his own life.

But for an entire year Hezbollah has been claiming that it is only shooting towards Israel to support Gaza. How can it now say that it wants a separate ceasefire when there is none in Gaza?

By rewriting history!

Qassem said in his speech:

This Israeli entity has proven to be a danger to humanity, Lebanon and the region. We announced the support front from Lebanon to achieve two goals: the first is to help in the confrontation to relieve Gaza and help it win this battle, and the second implicit goal is to defend Lebanon and its people.

This is the first time Hezbollah claimed that its attacks on Israel were meant to defend Lebanon.

It is such an absurd and transparent lie that only an Arab leader could say it with a straight face. But it is the only way Hezbollah can climb down from its tree - by now claiming that it must accept a ceasefire for the good of the very Lebanese people that it has turned into its own human shields.

It doesn't only reflect Hezbollah's panic, but Iran's too. Reports say that the instructions to consider a separate cease fire comes from Iran. They are hoping to avert a major Israeli response to its ballistic missile attack, and suddenly supporting Gaza is no longer so important to Iran.

How much more proof does the world need that strength is what is necessary for peace, not weakness? Israel's position has improved vastly in the past few weeks, and it is all because it took the offensive and signaled that it will not stop until it reaches its goals. It never articulated a goal to destroy Hezbollah or Iran, but its moves in that direction can help it achieve its goals of destroying Hamas, returning Israeli citizens to their homes, and hopefully to get the hostages back.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

One doesn't have to look hard to find people willing to say that every single Israeli or Zionist deserves to be killed, imprisoned or banished because by definition they are criminals.

Or this Wikipedia editor who makes up his own international law definitions to say that there are practically no Israeli civilians, and that since Hamas is a military it cannot murder anyone, and anyone it kidnaps is not a hostage but a prisoner of war.

Or this graffiti on a Jewish-owned Manny's cafe in San Francisco this week shown above calling for all "Zionists" to be expelled from the city and calling for their deaths.

Finally we have this example, where someone commenting on the idea that there are no innocent Israelis or Zionists, even says the quiet part out loud: he said there are no innocent Jews.