Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Is now the time to attack Iran?

Jake Wallis Simons writes in TheJC:

If there has been one message to have emerged in intelligence circles in recent weeks it is that Iran’s feared “axis of resistance” was not all it was cracked up to be. Did Russia and China come to Iran’s defence when Israeli planes attacked? They did not. When Tehran rained missiles on the Jewish state last April, however, a coalition of friendly democracies pitched in. It is clear where the true alliance lies.

For years, the Biden administration has been trying to appease the despots of Tehran. Why? It has never been any match for Western might. The time is approaching to point out that the emperor has no nukes.

For now. History may never repeat itself but certain lessons may be drawn. If Iran is allowed to go nuclear, there are two possible futures. Either the regime gets to wield its new atomic muscle across the region or it collapses under the weight of its own brutality and the weapons fall into chaotic hands. For Israel, neither would be tolerable.

The recent constellation of events has led Iran to its weakest position in decades. The regime is desperate. This week, Rafael Grossi, head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Tehran had drastically escalated its uranium enrichment programme. A wounded animal is most dangerous when cornered.

Whether the White House will get onboard or not, Jerusalem must rip apart the paper tiger of Tehran before it crosses the atomic threshold. Remember when the late John McCain sang “bomb bomb Iran” on the campaign trail? That was 16 years ago. Why the delay? The Begin doctrine worked in Iraq and Syria. It is time to dust it off once again.

There are a couple of other reasons for Israel to consider action now.

One is that Biden is the lamest in the history of lame duck presidents. Right now the US is rudderless. Any worries about the US turning against Israel at this point, with Trump entering the White House, are almost nonexistent.

But beyond that:

I recently looked at Iranian media to see what they were saying about the promised reprisal against Israel for last October's attack by Israel on Iran. Iranian officials and media are still promising that the attack is coming, and the emphasize that when Khamenei makes a promise, they will make sure it happens.

One analyst asked what is taking so long -in mid-November.

The first possibility is that Iran is trying to repair the gaps and strengthen its defense systems before attacking Israel, and this solid work may take a little time. For example, the Bavar 373 defense and defense system has proven to be very effective, but its number of missiles is limited. The Russian S-300 system is probably not up to expectations; Perhaps there is a greater need for electronic defense systems. For example, in order to repel the next Israeli attacks, a new generation of Russian or Chinese fighters may be needed, or for any other reason that Iranian defense officials want to patiently and intelligently organize and work hard.

Iran saw its weaknesses from Israel's October attack and is probably busily looking for all the help it can get to patch them. It knows that if it gives Israel an excuse, Israel's next attack will be much larger and more devastating. It doesn't want to attack when Israel's next response will hurt it much more than it can hurt Israel.

Why should Israel play Iran's game? They have publicly promised to attack Israel. (The UN seems strangely uninterested in that promise.) Israel has every right under the theory of self-defense to take the initiative this time. Why wait until Iran is closer to a nuke, until Iran shores up its defenses?

Israel has the ability not only to damage Iran's nuclear program (which is still mostly underground) but to cripple Iran's economy much faster than Trump's sanctions will. Iran can't count on too many friends to help it out.

While Israel may want to wait for a clearer reason to attack, the daily threats from Iran must be taken seriously. They didn't lie the last two times and they are not lying now. Waiting is what Iran is assuming Israel will do. There is no reason to play by their rules.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Adam Schiff was sworn into office yesterday. He chose to place his hand on a 15th century printing of a volume of Maimonides' legal opus Mishneh Torah that is owned by the Library of Congress.

This sparked an interesting discussion on X.

It is traditional for officials to swear on Bibles. Lahav Harkov half-jokingly asked whether Schiff thought that the Mishneh Torah is a Torah, which it isn't.

Forgetting Schiff's political positions, which certainly color people's responses, there are a couple of interesting points made.

One is that under US law, people can choose to swear in using pretty much anything they want. People have used a Dr. Seuss book, a rare Superman comic book, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X, or even nothing. So from that perspective, there is nothing wrong with swearing on a book of law, which seems appropriate given that the wording he is swearing is to support and defend the Constitution.

The other issue is whether Jewish law allows such an oath to begin with. Traditionally, religious Jews avoid swearing given the seriousness of such a move under Jewish law; instead we will say we "affirm" when going to court or the like.

In this case he did swear, so the question is whether a Jew can swear on a Mishneh Torah?

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin notes that "Ramah in Choshen Mishpat 87:15 cites opinion that allows for oaths to be administered on any Jewish Sefer that includes the name of God."

But that brings up the next question: does that mean the Tetragrammaton, the four letter Name that should not be pronounced, or one of the other Names that are more commonly used that do not have the same degree of sanctity?

As far as I can tell, looking at old editions of Mishneh Torah online, the Rambam (Maimonides) does not use the Tetragrammaton, instead abbreviating it with the letter "heh" or the "double yud." (He alludes to the Name in the acrostic introducing the work.)

So I am not sure that Mishneh Torah, while certainly holy, qualifies as a a book that contains the name of God for the purposes of taking an oath.

Finally, I expect it will take about five minutes before antisemites use this ceremony to "prove" that Schiff only swore to uphold Talmudic Jewish law, not the Constitution.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A new poll of Canadian Jews by a group of left-wing Jewish organizations finds something curious and seemingly contradictory.

It showed that a huge majority of Canadian Jews - 94% - believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

That's pretty much the definition of Zionism.

But only 51% of them considered themselves Zionists. 27% said they did not consider themselves Zionist and the rest were not sure.

So 94% of Canadian Jews are Zionist - but nearly half of them don't admit it even to themselves.

I don't have the raw results of the poll, but the article indicates that older and more religious Jews are more likely to say they have an emotional connection to Israel so it is likely that most of the people who are Zionist but claim not to be are younger and more liberal.

The most likely reason is that anti-Zionist propaganda among the Left has been so effective that the word "Zionist" is now associated with evil, completely outside of its actual meaning. Repetition - the most effective form of brainwashing - mean that even people who support Israel as the Jewish state don't want to be associated with that term.

We need to take back the word "Zionist" from the haters. We need Jews to be proud to be Zionist. We need to show the world that, invariably, anti-Zionists are just antisemites in new clothing.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Let's compare how much Syrian territory Israel controls with how much Turkey illegally occupies

Lots of antisemites are looking at Israel going into the former buffer zone in Syria to help defend Israel from any threats. They are saying that this is evidence of the "greater Israel" plan, of Israel's ast expansionist desires to eventually control the entire region from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Let's look at how much land Israel is now occupying. (Most maps from Critical Threats.)

It is the little patch of blue next to the much larger Golan Heights.

Now let's zoom out and look at who is controlling all of Syria today.

You can hardly see the blue area.

But look at the light yellow areas in northern Syria.

Those are controlled by the "Syrian National Army." The SNA is a Turkish proxy - essentially, Turkey's "Hezbollah." It is funded by Turkey, armed by Turkey and all of its military decisions are made by Turkey.

Turkey controls 22 times the area Israel controls - 8,835 square kilometers.

And the Turkish presence is not only in the yellow sections. As of 2021, one think-tank counted 113 Turkish military bases and outposts in Syria: within 5 governorates: 55 in Aleppo, 43 in Idlib, 9 in Raqqa, 4 in Al-Hasaka and 2 in Lattakia.

Unlike the Russian and Iranian bases in Syria, the Turkish bases are in no danger of being taken over by the rebels.

This has been going on for many years, and there are probably fewer articles about Turkish occupation of vast parts of Syria in the past decade than on Israel taking over tiny parts of Syria in the past couple of days.

But that is not the only thing that Western media has been downplaying about these areas.

Turkey considers a 20-30 km wide swatch of Syrian territory along its borders to be a "safe zone" - which is a buffer zone that it controls or intends to control. And within that zone are illegal settlements.

You see, Turkey has been expelling hundreds of thousands of Kurds from these territories - building settlements, and forcibly populating them with Sunni Muslim Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey. They are changing the demography of the area with settlements that almost no one talks about.

Turkey's policy of occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement enterprise in parts of Syria violates international law. Almost no one discusses this and European governments, fearful of Turkish reactions and threats to send millions of refugees their way, are reluctant to emphasize this - but no one outside Turkey disputes this.

How many Syrians has Israel displaced? From all accounts - zero.

Here is a great example where the main story is true - Israel did indeed take over 400 square kilometers of Syrian territory, as a temporary measure until there is a dependable government or other arrangements that can guarantee Israel's security. But when you compare that to the entire size of Syria and the amount of land controlled by other foreign nations, the real story turns out to be the one that everyone is ignoring.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/09 Links Pt2: ‘NY Times’ confirms Hamas presence in UN schools; BBC News is openly deceiving you; The Real Reason Iran Wants to Destroy Israel

From Ian:

Kassy Akiva: Why Trump Recognizing Jerusalem As The Capital Of Israel Is ‘Just and Right’

The authors of a book detailing the behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem weighed in on what a future Trump administration will mean for U.S.-Israel relations. In their book, “Because It’s Just and Right,” Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein chronicle the story behind one of Trump’s most significant foreign policy moves. Now, as Trump prepares to return to office in January, the two authors offer unique insights about how his second term may further redefine and strengthen U.S.-Israel relations. “You’re going to be seeing a whole different world, a much more peaceful world now with the Trump administration,” said Weiss. Weiss and Grunstein both predict that a key priority of the Trump administration will be to expand the Abraham Accords. “I think you’re going to see many countries become part of the Abraham Accords and you’re going to just see a whole different dynamic,” said Weiss. He added that the Abraham Accords will be able to broaden because the United States will refocus on countering the Islamic Republic of Iran and their proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Grunstein said that he hopes these actions will pave the way for a “Cyrus Accords” agreement — named after Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from captivity and allowed them to return to Israel in 538 B.C. — between Israel and the free people of Iran. “It’s natural for the free people of Iran to come together. And this new axis of evil that’s developed will be dismembered in effect, and it will usher in a new age of peace and prosperity in the world,” said Grunstein. Both Grunstein and Weiss believe that more countries will be emboldened to follow Trump’s lead and move their embassies to Jerusalem. So far, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea have made the move. Argentina has indicated that it will follow suit, with some speculation that Hungary is considering the move as well. Because It’s Just and Right, named from the remarks for former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who championed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995. Weiss himself was instrumental in the act’s passage, after being asked by Kyl to serve as an advisor because of his credentials as the president of Young Israel of Phoenix, a prominent synagogue.

JPost Editorial: Amnesty International cherry-picked incidents to fit its predetermined narrative

Undermining credibility
Amnesty International’s misuse of the term “genocide” undermines its credibility and trivializes the suffering of actual genocide victims. From the Holocaust to the Rwandan and Yazidi genocides, the term carries a historical and moral weight that should never be wielded irresponsibly.

The timing of this report is equally telling. It comes as Israel continues to recover from the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas: the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Amnesty International, which condemned Israel’s actions so swiftly, has yet to produce a comprehensive report on Hamas’s atrocities, including its use of human shields and indiscriminate rocket fire targeting civilians.

NGO Monitor said before the report’s publication that the announcement used selective evidence to come to its conclusions. The group highlighted how casting the humanitarian effort of evacuation orders as genocidal contradicted demands that Israel take precautions to avoid civilian deaths in combat.

This report is not about justice or accountability – it is about vilifying Israel. By turning a blind eye to Hamas’s crimes while condemning Israel for defending itself, Amnesty exposes its bias and forfeits its moral authority. The International Legal Forum pointed out that the report is “replete with malicious lies, gross distortions of truth, and fabrications of law.”

If Amnesty International wishes to salvage its reputation, it must retract this report and apologize for its reckless accusations. Human rights organizations must uphold fairness, impartiality, and truth – not inflame tensions with baseless claims. The term “genocide” should never be used as a rhetorical cudgel, and Amnesty’s decision to do so is an insult to both the victims of real genocides and to the truth itself.

Israel’s critics should remember this: The Jewish state will always be held to a higher standard and will not shy away from scrutiny. But reckless accusations like these do nothing to protect civilians or promote peace. Instead, they encourage extremists and deepen divisions.

David Collier: BBC News is openly deceiving you

Make no mistake – BBC News is openly deceiving its audience. It is happening day after day, and article after article. Sometimes we can put the problem down to laziness, ineptitude, or an ‘agency problem’ (the fact most BBC articles on the Middle East are dependant to some degree on toxic BBC Arabic journalists and their networks). But often, the problem is clearly more sinister than mere incompetence.

We know for a fact that there are numerous BBC journalists who spend almost all their time ONLY looking for new ways to demonise Israel – and there are far too many occasions where a piece has been deliberately worked to hide a central truth from a reader. The only logical conclusion – is that there are BBC journos out there who are deliberately skewing the news. BBC News deceiving readers – example 1

This heartbreaking article was published late Sunday night, 01 December. It is the story of a poor, innocent Lebanese family, who paid a devastating price during the conflict. Having already moved several times to get away from the fighting, the woman in the image – Rihab Faour – eventually lost both her children and her husband to a massive IDF strike. A devastating story with a crushing headline…so of course, the article went viral.

Hezbollah – the aliens from outer space
The article on Rihab Faour is a great example of a primary disinformation campaign the BBC has been running since Oct 7. The BBC completely misleads readers about the culture, and make-up of the societies being discussed. The truth is that Hezbollah is even more embedded into Shia Muslim Lebanese society, than Hamas is into Gaza – but this truth does not suit the narrative the BBC journalists want to spread around.

Instead, the BBC describe a fictitious landscape, which suggests 99% of the local population has nothing at all to do with the terrorist groups (that most of them voted for!). What this does is create a completely false illusion – as if Hamas and Hezbollah are aliens that have invaded these lands, and have forced themselves on all these poor, innocent, locals. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth and places the IDF in an impossible war.

But a very different story is hidden away behind the words in the article – or in some cases omitted all together. For example, even though it can be found easily online, the original village Rihab Faour came from is (strangely) not mentioned in the BBC article. I found it on the FB page of her husband’s workplace. It was Bint Jbeil. Which means that the BBC journo did not have to go far, to give some colour and context to the piece, because BBC News has previously referred to Bint Jbeil as ‘Hezbollah heartland’. For whatever reason – this information – that the family lived in a Hezbollah heartland, was left out.

Then the article tells us the family left ‘their unnamed village’ – and headed to a suburb of Beirut
“The Israeli bombs fell close enough to Rihab’s village that the 33-year-old and her husband Saeed, an employee of the municipal water company, gathered their daughters Tia, eight, and Naya, six, and fled to Rihab’s parents’ house in Dahieh, a suburb of the capital Beirut.”

A responsible journalist would probably have added here that the Beirut suburb of Dahieh – is the capital of Hezbollah’s ‘state-within-a-state’, which is WHY the suburb was being specifically targeted. But the BBC is not publishing this article to INFORM readers – it is being written to MISINFORM. So nowhere in the article is that vitally important fact mentioned either. The family left one Hezbollah outpost – and headed to another.

And it gets worse. The family moves again, and is tragically struck (and children being killed is always a tragedy), during an Israeli attempt to kill Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s co-ordination and liaison unit. Which means (whether it was successful or not) that the third place we know the family had set up home inside, was in, or next to, a building being used by Hezbollah’s leadership.

And then there is this from Saiid Kabalan – Rihab Faour’s husband. Posted on his timeline 11 years ago. A statement he is proud to be considered a terrorist, and is ‘at the service’ of Hezbollah:

12/09 Links Pt1: This Is What Imperial Collapse Looks Like; The suicide of the Israel haters; Israel denies report hostage deal in ‘advanced stage’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: This Is What Imperial Collapse Looks Like

It seems odd that the great mass of “anti-imperialist” students and scholars are so unenthusiastic about having a real-world example to point to. Nonetheless, the end of the Assad rule in Syria, whatever else it may also mean, signifies the textbook dissolution of an empire whose time has come and gone.

That empire is, of course, Iran’s.

The Iranian government itself may not fall. The end of the Russian Empire did not result in the disappearance of Russia, and the same is true of most empires. But Iran’s empire is crumbling.

It is appropriate, then, that it appears to be ending where it began: in Syria.

The Iran-Iraq War that consumed most of the 1980s reshaped political alliances in odd ways, one of which was that Baathist Syria aligned itself against Baathist Iraq and with non-Arab Iran.

zran expanded into Lebanon by helping to launch Hezbollah. This proved to be the most advantageous of any of its investments. Born of chaos and opportunism, Hezbollah was Iran’s successful effort to organize Lebanon’s disparate militias under one umbrella, while gaining Tehran a Mediterranean outlet.

Soon the Lebanon and Syria branches of this imperial tree would start to benefit each other. Iran used Syria to transfer arms and other terrorism supplies to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah’s leadership helped guide Bashar al-Assad when he succeeded his father, Hafez, as president of Syria at the young age of 34.

In the late 1980s, Iran was also an “angel investor,” so to speak, in Hamas. “Since its formation in late 1987, Hamas has received and continues to receive significant financial and other support from Iran,” writes Matthew Levitt, counterterrorism program director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “By 1994, Palestinian author-turned-legislator Ziad Abu-Amr wrote that Iran ‘provides logistical support to Hamas and military training to its members,’ estimating Iranian assistance to Hamas ‘at tens of millions of dollars.’ Over time, this figure would rise steadily.”

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was an important source of funding and training for Hamas. After Hussein’s fall, Iran stepped in to fill the void left by its old rival. Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader based until 2012 in Syria, played a key role in increasing Iran’s operational control over the Palestinian terror group.

Brendan O'Neill: The suicide of the Israel haters

They tried to destroy the Jewish State and ended up destroying themselves. The 7 October effect is extraordinary. Fourteen months after Hamas visited its racist savagery on the people of southern Israel, the so-called Axis of Resistance is in tatters. Hamas is gravely weakened as a result of the ruinous war it started. Hezbollah has been spectacularly humiliated, its leadership almost entirely wiped out by the IDF. And now the Assad regime has fallen. This ‘keystone’ of the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ is no more. The Iranian regime hasn’t looked this rattled, this isolated, this existentially brittle, since the Iran-Iraq war that followed its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Has there ever been a greater self-inflicted blow in world affairs than 7 October?

The fall of Assad is first and foremost a good day for the people of Syria. People are right to raise questions about what comes next, about what the Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and their various allies might do now they’ve conquered Damascus. But the staggeringly swift fall of the Assad regime, a testament to its superficiality, should be welcomed by all who love liberty. Bashar al-Assad, like his father Hafez before him, was the cruellest of rulers. He viciously suppressed dissent, jailed his critics, massacred Kurds and invited Russia to help him slaughter tens of thousands of his own countrymen during the civil war. The Syrians dancing in the streets following his spineless fleeing are not doing so because they’ve read every policy statement of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and agree with it all. They’re doing so because they feel the sweet relief of deliverance from Assad’s boot on their throats. It’s their Berlin Wall moment and it should not be begrudged them.

Yet Assad’s fall also speaks to the suicidal dynamic of 7 October. Hamas’s pogrom set in motion a chain of events that proved catastrophic for the pogromists themselves and their apologists. Assad’s scalp is the greatest prize yet in this self-destruction of the Israelophobes. That his shallow government, all-powerful but unrooted, was so speedily put into the history books by the advancing rebels is down to two things. First, and most importantly, the distraction of Russia. Assad’s allies in Moscow are too busy killing Ukrainians to be able help him kill Syrians this time round. Without the brute force of Russian back-up, Assad’s hollow government collapsed overnight. That Syrian soldiers in city after city downed arms as the rebels arrived spoke to the regime’s pathological frailty in the absence of Russian muscle.

The second problem for the Assadists was the gutting of Hezbollah by the IDF in recent months. Hezbollah played a central role in propping up the Assad regime during the civil war. Where Russia slayed rebels from the air, Hezbollah did it on the ground. It both trained pro-Assad militias in the ‘art’ of urban warfare and took part in major clashes, including the Battle of al-Qusayr when Assad forces and Hezbollah militants won back the key supply route of al-Qusayr in western Syria. The Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC went so far as to say that Hezbollah was ‘winning the war in Syria’, using its ‘battlefield acumen’ to re-establish Assad’s rule. In 2024, though, Hezbollah could do precisely nothing to assist its allies in Damascus. Like Russia, it is distracted. In fact, it is virtually defeated.

Where once Hezbollah ‘deployed its well-trained fighters’ to aid Assad, says the BBC, that ‘did not happen this time’ because Hezbollah is ‘preoccupied with [its] own affairs’. That’s one way of putting it. Actually, Hezbollah is suffering one of the worst ignominies of its entire existence as a result of the fallout from the 7 October pogrom it supported. In the days after Hamas’s butchery in southern Israel, Hezbollah started raining missiles on northern Israel in an act of solidarity with the Jew-killers. It was a low-level war for months until Israel upped the ante in September this year. It launched its devastating ‘pagers attack’ and took out Hezbollah leaders one by one, including the secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. Last month, Hezbollah agreed to the humiliating terms of a ceasefire deal with Israel that effectively forces it to vacate southern Lebanon and, worse, to submit to the authority of the Lebanese government.

How Assad’s Potemkin dictatorship crumbled

And just like that, Bashar al-Assad’s reign over Syria is no more. Over the course of a mere two weeks, what looked from the outside like a brutal but relatively stable regime has evaporated into thin air.

When several thousand opposition fighters, headed up by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), launched their offensive in late November, few would have predicted their triumph. Riding out from their anti-Assad hold-outs in Syria’s north-west, in pick-up trucks and on motorbikes, they looked like what they were – a fearsome set of militias, but surely no match for a state army backed by Russian airpower.

The HTS-led forces soon took towns and villages with ease. By last weekend, they had captured Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and were seemingly advancing on the capital, Damascus. Even then, few inside and outside Syria believed that Moscow-backed government forces would not at some stage mount a counter-offensive. On Saturday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that Russia ‘was trying to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from prevailing’. Rumours circulating that Assad had fled were denied. The interior ministry announced that the army was forming a ‘ring of steel’ around the capital. Surely, there would be a fightback.

But the fightback never came. The insurgents were able to enter and capture Damascus without really having to lift a weapon – except to fire celebratory shots into the sky. By Sunday, HTS had announced that ‘the city of Damascus is free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad’, and a few hours later HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, now going by his original name Ahmed al-Sharaa, was declaring victory in a speech to the nation from within Damascus’ historic Umayyad mosque, the same mosque at which Assad would usually mark Eid.

The speed with which Assad’s rule has collapsed and the sheer absence of any resistance reveals a stark truth about Syria’s fallen dictatorship. It has been completely hollowed out over the past decade or more of conflict. This was a regime built on repressive force that now lacked any actual force. A regime whose authority rested on military strength that now lacked a strong military. And so when Islamist factions pushed at the doors to the palace, as they did both literally and figuratively this weekend, they simply opened.

Few will mourn the passing of the Assad family’s half-century-long exercise in despotism. Bashar’s father, former airforce pilot Hafez al-Assad, had been a key player in a military coup in 1963, which brought the Ba’ath Party to power. When Hafez became president in 1971, it wasn’t due to popular support. From the start, his regime’s authority rested almost entirely on its use of force, principally through Syria’s much feared intelligence and security agencies.

Bashar al-Assad inherited this repressive regime, complete with its brutal security apparatus, in 2001. Initially feted by the West, this British-educated ophthalmologist set about liberalising Syria’s economy, largely for his and his network’s own benefit. At the same time, he busied himself repressing any hints of dissent and striking up a close relationship with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in neighbouring Lebanon – all the better to suppress their mutual opponents.

A reminder of how the "Axis of Resistance" loved Assad up until recently

It's really funny to see Iran and its proxies scramble to pretend to support the Syrian people, when just a month ago they were supporting the ruthless dictator who was repressing those same people.

Looking through older issues of Islamic Jihad's mouthpiece Palestine Today, I see this classic from 2022:

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, stressed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian people enjoy high esteem and prestige among the peoples of the region, noting that everyone today views Syria as a force to be reckoned with.

During his reception today, Sunday, of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his accompanying delegation, Leader Khamenei considered the resistance and steadfastness of the people and state in Syria and the victory in an international war as having provided the ground for strengthening Syria’s position and pride.

He said: "In light of the interest, activity and strong will of the President of the Republic and the Iranian government to develop cooperation with Syria, efforts should be made to further advance relations between the two countries."

The Leader of the Revolution stressed that Syria today is not Syria before the war, and pointed to the great successes achieved by Syria in the political and military arenas, indicating that respect for Syria and its status have become much higher than they were in the past, and that everyone sees this country as a force.

Or who can forget this greatest hit:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a new presidential term for the fourth time in a row after winning 95.1 percent of the votes, according to results announced by People's Assembly Speaker Hammoudeh Sabbagh on Thursday.

Not to mention this from this past August:

The Syrian President sent greetings to the resistance fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, who represent "a role model, an example, and a model for us to follow on the path of liberation, dignity, honor, and independence."

The "strong horse" theory remains in place, and there are fewer and fewer strong horses in the Iranian orbit.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Once upon a time, @UNRWA helped resettle Palestinian refugees in other countries - and removed them from their "refugee" counts

Browsing through old UNRWA annual reports, I saw this from 1954:

At one time, UNRWA would remove refugees from its rolls if they emigrated to other countries - and even if they made money on their own.

And UNRWA encouraged both. It created works programs (the "W" of UNRWA) to help Palestinians find work and become self-sufficient. Over time, those programs disappeared.

When it came to emigration, the same thing happened. Its 1956 report says that UNRWA provided grants to those who managed to obtain visas but couldn't afford travel: "1,040 refugees who wished to emigrate, who had obtained visas on their own initiative and who had requested assistance from the Agency have been given travel grants when they demonstrated that they would otherwise not have been able to use their visas."

UNRWA continued to give such grants for the rest of the decade, although it doesn't seem to have publicized that too well. The number of people who took advantage of it went steadily down. (Only Jordan and Lebanon allowed the refugees to leave; those in Syria and Gaza were not allowed to emigrate - for their own good, of course.)

South America was the preferred destination for most of the Palestinian refugees.

By 1962, the budget for paying for Palestinians to go elsewhere was slashed. The program wound a year or two afterwards, although UNRWA doesn't explain why.

This chart can help explain it, though:

By 1961, over 99% of UNRWA staff were Palestinians themselves. These were the ideologues who wanted to ensure that the population would stay put to pressure Israel with the threat of "return." It is no wonder that UNRWA funds to emigrate dried up - these Palestinian UNRWA employees would pressure, and probably threatened, anyone who wanted to find a better life in the West, where they would no longer be stateless.

It was not long after this that UNRWA decided that the definition of "refugee" would include their descendants, forever, and when UNRWA changed their policies to ensure that "refugees" can never be taken off their rolls even when they leave UNRWA areas of operation.

UNRWA transformed from an agency that actually tried to help Palestinians into an agency that only wanted to keep them miserable and stateless for political reasons. The statistics of those that UNRWA helped emigrate elsewhere is another piece of evidence for how the agency went from a group of people who really wanted to help into a political organization hell bent on using the "refugee" issue as a means to destroy Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Journal for Architectural Education has an upcoming issue called "Palestine."

The Call for Papers is a case study of how modern blood libels have infiltrated every corner of academia.

It claims that the slander that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid state is an established fact:

In the face of the ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, this issue of the Journal of Architectural Education calls for urgent reflections on this historical moment’s implications for design, research, and education in architecture. This volume will build on existing knowledge, research and publications to continue to learn from and with practices of resistance to the Zionist, militarist, carceral, and capitalist regime of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.....Contributors might map, represent, theorize, and historicize genocide, ecocide, spaciocide, terracide, and urbicide as practices of colonial erasure and unpack the way they appear and operate.

It gets worse. Much worse.

The call for papers celebrates October 7 as hopeful:

The Palestinian philosopher Abdaljawad Omar argues that Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and resistance to it—“no matter how horrific, bloody, and tragic”—cannot be reduced to a “pathology of violence.” Palestinians are not hapless victims nor motivated merely by “vengeance.” Omar advocates, instead, that a “pathology of hope” in a decolonial struggle “might ultimately create the space for new possibilities.” .....A decline of imposed Western hegemony corresponds with the rise of new formations of struggle and power that draw from radical possible histories, presents, and futures. Through this call for papers, we invite authors to engage with such formations of anti-colonial struggle within and beyond Palestinian geographies, reflecting on how Palestine has inspired pathologies of hope, constellations of coresistance, and infrastructures of resistance, the world over.

This is praise for a bloodthirsty, truly genocidal, Islamist terror ideology.

The romanticizing of Hamas and its murderers and rapists doesn't end there.

Though not human-built borders, the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea form the boundaries of aquatic imaginaries of sovereignty: the latter’s shores are equal parts a respite for Gaza’s citizens and the banks of now-heavily polluted waters weaponized by Israel in counterinsurgency efforts against Palestinian military resistance and the health of its soil. ...

In addition to weaponized environments of soil, water, and air, sites of consideration include the tunnel as a route of militants’ fight and prisoners’ flight, the blockade as carceral infrastructure, the safe haven of the hospital, the intergenerational sanctity and stewardship of the olive grove, the absenting of sacred space and cultural memory, the resistive archive, the breaching of the border fence and the rupture of settler containment...

This rhetoric sanitizes and romanticizes terrorist violence as a legitimate form of political struggle. By positioning the Hamas attack within a narrative of "anti-colonial struggle" and "decolonial hope," the text attempts to provide an intellectual veneer to a brutal terrorist massacre and mass rape of civilians. The call for papers seeks to transform acts of horrific violence into an academic discourse of liberation. This represents a profound corruption of academic standards, where a scholarly publication is being used to justify and celebrate terrorist violence rather than engage in genuine scholarly inquiry.

Beyond that, by excluding any other perspectives at the outset, they are brainwashing entire academic fields. There is no space for anyone who is not supportive of terror to be seen or heard in the pages of this journal.

Fields such as gender studies, Middle Eastern studies and anthropology have already been polluted and destroyed by these anti-Israel perspectives. Here, we see how the perverters of academia are encouraging brand new methods of research and scholarship for their own political ends, across every field they can find, to the detriment of academic research itself.

(h/t JW)

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I am pleased to announce that my long-awaited collection of the best of my cartoons has been released.

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" highlights the absurdities of Israel haters and antisemites.

This is more than a cartoon book. This is a scathing critique of the progressive Left that exposes their hypocrisy and ignorance. Their statements in these cartoons are barely exaggerated from what they really say, from cocktail parties to the newsroom to the offices of so-called human rights groups and college campuses.

Yaakov Kirschen, legendary cartoonist of Dry Bones, says,

Elder's book is a delight, I LOVED it.
The few cartoons in this surprising collection that aren't absolutely fabulous are merely really good. Amazingly, this important and insightful book about antisemitism is actually fun to read. A feel-good experience, a powerful message, and a great gift to be shared with friends (and others).

"He's a Zionist Too!" shows in a humorous way how the line between "anti-Zionism" and antisemitism is largely an illusion.

It would make a great Chanukah gift for the Zionists in your life! Buy it today!

Two notes of apology: First, I accidentally named the book incorrectly in the Amazon page, missing the "Anti." I'm hoping to get this corrected but getting hold of anyone at Amazon is not easy. (UPDATE: Mostly corrected.)

Secondly, publishing in color is more expensive than black and white. The book costs more than I intended, but it is only about 15 cents per laugh, which is still a bargain!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

There is no doubt that Hezbollah has been planning to rebuild its forces in Lebanon, whether north or south of the Litani, with or without the Lebanese army and UNIFIL watching, as soon as the IDF is no longer physically there.

However, Hezbollah was relying on the idea that Iranian weapons would resume being imported across the porous Syrian border. While Hezbollah had some rocket manufacturing facilities, chances are that they have almost all been heavily damaged or destroyed.

That rebuild is not nearly as easy now that Assad fell. Any Iranian weapons convoys that try to cross the country would probably be confiscated by the rebel forces.

This is the most obvious way Hezbollah could be affected by the fall of Syria, but not the only one.

Hezbollah claims the Shebaa Farms area, and the basis for that claim is that it is Lebanese, not Syrian (and therefor part of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel.) Syria has not claimed that area as a favor to Hezbollah although it hasn't relinquished it, either. If the new regime claims it as Syrian territory, Hezbollah's entire claimed reason for existence as "resistance" evaporates.

Also, Hezbollah got a large amount of income from the sale of illegal drugs, particularly Captagon, and it partnered with Syria in that enterprise. Now that avenue of revenue is severely impacted.

Furthermore, the fall of Assad was celebrated by the Sunnis and Christians of Lebanon. They are now even less likely to consider Hezbollah a veto power over their desires in Lebanon, as it has far less leverage than it had before.

It is a two way street - Hezbollah's weakness means Iran no longer has the power to impose its will on Lebanon, and the Lebanese were always resentful of their land being controlled by this outside Shiite power who does not have their best interests at heart.

I had argued for months that the Lebanese people had the power to pressure Hezbollah to stand down from an imminent major escalation with Israel. They were way too frightened to do so. But that was then - now they feel far more empowered with the combination of Hezbollah's and Assad's, not to mention Iran's black eye from Israel's attack on that regime in October.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah keeps shouting to the wind that they were victorious over Israel.

Israel's victory in Lebanon was great news for the people there. Syria's fall give the Lebanese people hope that it was not a temporary reprieve in wars every decade or two, but a real chance to build their own country.

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12/08 Links: As Assad falls and Iran weakens, Qatar gains influence across Middle East; This is Iran’s annus horribilis; Jewish community in Australia ‘no longer feel safe’

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: As Assad falls and Iran weakens, Qatar gains influence across Middle East

While Iran may appear cornered, there are still many wheels in motion in the region. Qatar will benefit from Iran’s weakness because it gives Doha even more influence and sponsorship space – the one Iran lost – over groups such as Hamas or the new emerging rulers in Damascus.

The system works like this: Over the past few years, Iran backed various regional groups, positioning itself in the role of hollowing out the countries these groups are based in, weakening them, and filling that space with militias.In Iraq and Lebanon, the militias are Shi’ite – like the Iranian regime; in Yemen, they also are a local sect.

In Syria, the Assad family is Alawite, a minority group. That means Iran fed off working with non-Sunni groups in the region.The exception to that rule was Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. By sponsoring these groups, Iran gained significant influence over Palestinians, enabling it to escape what was partly a sectarian ghetto.

Qatar is a different story. Doha backed the Muslim Brotherhood for years all across the region, a group rooted in Sunni Islamic politics, meaning that Doha has often found influence in civil conflicts and has been on a different path than Iran.

This was the case in Libya, Syria, and with Hamas. Qatar lost out at times, like when the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt in 2013. It even suffered some isolation when Saudi Arabia led several Arab countries to break ties in 2017.

Qatar and Turkey have formed an iron bond, however, and both have reached out to Iran. Turkey, Iran, and Russia were all part of the Astana process that aimed to end the Syrian civil war, and all three, along with Qatar, support Hamas.

While Israel will gain from Iran’s weakness, it is not a complete victory because Hamas continues to control Gaza, is angling for influence in the West Bank, and is holding 100 hostages. The Iranian threat was only one part of the deadly chessboard in this region, and a new threat will emerge soon.

Israel has always faced new threats. In the 1950s and 1960s, they were led by Arab nationalist regimes. Later, they were replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Turkey, whose leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, is one of the most vicious foes of Israel.

Make no mistake, the end of the Assad regime will not likely solve all of Israel’s challenges. Qatar is angling to make itself more important, and its historic hosting of Hamas presents a challenge to Israel’s security.

On October 7, 2023, more Jews were massacred in one day than at any time since the Holocaust. So, while Iran and its axis continued to be a threat, they could not massacre 1,200 people and kidnap 251. Israel prevented Iran and its allies from such activities.

The key issue right now is preventing Hamas and its backers in Ankara and Doha from exploiting the situation in Syria for their own ends.

Jonathan Schanzer: Assad End in Syria

The Syrian border with Israel, now fortified with ground troops and air power, is one to watch in the weeks and months ahead. The Israelis have already taken the buffer zone on the Golan Heights. But Northern Syria is another flashpoint to watch. This is the Kurdish region, which is already a target for the Turks and their Sunni jihadi proxies. The Kurdish People’s Defense Units or YPG have been a consistent concern for Ankara because of the group’s close ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group in Turkey and in the United States. Never mind that the YPG played a significant role in the US campaign to defeat ISIS. Troublingly, Turkey has unfinished business in Syria. The Kurdish people, who have suffered mightily throughout their history, are slated for more suffering.

Alarmingly, the lame duck Biden Administration looks like a bystander. The region has its eyes instead on the X feed of President-Elect Donald Trump, who has advised America to simply let the drama in Syria play out. This may ultimately be the American interest, but the incoming Trump team should warn the patrons of the Syrian rebels—Turkey and Qatar—to keep their fighters away from America’s allies. This should include both Israel and the Kurds.

Some analysts believe that a consolidated Syrian state under Sunni control, after more than half a century of dominance by the country’s Alawite minority, could portend stability. Still others believe that sectarian cantons could emerge. Still others see the eventual Balkanization of the country. It’s obviously too soon to predict, but it certainly seems as if the Sunni rebels will dominate most if not, all of the country when the guns fall silent.

Whatever the map ultimately looks like, we are watching the return of a competition between two storied Middle East empires. The Iranian aspirations for a resurrected Persian empire experienced a massive setback yesterday. But those in Turkey seeking a neo-Ottoman order in the Middle East are elated. In other words, Syria has flipped from an Iranian satrap to an Ottoman sanjak overnight.

The fight for Syria appears to be over. The end of the Assad regime is an historic event. But history is still being written. The regional war launched by Hamas on October 7 has backfired horribly on its patrons in Tehran. Whether other unintended consequences follow is yet to be seen.

Syria: Better the Devil We Don't Know

From the perspective of Israel's strategic interests, the rebel attack in Syria presents opportunities that overshadow the risks. During the years when ISIS controlled territories in Iraq, the Iranian land route from Iran to Syria was blocked. Now, a similar blockage is expected to affect the land routes from Syria to Lebanon.

The chances of the recent agreement in Lebanon to restrain Hizbullah in the long term are increasing, as the process of its military recovery, after the war with Israel, will be slowed. At the same time, Iran's appetite for continuing cycles of threats and blows with Israel is expected to wane further, after Israel's effective strikes within its territory in October, which have already cooled its enthusiasm.

Some view Assad's regime as the "lesser evil" and argue that Israel would be better off with "the devil we know." According to this view, Assad is a figure with whom Israel can engage in deterrence dialogue (allowing air force freedom of action). He suppresses the Islamist forces that are far from being "Zionist-friendly," and he maintains a certain degree of stability in Syria and control over weapons, especially unconventional ones, within its territory.

We disagree. Assad, who massacred half a million of Syria's citizens and used chemical weapons against them, is a central figure in the axis that poses the most significant strategic threat to Israel. Most of Hizbullah's weapons have come from his production lines, his warehouses, or from Iran through Syrian territory. The ties between the Alawite regime in Syria and the mullah regime in Tehran are deep, and all efforts to distance Syria from Iran have been in vain.

On the other hand, the many Sunni rebel groups in Syria are not expected to direct their weapons toward Israel, certainly not in the immediate or medium term. They have a long-standing blood feud with Assad, Iran, and Hizbullah, and also among themselves.

Israel would prefer "the devil we don't know," as long as it leads to the weakening of Iran and the Shiite axis, which would mean a dramatic and positive shift for Israel in the regional balance of power.

How did UNRWA "verify" teachers weren't terrorists? By getting a signed letter from Hamas!

"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.

They add details that show UNRWA is irresponsible even more than we had already known.

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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From the front page of Iran's PressTV:

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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