Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 16, 2024

12/16 Links Pt1: The parroting of Hamas propaganda is an ethical crisis for journalism; Why Trump Deserves the Nobel Prize; Why Not Put the Palestinian Homeland in Syria?

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: The parroting of Hamas propaganda is an ethical crisis for journalism

This shameful and irresponsible media bias emboldens antisemitic conspiracies and justifies hostility toward Jewish individuals and communities, conflating criticism of Israeli policies with outright bigotry. The surge in antisemitic attacks worldwide underscores the dangerous real-world consequences of disseminating unverified figures that paint an incomplete picture of the conflict.

Accurate fatality data is not just an academic exercise — it is essential for fair reporting and policy-making regarding Israel. International humanitarian law acknowledges civilian harm as an inevitable consequence of war, provided efforts are made to minimise it. However, by inflating the proportion of civilian casualties, Hamas has manipulated perceptions to vilify Israel on the global stage. This tactic not only undermines Israel’s right to self-defence. It also obscures the role of Hamas in exacerbating civilian suffering through their deliberate strategy of the human sacrifice of Gaza’s civilian population.

The irresponsible reporting of fatality statistics also erodes trust in journalism, a cornerstone of democratic societies. The media’s uncritical acceptance of MoH data, combined with its reluctance to challenge Hamas’ propaganda, reveals a failure to uphold basic journalist standards of accuracy and impartiality. This negligence allows Hamas to weaponise casualty figures as a tool of psychological and political warfare.

The responsibility to counter disinformation lies with the global media. We hope this report serves as a wake-up call to journalists and editors who must exercise greater diligence in verifying sources, especially in conflict zones. Failing to do so risks perpetuating false narratives with devastating consequences for public trust and global stability.

By taking Hamas’ numbers at face value, the media undermines its credibility and amplifies a biased narrative that distorts the realities on the ground. Journalists must scrutinise all sources of data with equal rigour, ensuring that the public receives an accurate, nuanced understanding of conflicts like the one in Gaza.

The misreporting of Gaza’s fatality figures is more than a journalistic failure; it is an ethical crisis that has fuelled global antisemitism and polarised international discourse. Our report is a vital reminder that truth is the first casualty of war, and it falls to the media to guard it zealously. In a world increasingly shaped by disinformation, upholding journalistic integrity is not just a professional duty — it is a moral imperative. After 14 months of antisemitism sparked by irresponsible reporting of the war in Gaza, the Jewish community in the UK knows that better than anyone.

Seth Mandel: The Most Important Revelation About Gaza Casualties

From April to August of this year, the report states that, according to Hamas hospital numbers, 45 percent of those killed were men and 37 percent were children. According to the more reliable family reports, men were 64 percent of casualties and children were 22 percent.

Except, “children” generally means under 18 and Hamas has been known to tweak it to 19. Which means we know for a fact a chunk of that 22 percent were combatants. Some of those combatants were children, some weren’t. The fact that Hamas uses child soldiers actually benefited the terror group in the media narrative, because the numbers never distinguish between civilians and combatants, and news consumers don’t read “children” and assume “combatants.” The press was broadly complicit in normalizing and incentivizing the use of child soldiers, a fact that should stain many reputations forever.

But wait, there’s more. The report notes that Hamas—and thus the press—includes natural deaths in the casualty count. There were more than 5,000 natural deaths in that time, by conservative estimate.

But wait, there’s even more. A review of the first 1,000 names on Hamas’s casualty list between the beginning of the war and the summertime found more than 100—that is, 10 percent—had their ages revised downward. In other words, between the time that Hamas numbers could be plausibly verified and the more recent counts, lots of people suddenly became “children.”

But wait, there’s still more. Gaza casualty numbers include those killed by Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups. Remember the al-Ahli hospital blast that was reported initially as a Israel’s fault, only to become clear soon after that it was an errant Palestinian rocket (likely from Palestinian Islamic Jihad)? Those deaths still get reported today by the press as caused by Israel because they are included in the casualty numbers—as are, if you can believe it, all Gazans murdered by Hamas security forces during the war.

But wait, there still even more. Cancer patients, the report shows, were listed as war fatalities by Hamas while still also being listed as alive and receiving treatment in Israel or some other treatment center outside Gaza.

Two main conclusions. First, once you drop the natural deaths, approximate the numbers of those killed by Hamas or other Palestinian groups, and adjust the demographic numbers to fit the actual family reports, you end up with about as many militants killed as civilians. In an urban environment with the Hamas soldiers stationed among civilians, this means Israel’s civilian-combatant ratio is not just low but unheard of.

Second, much of the reporting and commentary has framed this war as a “war on Palestinian children.” It’s a convenient reanimation of a classic blood libel, and it is demonstrably a lie. I don’t think anyone using the “Israel is murdering Palestinian children” talking point was ever interested in statistical accuracy, but it is important that the rest of society is aware of the level of deception being practiced by those who propagate it.

Those who put trust in the Hamas casualty figures should hang their heads in shame

The vast majority of broadcasters, news sites and newspapers ought to hang their heads in shame. Of 1,378 articles published over a four month period in spring 2024 in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CNN, the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and the Australian ABC, a full 84 per cent did not bother to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, Fox found.

A shockingly low 5 over cent of publications released any numbers from the Israelis, while 98 per cent – basically all – exclusively published the Hamas Ministry of Health figures.

The sheer force of the need to paint Israel as targeting civilians has been overwhelming. Trying to go against this need with the small sounds of sanity has inevitably been painful and confrontational. Some of those who lost their hats over my insistence that, while all civilian deaths in Gaza were tragedies, the IDF was not baying for the blood of innocents, may have been infected with anti-Semitism.

But most were just consumers of the news from sources they ought to have been able to trust. These sources, which Fox suggests were incorrect, not only let their readers, listeners and viewers down, but have viciously pursued the deepest embedding of fake history that Europe and the Anglosphere has seen since the propaganda tools of the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

From International News Service, March 5, 1957:

American firms making everything from bubble gum to varnish are being blacklisted by the nine Arab nations for refusing to end their trade with Israel. The widespread pressure campaign to force world industry to boycott Israel already has led scores of manufacturers in 19 countries, including the U.S., to accede, INS learned today.

The Arab League "Boycott Bureau" in Alexandria, Egypt, announced today, without giving details, that 25 foreign firms had been blacklisted, and 49 foreign companies had agreed to discontinue commercial relations with Israel in the past year.

The announcement followed disclosure by INS last Friday that powerful Arab blacklist pressure had forced a boycott of Israel by major U.S. and other free world oil and shipping interests.

A spokesman for Topps said the company was put on the blacklist because its packages of gum contained cards showing flags of all nations and had included the flag of Israel.

The firm recently was permitted to resume shipments to some of the Arabian countries but only after agreeing not to ship or attempt to sell the item which aroused Arab League displeasure.

The U.S. Government is aware of the discrimination against American firms which deal with Israel. The Department of Commerce recently published a notice that Saudi Arabia intended to boycott not only firms doing business with Israel but those which are owned or directed by Jews. 

Actually, by 1957, it was well known that the boycott included Jewish owned or controlled companies.

Anyway, while Topps managed to get out of being boycotted in 1957, it once again became boycotted decades later. From a 1983 US Government intelligence report on the effects of boycotts:

Although boycott officials periodically insist publicly and privately that only firms adding to Israel’s strength are blacklisted, the contributions of many boycotted companies are difficult to discern. The Topps Chewing Gum Company, for example, was blacklisted after it licensed an Israeli factory to produce Bazooka bubble gum.

The report doesn't mention it, but the founders of Topps Chewing Gum Company were four Jewish brothers, Abram, Ira, Joseph and Philip Shorin. The person who designed the first baseball cards in a Topps bubblegum pack was another Jew, Sy Berger.

So while the intelligence community seemed perplexed at the Arab boycott of Topps, the reason was obvious.

That report also showed that the Arab League boycott was suspended in cases where such a boycott would hurt Arab businesses more than it would hurt Israel. There was never anything principled about either the Arab League boycott or BDS - they were always aimed at Jews.

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

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Abba Eban, who was Israel's Foreign Minister as well as Ambassador to the UN and Ambassador to the US, was known as a brilliant orator as well as for his wit.

He famously said that Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." (That is usually misquoted as "Palestinians.") He also said, "History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." After the Six Day war he said, "I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender."

But one of the most famous quotes attributed to Eban is this one: "If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions."

When I looked for the source, however, I came up empty.

The earliest I found a similar quote from him was from a Toronto Star article from 1968:

While United Nations delegates quarrelled in the rhetorical aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war last June, Israel’s grandiloquent Foreign Minister Abba Eban delivered a wry semantic solo: "If the Arab League made a motion at the UN assembly that the world was flat they would get 40 votes for it”.

I saw a couple of sources in 1970 change the quote slightly: "If the Arabs table a resolution tomorrow that the earth is flat, they can count on at least 40 votes."

The closest quote I have found came not from Abba Eban but from Chaim Herzog, Israel's UN ambassador. The Los Angeles Times mentioned his version of Eban's quote in 1975:

Former Foreign Minister Abba Eban of Israel once observed that the Arabs could automatically muster 40 votes for a declaration that the world was flat.

Israel's new U.N. ambassador, Chaim Herzog, has updated the illustration to say that if Saudi Arabia sponsored the flat-earth proposal, the vote would be "100 in favor, Israel, Costa Rica and the United States against, and 35 abstentions."

The earliest I can find the "Algeria" quote comes from an op-ed by Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in The Guardian in 2004:

The general assembly request recalls the famous observation of Abba Eban that "if Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions".

Since Eban died in 2002, this version of the quote sounds apocryphal, but the Guardian piece is used as the source by others.

It is certainly possible that within Israel's diplomatic community, the quote kept being modified in internal discussions, so for all we know Abba Eban or someone else may have refined it beyond Herzog's version. Perhaps Shalom was quoting from internal lore where the quote kept morphing within the Foreign Ministry.

But I cannot find any evidence that Eban himself said this quote.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Israel is eyeing a base in Somaliland to counter the Houthis

There are reports that the US struck Houthi positions last night.

It appears that the US has been doing far more in Yemen than has been reported, with new information about hundreds of combat sorties in recent months. These activities are being described as "the largest naval conflict the United States has been in since World War II."

It is unclear how many of these missions are defensive - protecting ships and themselves - and how many are offensive to degrade Houthi abilities.

After arriving in the CENTCOM area of operations in August, the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group worked alongside the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, until that group left in September. Alongside intercept missions, the squadrons took part in offensive operations. Those included major strikes on Houthi military sites over two days in Nov. 9-10. The Marine Corps’ VMFA-314 took part in that operation, the first time that the Marine Corps’ F-35C saw combat. The squadron dropped 72,000 pounds of ordnance while in the Middle East, it reported.

Even more unclear is whether these sorties are deterring the Houthis at all. So far, it appears not.

Once again, Israel may have to do what the world doesn't want to.

Arab media and Haaretz have reported that Israel is looking at establishing a military base in Somaliland specifically to have a place nearby from which they can attack the Houthis.

On October 17, the pro-Qatari news website Middle East Monitor reported that Israel secretly approached Somaliland, situated across the Gulf of Aden from the Yemeni city of Aden, with a proposal that would serve both parties: Israel will set up a military base in Somaliland that will allow it to attack and deter Houthi targets, in return for formal recognition of the country and financial investments in it.

According to the report, which relies on diplomatic sources, the United Arab Emirates is mediating between the two countries, and has not only convinced Somaliland to allow the construction of the military base, but will also finance it. The UAE, a signatory to the 2020 Abraham Accords with Israel, has a clear vested interest in such a deal, as the Houthis have become a security threat for it, too, and Israeli military forces in Somaliland will certainly help it fight them.

In recent years, Somaliland allowed the UAE to use the port of Berbera and its airport as a base for its military activity in Yemen, in return for a $440 million UAE investment in Berbera port, according to foreign media. The UAE mediation follows its military cooperation with Israel, the two having reportedly established a joint military-intelligence base on the Socotra archipelago, one of the world's remotest, most ecologically diverse islands, situated in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen.

Israel recognizing Somaliland is a win-win. Somaliland is not recognized by most of the world but it is a democracy in the midst of authoritarian governments. Its most important resource is its location - right at the entrance of the Bab al-Mandeb straits, through which 12% of the world's global trade passes.

Here's where the Abraham Accords and other peace deals pay off. Moderate Arab states hate Iran and its proxies, but Israel can do the dirty work they need. Egypt will never admit to wanting Israel to deter Yemen but it has lost a significant amount of Suez Canal revenue because of the Houthis, and it would prefer Israel fix that problem while not making itself a bigger target for Islamists.

For all its formidable power, the US does not seem to ever want to deliver a knockout punch in its operations. Israel would have no problem hitting Houthi positions beyond the purely military - to destroy its ports from which Iran sends it weapons, for example.

As we've seen in Gaza and Lebanon, a knockout punch is what is necessary against fanatical jihadists. The US and moderate Arab countries are reluctant to deliver such a punch. But the Houthis will not agree to stop their murderous operations unless they are on the ropes.

Israel cannot do this from a distance. Somaliland gives Israel the chance to not only drop the next to last domino of Iranian proxies, but also to enhance its own ability to act worldwide when necessary to defend its interests.

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

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In May, Dutch MP Mona Keijzer was a guest on TV program "Sophie & Jeroen." In a discussion of what prospective immigrants should be required to know before being allowed to become citizens.

She argued that the integration classes should include material about the Holocaust, saying of asylum seekers from Muslim countries, "We know that there, hatred of Jews is almost part of the culture."

The host and another guest immediately took offense, first pretending that she said that only Muslims were antisemitic and then that she was calling all Muslims antisemitic. She clarified what she said: "Now it seems as if I am saying that everyone who comes from an Islamic country hates Jews, that is not the case. If that is how it came across, I apologize, because that is not what I meant. But it is definitely a problem and it must become part of the integration process."

A group of Muslims filed a complaint saying that her comment is insulting and she was inciting hatred, violence and discrimination against Muslims.

The Public Prosecution Service concluded that Keijzer was "in principle guilty of group insult", but that prosecution would be too great an infringement of a politician's right to freedom of expression, so the case was dropped.

Mona Keijzer is now the Housing Minister for the Netherlands, and she wants a review of the case to clear her name.

Her defense is that her words are objectively true."Facts cannot be punishable," Keijzer has been telling the media.

Referring to various studies done in Europe, in the Netherlands and by Pew Research, she says "seventy to eighty percent of people from Islamic countries exhibit antisemitic views."

De Telegraaf newspaper looked at the statistics and found that Keijzer's statement was accurate.

The American Anti Defamation League (ADL) has been conducting surveys around the world since the 1970s....The largely Islamic Middle East and North Africa do not fare well. Of the 275 million inhabitants, 200 million people hold views such as 'Jews have too much power in the financial world' or 'Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars'. According to the ADL, anyone who agrees with six of eleven more or less anti-Semitic statements is considered an anti-Semite. That yields a score of 74 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. In Morocco, it is 80 percent. By comparison, Sweden scores 4 percent, the Netherlands 6, the US 10, France 15, Spain 26 and Turkey 69 percent.

Recognizing widespread Islamic antisemitism has been the third rail in most Western countries. The liberal West, including academia and human rights groups, treat pointing out the truth as Islamophobic.

This is an important case for freedom of speech. Moreover, it helps bring a very real problem of a very real bigotry out in the open, when the media and most governments try mightily to bury it.

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

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12/15 Links: How Israel Turned the Mideast Around; Israel closes embassy in Ireland; Senior Hamas official admits: 'October 7 ruined us'

From Ian:

How Israel Turned the Mideast Around

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer interviewed by Barton Swaim

Critics used to complain about the "Israel lobby" and its supposed ability to bend U.S. policy to its will. A saner case could be made that Israel is constantly doing America's dirty work at immense cost to itself. Its war against Hamas and Hizbullah isn't some regional conflict over disputed territory but a battle in a worldwide cold war between an alliance of democracies and a confederation of anti-American dictatorships.

Ron Dermer, 53, Israel's minister for strategic affairs who grew up in Miami Beach, was Israel's ambassador to the U.S. from 2013-21. He says, "A lot of people...think America is hated because of Israel. I think Israel is hated because of America. We're seen as an extension of your values. And guess what? They're right."

Six months ago, global opinion-makers spoke mainly about the "genocide" perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. Dermer says, "The Jews must be the dumbest genocidal force in history. We win Nobel Prizes, but we're idiots when it comes to genocide - the Palestinian population is about 10 times what it was in 1948."

He asks me to imagine I'm president of the United States and I have to pick one ally for the next half-century. "Just one, strictly in terms of American interest. You want an ally that can defend itself by itself and you don't have to send in troops to protect it. You want an ally with formidable intelligence capability and cyber capability and all the new forms of warfare. And you want an ally that can develop new weapons. If you're honest, you're down to Britain and Israel. And I think we have a bigger standing army than the Brits."

‘Very friendly’ Netanyahu-Trump call focused on hostages, victory

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a “very friendly, warm and important” phone call with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on the need to complete Jerusalem’s victory over Iranian-backed terror proxies and free the hostages held by Hamas, the Israeli leader said on Sunday.

Netanyahu in a statement said he and his “friend” Trump discussed the situations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria during the call on Saturday night.

“A year ago, I said something simple: We would change the face of the Middle East, and we are indeed doing so. Syria is not the same Syria. Lebanon is not the same Lebanon. Gaza is not the same Gaza. And the head of the axis, Iran, is not the same Iran,” Netanyahu said in the video statement on Sunday.

“We are working today forcefully and with due consideration in order to have security regarding all the countries of the region and in order to have stability and security on all of our borders,” he stated, adding that challenges remain in fighting Iran’s “bloodied proxies.”

Netanyahu emphasized that Jerusalem has “no interest” in a confrontation with the incoming Syrian regime, stressing that his policies towards it will be determined “according to the reality on the ground.”

“Together with Defense Minister [Israel] Katz, I have directed the IDF to thwart the potential threats from Syria and prevent terrorist elements from taking control close to our border,” he stated. “Over the course of several days, we have destroyed the capabilities that the Assad regime took decades to build.”

The Israeli leader quoted Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem as confirming that the Iranian-backed terrorist group has lost its Syrian supply route. “This is, of course, additional testimony to the severe blow with which we have struck the entire Iranian axis,” according to Netanyahu.

“I would like to both clarify and warn: I would like to make it clear and to warn: We are committed to preventing the rearming of Hezbollah,” said the premier. “I unequivocally declare to Hezbollah and to Iran: In order to prevent you from attacking us, we will continue to take action against you as necessary, in every arena and at all times.”

Regarding the war in Gaza, he declared, “We will continue to act relentlessly to return home all of our hostages, the living and the deceased. Let me add that the less we discuss this, the better, and so, with God’s help, we will succeed.”

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 8, Trump made it clear that while he hopes for an end to the conflict, Jerusalem must secure a decisive victory. “I want [Netanyahu] to end it, but you have to have a victory,” he stated.

He also addressed the growing criticism of Israel and the downplaying of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, comparing it to Holocaust denial: “You know, you have Holocaust deniers. Now you have Oct. 7 deniers, and it just happened. No, Oct. 7 happened. What happened is horrible.”

Jonah Goldberg: What the Headlines Missed about Amnesty International's Accusation that Israel Commits Genocide

Reporting on Amnesty International's new report about Israel's War in Gaza, the New York Times headline read: "Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Genocide in Gaza." The Los Angeles Times was similar: "Amnesty International says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza."

Calling the report unfair would be a profound understatement. Here's its first sentence: "On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip." In other words, the story begins not with Hamas's unprecedented terrorist attack on Israeli civilians that day. Rather, it begins with the Israeli response to the aggression of Hamas. This is a bit like reporting on America's "genocide" in Japan by stating, "On April 18, 1942, the United States embarked on a military offensive on the Japanese nation" - leaving out that whole Pearl Harbor thing.

The Genocide Convention of 1948 is very clear about what constitutes actual or attempted genocide: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." But the Palestinian population has grown more than eightfold since Israel's founding, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and the population of Gaza has increased 600% since 1960.

One of the most important words in the UN definition of genocide is "intent." If Israel, which even its enemies characterize as supremely competent and lethal, intends genocide, it's really, really, bad at it. Indeed, if genocide were the goal, you would think Israel would stop warning civilians to evacuate areas it's about to attack and sending Palestinians caravans of aid.

On page 101 of Amnesty's 296-page report, the authors essentially concede that Israel isn't committing genocide under prevailing interpretations of international law, as they reject "an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence...that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict."

As Commentary's Seth Mandel writes, "So Amnesty International dissents from international law. That's fine. Just be up-front about it: Amnesty is not accusing Israel of 'genocide,' it is accusing Israel of a different crime which Amnesty has named 'genocide,' just so it could use that word." Amnesty didn't want a discussion about the proper definition of genocide. It wanted headlines alleging that Israel committed the crime - and it got them.

Hezbollah's leader Naim Qassem's speech yesterday - Nasrallah's lies without the charisma

It used to be when the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech, it would be covered closely in Lebanese media. Every sentence would be live-blogged on news sites. The Lebanese realized that their lives were dependent on Hezbollah and Nasrallah was the most powerful man in Lebanon.

How times have changed.

Yesterday, Nasrallah's successor Naim Qassem gave his second major speech since taking over, and even pro-Hezbollah media didn't give it wide coverage.

While Qassem made the same kinds of statements and threats Nasrallah used to, no one is too impressed with Hezbollah's power anymore, and Qassem does not have the same charisma that Nasrallah had.

Here are some highlights of Qassem's speech, including some that admit Hezbollah's weakness.

"We hope that this new party in power [in Syria] will see Israel as an enemy and not normalize relations with it."

"Hezbollah lost a military supply line via Syria. The resistance must adapt to the circumstances."

Israel was able to assassinate “Hezbollah leaders, headed by His Eminence the Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and committed its brutal crimes against civilians, but it was unable to break the den of the resistance.”

He again declared victory, saying, "three factors of strength and steadfastness made us victorious. The first is the legendary steadfastness of the resistance fighters in the field, the second is the blood of the martyrs, headed by Sayyed Nasrallah, and the third factor is the integrated and effective political management with the management of the resistance of the brave." He claimed that Hezbollah has “thwarted the enemy's goal of eliminating and crushing the Resistance.”

Of course, Israel never stated that was a goal.

But that was not Israel's only imaginary goal that was thwarted. According to Qassem, Israel wanted to take over all of Lebanon and move Jewish settlers there.

He won't mention that Hezbollah was decimated by Israel and accepted a humiliating ceasefire forcing it to agree to lose everything it has been building for 18 years in southern Lebanon.

This weakening of Hezbollah has had a huge impact on the Lebanese psyche. You can see the change in their media. No longer are the journalists frightened of criticizing Hezbollah or of talking about a Lebanon that is not dominated by the Shiite minority,.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The popular art magazine Hyperallergic, together with the anti-Zionist Jewish Currents magazine, has an article about "anti-Palestinian repression" in the art world.

A wave of anti-Palestinian repression has swept the Western art world in the aftermath of October 7th, 2023. From Amsterdam to San Francisco, artists who have criticized Israel’s brutal war on Gaza have seen their exhibitions canceled, their work deinstalled, and other opportunities rescinded. Some of these incidents have been met with major backlash: After Vail, Colorado disinvited Native artist Danielle SeeWalker from a residency last May, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the town; months earlier, Indiana University’s cancellation of Palestinian American painter Samia Halaby’s retrospective made international headlines. In our extensive reporting at Hyperallergic on this phenomenon, we’ve seen that these high-profile cases are just the tip of the iceberg. In Miami Beach, for example, Oolite Arts removed an installation evoking the phrase “from the river to the sea” by Vietnamese artist Khánh Nguyên Hoàng Vũ, citing concerns from unspecified community members that the popular expression of support for Palestinian self-determination amounted to “a literal call for violence against them.” Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany canceled an exhibition section on Afrofuturism after guest curator Anaïs Duplan professed his support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in a social media post.

When you look at the examples they give of art or artists that they suggest are being unfairly attacked, you see that the art or artists that are being criticized aren't pro-Palestinian but anti-Israel.

Saying "from the river to the sea" is a call to dismantle the world's only Jewish state. BDS' explicit aim is the destruction of Israel. Other examples they give are of artists comparing the war in Gaza to the Holocaust - which is Holocaust inversion, a form of Holocaust denial - and calling Israel genocidal, which is a slander against Israel and not a "pro-Palestinian" position.

The article doesn't really have a lot of examples of this so called "repression" so it expands the definition of repression to include a museum moving a piece of artwork to another wall and adding signage about how its content can be seen as offensive. Beyond that it features anti-Israel artists' self-censorship - artwork that they refused to show when the galleries refused to adopt BDS - as examples of repression, when the only people who stopped their being exhibited were the artists themselves.

Nowadays, it is indeed difficult to distinguish between "pro-Palestinian" and "anti-Israel." That is because the proponents themselves make no such distinction between the two, causing otherwise intelligent people to be blind to the obvious: No one is calling to censor or repress any artwork that calls for a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, or that sympathizes with Palestinian suffering, or that celebrates Palestinian culture.

Calling to destroy Israel as a Jewish state when there is no call to demolish China or Iran, when there is no call to dismantle any state that defines itself as Muslim or Christian, is not "pro-Palestinian." Israel's entire purpose, and Zionism's entire purpose, is to create a small space on Earth that Jews can feel safe. Criticizing how Israel balances the rights of Jews and non-Jews under its control is perfectly acceptable. Opposing it altogether, and denying the Jews equal or any rights in the region, is antisemitism. Redefining Zionism, or framing that idea as "pro-Palestinian," does not change the bigotry behind the desire to destroy the Jewish state.

While these are all examples of "repression," it is richly ironic that Hyperallergic is not at all critical of BDS which itself calls for the censorship of anything - including art - of Israelis or Zionists.

The hypocrisy goes beyond that.

Hyperallergic properly discusses the work of the late artist Charles Krafft. Krafft was known in the Seattle arts scene as a deeply ironic artist who would explore Nazi and racist themes - but then he made it clear that he wasn't being ironic, and he was in fact a white supremacist and Holocaust denier. Obviously, once that became known his stock in the art world went down and galleries refused to show his art.

There is no criticism from Hyperallergic for the right of art spaces to choose who to highlight and who not to based on their politics when those politics are those that the magazine disagrees with. There is no complaint about "repression," even though the antisemitism represented by Krafft is just as odious than the antisemitism of the artists it celebrates.

Hyperallergic fully supports artists who deny Jewish national rights, who desire to ethically cleanse seven million Jews from their homes, who claim that Jews are not really Jews but Khazars, who say that Jews have no right to Jerusalem or other holy places, and many of whom question or deny the Holocaust if anyone would ask them. The magazine does not seem to understand that the Palestinian and Arab antisemitism that pervades their media and their art is indistinguishable from that of Krafft. Criticizing and marginalizing white supremacist artists is proper - and so is criticism and marginalization of antisemites from the Left and from the Muslima and Arab worlds.

Condoning their antisemitism is not at all being anti-Palestinian - unless you define antisemitism as an integral part of the Palestinian narrative. And that is a question that the Left should be taking seriously if it really hates racism.

The question of where to draw the line between free speech and hate speech is legitimate. The differences between censorship and criticism are important to define. It is proper for Hyperallergic to grapple with those issues. It is not proper for it to take an inconsistent position that conveniently aligns with its politics and ends up supporting some kinds of Jew hatred as a principled position.

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

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CNN Turk is owned by the Turkish Demirören Group which licenses the CNN name and has the rights to broadcast content from CNN International..

In 2022, Newsweek reported that the network has a history of bigotry and antisemitic conspiracy theories:

A retired Turkish ambassador on a talk show CNN Turk aired in April erroneously claimed, "Jews rule the world. They control 27 percent of the U.S. economy." A senior adviser to Erdogan joined him with his incorrect, dangerous and antisemitic rants: "They also rule the military, politics, media and more importantly the movie industry." During this exchange, the CNN Turk anchor intervened only once to note that although there are only 7 million Jews in the United States, "their influence is very high."

This was not a one-off episode. The previous year, Brooklyn College associate professor Louis Fishman criticized CNN Turk for another talk show, where a guest known for his antisemitic conspiracy theories claimed that an Israeli professor at Harvard University had developed the COVID-19 virus as a biological weapon in partnership with a Wuhan lab. This antisemitic trope came at a sensitive time when a spike in coronavirus cases in Turkey also exacerbated antisemitic narratives, triggering accusations that Jews were responsible for the pandemic. When one of the other guests tried to push back against such a conspiracy theory, the CNN Turk moderator intervened in defense, "But can his theory be disproved?"

The article mentions that there were reports that CNN International was seeking clarification about the channel, concerned that this antisemitic content reflects badly on the CNN name. But nothing happened.

While the examples listed above were of CNN Turk interviewing antisemites, the network could claim that their opinions do not reflect those of the network itself. But since then CNN Turk directly published antisemitic conspiracy theories under its own voice.

In November 2023, CNN Turk claimed that Israel had a secret plan to buy up large areas of Turkish occupied Northern Cyprus. This is a common conspiracy theory in Turkey, but CNN Turk added:

It is clear that the interest of Jews from Israel and all over the world in the island of Cyprus is not an ordinary and spontaneous interest. The island of Cyprus is located within the “Promised Land” of the Jews. They are very active not only in the north of the island but also in the south, which is under Greek control. What is the real purpose of the “Larnaca-Gaza Humanitarian Aid Corridor” project that suddenly came to the fore after the Gaza issue emerged? Is their concern really humanitarian aid activities or are they preparing to take one of the steps that will turn Cyprus into a second homeland for Israel?

And then it printed a map of the supposed Biblical borders of Israel that the State of Israel intends to expand to, which includes large parts of Turkey.

Notice that even this map, which extends way beyond the Euphrates, still doesn't include Cyprus. It was copied from another Turkish site which extended Greater Israel into southeastern Turkey.

And more recently, CNN Turk had a feature about the "Gharqad tree", the tree mentioned in the Islamic hadith that supposedly will protect the Jews when all other stones and trees tell Muslims where Jews can be found to be slaughtered. CNN Turk states as fact:

According to the hadiths, it is thought that the garquad tree will hide the Jews in a war between Muslims and Jews. For this reason, the Jews plant a lot of garquad trees, especially in the Israeli region. Every tree and every stone that the Jews hide behind will inform the Jew behind it, but the garquad tree will remain silent. For this reason, it is a tree that is planted in abundance by the Jews.

Of course CNN Turk happily interviews "experts" who describe how awful Israel and Jews are, including anti-Zionist Jews.

CNN cannot be unaware of these reports. Apparently, it isn't bothered by blatant antisemitism broadcast under its name.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.