Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 28, 2024

10/28 Links Pt1: Western Leaders Should Be Thankful to Israel; Israel outlaws UNWRA; What would you do in our place, President Macron?

From Ian:

Western Leaders Should Be Thankful to Israel

At a bleak time in global affairs, a powerful blow has been struck against the most malign regime in the Middle East. On Friday night the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a measured, precise but devastating aerial assault on Iran. It was a proportionate response to Iran's missile attack on Israel, and civilian casualties were kept to a minimum.

Israel has reminded allies and enemies alike of just how formidable its military capabilities are. The IDF has established air superiority over Iran and can destroy its military infrastructure with virtual impunity. Having already decapitated Hamas and Hizbullah, Israel has demonstrated that it could do the same to their masters in Tehran at a time of its choosing.

While Europe and America have sought to bully Israel into ceasefires, the IDF has methodically set about eliminating the terrorist threat on its border, while checking Iranian power and influence.

Israeli Strike Could Create Deterrence

Israel has apparently inflicted severe damage on Iran's air defense systems. It is reasonable to assume that they were significantly impaired in the initial wave of attacks, given that the Iranians barely intercepted any missiles or Israeli fighter jets. With its air defenses neutralized in several critical areas, Iranian leaders will have to carefully consider whether to launch a strong attack on Israel and risk a counter-response they cannot stop.

The Israeli strike was deliberately designed to offer the Iranian regime the option to avoid retaliation. The IDF spokesperson explicitly stated the strike was "focused," and Israel has no interest in prolonging the exchange of blows.

The Israeli strikes aimed to achieve a tangible impact on Iranian military capabilities, a clear signal to the regime that it is exposed and vulnerable, which strengthens deterrence, and a severe blow to its prestige in the eyes of its citizens, all while carefully giving Tehran a "ladder to climb down from the tree," providing a justification to halt the cycle of retaliation. Neither Israel, the U.S., nor Iran currently desires a regional war.

The strikes on facilities for the development and production of surface-to-surface missiles and rocket engines were carried out around 2:00 a.m., when no civilians were present. Attacks in Ilam and Khuzestan provinces targeted surface-to-surface missile launch facilities and arrays, from which ballistic missiles were launched at Israel in the two previous Iranian attacks.

Israel's Strike on Iran

Israel destroyed Iran's air defense systems, leaving the country vulnerable to repeated Israeli Air Force strikes. These systems, of Russian origin, also demonstrate the superiority of Western weapons over Eastern ones. Given that Russia needs these systems for its war against Ukraine, it's questionable whether Russia will agree to sell additional systems to Iran.

Israel's offensive capabilities surpass Iran's defensive capabilities, revealing Israel's clear operational superiority over Iran. Israel managed to strike all of its intended targets, while Iran did not.

In deciding whether to escalate, Khamenei must consider key factors: Does Iran have enough missiles to sustain a prolonged campaign against Israel, given that production has been disrupted? Could Israel's next strike target energy and nuclear facilities? No response would signify an historic weakness, while a response would allow Israel to strike where it truly hurts. All this is happening as Hizbullah is weakened and no longer serves as a restraining force on Israel.

Abdullah Kanaan

Jordan's Royal Committee of Jerusalem Affairs, created in 1971 by the late King Hussein, issued a press release during Sukkot:

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, which is being celebrated these days, embodies a practical model of colonial holidays that are far removed in their meaning and values from the lofty concept of the holiday among all nations. Instead of peace, love and reassurance, this holiday comes in the shadow of a war of genocide practiced by Israel against our people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and in Lebanon as well..

Secretary-General of the Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, said in a statement to Al Rai that these Jewish holidays are in reality nothing but an environment of hatred, violence, killing and genocide. How can a sane person understand that this is a holiday celebrated on the remains of thousands of martyrs, wounded, detainees, missing persons and millions of displaced persons in Gaza and Lebanon?.

But it isn't only Sukkot that bothers Kanaan. He said something similar on Yom Kippur:

Secretary-General of the Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, said that Yom Kippur, the holy day for Jews, which falls on Sunday [sic], is a religious occasion, but it is dominated by provocative, racist and settlement practices against the Palestinian people, which include continuous attacks on them and intensified incursions into Islamic and Christian holy sites, foremost among which is the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif.

Kanaan added that this holiday is accompanied by religious rituals and strict measures that include preventing the movement of transportation, closing roads, and comprehensive restrictions on the Palestinians, pointing out that mercy, tolerance, respect for beliefs, and freedom of worship are deliberately absent from Jewish holidays, including Yom Kippur, which is accompanied by the occupation authorities and settlers following all forms and methods of racism and the policy of killing, capturing, arresting, and protecting Israeli incursions and attacks carried out by settlers.

He said that the Royal Committee confirms to world public opinion, including legitimate legal and international institutions and the global media, that Jewish holidays have become a haven for the policy of "apartheid", which the media and international legitimacy
places before the responsibility of exposing the Israeli policy and protecting the Palestinian people from those crimes that have left the Palestinian wound bleeding to this day.

In case you are wondering how tolerant Jordan is towards non-Muslims, it is illegal to eat, drink or smoke publicly in Jordan during the day for the entire month of Ramadan, and even tourists can get arrested for eating in public.

Israel has no similar laws for Yom Kippur or other Jewish fast days.

This is not a random commenter on Reddit or X.. This is a Jordanian official, publicly spreading antisemitism, as part of his official duties.

Naturally, none of this is covered in the media.

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!

In 2017, Politico broke a story that has particular relevance to what is happening in Lebanon today.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

The article also notes how the Obama administration was convinced that Hezbollah had "moderate" elements that could be encouraged.

This is all documented. Katherine Bauer, a former Treasury official, testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2017, "Under the Obama administration, however, these investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal."

A major reason Hezbollah is such a major threat today is because the United States looked at it, and Iran, with rose-colored glasses. That policy has resulted in the deaths of many - in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and also the US from illicit drugs being imported. It also resulted in Hezbollah cementing its role as de facto ruler of Lebanon, at least to the extent that it could veto anything it doesn't like.

I'm not seeing any mea culpas from the Democrats over their hero Obama's role of strengthening Hezbollah.

If the US had finished what it started, perhaps there would have been no Lebanese front in this war.

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!

Jews are being hunted in the streets in America. Over 75% of anti-religious hate crime is against Jews. US antisemitism strategy is utterly useless against today's antisemitism. (update)

YNet reports:

A 39-year-old Jewish man was shot in the back while walking to a synagogue in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood on Saturday morning, in what some community members allege may be a hate-driven attack.

The incident, reported by Yeshiva World News, occurred around 9:35 a.m. in an area with a significant Orthodox Jewish population. Witnesses recounted that the shooter, reportedly a 23-year-old man, yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he exchanged fire with responding officers.

At about 0:42 of the Ring camera video, you see a man emerge from between houses in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, shoot at the responding officers and civilians helping the Jewish man who was shot, and then scream something that could very well be "Allahu Akbar."

From all indications, Jews are now being hunted down in America.

Chicago's hate crime statistics show that there have been 80 anti-religious hate crimes in the city so far this year. 70 of them - 87.5% - have been against Jews.

Here is the chart of antisemitic hate crimes in Chicago over recent years.

They have gone up from 6 in 2020 to 70 in 2024 - so far. That is over a 1000% rise in antisemitic crime in Chicago.

The pattern of the over 80% of antireligious hate crimes targeting Jews is consistent in every major city that keeps such statistics.

In New York so far this year, I count 276 out of 325 antireligious hate crimes being against Jews - 85%.

In San Francisco, every single anti-religious hate crime reported this year has been against Jews, and since 2022 87.5% of them have been against Jews.

In Los Angeles, the most recent statistics I could find were 2022, and 83% were anti-Jewish.

Nationwide, according to the FBI, the percentage is slightly lower - about 75% of all antireligious hate crimes in 2023 were against Jews.

The Kamala Harris campaign is touting the US National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism that they are taking credit for in appealing to Jewish Americans to vote Democratic. Yet antisemitism has skyrocketed in the 17 months since the strategy was unveiled. What, exactly, has it achieved? What metrics are they using to measure the effectiveness of this strategy? Because from the raw numbers, things are getting far worse.

If Harris wants to take credit for the strategy, then she must take responsibility for its failure.

There are at least four very specific sources for antisemitism in America today. There is Black antisemitism (which can be subdivided as well), Muslim antisemitism, far-Right antisemitism, and progressive antisemitism that calls itself anti-Zionism. The US National Strategy only addresses the far-Right version specifically - in fact, it generally agrees with the "progressive" falsehood that fighting antisemitism is part of a larger battle to fight all forms of bias.

It cannot even conceive that Jews can be victims of bias from other groups that themselves suffer bias.

If the Chicago shooter is indeed a Muslim - Chicago police have not released his name, and he is in critical condition from the shootout - the National Strategy has done nothing, literally nothing, to stop him and people like him. Adding additional Holocaust education in schools and speaking out against antisemitism is all well and good but when the Muslim community sees these kinds of initiatives, they could easily backfire and make Muslims think Jews control the US.

A significant percentage of violent antisemitic attacks in America are done by Muslims. But the National Strategy, instead of identifying them as a group that must address antisemitism, instead only identifies them as victims of more generalized and ill-defined "hate" along with Jews.

In fact, despite the strategy document, even right-wing antisemitism is worse than it has been for decades. People with millions of followers are spreading the most insane and hateful antisemitic conspiracy theories and getting lots of attention that fall below the radar of the media and most politicians. This trailer for an antisemitic film being released has been viewed millions of times.

It is a hodgepodge of Nazi-level antisemitic conspiracy theories that make it look like religious Jews are behind pornography, not to mention 9/11. But notice also how it places side-by-side Third Reich caricatures of Jews with far-Left language and themes, such as its anti-Israel content and the its very title of "occupied."

Just as with antisemitism on the Left, this is no longer fringe. It is being broadly disseminated among pro-Trump podcasts which are now replete with Rothschild conspiracy theories and libels about the Talmud. All of this is being spread by millions yet flying under the radar.

Far-Right antisemitism has cross-pollinated with far-Left antisemitism. And just as Black, Muslim and progressive antisemitism is being largely ignored by Harris devotees, far-Right antisemitism is being largely ignored by Trump fans.

The danger to Jews in America is real. We are literally being hunted down like animals. Politics is the excuse used to ignore it. And Jews are the ones who are paying the price.

UPDATE: The name of the shooter in Chicago is Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi. Which means, yes, he screamed Allahu Akbar.

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!

TOI reports:

A man was killed and 32 people were wounded in a suspected terror truck-ramming attack at a bus stop near Herzliya on Sunday morning — five in serious condition, seven moderately wounded, and 20 lightly hurt.

Police said that the driver who rammed his truck into people at a bus stop outside the IDF’s Glilot base in central Israel, north of Tel Aviv, was shot and “neutralized” by armed civilians in the area.

The victim in the attack was later named as Bezalel Carmi, 72, from Rishon Lezion.

Hebrew media outlets named the perpetrator Rami Nasrallah, an Arab Israeli driver from Qalansawe in central Israel.

Many of the injured were senior citizens who had disembarked from the bus ahead of a day trip to a nearby museum to mark the national memorial day for those killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and subsequent war.

Now see how Iran's IRGC-linked Defa Press reported the same story:

In a martyrdom operation in the north of Tel Aviv that was carried out using a truck, 6 Zionist soldiers were killed and more than 50 people were injured.

The Zionist media further admitted that the injured in the security incident in the north of Tel Aviv are all soldiers.

According to Hebrew sources, all the injured in this operation were from the military intelligence unit 8200 in Glilot base, who were returning to their bases.

Iran's media clearly reads Hebrew media to report what happened. They know that the victims were mostly elderly civilians. But they lie, knowingly, to pretend that this attack was against soldiers.

Noe also the pride that Iran shows in the terror attack.

This is a regime that contributes nothing to the world besides terrorism, and as such it has no reason to exist.

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!

10/27 Links: 7 October tore at the fabric of civilisation; Why Israel didn’t hit Iran where it would really hurt; Arab Advocates for Israel Speak Out on Social Media

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The war with Iran

But this is emphatically not the end of the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran — a threat that is about to become infinitely worse once the regime acquires nuclear weapons. The Biden-Harris administration regards what’s happening not as a desperate war by Israel against an existential enemy that must be defeated but instead as a set of war games whose rules are set by America.

Those rules mean that Israel must suffer the blows rained down by its Iranian enemy, with the US coming to Israel’s defence only if those attacks threaten to take too many Israeli lives (depending, of course, upon quite how the US calculates the value of Israeli lives against its own strategic goals) — but also forbidding Israel from ending the threat under which its population is therefore sentenced to live in perpetuity according to American diktat. But that’s ok, apparently, because the US has warned Iran not to “escalate” — a warning that the regime in Tehran, regarding with satisfaction the craven Americans grovelling before it, will undoubtedly dismiss with even more contemptuous disdain.

America’s attitude would be unbelievable were it not for the fact that, at every stage in this dreadful year that has just passed, the administration has pressured Israel not to respond in a way that would inflict a decisive blow on Iran or its proxies.

And then there’s the part played by the western media in misleading the public about the war that Israel is being forced to fight. Even in some media outlets whose editorial line is reasonably supportive of Israel, the reporting on its foreign news pages is malign.

Routinely recycling Iranian or Hamas propaganda that’s being pumped out by the UN and many purportedly authoritative security and policy analysts in western think-tanks, academic and other institutions — including western intelligence services — these outlets present the Iranian war of annihilation and Israel’s self-defence against that war as mere “tit-for-tat” exchanges of moral equivalence.

Worse, some of these outlets present Iran’s war of annihilation against Israel as Iran defending itself against Israeli aggression, such as this gem today:
For years, Israel has conducted a campaign of assassinations and sabotage in Iran, including killing the head of Iran’s nuclear programme with a remote controlled machine gun as he drove from his holiday home. Iran has in turn attempted attacks including covert operations and cyber warfare in Israel.

According to Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, head of the Israel Defence and Security Forum (a group composed of robust Israeli military and security analysts), the US election on November 5 is a crucial factor in Israel’s next moves.

If Donald Trump becomes US president and if (second big if) he were to put America at the head of a coalition to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, says Avivi, such a coalition could achieve that outcome in a matter of days. If on the other hand Kamala Harris wins the election and America turns unequivocally hostile (or if Trump isn’t willing to participate), Israel will have to go it alone.

This would take longer, would doubtless involve different tactics and would be far more difficult. But Israel would do it nevertheless — because it has no alternative.

In fighting the west’s most lethal terrorist enemy, Israel is of course doing the west’s dirty work for it. In response to which, Israel’s perfidious allies have shown their appreciation in a mighty strange way.

In the US, the Biden-Harris administration has withheld from Israel essential weapon supplies and threatened to throw it to the wolves at the UN. In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer’s “Biden-Harris mini-me” government — following its partial arms embargo against Israel — has now threatened to assist the International Criminal Court in its “lawfare” attack against the Jewish state by making available to the ICC information gathered by RAF surveillance flights over Gaza that were ostensibly undertaken to help search for the Israeli hostages.

In fighting Iran and its proxies in this seven-front war, Israel is sacrificing its own young people — so many of them the country’s best and bravest — who are devastatingly continuing to fall in battle. In response, the young in America and Britain are expressing their own gratitude for thus being enabled to live in civilian safety by screaming that Israel is committing “genocide” and chanting for its destruction.

In deeply traumatised, heroic and steadfast Israel, it is impossible to exaggerate the disgust being felt at such western decadence, de-moralisation and the willed defeat of civilisation.

‘7 October tore at the fabric of civilisation’

The 7 October pogrom was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, but you wouldn’t get that impression among the Western intelligentsia. Ever since Hamas rampaged through southern Israel last year, the mainstream media have relentlessly presented Israel as the aggressor, for daring to fight back. ‘Pro-Palestine’ protesters routinely smear the Jewish State as a genocidal menace. We’ve witnessed glorifications of Hamas and other Islamist forces on our streets. Anti-Semitism has surged to historic levels. The West as a whole seems to be in a perpetual state of disarray, unwilling to fully defend Israel in its civilisational struggle against barbarism.

Brendan O’Neill’s new spiked book, After the Pogrom, powerfully details how the West’s moral rot has been exposed over the past year. To mark the book’s release, and the year anniversary of 7 October, spiked held an online book launch on 1 October, in which Batya Ungar-Sargon interviewed Brendan. This is an edited extract from their conversation. You can watch the full interview here.

Batya Ungar-Sargon: Why do you think a generation of the most educated people in history failed the great moral test of 7 October?

Brendan O’Neill: Firstly, my book tries to remind people what happened – because I think people have forgotten – on 7 October 2023. But secondly, it tries to put forward some answers for why people failed the moral test. Cast your mind back to the days after the 7 October pogrom, when protesters were on the streets 24 to 48 hours after Hamas’s attack. Israel hadn’t even responded by that point, so why were people on the streets? They were there to celebrate the murder of Jews.

This happened in London, with a celebratory gathering outside the Israeli embassy around 36 hours after the pogrom, with people playing music and dancing. The same happened in Berlin and in Paris and even in the US. We knew at that stage what had happened. We knew that Jewish men, women and children had been raped, murdered and kidnapped. This was as sick and perverse as if people in London had poured on to the streets to celebrate Kristallnacht. It was then that I realised that this was going to be worse than I thought.

The thing that really struck me was those feral attacks on the ‘kidnapped’ posters that Jewish people and their allies had put up in various cities around the West. Everywhere I went in London, I would see these posters torn to shreds. On Finchley Road – in an area in north London heavily populated by Jews – there was a ‘kidnapped’ poster of three-year-old twins taken by Hamas, and someone had daubed Hitler moustaches on them. When that was reported, the anti-racist left said nothing about it. But to my mind, it was one of the worst things I have ever seen. The daubing of Jewish children with a Hitler moustache, the branding of Jewish children as fascists who presumably deserved what they got after they were kidnapped on 7 October by Hamas.

After seeing things like that, I started to think there is a moral rot in Western society. This moral decay, the turn against Enlightenment values, all of this is going to come surging to the surface of society. I think our chickens have come home to roost. We’re now seeing that if you educate an entire generation to look at their societies as institutionally racist, Islamophobic and born from the sins of slavery and colonialism, when you continually educate a new generation to have contempt for the communities in which they live, you are going to turn them away from the values of Western civilisation and possibly push them into the arms of its opposite. This is what we saw on 7 October: a complete tear in the fabric of civilisation. It ended up not being surprising to me that younger generations in the West found themselves warming to barbarism.

We live under a tyranny of the self-righteous

We no longer live in an age of moral relativism, but one of moral absolutism.

That’s one observation made by Canadian academic Eric Kaufmann in his latest book, Taboo, published this year. It’s an arresting inversion of a long-held view. Everyone today does indeed seem to know what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

But it also makes it hard to square the argument that postmodernism is at the root of our ethical woes and moral vacuum. Rather than living in a state of doubt and ambivalence, as postmodernism’s most optimistic advocates argued in the 1990s, we now actually inhabit a world where people cleave to firmly held truths and fight over them with righteous fury.

This can be seen most evidently in the present day over Israel and the Middle East. For many, the Israelis – and very often, by extension, the Jews – are the personification of evil. Hence, the precipitous rise of virulent anti-Semitism and of correlating sympathy for the Palestinians. In the minds of many, this is a war of good against evil. The Palestinian flag has itself become a universal symbol of goodness. And when you feel you have good on your side, any sort of appalling or belligerent behaviour or words are permissible.

This Manichean viewpoint is replicated in matters over the environment. Here, those who supposedly have right on their side deem it acceptable to resort to any sort of anti-social behaviour because it’s for a ‘good cause’. Self-righteousness is an intoxicating sensation and a self-perpetuating one. The self-righteous become consumed by their own sense of power. Elsewhere in this regard, others abide by the creed that race determines everything. Others hold to the inviolable sanctity of trans rights.

Luke Conway, another North American scholar, also came out with a book this year. It’s called Liberal Bullies: Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left, and it looks at how and why today’s authoritarians do indeed stem from the progressive left. It’s the same story – they believe they are caught in a battle between good and evil. Because they possess virtue, liberal bullies no longer tend to engage in debate with opponents. They give up on argument altogether when possible, feeling the veracity of their positions to be self-evident. This mindset leads to ‘intellectual apathy’ and ‘cognitive rigidity’. As a consequence, they are reliant on slogans, personal intimidation and mob rule.

We should have seen this coming. Indeed, one man foresaw this would come to pass. Just after the 180th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthday last week, it’s worth recalling that it was he who warned of men’s lust for power. He warned of rule by the herd, of the danger of convictions and of the bellicosity of the righteous who believe they can act with impunity. It was Nietzsche who warned that a European civilisation drifting into nihilism would see matters henceforth settled with fists and guns.

It was perhaps no coincidence that Nietzsche was a life-long critic of anti-Semitism. He correctly connected this prejudice with resentment. Anti-Semitism, he wrote, is the emotion felt by those who resent the success of others, for whom ‘someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well’. Of resentment, he continued in 1887: ‘This plant now blooms most beautifully among anarchists and anti-Semites.’

Australian Arab news site claims that the Western Wall is a myth made up by Zionists

Oz Arab Media is "your comprehensive source of news, articles, and opinions dedicated to supporting the diverse Arab communities in Australia. With a deep commitment to providing valuable insights into the Arab diaspora in Australia and their home countries, we strive to foster understanding, unity, and empowerment within the community."

This week, they published an article that Jewish history is a myth.

Reproducing an article from Lebanese media, the title is "The biggest lie in the world...its name is 'The Wailing Wall'!!! "

The Jews consider the “Buraq Wall” a Jewish landmark and sacred to them (although it was not mentioned even remotely in the Jewish Encyclopedia in 1901). This was also denied by the International Committee, a branch of the League of Nations, in 1929.

But in 1967, the Zionist enemy took the wall by force after the war of that year, and turned it into a religious Jewish landmark. ...

The important thing is that this wall, which the Jews called the “Wailing Wall,” does not exist in the Torah at all. The Torah does not know the “Wailing Wall” and does not refer to it in any of its words.

The truth is that the “Wailing Wall” is an incorrect innovation that appeared among religious Jews of Western European origins only 150 years ago, until the hysteria of searching for a holy land for them escalated, even if it was false and slanderous.

The Jewish Encyclopedia doesn't mention the Western Wall? That's news to me, since its entry on Jerusalem includes this engraving of the Wall by Alexander Bida, and it adds a detail: "When Napoleon came to Palestine in 1798, the Jews were accused of assisting him, and were threatened with death by the Moslems. Led by Mordecai al-Gazi they assembled at the Wailing-Wall for prayer. "

Of course, the Hebrew scriptures refer hundreds of times to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

This sort of revisionist history is mainstream in Arab media. And, yes, denying Jewish history in the Land of Israel is antisemitic.

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!

From the National Security Agency archives:

During the Arab-Israeli War in October 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had frequent discussions with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. During a conversation on 18 October 1973, after he agreed that the military situation was stable, even stalemated, Kissinger declared that “my nightmare is a victory for either side.” Dobrynin observed: “it is not only your nightmare.”

No reason is given. The commentary guesses that "he may have worried that if either Egypt or Israel attained a decisive military advantage it would weaken U.S. influence over post-war peace talks. Dobrynin likely had the same concern for the Soviet position."

But perhaps it is just that the US foreign policy is to keep things as close to the status quo as possible, because any changes means an entirely new paradigm where the US could lose influence.

And we've certainly been seeing that with Israel (and, for that matter, Ukraine.) The US has said that Israel can defend itself, but it has never said it supports Israel winning - achieving its military goals of the destruction of Hamas or the defeat of Hezbollah, let alone ending the Iranian regime.

One can postulate that US policy towards its allies in regional conflicts around the world has been more to avoid their defeat rather than help them emerge victorious. There are several reasons for this:

A US perception that complete victory by one side could destabilize entire regions

The concern that a dominant regional power might be harder to influence than multiple competing states

The desire for states like Israel to have continued dependence on US support

Avoiding escalation that might draw in other major powers

It is hard to find counter-examples. US policy is not to end conflicts but to maintain detente and the status quo while keeping conflicts unresolved. (Of course, the US supported the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty but that wasn't a US initiative; it jumped on the bandwagon.)

The net effect is that the US is claiming to support Israel but is hamstringing Israel at the same time from actually winning wars.

Which is what we saw this weekend. The US made clear to Israel that it cannot do major damage to Iran's economy - yet that is what needs to be destroyed to end Iran's support for the worst terrorist groups in the world. Without decimating Iran's economy, Hamas and Hezbollah will be able to rebuild forever and we are in a Groundhog Day scenario. Indeed, this exchange of airstrikes between Israel and Iran this month sure resembles the US-managed tit for tat strikes between Iran and Israel in April.

While Israel sent a message to Iran of its air superiority this weekend and ability to hit any target in the Islamic republic, it also showed that Iran can limit what Israel could do by threatening the US or threatening US interests. The US stopped Israel from doing what needs to be done, and Iran received that message loud and clear.

That is not the message Israel should be sending Iran. But it is the message the US has been sending every terror-supporting group in the world since the days of Kissinger.

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!

From AP:

United Nations agencies have long warned that it could take decades to rebuild Gaza after Israel’s offensive against Hamas, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns since World War II.

Now, more than a year into the war, a new report speaks in terms of centuries.

The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said in a report released Monday that if the war ends tomorrow and Gaza returns to the status quo before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, it could take 350 years for its battered economy to return to its precarious prewar level.

How can any thinking person report this without laughing?

Los Angeles is more than triple the size of Gaza. It was founded in 1781, less than 250 years ago. Gaza could be leveled to a parking lot and be built better than ever in decades - if Hamas wasn't running the sector and if Gazans wanted to have peace with Israel.

Sure enough, the September 1 0 report says:

Therefore, once a ceasefire is reached, a return to the pre-October 2023 status quo would not put Gaza on the path needed for recovery and sustainable development. UNCTAD estimates that, if the 2007–2022 growth trend returns, with an average growth rate of 0.4 per cent, it will take Gaza 350 years just to restore the GDP levels of 2022, with GDP per capita continuously and precipitously falling, driven by population growth. This underscores the urgency of a political horizon leading to a two-State solution and significant economic support by the international community to facilitate recovery from the immense damage caused by the war.

Even these assumptions are based on a biased choice of GDP data.

In 2021 and 2022, Hamas was pretending to not want war with Israel and to act pragmatically for the good of Gaza citizens. It appeared to be making moves to stop terror rockets by other groups. As a result, Israel responded by loosening up restrictions on Gaza's economy, increasing imports and giving Gazans jobs in Israel. If you look at those two years before October 7, Gaza's GDP went up by an average of 5.5% a year, not the 0.4% that UNCTAD is basing its entire 30 estimate on.

Instantly, the 350 year estimate goes down to 13.5 years. And that is without a "two state solution."

The West Bank's GDP growth also has gone up about 4-5% annually from 2007-2022, without a two state solution.

So why is UNCTAD fixated on the two state solution rather than having governance in Gaza that is not focused on murdering Jews?

Perhaps because UNCTAD has no problem with murdering Jews. They just don't want Israel to respond - because that response is, according to them, the driving factor behind Gaza's poor economy.

It is a ridiculous and ultimately antisemitic viewpoint. Stop terror and Gaza can be a success story, just as it could have been in 2005 when Israel withdrew from the sector. UNCTAD cannot seem to draw that simple conclusion.

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!

10/26 Links: Murray: The profundity of evil; Israel hits multiple targets across Iran in retaliatory strikes; How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The profundity of evil

Before I conclude, I should like to point to one other aspect of the damage that Arendt has wrought. And to underscore it, I should like to return once again to the work of Bettina Stangneth.

One of the things Stangneth’s work gives the reader is the opportunity to understand one particular aspect of what Eichmann wrote in the 1950s. It is one that deserves far wider attention. In Die anderen sprachen, jetzt will ich sprechen! Eichmann turns his attention to the recent Suez Crisis. (How extraordinary it is to think of Eichmann commenting on the Suez Crisis!) Here is one passage from that work:

And while we are considering all this—we, who are still searching for clarity on whether (and if yes, how far) we assisted in what were in fact damnable events during the war—current events knock us down and take our breath away. For Israeli bayonets are now overrunning the Egyptian people, who have been startled from their peaceful sleep. Israeli tanks and armored cars are tearing through Sinai, firing and burning, and Israeli air squadrons are bombing peaceful Egyptian villages and towns. For the second time since 1945, they are invading. . . . Who are the aggressors here? Who are the war criminals? The victims are Egyptians, Arabs, Mohammedans. Amon and Allah, I fear that, following what was exercised on the Germans in 1945, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance, to all the people of Israel, to the main aggressor and perpetrator against humanity in the Middle East, to those responsible for the murdered Muslims, as I said, Your Egyptian people will have to do penance for having the temerity to want to live on their ancestral soil. . . . We all know the reasons why, beginning in the Middle Ages and from then on in an unbroken sequence, a lasting discord arose between the Jews and their host nation, Germany.

There then follows an extraordinary and important passage. For Eichmann goes on to say—only a few years before being taken to face trial in Jerusalem, mind you—that if he himself were ever found guilty of any crime, it would only be “for political reasons.” He even tries to argue that a guilty verdict against him would be “an impossibility in international law,” though he admits that in any case he could never obtain justice “in the so-called Western culture.” The reason for this is obvious enough: in the Christian Bible, “to which a large part of Western thought clings, it is expressly established that everything sacred came from the Jews.” Western culture has, for Eichmann, been irrevocably Judaized. And so Eichmann looks to a different group, to the “large circle of friends, many millions of people” to whom his manuscript is aimed. This is part of what he writes:

But you, you 360 million Mohammedans, to whom I have had a strong inner connection since the days of my association with your Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, you, who have a greater truth in the surahs of your Koran, I call upon you to pass judgment on me. You children of Allah have known the Jews longer and better than the West has. Your noble Muftis and scholars of law may sit in judgment upon me and, at least in a symbolic way, give me your verdict.

Eichmann in exile was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an enormous admirer of Israel’s neighbors—something that, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned out to run in the family. After Eichmann’s abduction, his relatives apparently became concerned about his second son. According to a police report, “As Horst was easily excitable the Eichmann family was afraid that when he heard about his father’s fate, he might volunteer to fight for the Arab countries in campaigns against Israel.” As Stangneth notes, “Eichmann had obviously told his children where his new troops were to be found.”

And as Stangneth concludes,

Eichmann refused to do penance and longed for applause. But first and foremost, of course, he hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against the Jews who were always the “principal war criminals” and “principal aggressors.” He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.

How strange it is that as we try—and largely fail—to recognize and stand up to the enemies of civilization in our time, one of the people who seems to have stripped us of our ability to do so should have been a German Jewish philosopher, who sat for a few days in a room with evil in its most concentrated form and decided to define it by everything it was not.

Col Kemp: Netanyahu needs an American president who will let him finish the job against Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, knows only too well that a decisive strike is required. But his military actions have to be calibrated according to what will be tolerated in Washington. Fighting a war on seven battle fronts, plus a hugely important eighth front — political warfare fought in the UN, international courts, and capitals around the world — Israel is heavily dependent on continued US support.

To say the least, that is already patchy. Yes, the White House directly assisted Israel’s defences against Iranian missile attacks and has recently deployed THAAD air defence systems and the troops to man them. But when it comes to offensive operations, vital to defence, it has been positively obstructive, including withholding essential munitions supply.

The administration has also been unduly restrained in providing diplomatic cover for its ally’s necessary and legitimate military actions, not least by failing to respond aggressively to the obscene accusations of genocide in the International Court of Justice and the disgraceful demand by the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

It is only too clear that the decisions made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris since this war began has been directed by their overriding desire for appeasing two fronts. Domestically, they have calculated that the strong and growing anti-Zionist influence amongst the Democratic electorate can just about tolerate supporting Israel’s defence but won’t stretch to overt backing of offensive actions. It will always tempered by “Israel has a right to defend itself, but…”

Internationally, the administration’s Middle East policy is dominated by dangerous empowerment of Iran, including desperation to restore Barack Obama’s fundamentally flawed nuclear deal and fuelling its regional aggression by releasing billions of dollars of frozen assets. Both of these considerations account for the White House falling over itself to deny any involvement in this morning’s Israeli strikes.

That means Netanyahu has little choice other than to bide his time until after the presidential elections before he can deliver the necessary decisive blow against Iran. Despite the IDF’s remarkable success so far against Hamas and Hezbollah, the “ring of fire” of terrorist proxies intended to suffocate the Jewish state can only be extinguished by a bullet in the head of the brain that controls and funds the whole pernicious strategy. But Israel is acting not just in defence of itself, but of the entire region and the world.

The Islamic Republic’s watchwords are not only “death to Israel” but also “death to America”. Its intention is to subjugate the Sunni world. Even if the current administration in Washington does not take that seriously, the Arab countries certainly do. That is why most of them, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are fully behind Israel in its efforts to eliminate the threat.

Thanks to Biden’s pusillanimity and misjudgement over the last four years, Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. That must be prevented at all costs. Israel awaits a president who will have the courage to join, or at least back, the military action necessary to do so. The IDF has announced that its current strikes have been completed, but we should expect a much stronger resumption in the coming months.

Israel strikes inside Iran

Israeli Air Force fighter jets conducted precision strikes on military targets in Iran overnight Friday, nearly one month after Tehran launched a massive ballistic-missile attack on the Jewish state.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, dozens of aircraft, including refuelers and spy planes, conducted “waves” of attacks over the course of a few hours across several regions of Iran, located some 1,600 kilometers from Israel. The targets included missile and drone manufacturing facilities and launch sites, as well as air-defense batteries.

The state-run SANA news outlet reported simultaneous Israeli strikes against military targets across central and southern Syria, amid Tehran’s decades-long effort to entrench itself in that country.

The IDF named the operation “Days of Repentance.”

“I can now confirm that we have concluded the Israeli response to Iran’s attacks against Israel. We conducted targeted and precise strikes on military targets in Iran—thwarting immediate threats to the State of Israel,” said IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“The Israel Defense Forces has fulfilled its mission. If the regime in Iran were to make the mistake of beginning a new round of escalation, we will be obligated to respond. Our message is clear: All those who threaten the State of Israel and seek to drag the region into wider escalation will pay a heavy price,” Hagari continued.

“We demonstrated today that we have both the capability and the resolve to act decisively, and we are prepared—on offense and defense—to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the overnight attack from the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he was later joined by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Mossad head David Barnea and Israel Security Agency leader Ronen Bar.

“The regime in Iran and its regional proxies have been relentlessly attacking Israel since [Hamas’s] Oct. 7th [massacre of 1,200 people]—on seven fronts—including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” the IDF said. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and duty to respond.”

The military was conducting an ongoing situation assessment, and there were no immediate changes to Home Front Command directives for civilians.

10/23 Links Pt2: What the Campaigns Don’t Get About Jewish Voters; Speaker at ‘peace’ festival compared Zionists to Isis; WSJ documentary on the 1991 Crown Heights riot

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What the Campaigns Don’t Get About Jewish Voters

Trump has a way of walking right up to a point and still completely missing it. The best example of this was when the former president addressed a gathering of Jewish Republicans and said “You’re not going to have an Israel if [Harris] becomes president … Israel will no longer exist.” To that oy, gevalt message he added: “If they win, Israel is gone. Just remember that. If they win, Israel is gone. You can forget about Israel, that’s what’s going to happen. So they have to get out on Nov. 5 and they have to vote for Trump. If they don’t, I think it’s going to be a very terrible situation.”

To state what I hope is the obvious: No, Israel will not disappear if the Democrats win the election. But before veering totally off course, Trump had put his finger on something real. This is the first time in the adult lives of many Jewish Americans that Israel’s place in the world has appeared vulnerable or even mildly precarious. Under attack from about six different directions, Israel was being lectured by its Western allies—two of whom then announced an offensive arms embargo that seemed designed to signal to the world that even the West preferred Hamas alive and kicking while the US poked and prodded at Israeli society’s internal divisions. The Biden administration spent months holding Israel back from going into Rafah (“I’ve studied the maps,” Harris ridiculously said), which ended up being where hostages were held and where Yahya Sinwar was ultimately tracked down and killed, as well as home to key tunnels that served as Hamas lifelines. Sometimes it really can feel like the world is lined up against Israel, and that was one of those moments.

Trump understood the vibe, as his opponents might say. But then he went and did something inexplicably counterproductive: he reinforced the fear.

Trump has never understood that his public statements matter. And the message Israel’s enemies heard when he made those comments was: You guys are close! You really might wipe Israel off the map this time. It showed an absurd lack of confidence in Israel to defend itself and suggested that the Iranian-backed coalition was on the right track; it had convinced the Americans that the momentum had shifted.

The state of Israel is what was supposed to take the fate of the Jews out of the hands of American (and other) presidents in the first place; doesn’t he understand that? Well, he ought to.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile needs to understand two things. The first is that Harris herself played a not-insignificant role in backing Israel into that corner. She cannot solve this by simply repeating that she supports Israel’s right to defend itself. She needs to somehow communicate to Jewish voters that she accepts some culpability for the fear they are expressing and give them reason to believe her presidency wouldn’t be four more years of that kind of pressure.

Second, the Harris campaign has put out several strong statements criticizing the anti-Zionist street mobs. But she undermines them by seeming to publicly agree with protesters who call Israel genocidal. Each time she does something like this, she encourages more of it.

And here’s the key: This outbreak of anti-Semitism of which those protesters are a part is here, in America. This is not an “Israel issue.” Saying “I support Israel” is not an answer to “what are you going to do about the fact that your administration has presided over an unprecedented explosion in public anti-Semitic sentiment?” Harris is talking to mothers and fathers who fear for their child’s safety on campus; Israel’s self-defense isn’t the point.

Harris has a terrible habit of treating all Jewish issues as Israel issues. Public institutions are ostentatiously violating civil rights laws by refusing to apply them to Jews. Harris’s support for Sinwar’s elimination isn’t relevant here. But you know what is? Saying those braying mobs are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”

Street violence against American Jews isn’t going anywhere if our leaders indulge anti-Semites’ stated motivation for their anti-Semitism.

This is what’s on the minds of anxious Jewish voters. So the Trump and Harris campaigns should stop saying they can’t understand why any Jew would vote this way or that. The candidates’ professed exasperation is a big part of the problem.

American deterioration and the appeasement of the Islamo-Marxist alliance, pre and post 10/7

Universities are breeding grounds for radical ideologies, including antisemitism. For the past year, almost every weekend, young people in Keffiyehs have filled the streets, threatening Jews, carrying signs that call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state. These same people issue calls to bring down the Empire (referring to the US), and light the American flag on fire. They vilify the values that built America: democracy, free speech, individual rights, and the rule of law.

In this world, moral equivalence reigns. The narrative that there is no difference between good and evil, Israel and Hamas, or between those defending their citizens and terrorists determined to harm innocents.

America’s wavering and waffling support of Israel signals to radical groups that the West no longer stands firmly for the principles of freedom and human dignity. This weakness emboldens enemies of democracy and gives them license to act with impunity.

Appeasement of Evil Leads to Tragedy
For too long, radical Muslim movements have been given a pass by the international community influenced by the far-left. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Iran, and their ilk have grown in strength and influence, not because they are powerful forces, but because the West has repeatedly chosen diplomacy and appeasement over moral clarity. This willingness to engage with regimes and organizations that openly call for the destruction of Israel and the West has predictably led to disaster.

The Iran nuclear deal, celebrated by many as a diplomatic victory, normalized and empowered Iran - the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. By offering legitimacy and financial relief to Iran, the deal strengthened the regime’s proxies, helped supply and train Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiah militias in Iraq, and allowed the IRGC to expand their reach. Instead of confronting Iran and its proxies, the United States and the West empowered it, leading directly to the Hamas’ 10/7 attack, Hezbollah’s daily missile attacks on Israeli civilians, and Iran’s ballistic missiles attacks on Israel.

This policy of appeasement is not just confined to the Middle East. Within the West itself, government officials, institutions, and human rights organizations legitimize Islamist groups, parrot their views and embrace their rhetoric. Hamas is regularly portrayed as a political movement fighting for Palestinian liberation, when it is a terrorist organization with a charter that explicitly calls for the annihilation of Jews worldwide.

Evil does not compromise. There’s a reason that Neville Chamberlain’s name is associated with blunder and Winston Churchill’s name evokes courage.

Churchill knew what Chamberlain failed to understand about Nazi Germany. Evil cannot be reasoned with or moderated, it can only be defeated. When it comes to brinksmanship, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran are no different.

A Call for Moral Clarity
The assault on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran are an attack on the values of freedom, democracy, human rights, secular life, women, and human dignity. They were an attack on the Western world.

Now is the time for moral clarity. Israel is the floodgate. The fight to defend Israel is a fight to defend Western values. Appeasement and moral ambiguity will only lead to more violence and hatred. The West must confront its enemies within and stand with Israel against the enemies on its border. Not just for the sake of the Jewish state, but for the sake of freedom and democracy everywhere.

Simchat Torah flag, circa 1950

Simchat Torah the first yahrzeit of over a thousand Jewish martyrs.

We remember them, we are always thinking of the hostages, but we are obligated to be happy for the holiday.

There are some good essays on the topic, including from the previous challenging Simchat Torah of 1973.

Simchat Torah is a holiday dedicated to new beginnings. May you have a joyous holiday.

Since I am still in Galut, I will be offline until Saturday night.

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!

10/23 Links Pt1: Six Al Jazeera journalists are Hamas, PIJ terrorists; NYTs Is Not Disclosing a Source’s Ties to Hamas?; Guterres embraces the authoritarians

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Israel must not end war yet despite Sinwar success

Alas, refusing to incorporate new, inconvenient, politically incorrect facts into their worldviews, Biden, Harris, and Friedman instantly returned to the same stale rhetoric they used to try to restrain Israel for months.

Harris, whose words most count now, insisted: “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”

We in Israel crave those goals. But this year has confirmed that achieving them requires a long, bloody process – and much more patience.

Indeed, we cannot “end the war in Gaza” until “Israel is secure.” And if the Gazans are truly innocent, they should turn on Hamas and force it to surrender, while freeing the hostages.

Until that happens, Israel must maintain the military pressure, and prepare its security zone along the Gaza border, including taking Gazan territory, so the Palestinians learn that every future attack will result in more territorial losses.

MEANWHILE, let’s end the hostage negotiation farce – by exposing the self-destructiveness of Israel’s Hostage Deal movement. Politicizing the issue keeps raising Hamas’s price to free the hostages.

The movement should only protest – and harass within the limits of the law – Qatari and Turkish diplomats, as well as those in North America, Australia, and Europe. Qatar and Turkey host and bankroll Hamas. Bibi-bashing may feel good – but it’s counterproductive.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sinwar kept “urging” Hamas officials “to refuse a hostage deal. Hamas had the upper hand in negotiations, Sinwar said, citing internal political divisions within Israel, cracks in Netanyahu’s wartime coalition and mounting US pressure to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”

A more unified global front against Hamas might have freed the hostages sooner; it remains the only way to end their suffering, which weighs on all people of conscience.

In short, we, who want this war to end yesterday, must keep fighting tomorrow and tomorrow, until the aggressors – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran – cave in.

Only then, once Israel is secured, will those Palestinians who actually want “dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” – rather than Israel’s destruction – have a shot at making progress, too.

On Proportionality

The opposite was true in the Second World War, when President Roosevelt, backed by the American public, thought it appropriate to do whatever it took to win, even if that meant rooting

out Japanese infantry cave by cave, never mind the high cost in American lives; leveling German and Japanese cities; and, ultimately, dropping atomic bombs. We killed thousands of French civilians prior to the Normandy invasion just to damage the French rail network and impede the Germans’ ability to move troops to the invasion zone. To my knowledge, everyone thought it was necessary. Even the French tend not to talk about what we did to them, precisely because they understand it to have been necessary. The suffering was justified. Until recently, the Germans didn’t talk about what we did to their cities, either. Books on the subject, like Jörg Friederich’s The Fire, date to this century, not before.

Of course, IHL did not exist then. However, I suspect that even if it did, Americans’ understanding of proportionality would have condoned the extreme violence we meted out on the Germans and Japanese. It is fashionable for some people today to fret that we committed war crimes in those wars. Those people were extremely rare in 1941-1945, if they existed at all. I’d go so far as to argue that concern with the ethical imperative of the post-war legal notion of “proportionality” is a luxury to be enjoyed by nations with little at stake in what mostly are wars of choice. So no, the wars in Gaza and Lebanon are not like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because unlike America in those wars, for Israel a great deal is at stake. What was proportional in Afghanistan and Iraq is not the same thing as in Israel’s conflict with Iran and the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

The second problem has to do with the whole logic behind the use of force in a conflict. The basic idea in war is to seek “decision.” To do something that makes one’s victory all but assured. Theorists from Carl von Clausewitz to Ferdinand Foch thought of that in terms of destroying the enemy’s ability to fight, such that one can impose one’s will on them. Hitting someone back with precisely the same force that they hit you does not achieve decision. Trading blows in a tit-for-tat struggle also does not achieve decision. It prolongs the conflict, which then becomes one of attrition. Wars of attrition often go to the side that can withstand the most pain. In that case, a death cult like Hamas is sure to win. Hamas does not care how many people die. So much the better, if the deaths can be filmed and disseminated in all their gruesomeness over the internet. Hamas seeks decision in the public sphere.

Decision in warfare can be achieved in many ways, but often it just boils down to this: if someone hits you, you hit them back with so much force that one has, in effect, won not just this fight but the next. One seeks to end one’s enemy’s ability to do you any harm, at least not any time soon. Some might object that eventually one’s enemy will get back on its feet and seek vengeance. That is true. However, human history is long, and to expect a “final solution” that ends a conflict forever is to aspire to end history. That’s messianism. Maybe when we attain warp drive, the Vulcans will come and teach us to transcend our divisions. Alternatively, one can aspire to genocide, which no one counsels.

Insisting on “proportional” responses to Iran serves only to avoid escalation, but that means avoiding decision. Which means prolonging a conflict and ensuring that there will be more fighting soon. That is precisely what happened when the “international community” forced Israel to call a halt to its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. The net result of ending that fight was only to enable Hezbollah to grow in strength and acquire ever more precise and destructive Iranian weapons. The present war in Lebanon is a direct consequence of past calls for proportionality. Likewise, the present war in Gaza is a direct result of Israel’s failure to follow through in the few times in conducted land incursions into the territory following its withdrawal in 2005. Under intense international pressure and fear of suffering casualties, Israel contented itself with a proportionality dictated by others who had their own interests at heart. And here we are today.

Today I read that Israel assured the Biden Administration it would not hit Iran particularly hard. It will respond “proportionately,” defined, it seems, in a way intended not to trouble the U.S. elections. I don’t see the point, and think Israel should focus instead on seeking decision against Hamas and Hezbollah if it is not inclined to hit Iran hard enough to make a real difference. Or maybe just wait until after the November election. That would mean, however, postponing decision. Is that what’s best?

Can Israel Ignite Regime Change in Iran?

If Israel’s “deadly, accurate, and surprising” attack does not meet the Islamic regime’s threshold of domestic, regional, and global embarrassment, it is unlikely that they will retaliate in any shape or form, potentially ending the chain reaction. This scenario might be in favor of the regime. Because historically, the regime has proven their lack of military and intelligence superiority. And despite their propaganda machine spewing how powerful the regime is, I believe they are internally fully aware of their inferiority to Israel’s military intelligence prowess (head of IRGC’s Quds Force was missing for a while).

Knowing this, Israel’s willingness to keep the chain reaction alive could positively affect the course of events. In other words, if Israel has bigger plans for Iran, it will strike in such a way that will require a response from the Islamic regime.

But if that is not Israel’s goal, and its response is what the regime wants (weak, inaccurate, and predictable) then Israel partially weakens the regime and takes the upper hand in the conflict, without escalating any further.

Similar to what Israel accomplished in Lebanon, these series of attacks could be “deadly, ” targeting regime leadership, top decision makers, IRGC commanders, and even the House of Leadership (بیت رهبری); they could be “accurate” and target sensitive locations such as nuclear facilities, oil fields, and missile depots; they could be “surprising, ” targeting the regime when and where it least expects it.

Israel has demonstrated how precise they can be in their attacks, so it should not be surprising if they invent new ways to deal with the threat of the Islamic regime. The Israeli intelligence community’s creative approach will tell us how these chain reactions will play out.

Will Israel be able to strike the regime a humiliating blow that ignites an inevitable chain reaction resulting in the regime’s demise?

This amazing video, when viewed properly, shows Israel's unsurpassed morality in waging war.

Normally, when a building is demolished in a controlled implosion, it takes a team of structural engineers to study it ahead of time and to strategically place many explosives throughout the building to minimize damage.

Here, the IDF clearly had enough intel to know exactly how the building was built, and they used single missile shot exactly at the right place to take it down - not topple it but have it pancake straight down - with practically no damage to the buildings right next to it.

Of course, Israel gave warning beforehand because it was targeting a Hezbollah weapons depot, not people. No one was injured.

It is phenomenal.

This shows that Israel is targeting Hezbollah, and only Hezbollah, in Lebanon, just like it only targets Hamas in Gaza. It shows that Israel goes to unbelievable lengths to minimize collateral damage even to buildings. And, conversely, when we see photos of widespread damage in Gaza or Lebanon, it is because the IDF had no choice (for example, the targets were underneath the buildings or they were aiming at high value targets like military leaders.)

If the IDF was 1% as evil as today's antisemites claim, what we see in this video would never happen.

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!