Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 03, 2024

Lebanese article: Israel's unprecedented determination to avoid civilian casualties is "like science fiction"

Immediately before an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah commander on a highway in Lebanon on October 19, the IDF called up the person driving the care behind him and warned her to pull over.

An op-ed in Le Orient Le Jour by Gilles Khoury tells how terrified Lebanese are of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah - while at the same time it unintentionally describes Israel's attempts to avoid civilian casualties as "science fiction."

It was a beautiful day in Lebanon on Saturday, Oct. 19. A perfect sky, whose deep blue magically blended with that of the sea along the bay of Jounieh. Here, on either side of the highway, there were just a handful of cars. ...

And in the midst of this little life that remained, in a 2000s Honda CRV, was presumably a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s intelligence services. To his right, in the passenger seat, was his Iranian wife. The motorist driving behind the Honda had no idea. Until she received a call from an unknown number, and a voice on the other end formally urged her—in perfect Lebanese Arabic, no less—to slow down and pull over “immediately” to the side of the highway.

For reasons she didn’t understand, the woman complied with the warning. No sooner had her vehicle parked on the side of the highway than an invisible drone began raining down “little” missiles on the CRV one after the other. From his balcony, a man filmed the scene. The Honda passed through the falling missiles, which left their shrapnel on the pavement.

Like in a video game, the man filming from his window narrated the scene live. “Look, look, they hit the guy’s car from there to... Look, now they’ve suddenly stopped on the side of the road. It’s happening right there, on the Sahel Alma highway. Look, now they’re rushing out of the car towards the bushes. My God, look, the drone just targeted them, and they’re burned, there’s nothing left of them but a pile of dust. My God. Holy Virgin.”

I couldn't find this full video described here. I found one showing the initial airstrike on the car:

And a portion of the video described, showing where the Hezbollah member and his wife try to escape into the bushes, but not their "martyrdom."

It is amazing that the IDF called the people in the car driving behind them to save their lives.

No less incredible that Israel used "tiny missiles" that didn't even leave an impact on the road to avoid unnecessary damage.

The target was Reda Awada, a Hezbollah commander described as an expert in wireless communications. He was so prominent that his son met with Iran's Supreme Leader afterwards.

Khoury puts this attack in context of the other Israeli attacks on Hezbollah targets:

I realize how this war that is raining down on Lebanon has surpassed the realm of the understandable, the graspable, the familiar, if I dare say, to challenge science fiction.

I could have believed I was being told the plot of a dystopian film on Sept. 17 when, at the same second, everywhere in Beirut and Lebanon, pagers placed in pockets, cupped in hands, in bags, on belts around the waists of Hezbollah members exploded in unison. In supermarkets, shopping malls, and bedrooms. And then suddenly, the emergency rooms of hospitals transformed into scenes of an invisible war, filled with severed limbs, missing eyes, exploded genitals, crushed legs, and arms.

I could have thought this same horror film continued the next day when, at the same hour as the day before, walkie-talkies exploded everywhere, at the same time across the country, and that without a sound, the streets, sidewalks, and apartments became in an instant a battlefield with bodies lying on the ground and ghostly enemies. I believe this horror film will never stop when, at any moment of the day, I receive an image of a crushed and burning car, minivan, or scooter, after being targeted by an imperceptible drone, while the motorists around continue their journey, tracing their path without stopping, almost as if this vision has become common, ordinary, banal.

Like science fiction, this diagram representing the high command of Hezbollah that, day after day, for more than a month, evolves with faces of men stamped with “eliminated by Israel.” Like a feeling of dystopia, the day Hassan Nasrallah, the master of the game whom many long believed could turn the table with the strength of his finger, vanished into a 14th basement, under the weight of tons of bombs and buildings reduced to ash. Like science fiction, the idea that we might never see him again, that we will no longer wait for his speeches with knotted stomachs, that we will no longer hang onto each of his words to know where we are going and what awaits us.

I don't blame the Lebanese for being terrified at the prospect of an attack happening at any time on the person next to them. But the unsaid context here is that in each of these cases, the "science fiction" aspect was to avoid and minimize civilian casualties. If it wasn't science fiction - if Israel acted the way wars are traditionally fought - there would be thousands more civilians killed.

Hezbollah members are walking, driving and living amongst innocent Lebanese people and Israel goes to unimaginable lengths to kill them while not killing the innocent. That is indeed akin to science fiction.

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!

Australian TV network accuses Israel of targeting journalists. Maybe they should practice some actual journalism.

Australia's ABC "Media Watch" host Paul Barry showed clips of a news story about an Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists in Lebanon, and then said this is proof that Israel targets journalists (to silence any criticism.)

The ABC News (US) report starts off with a blatant inaccuracy. Noting that the people killed worked for Al Manar TV and Al Mayadeen, that reporter said that Al Manar was "state channel" in Lebanon while Al Mayadeen has "some kind of link or affiliation with Hezbollah."

In fact, Al Manar is owned by Hezbollah. Its initial webpage (in 2003) said, in English, that its purpose was psychological warfare against the Zionist enemy.

Hezbollah itself has said quite clearly that there is no distinction between its political and military activities. Hassan Nasrallah's successor Naim Qassem has said, "We don't have a military wing and a political one...Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority." Al Manar's website shows that the station regards its media operations as being military as well.

Al Manar, before it sought respectability as a major Arabic language satellite station, made clear its real purpose was military. Everything else is window dressing.

To be sure, reporters - even for a propaganda outlet - should be presumed to be civilians unless there is specific reason to believe otherwise. ABC Australia certainly doesn't know what intelligence Israel had when it targeted the building. But if they cared, they could have found hints that these journalists were considered Hezbollah first, last and always.

The funerals of the two Al Mayadeen workers show that their caskets were covered with Hezbollah flags.

That sure indicates that they were Hezbollah first, employees of Al Mayadeen second.

Still, to be a legal military target, one has to directly contribute to the military operations. That does not only mean carrying a gun: it includes transporting weapons, being a "spotter" and giving information on troop positions or similar to the enemy, delivering supplies to combatants, helping plan military operations, helping facilitate messages between terror cells, setting up or maintaining communications networks used for military purposes. and even boosting the morale of combatants by broadcasting propaganda to them. In some of these examples, one should still assume civilian status when they are not actively engaging in the activities mentioned, but the calculus may be different when Hezbollah itself considers all its members to be militants.

Also, we don't know if the victims were the ones targeted. There might have been Hezbollah officials or weapons in the building that were the actual targets.

Flatly saying that Israel is targeting journalists is libelous. If ABC Australia cared about the truth, they would have done what I just did, and looked at it from the perspective of international law, not a kneejerk assumption that the IDF is monstrous.

(h/t Martin)

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!

11/02 Links: The Clash Between Academic Freedom and Antisemitism; Not Satire: BBC staff sign letter accusing broadcaster of pro-Israel bias

From Ian:

“Never Again”… Again

Freedom of speech propels democracy. But when employed incorrectly, we inch closer towards the kind of tyranny and oppression in Nazi Germany, when Jews were systematically silenced through censorship, propaganda and ultimately the Holocaust. In that dark time, Jewish books were burned and Jewish voices were excluded from public life and, as we are seeing again today, in academia.

The clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli Americans has been so intense because of our mutual right to free speech. But Columbia University’s temporary restriction of Shai Davidai — a Jewish Israeli professor at the Columbia Business School — from entering campus has infringed on this very right.

Davidai has spoken out against what he calls “pro-terror” protestors on campus since Oct. 7, 2023. He has encouraged students to film him confronting pro-Palestinian protestors. His confrontations are not intended to “harass” or “intimidate,” as Columbia claims, only to educate. Last week, at the University of Toronto, Davidai posted a video of an encounter with a student who claimed Israel’s history started in 1948. The student professed to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but when asked about the Hebron massacre, the Great Arab Revolt or the British Mandate — all events prior to 1948 — he had zero clue about any of it.

Davidai ended by giving the student book recommendations and captioned the video: “The only cure for indoctrination is education. It’s OK not to know. It’s not OK to say that you do when you don’t, and it’s DEFINITELY not OK to protest something you have no idea about.”

Davidai believes that the rise in pro-Palestinian protests is largely due to ignorance. His mission is to educate and, for this, he has suffered consequences. People think he’s some kind of fanatic who deserves the academic equivalent of a time-out. But let’s examine the context and see if he’s really the maniac he’s been portrayed as on social media.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel, kidnapped 254 hostages, likely raped women and murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians — the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. At Columbia, on the anniversary of this genocide, Jewish students wanted a day to mourn. They gathered, wrapped themselves in the Israeli flag and called a prayer in Hebrew for the victims. But masked “Free Palestine” advocates felt a need to protest this mourning of mass rape and murder and vastly outnumbered the Jews gathered. These protesters were not peacefully demonstrating for peace between Israel and Palestine. They were promoting the opposite, shouting that there will be no peace until Palestine is victorious.

Davidai is seen as a radical for referring to these protestors as “pro-terror,” but Hamas is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States Bureau of Counterterrorism. Protestors hold Hamas signs that read “glory to them.” Protestors shout “No peace” and “Globalize the Intifada.” They say this “speaks to liberation” and “to free Palestine from the apartheid regime and the military occupation.” For me it calls for freedom and for change. But to many Jews, this phrase is inextricable from the violence towards Israelis during the First and Second Intifadas. So the word “Intifada” feels as charged as if someone were to say “Holocaust.” A phrase that calls for aggressive resistance against Israel and those who support Israel around the globe. By the same token, “From the River to the Sea” is an implicit rallying cry for the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. “There is only one solution” is a rejection of the co-existence of Israel and Palestine with shades of Hitler’s “final solution” to exterminate Jews from the face of the earth. As is “resistance by any means necessary.”

By any means necessary. Think about that. If that is not condoning the “means” of rape, the “means” of murder, the “means” of mutilating, defiling bodies and using people as human shields. If that is not condoning terrorism, I don’t know what is.

The Clash Between Academic Freedom and Antisemitism

Academics who cherish free speech have been pushed into a corner by the rapid rise of anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric and action on our campuses. The concept of free speech covers speech we abhor and regard as not merely false but dangerous. As Justice Louis Brandeis said, the proper remedy for bad speech is more speech—to argue against that with which you disagree. That is a splendid concept, but what if that freedom of speech is abused by partisans who spread hatred and intimidate anyone who dares to respond to them?

University of Illinois professor Cary Nelson addresses that question in his book Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles. As Nelson begins, “Antisemitism is on the rise worldwide and academia plays an important role in rationalizing its character and application, indeed in applauding and promoting antisemitism’s culture and political strategies.” Nelson surveys the stunning resurgence of antisemitism (usually presented as the merely political “anti-Zionism,” though, he argues, the two are hardly distinguishable) at American colleges and universities and ponders the correct response to it. Can we protect academic freedom without letting loose the vicious hatreds that caused so much misery in the last century?

After World War II, most people saw the Jews as the victims of a horrible ideology spun by the Nazis to justify conquest and mass murder. They wished the Jewish people well in their new state of Israel. Within just a few decades, however, many professors and public intellectuals had begun referring to Israel as an “apartheid state” and declaring that it was the worst human-rights violator on the planet.

Why this shocking turn? Nelson observes that many people on the left need “a community of pure victims” with whom they can declare their solidarity and from which they can recruit support for their agenda. The Palestinians fit that need. They are the victims, the Jews their oppressors. Facts and civility were readily abandoned as this narrative gained momentum.

The frenzy to attack the Israeli government (anti-Zionism) has spilled over into hatred directed at Jews anywhere (antisemitism). We saw that on display on many college campuses following the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas. Character assassination, bold lies, and violence have become normalized, and our academic leaders mostly look on helplessly, or even approvingly. Professors and speakers who adhere to the “Israelis are the new Nazis” line can say whatever they want, but woe betide someone who dares to rebut their claims. Many students get a steady diet of virulently anti-Israel rhetoric and never hear a word to the contrary.

To make matters worse, anti-Zionism has become institutionalized. We now find scholarly organizations adopting resolutions condemning Israel even though such controversies have nothing to do with their fields (e.g., anthropology), as well as academic departments putting forth declarations that embrace anti-Zionist viewpoints. (That is most often the case in those fields that are more about the grievances of the faculty than about conveying a body of knowledge.) As a result, young scholars who don’t buy into the demonization of Israel and the Jews (whether they are Jewish or not) realize that they have little hope of making it through their programs unless they can manage to hide their dissent from the antisemitic orthodoxy. That badly undermines the university as a place where truth is sought.

Another ugly aspect of the success of the antisemitic movement is that publishers are now getting in on the act. Nelson points out that the University of California Press is now upfront that it won’t consider manuscripts by authors who disagree with the “Israelis are the new Nazis” narrative. This is a spreading plague.

FreePress: SCOOP: The Nationwide Conspiracy to Indoctrinate Anti-Israel Students

Author Abigail Shrier breaks down her recent piece in The Free Press on the Kinderfada Revolution, a well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel.

LA - meet the antisemitic groomers indoctrinating young kids to hate Jews:

👉🏽 Ringleader Ron Gochez - Maya Angelou Community Senior High

👉🏽 William Shattuc - John Adams Middle School

👉🏽 Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona - Roybal Learning Center

👉🏽 David Feldman - Santee Education… https://t.co/jLoRQ6RkgJ pic.twitter.com/UaEufac9mo
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 1, 2024

11/01 Links Pt2: The Freedom to Be Sharansky; Chuck Schumer’s Ultimate Betrayal; Thom Yorke vs the anti-Israel bigots; Sally Rooney’s anti-Israel intolerance

From Ian:

Gil Troy: The Freedom to Be Sharansky

Historians rarely write in collaboration with those who make history. A few years ago, I was fortunate to do just that.

Natan Sharansky at 76 starts his workdays at 5:30 a.m. He has been married to Avital for 50 years, although she adds “minus 12” because she refuses to count the ones during which the Soviet authorities forcibly kept them apart as they dared to defy the Communist system and seek emigration to Israel. Those years of separation include the nine from 1977 to 1986 when he was trapped inside the Soviet prison system, including stays in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail and Perm 35 in the Gulag archipelago.

In 2018, as he completed another nine years—his near-decade leading the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Jewish world’s largest nongovernmental organization—Sharansky felt compelled to recount some key episodes and lessons of his life in his effort to balance the twin goods of freedom and identity, thoughtful patriotism and civil dialogue. He asked me to co-author that book.

We made an odd couple. I was raised with my name, “Gil Troy,” to fit in as an American while being a proud Jew, living in one of the most Jew-friendly countries; he was forced to stand out despite his perfectly Russian original name, “Anatoly,” because he was a Jew living in one of the most Judeophobic countries. I spent most of the 1980s at Harvard, learning to be an American historian. He spent most of the 1980s in the Gulag, fighting to stay alive as a political prisoner. When I first noted our Harvard-Gulag ’80s gap, without skipping a beat, Natan quipped, “That means I have moral clarity, and you don’t.”

Miraculously, Avital’s unlikely but determined campaign of persuasion—during which she crisscrossed the globe and lobbied Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, and many others for years seeking their assistance in securing the freedom of her husband—finally paid off. In 1986, many of us watched Sharansky zigzag across the Glienicke Bridge connecting East and West Berlin after a KGB agent had told him to “walk straight” to freedom, a final act of defiance.

But that’s not actually what we saw. In fact, after landing in East Berlin, it was on the airport tarmac that the then-named Anatoly Shcharansky (note the Russian letter “shch” he bore as the opening sound of his surname rather than the softer Hebrew “shin”) zigzagged away from his Communist captors into a waiting car. In a 1988 speech, Ronald Reagan said of that moment, “It was one of those moments when laughter and tears commingle, and one does not know when the first leaves off and the second begins. It was a vision of the purest freedom known to man, the freedom of a man whose cause is just and whose faith is his guiding light.”

By the time he had reached the bridge, he was already free and no longer had Communist masters to disobey. Nevertheless, people keep telling him, and me, how they are still inspired by that moment, which I’m sure they are, only it wasn’t on the bridge!

Although we wrote the book collaboratively, the most pressing question I was trained to ask as a biographer stayed with me: What made this man tick? There were 250 million Soviet citizens, including 2 million Jews. Why did he become not just a refusenik—a Jew who sought and was then refused permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel—but one of the few Jewish activists who also worked as a dissident with Andrei Sakharov and the Soviet human-rights movement? That synthesis made him the regime’s most famous political prisoner. And how did he endure nine years of solitary confinement, punishment cells, hunger strikes and forced feeding, yet then emerge with a ready smile and quick wit?

Sharansky explains, matter-of-factly, that in 1967, when he was 19, the anti-Semitic jibes he had grown up enduring suddenly changed form. After Israel won the Six-Day War, even close friends started joking about his being a bully and not a coward. Fascinated that something that happened in a country he had never visited could change people’s impressions of him, he started learning more about the Jewish state and his Jewish identity.

“Once I discovered my identity, I then discovered my freedom,” he explains. Still, discovering your freedom is not the same as fighting for it.

Editor's Notes: The dilemma of raising children during the war is almost like 'Life is Beautiful'

Beyond the tragedy, we also witness the incredible resilience of our people – thousands of initiatives aimed at bringing light into these dark days.

People reach out with stories of kindness, courage, and unity, hoping we can give them a platform, a voice in this storm. And while we long to honor each one, the hard truth is that we can’t.

We don’t have enough time, enough staff, or enough space on our pages to truly do justice to every single story. It’s a painful compromise, one that eats at us, but it’s the reality we’re up against.

In the end, though, we keep going because that’s what we’ve always done. In a way, being Jewish has always meant living on, pushing forward, and finding light amid the darkness.

We may be shaken, but we are not broken. We have no time to fall into despair because our purpose keeps us grounded.

Getting the news to you – truthful, fast, and clear – is our mission, even as our own hearts are sometimes weighed down by it all.

There’s an unbreakable resolve in us. We won’t allow ourselves the luxury of crumbling.

We keep going, keep telling the stories, keep bearing witness, because it’s our role.

As a father, as a journalist, and as a Jew, I look at these challenges, these daily battles, and realize they are woven into who we are. And, as always, we’ll endure.

When Jews Lived Under Muslim Rule

The Land of Israel is Different
As we mentioned, yes, there were golden eras in the history of Arab-Jewish relations. However, a claim put forward by some ardent anti-Zionists is that things were actually better for Jews in the land of Israel under Islam and before Zionism came on the scene. It is saying that Zionism changed the dynamic. And in that sense, they are correct, but only insofar as it introduced a Jew who fought back – not in terms of antisemitic attacks and persecution.

First, let’s begin with the basic fact that the Muslim Arab conquest of the land of Israel in 636-37 was a settler-colonial enterprise. And they are proud of it, calling it the “Palestine Conquest” - Fatah Filastin (yes, the same word Fatah, “Conquest”, is used as the name of the movement currently in charge of the Palestinian Authority). After the occupation, the majority of Christians in the land of Israel adopted Islam and Arabized and the building of new synagogues was banned.

With the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 691 and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 705, the Muslims established the Temple Mount as an Islamic holy site. Jews were banned from it for the next 1,000 years. Periodic social and economic discrimination in the following centuries caused substantial Jewish emigration from the land of Israel.

Other notable events under Muslim rule include:
- The expulsion of the Gaonate – the main Jewish academy of learning and religious authority – in 1071, after Jerusalem was conquered by the Seljuq Turks.
- The imposition of a dhimmi tax on Jews and Christians and the curtailment of their rights, with more intense enforcement in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the Mamluk period (13th-16th centuries), the dhimmi laws were cranked up to include additional discriminatory practices intended for humiliation. Jewish and Christian communities declined precipitously.
- The Mamluks also banned Jews (and Christians) from the Cave of Our Patriarchs in Hebron. To this day, you can still see where Jews had to stop for about 700 years, on the seventh step leading into the building, until Israel put an end to the ban after the Six Day War in 1967.
- In the 18th century, Jewish communities throughout Israel were extorted and oppressed by local tribal and regional chiefs. In Jerusalem, Ottoman authorities restricted the number of Jews allowed to live there and expelled all Ashkenazi Jews from the city due to a debt some of them owed to Muslims.
- In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt took over the land of Israel. In 1834, there were 33 days of looting and murder targeting Jews in Tzfat (Safed) and Hebron. More than 500 Jews were murdered, unknown numbers of women were raped, property was ransacked and looted, and synagogues were set on fire.

That’s all before the Zionist movement as we know it was a thing.

Then there’s this inconvenient fact, which is worth noting even though it does relate to a time after the Zionist movement was already well established: there are more than a dozen Jewish communities in the land of Israel that were destroyed by Arabs before 1947. But not a single such Arab community.

This partial review is a corrective to manipulative misinformation promoted by anti-Israel terror-apologists on US campuses, in European streets, and in the international media. It is admittedly far from comprehensive. However, an honest and open-eyed review of Arab-Jewish relations can provide a new perspective on our history as Jews, on the Middle East generally, and on the State of Israel’s struggle for survival.

Of course, this does not mean that Israel is always right. Just a reminder that views on current events should be grounded in reality – however complex it may be.

11/01 Links Pt1: The Iranian Period Is Finished; The UN’s Kosher Stamp for Terror; Albanese report slammed as ‘gross perversion of history,’ ‘weaponizing Holocaust comparisons’

From Ian:

Israel’s Mistake Was Viewing Hamas as a Minor Nuisance

Thirty years ago, Netanyahu warned that the Oslo Accords would turn Gaza into a launching pad for rockets, and Yitzhak Rabin accused him of abetting Hamas. That was the first articulation of the now common—and slanderous—claim that “Netanyahu has supported Hamas.” The truth was that Netanyahu was proved right in the summer of 2007, shortly after the terrorist group seized control of Gaza, when its first rocket barrages fell on Sderot. The late military analyst for Haaretz, Ze’ev Schiff, at the time wrote a biting column titled “Israeli Defeat in Sderot,” in which he called what had happened a national disgrace. And it was: Israel had no response to a heavily armed organization at its doorstep that went on to build a vast subterranean fortress beneath its territory and to amass missiles that could reach Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport. In an article for Israel Hayom, I described Gaza as a “mini-North Korea” and argued that Israel couldn’t live with this sort of hostile statelet on its southern border.

Only a handful of individuals believed that Israel should have done then what it is doing now at a much greater cost, that is, reoccupy Gaza and eliminate Hamas: the former head of the Shin Bet Avi Dichter (now minister of agriculture), the erstwhile finance and energy minister Yuval Steinitz, the late former defense minister Moshe Arens, and perhaps one or two others. The IDF, meanwhile, formulated various plans for conducting retaliatory strikes and restoring deterrence, but not for achieving a decisive victory, let alone reoccupying the Strip.

For the past fifteen years Israel has had several governing coalitions and a parade of defense ministers who were prepared to go no further than carrying out limited ground incursions into Gaza. Gadi Eisenkot, who was chief of staff of the IDF from 2015 to 2019, said not too long ago that Hamas was Israel’s weakest foe in the region, and that fighting against it weakens the army. Only a few days before the October 7 attacks, the security services, headed by the Shin Bet, formally recommended that the government continue strengthening Gaza’s economy to ensure continued calm. Shouldn’t a PM be able to trust the army to secure a 42-km border?

If there were political considerations that shaped Israeli policy in Gaza, they were those of left-wing leaders and high-ranking IDF officers who didn’t want to re-enter, let alone reoccupy, the territory, since doing so would be an admission of the massive failure of the policies they had long supported.

To identify the flawed concepts behind the intelligence failures of October 7, we should look at the inability of technocratic military leaders to understand the psychology of the enemy. A large section of the media, the intelligence services, and the IDF saw Gaza as a hostile territory only in a technical sense, instead of realizing that it was governed by bloodthirsty Islamist fanatics. And the problem goes further still: if you are alienated from your identity as a Jew, it becomes harder to understand an enemy that wants to murder you merely because you are Jewish.

This fundamental failure of imagination manifested itself concretely in the behavior of the IDF on October 7 of last year. Unlike the surprise attack of October 1973, when Golda Meir and members of her cabinet were informed of the threat but told to ignore it by the head of military intelligence, in October 2023 the military didn’t communicate the warnings it received to the prime minister or defense minister at all. The chief of military intelligence went back to sleep on the night before the attack. The IDF didn’t even order the units defending the border to go on high alert.

Even then, as Brigadier General Guy Hazot has written, the army is supposed to abide by the motto, “Even if we are surprised, we won’t be defeated.” That is, even when confronted with a surprise attack, it should be able to muster an effective defense immediately. Instead, what ensued on that awful day was a systemic failure of the security apparatus. It’s only thanks to the extraordinary heroism and grit of the Israeli people that the state regained control of the Western Negev after only three-and-a-half days.

October 7 saw a complete breakdown from the IDF top brass on down. In seeking to identify modes of thinking that led to disaster, we should begin with the conceptual error that caused a heavily armed and fanatical enemy to be perceived as a minor nuisance.

The Iranian Period Is Finished

Two months of war have transformed Lebanon. Hezbollah, the Shiite movement that seemed almost invincible, is now crippled, its top commanders dead or in hiding. The scale of this change is hard for outsiders to grasp. Hezbollah is not just a militia but almost a state of its own, more powerful than the weak and divided Lebanese government, and certainly more powerful than the Lebanese army. Formed under the tutelage of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it has long been the leading edge of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance,” alongside Hamas, the Shiite militias of Iraq, and the Houthi movement in Yemen. Hezbollah is also the patron and bodyguard of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims, with a duly elected bloc in the national parliament (Christians and Muslims are allocated an equal share of seats). Hezbollah smuggles in not just weapons, but billions of dollars from Iran. It runs banks, hospitals, a welfare system, and a parallel economy of tax-free imports and drug trafficking that has enriched and empowered the once-downtrodden Shiite community.

Hezbollah has long justified reckless wars against Israel with appeals to pan-Arab pride: The liberation of Palestine was worth any sacrifice. But the devastation of this conflict extends far beyond Hezbollah and cannot be brushed off so easily. Almost a quarter of Lebanon’s people have fled their homes, and many are now sleeping in town squares, on roads, on beaches. Burned-out ambulances and heaps of garbage testify to the state’s long absence. Many people are traumatized or in mourning; others talk manically about dethroning Hezbollah, and perhaps with it, Lebanon’s centuries-old system of sectarian power-sharing. There is a millenarian energy in the air, a wild hope for change that veers easily into the fear of civil war.

A few stark facts stand out. First, Israel is no longer willing to tolerate Hezbollah’s arsenal on its border, and will continue its campaign of air strikes and ground war until it is forced to stop—whether from exhaustion or, more likely, by an American-sponsored cease-fire that is very unlikely before the next U.S. president is sworn in. Second, no one is offering to rebuild the blasted towns and villages of southern Lebanon when this is over, the way the oil-rich Gulf States did after the last major war with Israel, in 2006. Nor will Iran be able to replenish the group’s arsenal or its coffers. Hezbollah may or may not survive, but it will not be the entity it was.

I heard the same questions every day during two weeks in Lebanon in September and October, from old friends and total strangers. When will the war stop? Will they bomb us too—we who are not with Hezbollah? Will there be a civil war? And most poignant of all, from an artist whose Beirut apartment was a haven for me during the years I lived in Lebanon: Should I send my daughter out of this country?

The UN’s Kosher Stamp for Terror

Having a U.N. agency of multinational toy soldiers in white armored personnel carriers backed by the U.S. and ostensibly representing the “international community,” whose actual function is to shelter military positions inhabited by Iran’s chief terror army, presents a real threat to Israel’s national security. Given its function and purpose, UNIFIL will always necessarily be enmeshed with Hezbollah and with its “social support base”—employing them, relying on their goodwill, and servicing them. Because this partnership with a terror group serves U.S. objectives, and because UNIFIL’s ability to appear to fulfill its mandate requires it to whitewash and buy off Hezbollah, Israel will find itself having to compromise its security to appease its superpower ally, while the latter will utilize its U.N. instrument to place constraints on Israel’s sovereign decision-making.

By its nature, this dance with a terror army is obscene. Letting that army entrench itself on Israel’s northern border for the past two decades under U.N. protection is a joint act of madness by American policymakers of both parties and especially by Israel’s leaders, who can only thank some form of divine protection for the fact that the attack tunnels that UNIFIL helped shelter were never used to massacre Israeli civilians in the north, on a scale much larger than the attacks that UNRWA helped to support and perpetrate in the south.

Yet it’s no surprise, on the eve of the election, that the Biden administration is tripping over itself to resuscitate the UNIFIL-LAF arrangement in Lebanon and impose it again on Israel—which is what the U.S. peace proposal for Lebanon, leaked by an Israeli TV channel this week, is all about. In addition to beefing up UNIFIL, the administration wants to enlarge the LAF, and underwrite legions of new recruits—many of whom will no doubt come from Hezbollah’s support base, if not Hezbollah itself.

The added twist in the proposal is the formation of a so-called monitoring mechanism which would include the U.S.—an outgrowth of the 2022 maritime deal brokered by special envoy Amos Hochstein, which introduced the idea of Washington as a direct arbiter between Israel and Hezbollah. Now, Hochstein wants to formalize this role. As a bonus, his proposal also calls for picking up where he left off with his maritime deal to initiate a land border demarcation process. Inserting the U.S. in this so-called monitoring mechanism as an official arbiter reaffirms the status of Lebanon as a special province under U.S. protection, where Israeli security interests would need to pass through Washington. If Israel has intel about new Hezbollah tunnels, it can pass it along to the CENTCOM security coordinator who will then share the intel with the LAF—which is controlled by Hezbollah—or with a “strengthened” UNIFIL, whose role as Hezbollah’s protector in the south has been well established for the past decades, and at the same time has never been more urgent.

Luckily, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to understand the stakes much better than American politicians do. In an address on Thursday, Netanyahu had this to say about the American plan: “The agreements, documents, proposals and numbers—[UNSCR] 1701, 1559—with all due respect, are not the main point. The main point is our ability and determination to enforce security, thwart attacks against us, and act against the arming of our enemies, as necessary and despite any pressure and constraints. This is the main point.”

In the event Donald Trump wins Tuesday’s election, Israel will likely have a wider margin vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies. However, Jerusalem should not underestimate how similar Republican impulses toward Lebanon are to those of Team Obama, even if their ostensible motives are different. On the right, the growing, poisonous sectarianism that’s been infused into Lebanon policy in Washington—a toxicity that the Lebanese (and Lebanese American) lobbyists have consciously encouraged and exploited—fantastically views Lebanon as an arena for “empowering Middle Eastern Christians.” Another, related variant draws on cliches about Lebanon as the “Paris” or “Switzerland” of the Middle East—a naturally pro-Western society that’s just waiting for the proper amount of U.S. political and financial investment, the same way Iraq was a natural democracy waiting for U.S. liberation in order to fulfill the reality-free fantasies of Freedom Agenda ideologues. In reality, Lebanon is a bankrupt terror haven controlled by Iran whose fake “state institutions” are run by sectarian jackals who are unable to supply basic services like electricity to their supporters. Yet that hardly stops Republican lawmakers in Congress from being among the most ardent supporters of the disastrous Obama policy of underwriting the LAF.

None of these deranged fantasies—whether of an American partnership with the mullahs in Tehran that runs through Beirut, or of a “Lebanese state” built on infusions of U.S. dollars into “institutions” controlled by Hezbollah—can alter reality, however. Washington can entertain itself by pumping billions into the UNIFIL-LAF charade to maintain the appearance of running its own special Levantine province. For Israel, such Napoleonic parade ground antics will remain detached from the reality on the ground. Only by preserving its freedom to act independently and at will to remove threats from its northern border will Israel be able to live in peace.

Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the head of the Strategic Council for Foreign Policy of Iran, told Al-Mayadeen that changing the country’s nuclear doctrine is possible.

In response to questions about potential changes to Iran's nuclear doctrine, Kharrazi indicated that such changes are possible, especially if Iran encounters an "existential threat". He asserted that Iran has the technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons and encounters no significant obstacles in this regard. However, he emphasized that the fatwa issued by Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei serves as the sole constraint preventing Iran from pursuing nuclear armament.

So, suddenly fatwas are not permanent? They can be changed at the whim of the person who (supposedly) issue them?

In other words, they have no legal weight whatsoever?

Now, we already knew that the fatwa was a joke, and could be changed at any time. But here we are seeing a major Iranian official saying that same thing.

The "fatwa" that enamored Barack Obama and John Kerry ("we have great respect – great respect – for the religious importance of a fatwa") was not worth the paper is was never written on. (Yes, it was only given orally in the mid-1990s)

We all know that Iran kept pursuing nuclear weapons well after the fatwa. It never meant anything. But now we even have an Iranian official pretty much admitting it.

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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.