"Death to You, O Sons of Zion" message from URWA doctor on Facebook, 2015
UNRWA uses signed letters from the government to verify that their employees aren't terrorists.
In Gaza, that means that UNRWA trusts Hamas to tell it that its teachers and principals aren't Hamas members.
That is only one example of how poor UNRWA's vetting and investigation process is.
It it many months too late, but The New York Times looked at Israeli evidence that many UNRWA principals and top school officials in Gaza were in also Al Qassam Brigades terrorists.
We see an agency that downplayed all evidence of its employees being terrorists, evidence that Hamas purposefully chose schools to "protect the resistance," and that its vetting procedures to ensure that they don't hire terrorists are worse than a joke.
The most damning details are buried deep in the article.
Paragraph 11:
Among the seized records are secret Hamas military plans that show that the Qassam Brigades regarded schools and other civilian facilities as “the best obstacles to protect the resistance” in the group’s asymmetric war with Israel. The documents also list two schools in particular that were to be used as redoubts where fighters could hide and stash weapons in a conflict.
Paragraph 13:
In several cases, educators remained employed by UNRWA even after Israel provided written warnings that they were militants.
Paragraph 26:
Residents of Gaza said in interviews that the idea that Hamas had operatives in UNRWA schools was an open secret. One educator on Israel’s list of 100 was regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov.
Paragraphs 33-34:
Seized records say that the principal of the school, Khaled al-Masri, is a Hamas member who was issued an assault rifle and a handgun, and he is pictured standing in front of a Hamas banner on Facebook.
He remains on UNRWA’s staff, the agency says, but is under investigation for a social media violation.
Paragraph 39:
Even for criminal background checks, UNRWA relies on employees to self-report and provide confirmation of a clean record by way of a letter from the “de facto authorities.”In Gaza, that means Hamas, and before Hamas took over in 2007, it meant the Palestinian Authority.
And even when the UN investigates, it doesn't bother to investigate:
Paragraphs 41-42:
For nine of the workers, the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services said there was insufficient evidence to take action. But a copy of its report, which was never made public, says it did not consider evidence that Israel provided about their “alleged membership of the armed wing of Hamas or other militant groups.”
U.N. investigators ultimately only found that the other nine “may have” been involved. (In one case, investigators were shown video of the worker throwing a dead Israeli into an S.U.V.)
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Israeli police have detained Rabbi Abraham Katz, a prominent anti-Zionist figure from New York, for over two months under a non-departure order, demonstrating the Benjamin Netanyahu regime's hostility toward everyone opposed to their genocidal war crimes.
Rabbi Katz, a citizen of both the United States and Canada, has been languishing behind bars for his pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Many prominent Jewish organizations around the world have urged the US and Canadian governments to intervene and pressure the Tel Aviv regime to release Rabbi Katz.
Well, besides that Rabbi Katz is not "behind bars," and Israel hasn't showed any interest in his anti-Zionist opinions, and no prominent Jewish groups have urged any intervention, sure, this is accurate.
Here' what really happened:
A man in the United States has been refusing to give his wife a religious divorce for ten years, which means that she is an "agunah," or "chained" to him - she cannot marry anyone else. The man then used a sketchy loophole, apparently under false pretenses, to get a dispensation to marry a second wife under Jewish law. Rabbis that signed that dispensation have since retracted their signatures.
Nevertheless, the man then did marry a second wife, and Rabbi Avraham Katz participated in the ceremony (according to his supporters, he was honored by reading the ketubah; he did not officiate.)
When Katz visited Israel, the wife's supporters petitioned the government not to allow him to leave the country, in an effort to help pressure the husband to issue the divorce.
In November, Katz tried to leave Israel and was stopped by police and then placed under house arrest. He is not "behind bars," and in fact he spent this past Shabbat in Tiberias.
Meanwhile, the Satmar Rebbe - who is famously anti-Zionist - issued a proclamation to excommunicate the husband in his community of Monroe, NY, after the husband promised and then reneged on his promise to issue the divorce. The husband then fled to another community.
It is just a small example of how Iranian and Arab media - not to mention Neturei Karta and other anti-Zionists - will take a grain of truth and build an edifice of lies around it.
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In the Amnesty International report released last week, it claims that Israel was occupying Gaza even after it withdrew its troops in 2005.
In cases like this, where the occupying power has withdrawn its forces from all or parts of the
occupied territory but has maintained key elements of an occupying power’s authority – in
this case, after the 2005 redeployment of Israeli forces – this retention of authority can
amount to effective control. In such cases, occupation law – or at least the provisions
relevant to the powers the occupant continues to exercise – remains in force.[179]
That article says quite clearly that the physical presence of the hostile army is one of the necessary criteria in determining whether a territory is occupied. In other words, it completely contradicts Amnesty.
Ferraro creates a legal test for determining whether a situation qualifies as an occupation for the purposes of international humanitarian law.
In light of what has been discussed above, one may infer the following test for the
purposes of determining the existence of a state of occupation within the meaning of
IHL. The effective-control test consists of three cumulative conditions:
– the armed forces of a state are physically present in a foreign territory
without the consent of the effective local government in place at the time of the
invasion;
– the effective local government in place at the time of the invasion has been or
can be rendered substantially or completely incapable of exerting its powers by
virtue of the foreign forces’ unconsented-to presence;
– the foreign forces are in a position to exercise authority over the territory
concerned (or parts thereof) in lieu of the local government.
Not one of these were true before November 2023.
Ferraro adds, "If any of these conditions ceases to exist, the occupation should be
considered to have ended."
He also addresses the claim that Israel is engaged in "effective control" because Israel controls most of the borders and airspace of Gaza:
Occupation and its related element of effective control cannot – in principle – be
established and maintained solely by exercising power from beyond the boundaries of the occupied
territory. The test of effective control cannot include the potential ability of one of the parties to the armed
conflict to project power through its forces positioned outside the ‘occupied territory’ without stretching
the concept of occupation so much that it makes any assignment of responsibilities under occupation law
meaningless. Otherwise, any state capable of invading the territory of its weaker neighbours by virtue of its
military superiority, and of imposing its will there, would be said to be in ‘effective control’ of that territory
and considered an occupant for the purposes of IHL. Such an interpretation would be unreasonable.
As is often the case, this is a sui generislaw made just for Israel.
And it also contradicts previous ICJ rulings!
Ferraro quotes the ICJ on DRC vs. Uganda (2005):
In order to reach a conclusion as to whether a State, the military forces of which
are present on the territory of another State as the result of an intervention, is an
‘occupying Power’ in the meaning of the term as understood in the jus in bello,
the Court must examine whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate
that the said authority was in fact established and exercised by the intervening
State in the areas in question. In the present case the Court will need to satisfy
itself that the Ugandan armed forces in the DRC were not only stationed in
particular locations but also that they had substituted their own authority for
that of the Congolese Government.
The ICJ requires physical presence as well as substituting Israel's authority over the Palestinian or Hamas government in Gaza, neithr of which happened.
Furthermore, the ICJ said in DRC vs. Congo:
In order to reach a conclusion as to whether a State, the military forces of which
are present on the territory of another State as the result of an intervention, is an
occupying power in the meaning of the term as understood in the jus in bello,
the Court must examine whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate
that the said authority was in fact established and exercised by the intervening
State in the areas in question. In the present case the Court will need to satisfy
itself that the Ugandan armed forces in the DRC were not only stationed in
particular locations but also that they had substituted their own authority for
that of the Congolese Government.
Those criteria are consistent in ICJ rulings....before it looked at Gaza. In all other cases, physical presence was one criterion for occupation. In all other cases, the occupier must have substituted its own authority for the local authorities. In all other cases, occupation law was considered all or nothing, not partial.
Amnesty's acceptance of the 2024 ICJ ruling also contradicts Amnesty's previous claims that Israel is fully occupying Gaza.
The irony is that Israel still ensured that Gaza would get food, medicine, vaccines and everything else that humanitarian law requires even under occupation.
But the legal precedents before 2024 are clear: Israel did not occupy Gaza, and those that claim it did are making up new international laws just for Israel.
Something Amnesty is quite proficient at.
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The rapid fall of the Assad regime in Syria is stunning.
There is no shortage of analysis, but essentially every "expert" in the field is warning of things that could or might happen.
What I haven't seen is any of these experts admitting that they couldn't see this coming.
The Middle East is the most watched, analyzed and studied region on Earth. Isn't it strange that no one saw the coordination necessary for the disparate Syrian rebel groups to mount this offensive? The planning must have taken weeks, if not months. Israel's escalation against Hezbollah in September would undoubtedly have either started these plans if not accelerated already existing plans.
Where were these analysts then? And - why should we believe any of them now when they didn't see this coming?
We can expect to see analysis in the coming weeks of how the signs were there all along, all ignoring that these supposed experts missed those signs.
Lesson #1: Media and academic experts are no better at predicting what will happen than anyone else.
To be sure, Western intelligence agencies appear to have been caught flat-footed as well. Any decent intel organization must go back, look at any evidence of this development that must have been visible but ignored, and ask itself where it went wrong.
Every intelligence failure that I am aware of comes not from missing the evidence, but from not connecting the dots. Intelligence agencies have to deal with massive amounts of data that they gather from tens of thousands of sources. The challenge is being able to notice patterns and properly prioritize the data coming in.
How many times have we seen after the fact that the pieces of the puzzle were always there? From Pearl Harbor to the Yom Kippur War to October 7, the data wasn't the problem. It was the refusal to believe the data, the refusal to properly prioritize the data, the overriding of the evidence with beliefs.
Perhaps artificial intelligence can overcome these issues, which are after all human blind spots. But AI is often being programmed too often with the same blind spots, at least the AIs I've been playing with. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be hard to adjust AIs to avoid bias in the models and programming to learn to put together data. Expect to see accelerated work in that arena.
Lesson #2: Even national intelligence agencies have blind spots and they need to adjust their methods of analysis.
Some of these failures come because dictatorships, whether they are Syria or China or Iran, zealously hide their weaknesses from the world and project not the truth but propaganda. Furthermore, they end up hiding the truth from themselves as well out of desire to do what the dictator wants rather than what's best for the country.
The startling speed of the Syrian coup is because of any unique set of circumstances. It could happen in any non-democratic country. (Democracies can change quite quickly as well but they are usually open enough for people to see it coming.)
This is a sobering lesson for those who rely on dictatorships as partners. Every decision a western power makes when making deals with a Saudi Arabia or a UAE or an Egypt or a Jordan must include the non-zero chance that these regimes can be replaced tomorrow with leaders with a vastly different worldview. Weapons given to prop up these regimes can fall into the hands of those who those whom the weapons were meant to fight. Personnel posted in those countries are only a bullet away from becoming hostages.
Strongmen are often not as strong as they project, nor as strong as some want to believe. Nations rely on allies, and must make educated guesses as to whom to trust, but when it comes to even seemingly enlightened dictatorships they need to hedge their bets because their allies can turn into enemies in a day,
Lesson #3: "Put not your trust in princes."
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We saw it with Hamas. we saw it with Hezbollah. And now we're seeing it with Syria.
They Syrian regime is teetering on the edge. The soldiers in the are deserting. The combined opposition forces are entering Damascus. Reports say that the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has fled.
But the Syrian media, or what's left of it, insists that it is winning.
The official SANA news agency website seems to be down - which is itself a sign that things are going really poorly for the regime. But its Facebook page is still up, and they are saying:
=Military source: The news from some media channels about terrorists entering al-Qaryatayn area south-east of Homs is incorrect and our forces are in their positions and in full readiness.
-Military source: There is no truth to any news about the withdrawal of our forces from the Damascus countryside
-Cabinet: The government has the experience and ability to deal with emergency situations
-Syrian Army Eliminates large numbers of Terrorists, destroys dozens of their vehicles in northern Homs countryside
-President Al-Assad assumes his work, national and constitutional duties from Damascus
However, they stopped posting any updates about ten hours ago.
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Most recently, Israel has confounded expectations in its war against Hamas. The IDF has ground Hamas into the rubble of Gaza, killing most of its leaders. It has wreaked sufficient devastation on Hezbollah to produce a ceasefire agreement, albeit a shaky one. Commentators warned solemnly of ‘escalation ladders’ and a ‘wider regional war’, predicting that Iran would not stand idly by as its proxies were degraded. Yet apart from a few token missile strikes, that is precisely what has happened.
Heeding caution in military matters is wise, as Iraq and other misadventures have shown. But an aversion to conflict at all costs grants bad actors free rein. As Israel’s enemies sue for peace – precisely because of Israel’s resolve in pursuing a war many deemed unwinnable – it’s clear that caution has its limits. While a decisive victory has yet to be achieved, Israel certainly appears to be winning. It has demonstrated that the murder of its citizens has dire consequences – a fact it must constantly prove to secure its survival. Israel has also shown that Iran, reportedly leaning on Hezbollah leaders to agree to a ceasefire, has little appetite to risk its neck for its proxies.
Yet many commentators continue to treat ‘de-escalation’ and an immediate ceasefire as the only viable routes to peace, scarcely hiding their disappointment when the realities on the ground suggest otherwise. After Hamas’s military leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by the IDF in October, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, snarked that ‘to get a ceasefire and a deal you need every side really in it’. He thought this would be harder after the assassination. Yet since Sinwar’s death, Hamas has actually shown more interest in negotiation. Similarly, when Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was eliminated in September, journalists at Israel’s Channel 12, which has also taken a defeatist view of the war, reportedly greeted the news with ‘mournful faces and barely hidden disappointment’.
Contrast this with the elation of ordinary Israelis – and many others around the world – at these momentous victories. Such enthusiasm is well placed. Nasrallah’s policy of showering rockets on northern Israel until the IDF withdrew from Gaza has, for now, been discontinued. This is a tangible win for thousands of Israelis who can now return to their homes in the north.
The war itself enjoys widespread support within Israel. It is, among other things, democracy in action (just not the kind favoured by the media and commentary classes). Yet so many media outlets portray it as little more than a ruse by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cling to power. This narrative conveniently diverts attention from Israel’s strategic gains.
Reflecting on the Second Intifada, which broke out in 2000 and led to over 1,000 Israeli deaths, writer Pascal Bruckner remarked that journalists sympathetic to the Palestinian uprising had taken a more sanguine view of it than the Palestinians themselves. In 2004, Fatah leaders conceded that the ‘militarisation of the Intifada had been a great failure and had left society exhausted and on the brink of civil war’. According to Bruckner, this failure was a ‘disappointment for the militants, but also for the press correspondents, who thus found themselves repudiated’. The journalists, he concluded, had ‘allowed themselves to be blinded by their convictions: these men in the field had seen in reality only the projection of their own fantasies’.
Twenty years later, fantasies and wishful thinking still cloud much of the media’s judgement.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict ended decades ago with the country's founding and its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, according to former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates.
Speaking to ILTV on Monday at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, she said the Palestinians were never told they lost. Instead, "they were encouraged, particularly after the Iranian Revolution, to continue this self-defeating, suicidal, genocidal [behavior] we saw on October 7."
"Someone has to have the nerve to say to the Palestinians, we are not negotiating a ceasefire, we're negotiating terms" to end the conflict, she added.
Coates, an evangelical Christian and staunch supporter of the Jewish state has visited Israel many times. She has held several key political leadership roles, including serving in the Department of Energy, where she advised Secretary Dan Brouillette on national security issues and acted as his representative in the Middle East and North Africa.
Today, she serves as Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. She recently published a book, The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win, which focuses on October 7 and why America must stand with Israel.
She said the possibilities for the Palestinians, if they were to disarm and accept defeat, are abundant.
"You could imagine what would flow into both the West Bank and Gaza, just the offers of assistance and the enthusiasm on the part of Israel," Coates said.
She added that some actions from the Trump administration, such as cutting funding, might help deliver this message.
However, while Coates is deeply passionate about Israel, she said her book aims to address issues in her own country. "Because this [Islamic extremism] isn't a Jewish or an Israel issue. This is a Western civilization issue," she explained.
"They might be coming for Israel right now, but the United States is next, make no mistake about it," Coates said.
This week, Channel 11’s journalist Ayala Hasson broadcast a two-part exposé on the Israel Defense Forces’ self-investigation of the massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, which took place a kilometer from the Gaza Strip. Hasson’s reports reinforced the fact that the IDF and Shin Bet top brass are to blame for Hamas’s successful day of genocide.
A total of 364 people were brutally murdered at the Nova music festival and along avenues of escape. Thirty-nine were taken hostage. The rave opened on Oct. 5 with 3,800 revelers.
According to earlier investigative reports, the IDF intercepted Hamas’s invasion plans a year before Oct. 7. They received multiple, rapidly escalating warnings of the impending invasion from a variety of sources in the Southern Command in the months, weeks and days prior to that day. Intelligence head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar did not share the warnings or Hamas’s intercepted invasion plans with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, they repeatedly briefed him that Hamas was deterred, and Israel simply needed to provide it with more cash from Qatar and more work permits for Gazans in Israel to keep the terrorist regime fat, happy and deterred.
On Oct. 10, we learned that on the night between Oct. 6 and Oct. 7, Halevi, Bar, Southern Command Chief Maj. General Yaron Finkleman, Operations Directorate Chief Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk and Haliva’s assistant (Haliva was on vacation and not answering his phone), held two telephone consultations, at midnight and 4 a.m., when they discussed multiplying indications that Hamas was about to carry out its invasion, slaughter and kidnapping plan. They chose to do nothing, told no one and agreed to meet again at 8 a.m. Hamas invaded at 6:30.
Hasson’s reported excerpts from two-and-a-half hours of recordings of a conversation between Halevi’s representative Brig. Gen. Ido Mizrahi and police commanders in the Southern District. Halevi appointed Mizrahi to conduct the IDF’s inquiry into the slaughter at Nova.
The police were the heroes of the festival. By declaring that Israel was under invasion at 6:30, Southern District Commander Superintendent Amir Cohen precipitated the Ofakim police station commander’s order to disperse the concert-goers. That decision is credited with saving the lives of 90% of the party’s attendees. According to Mizrahi, about 200 people were at the party site when the Palestinian rape, murder and kidnapping gangs arrived a bit after 9 a.m.
Forty policemen and women died staving off the invading Palestinian terrorists from the Nova festival. IDF forces didn’t show up until after the massacre was over and the 39 hostages had been taken to Gaza. All the same, Mizrahi tried to shift the blame for the mass slaughter from the IDF onto the police, asking why there were still 200 people at the party site at 9.
Surprised, the police explained that they couldn’t enforce the order because they were busy fighting Hamas since the IDF didn’t arrive.
Mizrahi disclosed to Cohen and his officers for the first time that on nighttime telephone calls, Bar, Halevi and their associates discussed the Nova festival but opted to do nothing. The police officers noted that had they known this at 4 a.m., the slaughter would have been prevented.
Dealing with the Iranian regime, whose machinations lie at the core of this conflict, will be a major focus of the next Trump administration’s foreign policy. Yet even before Donald Trump enters the Oval Office (again), Iran is already looking damaged and weaker now when compared with Oct. 7. While its missile attacks on Israel failed to dent either the IDF or the Israeli population’s resolve, Jerusalem’s responses have badly frayed Iran’s air defenses and highlighted the vulnerability of its nuclear program. As well as seeing its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies degraded, Iran is now watching as the Assad regime in Syria clings to survival. Iran still retains its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, but these, too, may also find themselves in the firing line with a new administration in Washington. “Although today’s Iran is confident that it can fight to defend itself, it wants peace,” wrote its former foreign minister in a frankly ludicrous article for Foreign Affairs. That sounds suspiciously like a plea to the regime’s adversaries to hold off because the reality is that the regime cannot defend itself from Israel—not to mention the Iranian people, growing swaths of whom truly loathe the Islamic Republic and are determined to get rid of it.
For two states in the region, the outlook is unfortunately rosier. One is Turkey, whose membership of the NATO Alliance remains undisturbed despite the increasingly unhinged attacks on Israel leveled by its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and its open support of Hamas. Ironically, Israel’s punishing of Hezbollah has helped Erdoğan in Syria, where Turkey is backing anti-Assad forces in the north of the country, though don’t expect him to acknowledge that.
Secondly, there is Qatar, an emirate grounded in Sharia law, where a little more than 10% of the population enjoy full citizenship while the vast majority—mainly migrant workers toiling in slave-like conditions—live under a form of real apartheid. The Biden administration’s faith that Qatar—a financial and diplomatic backer of Hamas whose capital hosted the terror organization’s leaders—could act as an honest broker in negotiations to release the hostages was spectacularly misplaced, with more than a year dragging by since the one-and-only prisoner exchange that compelled Israel to release Palestinians convicted of terrorism and violence. Despite this dismal failure and its two-faced stance on terrorism, Qatar’s ruling family continues to be feted by international leaders, most recently in London, where the British Royal Family dutifully trooped to The Mall for a parade welcoming the visiting emir. For the foreseeable future, Qatar’s astonishing wealth, coupled with its financial hold over many of the world’s capitals, is a guarantee of immunity from criticism, let alone actual sanctions.
For Turkey and Qatar, then, net gains. For Iran and its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies, net losses. For Israel, the jury is out. The first year of Trump’s term in office will doubtless tell us more.
Israel is said to be preparing for the possibility that the Syrian army may collapse in the face of rapidly advancing rebel forces, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding security deliberations on the matter on Thursday night.
Channel 13 reported that the IDF now assesses the rebels may pose a real threat to the continuation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. According to a report on Channel 12, Israel has been surprised by the weakness of the Syrian army, as it continues to swiftly lose ground to the jihadist-led fighters.
The report added that Israel has sent a strong warning to Iran not to send weaponry to Syria that could reach the hands of the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.
Kan news reported, citing two unnamed sources, that Israel and the United States are “detecting signs of certain collapse” in the Syrian army, and that one of Israel’s main concerns is that the rebels will advance as far south as the Israeli border with Syria in the Golan Heights.
Channel 13 said Israel has conveyed messages to rebel leaders to stay away from the border.
Earlier on Thursday, Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi held an assessment on the developments in Syria, as the rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured the key central city of Hama, a little more than a week after they launched their offensive, just as a ceasefire took hold between Israel and Assad’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
Residents take to the streets of Hama, to welcome anti-government fighters after they took control of Syria’s west-central city on December 5, 2024. (Photo by Bakr Alkasem / AFP)
Last week the rebels took control of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, and have since pushed south, capturing Hama on Thursday and advancing further south to Homs, a key central city that functions as a crossroads connecting Syria’s most populous regions.
The Israeli military assessment was held with the IDF General Staff Forum, the military’s top brass.
“The IDF is following events and is preparing for any scenario in attack and defense,” the military said in a statement. “The IDF will not allow a threat near the Syrian-Israeli border and will act to thwart any threat to the citizens of the State of Israel.”
Amid the growing concern, two senior Israeli officials told the Axios news site that the collapse of regime defense lines in the past 24 hours had happened faster than expected.
A US official who also spoke to the site said that Israel has expressed concern to Washington over both a potential radical Islamist takeover of Syria and an increased presence of Iranian forces in the country to back Assad.
At the same time, an official told The Times of Israel anonymously that Israel’s interest in the renewed fighting in Syria is “that they continue fighting one another.”
They added: “It’s entirely clear to us that one side is Salafi jihadists and the other side is Iran and Hezbollah. We want them to weaken one another.”
The official stressed that Israel is not getting involved on either side. “We are prepared for any scenario and we will act accordingly.”
From the people who brought you “Israeli apartheid” comes another trendy smear: “Israeli genocide.” With a new report Wednesday night, Amnesty International assures its good standing in the anti-Israel herd. The price is to swallow an inversion of reality.
Amnesty poses as a fair-minded critic of Israeli policies, but it tipped its hand in its 2022 report that tried to claim “this system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948.” That’s well before any “occupation,” but it reflects the ideological obsession that treats the Jewish state’s existence, in any borders, as a crime.
Amnesty’s headline-grabbing apartheid report quietly conceded it wasn’t arguing Israel’s laws are analogous to South Africa’s. This new report uses a similar sleight of hand by redefining genocide. The case law at the International Court of Justice requires a finding that “intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part, must be the only reasonable inference which can be drawn from the pattern of conduct.” Amnesty says that’s too high a bar and looks at the “broader picture” and “context.”
By context it means apartheid and all its previous slanders of Israel. What about Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, which was genocidal in character? Here’s the report’s opening line: “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration.”
Gaza wasn’t occupied, and Hamas, not Israel, embarked on a military offensive. But Amnesty says it will get to the Hamas mass murder later. Here it uses the Oct. 7 massacre to pathologize the Israeli “state of mind resulting from the attacks.”
While Amnesty uses the casualty figures of the “Gaza-based Ministry of Health,” aka Hamas, it never mentions that Israel says 17,000 dead Hamas fighters are among them. It omits the crucial civilian-to-combatant ratio, which would suggest Israel has done better than most in urban warfare.
The report essentially blesses Hamas’s strategy of using human shields. It suggests Israel has no right to attack in civilian areas even if Hamas is using them, just as it wouldn’t if some enemy soldiers had gone home on leave. As if that’s equivalent to terrorist headquarters in hospitals and a 400-mile, terrorist-only tunnel system beneath cities.
None of this is surprising. For the better part of two decades, Amnesty has been fixated on singling out Israel for condemnation.
In February 2022, Amnesty labeled Israel an apartheid state. This term, originally associated with South African segregation, has been misappropriated by anti-Israel activists to paint the Jewish state as inherently racist.
Amnesty ignored the active participation of Arab citizens in Israeli society, from serving in the Knesset to holding prominent roles in medicine, academia and law. It omitted the historical context behind Israel’s security measures, designed to thwart relentless waves of Palestinian terrorism, and distorted the legal and political realities on the ground.
During “Operation Protective Edge” against Hamas in 2014, Amnesty accused Israel of grave violations of international law. Overlooking substantial evidence of Hamas’s use of schools, hospitals and mosques as weapons depots and command centers, Amnesty decried Israel’s defensive measures. It issued reports lamenting civilian casualties and damaged buildings while downplaying Hamas’s use of densely populated areas to provoke such tragedies.
Meanwhile, Amnesty remained silent on Hamas’s brutal treatment of its own people, including executions of alleged “collaborators” and the forced recruitment of child soldiers. Nor did it acknowledge Israel’s unprecedented measures to warn civilians—via phone calls, leaflets, and “roof-knocking”—before conducting strikes.
The aftermath of “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008-09 prompted a similarly warped narrative. Amnesty’s report “22 Days of Death and Destruction” portrayed Hamas as a minor player, rather than a bloodthirsty terrorist group that had fired thousands of unprovoked projectiles into Israel.
During the Second Intifada (2000-2005), when Palestinian suicide bombers attacked buses, cafés and nightclubs, Amnesty directed its ire at Israel’s counter-terrorism measures, such as the construction of a security barrier to reduce attacks on innocent Israelis.
Despite Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing every last Jew from the Strip, Amnesty continues to describe the enclave as “occupied.” The pattern is undeniable: Amnesty seizes every opportunity to vilify Israel.
Founded in 1961 by British lawyer Peter Benenson to advocate for prisoners of conscience, Amnesty won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its defense of human dignity and a United Nations human-rights prize the following year. Once lauded for impartiality, it has devolved into a slanted advocacy group with a pernicious agenda.
Amnesty’s animus toward Israel transcends politics. Naturally. Considering the existence of the Jewish state to be illegitimate means never having to care about the ideological makeup of the ruling coalition in Jerusalem.
House lawmakers are circulating a joint statement condemning Amnesty International for its report accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
The statement, which is still open for additional signatories, according to a source familiar with the effort, accuses Amnesty of echoing “misinformation that has been spewed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran — the U.S’ shared enemies with Israel” and of “mislead[ing] the public by standing with the narratives produced and promoted by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”
The statement is being organized by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Max Miller (R-OH), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Tom Kean (R-NJ), Don Bacon (R-NE), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) had signed on as of Thursday night.
The lawmakers accuse Amnesty of making “slanderous” claims, in line with a “long-standing, historically biased position against Israel and the Jewish people.” They said the NGO had “admittedly and nefariously created its own definition of the legal term ‘genocide’ in their report simply to fit their defamatory narrative.”
The lawmakers said that Amnesty’s “[f]alse statements about Israel’s conduct in its war of self-defense rewards self-proclaimed genocidal terrorist organizations intent on destroying the Jewish state and murdering Jews everywhere” and would “embolden Israel’s enemies” in their fight against both the U.S. and Israel.
“The promotion of this misleading report will further threaten the safety of the only Jewish nation in the world and undermine those working to achieve the safe return of all hostages,” they continued.
We are pausing the delivery of aid through Kerem Shalom, the main crossing point for humanitarian aid into Gaza.
....
In Gaza, the humanitarian operation has become unnecessarily impossible due to:
- The ongoing siege,
- Hurdles from Israeli authorities,
- Political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid,
- Lack of safety on aid routes and
- Targeting of local police.
The responsibility of protection of aid workers + supplies is with the State of Israel as the occupying power.
They must ensure aid flows into Gaza safely & must refrain from attacks on humanitarian workers.
Notice that all five reasons given blame Israel. Hamas and the armed gangs who steal food are nott mentioned as the problem - they are an inevitable consequence of Israeli actions. (This of course is bigotry - Lazzarini is saying that Gazans naturally steal.)
An UNRWA Director of Logistics for Gaza, Miranda Barakat, just toured an empty UNRWA warehouse in southern Gaza and she gave her own impressions of the problems for Arabic-speaking audiences.
She didn't mention Israel once.
Instead, she said that the reason the warehouse is empty is due to the danger felt by workers in transporting goods from the Kerem Shalom crossing to the warehouses as a result of the current security situation. She admitted that UNRWA has 700 lorries inside the crossing waiting to be picked up.
She said the thieves don't only take the goods but also steal the batteries and tires of the trucks.
Barakat properly blamed the thieves, not Israel. She said that those who deliberately steal aid trucks do not only aim to steal, but also to sabotage, disable and take them out of service, at a time when it is impossible to find replacement spare parts due to the war.
While she doesn't directly blame Hamas, it seems apparent that only Hamas would be interested in the batteries and tires to keep their own logistics running. The armed gangs would want to ensure that the aid keeps coming; disabling trucks hurts their entire business model.
It is still striking that the constant blaming of Israel alone is rhetoric meant for the West. Gazans know that Israel is bringing the goods to Gaza and the problems start there.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
After nearly a year of contentious public comment periods at Boulder City Council meetings — dominated by protesters demanding the council endorse a Gaza ceasefire resolution and increasingly marred by personal attacks, including antisemitic remarks directed at City Councilmember Tara Winer, who is Jewish — the mayor and several councilmembers took a stand during their Dec. 5 meeting. Earlier this year, the council voted 7 to 2 to abstain from initiating a process to create a Gaza ceasefire resolution.
“This city council body has no role in international affairs,” Mayor Aaron Brockett said. “A ceasefire resolution has nothing to do with the business of the city. … This is not something that I’m changing my mind on,” he added, noting that he is “disturbed by some of the personal attacks that we’ve seen against other community members and individual city councilmembers.”
Brockett specifically referenced a comment from a previous meeting where someone compared the city council to Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief engineers of the Holocaust. The mayor said he had previously stayed silent during public comment periods, hoping the issue would fade.
Winer has been targeted by anti-Semitic remarks, including being called a “Jewish supremacist” during one meeting and receiving emails containing antisemitic slurs. People attending the Dec. 5 council meeting accused councilmembers of being “baby killers” and said they were “complicit in genocide.”
Last month, the Boulder campus of Colorado University was graffitied with "FUCK ISRAEL," "HAMAS IS RESSITANCE" and other slogans that the university termed antisemitic.
On the one hand, the haters have been successful in normalizing the worst antisemitic slurs like the "genocide" libel. On the other hand, they are really alienating normal people even on the Left.
But perhaps this is part of the strategy.
When they do extreme stunts like these or blocking traffic or stopping a Thanksgiving Day parade, it may be that this gives them more room for the accusations of "genocide" and calling Hamas "resistance." People only have the ability to be outraged at a limited number of things; responding to every "river to the sea" chant has diminishing returns and that ends up making the lies and calls to ethnically cleanse Israel in the name of democracy sound more reasonable in contrast.
I don't think the haters are quite that organized, but the effect is the same. Normal people might get upset at their blatant antisemitism but there has still been very little headway into pointing out that it is all antisemitism.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The wonderful Jacqui Peleg, the person behind #TheGazaYouDontSee hashtag known as Imshin, created a video describing exactly how Hamas steals aid and resells it to desperate Gazans. I asked her for the transcript to make it into a guest post.
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In recent days, the media has been airing disturbing footage of massive queues outside bakeries in South Gaza, reporting terrible shortages of flour and bread.
At the same time, COGAT, the unit in the IDF responsible for coordinating and facilitating humanitarian aid for Gaza, says 18,000 tons of flour entered the Gaza Strip in November on 600 trucks.
So what’s going on? Where is all the flour?
One of the problems facing Hamas since the beginning of the war has been how to continue to pay salaries to their people, especially since the IDF has discovered and confiscated huge amounts of cash found in Hamas terror tunnels.
They’ve done all sorts of things, even resorting to robbing the banks!
But by and far the most lucrative money-making scheme has been turning a profit from the hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks that pour into the Gaza Strip weekly, and also dozens of private sector supply trucks.
Hamas regularly steals humanitarian aid trucks, taking what they need, and selling the surplus for exorbitant prices in the markets. They have even created a special unit of enforcers, the Saham Unit, ostensibly to prevent stealing of trucks, but in fact believed by many Gazans to be doing a lot of the stealing itself.
Hamas also “taxes” private sector food imports for half of their worth and more. By “taxes” I mean that armed Hamas forces stop the trucks at gunpoint and force the drivers to either pay or hand over the merchandise.
Between 16th– 17th November, 109 flour trucks were reportedly stolen after entering South Gaza via Kerem Shalom crossing. Hamas claimed the trucks were stolen by “criminal gangs”, but Gazans on social media said that the only criminal gang, capable of pulling off such a large-scale heist, was Hamas itself. This is because Hamas continues to control the population and resources in the Gaza Strip with an iron fist.
Gazan activist and journalist Hamza al-Masri commented a few days ago that one sack containing 25 kg of flour pays the salary of one Hamas Nukhba terrorist for a month.
Although food prices in general had been going up before the heist - and why this is happening is a subject for a separate article - this 109 flour truck heist was the trigger that started the so-called flour crisis.
With the heist, Hamas in effect created an artificial flour shortage, putting severe pressure on the population, and this lead to the creation - or perhaps continuation on a higher level - of yet another Hamas money-making scheme. This scheme involves running what Israeli commentator Abu Ali has called “a bread cartel” with the big bakeries.
According to COGAT, twelve big bakeries are operating in Gaza, four in North Gaza and eight in South and Central Gaza, producing close to three million pita breads a day.
The bakeries receive free flour and fuel and are supposed to sell each bag of ten pita breads for three shekels. That’s the equivalent of 83 US cents.
Descriptions I’ve seen of how the bread cartel works suggest two options:
The first option is that the queues outside the bakeries are policed by gunmen who make sure that those buying the three shekel bags are children and young girls belonging to certain families and crime gangs. The bags are then sold on for thirty to forty shekels each. That’s between eight to ten dollars.
The second option is to sell a small amount of the three shekels bags at the bakeries. Of course, everyone converges on the bakeries to try and get a bag of the subsidized bread, creating a massive crush that makes for great propaganda, for the “The Gazans are Starving” lie.
Now, I‘ve seen enough queues in Gaza to know that when they want to, the Gazans are quite capable of enforcing orderly queues, and standing patiently in line for hours on end. So, when I see one of these shocking massive crushes, I can usually tell by the source that it has been manufactured to shock and manipulate a Western audience. What’s more, it is more often than not filmed and photographed by Hamas mouthpieces, such as Hasan Eslaiah, who you may remember also participated in the October Seven Massacre.
To continue, in this second option, a large proportion of the bread is smuggled out of the back, and sold, again, for thirty to forty shekels for a bag containing ten pitas, ten times and more above the official price!
My guess is that both option one and option two are used by the bakeries in tandem.
Unsurprisingly, Gazans are tired of these games. After the heist they started to buy sacks of 25kg of flour to make their own bread, which many Gazans have been doing all along, using traditional clay ovens.
At first, the prices skyrocketed – you could pay anywhere between 600 to 1000 shekels for a sack of flour. That’s between $165 to $280. That’s if you could even find any. But relatively quickly, as additional flour trucks entered, prices started to come down again. The last I saw were around 280 to 300 shekels. That’s $78 to $83. But it’s probably come down more, and I just haven’t seen it.
Now the strange thing is that while all this fake crisis has been unfolding in South Gaza, in North Gaza there has been no flour shortage at all. On the contrary, there has been a surplus, and since prices remain low, some flour shipments to the North have even been thrown away, perhaps to keep the price up.
A few days ago, I even came across 25 kg flour sacks being sold in North Gaza for 5 shekels each! That’s $1.40 each for 25 kgs of flour! For the benefit of American readers, 25 kg are just over 55 lbs.
My message to people watching the heartbreaking footage of desperate Gazans being crushed in bread lines in Gaza, is that I’m afraid to say you are being conned. This is not to say that the Gazans in those crushes are not suffering, but that it is not the result of any real shortage, but of a manipulation to exploit both the ordinary Gazans, and you.
__________________
Kan TV also had a story on how Hamas steals aid into Gaza.
Since October 7 last year, we've seen, again and again, a consistent theme from the media: Jews cannot be trusted.
Everything Israel says that makes it look less than monstrous is triple-checked and publicly doubted. Gaza "witnesses" and "humanitarian workers" - who are all either working with or are deathly afraid of Hamas - are trusted without any verification or skepticism.
The new Amnesty blood libel report accusing Israel off genocide continues that antisemitic tradition. But something that happened outside the report itself is, in many ways, more illuminating than he hundreds of examples of how Amnesty believes anything a Palestinian says and nothing a Jew says.
Amnesty Israel issued a statement that it disagrees with its parent organization Amnesty as to its conclusions. But more interesting still is that the Israeli branch says that they were not involved in the report at all. Their press release says Amnesty Israel "is not one of the initiators of the report; it is not one of its authors, and that the branch in Israel was not a partner in financing or approving the report,"
The question everyone should be asking is...why not?
Why didn't Amnesty ask their Israeli branch to contribute to a report about the country that they know better than any other Amnesty researcher?
Amnesty complains in the report that Israel didn't cooperate with them. But they themselves didn't cooperate with their own Israeli branch!
Certainly the Amnesty Israel people could have added context, color, and depth to the report, not to mention correct the many mistakes like taking Israeli officials' quotes out of context. Apparently the parent organization didn't even use Amnesty Israel to help translate Hebrew!
Amnesty interviewed scores of seemingly ordinary Gazans and aid workers. But they didn't interview any Israelis. or IDF soldiers who fought in Gaza. Amnesty Israel could have looked out their window and found a dozen IDF reservists willing to talk about what they did (and didn't do) in Gaza.
Clearly, Amnesty didn't want to pollute its blood libel report with facts and context.
The report is book-sized. It takes a lot of resources to put something like that together. Not using Israelis who have a more accurate perspective on how the IDF works - indeed, many of the Amnesty Israel employees probably served in the IDF - can only be because Amnesty doesn't trust Jews.
This is further proof that Amnesty wrote the report from the start to make the libelous "genocide" claim against Israel, and always intended it to be one-sided. Amnesty Israel - which is still far -Left and highly critical of Israel's conduct in Gaza - would have watered down what Amnesty wanted to say. It would have pointed out mistakes. Amnesty knows that its thesis is precarious to begin with (after all, they had to make up a new definition of genocide) , and if their Israeli branch would have been involved, the pre-determined conclusion would have been endangered.
This is echoed by some Amnesty Israel employees who can say with authority that the conclusions were written before the "investigation."
In a separate statement obtained by the Haaretz newspaper, several members of Amnesty Israel and Jewish members of Amnesty International went one step further and accused the report of producing an “artificial analysis” of the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“From the outset, the report was referred to in international correspondence as the ‘genocide report,’ even when the research was still in its initial stages,” Haaretz cited the Amnesty members as saying.
“This is a strong indication of bias and also a factor that can cause additional bias: Imagine how difficult it is for a researcher to work for months on a report titled ‘genocide report’ and then to have to conclude that it is ‘only’ about crimes against humanity,” they added. “Predetermined conclusions of this kind are not typical of other Amnesty International investigations.”
They accused the report of having been “motivated by a desire to support a popular narrative among Amnesty International’s target audience” that stemmed from “an atmosphere within Amnesty International of minimizing the seriousness of the October 7 massacre. It is a failure – and sometimes even a refusal – to address the Israeli victims in a personal and humane manner.”
At the very least, Amnesty's not using the Israelis shows a shocking level of disrespect that Amnesty has towards its Israeli branch. To Amnesty, their Israeli employees are untrustworthy and must be marginalized.
Which is yet more evidence that Amnesty is irredeemably biased. They are practicing BDS against even the most progressive Israelis who fully subscribe to Amnesty's ideals.
If Amnesty Israel had any self respect at all, it would quit the organization. Clearly they are treated as if they are worthless.
Right now their entire role is to be the token Jews that Amnesty can point to in order to pretend they aren't antisemitic.
Here's a Soviet-era cartoon from 1972 that sums up the entire Amnesty report. (Caption: "In his likeness and image.")
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said that there will be “all hell to pay” if the Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip aren’t released by his inauguration on Jan. 20. He added: “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.”
While no one knows what Trump would actually do, can anyone doubt that a similar stance by the United States after the Oct. 7 pogrom would have produced results?
If, instead of appeasing Iran and bullying Israel, the Biden administration had told Qatar on Oct. 8 that unless the hostages were released within 24 hours, Washington would sever all economic, diplomatic and security relations with Doha—and meant that—it’s likely the hostages would have been freed and the horrors of the past year averted.
That’s because Qatar is Hamas. The Gulf state founded it, funded it and, until Trump won the November presidential election, sheltered the men who run it.
Qatar is a profound threat to the free world. As Yigal Carmon of MEMRI has written, it supports ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah. In 1996, it hid the future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in Doha. When the FBI came to arrest him, informing only the Qatari Emir, KSM disappeared within hours.
Arab states that support the Abraham Accords have repeatedly warned the West against Qatar. In 2017, Dr. Anwar Gargash, then the United Arab Emirates’ minister of state for foreign affairs, described Doha as the “main sponsor” of terrorism and a “safe haven” of extremism.
In 2017, Qatar’s behavior led Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to cut their diplomatic ties with it and impose a blockade on all contact by land, sea and air—a blockade that lasted for three-and-a-half years.
Yet the West refuses to treat Qatar as a godfather of terrorism and an enemy of civilization. During the past year, the United States has used it instead as an interlocutor with Hamas, treating the emirate as an honest broker in the negotiations to release the hostages.
These negotiations were never going to succeed. They were used instead to cripple Israel’s ability to inflict a speedy military defeat of Hamas. The only way the hostages were ever going to be released was through pressure on Hamas.
Yet Qatar had no intention of exerting that pressure, and none was exerted on Qatar, in turn, to do so. So the emirate played America for suckers, while more Israeli soldiers were killed or injured, and the hostages were left to their appalling fate.
Refusing to cut off the head of the snake in Tehran, the Biden administration conducted a Potemkin negotiation with Qatar which, despite its Islamist extremism and terrorist ties, has insinuated itself into the West on an enormous scale.
In 2006, Hezbollah precipitated a war with Israel. After 34 days, under the newly passed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, the Israelis ceased firing and withdrew.
In exchange, Hezbollah was to pull out of southern Lebanon, from the Litani River to the northern Israeli frontier, under the supervision of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Instead, both the LAF and UNIFIL did nothing—or actively collaborated with Hezbollah, which has now spent almost two decades emplacing missiles in schools and mosques, building underground fortresses and storing chemical weapons.
All this was in preparation for a future invasion of Israel that was to be followed by massacres, hostage-taking and, if possible, the conquest of the Galilee and other northern Israeli territories.
Had this plan been carried out in coordination with Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, along with missile barrages from Iranian territory, and strikes by the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias in Syria and Iraq, who knows how many Israelis might have been killed? Who knows whether Israel would have survived?
For reasons about which we can only speculate, that didn’t happen. But on Oct. 8, Hezbollah demonstrated solidarity with Hamas by firing missiles at northern Israeli communities. These strikes continued for more than a year. Tens of thousands of Israelis have had to abandon their homes.
Enormous numbers of Iranian missiles were launched against Israel from Iranian soil in April and October of this year, and sporadically by the Houthis.
Israel’s missile defense systems, augmented by American systems, minimized damage and, in response to Tehran’s attacks, Israel destroyed Iran’s air defense systems.
In September, the pagers carried by hundreds of Hezbollah operatives suddenly exploded. Days later, an Israeli airstrike killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deep in his bunker.
The Israelis then proceeded to destroy hundreds of Hezbollah missiles, launchers and weapons caches. Most of the group’s senior leadership has now been eliminated.
The ceasefire the Biden administration arranged last week has left Israelis arguing among themselves.
Critics contend that it will allow Hezbollah to get up off the mat, and that it doesn’t ensure that displaced Israelis can return to their homes.
My reading is that, on balance, the Israelis come out ahead. President Biden was adamant to achieve a “diplomatic solution,” and the Israelis need a prompt resupply of American munitions. That now appears to be in train.
The Israelis are already responding forcefully to Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire.
And next month, President Trump will bring a new approach to the Tehran-fueled conflicts of the Middle East.
But back to the Lebanese. They now have a chance to remove the imperial yoke Iran’s rulers put around their neck and regain their freedom, sovereignty and independence. The LAF, long funded and trained by the United States, should at least attempt to disarm a crippled Hezbollah.
Lebanese patriots need to ask themselves two very Israeli questions: If not now, when? If not us, who?
The area controlled by the thing that refers to itself as the Syrian government, which should more properly be termed the regime of Bashar Assad, remains the largest of the three zones of control in partitioned Syria. This structure controls around 60 per cent of the territory of the country.
The Assads run their fiefdom as a family dictatorship. One young Syrian evocatively described the country to me under the Assadsas a “family run farm, and we’re the animals.” This statement sums up the brutally repressive nature of the regime. But the Assads rule by more than terror. They are members of the Alawi sect, a split-off from Shia Islam. They have privileged their own community and implicated it in their excesses. The loyalty, partly coerced, of Syria’s Alawis is the foundation on which Assad’s continued rule of his area rests.
East of the Euphrates, in an area comprising roughly 30 per cent of Syria’s territory, a governing structure dominated by Syria’s Kurdish minority holds sway. The self-styled Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES) is recognised by no state in the world. It has nevertheless created the most stable and functioning area of Syria. Its fighters formed the key ground ally of the US-led coalition in the war against the Islamic State, concluded victoriously in 2019. Once the toast of all those opposed to the murderous excesses of ISIS, the Syrian Kurds and their beleaguered enclave are now largely forgotten by the world. They are nevertheless determined to maintain and defend their zone of control against ongoing attempts by both Assad and the Sunni Islamists supported by Turkey to encroach upon it.
Lastly, and most relevantly to the events of recent days, in the north west of Syria there is an enclave maintained with the support of Turkey, comprising around 10 per cent of Syria’s territory (though now considerably more, as a result of recent events), and further subdivided between two Sunni Islamist governing entities, the so-called Syrian Interim Government to the north, and the Syrian Salvation Government in the southern part of this area.
It may well be that any reader who has lasted this far now feels they understand less about Syria than they did when they began the article. Syria can have that effect. Nevertheless, the background matters. What has happened in recent days is that the Syrian Salvation Government, an entity maintained by a Sunni jihadi group called Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), has launched an offensive against the Assad regime, and has achieved remarkable success. Its allies in the Syrian Interim Government, meanwhile, have embarked on their own offensive against the Syrian Kurds.
HTS have rapidly covered ground. In a remarkable achievement, they have taken Syria’s second city, Aleppo. They are now menacing the city of Hama, 100 km or so further south. As a result of the gains of recent days, the Sunni Islamist enclave in Syria now has a population of around 7 million people.
The Assad regime is not yet in serious danger. The Sunni jihadis’ lines of advance are still far north of Damascus, and east of the Assad’s heartland in Latakia Province on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. As of now, at least, HTS’s remarkable offensive has simply re-set the balance between the areas of control in Syria.
So why should no-one have been surprised by the offensive?
First, because frozen conflicts rarely stay frozen forever. The causes that originally animated them tend to make themselves manifest at a time when one or another of the sides finds it opportune.
Secondly, because all serious observers of Syria have known for a while that behind its rhetoric, the Assad regime is a depleted and rotting structure, dependent on its powerful Iranian and Russian allies for survival. These allies are currently distracted in wars with Israel and Ukraine respectively. HTS, whose leader Abu Mohammed al Jolani is as tactically flexible as he is strategically rigid, spotted the opening and chose to strike.
And lastly, no one should be surprised at rival ethno-sectarian forces, supported by powerful regional and global states clashing in the Middle East across the landscape of collapsed states, because that is the very essence of the way that power is wielded across the region at the present moment. From this point of view, current events in Syria offer a kind of microcosm of the dynamics of the region as a whole. Hopefully, both western governments and publics are watching carefully, and may even emerge better informed about the nature and dynamics of the Middle East.
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Elder of Ziyon
