Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

12/25 Link: Israel: A protector of minorities in the Middle East; Treating Anti-Semitism as a Preexisting Condition; Erin Molan interview

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: We need to find the crack in the darkness

The most recent repercussion of the Hamas massacre of October 7 was the death on Tuesday of Kibbutz Nir Oz member Hannah Katzir, 76, who was released along with 50 other hostages held by Hamas in a deal in November 2023Katzir was kidnapped to the Gaza Strip from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Her husband, Rami, was murdered during the massacre. Her son Eldad, taken captive the same day, was later murdered in Gaza.Katzir’s daughter, Carmit, had written in December last year that her mother returned from captivity “both heartbroken and with serious cardiological issues, including broken heart syndrome.”

The Katzirs’ story is just one of many unfathomable tragedies that have befallen thousands of families in Israel on October 7 and since - those who fell then, those who have fallen in battle, and all of those who have not returned home, as the country gathers to celebrate one of the most family-oriented holidays in the Jewish calendar.

Yet, celebrate we will, as the people of Israel continue to choose life over death and light over darkness.

As Rabbi Stewart Weiss states in a column that will appear in this Friday’s Post magazine, “Hanukkah, at its core, is the celebration of miracles - both then and now. Yet exactly which miracles are being referred to is the subject of much debate.”

One way to look at it is that the lights of the hanukkiah have illuminated our path through the interminable darkness and continue to light our way toward redemption, writes Weiss.

So, when we light the first Hanukkah candle tonight, let’s rejoice at what the Jewish people have and what we’ve accomplished – and the existence and durability of the Jewish homeland, of the state of Israel.

But let’s also think about the Jews suffering from persecution and antisemitism, who are too afraid to display the hanukkiah in their windows and will light in secrecy inside, reminiscent of the dark periods of Jewish history.

And let’s think about the hostages, some languishing below ground with their mental and physical health deteriorating on a daily basis. If anyone deserves a Hanukkah miracle, it’s them and their families.

May the lights from our hanukkiah illuminate a path that reaches them and sends them a message of hope amid their darkness.

As the great Jewish poet Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack, a crack in everything… That's how the light gets in.”

This year, the miracle of Hanukkah will be to find those cracks and shine the light through.

Yisrael Medad: Needed: A little more ‘Three Wise Men’ wisdom

While wise not to reveal to Herod the location, they were even wiser to know that the child was Jewish; he was born in Judea and that area was the land of Judah, a son of Jacob. While not specified, I am fairly certain that they knew the country was not Palestine and as such, that the child was not an Arab Palestinian (even if, earlier this month, the current pope gazed upon a Nativity display of a manger scene that had the representative doll resting on a keffiyeh).

Pope Francis attended the unveiling of the exhibition at the Paul VI Hall on Dec. 7. It was designed by artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi from Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University.

“The keffiyeh was added at the last minute during the installation phase,” said Faten Nastas Mitwasi, one of the two artists, students at Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem overseeing the project, along with Johny Andonia.

In a Dec. 12 interview with the Religious News Service, she said that while it was not their initial intention to turn the display into a political statement, they welcomed the final addition of the keffiyeh as a symbol of national identity. She added, “This is a gift from the Palestinian people. So, it’s holding and carrying the Palestinian identity.”

Minister for Diaspora Affair Amichai Chikli quickly wrote to the pope that the decision to portray the scene as such was “a deliberate adoption of the Palestinian narrative.” Within days, the keffiyeh was removed.

A few years ago, in response to the propaganda campaign comparing Jesus, Mary and Joseph with present-day Arabs being held up a roadblock put up by the Israel Defense Forces, there was need of a concerted effort to point out that roadblocks are due to Arab terror operations and not to Jews seeking to be cruel. Moreover, as Matthew 2:19 records, Mary and Joseph, following Herod’s death, returned from a short exile from Egypt and the country to which they came back is recorded, at 2:20-21, as “Israel.” Again, no “Palestine.”

Anyone who searches the Christian Bible will find dozens and dozens of references to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And a Jewish Temple, too, which was also an object of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s erasure efforts. “Palestine” and “West Bank” are not to be found, nor, as the case is, in the Quran. Not even Jerusalem. However, at Sura 5:21 the Children of Israel are charged to live in the Holy Land (al-Ard al-Muqaddas).

The verse refers to the words spoken by Moses to the descendants of Isaac: “Remember Moses said … O my people! Enter The Holy Land which God hath written for you, and turn not back.”

Imam Abu al-Qasim Mahmud al-Zamakshari, in his 11th-century commentary al-Kashaf, explained that the borders of “the Holy Land” are from Mount Hermon and part the Golan, whereas others say it extends from the territory of the Philistines (Gaza) until Damascus.

It would be wise to inject more objective, fact-based, ecumenical and genuine knowledge into the regional equation, which would achieve much for religiously motivated supporters—and opponents—of Zionism.

Israel: A protector of minorities in the Middle East

Given the Jewish people’s two millenniums of wandering without access to their homeland, it’s only natural for Israelis to empathize with the Kurdish people and their desire for a state of their own. In past conflicts between Turkey and the Kurds, such as in the fall of 2019, Jerusalem declared its support of the Kurdish people. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Facebook that October, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”

Just last month, the newly installed Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, emphasized the importance of forging a “natural alliance” with the Kurdish nation.

The Turks, Iranians and the Arab regimes in Iraq and Syria share little in common, except a unifying desire to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. Turkey and Iran, in particular, have been aggressively persecuting their Kurdish population. The major ambition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is to impede any manifestation of Kurdish independence or autonomous status in Syria.

Erdoğan has trained and financed the rebel groups that ended the Bashar Assad regime’s control of Syria. While the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group focused on capturing Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, Erdoğan’s proxy—the National Syrian Army—focused on killing Kurds and conquering Kurdish majority communities in northern Syria.

Israel has a security and strategic stake in an alliance with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, as well as supporting the Kurds in Iran and the Druze community in Syria. Strong alliances with these minorities would create a barrier against any future attempts by Iran and its Shi’ite Iraqi proxies to infiltrate Syria and link up with Hezbollah.

A prominent Syrian-Kurdish leader told me that while words of support from Israeli government officials are nice, the Kurds need action. The Kurds want an alliance with Israel and they want military assistance. I responded by noting that while it has been difficult for Israel to aid the Kurds militarily given the close military relations Israel had with the Turkish army and intelligence apparatus, Erdoğan’s openly hostile declarations indicate him to be a declared enemy of Israel. As a result, this has changed the calculations in Jerusalem and, Israel may now be prepared to render military assistance to the Kurds.

An alliance with the Druze is much easier given the proximity of the Golan Heights to the Druze villages in southern Syria. As seen in a widely circulated video on social media, some Druze leaders have expressed a desire to become part of Israel to prevent assaults by “radical Islamists.”

These Druze villagers remained loyal to the Assad regime until the end. As a minority, they were always watching their backs, and now they fear retribution from the Sunni jihadist rebels who have taken over Syria. In terms of the bigger picture for the Druze, they would like to be granted an autonomous status in southwestern Syria, realizing that right now, an independent Druze state is unrealistic. Given the weight of the Israeli Druze community, coupled with the prestige and affection with which they are held by the Jewish majority, Syrian Druze feel compelled to choose sides. Their fear of jihadist rule and the prospect of joining with their fellow Druze in Israel under the protection of the Israeli Defense Forces’ umbrella, makes for an easy choice.

A Christian-Lebanese friend of mine recently told me that “Israel must become the protector of the minorities in the Middle East.” He had in mind not only the Kurds and the Druze but the Christians in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is a tribute to Israel’s recent military victories, which have projected Israel as the “strong horse” in the region, those objectives, however, might be far beyond Israel’s resources. Still, an alliance with the Kurds and the Druze in Syria has considerable merit.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Chanukah is kind of lucky because everyone just loves Chanukah, which is why everyone and their dog wants to borrow Chanukah and use it to express themselves however. Take Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. He thinks Chanukah is about people hiding and running out of oil and such. You know the tweet I’m talking about—the one from 2023—the one ole Dougie had to delete because it was stupid and made up and betrayed his ignorance about his own religion and heritage.

“The story of Chanukah and the story of the Jewish people has always been one of hope and resilience. In the Chanukah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive or that the few drops of oil they had would last,” said Doug E. “But they survived, and the oil kept burning.”

Oh my. People like Dougie Emhoff really shouldn’t just make stuff up about Chanukah and distribute it to the masses. Because people were bound to see it and make fun of him and his ignorance. Which they did. Because Chanukah is definitely not about people hiding and running out of Wesson.

But Doug wasn’t done putting his foot—instead of say a jelly donut or even a latke—in his mouth, “During those eight days in hiding,” said Doug, “they recited their prayers and continued their traditions.

“That’s why Chanukah means dedication. It was during those dark nights that the Maccabees dedicated themselves to maintaining hope and faith in the oil, each other and their Judaism.”

“In these dark times, I think of that story,” added Emhoff.

Uh huh. Sure you do, Dougie. I can just picture you late on the night of November 5, 2024, thinking of Chanukah. It would have been a very dark moment for you, for sure. I can’t even imagine how loud and long Kamala screamed and pulled her hair out and blamed everyone but herself on her poor showing in the election. But you had faith in the oil!

Old Doug would not have been bothered one bit about Kamala's stunning loss. Not Doug. Doug E. would have been thinking about Chanukah and about hope and about how to squeeze out a few more drops of canola so he wouldn’t have to go to the store and pay out the nose for another bottle because of Biden-Harris inflation.

I jest.

But it has long been the way of progressive Jews like Emhoff to use and distort the holiday of Chanukah to suit their agenda—an agenda that has nothing to do with religion. In 2012, for example, writing for the Portland Press Herald, Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld, an “orthodox” rabbi, tied Chanukah to gay marriage. “With my very own eyes, I have seen a great miracle this year right here in Maine. A small group of people, homosexuals and their supporters, stood up for their equal rights in marriage.”

Wait, whut??? Chanukah isn’t about standing up for gay marriage. The complete opposite of that. Chanukah is about RELIGION. Specifically about Jewish fidelity to the Jewish religion.

Writing about Herzfeld’s idiotic op-ed, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky was clear, “The demand for same-sex marriage is personal and political, but not at all religious.”

Herzfeld, writes Pruzansky, “inverts the story of Chanukah on its head in order to make a political point that is shockingly shallow and entirely bereft of Torah wisdom.”

What makes the irony even more pungent is that the Greeks – against whom the Maccabees fought and prevailed – were avid supporters of and indulgers in homosexuality. It was just one of the immoral practices of the Hellenists that the faithful Jews found so repugnant, and therefore went to war in order to purge the land of it. In other words, to be faithful to the Chanukah story, the rabbi should have opposed same sex marriage. I.e., rather than succumb to the morality of the dominant culture and wrench the definition of marriage from its traditional moorings, he should have stood with the faithful Jews of yesteryear (and today) and preached the truth of Torah even if – particularly if – he would thereby remain in the minority. That is, after all, a dominant theme of Chanukah historically: that the Jewish people have survived not by mimicking the fluid morality of others but by clinging tenaciously to our own timeless moral norms. Surely the rabbi knows this.

Back in 2014, my piece, The Truth About Hannukkah, was yoinked and printed word for word on a website with an evangelical readership. The piece was an attempt to explain Chanukah in simple terms, in order to combat this rabid infection of everyone abusing the holiday in support of their current ideological flavor of the month or minute. It was irritating the heck out of me. So I explained Chanukah and the history of the holiday as I saw it, in simple terms, a kind of Chanukah for Idiots:

Those flickering Hanukkah lights have nothing to do with equality, integration, and multiculturalism. They have nothing to do with coexistence. They have nothing to do with charity. They have nothing to do with peace.

The candles, in fact, have everything to do with insulating the Jewish people from outside influences which might contaminate them and draw them away from their God.

The story of Hanukkah, the real story, and not the pretend stories that people tell you, begins in 174 BCE when Antiochus IV decided to consolidate his reign by imposing a single culture and religion on those who lived in the region of the Seleucid Empire. Seeing Judaism as a threat, Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and installed Jews who had come under the influence of Greek culture (Hellenism) in positions of Jewish influence in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Torah scrolls were burned. Many Jews were killed for refusing to give in to Antiochus’ decrees. They would die rather than give up their God and their faith in favor of Hellenism.

The altar of the Temple was defiled by a Hellenist Jew and that was the tipping point. Matthias killed this man with his sword and then it was all-out war. The Jews formed legions and fought back against those who would destroy their faith.

They fought against integration.

They fought against multiculturalism.

They fought against coexistence.

They fought assimilation—the outside influences that would drown out the voice and spark of the Jewish soul within.

And won.

The evangelical website plagiarism was only the start of what proved to be a very strange phenomenon in which churches distributed the article among their parishioners, and homeowners all over America found copies left outside their doors. At any rate, some two months after the Chanukah (or “Hannukkah” as we were spelling it that year) piece, I had an odd encounter on Twitter, which led to the following email exchange with a Jewish woman in California:

I saw your tweet about getting in touch with you about your interest in my blog with this address. How may I help you?

Varda Epstein

Hi! Yes I don't have a twitter account, but my daughter tweeted you for me with my email address. I was at an upscale outdoor shopping mall in Berkeley CA on Friday, and when I returned to my car, your flyer, "The Truth About Hanukkah" was on my windshield and plastered on all the cars in the lot.

It befuddled me!! When I read it, I thought it was a Christian doctrine, as it read like that. These days there is so much antisemitism that I was concerned about who did this and why?

(name withheld)

Ten years ago, I sat in my living room in Israel, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where a Christian slips a flyer about Chanukah under your windshield, and your mind goes to, “Is it antisemitic?”

Today, I no longer want to tell anyone about Chanukah, what it is, or how they should observe it. I’m not a rabbi and it’s not my place. What I do want is for Jews to show more intellectual curiosity! Don’t take his word for it when an “orthodox” rabbi tells you that the message of Chanukah is that community support for gay marriage is a “great miracle.”

In general, when it comes to Jews mouthing off about Judaism, if what they say sounds shockingly cool, it likely isn’t. More probably it’s just someone saying stuff they made up to get attention. That’s the kind of person who, for instance, is going to tell you that Chanukah is about the miracle of abortion, or the fight for human rights in some third-world country. Don’t listen to that person. See through them, please.

Even if you don’t have a rabbi, or much knowledge of Judaism, you can question what people tell you about Chanukah. Don’t be satisfied with a recitation or a narrative. Press them for sources. Get the facts about Chanukah and don’t allow others to use this Jewish holiday to get you to believe whatever they want you to believe.

Doug Emhoff used Chanukah as a platform to issue platitudes. His words were meant to be some kind of sweet message for the public, something to post on social media on a Jewish holiday, just generally. “Poor” Doug. He didn’t realize that it was important to be accurate about the Chanukah story and its meaning. From his point of view, that tweet was just a season’s greeting, for crying out loud. He was doing something NICE, and look how they treated him. Sheesh.

And yet, Doug ended up deleting that tweet. He came to understand that, indeed, some folks genuinely care about these matters—about the accuracy of it all, and about what Chanukah means. Perhaps Doug Emhoff views these individuals as religious zealots, failing to see that he himself unwittingly represents the very Hellenized Jews that the Maccabees themselves were forced to confront.

Chanukah Sameach to all my readers!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A fairly well known Egyptologist named Wissam al-Sisi was interviewed and had interesting things to say:

Dr. Wassim Al-Sisi, an Egyptologist, said, “There is a conspiracy being hatched against the Egyptian state with the aim of harming it,” adding, “The conspirator is global Zionism and the one being conspired against is the Middle East.”

“The conspirators are America, England, Israel, and terrorist groups,” he said.

He added: "No president of the United States of America comes to power without the approval of global Zionism and American Jews."

He added, "Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, was a member of Freemasonry, as was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote an article, 'Why I am a Freemason.' The duo are English products."

He added, "The terrorist Brotherhood group knows nothing about religion, and considers the homeland a handful of rotten dirt. What they are doing is not on their own, but in implementation of the orders of England and America."

He pointed out that "the goal of the conspiracy against the Middle East is to steal its wealth, subjugate it politically and ideologically, and prevent its progress so that they cannot control the West because they are the largest bloc that speaks one language and has almost one religion."

He believed that “the reason for choosing a homeland for the Jews and Zionism in the Middle East instead of Uganda and Argentina is the presence of the Dead Sea in the region, which gives Israel life and contains phosphates necessary for agricultural land and sufficient for the world for the next 100 years.”

Why should Zionists have wanted to go to Zion?

(No one thought of extracting phosphates from the Dead Sea until decades after Zionism started.)

Sisi has said far more outlandish things, like the US wants to resettle savage blacks to Egypt to get rid of them, just like Europeans wanted to get rid of their Jews. He once wrote a column pretending to be Hitler explaining why he wanted to kill all the Jews.

Everyday antisemitism in Egypt. Nothing to see here.

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

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Not just Hamas: The PA makes up Gaza casualty numbers as well

The Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education issued an infographic that claims that some 12,700 students have been killed in Gaza.

Their source? They don't say.

The latest Gaza health ministry list of "martyrs" from September counts about 7,150 children between ages of 6-17 out of the total of 34,000 they counted at the time. That's about 21%.

If we are to believe the PA education ministry, of the deaths not counted between that report and now, about 11,000 people have been killed - of whom about 4,700, or 43% are school aged children, more than double the rate of the only list of names of the dead.

Which is statistically highly improbable.

We've already seen that the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics publishes, as factual, Hamas statistics that contradict the health ministry numbers. The PCBS is part of the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, but they happily use Hamas numbers because they are more anti-Israel.

It looks like the education ministry is not basing its count on the list of names, but rather on the same Hamas lies that the PCBS parrots. Hamas claims that some 17,581 children have been killed in Gaza. Assuming that about 2/3 of them are school aged - which is what the MoH list indicates - one comes up with a number very close to the 11,913 school age children in the MoE poster above.

The Ramallah-based education ministry doesn't have a list of students killed. If it did, it would publish the names. Instead, it takes Hamas statistics and massages them to make it appear like it has very specific fatality numbers.

Keep in mind that the EU pours money into the PA to ensure that it adheres to the highest standards of government responsibility and professionalism. The PCBS itself brags about how professional its methodology is.

In the case of Gaza statistics, the Palestinian Authority is no better than Hamas.

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

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This cartoon was published last week in Australia's The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

The cartoonist, Cathy Wilcox, is the president of the Australian Cartoonists' Association and has won several awards.

The sentiments here are mainstream, and no doubt Wilcox would bristle at the idea that it is pure antisemitism. But it is.

It is a blood libel against Jews because of the assumptions it makes - assumptions not based on the facts but on Hamas propaganda, filtered and laundered through the world media.

The antisemitic and anti-Zionist assumptions are:

1. Israeli Jews are fighting in Gaza not for any legitimate reason, but for "vengeance" for October 7.

2. Israeli Jews justify the war by appealing falsely to Judeo-Christian values but in fact they are hypocrites who eagerly flout those values.

3. Dehumanizing the terrorists who raped, burned and kidnapped Israelis is morally wrong. Real morality requires us to be better than that.

3a. The implication in this poem is that Hamas actions must be judged as part of a complex moral continuum within a larger context, but Israeli actions are 100% immoral.

4. Anyone who supports Israel doesn't care about human suffering.

When you look objectively at what she is saying, the underlying hate becomes much clearer. But even worse, the framework of the poem itself is classic Christian antisemitism: painting Jews as being anti-Christmas and anti-Christian values is the Jew-hating icing on the cake. It today's Spanish Inquisition.

Israel is fighting to destroy Hamas. Before October 7, Israel had detente with the terror group, assuming that it was acting pragmatically for the good of Gazans. In fact, it was using Gazan welfare which Israel has always wanted - as a deception to plan the worst attack on Jews since Auschwitz.

Hamas' actions since then proves that every single civilian casualty comes directly from their treating innocent people as cannon fodder and human shields. Every one. Their building hundreds of miles of tunnels, their using schools and mosques for military purposes, even their own words prove how civilian deaths are a strategy.

At no time in history has an army fought against an enemy that uses civilians as their main line of defense. Israel's humanity was seen as a weakness to be exploited by Hamas.

Given this reality, Israel faced a choice: Destroy Hamas which will inevitably result in the deaths of thousands of innocents, or allow Hamas to plan and mount more October 7s.

Israel's choice was the moral one: protecting its own citizens is the highest goal of every civilized country. Israel was forced to wage a war it didn't want, and to do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties within that context.

This is what it did, in ways that no army in history has ever done. No one has ever done more than Israel to ensure mass quantities of food, medicine and other aid be brought into an active war zone. In other wars, the ruling government would move civilians out of the way of the fighting; in this war because Hamas wants their people to die for PR it is up to their enemy to evacuate the people as safely as possible. Every military expert that has visited Israel has been impressed with how much Israel does to reduce casualties while fighting a necessary, existential war.

Destroying Hamas is not a luxury after October 7 - it is a profoundly moral imperative. And self-righteous preachers like Wilcox don't know what morality means.

Moral midgets like Cathy Wilcox willingly follows Hamas' script. They swallow and regurgitate the lies, adding their own layer of hate. And they do it while taking on the mantle of morality and humanitarianism. To them, it is crystal clear that Jews have to live with terrorists next door and among themselves, to accept being slaughtered every few years (or days as they were during the second intifada,) to stay purely on defense and allow the Islamists to flourish to attack them and their loved ones again and again

Wilcox thinks that rhyming proves wit when her assumptions are shit.

(h/t Jill)

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

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12/24 Links Pt2: A Hanukkah for "Oct. 8 Jews"; Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs; Amsterdam court hands ‘lenient’ sentences to five ‘pogrom’ culprits

From Ian:

A Hanukkah for "Oct. 8 Jews"

The desire of many Jews to disappear into America's melting pot did not work. Beginning on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust - and long before the Israel Defense Forces began their response in Gaza - some protesters in U.S. cities began rallying in the streets for the terrorists who had slaughtered and abducted Jewish civilians.

For many American Jews, Oct. 8 was a wake-up call. Jews looked around expecting support and, instead, found themselves more alone than they could have imagined. Many alliances, nurtured through decades of civil rights activism, philanthropy to non-Jewish causes (not least universities) and coalition-building turned out to be a mirage. Statements from many supposed friends were equivocal at best. For Jews who had placed their faith in assimilation or allyship as a shield against antisemitism, the disillusionment was profound.

Oct. 8 Jews see now that assimilation is no guarantee of safety or acceptance. Countless nonobservant American Jews have been jolted awake. Synagogues have seen rising attendance, Jewish schools are growing, and even those who once distanced themselves from their heritage are reconnecting with it.

Writing to a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, George Washington blessed the community: "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

How “Kratsmakh” Became the Yiddish Word for Christmas

So we read in first chapter of the Mishnaic tractate of Avodah Zarah or “Idolatry,” which deals with the precautions that Jews must take to avoid participating, if only unintentionally, in the religious rites of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Roman empire, in whose province of Syria Palestina the Mishnah was compiled in the 3rd century CE. Although each of these three holidays disappeared along with the empire itself, the first two, and possibly the third, are connected, each in its own way, to the New Year’s, Hanukkah, and Christmas that are celebrated this week. Let’s take a look at them.

The Roman calends or calendae, the Kalenda of the Mishnah, was the first day of every month of the year. All the calendae were holidays in Rome and its territories, the most important of them being the calends of January. This was the Roman year’s first month, named for the god Janus, the keeper of doors and portals who ushered in the new year. Celebrated with sacrifices to him and public feasts, the calends of January are described in the Gemara, the Talmud’s commentary on the Mishnah, as taking place eight days after the winter solstice, that is, at the end of December—and it was the proximity of January 1 to the solstice, on which the daylight hours begin to lengthen again after growing progressively shorter from June on, that made it the new year’s first day, as it has continued to be ever since.

The Mishnah’s Satarnuna is the Roman Saturnalia. Originally a one-day holiday dedicated to the god Saturn that took place on December 17, Saturnalia had by the 1st century BCE become a seven-day festivity. Its carnival-like atmosphere featured gift-giving, gambling, and the lighting of candles—and if this reminds you a bit of Hanukkah, which takes place at the same time of the year, it’s no coincidence. It is generally accepted by historians of the period that Saturnalia influenced Hanukkah, the celebration of which began in the 2nd century BCE with the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks but acquired new customs later on when the Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean passed from Greek to Roman rule. One of these was the lighting of Hanukkah candles, which appears not to have been part of the original holiday.

Which brings us to Kratesim, spelled קרטסים in traditional editions of the Mishnah and Gemara. As modern scholars have pointed out, this is the result of an ancient or early medieval scribal error, the correct form of the word being קרטסיס or Kratesis. (The Hebrew letters ס and ם, samekh and final mem, are easily confused.) A Greek word formed from the verb krateo, to rule (think of “democrat” or “autocrat”), kratesis means “coming to rule” or “acquiring power,” and was the name of a holiday, observed only in the eastern or Greek-speaking regions of the Roman empire, that fell annually in late summer.

12/24 Links Pt1: Why the American Right Still Sides with Israel; Freed Israeli hostage Hannah Katzir dies, 78; UN Fakes Gaza Famine by Refusing to Deliver Food

From Ian:

Why the American Right Still Sides with Israel

Written in response to controversies surrounding the conservative journalist Joseph Sobran and the then-presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley’s In Search of Anti-Semitism rings eerily familiar today: its subjects leveled outlandish and conspiratorial charges against Israel, especially regarding its wartime conduct, and then hollered with outrage when accused of anti-Semitism, insisting they were victims of a nefarious Jewish plot to silence them. Many of the subtle and persuasive arguments deployed by Buckley against his fellow conservatives could be harnessed against the anti-Israel left today.

Meir Soloveichik considers the fact that, although the American right has since 2016 moved in a populist, Buchananite direction, it has only become more supportive of Israel:

Many religious conservatives are still driven by a belief that the story of Israel is a miraculous fulfillment of prophetic promises to the Jewish people. Moreover, what unites conservatives today is a detestation of wokeism and its anti-American creed; and it has become increasingly clear that woke-progressive hatred of Israel goes hand in hand with hatred of America. Many instinctively understand that a defeat of the enemies of the Jewish people is itself a victory for America.

This despite some notable exceptions, most importantly the Internet television host Tucker Carlson:

In the wake of the October 7 massacre, Carlson criticized Ben Shapiro for speaking so frequently about Israel, charging that this focus on another country meant that Shapiro did not truly love America. Not long after that, Carlson hosted and lauded a “historian” who claimed that Churchill, rather than Hitler, was the true villain of World War II, and that the death of countless Jews in the camps was a result of lack of preparation by the Germans.

Yet despite Carlson’s purported influence in the incoming administration, the cabinet that has emerged so far looks to be the most pro-Israel one in American history. . . . Trump’s pro-Israel stand seems to have only helped his electoral prospects. In the end, contra Buchanan, many political figures are pro-Israel not because Congress is “Israel-occupied territory,” [in Buchanan’s words], but rather because many Americans care about Israel’s future, and about the well-being of Jews.

Father of former hostage Emily Hand will not return to Ireland after it 'rewarded Hamas'

News of the embassy’s closure did not come as a surprise to Hand.

“I expected them to do it a lot earlier,” he said, because Israel regards Ireland as doing “too many anti-Israel things.”

Father and daughter are from Kibbutz Be’eri, which was the site of some of the worst horrors on October 7 and where 101 people were murdered. That day Hand was at his home on the kibbutz, while his daughter was on a sleepover at a friend’s house nearby.

Ireland’s recognition of a Palestinian state has come in for some harsh criticism from Hand.

“Recognizing Palestine as a state, very soon after their massive terrorist attack – it was almost a reward,” he said. “They [the Irish government] must have seen all the atrocious videos that Hamas put online themselves and yet they were recognised. For me personally, it looked like they were being rewarded for what they did.”

Hand, who like his daughter is a dual Israeli-Irish citizen, was not happy about the embassy’s closure as he believes cutting the lines for diplomacy is “never a good thing." “But I guess they had to show some kind of sign that we’re not very happy with the decisions being made by the Irish government,” he said.

Born and raised Catholic he now describes himself as an atheist and said he would “probably hesitate” before returning to Ireland due to the strength of anti-Israel feeling. “I’m pretty well recognized nowadays. I could be very easily attacked,” he said, as he recalled coming face to face with anti-Israel demonstrators while in Ireland.

The problem, he believes, is deeply entrenched.

“They [the Irish] simply don’t understand the history of the place. Myself, before I came here, I had Palestinian sympathies – I was a sympathizer.”

But living in Be’eri, just a few kilometers from Gaza, changed his outlook.

“They fired thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets at us continuously,” he said.

“Ireland mistakenly sees Israel as the super power, the strength, the oppressor and of course they have sympathies for the Palestinian people,” he said. “Well, if they understood the history of the place, they’d realise there is no comparison.”

Freed Israeli hostage Hannah Katzir dies, 78

Hannah Katzir, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and freed in November of that year as part of a hostage exchange with Hamas, died on Monday night at the age of 78, the kibbutz confirmed on Tuesday.

“With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our member, Hannah Katzir of blessed memory, following a prolonged battle with complex medical complications after her release from captivity,” the statement read.

Her funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at 4 p.m. in Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Katzir’s husband, Rami, was killed during the Oct. 7 invasion. Their son, Elad, abducted alongside her by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, was killed in captivity in Gaza in January. His body was recovered in April during an Israel Defense Forces operation in Khan Younis.

Hannah was released on Nov. 24 as part of a hostage deal that freed 12 other women and children that day. By the end of the six-day truce on Nov. 30, a total of 105 captives had been released.

Days before her release, PIJ falsely claimed she had died in captivity. She had previously appeared in a propaganda video on Nov. 9, with the terror group later stating she would be freed due to humanitarian concerns.

Hannah’s daughter, Carmit Palti Katzir, recently testified before a Knesset committee about her mother’s declining health following her release, as reported by Kan News.

“My wife Sara and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Hannah Katzir, of blessed memory, a survivor of Hamas captivity, who passed away after a year-long battle for her life,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We succeeded in bringing Hannah home, who was brutally kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, but her body and soul carried the scars of horror until her last day. We embrace the Katzir family and are committed to doing everything in our power and continuing to work tirelessly until we bring all our hostages home,” Netanyahu continued.

Newest set of EoZ cartoons and memes

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We've all seen (and debunked) the absurd narrative of Israelis "stealing" so-called Palestinian food and cuisine.

The accusers aren't tethered by facts, however. And a most absurd example comes from a recent video by Mondoweiss, where they use a Jewish Palestinian cookbook from 1936 as a launching pad for another tiresome article accusing Israel of "food colonialism," whatever that is.

The cookbook is called "How to Cook in Palestine" by Dr. Erna Meyer. Here is how Laila El-Haddad describes the cookbook in the video: "It just read to me like a very typical, you know, sort of what would a colonizer say or advise if you were coming somewhere else to a country where you wanted to establish roots and make it your own and uh completely reject uh and erase and invisibilize you know the local population."

I don't know what cookbook she was reading, because you can read the cookbook online, and it doesn't appear to have a single recipe or mention of Levantine food. No hummus, no falafel, no chickpeas.

The entire point of the cookbook was to adapt European recipes to a new land where the available ingredients are different, and traditional ingredients are expensive. Vegetable oil replaces butter, and vegetarian dishes replace meat, and local spices are introduced to flavor known dishes. Ketchup becomes a staple in cooking. How to cook with electricity is a significant topic. None of this is taken from Palestinian cuisine - rather, it is simply adapting cooking techniques to a new environment and new ingredients, like eggplant.

We housewives must take an attempt to free our kitchens from European customs which are not applicable to Palestine. We should wholeheartedly stand in favour of healthy Palestine cooking. We should foster these ideas not merely because we are compelled to do so, but because we realize that this will help us more than anything else in becoming acclimatised to our old-new homeland. Once we learn how to take advantage of the natural products of Palestine and in addition utilize our knowledge of European cooking we will bring about great changes in our method of cooking and will be able to vary our dishes — an important detail, often underestimated.

According to the haters, apparently, vegetarian chopped liver made of eggplants is somehow Palestinian. And so are sandwiches, which take up a large final chapter.

Notice also that the title of the book mentioning "Palestine," which seems to be the main point of consternation for Palestinian Arabs and those who fetishize them, does not carry over to the Hebrew and German titles which recognize that "Palestine" was historically simply the English translation of "Eretz Yisrael."

This video is another example of ascribing to Jews the worst possible motivations in every conceivable vector. The cookbook doesn't say anything negative about Arabs, but the obsession with interpreting Jews creating their own cuisine based on existing Levantine and other Arab dishes as "theft" and "colonialism" and "cultural genocide" proves that the only bigotry here is against Jews, not Arabs.

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To Palestinians and their antisemitic friends, Christians and Christianity are only meant to be subverted for the cause

There have been plenty of articles about how Palestinians like to claim that Jesus was Palestinian.

The Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet made an excellent spoof last year where all the Jews of Judea became declared Palestinians, but of course the non-existent Jews are the ones who killed Jesus.

As with most spoofs about Palestinians, the reality is barely different from the parody.

Here are excerpts of the description of a book called The First Advent in Palestine:

Reading the Advent narratives of Luke and Matthew anew, in their original context, changes so much about how we see the true story of resistance, abusive rulers and systems of oppression, and God coming to earth. In Luke, Rome and Caesar loom, and young Mary's strength and resolve shine brightly as we begin to truly understand what it meant for her to live in the tumultuous Galilee region. In Matthew, through Joseph's point of view, we see the brutality of Herod's rule and how the complexities of empire weighed heavily on the Holy Family. We bear witness to the economic hardship of Nazareth, Bethlehem, and the many villages in between--concerns about daily bread, crushing debt, land loss, and dispossession that ring a familiar echo to our modern ears. Throughout her explorations, Nikondeha features the stories of modern-day Palestinians, centering their voices to help us meet an Advent recognizable for today.

Like Holocaust inversion, Palestinians become Jews when it is done to attack today's Jews.

Meanwhile, Palestinians treat their own Christians like garbage. A new JCPA (now JCFA) report details how the Christians have been fleeing areas under Palestinian Authority and Hamas control.

In 1967, Christians in Judea and Samaria were 6% of the population. In 1997 they constituted 1.5% of the total Palestinian population, in 2007 – 1.2%, and in 2017 – 1%.

In Bethlehem, Christians frequently face violence and intimidation, and are left defenseless. A member of the Protestant clergy explained: “Christians feel unprotected due to the failure of the PA police to intervene on their behalf in confrontations with Muslims.”

In 1950, Bethlehem and the surrounding villages were 86% Christian. By 2017, Bethlehem’s Christian population had dwindled to 10%.

Here is a small example of everyday harassment of Christians in Bethlehem, from a 2019 article:

While Palestinian Christians don’t face systematic, large-scale persecution, conversations with local Christians behind closed doors reveal discrimination is, in fact, present.

Conducting research in the West Bank this past summer, I spent considerable time with Christian families around Bethlehem. One evening as I was eating dinner with a family, a mosque right outside their home broadcasted verses from the Hadith. Shortly after the recitation ended, the father of my host family remarked, “They just cursed the Christians.” While they explained this did not happen every day, I was shocked to discover that Palestinian Christians, living in what used to be a Christian-majority town in the West Bank, are forced to listen to curses hurled at them from loudspeakers.

We don't hear about this so much because the Palestinian Christians are deathly afraid and choose to embrace dhimmitude in a vain attempt to avoid being victimized. So they proclaim in public how well they are treated, while the majority have quietly fled elsewhere, away from the region.

The Palestinian Authority still officially follows the 1960 Jordan Penal Code, which can be used to intimidate and jail Christians who are perceived as insulting Islam - even if they make a noise or gesture. The laws are written as if they protect Christians as well, but the reality is that they are only used to attack them.

Whoever dares to publicly scorn or curse any of the prophets, he / she shall be punished by imprisonment from one to three years.

Whoever publicly violates fasting in the month of Ramadan, he / she shall bepunished by imprisonment up to one month or a fine up to twenty five dinars (JD25).

Whoever with the intention of hurting the feelings of any person and of insulting the religion of any person or with the knowledge that the feelings of any person are likely to be hurt thereby... he/she shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not to exceed three months or by a fine not to exceed twenty dinars (JD20).

Whoever commits one of the following acts, he / she shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not to exceed three months or a fine not to exceed twenty dinars (JD20):
1. Publishes any print, writing, picture or effigy calculated or tending to outrage the religious feelings or belief of other persons , or;
2. Utters in a public place and in the hearing of another person any word or sound calculated or tending to outrage the religious feelings or belief of such person.

As long as a Muslim can claim he of she was insulted by an overheard phrase or even a grunt made by a Christian, that Christian is subject to imprisonment.

It does not work the other way around, as the JCPA report notes:

Added to this is the institutional persecution committed by PA police against Christians. As one member of the Protestant clergy under the PA explained: “Christians feel unprotected due to the failure of the PA police to intervene on their behalf in confrontations with Muslims.” When subjected to harassment and worse by Muslim extremists, Palestinian Christians usually opt not to report incidents to the PA police. According to Shafik, a Protestant clergyman, many are too scared to discuss their accounts, feeling it is dangerous since it may provoke further persecution, regarding the PA police as hostile. Sana Razi Nashash from Beit Jala recalls being harassed by a man in the street. The next day, on her way to file a complaint with the police, she saw the perpetrator wearing a PA police uniform. Needless to say, she did not bother filing the complaint.

Christian Palestinians also face significant bias when seeking justice in local courts. Discrimination within the legal system leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, perpetuating their marginalization. Christians encounter obstacles in accessing justice for crimes committed against them, leading to a culture of impunity. This lack of legal recourse discourages reporting of abuses and perpetuates victimization. Christian women are especially vulnerable to legal discrimination.

Christians and Christianity are treated by Palestinians much the way they treat every social justice issue. To the world they claim to be in solidarity with these causes but in reality they are the first ones to violate the rights of the people they claim to care so much about.

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Iran's Supreme Leader gave a speech Sunday where he denied that Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis were Iranian proxies.

The third point articulated by Imam Khamenei regarding regional developments addressed the psychological and propaganda warfare against Iran, with claims of losing proxy forces within the region.

Emphasizing that the Islamic Republic does not have proxies, he stated, “Yemen, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PIJ are fighting because they have faith, and the power of faith has brought them to the Resistance field.”

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution underscored that if the Islamic Republic ever wishes to take action, it will not need proxy forces. “Faithful and honorable men in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and, God willing, soon in Syria, are fighting against oppression and the crimes of the imposed Zionist regime. The Islamic Republic is also fighting, and by God's will, we will remove this regime from the region,” he added.

This is obviously a lie. The IRGC "advises" those groups and tells them what to do. Qassem Soleimani, the late leader of the Quds Force which oversees the relationship with these proxies, took credit for the IRGC's contiguous takeover of areas in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran:

The IRGC has expanded the resistance in terms of both quantity and quality. It has expanded the resistance from a geographical territory of 2,000 square kilometers in southern Lebanon to a territory of half a million square kilometers.
...America and the Zionist regime concentrate their efforts on stopping this qualitative expansion. The second point is that the IRGC has created territorial continuity for [the different parts] of the resistance. It has connected Iran to Iraq, Iraq to Syria, and Syria to Lebanon.

Iran's IRGC directs their actions. That's pretty much the definition of them being proxies.

The reason Khamenei has publicly maintained this fiction that there are no proxies is because he doesn't want Israel to cut off the head of the octopus but to waste time with the tentacles. He knows that Iran's ability to directly attack Israel, while dangerous, is not nearly as lethal as Israel's response could be.

His denial of proxies, and claims that Iran can attack Israel directly without proxies, is bravado - and the clearest indication that he is very scared of an attack by Israel. He has been solemnly promising a massive response to the Israeli airstrikes from late October but nothing has happened, and the only reason is fear of what would happen next.

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