Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 01, 2024

Draft ceasefire plan for Lebanon published - is it a good deal?

The Jewish Policy Center published what appears to be a set of discussion points for American and Lebanese negotiators over a Lebanon ceasefire, phrased as an announcement.

It includes:

- Full cessation of hostilities by both sides.
- Both sides maintain the right to self-defense.
- Only UNIFIL and the Lebanese army will deploy south of the Litani line.
- Lebanon will be responsible for stopping the rearmament of Hezbollah. They are tasked with stopping arms from coming in and Hezbollah from reestablishing infrastructure.
- During a 60 day period Israel will remain in Lebanon and during that time the removal of Hezbollah to above the Litani line will commence.
- Only if the sides are happy with the progress of the disarmament will the conflict end permanently. That means after 60 days, Israel gets to evaluate progress.
- If satisfied, Israel and Lebanon will proceed to talks on how to fully implement Resolution 1701 and resolve border disputes.

There is also an outline for a verification mechanism:

- A monitoring mechanism will be chaired by the United States. If there are violations, that mechanism will look into them within a reasonable timeframe.
- There will be consequences for violations including sanctions.
- Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas.
- Israel has the right to recon overflights over Lebanon.

Times of Israel analyst Haviv Rettig Gur thinks this is "incredibly favorable to Israel."

The question is, compared to what?

There are some significant gaps in this plan that could, and would, be exploited by Hezbollah.

For starters, how do we know the Lebanese army will do what it has refused to do since 2006? Assuming it doesn't, all this accomplishes is buying Hezbollah time to regroup, re-arm, re-establish conduits for money and weapons from Iran (which Israel could not bomb,) and then in 60 days...the Biden administration will be lame ducks and nothing would happen.

The idea that Israel can just resume fighting in 60 days without paying a huge political price is fantasy. Hezbollah can stay and re-establish itself up to the border and as long as it isn't actively firing, Israel would have a hard time resuming airstrikes without even Western friends condemning them.

"Israel has the right to act militarily at recognized violations that are not addressed in certain areas" - this is meaningless. Because probably 90% of Israel's actions are based on reliable but secret intelligence, so if Israel bombs a food convoy that is hiding weapons, that would not be a "recognized violation." It would take third parties weeks to sort out what happened, and Hezbollah would stop them from doing so.

In the end, the only party that can clear Lebanon south of the Litani is Israel. There is an outside possibility that the Lebanese Army would be emboldened to do what it hasn't done yet now that Hezbollah is weaker, but chances are slim. As soon as Shiite "civilians" who housed Hezbollah weapons in their houses return they would physically block the LAF from entering and the army would do everything to avoid a confrontation like that.

Israel can continue overflights - that's great (and no different than 2006-2024) - but is restricted in its actions. The monitoring mechanism will look at Israeli evidence, Hezbollah denials, and play it safe by ruling against Israeli action.

Practically, there are no teeth in the plan - the only consequence mentioned for violations is sanctions, and Hezbollah is already under sanctions.

Anything that seems to favor Israel in this plan is mostly window dressing. Israel does not want to occupy southern Lebanon, but it needs a far better deal to ensure that Hezbollah completely withdraws, and that is the basis for everything else.

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A Kuwaiti influencer named Meshal Al-Nami is under huge criticism for making a video where he quote a witness who visited Gaza that some Gaza women are forced to turn to prostitution in order to get much needed food and aid.

No one is mentioning that the UN and NGOs quietly agree - and admit that their own aid workers are often the ones who blackmail women into prostitution to get aid that should be free.

As we've noted, a May report by the UN said, "Insufficient and unreliable aid, distributed under conditions of insecurity that do not allow adequate targeting, expose vulnerable groups to violence, exploitation and abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, including by aid workers. "

It referred to an April report by the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Network - which is no longer linked on its website, but can be seen here - that says, "Food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, and acute aid dependency are highly engendered matters that further expose women and children to SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence] and VAC [violence against children], including by Aid Workers" and that there is a danger of an "epidemic of SEA [sexual exploitation and abuse] abuses committed by personnel related to humanitarian operations."

But the truth doesn't matter to the Arab world as much as honor. When Al Nami wanted to expose the abuse and protect Gaza women, the Arab world shot the messenger.

Al-Nami says he heard this secondhand from a Muslim Brotherhood member who said that "the situation in Gaza is so dire that women are resorting to prostitution." He named a social media figure who recently visited Gaza as the source of the information. Al Nami's point is to show how desperate the situation is in Gaza, not to impugn Gaza women.

The reaction to Al Nami's video was swift and furious. Thousands of people were upset at him tarring the reputation of upright, moral Gaza women. A typical comment:

The people of Gaza are the memorizers of the Quran, patient in hardship and distress, and the remembrance of the Lord of the Worlds is never absent from their tongues. We see the chaste women of Gaza, in the most difficult moments of helplessness and oppression, with their full veil, cover, and chastity. So you and your ilk, you dogs of Hell and mounts of the Jews, come and slander their honor with your filthy tongues? But it is said that only those whose sperm is suspicious and whose origin and lineage are doubted find it acceptable to talk about people’s honor.

A group of 27 doctors who visited Gaza "refuted" his story, saying,

By entering the Gaza Strip during this heinous and ongoing aggression, we witnessed the extent of the noble morals of the people of Gaza, which overwhelmed us from every direction and side. Their men, with their chivalry, courage, and generosity, on the one hand, and their women, with their chastity, dignity, and keenness to ensure that the Gazan woman remains an eternal example [for the world.] We did not imagine that even the most extremist of the Zionist entity would use attacking the chastity and honor of the women of Gaza as a cheap weapon in this battle...pure, honorable and chaste women, and those who are cited as an example of patience, steadfastness, support for resistance and jihad.

Absence of proof is obviously not proof of absence. No one is claiming that desperate Gaza women are walking around half naked and publicly offering themselves to men.

At least two criminal complaints were filed in Kuwait against Al Nami for attacking the dignity of Gaza women.

This mentality, where publicizing the crime it is considered worse than the crime itself, is shared by the NGOs who briefly reported on the story and then covered it up. The PSEA Network report warns of publicizing their own findings:

Safeguarding claims, nonetheless, shows the pick of the iceberg of misconduct of aid workers and poses risk for the communities, aid staff and aid institutions alike.

Identified risks are:
- Humanitarian aid diverted causing further harm to the community and increasing tensions
- Potential retaliation against aid workers (physical harm)
- Lost of trust in aid institutions calling for further acts of incivility: deterioration of the operational environment
- Media attention to safeguarding incidents which can also have an uncontrolled political manipulation

Everyone cares more about protecting the reputation of Gaza women more than protecting their bodies. NGOs don't want publicity for aid workers committing horrific abuses, and Arabs don't want publicity that they believe would hurt Gaza women's "honor" in the Arab world.

So the abuse continues, and the people who claim to care the most about Palestinians are the ones who are ensuring that nothing is being done.

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In Syria, dead militants outnumber civilians by a 6-1 ratio

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has been keeping a tally of those killed by Israel in Syria this year:

These strikes killed 269 combatants and injured 188 others. The fatalities are distributed as follows:
25 Iranian members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
53 members of the Lebanese Hezbollah.
28 Iraqi persons.
75 Iranian-backed Syrian militiamen.
24 Iranian-backed non-Syrian militiamen.
62 regime soldiers.
Two unidentified persons.

In comparison, there have been 48 civilian victims, meaning about a 6-1 ratio of combatants to civilians.

The largest number of civilian victims seems to have been from this incident in early October where ten civilians, unfortunately, were killed:

The fatalities are a Yemeni doctor, his wife and his three children, a woman and her child, a young female doctor, another woman and a man.

That is indeed tragic. But they were not the target.

As SOHR reported at the time:

Three people, two members of Lebanese “Hezbollah” and one unidentified person, were also killed as a result of a direct airstrike on an apartment frequented by leaders of the “Resistance Axis” and vehicles parked in front of the building.

Residents fear recurrence of Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings, where they urge the combatants to leave the buildings out of concern for their safety.

The civilian victims were human shields. The civilians who live there know this and complain about it. The neighborhood is known to be a place where lots of Iranian and Hezbollah members gather (the Iranian embassy is there.) A week earlier, Israel targeted a commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah in that neighborhood.

For some reason, even though this is well documented, the media and NGOs never even consider that Israel uses the same care in protecting civilians in Gaza and Lebanon as they do in Syria - and that every civilian death is the result of the terrorists hiding among them and using them for cover.

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10/31 Links Pt2: Purging Jews From the Arts; Abigail Shrier: The Kindergarten Intifada; Bubble-Wrapping Coates; Ministries cut ties with Haaretz

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Purging Jews From the Arts

You are to be unpersoned, that is, if you write about Israel without denouncing the Jewish state—a rule that is intended to disqualify Jewish writers of any and every nationality—or if you are Israeli and have not renounced your country and your people, like any Good Jew apparently would. Israelis are currently under fire from seven fronts in a war that began with an explicitly genocidal invasion by Iranian proxies, and if you do not do something to help the cause of exterminating your own people, you are heretofore banished from the arts.

I’m not sure it’s possible to top the reaction from the poet Gillian Lazarus, who said:

“The likes of Sally Rooney would boycott the likes of Amos Oz, David Grossman and Yehuda Amichai. It’s as if a composer of advertising jingles boycotted Mozart.”

Look, if Sally Rooney could write like Howard Jacobson she would probably not be trying to purge her competition.

But she can’t, and so we all must suffer.

As I said, what’s interesting about Rooney is seeing who else joins her fatwas—especially if they don’t have to. Arundhati Roy is on the list calling for a loyalty oath for Jews in the arts, sadly. Jonathan Lethem, too. Other fellow listers: Jasbir Puar, an academic who invented a blood libel about Jewish organ harvesting; Naomi Klein, professor of “climate justice”; Mohammed El-Kurd, who accused the Jewish state of having an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood”; and other such literary luminaries.

The loyalty oath has made something of a comeback among Western institutions, especially in the academic world, where Jews are occasionally permitted to participate in campus activities as long as they publicly call for the ethnic cleansing of their fellow Jews from whichever part of the world is currently trying to expel them.

Then there is the other angle to the purge: In addition to being irredeemably immoral, it’s also very stupid. Fania Oz-Salzberger, daughter of the late Israeli writer Amos Oz, responded on social media: “My late father, Amos Oz, would have been sad, disgusted, but proud to be banned by these 1000 writers and literati. And ban him they would. Not because he didn’t care for the Palestinians, of course he did, but because he’d be the first to tell these virtue signallers that they are historically and politically ignorant.”

I would go further and point out that Amos Oz, simply by being both an Israeli cultural giant and an advocate for Palestinian self-determination, did more for peace every moment he was alive than Rooney and Kushner will do in a lifetime—not least because a cultural boycott of influential left-leaning figures can only sabotage the Palestinians who want statehood and isolate them from likeminded Israelis.

But that point is only relevant if you believe Sally Rooney and Rachel Kushner and the other inquisitors are interested in helping Palestinians. If they only care about harming Jews, then this purge makes perfect sense.

Howard Jacobson: Political boycotting of the arts paints a picture of tyranny

Thus, to be a boycotter you must believe there is a hierarchy of compassion and condemnation. Only those whose anguish is as vociferous as theirs are allowed a voice. What makes this inquisition so grotesque is that the inquisitors are themselves artists or art-enablers.

Art matters. The pleasure we take from looking long at a painting or grappling with a complex novel or symphony is not some idle luxury. It transforms, invigorates and inspires. It redeems that belief in our shared humanity, which it is so easy, especially in angry and divisive times like these, to lose. And it does that not by confirming what we already think and feel, but by daring us to risk everything we hold dear on the turn of a single page. Creativity, in whatever sphere, is the means not of finding but of losing ourselves.

Everything must be permitted for artists but the silencing of their fellows. To boycott authors, agents or publishers on the grounds that they hold views objectionable to you is to violate art and the part it has played in stirring and individuating the imaginations of men and women since the first cave drawing appeared.

Art is not to be confused with a post on social media. It is not a statement. It is not susceptible to thumbs-down disagreement for the reason that it doesn’t invite thumbs-up consensus. It is not an echo chamber. It is a meeting place, not only of people who read and look and listen differently to one another, but of the hostile and the loving, of the real and the imagined, of colours that are not meant to go together, of words that clash and contradict.

Those who cannot bear such vitality of contradiction congregrate with the like-minded in a safe space they call a boycott, but for which the real word is tyranny.

BHL Boycott Backfires

Fortunately, in the case of Mr. Lévy’s Israel Alone, this cynical pandering to antisemites, ideologues, and to those who worship at the altar of the bottom line backfired. Education may enlighten the prejudiced, which is why Mr. Lévy’s book is so urgently needed, but there are few antidotes for stupidity, except the free market, which is working brilliantly in this instance. Interest in the book is quite robust and will undoubtedly have a positive effect on sales. So, we owe thanks to Shelf Awareness for the unintended consequences of its malfeasance.

We are pleased to add that our organization, in partnership with B’nai B’rith International, has raised funds from generous private donors to purchase and distribute for free thousands of copies of the book to college students around the country. Mr. Lévy will also be speaking in November at select American and Canadian universities. As he explained, “curbing this hate begins by going to the source.” It is abundantly clear that far too many universities and far too many journalists have failed to provide what Americans need to understand about Israel and the Middle East.

Censors can cause a lot of short-term damage, but history tells us that they ultimately lose and their disgrace follows. This comes from the first-century Roman author Tacitus: “When what has been created is persecuted, its authority grows. Neither foreign despots nor others who employ such savagery beget anything except infamy for themselves and glory for those they persecute.”

The ironic good news is that despite the efforts of Shelf Awareness, many more people are now aware of Israel Alone. They can make up their own minds about its message.

Bubble-Wrapping Coates

CBS News is in turmoil following an appearance by Ta-Nehisi Coates that actually included probing questions about his new book on Israel. All it took was one interview during which Coates received some pushback for the legacy media to lose its mind and denounce the CBS anchor, and for the network to quickly rebuke him. Top CBS newsroom brass—i.e., woke PR types with zero actual newsroom experience who now run the network—apparently believed Coates should be coated in bubble wrap and only given friendly questions, preferably fed to him in advance.

But babying American intellectuals is not the American way. Feuds and sharp elbows have been a long-standing part of the American intellectual tradition—and signal the public’s appreciation for robust debate.

One of the greatest feuds in American intellectual history was between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman. Hellman was an apologist for communism, something for which McCarthy had no patience. In 1980, McCarthy went on the Dick Cavett show and famously said of Hellman that “everything [Hellman] writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Hellman responded with a $2.25 million libel suit, which was never resolved before her death in 1984.

Cavett’s various shows, which ran on multiple networks from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, often served as a showcase for great American intellectual brawls. After Gore Vidal lumped together Charles Manson, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer for their poor treatment of women, Mailer was understandably incensed. Shortly afterward, Mailer appeared with Vidal on an episode of Cavett’s show. Things were headed south while the two men were in the green room, where Mailer headbutted Vidal. They didn’t get much better on camera, with the two men trading barbs and Mailer at one point approaching Vidal menacingly. Cavett thought Mailer was going to take a swing at Vidal, but he didn’t, and just angrily pulled the papers Vidal was holding from his hand.

Mailer was still mad six years later when he saw Vidal at a cocktail party at Lally Weymouth’s New York apartment. In front of an impressive crew of literati, Mailer threw a drink in Vidal’s face and followed up with a punch. As Vidal wiped the blood from his face, he responded with a retort that landed harder than Mailer’s blow: “Norman, once again words have failed you.”

Vidal also feuded with the author Truman Capote. They didn’t trade physical blows, but instead took swipes at each other in the press. Vidal sniffed that Capote’s prose was like Carson McCullers, combined with “a bit of Eudora Welty.” Capote countered that Vidal got his literary influence from the New York Daily News.

Vidal was threatened with physical violence in perhaps his most famous feud, with National Review founder William F. Buckley. The two men appeared on ABC News during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Vidal had prepared extensively for the debates and got under Buckley’s skin by calling him a “crypto-Nazi.” An angry Buckley responded, “Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” For the rest of his life, Buckley regretted that loss of composure.

10/31 Links Pt1: Israel is right to shun UNRWA; America’s Credibility Crisis on the Global Stage; Radiohead frontman confronts ‘coward’ anti-Israel heckler

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The UNRWA meltdown

In what conceivable moral universe is a country targeted for such a remorseless and genocidal attack expected to look after the welfare of its murderous attackers?

The United Nations says that Jerusalem has an obligation under international law to provide humanitarian assistance in Gaza because Israel is the occupying power. But this is totally untrue. Israel is not occupying Gaza. It withdrew from it altogether in 2005.

It’s the United Nations that has failed to live up to its own international obligation not to fund and support violence. For years, the world body has turned a blind eye to UNRWA’s ties to terrorists. So have America, Britain and other countries. They still refuse to acknowledge this problem.

In a statement this week expressing “grave concern” over the Israeli ban, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom claimed that UNRWA was tackling its employees’ support for terrorism by pursuing the recommendations made in last April’s independent review by the former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna.

That review was a travesty. Before the report was even written, Colonna said that her goal was to “enable donors … to regain confidence, when they have lost it or when they have doubts, in the way UNRWA operates.” Her report was drafted to achieve precisely that rather than stop the rot.

Far from tackling the agency’s terrorist ties, its commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has batted them away. He claimed implausibly that UNRWA didn’t know about the Hamas data center underneath its Gaza headquarters.

He denied that it employed terrorists and said this claim was part of a “large-scale campaign aimed at undermining the agency.” Having suspended the teachers’ union head Abu el Amin under pressure over the revelation of his Hamas role, Lazzarini reinstated him three months later under pressure of a strike by UNRWA teachers supporting their union’s head.

As for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, he appeared to blame Israel for the Hamas Oct. 7 pogrom by saying it “did not happen in a vacuum” and has repeatedly parroted Hamas talking points.

Instead of holding the U.N.’s and UNRWA’s feet to the fire, Israel’s supposed allies in America and Britain have been threatening to cut off the Jewish state at the knees.

Having told Israel earlier this month that it must take steps within 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on U.S. military aid, the Biden-Harris administration threatened it with “consequences under U.S. law and U.S. policy” over its UNRWA ban.

In Britain, there have been reports that the government may suspend further arms sales to Israel as punishment. The U.K. ambassador to the United Nations, Dame Barbara Woodward, said that Israel must “ensure UNRWA can continue to provide essential services to those suffering in Gaza and the West Bank.”

But UNRWA’s role is not as a dispassionate provider of essential services. It was actually created in 1949 as a weapon to delegitimize the State of Israel. While refugee status for all other peoples is considered a temporary measure, it’s permanent for the Palestinian Arabs. Under UNRWA’s unique designation, it’s passed down from generation to generation.

That’s why the number of Palestinian Arab “refugees” has ludicrously increased from 700,000 in 1948 to 5.9 million today—an ever-growing running sore whose toxicity is vastly increased by the hatred of Israel taught in UNRWA schools.

The pretense that UNRWA exists to provide for the suffering was finally ripped apart by the part its employees played in the Oct. 7 atrocities and in the war that has followed.

Israelis are no longer prepared to tolerate people who are trying to kill them and destroy their country while parading as humanitarian relief workers. Yet the United States, Britain and the United Nations are pressuring Israel to continue to keep this malign farce going.

Such people aren’t appalled by UNRWA. They’re appalled by the ban on it. That tells you everything you need to know about the war against Israel by the so-called civilized world.

Israel is right to shun UNRWA

Even aside from the links to Hamas, Israel has a more fundamental reason to object to UNRWA. It is no exaggeration to say that its work is designed to delegitimise the state of Israel. It has also undoubtedly played a role in prolonging the Israel-Palestine conflict.

For one thing, UNRWA is a UN agency dedicated solely to serving who it deems to be Palestinian refugees. All other refugees around the world are the responsibility of UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). The UNHCR operates on the premise that refugee status is temporary. Its goal is to assist refugees until they can either, hopefully, return to their home country or settle permanently elsewhere.

In contrast, for UNRWA, Palestinians are considered permanent refugees. Uniquely, refugee status can be handed down from generation to generation. That explains why UNRWA estimates that there are 5.9million Palestinian refugees today, even though just 700,000 Palestinians were displaced when Israel was founded in 1948 – an event Palestinians call the Nakba (‘catastrophe’).

Curiously, many Palestinians classified as refugees today live in areas that even supporters of Palestinian statehood would consider to be part of historical Palestine. That includes East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. UNRWA counts them as ‘refugees’ despite the fact they say they are living in their own homeland.

The Arab regimes on Israel’s borders have compounded this problem. Today, many people of Palestinian heritage in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria often have tenuous personal connections to their ancestors’ land. In many cases, it was their grandparents or great grandparents who fled what is Israel today in 1948. Yet the new generations are often not integrated into the countries where they were born and raised. Their permanent refugee status is used to keep them separate from the general population. For example, it is hard for Palestinians to get citizenship in Lebanon and Syria, even if they were born and brought up there. UNRWA insists that these millions of people have a right of return to lands that have been recognised as Israeli for decades. This essentially calls into question Israel’s right to exist.

Israel certainly has a duty to do its best to ensure Palestinians in Gaza receive sufficient food and other supplies. But it is highly doubtful that UNRWA, even if it was reformed, would be the best vehicle to achieve this goal. It seems far more focussed on undermining Israel than helping to provide Palestinians with their everyday needs. Indeed, if anything, UNRWA plays a key role in perpetuating the plight of the Palestinians.

To be frank, no other country would be expected to tolerate an organisation like UNRWA operating on its soil. As ever, the anti-Israel set is subjecting the Jewish State to extraordinary double standards.

The UN aid agency that can’t shake its terror links

In February the Israeli Defence Force announced the discovery of a subterranean Hamas data centre below the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza.

“UNRWA provides cover for Hamas, UNRWA knows exactly what is happening underground, and UNRWA uses its budget to fund some of Hamas’s military capabilities, this is for certain,” Colonel Benny Aharon told the reporters accompanying him through the tunnels, including some that ran under an UNRWA school.

Also in February, a video was made public allegedly showing a UNRWA employee loading the body of an Israeli man into the back of an SUV and driving away from Kibbutz Be’eri during the Oct 7 attacks. The video was first reported by the Washington Post and also shared online by Israeli officials, who identified the man as Faisal Ali Mussalem Al Naami, a social worker from Gaza. Jonathan Fowler, an UNRWA spokesperson, said: “It is not possible for UNRWA to verify the footage or photographs and ascertain who the person is.”

These were further blows to the problematic and increasingly confrontational relationship between the UN aid agency and the Jewish state, which reached a new low this week with two bills passed by its parliament, the Knesset, that effectively ended Israel’s dealings with UNRWA and banned it from any Israeli-controlled territory. Now, more than a year on from the Oct 7 attack by Hamas, the largely Western-funded body is under the spotlight again, simultaneously defended as the only means of providing essential aid, healthcare and education for Palestinians enduring war and deprivation across the region but attacked as an organisation infiltrated by and protective of terrorists.

As the bills passed, Amir Ohana, the speaker of the Knesset, proclaimed: “The UNRWA, an organisation that has been proven beyond any doubt to be part of Hamas, took an active part during October 7, in the kidnapping, the murder, in all the actions that we know the Hamas organisation did in the state of Israel – UNRWA were an active part of it.”

Those proposing the new laws spoke of the longstanding antipathy towards UNRWA and increasingly towards the United Nations in general, which many in Israel believe embodies the failure of parts of the international community to recognise the role UNRWA has played in facilitating the actions and ideology of Hamas as well as being a platform for hostility towards Israel more broadly.

Amid Tight Michigan Race, Harris Promises To Add Nasrallah To Mt. Rushmore (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Dearborn, October 31 - The Democratic Party nominee for the presidency made further efforts this week to maintain an edge with Muslim voters in this crucial swing state, with a campaign statement today that, if elected, she will commission a likeness of the recently-eliminated leader of Hezbollah alongside those of four iconic US presidents in South Dakota.

The Kamala Harris for President organization issued a statement via X and several other online media to the effect that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel assassinated in a targeted airstrike on his Beirut bunker just over a month ago, deserves to have his face commemorated and venerated next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

The X post also contained a short video clip of Harris attempting a Lebanese Arabic accent as she sang the praises of "Sayed Nasrallah" and the hope he brought to millions of Shiite Muslims.

Polls have Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump at a statistical dead heat in several swing states. Both candidates and parties have made overtures to the American Muslim communities, especially in this area of Michigan, a stronghold of the demographic. Trump campaigned there last week, securing an endorsement from one prominent community leader, though the extent of that leader's influence remains open to debate. Muslim Americans have favored the Democratic Party, by and large, for at least two decades, especially after 9/11 and its aftermath, when a GOP administration held power.

Recent dissatisfaction among vocal elements of the community regarding what they view as the Biden-Harris administration's insufficient response to Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip has led to numerous threats not to vote for Harris in the election - despite her rival having moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the city as the capital of the Jewish State, acknowledged the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in territories the Palestinians claim, and brokered regional peace deals that sidelined the Palestinian issue, when he held the office from 2017 to 2021.

The impact of Harris's Rushmore promise remains unclear. Her choice of Nasrallah over, for example, the more-recently-slain Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, an actual Palestinian and not merely the head of an Iranian proxy militia, has raised eyebrows among both Muslims and political analysts.

A campaign spokesman explained that they had originally decided to promise a likeness of Sinwar, but selected Nasrallah instead when engineers warned them that the size of his ears would render an accurate reproduction impossible.

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!

New batch of EoZ cartoons

Slowly catching up...

(made before Sinwar added to the list)

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!

At first blush, the New York Times op-ed published today, "Stop the Boycott of Israeli Culture," seems to be a passionate response to the open letter calling on all authors to stop working with any Israeli cultural institutions.

But the piece, written by Israeli literary agents Deborah Harris and Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, ironically appears to defend some kinds of censorship.

Some readers may view this column as a gripe of the privileged Israeli creative class. But if they believe that we sit here in comfort and tacit approval of the war in Gaza, that means they don’t know that many Israelis are desperate for this war to end. We are traumatized, we are burying our dead, we are caught in the dread and anguish of what this war has wrought here and in Gaza and in Lebanon — if they don’t know those things, do the writers who signed that letter even read?

...What does this rejection achieve other than to serve as fodder for nationalist parties who exploited these boycotts for their own political gain? When Israel is isolated, the country’s extremists become only more entrenched.

...You cannot solve a problem by looking at only one part of the equation. You cannot understand the terrible tragedy of this place if you read only the literature of one side. You cannot advocate Palestinian rights by excluding and alienating the people who would fight for them from the only battleground where they might be won.

Targeting the Israeli publishing industry as if we have the power to negotiate a cease-fire deal or depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a gesture of foolish acrimony that contradicts the very thing literature is supposed to do. If you believe that books have the power to change hearts and minds, why wouldn’t you try to use that power constructively instead of engaging in a boycott, to take advantage of cultural institutions to argue your case on behalf of the Palestinians?

Throughout the article, the authors implicitly divide Israel up into good Jews and bad Jews, and much of the argument is that the boycott will silence the good Jews along with the bad.

What is missing here is any argument that all censorship and cultural boycotts are inherently immoral, especially for opinions that one disagrees with (if they do not cross the line into incitement to violence.)

This op-ed is not a liberal argument. It is an argument begging the Western progressives that leftist Israelis not be lumped in with those who everyone apparently agrees really should be silenced and censored.

Those who want to see Hamas and Hezbollah defeated and those who want to see Iran's support of terror groups stopped do not have a place in this discussion. Other opinions, such as that Israel has strategic and cultural interest in maintaining presence in Judea and Samaria, or that a Palestinian state would encourage terror and war rather than bring peace, are considered beyond the pale: everyone agrees they must be silenced, let alone occupy a section of the "Israel/Palestine" table of Western bookstores.

Their argument is that boycotting Israel hurts the very Palestinians the haters pretend to support, not that censorship is wrong altogether. Those who cannot even bring this obvious point up for discussion are part of the problem, not the solution. Throwing those whose opinions you disagree with under the bus in the name of being against boycotts is not exactly a winning argument.

Contrast this op-ed with the unapologetic statement against cultural boycotts issued by the Creative Community for Peace, signed by over a thousand artists:

We continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracize their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

The exclusion of anyone who doesn’t unilaterally condemn Israel is an inversion of morality and an obfuscation of reality.

History is full of examples of self-righteous sects, movements and cults who have used short-lived moments of power to enforce their vision of purity, to persecute, exclude, boycott and intimidate those with whom they disagreed, who made lists of people with ‘bad’ views, who burned ‘sinful’ books (and sometimes ‘sinful’ people).

Over the past year, planned bookstore appearances by Jewish authors have been canceled, ads for books about Israel have been rejected, book readings have been shut down, literary groups have been targeted, and activists have publicized lists of “Zionist” authors to harass.

The instincts and motivations behind cultural boycotts, in practice and throughout history, are directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred.

Boycotts against authors and those who work with them is illiberal and dangerous.

That is the difference between a craven argument to save your own job and a principled stand for liberal values. That the New York Times prefers to platform the former tells us a lot about the state of the mainstream media today.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The New York Times twists international law against Israel, again

The New York Times has an article showing that the IDF has set off controlled demolitions in large areas of various villages in southern Lebanon near the border.

Satellite imagery and videos show widespread destruction in six villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, revealing 1,085 buildings that have been leveled or badly damaged since its Oct. 1 invasion aimed at crippling the militant group Hezbollah.

Videos posted to social media by the Israeli military and individual soldiers, and verified by The Times, show that at least 200 of the buildings were blown up in controlled demolitions, in which soldiers place and then remotely detonate explosives. Controlled demolitions were seen in five of the six towns: Blida, Kafr Kila, Mhaibib, Ramyah and Aita al Shaab. It couldn’t be determined how other buildings were damaged.

They then quote an international law expert:

Tom Dannenbaum, an associate professor of international law at Tufts University, said that nonmilitary structures may be targeted only if they are being used militarily, or if Israel has specific information that they are intended to be used that way. “It is not permitted to target an entire area in which there is a mix of military objectives and civilian objects,” he said.

Dannenbaum is (mostly) right. And from reading the article, it sounds like Israel is blowing up buildings indiscriminately.

But the New York Times asked Dannenbaum a loaded question, one that doesn't reflect reality.

The video that the NYT publishes of the controlled demolition of part of Ramyeh shows a spectacular set of explosions that seem to destroy much of the town.

The NYT says 40 buildings were destroyed. But Ramyeh has between 100-150 buildings.

Clearly, Israel chose only to destroy some and not the others. Why might that be?

The Times mentions other villages and towns hard-hit by demolitions:

The most severe destruction has been in the town of Meiss al-Jabal, which had a prewar population of a

In Aita al-Shaab, satellite imagery shows at least 206 buildings were destroyed, virtually flattening the entire eastern part of the village.

In Kafr Kila, the largest of the six communities that The Times analyzed, with a prewar population of about 10,000, at least 284 buildings were badly damaged or destroyed.

The small village of Mhaibib was also almost entirely destroyed in a controlled demolition, videos show. Satellite imagery shows that at least 76 buildings were destroyed, and only a few structures were still standing.

Elsewhere in the article, the Times gives a hint as to why Israel may have targeted specific sections of those areas,, but doesn't link that reason it to the demolitions:

In statements posted to social media, the Israeli military said that troops had found and destroyed Hezbollah tunnels underneath homes and other buildings in Meiss al-Jabal, Kafr Kila and Mhaibib, and under a hill in Aita al Shaab. It wasn’t possible to independently verify whether footage of tunnels was filmed in those towns. The Israeli military has also posted footage of tunnels it says were discovered elsewhere along the Lebanon-Israel border.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg of context that the NYT doesn't want readers to grasp.

The Times of Israel described what IDF soldiers are seeing in these villages that they are clearing:

Asked in how many homes his men have found weapons, Sebag responds that “in these villages it’s not just one or two houses, it’s all of the village. These are villages that are strongly identified with Hezbollah. In almost every home there are weapons and signs of identification with the organization.”

His men agree, with one telling The Times of Israel that they had found rifles on tables in many houses, ready for use and that weapons were even found in the village’s school and medical clinic.

If a house is used to store weapons, it is a military target. No question.

Now, if the newspaper would have asked the international law expert whether Israel can destroy tunnels underneath buildings, and buildings that have entrances to tunnels, and houses that have weapons ready to be used on their kitchen tables, and buildings like schools and medical clinics that are actually weapons depots, guess what he would have said?

Of course they can, because placing weapons in civilian structures turn them into military installations, under international law.

But the question was not framed that way. It was deliberately asked and answered in a way to make Israel look like it was likely violating international law.

There is another piece of context that the Times elliptically refers to but still obfuscates.

Here is its map of the villages it is discussing:

Every single one of these villages is within a half mile of the Israeli border.

Now, put it all together: The villages housed weapons in most buildings. They had military tunnels underneath them. Every single civilian building is utilized to hide military activity from Israel. They are easy walking distance to Israel.

The entire villages are obviously Hezbollah strongholds and meant to be used to invade Israel. The villages themselves were weaponized, not just certain buildings. These villages were specifically chosen by Hamas as ideal areas to stage October 7-type massacres of Israeli communities.

Can the entire villages be flattened under international law? Given what we saw Hamas do last year, a strong case could be made for that.

The Times did not tell its readers all the facts that would be relevant in determining the law, and it is hard to say that this was not deliberate.

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!

As the war in Lebanon heats up, people forget that Hezbollah was not just a threat because of its huge rocket and guided missile arsenal, but also because it was planning to invade Israel in a October 7 style pogrom.

In May, 2023, Hezbollah featured its Radwan Unit in a military exercise that they held in front of the media. According to its Al Manar mouthpiece,

The mujahideen carried out a simulation of a drone attack on a target inside the entity, and another of storming the border strip with occupied Palestine, and attacking vehicles on the other side before pulling a “body” from one of them and transporting it across the “border,” in what appeared to be a simulation of the capture of Israeli soldiers.

A high concrete wall was erected in the place, similar to the wall erected by the temporary Zionist entity at the border, and the slogans “We are coming” were written on it next to a picture of the Dome of the Rock, “We swear we will cross” and “With great force.” A number of resistance fighters breached this wall after blowing up parts of it.

At one point it appears that the Hezbollah terrorists are disguised as women with hijabs.

Some of the scenes are eerily similar to the videos we've seen of October 7.

Hezbollah, in front of a crowd of reporters, practiced war crimes including taking hostages.

This is why Israel needs to clear out southern Lebanon.

This is the sort of thing that people need to be reminded of.

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!

10/30 Links Pt2: The betrayal of literature; The warnings from history are piling up for ‘non-Zionist’ Jews; Jewish Man Severely Wounded in Brooklyn Stabbing

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The betrayal of literature

It’s a fair bet that the authors and publishing professionals who have called for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions didn’t anticipate the scale of revulsion and outrage they have caused.

After all, given the current tsunami of hatred and insanity directed at the Jewish people throughout the west, they may well have thought they were merely going along with the overwhelmingly accepted narrative in “progressive” circles — in other words, anyone whose opinion was worth bothering about — that Israel should be shunned as a pariah because of the war in Gaza.

Hundreds supporting a campaign organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, alongside Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza and Fossil Free Books, have signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions which they claim have been “obfuscating, disguising and art-washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades” and have thus been “complicit in genocide”.

“We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” they write.

Among the signatories are award-winning authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, children’s author Michael Rosen and actress Miriam Margolyes.

The reaction to this letter from within their own creative world has been seismic. More than 1000 leading names in the entertainment industry have hit back. A counter-letter has been published by the Creative Community for Peace, signed by writers such as Lee Child, Bernard Henri-Lévy, Herta Müller, Sir Simon Schama, Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, David Mamet, Lionel Shriver and Elfriede Jelinek as well as names from film and TV.

Howard Jacobson said he was “staggered” that the boycott signatories could dream they had a right to silence other writers, while Lionel Shriver said they had sought to “intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals”.

Let’s remind ourselves against whom Israel is currently fighting: genocidal enemies who carried out the worst single set of atrocities against the Jews since the Holocaust and who openly declare their aim to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people. Instead of supporting the resistance to such evil, Rooney, Roy, Rosen and their fellow signatories are actively pumping out the propaganda lies being invented to promote that unspeakable cause.

The Guardian reports:
Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.

But there are no “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” in international law. The only inalienable legal rights to the land belong to the Jews.

These much-garlanded authors and hangers-on aren’t targeting people because of what they are said to have done. They are attempting to silence Israelis because they have failed to express the only approved opinion by opposing their own government’s actions. That’s a totalitarian impulse to crush all dissent. And there’s worse still. As Lionel Shriver has written:
But the intention is not only aimed at punishing Israel’s tiny cultural institutions. The boycott seeks to go well beyond the signatories and intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals. That includes writers who disagree with the organisers and do not believe that the IDF’s effort to root out Hamas qualifies as genocide as well as a range of Jewish writers in and outside of Israel whose views on this war may be tortured or finely nuanced. Because we must all speak as one.

The tactic Shriver is aptly describing is designed to set one Jew against the other, to act as a kind of proxy assassin on behalf of the Jew-basher who can thus claim to have clean hands.

Sir Simon Schama, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Howard Jacobson lead 1,000 intellectuals in open letter against boycott of Israel

Over 1,000 literary and entertainment stars from around the globe have signed an open letter in support of freedom of expression and against discriminatory boycotts.

The signatories of the letter include Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy, Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, actor Jeff Garlin, historians Sir Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, novelist Howard Jacobson and musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons of Seventies rock band Kiss.

This broad and united call from prominent members of the literature and entertainment world to unequivocally voice support against boycotts represents the first of its kind.

Last week, an online petition was launched calling for a boycott on Israeli publishers, book festivals, literary agencies, and publications, organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, attracting support from authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy.

The letter in response, published on Tuesday, states that regardless of one’s own view on the war in the Middle East, “boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.”

It adds, referencing October 7, that the signatories “continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracise their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

The motivation behind cultural boycotts, it argues, is “illiberal and dangerous”, and contrary to the “liberal values most writers hold sacred”.

“In fact,” the letter continues, “we believe that writers, authors, and books – along with the festivals that showcase them – bring people together, transcend boundaries, broaden awareness, open dialogue, and can affect positive change.”

It concludes by calling on “our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”

Other signatories of the letter, rejecting boycotts against authors and literary institutions, includes essayist Adam Gopnik, Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, actresses Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and Julianna Margulies, investor Haim Seban and Nobel Prize Award winner Elfriede Jelinek.

Aviva Klompas: Time for a Reckoning With Antisemitism in the U.S.

Hate, once it is unleashed and legitimized, will spread and mutate, targeting other minorities and vulnerable groups and, eventually, anyone who dares to question the mob mentality. Antisemitism in America isn't just a Jewish struggle; it's a fight for America's future.

But it's a fight that we are failing to recognize, address, and commit to winning.

How do we change course? One piece of encouraging news is that Americans are actually paying attention to the Middle East. Recent polls show that 62 percent are closely following the Israel-Hamas war, and 81 percent express greater sympathy for Israel than Hamas.

The reason is clear: most Americans understand that Israel is fighting for its very survival against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose explicit mission is to annihilate Israel. But what many may not fully grasp is that these groups' ideologies aren't limited to the Middle East. Their virulent strain of hate, deeply rooted in antisemitism, has spread beyond the region and found fertile ground in Western democracies, including the United States.

So even as Americans recognize the high stakes in Israel, there remains a troubling disconnect to what they recognize at home. Only six percent of voters consider the Israel-Hamas war a top priority for the country, and a mere two percent list antisemitism as a pressing issue. These figures highlight a dangerous gap between perception and reality.

For Americans, supporting Jewish communities should be reason enough to confront antisemitism. But if more is needed, we must also recognize that the foundational principles that underpin American democracy cannot survive in a society where hate and intolerance are given space to flourish. When bigotry takes root, what follows is a breakdown in the social contract that binds us as a nation.

American Jews are under attack. If antisemitism continues to fester unchecked, it won't be long before other groups face the same threats.

How we respond today will define the nation we are tomorrow.

The warnings from history are piling up for ‘non-Zionist’ Jews

The protest was at the JW3 community centre on the Finchley Road last week. JW3’s offence was to host a conference sponsored by Haaretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper that reliably covers Palestinian despair in Gaza and the West Bank. It was convened to discuss the future of the region, including the questions: How do allies committed to liberal democracy relate to a hard-right Israeli government? Who are the Palestinian partners for building a common future?

The insinuation of these question is that a hard-right Israeli government is to be feared and there is, potentially, a common future for Israelis and Palestinians. Delegates included Rula Hardal, a Palestinian and CEO of A Land For All, a Palestinian-Israeli NGO dedicated to a two-state solution; and Ayman Odeh, an Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset.

But answering these questions did not tempt the protesters who gathered outside the gates. These questions, it seemed, should not be answered. They should not even be asked. Instead, again, slogans – we should have learnt to fear slogans – and laughter. The laughter troubles me particularly: for people apparently agonised by war, they seem to be enjoying themselves.

“You look like pigs,” said one to the assembled Jews. “No one likes you. You lot reek.” “We are protesting against the Zionist entity which is well-known to be prolifically based in London,” said another, “and this is one of the venues that likes to host the Zionist entity and those who are complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians by the Israeli settler-colonial state.” “There is only one solution,” sang the rest. “Intifada revolution.” (The police stood by, but that is for another column.)

The second thing was a rebuke offered by David Miller, notorious on these pages, to non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in a series of posts on his X/Twitter page. It was designed, perhaps unconsciously, to mimic a trial.

“Exhibit C,” he typed, “on the problematic status of some of the progressive Jewish milieu.” He named, for instance, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

Surely these are immaculate comrades? Chomsky, who considered Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank “much worse than apartheid?” Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry?

But in 2012, Miller reminds us, Finkelstein wrote this, on the two-state solution: “The flaw in the BDS movement is that it selectively upholds only Palestinian rights, and ignores Palestinian obligations. Under international law, Israel is a state. If you want to appeal to public opinion on the basis of international law, you can’t suddenly become an agnostic on the law when it comes to Israel.”

It seems that even non-Zionist Jews will be soon be required to leave the community of the good. The warnings from history are piling up.

10/30 Links Pt1: Deterrence Is All That Matters; UNRWA has brought Israel together; UNRWA ‘payroll resembles a most-wanted list’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Deterrence Is All That Matters

So what’s the point of even trying to reinstitute a dead letter like Resolution 1701?

Here, though the Biden administration is unlikely to acknowledge it, Israel has actually provided the ray of hope. It’s possible that a ceasefire along status quo lines could now hold long enough for Hochstein to get a full night’s sleep. But that’s only because of Israel’s recent mop-up jobs in Lebanon and its strikes on Iran.

If—and it’s still a big if—the Lebanon-Israel border can be pacified, it will be for one reason and one reason only: deterrence.

The structure of the status quo in Israel’s north favors Hezbollah and Iran; the balance of military power favors Israel. Every so often, Israel is forced to use that military advantage because the UN and the international community allow Iran and Hezbollah to stay in position to start wars. The aim of all sides is to end those wars before they expand beyond south Lebanon—in other words, before Iran and Israel come into direct conflict.

Well, we’ve passed that particular line. And rather than drag the world into a great global conflagration, the ensuing skirmishes revealed the fact that Iran is wildly overmatched.

But deterrence isn’t only about getting in the enemy’s head. Israel destroyed all of the air-defense systems provided to Iran by Russia. IDF jets also crippled Tehran’s ballistic-missile development and reportedly some drone launch sites.

That means Iran cannot keep up this tit-for-tat even if it wanted to. Israel, however, could do this every day of the week and twice on Sunday, if it needed to.

Hezbollah is depleted and demoralized, and Iran is licking its own wounds. That’s why Amos Hochstein can ask everyone to go back to their corners.

The word for this is deterrence. It’s possible that Iran will still come out of its corner swinging despite its glass jaw and blurred vision. But the result of the recent conflict is that Iran’s next attacks would be necessarily weaker than the previous round, and Israel’s responses would be stronger.

No, UNIFIL isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah. Its peacekeeping forces aren’t capable of keeping the peace, and they are unlikely even to try. Hezbollah cannot be trusted to keep its end of an agreement. Iran does not seek peace and coexistence. US and European mediators are window dressing.

Israel’s display of force is the one and only factor. If there is quiet in the north, it’ll be because Israel reestablished deterrence, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy.

Mark Dubowitz calls for Israel to pursue political strategy after military successes

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, is now calling for Israel to wrap up its major ground operations in Lebanon, with a longer-term goal of converting what he praised as significant battlefield successes into political achievements that will help consolidate recent gains.

“There’s a certain point where you hit the law of diminishing returns,” Dubowitz told Jewish Insider on Monday, noting that he had recently arrived at his conclusion while observing a growing number of Israeli soldiers who have been killed in Lebanon.

From a military standpoint, Israel “has maximized its gains,” he argued, warning that “further fighting without any sort of political strategy is likely to lead to more Israeli troop losses — and not necessarily to greater military advantage.”

“Now is the opportunity to undermine Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the ayatollahs in Iran, and through covert action and support for the people with continued military pressure, come up with more sustainable political achievements that are going to accomplish Israel’s overall strategic goals.”

His assessment marks something of a turning point in how pro-Israel foreign policy hawks have publicly reckoned with the ongoing turmoil in the region — as Israel has engaged in a widening, multifront war that has decimated Hamas, wiped out Hezbollah’s top leadership structure and exposed Iran’s military vulnerabilities.

But Dubowitz said his recent conversations with a range of Israeli government and security officials indicate that they agree with his push for a broader strategic pivot in the coming weeks or months.

“From the more cautious to the more aggressive, I think there was a sense of, ‘Yes, we need to start thinking about how to convert our impressive military achievements of the recent months into sort of sustainable political victories,” he told JI.

The Biden-Harris Administration, a 'Ceasefire' and a Palestinian State

There seem to be several reasons for the Palestinians' reluctance to reach an agreement about a two-state solution, and a lasting end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Any Palestinian leader who has recommended an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been denounced by his people as a traitor and killed. That outcome would seem quite a disincentive. As the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said, "Do you want me sitting up there having tea with Sadat?"

The donations that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have received since 1993 could have turned the West Bank into a thriving area, and Gaza into a "New Singapore" or "Dubai on the Mediterranean," however, the leaders evidently had other priorities for that cash.

One aim of Abbas seems to be to preserve his own wealth, estimated at $100 million, and the prosperity of his sons, who own the largest businesses in the Palestinian Authority. If donors keep throwing gigantic amounts of money at one -- especially unconditionally -- why not take it?

In a situation where every attempt to achieve peace turns into another bloody war-experiment, most Israelis have apparently concluded that they would be better off without such a "peace".

From the point of view of many Palestinian Arabs, and even some Americans, Jews can return to the other countries that wanted to kill them.

At present, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, praised as "The Churchill of the Middle East," appears determined to disable Hamas and Hezbollah politically and militarily so they will not be able to threaten the security of Israelis again.

Even with a supposed "ceasefire deal," Sinwar's successor will no doubt release the hostages as slowly as possible to allow more time for the Palestinians to rearm.

For a ceasefire, Hamas -- probably also including Qatar and Iran -- is asking for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, far from the smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. They are also asking for a "permanent ceasefire" -- meaning that they want the US administration and the international community to force Israel to stop fighting, but leave Hamas's leaders and terrorists free to rearm, regroup and ready to fight another day.

In 2023, Israel allowed extra work permits to the Gazans -- who then mapped out every house to attack, including "the names of the people, how many children they had and even which of them owned dogs."

At this point, whatever happens with a ceasefire or not, the region clearly does not seem ready for any kind of Palestinian state -- to say the least.