Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, December 14, 2024

12/14 Links: Number of civilians killed in Gaza ‘inflated to vilify Israel’; Shifting the goalposts of genocide; Is domestic terrorism the next step for antisemitic radicals?

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Syria Refused to Accept Final Borders. It’s Paying For That Now

The narrative in parts of the press that Israel is “invading” Syria because it has been taking out loose chemical weapons stocks and securing its buffer zone is more an expression of emotional derangement than analysis, but egging on Syria’s rebels to go to war with Israel is a bit much even for this crowd.

There is a serious point here, however. Complaints about violations of Syrian sovereignty are reminders that the fluid borders are Syria’s own doing, by design. Countries that actually signed peace and recognition agreements with Israel don’t have this problem, because those countries were willing to delineate permanent borders with the Jewish state. No one is guiltier of obstructing that process than Syria.

Upon the passing of the UN partition plan in 1947 and the subsequent assurances by the British that they would fulfill plans to end the UK’s mandate for Palestine and allow for the division of the land into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, Syria began agitating for war and whipping up opposition to recognizing Israel among the Arab states. The Syrian government expressly warned the U.S. that should partition pass, there would be blood. It was not an idle threat.

In early 1948, U.S. diplomatic correspondence outlined Syria’s orchestration of a campaign of disregarding the sovereignty of Palestine while it was still held by the British: “Reports from the U.S. Mission at Damascus indicate that Syria is the center of recruitment and training of the so-called ‘irregulars’, which are intended for infiltration over the Palestine border and subsequent guerilla work in Palestine. There is evidence that such forces have already proceeded across the border to a considerable extent.”

The memo went on to explain in more detail: By New Year’s 1948, Syrian commanders had recruited thousands of irregular soldiers—more, in fact, than they had weapons for. Syria also became “the training center for recruits from Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.” Beginning less than a month after the partition vote, these militiamen began infiltrating Palestine with what appeared to be Syrian soldiers directing or covering them. A Syrian defense official described one attack on a village “as a ‘screen,’ under cover of which there is good reason to believe that approximately 600 Syrian-trained, equipped and transported ‘regular irregulars’ moved across the border into Palestine.”

The U.S. charge d’affaires in Damascus dryly suggested that the government “might consider cautioning the Syrian Government that its participation in recruiting, arming, training, financing and transporting the ‘irregulars’ to the frontier in Syrian army trucks is contrary to the word and spirit of the U.N. charter and the G.A. U.N. resolution on partition.”

Syria got its war, and failed to defeat the Jewish state. In 1949, Israel and Syria signed an armistice agreement that “emphasized that the following arrangements for the Armistice Demarcation Line between the Israeli and Syrian armed forces and for the Demilitarized Zone are not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements affecting the two Parties to this Agreement.”

Syria then spent the next two decades trying to claw land away from Israel and redirecting water supplies away from the Jews, while shelling Israeli civilians from Syrian-held positions. In 1967, Syria tried again and failed again: This time Israel was able to take the high ground of the Golan. After the war, the Arab states announced they would not negotiate with Israel over the return of land that changed hands during the war.

Biden Admin Takes Credit for Israeli Victories It Tried To Prevent

Biden administration officials have claimed credit this week for the ongoing collapse of the Iranian axis, seeking to recast their role in a series of Israeli victories that they worked to thwart.

Hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria on Sunday, President Joe Biden touted "the unflagging support of the United States" for Israel’s war against "Iran and its proxies," Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden noted that Israel had weakened the coalition of tyrants and terrorists in the region to a point where it became "impossible ... for them to prop up the Assad regime."

"Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East," the president boasted in remarks at the White House. "Through this combination of support for our partners, sanctions [on the Assad regime], and diplomacy and targeted military force when necessary, we now see new opportunities opening up for the people of Syria and for the entire region."

The Biden administration has overseen crucial U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel during the past 14 months of the war. But from the outset, Biden and his aides have also pressed Israel to reach accommodation with its enemies—criticizing, threatening, and punishing the U.S. ally in the name of regional deescalation. By early this year, before Israel had militarily defeated Hamas or seriously retaliated against Hezbollah or Iran, Biden was already publicly calling for an end to the fighting.

"Biden tried to prevent us from winning this war in every way he could," Gadi Taub, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a cohost of the Israel Update podcast told the Washington Free Beacon. "Now that we’re winning in defiance of him, he’s pretending that he was with us all along."

Syria’s Christians: ‘We Have No Reason to Trust Al-Jolani’

Christians have lived in Syria for over 2,000 years, but their numbers have dwindled since the beginning of the civil war in 2011, declining from 2.2 million to about 500,000 or less, making up just over 2 percent of the population. Richard Ghazal, a Syriac Orthodox Christian and executive director of In Defense of Christians, part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C., said that under Assad’s rule, Christians in Syria were generally protected by Assad as long as they didn’t raise objections to his cruel dictatorship. But they were always treated as second-class citizens. Many of them fled to Lebanon during the war. He said that Syrian Christian church leaders spoke favorably about Assad because they had to—it helped keep the Christian community safe.

“Bishops and priests in Syria and even in the United States knew that all their words and actions were scrutinized by the Assad government,” Ghazal told The Free Press. “If you weren’t a cheerleader for Assad, you were the opposition.”

This week, Fr. Bahjat Karakach, a Franciscan friar in Aleppo, told Vatican News that Christians living under Assad were not living, but were merely surviving.

Ghazal met with the State Department and politicians on Capitol Hill earlier this week and urged them to make it clear to Al-Jolani that America is watching. “The United States needs to show that we are interested. They need to show that we’re not going to be fooled, and we’re going to use whatever means possible from a foreign-policy standpoint to make sure this is right.”

Ghazal said he has received reports from Syria of rebels destroying liquor stores, since alcohol is banned in Islam, and of rebels telling women to cover their hair.

“This is chapter one,” said Ghazal. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is still trying to woo the world.”

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told The Free Press that Christians in Syria are vulnerable because “they have no protector, no militia, and people take advantage of them, either for criminal reasons or for ideological reasons, so they’re very much in peril. Whether it’s an Islamist authoritarian rule or whether it’s just political chaos, they’re fearful.”

And yet, in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city and the first to fall to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, there is a strange normalcy. “Things are positive for the Christian community,” said Hadeel Oueis, a Syrian Christian living in the U.S. who grew up in Aleppo. “The Islamist rebel groups want to show the international community that they have changed. They want the West to take them off the list of terrorist organizations. So they are behaving.” Oueis was arrested in 2011 and imprisoned for posting information on Facebook about anti-Assad protests in Aleppo. Despite the rebel takeover, she said, the members of her family have been able to return to work.

The Center for Peace Communications, where Oueis works, conducted on-the-street interviews with Christians in Aleppo after Al-Jolani’s takeover, and most were cautiously optimistic. “The first two or three days were uncomfortable, and we were very afraid,” said one woman. “We’ve had enough of war. It’s been 13 years, and our children haven’t been able to experience life. But after a couple of days, the electricity got better, and our situation has become better, safer.”

It’s too early to tell if al-Jolani will keep his word and ensure the safety of minority religious groups under his rule. Previous examples of Islamists taking control of a country aren’t encouraging. In 2020, after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban, a Sunni Islamist terrorist organization much like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, promised to allow girls and women to attend school and universities. Nearly four years later, girls are banned from attending school beyond sixth grade, and women are no longer allowed to speak in public.

On Wednesday in Damascus, the electricity was out. Even though Elias’s family home has solar panels, they didn’t turn on the lights. People with access to solar energy are assumed to be wealthy, and his parents didn’t want to attract the attention of possible looters and robbers. For now, there is nothing to do but wait in the dark.

12/13 Links Pt2: The unhinged crusade to find Israel guilty of genocide; Trials expose logistics, planning behind Amsterdam pogrom

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: The unhinged crusade to find Israel guilty of genocide

It seems Ireland is looking for a way around this intellectual annoyance, around humanity’s pesky insistence on maintaining a moral distinction between the tragedy of war and the crime of genocide. ‘Ireland’s view’ of genocide is ‘broader’ than the ICJ’s, says Micheál Martin, with incalculable pomposity. Our definition of genocide, he says, is one that ‘prioritises the protection of civilian life’. His self-regarding prattle is not only imperious and deluded – it is opaque, too. Intentionally so, I would say. To speak of ‘genocide’ in the same breath as threats to ‘civilian life’ dilutes the calamity of genocide to an unforgiving degree. Is everyone who threatens ‘civilian life’ a genocidaire? A school shooter? A nutter with a knife? It is preposterous. And dangerous.

It seems Ireland wants to ‘liberate’ the ICJ from its quaint attachment to the morally reasoned belief that genocide requires genocidal intent. And it isn’t alone. Last week, Amnesty International ‘concluded’, like a kangaroo court of the most conceited people you can imagine, that ‘Israel is commiting genocide’. And in its report making this accusation – an accusation it never made against Saudi Arabia over Yemen, or America over Iraq, or Turkey over Kurdistan – it moaned that there is too often an ‘overly cramped interpretation’ of the crime of genocide. Such narrow interpretations can ‘effectively preclude a finding of genocide in a context of armed conflict’, it said.

They really want to find Israel guilty of genocide, hey? Even if it means entirely redefining genocide. Even if it means setting fire to decades of jurisprudence on this gravest of crimes. Even if it means sacrificing truth itself. No price is too high, it seems, in the zealous crusade to single out the Jewish nation as the most genocidal nation. UN loon Francesca Albanese says Israel is guilty of ‘domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and… ecocide’. This is religious gibberish, a speaking in tongues designed not to prove any case against Israel but simply to tar it with the suffix of ‘cide’ in order that people might think, ‘Wow, it’s just like Nazi Germany’. Albanese says sometimes the crime of genocide can involve ‘no killing at all’. I’m calling it: these people are insane.

To redefine genocide because you want to see Israelis in the slammer is a very serious matter. It will potentially lead to Israelis being found guilty of a crime they have not committed. Watering down the requirement of genocidal intent for Israel’s war on Hamas would entail Israelis being accused of genocide when all they’ve done is fight a war. Worse, applying a looser definition of genocide to Israel’s actions than was applied to, say, Sudan’s recent wars or the butchery in Syria under Assad is the living, breathing definition of bias. To judge Israel not only by a different moral standard but also by a different legal standard is, in my view, undiluted bigotry. People will fume if you call it anti-Semitism, but can they give another explanation for this twisting of conventions and changing of rules in order that the Jewish nation might be found guilty of the crime once infamously inflicted on the Jews themselves? I’m all ears.

Back to Ireland. What drives the Irish elites’ curious animosity for Israel? Why do Dublin liberals and leftists fume against the Jewish State even more noisily and ridiculously than other chattering classes in Europe? It seems to me that having switched from the Catholic religion to the woke religion, Ireland is apt indeed to fall under the spell of Israelophobia. For both these religions have issues with Jews. The former had a tendency to see them as Christ killers, the latter paints them as Palestine killers. The one feared their spilling of Christian blood, the other obsesses over their ‘letting’ of Palestinian blood. Ireland should leave Israel to defeat the anti-Semites that wish to destroy it, and turn its mirror of judgement back on itself.

Trials expose logistics, planning behind Amsterdam pogrom

More than a month after dozens of Arab men went on a so-called “Jew hunt” for Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, the trials of seven suspects revealed this week new information on the logistics of the event that shocked Jews and others worldwide.

The information, which was revealed on Wednesday at a court in Amsterdam, exposed the antisemitic agitation of the alleged perpetrators, and also how organizers worked for days to bus in culprits from across the Netherlands to ambush Israelis, whom the attackers often referred to simply as “Jews.”

The new information contradicts the popular narrative in the Netherlands that the assaults of Nov. 7 were a spontaneous reaction to Israeli soccer fans’ provocations.

Instead, it conforms with reports by Israeli authorities, including the National Center for Combating Antisemitism under Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, which found ties between the attacks and Hamas.

Some of the revelations in the indictments come from transcripts lifted from correspondence within WhatsApp groups that police had infiltrated and monitored, yet failed to use the information to prevent the assaults.

A defendant identified as Rachid O., 26, from Utrecht allegedly shared locations throughout the night of Nov. 7 of “cancer Jews to beat up,” as he wrote, to the 900 members of the main WhatsApp group of that night’s “Jew hunt,” as participants called the series of assaults.

(“Cancer Jew” is a common antisemitic term in Dutch.)

The group was initially titled “Free Palstine” [sic] but renamed “Neighborhood Home 2,” in a possible attempt to camouflage it.

The assaults by members of the group and others were against Maccabi fans returning from a soccer match between their Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team. More than 20 Maccabi fans were wounded in the assaults, which many Jews and others in the Netherlands called a pogrom.

Police were deployed in large numbers near the stadium but failed to protect the Israelis in the city center, where they walked into an ambush that had been planned days in advance by Arab men, including dozens of taxi drivers, the indictments showed.

Former national security official pens book to ‘arm’ Americans with answers to why Israel matters

Victoria Coates first went to Israel 10-and-a-half years ago, in May 2014, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for whom she was senior national security adviser. “At this point, I actually have no idea how many times I’ve been there,” Coates told JNS in her art-filled office at Heritage Foundation, where she is vice president of the national security and foreign policy institute.

Coates’s favorite trip to the Jewish state was during Christmas in 2019. “I was there with my husband, and we go into the room at the King David and there’s a card on the table that says ‘Dear guest,’ you know whatever. And they scratched it out and they wrote, ‘Dear Dr. Coates, welcome home,’” she told JNS. “My husband said, ‘That’s sweet, but do you realize you don’t live here?’ Actually right now, I don’t know.”

During a wide-ranging interview with JNS, which ran about an hour, Coates wore necklaces with a Jerusalem cross and a Philadelphia Eagles logo. She is Christian and divides her time between Washington and the City of Brotherly Love. The former deputy national security advisor for the Middle East and North Africa under President Donald Trump is also a staunch Zionist, whose book The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win is due out on Dec. 17 from Encounter Books.

“The purpose of this book is to explain why the pro-Israel side is correct and to chart a safe course at a moment when the U.S.-Israel alliance hangs in the balance,” she writes in the book, which she penned before the outcome was known of the November U.S. presidential election. (“I really wish the Israelis had tipped me off that they were going to take out Nasrallah and Sinwar,” she told JNS, referring to senior leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. “I would have liked to include that.”)

Regardless of who won the election, “the good news is that the pro-Israel side still comprises a significant majority of Americans, but with the balance shifting among the younger demographic,” she writes, “we cannot assume that it will prevail without concerted effort against an increasingly aggressive threat.”

She notes in the book the difference, which “could not be more stark,” between the “successful, if unorthodox, approach to the Middle East under President Trump and the decades of bipartisan failure most recently manifested in the Biden-Harris administration.”

Coates was in Israel in July 2014 when Phil Gordon, an adviser to President Barack Obama, delivered a speech. “As the rockets were starting to fly, he said, ‘You’ve got to give them a state,’” she told JNS. “I was going to Naftali Fraenkel’s shiva and I’m like, there’s something wrong here with these people and with what they’re doing.” (The latter was one of the teens kidnapped from Gush Etzion and murdered.)

“Being in the administration, and being on the inside and so close to what actually happens, that’s where I think it was important that it’s somebody who’s not Jewish, who is American to say, ‘Here is the value.’ I am Christian,” she said. “But the value of the relationship transcends my religious interest in the Holy Land.”

12/13 Links Pt1: If Israel had listened to the State Department on Syria …; Syrian Druze call to be annexed to Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The kaleidoscope is shaken

Not prepared to take the risk that Syria will now become an ISIS or al Qaeda-style caliphate, Israel has been using detailed intelligence to destroy Syria’s air force, navy, missile arsenals, air defences and suspected chemical-weapons stores.

This is a profound service to humanity for which, of course, the world isn’t thanking it. Instead, it’s grotesquely accusing Israel of “making a land grab”. The United Nations, which has been silent over Syria’s appalling human-rights abuses, has actually condemned Israel for “violating Syria’s territorial integrity”.

And the Biden administration also scolded Israel with the US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, telling Al Arabiya: “It is the responsibility of those who are taking the reins of power inside Syria first and foremost to secure and destroy any chemical weapons that they find in areas that they control.”

It is beyond astounding that the United States can seriously suggest that it would have been better to leave such chemical weapons to the discretion of al Qaeda-style Islamists whose aim is to destroy the non-Islamic world.

Credulous or bigoted eagerness to believe the worst about Israel, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions, usually goes hand in hand with an equally credulous eagerness to believe the best about the Islamic world, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions.

The eagerness to assume that Islamists have reformed themselves accompanies the west’s suicidal refusal to see what is so plainly the case —that whether it involves Shia or Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al Sham or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists are waging world war against unbelievers wherever they are.

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 set in train a series of events that have shaken the geopolitical kaleidoscope. Tiny Israel is now well on the way to smashing the Shia axis and — in the words of a member of the Iranian regime — becoming the foremost power in the region.

This also represents a shattering defeat for the strategy of former President Barack Obama, which has been continued by the Biden administration. This strategy was — remarkably — to empower the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To this end, the Obama and Biden administrations spared no effort to appease and protect the Tehran regime. In the war that followed the October 7 pogrom, Washington refused to respond appropriately to repeated Iranian attacks while putting Israel under enormous pressure also not to do so.

And after Donald Trump won the presidential election last month, the United States renewed a controversial sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to some $10 billion in payments from Iraq.

The stupendous developments in the Middle East are a cause for unprecedented optimism. With the likely destruction of the Shia axis, the way will be set for Saudi Arabia finally to make its peace with Israel and thus end, once and for all, the Arab war against the Jewish state. The cause of the Palestinian Arabs, who never were the issue until the west chose to make them so, would simply evaporate.

To envisage this is not to fall into the trap of wishful thinking. The dangers for Israel and the free world remain acute and unresolved. Iran is poised to get the nuclear bomb, and there are fears that with its back to the wall it will now do just that.

But Iran now has no military defences or proxy shields. This is therefore the moment to destroy totally its nuclear programme and maybe finish off this evil regime altogether.

To do this, however, Israel needs America to be involved. Will Trump be willing to do this? Or will he believe that he alone can make a deal that will tame the Iranian regime?

Any such deal would be illusory. Iran has lied about its activities for more than four decades and won’t stop now.

The old order has been shattered. Bad actors have been weakened; others are now empowered. It will take wise heads indeed to turn this extraordinarily complex set of developments into a real leap for peace in the world. It can be done. Are there the leaders to do it?

If Israel had listened to the State Department on Syria …

Yet in Ross’s account of his role in the Syria negotiations in his book The Missing Peace, he speaks fondly of Assad and about his friendly, sometimes warm relationship with the chemical-weapons war criminal.

Ross recalls wistfully one time when Assad was “holding my arm as he shook my hand to convey greater warmth and appreciation.” Assad “respected my knowledge and my attention to detail.” When the Syrian leader complimented him, “You never forget a thing,” Ross obsequiously replied, “I learned that from you, Mr. President.” The two joked around about which of them could stay in the negotiating room longer without taking a bathroom break.

And the human touch! In talks that took place a day after Assad visited the grave of a loved one, the warmongering dictator was “soft-spoken, fatalistic and clearly touched when I expressed my sorrow for his loss and the difficulty of this time for him personally,” Ross writes.

It’s painfully reminiscent of what some Western journalists wrote about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Assad was the man who twice tried to annihilate the Jewish state—first as Syria’s defense minister in the 1967 Six-Day War and then as Syria’s president in 1973’s Yom Kippur War. The man who daily ranted against Israel and Jews. The man whose schools raised entire generations of young Syrians to become antisemitic fanatics. The man who, at the very moment he was negotiating with Ross, was feverishly developing chemical weapons with which to slaughter millions of Israeli Jews. Assad literally aspired to finish Hitler’s job by asphyxiating millions of Jews with poison gas.

The only thing that stood between Israel and Hafez Assad’s chemical weapons was the Golan Heights. The same is true for Assad’s equally monstrous son, the deposed dictator Bashar Assad. If Israel had been foolish enough to follow along with Dennis Ross and his State Department colleagues, the Assads would have had the Golan—and their guns and poison gas would have been trained on the families who live in Israel’s Galilee, Jewish and Arab alike.

Today, Dennis Ross is again dishing out “expertise,” hoping that nobody remembers the awful advice he gave Israel about surrendering the Golan Heights. But Israelis, who are watching the unfolding chaos on their northeastern border, have not forgotten. They know just what the consequences would have been.

Douglas Murray: After Syrian rebels force Assad out, the Iranian regime could be the next one to collapse

The dominos are falling in the Middle East, and the last one may be about to topple.

For the past 45 years, the Revolutionary Islamic Government in Iran has been the main destabilizing force in the region, against pretty stiff competition.The ayatollahs have colonized vast swaths of the Middle East, though you won’t hear the dolts on American college campuses hollering about that.

For decades the mullahs moved their armies into Lebanon. After the vacuum left by American-led intervention in Iraq, they moved their militias there.

They also moved into Yemen.

And for the past 13 years, they propped up their ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

But then Iran’s proxy army Hamas invaded Israel. The ayatollahs hoped to wipe out the Jewish state. But that didn’t go as well as they planned. In fact, it has backfired completely.

Begging for cease-fire

Israel has spent the past 14 months decimating the armies of Iran.

It has almost completely degraded Hamas in Gaza.

It whacked Hezbollah so hard in Lebanon that Hezbollah started begging for a cease-fire, though there weren’t many people in the organization left to make that ask.

And after a set of direct missile strikes from Iran at Israel, the Israeli air force took out all of Iran’s air defenses.

Then this past week, with Iran’s armies diverted and destroyed, the Assad regime finally fell.

After decades of despotic governance, the disgusting Assad family fled to Russia.

The vacuum left in that country will be troubling everyone in the region — and the world.

But the main defeat is Tehran’s.

The mullahs are now naked and increasingly alone.

They haven’t yet dared retaliate for the last Israeli strike — probably because they know that this time, the response might herald the end not just of their oil fields and nuclear ambitions, but of their revolutionary regime altogether.

Latest batch of EoZ cartoons

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Israel and Syria signed a disengagement agreement in 1974 to end the Yom Kippur War. It has held for a remarkable 50 years.

Now, it appears that Israel is violating that agreement by entering areas that it was not allowed to enter under the agreement.

Is this legal?

First of all, the question is whether the Syria that signed the agreement in 1974 is considered the same government today. In general, under international law, a state is obligated to uphold agreements made by previous governments. It is too early to tell whether a successor government will uphold those obligations.

This gets a little more complicated by the fact that Syria never recognized Israel. While even parties that don't recognize each other are still obligated by the terms of the agreement, this could affect the legal analysis.

For Israel to abrogate the agreement, it has to adhere to various provisions in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Two possible legal avenues that could be pursued are Articles 61 and 62. Article 61 says that if the agreement becomes impossible to enforce it may be ended; Article 62 says that it could be ended by an unforeseen change in circumstances. The bars for both of them to be invoked are quite high, however, and even if Israel would want to invoke them, it would have to give formal notice and wait a time period for a response.

However, Israel has not nullified the agreement. It has said that the moves it has made like moving into the buffer zone are a temporary response to the changed circumstances following the collapse of the Assad regime. They are meant to secure Israel's border since there is no guarantee that any rebel forces could be trusted not to enter the buffer zone and UNDOF couldn't stop them. It is meant to only last until the security situation stabilizes and it becomes clear who will control the Syrian side of the border.

From Israel's perspective, holding onto the peak of Mount Hermon is essential for its self defense in the absence of a reliable UN or other force there.

Moves like these are justified under the necessity of self-defense or maintaining national security. Time is of the essence and Israel cannot afford to wait to secure its border and ensure no dangerous weapons fall into the hands of one of many jihadist groups in Syria. Up until last week, Israel could rely on the Syrian regime to act in certain ways that enforced the disengagement agreement; it can no longer rely on that and needs to make decisions now to protect itself. Even the hundreds of airstrikes can be viewed as proportionate since there has been little or no collateral damage and they were aimed at military targets.

So while it is technically violating the 1974 agreement with a regime that no longer exists, self defense justifies its actions under international law until a new Syrian government can step in and be trusted.

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One of the biggest traps that diplomats and pundits (and intelligence chiefs) fall into is substituting wishful thinking for objectively looking at the facts.

Here's an example from Professor Dror Ze'evi in Haaretz, but it applies to countless people buoyed by the lightning events in Syria:

The rebel leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Golani), is speaking from every possible platform about his desire for a representative government that will even be tolerant of the Alawites, who are identified with the old regime. Perhaps in the end, he will prove to be a terrorist who will lead his people into an attack on Israel. But the hysteria over this issue is exaggerated.

Israel is stronger than all the Syrian organizations put together. And since the air force has already attacked Syria's arsenals of chemical weapons and other strategic weapons, they possess nothing that could threaten Israel. Moreover, to a large extent, they owe their success in defeating the regime to the Israel Defense Forces' achievements in the war against Hezbollah and Iran, and they are aware of this.

...A democracy, or something close to it, in Syria that objects to Iranian intervention would be a significant advantage for Israel. It would ensure an end to arms transfers to Hezbollah, get rid of the Iranian militias that have entrenched themselves in Syria and turn Iran's plan for a joint, multifront operation to destroy Israel into a dead letter. It would also create an opening for peace in the future.

In addition, following the direct attack Iran suffered and the collapse of its proxies, there are powerful elements within that country that are interested in reconsidering its militant policy. It's true that Iranian leader Ali Khamenei opposes such a step, but the moderate groups are becoming louder.

Yet despite all this, Israel is behaving brutally and shortsightedly. It has occupied territory in Syria and has positioned itself from the start as hostile to Syria. Instead, immediately after the regime fell, the country's leaders should have wished Syrians success in replacing Assad's evil regime and said they would be happy to have peaceful, brotherly relations with Syria.

Firstly, the last paragraph is inaccurate. Netanyahu's message to Syria was not hostile, but resolute, and he indeed did say that he would be happy to have peaceful relations with Syria.

We send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria: to the Druze, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel. We're going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel.

The message is that Israel wants peace but is prepared for any eventuality. Which is exactly the correct attitude.

Starting a lovefest for Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham because its leader has made some moderate statements is shortsighted. The keyword isn't embracing him but using caution.

Two weeks ago no one in the West publicly supported the jihadist Syrian rebels taking over Syria. Now the entire West is jubilant over the end of what they had previously effectively supported: a brutal but stable regime. The messaging is inconsistent and the responses have been inconsistent as well.

Rebuilding Syria is important. The West should not let China or Russia step into the vacuum and become the new Syria's major sponsor, and if that means judicious and contingent loosening of some sanctions or terrorist designations that exist against HTS and al-Joublani, those decisions need to be made with a clear head.

However, treating HTS as a suddenly respectable political group is as shortsighted as supporting Hezbollah as a political party was.

HTS has a history of brutality, including after it broke with Al Qaeda.

For five years, HTS has controlled Idlib, and we can look there to see a little about its philosophy of governance. It includes arbitrary arrests of critics, torture, extrajudicial executions, anti-woman laws, forced conversions to Sunni Islam, confiscating property of Druze and Christians, stealing humanitarian aid, using human shields and using children as suicide bombers.

Which means they are pretty much the Syrian Hamas - a jihadist group that also enjoyed worldwide respect as being pragmatic and wanting stability and peace before October 7. An Islamist group that claimed to do what is best for the people while building up a powerful army that was stronger than the ruling government's.

Additionally, there is a dismal record of successful revolutions where there are competing rebel groups.

Encouraging the longshot of transforming Syria into a stable, democratic regime must not only be based on carrots but also sticks. While no one expects the jihadists to start loving Israel or Jews, they respect power, and Israel has shown power while still extending a hand for peace.

As far as I can tell, the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes against Syrian weapons this week - many of them causing spectacular secondary explosions - has not killed or injured a single person. That is a message that is being heard loud and clear.

Israel's caution seems to be the most sane reaction to Syria of anyone in the world.

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The Palestinian Authority executes a young man for no apparent reason. On video. But no Jews could be blamed, so no one cares.

A video was released this week showing an apparent point blank execution in Jenin.

Rabhi Shalabi, 19, was driving his motorcycle with his cousin.According to reports, he was carrying a carton of onions. He stops at a makeshift checkpoint. The Palestinian police vehicle is clearly visible. The cousins wait to be waved on through, as they are every day.

But this day Rabhi was shot dead, and the cousin got shot in the eye. (The cousin is in front, he can be seen waving his hand right before the gunshot.)

Unlike videos taken at Israeli checkpoints that show the security services shooting terrorists, there is no chaos. No split second decisions. No aggression from the victim. No threat. The shooter had ten solid seconds to size up the situation before deciding to shoot.

At first the Palestinian Authority denied it was responsible, claiming the cousins were shot by armed gangs. Only when the video was released did they grudgingly admit that they shot them.

And outside Arabic media, this story gained no traction at all. No press releases from human rights groups (although the local office of the UN human rights office did condemn it.) The main group condemning the PA is its rival Hamas.

The reason, of course, is because there are no Jews in the area to blame.

Palestinian lives only matter when those lives can be fodder for Jew-hatred. Otherwise, no one gives a damn.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/12 Links Pt2: The American university is rotting from within; Murdoch visits firebombed Melbourne synagogue; Paraguay reopens its embassy in Jerusalem

From Ian:

The American university is rotting from within

American universities face an unprecedented challenge with the return of Donald Trump. His administration seems likely to attack such things as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, while pushing to defund programmes favourable to terrorists, expel unruly students and deport those who are in the US illegally. Loss of federal support to universities, the educrats fear, could cause major financial setbacks, even among the Ivies. Like medieval clerics, the rapidly growing ranks of university administrators, deans and tenured faculty have grown used to living in what one writer describes as a ‘modern form of manorialism’, where luxury and leisure come as of right.

Universities are likely to try resisting any changes, no matter how justified. Nationally, 78 per cent of professors voted for Kamala Harris. To many, Trump’s election represents a rebellion of ‘uneducated’. The University of California at Berkeley blames his rise on ‘racism and sexism’. Wesleyan University president Michael Roth calls on universities to abandon ‘institutional neutrality’ for activism in the Trump era, predictably comparing neutral professors to those who accommodated the Nazis. Democracy dies, apparently, whenever the progressive monopoly is threatened.

This arrogance reflects decades of the sector’s rising power and influence. University became the ultimate passport into what Daniel Bell called the ‘knowledge class’ a half century ago. A National Journal survey of 250 top American public-sector decision-makers found that 40 per cent of them are Ivy League graduates. Looking at the question globally, David Rothkopf, author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, compiled a list of more than six thousand members of what he calls the global ‘superclass’: leaders of corporations, banks and investment firms, governments, the military, the media and religious groups. Nearly a third attended one of 20 elite universities.

Also like their clerical ancestors, today’s academics tend to embrace a common ideology. By 2017, according to one oft-cited study, 60 per cent of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared with just 12 per cent as conservative or far right. In less than three decades, the ratio of liberal faculty to conservative faculty has more than doubled. As pollster Samuel Abrams and historian Amna Khalid note, all this has occurred just as the US itself became somewhat more conservative.

Ideologically homogenous universities have become something akin to indoctrination camps, where traditional Western values are trashed while woke ideology is promoted. Not surprisingly, the graduates of today’s universities are inclined to maintain rigid positions on various issues, confident of their own superior intelligence and perspicuity while being intolerant of other views. They also tend to be not particularly proud to be American. The kind of support professors gave to the war effort in the Second World War would be hard to imagine today.

Ideological orthodoxy and fear of cancellation for the ‘wrong views’ is widespread on campus. A majority of students say they would report professors who say something offensive. Some 40 per cent of millennials, according to the Pew Research Center, favour suppressing speech deemed offensive to minorities – well above the 27 per cent among Gen X, 24 per cent among baby boomers, and 12 per cent among the oldest cohorts. The expansion of higher education, once seen as fulfilling the promise of liberal civilisation, is now accelerating its decline.

More remarkable still, the college campus has become the epicentre of movements embracing Islamist regimes like Iran and terrorist groups like Hamas. A Cornell professor who found the 7 October pogrom ‘exhilarating’ was briefly suspended but is now back in the classroom. He’s not alone. The American Association of University Professors this year rescinded its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts, which invariably target only Israel. The slaughter of innocent Israelis has occasioned celebrations on radicalised campuses, most notably Columbia, Harvard and other elite schools. Ignorance, rather than knowledge, now sparks college protests. Pro-Hamas demonstrators rarely know the geography of either the river or the sea that they’re chanting about.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump’s pick for civil rights can doom DEI racism

Such lawsuits would raise the real possibility that any college, university, K-12 school system, corporation or arts organization that used DEI to determine hiring or admissions would lose federal funding, and be subjected to sanctions in the same way that institutions that enforced racial segregation and discrimination were punished. In the face of a DOJ determined to oppose these toxic policies, it is entirely possible that support for DEI—something that is not just current liberal intellectual fashion but a new orthodoxy that seeks to suppress and punish all those who dissent from it—will be rolled up like a cheap carpet.

No other measure undertaken by private or governmental initiatives could do more to reverse the dominance of woke ideology. It would also go far in stemming the surge of antisemitism that was enabled by DEI policies and racial ideologues, and that has swept across the nation since the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The opposition to such an effort from not just congressional Democrats but the mainstream media and those who now rule so many of our institutions will be ferocious. Pursuing the end of DEI will take a keen legal mind, courage and willingness to fight, as has already been demonstrated by Dhillon. Her confirmation should be treated not just as a test of loyalty to Trump, but of support for the values of Western civilization and American liberty that the left has been so eager to undermine under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And Jewish groups who purport to care about the fight against antisemitism, even those that are dominated by liberals, should stand with her.

While cynics often say that politics and elections don’t affect much in our everyday lives, putting someone like Harmeet Dhillon at the helm of the Civil Rights Division could be a crucial turning point that marks the moment the tide was turned against a destructive ideology threatening to change America for the worst for the foreseeable future.

Kassy Akiva: Universities That Ignored Anti-Semitism Will Face Consequences Under Trump, Ernst Says

Colleges and universities that did not work to stop campus anti-Semitism will face consequences under the Trump administration and Republican-dominated Senate, Senator Joni Ernst told The Daily Wire.

“The new Senate Republican majority is going to work with the Trump administration to enforce the law in the face of campuses that have fanned the flames of hate through inaction,” the Iowa Republican told The Daily Wire. “Elite universities have made their bed, and they’ve got to lie in it, but not on the taxpayers’ dime.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have increased by over 500% since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israeli civilians. Ernst is one of several senators who have raised the alarm about the harm anti-Semitism has had on Jewish students. She says the Biden administration has repeatedly ignored her.

“The Biden administration ignored my repeated calls for action and sat on its hands as anti-Semitic violence exploded on college campuses across the country,” said Ernst.

In contrast, President-elect Donald Trump has threatened both public and private universities with repercussions for enabling hatred and promoting a diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.

“My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that if you do not end anti-Semitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal taxpayer support,” Donald Trump said in a September speech.

He added that Jewish Americans must have “equal protection” and that the United States government will not “subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers, and we’re not going to do it, certainly [not] on American soil.”

12/12 Links Pt1: The Age-Old Curse of ‘Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself’ Ireland Says the Quiet Part Out Loud; Putting Israel on Trial, Kafka Style

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Age-Old Curse of ‘Israel Has a Right to Defend Itself’

This debate came up again as Israel began taking out loose chemical weapons and conventional arms caches in Syria after the fall of the house of Assad earlier this week. The complaint: This isn’t self-defense! The implication being that Israel has a right to self-defense only.

According to this logic, Israel must wait until it is attacked with chemical weapons. Only then may it hit back.

The same, then, I suppose goes for Iranian nukes. Once Israel is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, it may bomb Iran.

The senselessness of this position is obvious, so why do people still hold it? One answer is that, as many have said throughout the past 76 years, Israel is the Jew of the world. That is, for 2,000 years rights and privileges that were otherwise available to everyone could be withheld at random from Jews. Now that there’s a state of Israel, those exceptions are applied to international laws and norms as well.

Indeed, Jews should bristle at the condescending declarations that we have a right to defend ourselves, just as we do every year on the holiday that marks the introduction of that wretched phrase into our story.

Purim celebrates that the Jews of Persia were saved from destruction. The evil royal adviser Haman convinced the king to seal a decree that on a certain day, Jews should be killed and their property taken. When Queen Esther turns the tables on Haman, the king issues a new decree: The Jews can and should defend themselves against any and all who come to kill them.

The obvious question is asked: Why didn’t the king simply revoke the earlier decree? The answer: Royal decrees could not be revoked, but they could be countered by new decrees. Therefore, rather than prevent the masses from trying to kill the Jews, the king simply responded by saying that the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves.

This is what the Jewish people have been living with ever since. When our fate is left up to the nations of the world who continue to see us as their subjects and not their equals, the best we get is that we may defend ourselves.

Of course Israel has a right to defend itself. It also has a right to defeat its enemies and safeguard the lives of its people. If it were up to others, Hamas would be alive and well, as would Hezbollah. The world is a better place when Jews assert their basic rights and obligations.

Seth Mandel: Ireland Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Amazing. The Irish government is saying that Israel can’t justly be convicted on a genocide charge as the law stands, so the law should be changed in the middle of the trial in order to achieve a predetermined outcome.

This is surely among the more corrupt statements ever made regarding due process by a high-ranking elected official in a democracy. Vyshinsky worked for Stalin; Martin works for the prime minister of Ireland. Somehow they ended up in the same place. What a proud day for Western Europe.

In fairness to Martin, his terrible idea wasn’t his own. He is simply copying off the recent Amnesty International report on the war, which blew up in the organization’s face. Martin is a guy who sees someone step on a rake and thinks, that looks like fun.

As a refresher, the Amnesty report acknowledged that Israel isn’t guilty of genocide by the traditional understanding of international law, so the organization simply changed the definition of genocide. Problem solved!

Well, not really. Because in the process, Amnesty had torched whatever credibility it had left: Organization insiders leaked the report ahead of time to try to blunt its impact, its Israel chapter disavowed the report, and the whole thing immediately fell to earth with a thud.

But Amnesty isn’t a state; it’s just a pressure group. Its opinion carries influence but not legal weight. Ireland, on the other hand, is a member state of the international “court” currently trying this case. Its intervention is shameless and, if followed, would sink the concept of international law to the bottom of the ocean.

Is it worth all that, just to get the Jews?

There’s a larger question here, of course. And that is the question of what some states of the free world have allowed themselves to become, either out of their own anti-Zionism or their fear of the anti-Zionist masses, or a combination of the two.

Obsessions with Israel are self-defeating, whether or not one cares about the fact that they are also morally deficient. Oct. 7, 2023, seems to have ignited in people throughout the world the belief that Israel really was on the ropes and that this was their chance to contribute to its defeat. Sometimes that contribution was military: Iran activated every one of its proxies and fired at Israel from every front. Sometimes that contribution was diplomatic: Russia notched a win or two at the United Nations by taking Hamas’s side in the war. Sometimes that contribution was mostly symbolic: Britain’s Labour Party, once back in power, announced it was suspending dozens of arms export licenses to Israel.

But now all that seems to be slipping away. Iran had its clock thoroughly cleaned, Russia is floundering, and Western diplomatic antagonism toward Israel is looking downright silly. Rational thinking would suggest Ireland’s leadership accept the fact that Israel is going to survive this particular round. But in the throes of obsession, Dublin is going for broke at the ICJ by throwing its lot in with a discredited Amnesty International.

The only real value here is in Ireland’s transparency. What was left unsaid has now been said: The purpose of the public campaign against Israel is not to defend international law but to contravene it.

Israel does world a service by hitting Assad’s chemical weapons caches

In the wake of the Assad regime’s collapse, Israel did the world a major service.

Over the past few days, the Israeli Air Force struck dozens of alleged Syrian chemical weapons sites to prevent these capabilities from falling into the hands of potential terrorists.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on Monday, “We attacked strategic weapons, the residual chemical weapons capabilities, long-range missiles and rockets, so they won’t fall into the hands of radicals.”

The United States, apparently content to let Jerusalem handle this critical military task while it struck Islamic State targets in Syria, must now help finish the job.

With a bit of luck, diplomacy will be sufficient, but the effectiveness of talking likely depends on speaking softly while carrying a big stick.

The priority for Washington is to pressure Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the power behind Syria’s new governing authority — to let international inspectors in and certify Damascus’ chemical weapons are verifiably eliminated.

HTS is a US- and UN-designated terrorist organization that is an offshoot of al-Qaeda, so more than a little caution is in order.

A US official told Axios on Sunday that Washington believes it has “good fidelity” on Syria’s chemical weapons inventory, and that these capabilities are not currently at risk for acquisition by non-state groups.

Thanks, on the latter, no doubt, goes to Jerusalem.

To the end, the Assad regime possessed a robust stockpile of chemical weapons, along with chemical agents, precursors, and associated research capabilities, munitions, storage, and testing sites.

The US State Department assessed as recently as May 2024 that Syria had an undeclared chemical weapons program, which it used to attack its own people on at least 50 verified occasions between 2012 and 2019. The actual figure is likely far higher.

In 2013, Damascus used the debilitating nerve agent, sarin, to murder 1,400 people in Ghouta.

Netanyahu Trial Judge Keeps Calling Recesses To Watch Footage Of IDF Destroying Syrian Weapons (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Tel Aviv, December 12 - Court proceedings regarding corruption allegations against Israel's prime minister have suffered repeated interruption, witnesses say, because the presiding justice has persistently stopped those proceedings to catch up on the latest video clips of Israeli airstrikes against military stockpiles and assets of the former Assad regime, lest they call into the hands of various jihadi rebel groups who also see Israel as an enemy.

Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu's trial for improper receipt of gifts, known in local shorthand as "Case 4000," began over the last week. Trouble began early, even as prosecutors began their opening statements, when, after about three minutes of the State Attorney starting to lay out the conceptual basis for the case against the prime minister, Judge Agatha Sidis of Tel Aviv-Yafo District Court ordered her to pause, as the time had come for an update on Israel's operations to destroy the remnants of Syrian naval, land, and air assets, as well as munitions, chemical weapons, and various other military facilities - with hundreds of airstrikes occurring just over the first night of the operation. Judge Sidis then spent fifteen minutes in her chambers before returning to the courtroom.

The phenomenon repeated itself six minutes later, just when the prosecutor felt she was hitting her stride. This time the recess lasted only twelve minutes, but the rhetorical momentum of the prosecution's opening statement had evaporated.

Netanyahu's attorney Amit Hadad fared little better. He got about thirty seconds into it before the judge again interrupted, this time inviting both attorneys into her chambers to view clips of the strikes together. The trio, plus two clerks and a bailiff, spent nearly half an hour reviewing footage of secondary explosions and of absolutely smashed naval vessels and Russia-supplied fighter jets, as well as images of tanks on fire and anti-aircraft batteries as charred wrecks.

Hadad restarted his spiel upon the reconvening of the session, only to face another interruption eight minutes later. This time, Judge Sidis ordered screens and speakers set up in the courtroom itself, and she then proceeded to show many of the videos she had already viewed in her chambers, while offering commentary and frequently pausing the playback to point out important details her audience might otherwise have missed.

She then ordered the bailiffs and clerks to make sure the audio and video equipment is already set up in advance of tomorrow's proceedings, so that no interruption of proceedings is necessary to get right to the important things.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

In a long article at Haber Vakti, Professor Dr. Mustafa Ozturk writes (and tweets) that the Jews are lying when they say that the classic Christian blood libel is a myth.

In Judaism, the blood ritual is first associated with the Passover Feast or Pessah, as it is also known. The Passover Feast (Pessah) is a feast in which the Israelites celebrate their exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Prophet Moses. Although the Passover Feast, celebrated in the middle of April every year, has undergone some changes from past to present, the sacrifice stands out as the most fundamental argument. In this celebration or commemoration, a suitable goat would be selected, the goat would be fattened for a while and slaughtered on the day of the feast. The goat, all of whose blood was carefully drained, would be eaten, including its offal. Various sources state that the Passover Feast was celebrated in this way by the Jews for at least a thousand years. This form of celebration continued until the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. According to many European historians, Jews abandoned the practice of sacrificing goats after the Temple was destroyed, but continued the same ritual by shedding the blood of Christian children, whom they viewed as animals.

The 13th century Flemish historian Thomas Cantimpreli, on the other hand, attributes the origin of the blood ritual to the crucifixion of Jesus. Pilate, the governor of the city, refuses to shed the blood of the person believed to be Jesus. The Jewish crowd waiting for the execution, however, protests this and chants, “Spill his blood, let his blood be on us and our children.” After this incident, the Jews turned killing Christians and shedding their blood into a ritual of worship. The blood ritual, which has been a serious topic of debate among Jews and especially Christians for centuries, is described in detail on Wikipedia, taking into account information from Jewish and Christian sources. Accordingly, a Christian boy who has not yet reached puberty is kidnapped or purchased in some way and hidden in a synagogue or somewhere else. When the night of the ceremony arrives, all the guests have taken their places and the torture instruments are ready.

The Christian child, who is considered a sinner from birth, is tried by a court of law. The naked and tied child is brought before the judge to have the verdict announced and is declared to have been sentenced to death. Before being executed, the child is subjected to various tortures. Treatments that the human mind cannot comprehend, such as mutilation, cutting off the penis, bleeding in a barrel with needles, and whipping are among the preferred methods of torture. After the child, who has been knocked unconscious by various tortures, is given a crown made of thorns and nailed to a cross. The blood flowing from the cuts on his body is filled into bowls. Finally, if the child is still not dead, he takes his last breath when a sword, spear or dagger is stabbed into his heart.

The blood obtained through the blood ritual, which Jews describe as “one of the oldest and most absurd anti-Semitic slanders in history,” is also added to the bread baked on Passover. As is known, unleavened bread is made and eaten for a week on Passover. According to some branches of the Jews, the most acceptable of these breads is the one with human blood mixed in it.

He traces the 2,000 year history of the libel - and accepts every single case, even up to a completely unsubstantiated accusation from Russia in 2005.

Not surprisingly, Ozturk writes a lot of articles about Jews, including one where he believes that an AI created photo of Netanyahu with a red cow is legitimate. Clearly, this professor of Turkish-Islamic Literature is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But he has no problem getting these lies published.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When Dictators Fall: Iraq (Whack-a-mole) VS Syria (Dominoes) (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Following the defeat of Saddam Hussein and his capture during the Iraq War in 2003, there were multiple reactions. Some saw it as freedom from oppression and an opportunity for democratic government. Sunni Arabs who benefited from Hussein's rule were afraid of being marginalized and thought what others saw as liberation was more of an occupation.

Western allies celebrated the removal of a vicious dictator as a victory for democracy and human rights, but critics were concerned about potential instability.

While it was not difficult to see that Iraq's defeat resulted in the removal of Iran's premier enemy, it is not clear if anyone actually predicted the degree to which Iran would gain influence and dominate the region.

The victory over Iraq was a game of whack-a-mole: Saddam's Iraq was replaced by Iran.

Now with the removal of Bashar al-Assad, the defeat of a brutal dictator again has consequences outside of the dictator's own country. This time the consequences play out with a cascading effect:

o The Hamas massacre on October 7 led both to Israel's crippling of Hezbollah and the weakening of Iran.

o The weakening of those two entities led to the fall of Syria since they could not lend the support they had given in the past. Similarly, Russia's involvement in Ukraine hampered its ability to defend Assad

o The removal of Syria from the constellation of Iranian proxies further hurts Iran's ability to act in the region and reveals its weakness

In addition, going forward:

o Iran will have difficulty getting arms to Hezbollah.

o  Russia's naval base in Tartus and airbase at Khmeimim are in jeopardy, putting its only Mediterranean port at risk and weakening its ability to project military power in the region.

o  Turkey will increase its influence in the area and could pose a further threat to the Kurds

o  The weakening of Iran may hurt the Houthis too.

o  The fragility of Lebanon is further threatened by neighboring Syria

And then, of course, there is Israel.

A Times of Israel article on December 6 featured the headline, Syrian rebel commander urges Israel to support uprising, strike Iran-backed forces. The article quoted an anonymous rebel commander from the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

We are open to friendship with everyone in the region – including Israel. We don’t have enemies other than the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran. What Israel did against Hezbollah in Lebanon helped us a great deal. Now we are taking care of the rest.

The problem is that the FSA is not in charge. Instead, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadi organization, is leading the overthrow of Assad. MEMRI reported on an HTS video that is much less reassuring:

After taking control of Damascus following the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime on December 8, 2024, HTS Islamist militants, in a video posted by Althawra Network Media on Facebook, declared that just as they entered the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, they will enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and the Kaaba in Mecca. They also advised the people of Gaza to remain patient, suggesting they would soon come to Jerusalem.

This is why Israel not only fortified the buffer zone between it and Syria and extended it, but also struck chemical weapons caches and other missile and air-defense systems in Syria.

However, with such instability, there is no way to be sure what the vulnerabilities will drive the various concerned parties to do to secure their positions and react to real and perceived threats.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)