Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, November 23, 2024

11/23 Links: Would the ICC have accused Churchill of war crimes?; Bibi effigy burnt in Montreal 'pro-Hamas' riots; UAE Chabad Rabbi missing feared kidnapped

From Ian:

WSJ Editorial: The ICC’s Assault on Israel—and the U.S.

This is about more than Israel, whose military may have achieved the lowest ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in the history of urban warfare. The effect of the ICC warrants is to disarm any Western democracy that is responding to atrocities from terrorists and rogue states. This precedent will be used against the U.S., which, like Israel, never joined the ICC.

The ICC indicts Mr. Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for allegedly using starvation as a method of warfare and several other crimes against humanity. The politicization begins with the list of the accused. It includes only two of the three members of Israel’s then-war cabinet, leaving out Benny Gantz, who was the hope of those who want to oust Mr. Netanyahu.

The charge of deliberate starvation is absurd. Israel has facilitated the transfer of more than 57,000 aid trucks and 1.1 million tons of aid, even though Hamas’s rampant theft means Israel is provisioning its battlefield enemy, something the law can’t require.

This is why President Biden said on Oct. 18, 2023, that if Hamas steals the aid, “it will end.” The President broke that promise, and Israel has exceeded its aid obligations.

The international Famine Review Committee found on June 30 that famine isn’t occurring in Gaza—Hamas attributes 41 deaths in the entire war to malnutrition—but that elevated risk of famine will persist as long as the war goes on. Especially when the world backs Egypt’s decision not to allow refugees out of Gaza, trapping civilians in the war zone.

Using Palestinian civilians as political weapons is the essence of Hamas’s strategy, which the ICC now vindicates. Hamas cheered the ICC warrants on Thursday in a statement that “international justice is with us and against the Zionist entity.”

Third, the consequences: Messrs. Biden and Schumer will no longer be able to protect the ICC, which conveniently waited to grant arrest warrants until after the U.S. election and before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

But Rep. Mike Waltz, the President-elect’s pick for national-security adviser, says action is coming. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton plan to press Mr. Schumer to hold a vote on the House bill in the lame duck Congress. If Mr. Schumer refuses, a vote is certain in the next Congress. Mr. Graham is also planning to introduce a bill that goes further and sanctions groups and nations that aid and abet those like the ICC that harm the security of the U.S.

President Trump sanctioned some ICC officials in 2020 for lawlessly investigating U.S. troops, and the court backed down. Mr. Biden revoked the sanctions in 2021. Cutting off the ICC and, say, its top 100 officials from the U.S. banking system via sanctions—with all that means for European bank accounts as well—could cripple the court.

The court’s self-immolation is one more consequence of a Biden foreign policy that has too often put the authority of international institutions above the U.S. national interest. It’s also a reason he soon won’t be President.

Telegraph Editorial: Would the ICC have accused Churchill of war crimes?

Since Hamas launched its murderous terrorist assault against Israel from Gaza on October 7 last year, the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in a major military offensive, justified as self-defence under international law, to destroy Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.

Civilians, as inevitably occurs in any war zone, have been killed or injured in the bitter fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists, who regularly use Palestinian civilians as human shields, itself a clear violation of the rules of conflict. In such circumstances, and with hostilities ongoing, making a proper assessment of the civilian casualty figures is difficult, if not impossible. The only figures available are those provided by Hamas-controlled health bodies, which appear to make no distinction between the number of dead Hamas terrorists – estimated to be around 20,000 – and civilians.

Yet, despite not having access to reliable facts, the ICC has nevertheless felt compelled to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel’s prime minister and former defence chief, the first time such action has been taken against the leaders of a democratic country.

The ICC decision raises worrying questions for other democratic countries – including the UK – that could find themselves engaged in conflict. It compromises the ability of democracies to prevail over their enemies if their military operations cause civilian casualties. Would Britain and its allies have emerged victorious from the Second World War had Winston Churchill and other wartime leaders been distracted by the prospect of facing war crime accusations?

The ICC action is also problematic for the British Government which, as a member of the ICC, is now obliged to detain the accused Israelis if they arrive on British soil, despite the fact that Israel is still supposed to be our close ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

Sir Keir Starmer’s immediate response was seemingly to back the ICC’s decision, a gesture he may come to regret if either Mr Netanyahu or Mr Gallant visit these shores at a future date. The Government’s confusion on this issue was reflected in the inability of Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to provide a coherent answer when challenged. Labour would be well-advised to determine how they do intend to deal with the challenge presented by the ICC’s erroneous act.

ARRESTING TIMES IN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

In the ICC, people in black robes sit to pass judgement on the democratically elected leader of a sovereign civilised country founded to protect its citizens. and world-wide Jewry, against another holocaust, a victim as it is, of attempted genocide by a terrorist organisation whose stated aim is the extermination of Jews.

‘Love of country’ might have been the explanation for the corruption of the judicial system in Hitler’s Germany. But underlying it was the willingness to accept rhetoric that Germany’s depressive economy was due to ‘the other’, Jews, other racial and ethnic minorities, undesirables, homosexuals.

We live in more sophisticated times where justification is softened by less colourful language but the prejudice against Jews and their nation state remains. The truth is, whatever Israel would have done to defend itself, it would have been wrong in the eyes of much of the world. However much humanitarian aid reached Gaza, it would never have been enough. However many civilians died, it would have been too many.

My faith in the international rule of law has been severely shaken.

In Numbers 23:9, the wicked prophet Balaam stares at the Jews, freshly freed from slavery in Egypt, and says: I see them from the tops of the mountains. I gaze on them from the heights. Behold, they are a nation that shall dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations. [Num. 23:9] .

The Midrash (a mode of biblical interpretation prominent in the Talmudic literature) says that this phrase means: When Israel rejoices, no other nation rejoices with them... And when the [other] nations prosper, Israel will prosper with them… [Tanchuma Balak 12, Num. Rabbah 20:19] .

Jews have always stood alone. Successfully so for more than 3000 years. They, and their nation state to which they have returned will continue to do so. This madness will pass and those who persecute the victim will, in time ask themselves

“What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies, and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part?”

11/22 Links Pt2: The international system is broken beyond repair; Released hostage describes terrorists bringing civilians to observe him

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The international system is broken beyond repair

Since Oct. 7, the outgoing Biden administration has been playing a game of footsie with the U.N. system. While paying lip service to Israel’s right to self-defense, President Joe Biden and his advisers have enabled and emboldened the world body and its agencies to side with Hamas by refusing at every turn to take any action against agencies siding with or aiding and abetting Hamas.

Consider UNRWA. On Oct. 7, UNRWA employees in Gaza participated in the atrocities. As the weeks and months passed, it became apparent that UNRWA was Hamas’s diplomatic and welfare arm. Its infrastructure was enmeshed in Hamas’s terror infrastructure. Its personnel were Hamas personnel. And this was by design.

UN Watch revealed this week that in 2017, then UNRWA head Pierre Krähenbühl met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror commanders in Beirut and pledged to work with them in full partnership. Krähenbühl , who now heads the International Committee for the Red Cross, emphasizes the “spirit of partnership” between UNRWA and the terrorist organizations. He urged them to keep the cooperation private to avoid angering UNRWA’s donors and endangering its funding.

Although the administration cut off funding to UNRWA after its employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7 atrocities was exposed, the U.S. State Department has repeatedly extolled UNRWA, promised to restore funding and threatened Israel with arms embargoes if it cuts off the U.N.’s in-house terror group. So the administration’s actual policy is to support UNRWA even as its terrorist activities have become undeniable.

Then there is the International Court of Justice. Two months after Oct. 7, the ICJ began to adjudicate South Africa’s allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the scandalous allegation, the ICJ agreed to hear the case. So today, Israel is on trial for the crimes Hamas and its supporters carried out against the State of Israel.

While decrying the trial, the Biden administration did nothing to intervene on Israel’s behalf with the ICJ. It placed no pressure on South Africa to withdraw its case.

By taking no action against the ICJ or South Africa, the Biden administration indirectly but clearly supported their decision to place Israel on the dock.

Last week, the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism revealed that the South African government and African National Congress (ANC) governing party are bankrolled by Hamas, and its state sponsors Iran and Qatar. So in effect, South Africa is acting as their agent. The actual party accusing Israel of genocide is Hamas, which actually continues its war of genocide still today.

Finally, we come to the International Criminal Court. For the past 15 years, the ICC has been working with Palestinian terrorists to build a legal fiction where Israel, which is not a member of the ICC and over whom the ICC has no jurisdiction is a terrorist organization; and the terror-infused, PLO-controlled, and Hamas aligned-Palestinian Authority is a sovereign state empowered to give the ICC jurisdiction over Israel.

Recognizing the threat the ICC posed not only to Israel but to the United States itself, during his first term, President-elect Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that required sanctions be imposed on ICC staff in the event the institution issued arrest warrants against U.S. military personnel or U.S. allies, including Israel.

Upon entering office, Biden canceled the Executive Order. He refused to reissue it following ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement last May that he intended to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill legislating the sanctions that appeared in Trump’s executive order, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) blocked it from being launched in the Senate.

Through its actions, the administration actively protected the ICC—and indirectly encouraged the ICC in its hostile, unlawful acts against Israel. And, just to be clear, the act in question is kidnapping. Netanyahu and Gallant have committed no war crimes and no atrocities. The ICC is acting without legal authority, outside the bounds of international law, with no evidence of any crime save claims from terrorists who are themselves war criminals. Its decision to issue international arrest warrants under the circumstances renders the ICC nothing more than a kidnapping ring. And every ICC member nation that agrees to execute the warrants is a member of the ring.

By enabling the international system to escalate its war against Israel and its people, the Biden administration completed the process initiated 50 years ago at the United Nations. Although Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have repeatedly protested their commitment to protecting the liberal world order, their actions in office have transformed the U.N.-based system into a mechanism for the advancement of the genocide of Jews and the destruction of the Judeo-Christian civilization.

These institutions are now beyond repair. They cannot be reformed, only dismantled. To this end, Israel, the Jews and the world are lucky that Trump has the courage to clean up the mess his predecessor is leaving and dismantle the now-broken international system that is Biden’s legacy.

Ruthie Blum: Penalizing the criminal international court

Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday called the International Criminal Court’s issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous, unlawful and dangerous.”

Thune then demanded that current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “bring a bill to the floor sanctioning the ICC,” warning that “if he chooses not to act, the new Senate Republican majority next year will.”

The double threat—aimed simultaneously at Schumer and the kangaroo court at The Hague—was significant for two reasons.

First, Thune has good reason to finger-wag at his Democrat counterparts, thanks to their disturbing attitude towards Israel. Professing an “ironclad commitment” to the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself” while withholding crucial arms shipments to America’s key ally and only democracy in the Middle East has made them deserving of suspicion by the likes of Thune and the rest of the unflinchingly pro-Israel Republicans.

The fact that a whopping 19 Democrat senators voted this week to advance resolutions put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block the transfer to Jerusalem of offensive weaponry necessary for its self-defense is a case in point.

Though Schumer—like President Joe Biden and other members of his party who have been critical of Israel’s prosecution of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon—opposed those resolutions, they’ve been openly hostile to the Netanyahu government since its inception; so much so that they’ve never concealed their desire for it to be toppled.

Second, there are concrete steps that the powers that be in D.C. can take against the ICC, such as the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, passed in May by the U.S. House of Representatives. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday reiterated his demand that the Senate vote on it “immediately.”

Similar to Thune, Johnson pulled no punches.

“The ICC’s decision to target America’s ally, Israel, is antisemitic, reprehensible and completely ridiculous,” he declared. “It has absolutely no jurisdiction over Israel or the United States, and these illegitimate warrants are an attack on the very concepts of sovereignty and due process. … If Senator Schumer and President Biden do not act now, they will most assuredly invite future lawfare against Israel and the United States. We cannot afford to show weakness.”

It’s a bit late for Biden and the Democrats to hide their weakness, however, since they long ago let the ICC off the hook. They did this by canceling Executive Order 13928—“Blocking Property of Certain Persons Associated with the International Criminal Court”—signed on June 11, 2020, by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.

The impetus for the order, which went into effect three months later, was the repeated attempt by then-ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and co-worker Phakiso Mochochoko to investigate “war crimes” committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghani forces and—you guessed it—the American military.

ICC arrest warrants against Israel could cut both ways

Israel has rejected allegations that it targets civilians, stressing its consistent and robust efforts to spare civilian lives in Gaza and beyond.

Beyond the international response to Israel’s defensive actions, the ICC warrants are an escalation in a broader struggle for sovereignty waged between democracies led by elected leaders and global institutions with unelected or unrepresentative leaderships, said Andrew Tucker, director of The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, or thinc.

“We’ve seen an incredible reliance on this global legal system to achieve world peace and security. But the problem is that Western states hold themselves to the highest legal standards, while terror groups and many non-Western states remain unaccountable. The court’s approach will have a chilling effect that threatens the security of Western states. With these Israeli arrest warrants, every Western state faces now the question: Are we going to continue to put our faith and trust in these global institutions,” said Tucker, whose Netherlands-based research institution focuses on exposing and educating on international lawfare.

In Tucker’s view, the warrants are an expression of a desire by the court and its prosecutor Karim Khan to go after Israel. But in so doing, Tucker said, this legal action is threatening to disarm other democracies of counter-terrorism tools.

“Europe is going to face potentially a wave of terrorist activities and attacks,” he said. “What are they allowed to do under international law to defend themselves against terror? If this is the direction that the court is taking, then Western countries are held to an extremely high standard while the enemy is completely unaccountable.”

Sharansky opined that the ICC move against Netanyahu could expose court officials to punitive action by the United States under Trump, and that the ICJ one could cost the United Nations billions of dollars in U.S. funding.

Ultimately, however, Israelis need to assess the arrest warrants in the context of their country’s war against Iran and its proxies, Sharansky argued. “The PR is of secondary importance. Right now, Hamas is on the ropes and so is Hezbollah. The warrants give our enemies new hope, and that’s their main damage. I’m concerned by it,” he said.

Yair GolanThen-Israeli Deputy Economy Minister Yair Golan speaks during a conference organized by Commanders for Israel’s Security in Herzliya on Oct. 2, 2022. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90. But Sharansky is also encouraged by some of what followed the arrest warrants. One encouraging effect, he said. has been the united condemnation of the warrants by all Zionist parties, including the ones harshly critical of Netanyahu, among them the left-wing The Democrats party under former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan.

The ICC warrants are based “on an antisemitic blood libel,” Sharansky said, “but there’s an important difference with previous blood libels.” Amid a resurgence of pro-Israel voices and movements in Europe and throughout the West, he said, “Jews do not stand alone in seeing and calling out the mendacious blood libel.

“A significant part of the world stands with us. And we just need to stand firm until enough people recognize these blood libels so that they’re no longer possible,” Sharansky said.

11/22 Links Pt1: ICC’s attack on Israel shows the free world’s moral collapse; Making it a crime for the Jews to defend themselves; Resist the Global Intifada

From Ian:

ICC’s attack on Israel shows the free world’s moral collapse

Let us be clear: Israel does not fight for recognition or approval.

It fights for its survival and for the values that underpin the free world — freedom, democracy and human dignity.

These are the values that Hamas and its backers, including Iran, seek to destroy.

Israel has always adhered to the highest standards of international law, not because it seeks validation from global institutions, but because it is the right thing to do.

The ICC’s hypocrisy will not deter Israel from holding itself to those standards. However, Israel will also not allow its enemies to weaponize those same laws against it.

The ICC’s actions serve as a reminder of the free world’s moral collapse.

Rather than confronting the true threats to global peace, the ICC and other international bodies have chosen the easier path: attacking those who fight to preserve the very freedoms they claim to cherish.

Throughout history, Israel and the Jewish people have often stood alone against overwhelming odds.

They have stood alone against ancient empires, against Nazi Germany and now against jihadist terror.

But they stood — and prevailed.

Today, as Israel faces an onslaught of rockets, terror tunnels and global hypocrisy, it continues to defend not just its people, but the ideals of freedom and justice.

What do you think? Post a comment.

The ICC can issue as many baseless indictments as it pleases, but Israel will not be swayed.

It will continue to fight terror, protect its citizens and uphold the values that the free world so desperately needs.

Because without Israel standing firm, the free world stands no chance.

Brendan O'Neill: Making it a crime for the Jews to defend themselves

For 24 hours straight we’ve been treated to the nauseating spectacle of states and even terror groups that are genuinely murderous welcoming the ICC’s indictment of Israel’s ‘murderers’. Turkey, violent suppressor of the Kurds, described the arrest warrants as an ‘extremely important step’ towards ‘justice’. Jordan, the state that fought a vicious year-long war against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s, said it will implement the ICC’s ruling. Even Hamas is now in love with the ICC, despite its indictment of Deif, cheering it for sending an important message to ‘every war criminal’. Guilt by association is bad politics, I know, but, seriously, if your actions make the fascist terrorists of Hamas grin from ear to ear, it is time for a moral rethink.

Then there is the bizarre spectacle of the activist class cheering an institution like the ICC. These are the kind of people who cry ‘white supremacy!’ when Katy Perry wears her hair in cornrows and yet they’re content to simp for a notoriously biased court that mostly targets the leaders of Africa. Most of the people indicted by the ICC have been black Africans. All it did yesterday was add a couple of Jews to the list. Honestly, not since the KKK has there existed an organisation with such a curious obsession with blacks and Jews.

That so many so-called progressives are willing to overlook the ICC’s gross racial track record because it has now issued arrest warrants for leaders of the Jewish nation is a testament to the bigotries swirling in the Israelophobic set. The cacophony of noisy gloating we’ve seen in influential circles since the ICC issued its warrants is proof of the neo-imperial hubris that underpins Israelophobia. The woke elites’ feverish demonisation of Israel echoes the old colonial elites’ demonisation of African and Asian nations as suspect, fallen, lesser. The chauvinist streak in the fashionable hate for Israel suggests that where once our ‘betters’ feared the ‘dark heart’ of Africa, now they fear the ‘dark heart’ of the world’s only Jewish State. New bigotries for old.

Fundamentally, the ICC’s actions speak to the profound moral disarray of the West. Let it be recorded that when something very like fascism returned to our world, the institutions of the ‘rules-based order’ went after the nation that was its victim. When the Jews were once again targeted for racist murder, they went after the Jews. When the very values of the civilised world were upended by the rapists and racists of Hamas, they essentially rewarded Hamas by agreeing with it that the state it hates is indeed the worst state. It isn’t only Israel that has been thrown to the wolves of unreason by the ICC and its powerful backers – so has civilisation itself. These arrest warrants are worthless and offensive. Every civilised state should rip them up.

Matthew Continetti: Resist the Global Intifada

As Israel defeats its enemies on the battlefields in Gaza and Lebanon, the intifada has gone global. The fronts of the war against the Jewish state encompass America's cities, the United Nations, the U.S. Senate, and the International Criminal Court. Marches, resolutions, embargoes, arrest warrants—these are the tactics by which Hamas sympathizers worldwide intend to isolate Israel diplomatically, undermine Israel's war against terrorism, and intimidate the Jewish people.

Only one response is appropriate. America must stand in the breach. America must provide Israel with the cover and support it needs to cripple Hamas and Hezbollah and restore deterrence to the Middle East.

These are perilous times. The president is a lame duck. The vice president is nowhere to be seen. The next administration does not take office until January 20. Thus Israel's adversaries—and America's—sense an opportunity.

This week began, for example, with an anti-Israel march through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The protesters targeted a Jewish community center where a presentation on real estate opportunities in Israel was taking place. Police arrested two individuals when the demonstration turned violent. A few residents described the incident as a nuisance. But that is a mistake. A nuisance is something that can be ignored or forgotten. The Marine Park march cannot be ignored, cannot be excused. Why? Because it is another step toward the normalization of anti-Semitism in the United States of America.

Anti-Semitism is already well entrenched at the United Nations. On November 20, the U.N. Security Council demanded, for the umpteenth time, that Israel submit to a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza. The United States vetoed the resolution. That is because the U.N. proposal failed to call for the release of the more than 60 men, women, and children, including Americans, who are thought to be alive since Hamas kidnapped and took them to underground dungeons on October 7, 2023. The proposal also said nothing about the remains of the innocents who have died in Hamas captivity.

An anti-Israel U.N. resolution is an everyday occurrence. What made this week's proceedings remarkable was the fact that America stood alone in Israel's defense. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to impose a ceasefire on a democratic nation state. Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to abandon hostages, including babies. Supposedly "advanced" economies such as France and the United Kingdom affirmed this unconscionable measure. They need a remedial education in Western civilization and its principles of moral clarity. Stat.

I know who ought to instruct them: the 80-some U.S. senators, Republicans and Democrats, who on Wednesday evening rejected Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) resolutions to block the sale of weapons to Israel.

On one level, Wednesday's vote was a reaffirmation of the U.S.-Israel relationship and a stinging rebuke to Sanders and to the anti-Zionist Left. On another level, however, the sight of 19 senators, all Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats, voting to abandon Israel in the middle of its existential war against Iran and its terrorist proxies cannot help but produce a certain anxiety among supporters of the Jewish state.

That a fifth of the U.S. Senate is ignorant of, blind to, or willing to overlook the reality of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in favor of anti-Israel and anti-Netanyahu propaganda is disturbing enough. That Sanders and company may also be a harbinger of the future direction of the American Left—a future heralded by the anti-Israel turn in the U.K. and Western Europe—is chilling.

Douglas Murray: A judge accused of sexual harassment rushes an outrageous war crime case against Israel

Idiotic, self-destructive and short-sighted nations around the democratic world have signed up to the jurisdiction of the ICC. For now — until it comes back to bite them — they seem to think that a couple of crooked judges from Britain or Africa should be allowed to decide how a sovereign nation is allowed to defend itself.

Which means that the prime minister of the world’s only Jewish state is no longer allowed to land in France, for instance. Or Britain. Or Germany, for that matter.

Indeed, from Thursday, if the prime minister of the Jewish State were to make a visit to Berlin the Germans would have to round up the Jew and imprison him, awaiting future German judgement.

At which point some people might say “well all of these countries are lost, aren’t they. At least Netanyahu can still come and visit his allies in Washington?”

Except that he can’t. As of now a plane carrying the Israeli prime minister might not be allowed to fly over the airspace of any country that could arrest him. If his plane needs to stop to refuel or have technical difficulties then it could be followed by international snitches and he could be arrested on the runway.

This is an outrage of course. But it is one that also affects America. If they can do this to Israel, they can do it to America.

President elect Trump has a historic mandate for many reasons. But now is a good time for him to make something very, very clear.

If you come for America then America will come for you. And if you come for America’s closest allies, then wow will you regret the day.

Sometimes, I wonder whether writing essays is worth the (significant) amount of time they take, when my tweets get far more views (sometimes more than 10,000) than my articles (usually a few hundred.)

But then I see that people really appreciate the articles.

Over the past week alone:

Jews ‘treated horribly’ in 19th century Morocco was published/linked by Point of No Return

"No one is free until everyone is free' Emma Lazarus was a Zionist published by (Reform) Temple Judea of Laguna Hills CA

Hezbollah Attacked a Synagogue — Yet This War Crime Goes Unreported published by The Algemeiner

Two Hamas Terrorists Were UNRWA School Principals — And No One Cares published by The Algemeiner

"Never trust a Jew" - an old trope we still see every day - translated into Polish and published at Listy z naszego sadu

Why accusing Israel of "genocide" is inherently and purely antisemitic - translated into Polish and published at Listy z naszego sadu

IDF Attacks In Lebanon ‘Like Science Fiction’ in Jihad Watch

Also, it looks like EoZ is now indexed in Google News. I looked into that a few years ago and they didn't allow anonymous news sites to be listed, apparently they have now decided this site was important enough.

Maybe I should create a Substack?

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!

I created this to show how the three major sources of antisemitism today intersect, and how their core hatreds- no matter how incompatible they are with each other - still end up including Jews.

It is obviously not a complete list of their (often contradictory) beliefs nor of every antisemitic stream out there. It doesn't include Black Hebrew or Nation of Islam-style antisemitism, for example.

Nevertheless, it shows at a glance the commonality of all extremists today, and their common enemy wears a Star of David.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Every senator who voted to block aid to Israel was endorsed by J-Street, almost all by JDCA

The Republican Jewish Coalition tweeted this list of senators who voted for the US to stop military aid to Israel:

• Senator Dick Durbin (@jstreetdotorg-endorsed and @USJewishDems-endorsed)
• Senator Bernie Sanders (J Street-endorsed)
• Senator Tim Kaine (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Chris Van Hollen (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Jeff Merkley (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Peter Welch (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Jon Ossoff (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Raphael Warnock (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Chris Murphy (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Tina Smith (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Jeanne Shaheen (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Martin Heinrich (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Elizabeth Warren (J Street-endorsed)
• Senator Mazie Hirono (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Brian Schatz (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Ed Markey (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Angus King (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)
• Senator Ben Ray Lujan (J Street-endorsed and JDCA-endorsed)

The Jewish Democratic Council of America did briefly put up a webpage on their site to contact senators to oppose the resolution. It is inactive now, and I could not find any posts on their social media urging their followers to sign this petition, so it appears half-hearted at best. It sure does not appear like they will pull their endorsements from any of the senators that supported it.

J-Street, however, was all-in on the resolution, calling it a "landmark vote" and a "milestone."

As US Ambassador to Israel Michael Herzog tweeted, "Anyone urging you to ban critical arms to Israel during an existential war is NOT pro-Israel."

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!

Before Egypt closed the Rafah crossing, as many as 100,000 Gazans paid exorbitant fees to be allowed to flee to Egypt.

They received 45-day tourist visas, which have long expired. Now they are there illegally with no rights as either citizens, refugees or otherwise legal residents. They are ineligible for public education, health care and other services that other residents in Egypt enjoy. They may not even open up bank accounts.

Here is a video showing scores of Gazans lining up to receive aid from a charity on November 21.

Gazans complain that there are no jobs available and Gazans are not allowed to work in many fields as well - just like Palestinians in Lebanon.

But in Lebanon, UNRWA acts as a quasi government that provides medical, food and education. UNRWA does not have a mandate to work in Egypt, but the Egyptians also do not allow the Gazans to apply to become refugees under the UNHCR framework that is there.

Egypt signed the 1965 Casablanca Protocol that promised to give Palestinians rights to residency, work and travel. It has ignored those obligations.

It also signed the Refugee Convention in 1981. Again, it has ignored those obligations towards the Gazans who fled there.

There are no protests outside Egyptian embassies. There are practically no articles in Western media about the situation of Palestinians in Egypt. While Egypt welcomed millions of refugees from elsewhere in Africa and Syria, it decided that Palestinians must be treated differently - and this blatant discrimination makes not a ripple among the "pro-Palestinian" crowd.

Because they aren't pro-Palestinian. They are just anti-Israel.

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!

11/21 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The pope’s embrace of evil discourse; Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro tell thousands in Jerusalem: You are the ‘tip of the spear in a civilizational battle’

From Ian:

Unfulfilled Promise

Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s operation in Gaza constitutes genocide, according to a new book published for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year. “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the pope said in excerpts published Sunday by the Italian daily La Stampa.

What makes the inflammatory statements in the pope’s book especially disturbing is that they follow on remarks by the pope that appear to demonize Jews even more broadly and which are contrary to teachings of the Church. Pope Francis’ prior Letter to Catholics of the Middle East on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza provoked widespread confusion and consternation among Jews and Catholics. While he has spoken regularly about the attack and the fighting that erupted in its wake, his inclusion in the letter of a citation of John 8:44 to denounce the evils of war was to many inexplicable.

The verse chosen by the pontiff, a vitriolic accusation that the Jews “are from [their] father, the devil,” has for centuries provoked and been used to justify Church hostility to Jews. Yet such terrible imagery of Jewish malfeasance is thoroughly out of place in a modern Catholic document. Regrettably, the pope nonetheless chose to use this notorious verse at a time when global antisemitism has reached disturbingly high levels. Such a statement threatens the intellectual work of his Catholic predecessors going back to the 1960s.

While the citation is surely troubling, more significant is the letter itself, for it is yet another example of an ongoing presentation of Francis’ extensive and controversial views on the Israel-Hamas war. This letter has made people aware of this significant body of statements and demonstrates the compelling need to understand current relations with one of the Jewish community’s most influential and important partners, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. In the year after the attack, Francis has spoken publicly about the war at least 75 different times. The conflict is not just like other conflicts, for it occurs in a place “which has witnessed the history of revelation” (2/2/24). Not only is he understandably very distressed about the war, but he is also clearly knowledgeable about it and notes many aspects of it (e.g., hostages, negotiations, humanitarian aid, Israeli airstrikes, challenges for aid workers). With the possible exception of Russia’s war on Ukraine, no other conflict has received such frequent mention by Francis, nor has he engaged so intimately with the specific features of other, often more deadly conflicts. He addressed the war most often in scheduled gatherings for the Sunday Angelus Prayer and in weekly audiences with the general public, though he has discussed it at greater length in official contexts (e.g., Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See, 1/8/24).

Pope Francis does not just speak homiletically. His statements express his deep-seated and passionate convictions about morality and political affairs. They also both reflect and influence current trends in Catholic thinking about the Israel-Hamas war. The Holy See of course is not just a religious institution but also a state, engaged in pragmatic exchanges and negotiations with other states and organizations. The pope’s views on war and peace necessarily shape Vatican diplomacy and guide Catholic political proposals, as seen for example in the statement of the Apostolic Nuncio to the U.N. in January 2024, which is replete with references to Francis’ speeches and elaboration on his ideas.

Francis is struggling to reconcile traditional Catholic just war theory, which began with St. Augustine centuries ago, with contemporary Catholic resistance to almost any justification of war, especially without international sanction (Fratelli Tutti 258 n. 242; see also the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2302-17). The latter, more skeptical view of war has roots in the 19th century but emerged strongly after World War II and the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), especially in the wake of the Shoah and the development of nuclear weapons. It continues to develop today, with Francis giving it his own emphases that reflect his roots in the global south and the influence of liberationist theology.

It is ironic, or perhaps predictable, that the Catholic Church in the modern period, now without access to military power, has moved away from just war theory and now largely deploys its more restrained views of war and peace in judging others. Given the prominence of the Israel-Hamas war in Francis’ speeches and its moral and political complexity, as well as his stature internationally, his views are relevant and influential.

Melanie Phillips: The pope’s embrace of evil discourse

In other words, his attack on Israel is far more than boilerplate liberal hostility to the existence of the Jewish state. It regurgitates the ancient Christian theological hatred of the Jews and the desire to obliterate them.

This pushes the Vatican backwards by several decades. Unlike Protestant churches, the Catholics have made significant attempts from the 1960s onwards to retract their ancient libel against the Jews and express contrition for what the church had done to the Jewish people.

Particularly neuralgic had been the behavior of Pope Pius XII, who was accused of having failed to speak out publicly against the Nazis and thus made the church an accomplice to the Holocaust.

Now Pope Francis has undone all of that progress.

Yet he has also said good things about Israel and the Jews. In Tablet magazine, Adam Gregerman points out that the pope has celebrated the change in Catholic thinking about Judaism that meant “enemies and strangers have become friends and brothers”; expressed sadness over Catholics’ past misdeeds against Jews; said “the State of Israel has every right to exist in safety and prosperity”; and insisted that “to attack Jews is antisemitism, but an outright attack on the State of Israel is also antisemitism.”

Responding to a letter from Jewish scholars written in November 2023 expressing deep concern over “the worst wave of antisemitism since 1945,” he said the Oct. 7 atrocities reminded him that the promise “never again” remained relevant, and must be taught and affirmed anew.

So what’s the explanation for the apparent contradiction?

The answer is surely that the pope is driven entirely by his identification with suffering victims—and since all wars inevitably create victims, he always opposes war. Four days after the Oct. 7 pogrom, he said: “No war is worth the tears of a mother who has seen her child mutilated or killed; no war is worth the loss of the life of even one human being.”

He is a consequentialist. Seeing only the awful consequences of war, the cause becomes irrelevant. War to stop a genocide thus becomes as bad as genocide.

That amoral thinking leads him effectively to deny any justification for a just war. He thus inevitably condemns innocent victims of aggression—in this case, the Israelis—to unlimited slaughter, torture and suffering, and ultimately the State of Israel itself to existential destruction.

Believing that war is itself a crime against humanity, he excuses, sanitizes and implicitly encourages actual crimes against humanity while anathematizing the defense against them.

By believing that this Marxist-derived ideology represents conscience, Pope Francis has made himself an accomplice of evil.

Yisrael Medad: On academic indoctrination in American universities

For those opposed to Zionism, Israel is a symbol of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism—the core evils leftists exist to oppose. This is the underlying layer of today’s debasement of anything pro-Israel, its pillars sunk into a feeling of intense and even depraved degradation of Jews and all things Jewish, especially an independent and successful Jewish state.

What has evolved is epitomized at Villanova University outside Philadelphia, where a director of counseling services can present antisemitic views at an international conference, describing Zionism as a “disease” that requires psychotherapy. FBI-style “Wanted” posters targeted Jewish faculty and staff members at the University of Rochester. The sheriff’s office in Walla Walla, Wash., was required to respond to a pro-Palestine student protest outside a Whitman Board of Trustees dinner at a winery forcing the college to relocate its dinner venue.

At De Paul University, supporting Israel landed one Jewish student in the hospital while a second student was lightly injured. At Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, the campus flagpole had a Hamas flag hoisted.

The deeper invasive connection between academia and anti-Zionism, however, is not in protests but in the educational content, or rather the indoctrination, that a student undergoes. For example, the University of California, Berkeley has announced that it is offering a course this coming spring semester describing Hamas as a “revolutionary resistance force fighting settler colonialism.” More invidious, the course description reads as if a primer for a revolutionary underground:

“With the U.S.-backed and -funded genocide being carried out against Indigenous Palestinians by the Israeli Occupying Force, many have found it difficult to envision a reality beyond the one we are living in today.”

A second example is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology seminar taught by linguistics professor Michel DeGraff. The course deals with “language and linguistics for decolonization and liberation and for peace and community-building.”

His position is that Jews have no connection to Israel and that Israeli textbooks “weaponize trauma of the Holocaust.” Israeli youth, he further asserts, grow up “with this trauma that made them fear that their existence is in threat.” That may be a fair observation, but he adds that the threat comes from “anyone who doesn’t believe in the superior position of the Jewish people in Israel.”

If you perceive some racism and black supremacist theory in this explanation, you are probably correct.

This is but one sphere of influence crushing on a student. In too many cases, his/her lecturers and advisors are those who sign pro-Palestine petitions, marshal the demonstrations and sit-ins, and provide support for campus groups when they are disciplined—or more correctly, when administrations attempt to do so.

The Capital Research Center has published a study titled “Marching Towards Violence” that investigated militant left-wing antisemitism on the campuses of U.S. colleges and universities. It has identified more than 150 campus groups that explicitly support terrorism or, at the least, emphasize violent anti-Israel rhetoric.

David Bernstein, founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews, sums up the situation:

“Anti-Israel forces focused on U.S. college campuses have transformed the American university into a vector for their activist agenda … playing the long game—what activists call “the long march through institutions”—in inculcating a stark ideological worldview that portrays anyone with power or success … as oppressors.”

Is there an antidote? One is the Deborah Project, which defends the civil rights of Jews facing discrimination in educational settings. Its aim is “to use legal skills and tools to uncover, publicize and dismantle antisemitic abuses in educational systems.” Other groups and individuals work on many levels of engagement; still, if the monied Jewish establishment institutions do not get behind this, then the anarchy, irrationality and hate will at some point come to overwhelm Diaspora Jewry.

11/21 Links Pt1: BHL: There Is No ‘Genocide’ in Gaza; ICC fake charges against Netanyahu and Gallant prove US must never recognize the court; Anti-Israel vandals target Sydney suburb

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy : There Is No ‘Genocide’ in Gaza

I have “studied” these subjects in depth. I have seen genocides in Srebrenica and Darfur with my own eyes. I have filmed those tortured by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the bodies burned alive, thrown from rooftops, beheaded, by ISIS at Mosul. I have documented, on the ground, the indiscriminate killings by Russia in Ukraine.

I covered, long before that, the carnage of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, from which the French writer Kamel Daoud escaped. I have borne witness to those survivors in the Christian villages of the Middle Belt of Nigeria, their lives decimated by the Islamist Fulani.

In short, I know what it means to be promised death. I have seen skeletons exploited to their last strength and, when that strength expired, thrown into a pit. In other words, I know what genocide and crimes against humanity mean.

The world has willingly forgotten that, in this war of Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its puppets, the IDF is the first army in the world to take so many measures, sometimes to its strategic detriment, to ensure that as few innocent civilians as possible are caught in the furnace of battles.

Thus, myths are forged.

Thus, we go from the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, or Judeo-Bolshevik, or Judeo-Capitalist conspiracy, to the Judeo-genocidal conspiracy of which all the Jews of the world would be more or less complicit. And thus we insult, not only the truth of facts and names, but the holy memory of the victims of the genocides of the last century. BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY

Unsanction Israel

President Biden's sanctions regime against Israelis "for undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank" violates several standards of sanctions policy. America almost never sanctions other democracies. Americans respect the desire of other self-governing peoples to govern themselves, rather than to obey coercive dictates from Washington. If America cannot peacefully persuade another democracy to change its ways, America lives with it.

America sanctions rogue states and non-state groups that brutalize people lacking recourse to courts or democratic institutions. Think China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Or the terror groups and states within states in Yemen and Sudan.

American sanctions policy now classes Israel with the world's worst regimes, including Iran, a state sponsor of terror officially dedicated to Israel's destruction. Actually, American sanctions now treat Israel worse than Iran: by targeting the speech of its citizens. Sanctioning Israel in wartime also advances the best hope of Israel's enemies - to isolate Israel from its friends.

Moreover, the sanctions regime the administration has set up grossly misidentifies the culprit. West Bank Palestinians have committed hundreds of terrorist attacks and killed at least 20 Israelis since Oct. 7, 2023. Nearly all alleged incidents of West Bank Jews committing violence against Arabs involve property crimes.

Settler violence is so infrequent that the Biden administration has struggled to find perpetrators to sanction. Instead, it has sanctioned persons never accused of violence or already dealt with by the Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, endemic Palestinian property crimes against Jews remain under-prosecuted by Israel, ignored or encouraged by the Palestinian Authority, and unsanctioned by America.

At a recent Israeli parliament meeting, both opponents and supporters of the Netanyahu government condemned the sanctions regime. Americans should join with Israelis in opposing this intervention in Israeli public life - to protect their own free-speech rights and to support an American security partner.

State Department’s last-gasp effort to sabotage an Israeli victory over terrorists

Israel’s detractors believe that America’s unwavering support for Israel is driven by the mythologically omnipotent “Jewish lobby.” The truth is it is the Arab lobby, entrenched within the deep state, which has been adversely affecting U.S. policy since the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s.

The Arabists fought first to prevent the establishment of Israel, then to strangle the nascent state at birth, and ever since, have sought to drive a wedge between the two countries despite their shared values and interests. This tradition has continued in the Biden administration, where the Arabists are determined to make a last stand before Donald Trump takes office and make their anti-Israel positions as Trump-proof as possible.

We have seen this movie before.

In the 1940s, President Harry Truman’s push for the creation of Israel was met with fierce resistance. The Arabists in the State and Defense Departments were adamantly against the establishment of a Jewish state, fearing the United States would lose access to Middle East oil (which we did not yet depend on), that Israel would be Communist, and that the Soviets would exploit Arab anger with America to gain influence in the region. Truman ordered them to support partition; however, after the resolution to create a Jewish and Arab state was adopted, American diplomats tried to prevent its implementation. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations announced that partition was unworkable and proposed an international trusteeship for Palestine instead. Truman learned about it from the newspaper. Historian Robert Silverberg said Truman “became a staunch Zionist for the first time” and ensured that he would no longer listen to “the appeasers of the Arabs, the worriers over oil, the frenetic anti-Communists and the subtle anti-Semites in the Departments of State and Defense.”

The Arabists have never given up.

We saw President Barack Obama’s Arabist instrument, John Kerry, sticking it to Israel as he headed out the door in a preemptive strike against the incoming Trump administration. As I wrote at the time, he and Hillary Clinton “carried out President Obama’s agenda to turn on our most fervent allies, such as Israel, make catastrophic deals with enemies such as Iran and, in a nod to Nero, fiddled while Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen burned.”

After the failure of Kerry’s efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and Trump defeated Clinton, Obama ordered the United States to abstain rather than veto Security Council Resolution 2334, a one-sided measure labeling Israeli settlements “a flagrant violation of international law” that damage the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama had previously vetoed a similar resolution but now claimed the vote reflected longstanding U.S. policy.

The US media’s war on Trump’s Middle East policy

In recent articles on Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on northern Israel, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal all referred to the “Israeli-occupied” or “Israeli-controlled” Golan Heights. The terms were revealing. In March 2019, President Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, making it an indivisible part of the Jewish state. In describing the Heights as “occupied” and “controlled” by Israel, America’s papers of record were publicly rejecting the position of the country’s democratically elected leader in favor of those of Belgium, China, and the Obama administration.

The willingness of the mainstream press to make its own foreign policy signals a deeply troubling trend. Presidents often rescind their predecessors’ decisions. George Bush and Donald Trump withdrew America’s representation on the flagrantly anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council and Barack Obama and Joe Biden restored it. Trump nullified Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and Biden tried to revive it. But the negation by the and large parts of the public of a formal White House policy poses far greater challenges. More than Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, at stake is the legitimacy of presidential decisions.

Those challenges will certainly mount under the incoming administration. Much of the controversy will center, once again, on the Middle East. President Trump has selected Secretaries of State and Defense, a National Security Advisor, and ambassadors to Israel and the UN, whose outlook on the region sharply diverges from that of the previous policymakers. While the Biden administration sought to limit Israel’s ability to defend itself, condemned Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank, and supported the creation of a Palestinian state that the vast majority of Israelis opposed, the Trump team believes that Israel should fight as it sees fit, calls the settlements communities and the West Bank by its Biblical name, Judea and Samaria. And though President Trump’s 2020 peace plan provided for a Palestinian state, those soon to be forging US foreign policy will undoubtedly oppose the establishment of any Palestinian entity bound to quickly fail and fall to Hamas. The Biden White House refused to stand up to Iran in any significant way and tried to appease it back to the negotiating table. In complete contrast, Trump’s senior staff will work to thoroughly isolate and weaken Iran. Should it ever come back to the table, it will do so begging for a deal.

All of this, of course, is good news for the majority of Israelis. Many dubbed Trump’s selection of Secretary Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Ambassadors Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee, the “Dream Team.” The Iranian regime promptly told that team it was no longer planning to attack Israel and was willing to negotiate with Trump. The restoration of trust in the relations between the United States and Israel, and fear among our common enemies, holds out the promise of unprecedented stability in the Middle East, the conclusion of wars, and the expansion of existing peace treaties. But will it last?

Defense Ministry Could Save 2 Billion Per Year By Not Ordering Donuts From Roladin (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, November 21 - An audit of spiraling military expenditures amid the current war has determined that the quickest, most effective avenue for cutting costs involves switching suppliers for the annual Hanukkah refreshments, and refraining from purchase of those products from a chain whose elegant holiday pastries make even the wealthy balk at the prices.

The authors of the study hope that their findings and recommendations will have an impact in time for this year's festivities: Hanukkah begins on the twenty-fifth of the Jewish month of Kislev, coinciding in 2024 with Wednesday night, December 25 - about a month from now. If Ministry of Defense and IDF staff can be prevailed upon to order donuts from sources other than Roladin, the authors write, then savings can amount to more than two billion shekels - about 530 million US dollars.

Defense Ministry spending could fall further, despite the mounting expenses of the October 7 war, already in its second year, if Hanukkah donuts expenditures disappear entirely - though the team of auditors doubt the feasibility of such a cut, which they worry could spark mutiny. However, the tantalizing possibilities of expanding such an austerity policy to other government entities has economists, government accountants, and civic watchdog groups thinking that the entire national budget could shrink by up to seventeen billion shekels per annum by forgoing Roladin Hanukkah donuts.

Jewish celebrations of Hanukkah have long featured the consumption of food fried in oil, a custom documented as far back as the High Middle Ages. The practice commemorates the Talmud's narrative of the festival's origins, when the Hasmoneans who liberated the Temple from Seleucid occupation in the second century BCE found only one undefiled flask of oil to light the candelabra as mandated in the books of Exodus and Numbers, a quantity sufficient for only one lighting. But it lasted a full eight nights, until new oil could be produced and procured. Earlier sources cite other reasons for the eight-day observance, but the story of the oil miracle fired the popular and gustatory imagination in more lasting ways.

Roladin, a cafe-style bakery and patisserie, has locations in every major Israeli city and town. Their year-round fare compares in price to other establishments of similar target markets. For Hanukkah, the chain has for years advertised its stylized, complex, and artistic donuts for Hanukkah - with a commensurate rise in the price of each one as the designs became more and more elaborate.

Market observers expect this year's Roladin offerings to include some new, even more expensive feature, such as pieces of the True Cross.

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!

Six months ago, someone painted a large Palestinian flag along with anti-Israel graffiti on the wall of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

The message says "Stop the genocide. Stop "Israeli" terror. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free! BDS IPSC"

The local Jewish community is frightened and do not want to go to a hospital with such a message. It is clearly inflammatory and upsetting, not to mention illegal.

It is still there.

Why hasn't the hospital removed it?

That's what the Democratic Union Party's Diane Dodds asked Belfast Trust Chief Executive Maureen Edwards. "My understanding is that it has been there for almost six months. In the interests of a health service that's available and open and everyone is welcome to that health service, it is a bit appalling that we have waited six months to get rid of antisemitic graffiti," Dodds noted.

Edwards answered that they approached several contractors to sandblast off the graffiti - something that would take at most a couple of hours - but they all refused.

Not because they disagree that the graffiti is antisemitic.

Because they are fearful as to what the pro-Hamas BDS antisemites would do to them if they erased the message.

This is terrorism, pure and simple. And Ireland appears to be OK with it, as long as the only people hurt are Jews.

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!

Did JNF plant forests to erase Palestinian culture? A 1920 article debunks a popular Palestinian myth

The Journal of Palestine Studies recently published a paper named "Fire as Elemental Intifada in Colonized Palestine."

The abstract seems to celebrate a devastating 2021 fire in the forests near Jerusalem as a type of "intifada."

In August 2021, wildfires erupted in the southwestern hills of Jerusalem, engulfing and ultimately destroying up to 20,000 dunums of pine forests planted by Israeli settlers. The burned landscape revealed a stunning vista of terraced hillsides, a visual testament to the existence of Palestinian land-based relations hidden under the camouflaging foliage. In this experimental visual essay, fire is postulated as an elemental force of Indigenous Palestinian resistance to the ongoing conditions of environmental and human Nakba imposed on Palestinian lands and bodies under Zionist settler colonialism. Fire, as a transformative and atmosphere-altering medium, is thus theorized and visualized as elemental intifada.

I don't have access to the "experimental visual essay" but it references New Arab article that says:

The wildfires which ravaged Jerusalem's hills in August, and which tore through 25,000 dunams of dense woodland laid bare a long-hidden landscape, full of forgotten traces alluding to the crimes which took place in 1947-8 during the Nakba.

This has served as a reminder of the ethnic cleansing which took place in the hilly region southwest of Jerusalem, in which all the Palestinian villages were destroyed and their remains concealed.

The fire returned the hills to their natural state, allowing their underlying shape to become visible once more: their historic terraced slopes testifying to the work of Palestinian farmers over centuries, as they strove to cultivate the land and make it bear fruit for its inhabitants.

While Israeli media mourned the burning forests and the wrecking of dozens of Israeli homes which had been built on the ruins of Palestinian villages, ancient agricultural terraces were revealed which go back more than 400 years. They alluded to the complex farming methods which Palestinian peasants developed, bringing into being flourishing agriculture.

An op-ed in Haaretz added:

On my trips to the West Bank and the occupied territories, when I passed by the expansive areas of Palestinian farmland, I was always awed by the sight of the long chain of terraces, mustabat or mudrajat in Arabic. I thrilled at their grandeur and the precision of the work that attests to the connection between the Palestinian fellah and his land.

The photos of the destroyed forest do show the terraces that were built into the hills.

It sure looks like proof of a deliberate Jewish plan to cover up ancient Palestinian farming methods, doesn't it?

Except that when you look a little further, you learn that:

1. The forests were planned and planted before 1948, before the "nakba."

2. They were planted with full cooperation and knowledge not only of the British but also the local Arab population.

3 The idea of terrace farming on hills and mountains in the region is at least 2,000 years old, way before "Palestinians."

An article in the San Francisco Examiner from April 11, 1920, shows a diagram of the plan by the British to return the land to the state it was in in years past - because it was ruined by the Ottoman Empire, especially during World War I. Amazingly, this diagram shows the terraces on the hillsides and the plan to bring water back to the areas because it had fallen into disuse and drought.

The article says:

A vast scheme of irrigation and reforestation, under the control of a British governmental commission, has been completed and approved both by the enlightened Jewish leaders, as well as the Arab Moslems under the guidance of the Grand Mufti, their head. The project contemplates raising the level of the Sea of Galilee, upon whose waters the Saviour walked, by damming its outlet into the River Jordan. It also contemplates subsidiary dams along the course of the Jordan and similar manipulation of other streams that run through the valleys and deep gorges of Palestine. An elaborate system of pipings from these reservoirs, great numbers of artesian wells in other regions and the planting of hundreds upon thousands of trees on the now desolate slopes of hill and mountain, are depended on to give the country the moisture that is the only thing needed to make it blossom into the garden it was when Moses looked down upon it from the top of Mount Nebo and saw the promise of Jehovah fulfilled.

... How different is that picture now, which the observer can see from the same mountain top, or from one of the hills just outside Jerusalem, where, according to Dr. Simon Lowenstein, one of the American Red Cross commissioners to Palestine, one can look over the country to the Mediterranean Sea on one side and to the Red Sea on the other! "Palestine," he says. "is now a tragically barren land. One can walk for miles without seeing a tree or a shrub large enough to cast any shade, and yet this land of our ancient fathers was and can become again an agricultural paradise." It is largely the destruction of the forests that retained and fed out to Palestine the waters that made it fertile, which is the cause of its present aridity.

The effect of the destruction of trees upon a land is too well known to need detailing. Forest masses act not only as reservoirs for rain, but as one of the causes of precipitation. The rainfall soaks into the ground and is retained by the roots, finding its way gradually into brook and stream. Besides this, a gradual evaporation is caused from which comes humidity to be in due course condensed into .storm and shower. When trees are ruthlessly cleared away the rain either soaks rapidly through the ground or is carried off at once along anything which provides a watercourse.

For hundreds of years Turkish misgovernment caused the land to be stripped of its natural resources in the way of lumber. But during the war this process of deforestation went on at a tremendous rate. Dr. Lowenstein, before quoted, and Dr. John H. Flnley, his associate in the Red Cross Commission to Palestine, says of this: "The process of deforestation was tremendously accelerated during the great war. Whole sections of Palestine were cleared of livestock and trees. The Mount of Olives is almost denuded. In some quarters of Bethlehem and other communities the people burned everything they could spare."

While the plan of irrigation is still in abeyance, that of reforestation is in actual effect. In various favorable sections, nursery gardens have been planted. Almost a quarter of a million timber and fruit trees have been set out and are growing upon the barren mountain slopes. Upon these slopes occur pockets of earth debris, left behind by the rushing floods of the winter rains. Not only do these provide excellent planting spaces, but by growing in them the trees the area of fertility is enlarged by the action of the roots in breaking up the stony soil.

Concerning the wanton destruction of trees during the war, "Palestine," an Arabic journal published in Jerusalem, recounts with bitterness the repressive measures of the Turks and Germans before the liberation of the country in cutting down the olive trees for fuel for the railroads. It tells how the owners of the ancient trees, the "blessed" trees, watched the process of cutting with streaming eye and fainting hearts.

When the Turkish officers were replaced by Germans, the paper says, their hopes rose that the remaining trees would be spared. But instead of clean, cutting steel which left a stump which might sprout again, dynamite was employed, utterly destroying the roots, among which the destructive energy was placed. The account closed with a well-known Arabic proverb, "'After I avenged myself upon Omar, I wept for Omar.' The Turk was more merciful than the German."

The roses of Sharon have all been dead for long the plain that was once so fragrant with them being now, for almost eight months in the year, little better than a dusty desert, but under enlightened control of the country these roses will bloom again..

It is clear that the reforestation of the land was only of areas that were not being farmed because they were barren. There were no farms, no crops, in these areas. The British didn't confiscate land that was legally owned or actively farmed.

The Arab population welcomed the plans, including the Mufti who preceded the antisemitic Mufti Husseini.

But what about the terrace farming? Isn't that Palestinian?

Those specific terraces may have been built by local Arabs, but the idea pre-dates them by many centuries. The Mishna (gathered and written from the first to third century CE) lays out the laws of the sabbatical "shemitta" year, and says that building terraces ("steps") in the hills is not allowed to support farming on the seventh year:

The Hebrew word used for "steps" is "madregot" - almost certainly the source for the Arabic "mudrajat" mentioned in Haaretz as proof of the Palestinian origins of the methods.

So literally everything being claimed by the Palestinians now about these forests is a lie. It was not their innovation, Jews didn't plant trees to erase them but to save local farming, and the Arab leaders at the time supported the reforestation plan to counter the damage done under Ottoman Muslim rule.

Not only are today's Palestinians lying, but they are celebrating the destruction of forests in Israel and the environmental damage that results. When it comes down to it, all their moral posturing and supposed love of the land is outweighed by their immense hate of Jews.

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!